Windmill excursions; Endangered; Sampson, prize gorilla of Milw. Co. Zoo, dead; Other endangerments

Last Sunday we took another drive to Appleton
to hear our daughter Erin's Vento Winds orchestra concert.

This time we were driving her former Ford Fusion, a new car
for the Lincoln-locked, replacing the 1996 Town Car
that was expiring, though with heart of steel.

Still.  Alas, along with rust.

This low mileage 2008 model offers ever so much better
gasoline mileage.

At last Dee has a reasonable and practical
transport, the sort of car she has always been
much better suited to, but she drove our only car, 
the Lincoln way longer than we should have had it.

We sold it to a local garage owner and all-round
mechanic who could repair the many pending
mechanical needs,
and indeed has now done so.

So instead of the noble machine's likely
ending as a crunched cube in a scrap yard
it has received some added life

though the abysmal rusting out of the body
that got away from us when I was sick
signals cube-time on the horizon,
maybe soon, but the good news is ~ not just now.

Added life for the faithful servant.

John Wiesenthal, mechanic/buyer removes the old YIBAWE plates.
Look John up on the net.  He's a good man.

YIBAWEan history:

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/01/there-is-paper-and-there-is-paper.html

Dee and new car, at Culver's.

Segue

Top of page:

Our drive in the new Fusion took us through
the wind turbine farms along Hy 41.
Past Held's sausage.

We were into windpower many years ago.

Here you see the little man playing - thanks to harnessed

wind on Arcadian Ave - his banjo.

And stomping his foot.

The stronger the breeze, the faster he strummed and stomped.

The windmill blades were recycled metal Venetian blind

blades cut and tapered to size.

The figure and more delicate parts were fashioned

with a tin snip from old cake tins belonging to my grandmother.

The mechanism once blew down the street
during a windstorm.  Badly dented, nay, broken
yet it has been kept 
as a curiosity and is here
at the Odd Fellows hall as I type.

It is a talisman, a connection with a former time.

A newer model sprung up on a supposed wind-proofed
6 inch square beam,

See the wooden top cap.  That was specially made
with the right bearings for me by a friend, Mel Stark.

Even the 6 x 6 that held the weathervane

went the way of eventual unstoppable rot.  Blew over in another wind.

Even so, good old Mel Stark of the Congo
took the bent pieces and straightened them.
Also took an old dresser I'd stored for years
in the garage, and beautifully refinished it.

Mel has that windmill 
- for which he'd made the original finial bearings -
yet in service in his Northview Ave 'back 40'
where it still tells the truth as to wind
speed and direction.

I have the finial and part of the unrotted pole here with me/us.

I temporarily laid out the license plates on the floor.
Four YIBAWE plates from our car and truck
with Erin's two numeral plates off the Fusion.

^,^

Endangered 

Cont'd

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/living-planet-report-wwf_us_58114bcce4b064e1b4b0725b

(and this whiff of humor, albeit in a zoo enclosure)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3tQqCdyflg

^,^

On Zoos, 1981
Letter to Editor, Milw. Journal

For easier reading

we've divided this letter to the 1981 Milw. Journal

into two sections - direct your cursor up and down for a complete
read:

First and third portion

  Second portion

^,^

Other endangerments

I have known

Ragtime’s Testicles

We had a cat who was a male

Whose habits and wants none could assail

Except in his dotage he’d flagrantly pee

In places inside where we’d smell, and then see

The vet said of that he could be easily fixed

By neutering him that scourge would be nixed

So I took him in and had the job done

And I told the vet I had a request, only one

That he save the testes in a small glass jar

For me to take home;  would not carry’t too far

They were to be sure Ragtime’s prized possessions

And I thought that to save them might stay any questions

Thus I placed in the ice box Ragtime’s yellow-gray orbs

In a small screw-top jar midst the food of all sorts

And with time in the way of fridges everywhere galore

The little jar got forgotten;  I knew it no more

I married Dee later, and she liked to clean

She tackled my icebox, threw out many things mean

But my sauces and condiments if questioned got left

For me to not lose so I’d be not bereft

Besides, the mystery jar took so little room

And didn’t look mouldy, formeldahyded safely from gloom

The contents looked like something that I might want to keep

So Dee, a good saver, said not a peep

Years later my father visited and in accord with his habit

Required a martini; he’d make it and have it

The gin and the vermouth were there in plain sight

But no garnishments, like olives, cheered  him that terrible night

He made do through searching, built a drink I’d have banned

And joined us in the living room, bare toothpicks in hand

And his brow it was furrowed as his lips he did smack

Saying, “Boy, your cocktail onions a wallop do pack!”

