WAUKESHA SEWER RACCOON NEWS: May 2016

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Typewriter; Cleo; Blessings; Bedroom sounds; Like poets opening the mail; Bell signals; Oddysey; The boys' cat brushes

From the Sat. Raccoon:

play:
click 'Go to link'

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=6207190989318&source=jl999&utm_medium=internal_email&utm_source=pickup&utm_campaign=receivercontent

^,^

Cleo strikes a classic pose
at a recent Danish cousine get-together. Thanks to the unidentified
photographer who snapped his!

^,^

Blessings
by Ronald Wallace

occur.
Some days I find myself
putting my foot in
the same stream twice;
leading a horse to water
and making him drink.
I have a clue.
I can see the forest
for the trees.
All around me people
are making silk purses
out of sows’ ears,
getting blood from turnips,
building Rome in a day.
There’s a business
like show business.
There’s something new
under the sun.
Some days misery
no longer loves company;
it puts itself out of its.
There’s rest for the weary.
There’s turning back.
There are guarantees.
I can be serious.
I can mean that.
You can quite
put your finger on it.
Some days I know
I am long for this world.
I can go home again.
And when I go
I can
take it with me.

"Blessings" by Ronald Wallace from Long for This World. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003

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Up in the bedroom

https://www.facebook.com/KraftyKutsOfficial/videos/10152328864369429/?pnref=story

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At the Feeder

by Jane Kenyon

First the Chickadees take
their share, then fly
to the bittersweet vine,
where they crack open the seeds,
excited, like poets
opening the day’s mail.

And the Evening Grosbeaks—
those large and prosperous
finches—resemble skiers
with the latest equipment, bright
yellow goggles on their faces.

Now the Bluejay comes in
for a landing, like a SAC bomber
returning to Plattsburgh
after a day of patrolling the ozone.
Every teacup in the pantry rattles.

The solid and graceful bodies
of Nuthatches, perpetually
upside down, like Yogis…
and Slate-Colored Juncoes, feeding
on the ground, taking only
what falls to them.

The cats watch, one
from the lid of the breadbox,
another from the piano. A third
flexes its claws in sleep, dreaming
perhaps, of a chicken neck,
or of being worshiped as a god
at Bubastis, during
the XXIII dynasty.

“At the Feeder” by Jane Kenyon from Collected Poems. © Graywolf Press, 2005

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Bell Signals

The churchbell lodged in ancient timbers

At the steepletop

Rung by rope knotted into a gigantic wooden pulley wheel

- mechanical advantage -

Strung down through air and pigeon leavings

Emerging cleanly in the vestibule

A strong Sunday-dressed child can ring it

Doves lodged in ancient timbers

Flutter in and out through louvers

Chicken-wired but time-worn

Keeping their high watches over the town

From coved and linteled archways

Cooing mildly feather-cuddling silent

Generations of doves nestled

In sanctuary at this height

Lived with the sleeping giant

Awakened only on Sunday mornings to summon

The attention of the worshipers gathered below

An under-used instrument

Calling not because of fire, death,

Disaster or rebellion

Struck in a foreign foundry over a century ago

Freighted to this town to be hoisted aloft

To be rung sedately by Congregationalists

A ton of bronze lodged in ancient timbers

With peaceful quiet doves

Might be sounding greater attentions

in times like these

Might be rung in shifts 24 hours a day

With all bells everywhere

Across the world ringing out

our own ton of bronze

With thousands more might speak out

In mad clamor to the heavens

Our ancient dusty megaphone

Oiled for Sunday use only

Treasured mighty bell

Voice above us though out of our sight;

The news from The Holy Land

God’s Earth

makes me think we should ring you

Until we lose consciousness

[David Dix]

^,^

A Space Oddysey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-X3C1w77Eg

^,^

The boys' brushes

A thank you card from the kids

of Tom and Malena Koplin

The special cat-hair brush from

Paws for a Moment salon (top view)

For one of these super brushes for your cat,

shop Paws for a Moment Salon and boutique.

316 South St., downtown Waukesha.

Expert grooming.

