now hear this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX0e72zhGlc

In the old days....

Craigie 1942

His name was David C. Craigmile
Son of my Aunt Frances and a man called Chick
Chick Craigmile, I didn’t know much about him
But I think like my maternal grandfather
Herman Elies, a miller by trade,
Chick and Herman were rogues

So my boyhood friend and brother in arms,
Craigie and I
Were related to rogues, we had roguery
In our blood, and we were often naughty together
Naturally;
One time Aunt Frances, local beauty, was spotted in town by
Uncle Lee, long after Chick and Herman blew the home scene
And Uncle Lee tracked Frances to the Methodist Church
Where she sang in the choir, good Welsh chorister
That she was


And Uncle Lee became a Methodist in his method to meet her
Starting off a romance with Frances and the church
That lasted Uncle Lee – not a rogue, ever –
A lifetime
Faith and faithfulness came to us spawn of rogues
But we were boys, sons of rogues
And I don’t think it took fully

Uncle Lee became Craigie’s father
And tried to instill Christian values
But it was too late;
By that time we were picking pockets,
Stealing cookies and fresh-baked pies
And later, planning bank jobs

At the Avon movies we sided with the bad guys
And went to the Salvation Army retail shop
For black hats
Craigie taught me to spit between my teeth and cuss
And get almost as much distance and vehemence as he got
And at night on sleep-overs we took flashlights
Under the blankets and read our favorite stories,
Including Seven Keys to Baldpate
Which we then alternated telling by rote in the dark;

It was World War II and at the Avon
We watched the RKO newsreels
And saw how the Nazis and the Japs were treating
Our American forces in the French woods
And at Bataan;
For a while I honored Craigie with an heroic
Battlefield name: Corregidor

Craigie was interested in drums so
Uncle Lee got him a set of used Slingerlands
And lessons
And through Craig I learned about Gene Krupa
And took to revering a paradiddling pothead;
We didn’t care if he had a bad habit or two
Because he could wail on the skins;
Craigie helped me practice tolerance;

Later Craigie served a hitch in the Navy
The branch Uncle Lee had been in
And did well until while on board a ship
He dove into the pool and cracked his head bad
And they gave him a medical discharge

He returned to the states and wasn’t quite
The same
But he married a nice girl, worked hard and had two kids;
One day when I was in the Army in 1958
They pulled me out of formation at Fort Holabird
To tell me Craigie had died;
He blacked-out, it was thought,
And plowed into the rear of a truck
On the way to work;

Thus ended the life of my brother
The end of a beautiful friendship
The beginning of a life without him
But his picture and his spirit are nearby,
The boy who fought for me when bullies threatened
Who traded a thousand tales with me
Who when we walked together
Threw his arm around my shoulders
Because we were buddies

Now he has Uncle Lee to put his arm around
Along with his mother
That’s the way we think in this family
And that’s the way it is



[David Dix 1-9-2003]

WAUKESHA FARMERS MARKET, REVISITED

A WONDERFUL TIME at the Waukesha Farmers Market very early this morning. Near frost had all the fresh goods moist with chilly dew.

I saw a Hmong woman from Verona holding big bunches of flowers under her arm and trimming them easily at the bottom with a defty-handled, surgically-sharp oriental-style butcher knife, (easy slice-slice!) to give bouquets to her customers fresh and ready for water & vase on a return home.

I saw a new style of Indian corn pictured above, in multi-colors I'd never seen before. One of these beauties per bunch of 3 ears, tied by a miraculously-chosen fabric ribbon. These vendors were there from Elkhorn. My friend author Terry Mahoney (O'Connor) from Waukesha http://midriffmuse.com/ is presently visiting her mother and sister there. Waukesha. I asked the sellers' name, figuring Terry might know them. (Not real likely; Elkhorn is small, but not that small anymore.) They were friendly, the order of the day at the farmers market.
It was a name I would need written down for Terry, so these grandparents who were helping their grandchildren run the stand asked one of the kids to tear a sheet from her tablet, and the man scrawled his name. (above)
He is a long-time dentist from Elkhorn, now retired. He and his wife thought they knew the name O'Connor. "Didn't they have a large family?" he asked. (Yup, I think they had heard of the O'Connors..........) And the Indian corn is from a new variety of seed. Enlarge the picture and see at the colors!
I ran into old friend Carol Smart perusing the veggies. We talked at length. She looks great, as always. Bob, my former mentor, not so good, she said, but holding forth in spite of a host of maladies.

