stolen from doctor's office

two tongue depressors for one very big-mouthed man

(doctored)

HE visited his doctor's office. One of several patients the nurse had lined up in a row of adjacent examing rooms, he grew impatient. He shifted his weight and tapped his fingers looking for something to do.

Then he spied the tongue depressor dispenser on the table. He borrowed two for an art project, rationalizing that he would have asked the doctor, but he was busy accumulating vast earnings. When he finally came in, the pocketing had been forgotten.

Arriving back home he emptied his pockets and found the swag. He made a mental note to pay for the balsam when next he returned. But rationalizing (again): his bill well-covered two flimsy depressors anyway.

church lady 7:30 AM

Feb. 10, 2008/wind chill minus (-) 36

and Denise, the church lady, far beyond any of the wildest dreams of Dana Carvey, sets off to walk to church, where she is employed as Director of Christian Educatiion and Faith Formation. Several members, including the pastor, called Dee to see if she didn't think church should be cancelled. Cancel? She thought not, she said, tentatively and judiciously.

Not to be daunted, though church is only five blocks off, the church lady decided the show should go on, and she would hoof it and open the building, per her custom, and wait for the three or four (or maybe a handful more?) to gather together and worship in His name.

As bundled up as she was in a goose down coat the editor hasn't work in a raccoon's age, and with her face covered muslim-style behind a wool scarf that Erin knitted her, she smiled broadly (believe me) before setting out.

And, we are happy to report, she just called to say she made it safely and soundly.

[The coons, by the way, are presumed much warmer today in their hostel beneath the old post office downtown, out of the high and frigid wind.]

Also, Dee advises that her confirmation class, in deference to the longer distances some must travel, IS cancelled.

Ruth Elies' dance band

For two cents plain

At 1130 AM on Oct. 24, 1927, a first class envelope (2 cents postage) was posted to SR News editor's mother, (then) Miss Ruth Elies. Sent from the Loyal Order of Moose, Madison Lodge No. 1451, it was to book Miss Elies' dance band for the night of Nov. 14th. Signed by the Chairman of Lodge Entertainment, Fred H. Rogers, it sealed the deal for Miss Elies, who at that time was only 13 years old. She was playing her saxophone then. Later she became a pianist and church organist, and played by ear. She's been gone since 2004, but in her final years she still played her Steinway grand. Her genes went into the musical proficiencies and gifts of her children and especially her grandchildren.

She graduated from Sun Prairie WI high school in 1931, where in her senior year she met a new history and band teacher fresh out of Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa. Leslie Dix. Romance was verbotin yet they had an intense clandestine love. The mutual love of music, the bands, the concerts they played "on the ether" - over radio out of the state network, the pieces they transcribed together like Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy's Indian Love Call - is all recalled at this time.

....and may all your (retirement) days be fortuitous

A couple of years ago your SRN editor wanted to design an all-purpose greeting card, and it happened that he had just acquired his first personal computer. You can see how hard he studied the exercise on his monitor, moving lines and colors around until it came out right. As at the left. The card even then was too late for Willie the milkwagon horse who finally took his last ninety degree turn, skyward, never to be seen again. But, Willie, this one's for you, wherever you are......................

etch-a-sketch; kindness for Willie the milkwagon horse

The milk wagon horses of my childhood
didn't know it themselves
but their owners did:
the gas engine was about to retire them.

For years these faithful draft horses
delivered the milk from the dairy
to our doors every morning early
and knew their routes by heart.

Only the slightest movement of the reins
would affect their stopping and going.
Our town is laid out mostly in a street grid
of sharp right angle corners and

every intersection posed a straight ahead
or 90 degree left or right decision.
These old horses almost drove themselves
after years of neighborhood clip-clopping.

They stood and waited and shat in a canvas bag
while their bib-overalled drivers
put the iced, clinking glass bottles in the racks
and carried them to our milk chutes.

Brave children would put some grass
up to the docile beast's bit-laden mouth
or a windfall apple or pear
while the driver wasn't looking.

The horse on our route was Willie
and he was so beaten by his wearisome
same old-same old
that he would not acknowledge us at all.

And when he was retired at long last
and put out to pasture
Willie was such an old horse
He could learn no new tricks

I heard he moved around
among the cows and other animal fellows
In a series of 90 degree turns only,
ploddingly, no galloping for poor Willie!

But each day he was called in for dinner early
To give him time to negotiate to the feed trough,
90's by 90's, before the food was gone to the gullets
of his less habituated pasture-mates.

Small measures of kindness for Willie:
no gold watch
but a deferential dinner call, behavior-mod fame
and medical insurance against the glue factory.

[David Dix 1-26-01]

……………………………………

Yes, Virginia, there is a RACCOON CITY.........

r

SEE?

http://residentevil.wikia.com:80/wiki/Raccoon_City

sleepless in Cedar Falls

http://www.kidshealth.org/kid/ill_injure/bugs/chigger.html

say no more

OLD VELVET DRAPERY SAMPLE, ANYONE?

SEWER RACCOONS

A rash, an "outbreak" of Sewer Raccoons
continues in Waukesha;
four coon servants of the blind King Coon
living beneath the city in his improvised
throne room
were seen simultaneously emerging
from a storm grate

These audacious coons
are gentle burglars
serving their liege
by gathering items
from his regal shopping lists
usually under cover of darkness

They rove about furtively
which gives strength to
the belief that they
are possibly harmful

Good heavens
what's so bad about their
meager wants
- bits of broken glass
and bottle caps?

The king needs a royal cape
and what better way to adorn him
than with a discarded purple velvet
drapery sample and the colorful trash
found in our street gutters?

I say live in harmony with
our subterranean friends
and be amused, not scared,
when they tip-toe about
touching us

Sometimes, yes, they go beyond
their usual shyness
particularly at Halloween
when they gently reach up pantlegs
and frighten children sufficiently
that they drop their sacks
of candy

Such pickings
should not be denied
the masked faux raiders
who do not poke guns
in anyone's back and say
"Stick-em UP!"

They come bearing
explicit shopping lists
from the King:
maybe a piece of metal
bent just so,
or a melon, or a piece
of pizza in the gutter

Nothing we're ever going to miss
No breaking and entering
no howls or shrieks
these raccoons are more afraid of us
than we are of them
except at HALLOWEEN

I say we welcome the raccoons
to our neighborhoods
Our streets are much cleaner
for their scavenging
Just imagine their King
and the cape he wears

Money cannot buy such
underground elegance

The King,
so old he cannot walk
can no longer negotiate
the long sewer distances
from the throne room
cavern far below the
old downown post office
to the far-flung
street-level residential grates

In truth
he is blind
from too many years
of being kept in the dark

His crest may read
"Veritas Est Lux"
Light, >>>let there be more light<<<

I know the coons are
looking for a miner's
helmet for him

and

I know the problem of Halloween
out-and-out theft
would be cured by tying
strings around childrens' pantlegs

[dd]