From Tom Koplin, CPA, Katman too

Coming next week:

Ukelele moves to Montana

used bigtime once again

SEE -

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2011/08/man-pronounced-dead-still-remembers.html

Saturday, May 21, 2016

Happy Goldfinch at the Five Points; Ben to the rescue; Curved folding chair; Eddie Condon cont'd; Errol Garner, jazz piano; A great bassist; Milkweed tenacious; Gaudy butterfly - again; A paper raccoon

Waukesha Five Points Goldfinch

perched in the honey locust tree adjacent to the Clarke. (Photo taken from Odd Fellows Hall)

In the the Main Street ongoing re-configuration this is the one tree left standing in that vicinity, and the regular
finch customers for the food finds are happy. Many daily trips are made by them.

^,^

Incoming son-in-law as of July 3, Ben Willard, IT man of Lawrence U. Appleton WI
keeps the computer up to date here at Raccoon headquarters.

^,^

Shop downtown where three of these old church wooden folding chairs
were spied in an antique store around the corner from Raccoon hdqtrs. This one sits
in the landing to the office. Note the curved design to comfort sitters' posteriors.

Church folding chairs are now metal and are not as accomodating.

^,^

Read The Progressive
for more articles like this:

http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/05/188724/snake-oil-salesman-and-carnival-barker-ryan-vs-trump?mc_cid=ef5bf541d5&mc_eid=df35b4cabc

You might also read this Opinion from the current Shepherd Express:

http://shepherdexpress.com/article-27788-ryan%25E2%2580%2599s-game.html

^,^
Eddie Condon cont'd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzmteUJsi4s

^,^

I'LL REMEMBER APRIL:

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=erroll+garner+i%27ll+remember+april

OUR LATE FRIEND David James used to admire Errol Garner and try to copy his style.

as did I with him, The Immortal Babes,
at the Univ. of W Madison, l958 and beyond;
David regularly commenting on Garner's
percussive left hand punctuatng his music. ("WOW!)
And his barely audlble moans / groans in the background when Garner played.
A trademark.

David too was a jazz pianist.

^,^

Jane Little, bassist, expires playing encore
- from CBS As It Happens
'CBS Dossier/ AIH' -

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.3584412/a-friend-s-tribute-to-bassist-jane-little-who-died-during-orchestra-performance-1.3584415

^,^

Milkweed tenacious
grows through asphalt
Colgate WI
at the Helt residence

'Somewhere Monarchs in a background

sing Fauna choruses of praise

That though their Fauna be weak

They shall be provided for

By also ephemeral-appearing

Flora; part of a shockingly wonderful
Plan.'

In her Email Cindy wrote:

"Notice the little bud coming up through the asphalt" ....

Ref: [Saul Alinsky; Hannibal: We will either find a way or make one.]

^,^

+
A Westerner sees a similar
to the milkweed sight -

a flower growing from a crack

in a stone wall

and falls to his knees to take

the plant out roots and all

to study it -

how that can be?

Thereby it harmed, killed.

An Easterner sees such a sight,

marvels over it

and moves on.

^,^

A Gaudy Butterfly Laid Me

[old Raccoon saw, but germain]

On a milkweed leaf she laid me

with no great hope of my success,

for I was just one of a hundred eggs

she deposited,

flitting, pausing, flitting, pausing,

my mother's abdomen arching

each time and putting us down;

we pinheads were merely something

that made her feel good

or the result of an act that did;

or not even that;

I don't know and will never know.

I ate my full engorgement of clean furrows

in the white-juiced leaves until I grew

to a fat temptation for predators

that eat the likes of me,

but the numbers had it

that I was one of the few who survived,

never got picked off in the hard

mandibles of life.

No,

my disappointment was different;

I spun my waxy cocoon

according to pattern

and then, alas, instead of the transformation,

the metanoia,

I had my beauty taken from me

and my capsule gradually

turned black,

and as I lay dying inside,

rotting into a fetid inkiness,

a monarch's striving nature

nonetheless living still,

my little strength merged to

poke a pinhole in the bottom

of my enbindment, and by dint

of waning force I dripped this

message onto the leaf below,

and that is how you come

to read a distillation of all

I was ever to become,

a quotation, nothing more, but by a higher power than I:

What we have to be

Is what we are - Thomas Merton

[David Dix 7/06]

^,^

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc5RMYvXOhA

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Dee then and now; The things we do; Downtown progress; Wis lives; Eddie Condon sings - 1929; Letter to editor

Worn to church, Mothers Day 2016

^,^

The things we do

Country Fair

by Charles Simic

Listen Online

If you didn’t see the six-legged dog,
It doesn’t matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,
One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.
Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.
She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.

^,^