Carol is going to put on her play about her Native American doctor grandmother at Old World Wisconsin near Eagle on Nov. 8th, free to visitors through a grant. I've seen Carol's play when it was put on at Carroll College some years ago, and will likely go again, as it is good.
Also met a woman who was selling shopping bags made from pillow-ticking. With wide shoulder straps. She was from Bayview, but wasn't sure of the 3 Brothers restaurant on St. Clair. When I described it (see an earlier posting on the SRN) she recognized it immediately. Yes, it's the cream city brick historic Schlitz neighborhood tavern building with the belted globe logo turret prominently on top.
She is a recent newcomer to Bayview, she said, and will now go there for sure. "Tell Branco I said Hi."

worst ever

and away we go-o-o-o........

October 1, 2008


The legacy

Among the many dispiriting things to come out of Bob Woodward’s quartet of books on George W. Bush is his observation that the president has not changed since he first started talking to Woodward in 2001.
No growth. No evolution. No regrets.
“History,” Bush replied, when asked by Woodward how he would be judged over time. “We don’t know. We’ll all be dead.” Broke, as well.
It would have been nice to let Bush’s two terms marinate a while before invoking Herbert Hoover and James Buchanan from the cellar of worst presidents. But then — over the last two weeks — he completed the trilogy of national disasters that will be with us for a generation or more.
George Bush entered the White House as a proponent of a more humble foreign policy and a believer that government should get out of the way at home. He leaves as someone with a trillion-dollar war aimed at making people who’ve hated each other for a thousand years become Rotary Club freedom-lovers, and his own country close to bankruptcy after government did get out of the way.
It’s a Mount Rainier of shame and folly. But before going any further, let’s allow his supporters to have their say.
“He’s going to have an unbelievably great legacy,” said Laura Bush in an ABC interview, citing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Fifty million people liberated from very brutal regimes.”
Fred Barnes argues that Bush is a visionary on a par with Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Bush is a president who leads,” he wrote in a 2006 book. “He controls the national agenda, uses his presidenti al power to the fullest and then some, prepares far-reaching polices likely to change the way Americans live, reverses other long-standing polices and is the foremost leader in world affairs.”
Finally, from Karl Rove, the Architect. Bush will be viewed “as a far-sighted leader who confronted the key test of the 21st century,” he said.
After wading through books with words like “fiasco,” “hubris” and “denial” in the title, historians will go to first-hand sources, the people who worked with Bush daily. There they will find Paul O’Neill, the president’s former Treasury secretary. In 2002, he sounded an alarm, saying Bush’s rash economic policies could lead to a deficit of $500 billion. This, after Bush had inherited a budget surplus, prompted many to scoff at O’Neill.
He was wrong, but only in one respect – the projected deficit, even without a financial bailout, will almost certainly be higher.
This means a lot, for every bridge not built, every Pell grant not given to a kid who may never go to college without one, every national park road left to crumble, every sick person who cannot afford to see a doctor in a country that wants to be known as the best on earth.
Historians will also go to Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary. Bush may20not be a “high functioning moron,” as Paul Begala called him recently. He is “plenty smart enough to be president,” McClellan wrote this year. But McClellan, in his job as the president’s mouthpiece, found him chronically incurious. He also said Bush deliberately misled the country into war, and in that effort, the news media were “complicit enablers.”
Historians will recall that in each of the major disasters on Bush’s watch, there were ample warnings — from the intelligence briefing that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike a month before the lethal blow, to the projections that Hurricane Katrina could drown a major American city, to the expressed fears that letting Wall Street regulate itself could be catastrophic.
Voluntary regulation. That phrase now joins “heckuva job, Brownie” and “mission accomplished” among those that will always be associated with the Bush presidency.
It’s painful now to realize, just as the economy craters and the world looks aghast at the United States, that the other cancer from the Bush presidency – his failure to even start the nation on the road to a new energy economy – gets short-changed during the triage of his final days.
Bush has hinted that his legacy will be about the war. So be it. He never caught bin Laden, the mass murderer who lau nched the raison d’etre of the Bush presidency.
But he did topple a paper army in Iraq, opening the drainage for our currency, blood and global reputation. It may go down as the longest, even costliest war in our history.
In a survey of scholars done earlier this year, just two of 109 historians said the Bush presidency would be judged a success. A majority said he would be the worst president ever.
But if you don’t trust those elites in academia, consider the president’s own base.
Bush leaves with his party in tatters. In the 28 states that register by affiliation, Democrats have picked up more than 2 million new voters this year while Republicans have lost 344,000. It seems only fitting that it was the last of the Bush dead-enders in Congress earlier this week who jumped ship when presented with the final horrendous hangover from this man who doesn’t drink.
If ever there was an argument for voting against politicians who are confident about their cluelessness, Bush is it. So it was heartening to see that a majority of the country, in some polls, now views Sarah Palin as unqualified to be president.
We may have learned something, even if Bush has not.

