" Why, if I had me a nickel for every buffalo I've killed

from moving trains...."

Noah,

four year old boy from Pleasant Valley, MD

plays Christmas gift from the raccoon editor in the annual yuletide name drawing. Your editor got the name of his mother, Deanna, but she was willing to share the intricate device.

We had a feeling that Noah and his brother little David would log some horn time on Christmas Day, and maybe plenty of other times as well.

Made from two gourds glued together where Noah's left hand holds the instrument, the seam ringed by decorative copper, it looks something like a ram's horn. We drilled a hole at the end and stuck a cornet mouthpiece into it. Thus with proper changing of embouchure - which trombonist Uncle Justin can show the boys - they may soon be playing 'Melancholy Baby' or 'Maryland My Maryland'.

Noah's father Luke, below, stands in the kitchen doorway at Noah's great-grandparent's house just down Hughes Shop Road . An imposing but gentle giant, our nephew is a hairy fellow, like his grandfather, John. See Luke's legs.

When Luke played high school football, at the time that this picture was taken a few years ago, a teammate shaved a vivid 'W' into his thick back fur. 'W' for Westminster. It was quite readable.

Marian McPartland and friends: NPR broadcasts

Herewith find a link that will deliver hours of listening enjoyment.

Courtesy of N. Blei

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122775344&sc=nl&cc=mn-20100205

Bespangled behemoth

Chain Pike, killer fish, survivor

Biting through lure-tipped fish lines easily when leaders were lighter weight, by fishermen's error, but also through lines that were appropriate gauge for a pike like her, the dark denizen of Lake Lundgren near Pembine WI always escaped capture. Was there every any thickness of leader that could defeat this aboriginal Esox Niger who plumbed the depths of her territory, her little lake whose few cabins claimed most of the surround, but for a Bible camp with a beachfront and pier?

It was known and still may be as Lake Lundgren Bible Camp a few miles west of Hy 41 and a bit south of Hy 8 heading toward mythic hodag country, Rhinelander.

That old Houdini fish may still be snapping lines today, with her necklace, her breastplate of gathering, rusting lures still dragging behind her. Like Marley's ghost in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, she wears the chains she forged in life. Only in the big fish's case, she perhaps proudly wears the chains she ESCAPED in life.

We wrote about him/her once in the raccoon news. For the complete unrevised posting and a fanciful drawing go to http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/fish-wearing-breast-plate-true-story.html. Otherwise, we've copied and pasted the free verse at the below. We were reminded of the bespangled behemoth the other day by an article in the New Yorker about other more huntable Chain Pikes:

click image to enlarge type

In this report we changed the name of the lake to Wunderken to protect the fish, not that she ever worried about that.


THERE WAS AN OLD LUNKERFISH
who'd been inhabiting a northern
Wisconsin lake, Wunderken,
for years and years
and years;
nobody could catch him
(or it might have been a her)
though the townsfolk had been trying
for years and years
- AND years;
tourists would ask
'any good fishing around here?'
and the locals would say nope
and they said that
for years;
they planned for one of them
to land the Wunderken monster
locally, in-house,
but they'd been trying in vain
FOR YEARS;
the old, great and mighty strong fish
a northern chain pike
struck from time immemorial
and snapped their lines
with ease
and had worn their snagged
and severed lures
like a breastplate of bangles,
carrying their vicious hooks in her flesh
..............for years.

I saw this legend once
as I snorkled beneath Wunderken
on a sunny day;
something shiny and moving fast
caught my eye through my facemask
as the sun shone down through the water
and reflected
off the trailing lures,
copper spinners and ill-conceived
man-made tricks meant to ultimately fool
the wise denizen;
How majestically she wore them!
armor hard-earned,
a finny knight in armor
she was.

Year by year, endlessly, the townsfolk
circled the lakeshore and spun a thick web
of fishing lines
across it in their little boats,
staring down for a sight of this creature
that I - an interloper,
not a hopeful local,
had fortuitously and graciously seen
- for I was not hunting her.

The finned magician was too smart
for these trick-trying "masters"
whose lines were futilely snapped like thread
or bitten through by razor teeth
if stronger gauge.

Their garage-hung landing nets
eventually rotted over those years
and the new ones they bought
likewise over the years
mouldered and went
to crumbly, holey mesh,
sometimes with the help
of gnawing mice;
while the snapping pike
gathered more and more
decorations on her chest,
medals
of the mortal combats
thrust upon her
by the tiring fishermen.

Is she still in Lake Wunderken?
I wouldn't know
for I haven't been up there
for my own years and years
and years
but I'm guessing she still rules
the deep waters of that tiny lake
and will
until the eventual weight
of her albatrossian lure collection
holds her
to a laken grave.

I say she won't be caught
no matter how many
years and years
and years
go by.

I got it! I GOT IT!

Man awakens every morning

with golden ring, not brass

PLAY VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybdLu0D1SVc

Noblest steed on the circuit
rode in from Merryland
and assured him by deed that
though life has its vicissitudes
his thumb will always
be encircled with gold

Think you've got it good?

Man, 54, lost almost everything, lives on his frozen houseboat, Oshkosh WI on the Fox River

Keeps body and soul together on disabiity

* sustained brain cancer

*divorce

*foreclosure of house

*loss of household goods

is happy, gives his sustenance donations from public to the poor, awaits spring thaw, going to New Orleans

and all he has left: the salvaged houseboat, 3 cats, woodstove, old guitar.....

from Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel 2-3-10

watch video:

http://www.jsonline.com/multimedia/video/?bcpid=13960334001&bcplid=14192768001&bctid=64088961001

Marty's Pizza: another public service announcement

Deserved recognition

A recent article in the local sneeze paid due homage to the best pizzeria around these parts. (See below, click to enlarge)

Marty's is where you go when you want top excellence in pizza. Reading the article will tell you why. We've been attending the restaurant since 1957. A bustling business now with two locations, they do not need a plug from the raccoon news.

We do know, however, that the local raccoons residing in the sewer are always delighted to find a discarded slice of Marty's Pizza in the ditch. Who would deign to jettison such treasure, one wonders? Peaceable critters, raccoons have been known to fight over a rare piece of Marty's.

That's a plug we can give.