“They have a certain gristle I’m not used to having,

And the flavour, though pungent, I’d probably be halving;

How long have you had them?”  Though with dawning great dread

I said, “The cat that they came from is dead!”

[David Dix 4-18-2004]

Martini-drinking Dad

Ragtime

Blind trust; Shakespeare Sonnet 73; Bear Ice; Desk away from my 10-16; A word a day; Wrong

^,^

Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold

by William Shakespeare

Listen Online

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’ d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

"Sonnet 73: That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold" by William Shakespeare. Public Domain

^,^

Very old dictionary
a family treasure


A Great Bear

white, like the ice he seeks
melting
stands atop his diminishing islet 
forlorn, growling

These pieces of wettening ice
broken, crashing loose
from shore ledges giving way
are bits of floating terra-infirma

Polar bears  jump from them,
 swim to them
to reach their prey,

to fatten for the coming leaner weather.

This method of hunting,
theirs from time immemorial
lessens year by year

The swims grow longer
sometimes exhausting;
the bear howls his WHY?

Something is changing!

dzd 10-21-16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ITc3Uclb40

and for Alaskan footage:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6d5QpmWw0s

^,^





Away from desk -
Raccoon News happens here;
all-purpose 2 X 4 table
in The Odd Fellows

^,^

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

trumpery

PRONUNCIATION:

(TRUHM-puh-ree) png>

MEANING:

noun:
1. Something showy but worthless.
2. Nonsense or rubbish.
3. Deceit; fraud; trickery.

ETYMOLOGY:

From French tromper (to deceive). Earliest documented use: 1481.

USAGE:

“The room was crowded with a chilly miscellany of knick-knacks 

and ornaments, gewgaws, and trumpery of every kind.”
Leo Bruce; Case for Three Detectives; Academy Chicago; 1980.

“History, made up as it is of so much trumpery, treachery, and tyranny,

 needs deeds of valor, of sacrifice, and of heroism if it is to be palatable.”
The Medal of Honor: A History of Service Above and Beyond; 

 Zenith Press; 2014.