Not for public use

Dear Coal Miner's daughter,

Thanks for sending this. It is going out over the SRN wire today.

Hope you are well in Wheeling.

s/ Huge disdainer of the NRA

David Zep Dix

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurie Leonard
To: 'David Dix'
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 11:12 AM
Subject: WV miners
Blacksville #2 Mine Idle After 440 Workers Stay HomePosted Monday, September 29, 2008 ; 06:20 PMUpdated Monday, September 29, 2008 ; 07:07 PM
Watch Story Video
UMWA Workers Took Memorial Day in Protest
Story by Courtney DunnEmail Bio Other Stories by Courtney Dunn BLACKSVILLE -- Coal production at a mine in Monongalia County came to a halt today when every union miner stayed home, as part of a political protest.
It was an idle day Monday at the Blacksville #2 Mine.
More than 440 workers who are members of the United Mine Workers of America took what's called a Memorial Day instead of going to work.
Union officials say they took the day to protest after a film crew from the National Rifle Assocation showed up at the Consol mine last week to interview union workers.
They say the crew tried to get union coal miners to speak out against Barak Obama.
The UMWA has endorsed the democratic presidential nominee.
"This was a surprise visit," explained VP Local 1702, Safety Chairman Eric Greathouse, "and a lot of the miners felt this was a direct slap in the face of the union because they were trying to coerce our people into saying things against Barck Obama."
"Consol doesn't let anybody on their property - never," said Safety Committee Member Mark Dorsey, "And for them to let the NRA come on the property and solicit our membership was totally uncalled for. We made our endorsement to our political process and we didn't bother them and they shouldn't be harassing our membership over this."
The workers will return to work at 12:01 Tuesday morning.
A spokesperson for Consol said the company is not issuing any comment on the day.

Atlas shrugged

A definition of globe (alization) that I can understand and
to which I can now relate:

Question: What is the truest definition of
Globalization?

Answer: Princess Diana's death.

Question: How come?

Answer:

An English princess with an Egyptian
boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch
engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky,
(check the bottle before you change the spelling),
followed closely by Italian Paparazzi,
on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian
medicines.

This is sent to you by an American,
using Bill Gates's technology, and
you're probably reading this on your
computer, that uses Taiwanese chips,

and a Korean monitor, assembled by
Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore
plant, transported by Indian lorry
drivers, hijacked by Indonesians,
unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen,
and trucked to you by Mexican migrant.


That, my fellow Earth passengers, is Globalization!

Great minds

"Without the sun, we'd be dead."

[Mona Dix]

^,^

Today is October 1st.

So far, the raccoon districters have not turned on the heat. Mona's radiator in the bathroom has a fresh towel on it, but the metal is cold, as Mrs. R and I vie for who will be chicken first, and bump up the thermostat thus activating the furnace boiler.

It's become kind of an in-house contest. (Mona isn't happy about that.)

We ought to mark the wall where we have etched the notches of growth of our chidren's height, from 36", when we started keeping penciled scratches,. to 6'2", the apparent end, a now-precious wall that will never be painted over. So what if it's gotten a little dingy? It's just a little patch of wall.

But we haven't kept track of the annual first day of furnace heat. How long HAVE we gone before succumbing to the WE Energy company's reaching hand out for meager money?

It's a whole 'nuther story of how I feel about the discourtesies paid us by those who've figured out to charge "The People" money for their should be nature-given right to water and oil. Those blessings were, I thought, supposed to our birthright, not as "Maricuns", but as fellow passengers on space ship Earth.

But, as Mona points out so wisely, we have the sun, and it IS free, and as long as it lasts - Mona's further point -

WE LIVE.

She is said to be only a cat, but such a mind. She didn't get to be 18 years old in this house for nothing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZtQh5EIgWQ