See more usage examples of trumpery in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

~~~

True Grit; Standard plumbing; Servants

SUNSET:
CONSERVATIVE BEING (s)
AT WEST AND BETHESDA AVENUES

WAUKESHA, A BASTION OF REPUBLICANISM

Note:  left to right:

Union Jack flag
Two Trump flags
Illuminated 'Back the Badge' sign in yard
American flag
Don't Tread on Me flag
and not shown ~
sign in the front yard - 'Hillary for prison' 



^,^


Midnight in Paris, great movie, great music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhiheDcF8SM#t=106.649177

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRWfS2s2v4 If it comes on in the middle, roll bar back to start. ^,^ Standard Plumbing by Marie Harris Listen Online Plumbing supply places, like auto parts stores,  have long counters with bar stools  for the customers. When I came in, the man behind the counter was telling a story  about the time he and his friends had decided to celebrate  getting home from Vietnam and had bought a lot of Scotch  and given one bottle to a wino who drank half of it all at once and dropped dead. Then the man, with Walter stitched on his shirt, asked what he could do for me and I told him I had come to buy a toilet, the cheapest, most basic toilet they had.  He wanted to know if I was putting it in one of my apartments or something and I said no, it was for my own house and I was, oddly enough, buying a toilet for the first time because we were installing indoor plumbing. The other houses I’d lived in had always come with toilets and I’d never given much thought to choosing one, though today I’d kind of decided I wanted bone, not white. So, in the process of getting the bowl and the tank and the seat and some pipes and gaskets from the warehouse, we got to talking about our outhouses and he allowed as how the one he had in Florida when he was kid in the fifties hadn’t been all that bad, except for the bugs and sometimes a snake, and we both agreed that there are times out there when you see things from an unusual vantage, for instance: that view of the night sky in winter is unparalleled. "Standard Plumbing" by Marie Harris, from   Weasel in the Turkey Pen. © Hanging Loose Press, 1993 The reading of the above - Standard Plumbing -  reminded me  of something  on the general topic   I wrote in 1980: Orduration by moonlight I am sitting on a chrome kitchen chair from which I've removed the seat. I've wound rags around the metal so that my bare skin will not stick to the chrome,   remembering once when I was a child that I made the adhesive mistake of touching my lower lip to the bare cold steel of my sled. I am sitting on this chair that I've carried from  the cabin into the snowy back yard because it is winter and the indoor plumbing has been discontinued  for the season. I have just arrived in the woods after driving the  230 miles from Milwaukee after work  to spend another contemplative weekend out of the city, out of the polluted air away from the struggling masses, an army to which I unwillingly belong. This is the place that refreshes my spirit and offers sanctuary. Tonight I am especially struck by the profound silence in the woods.  It is always quiet here, but now, in the middle of the night with no sounds on the road and no wind, I can hear nothing but the pulse in my ears and the little unwinding, clicking sounds of my close-by cooling VW engine.  A distant owl sounds its call.  Because there is  nothing else,it is clarion.   Whoooooo? I look up.  The sweeping sky is cloudless and full of stars. Lacking the inverted bowl of city gases this northern crystal vantage offers a clear look into the heavens. The Milky Way shines overhead like a loose band of sparkling diamonds. From piney horizon to piney horizon there are bright gems against back velvet. In the east, through the woods I see a quartering moon on the rise. It furnishes enough reflected light for me to note a row of forming icicles  from melting snow on the sloping back roof. Some of them will reach the ground. I know that soon, after the blaze I have set in the pot-belly stove spreads its heat. There will be additional configurations and occasional dripping sounds will issue outside my bedroom window tonight as I sleep. About four inches of fresh snow are on the roof. To my left stands what is left of an outhouse. The deceased homesteaders who built it couldn't have guessed that the rough boards they nailed there would interest a sojourner sufficiently, years later, to bring a careful pinch bar to the by-then frail repository. The dissembled outhouse is now the paneling in the living room of the cabin. It was a promotion for wood that faithfully  stood a rude watch long enough.  Wood that sustained the weathering of the years, coats and coats of dissimilar paints and the apparently frequent shotgun blasts of passing hunter fools. It all shows graphically and beautifully, the wrenching history, the B-B shot marks, the gradual mouldering, the time spent out here in the back yard with a lean-to and a shed. Now the noble slats hold forth in a milieu where people still read and do things of a more pleasant nature. The outhouse had paid its dues. I sit listening.  The wind has commenced since I chose my random spot to tarry. Snow from the branches of some near-by pines is dislodged and I hear it land with a whoof. Some particles drift toward me. I feel them as they land on my bare thighs and face. I open my mouth and taste the flakes.   Purity. Time passes. Standing, I prepare to leave my starry observatory, chair in hand. The owl repeats its interrogatory:  WHOOOO? It seems a more insistent question at this closer range, and a good one, too. Along with what and where and why and how. All questions I have pondered  and will continue to mull here  in the northern clearer land. [dzd 1980] ^,^ Servants by Faith Shearin Listen Online In college I read about Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton and I thought of their great minds and their long dresses and their gilded friendships which involved tea in the library or on the lawn. I thought of the places they traveled and the weight of their trunks and all the ways their marriages did or did not please them. I thought of the dogs that followed at their heels and the rooms and gardens they decorated and the beaches where they carried umbrellas. But I never once thought of their servants. I didn’t think of the cook who woke up to make the fires of morning or the maids who stood over a pot of hot soap, stirring the day. I did not think of how someone dressed them and scrubbed their floors, how someone brought their dinner on a tray. It was years before I knew they had them at all: invisible, unremembered, people who gave their lives to drudgery. Now I can barely write or finish a book for all the housework and errands, now I think of them: knocking dust from the curtains, carrying the rugs outside each spring so they could beat them with a broom. "Servants" by Faith Shearin from Telling the Bees. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015