WAUKESHA SEWER RACCOON NEWS

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

How much seeing before believing?

The SRN Editor peers at early sewer raccoons.

Many people used to pooh-pooh

and pooh

such a thing as a sewer raccoon.

They said it was a figment

of our overactive imagination.

Who cared?

That was in Two Thousand and Seven.

But we went on writing and exclaiming

about them;

and now,

five years later,

we're still writing about them,

and the 'realists'.

after seeing an article

by the Associated Press

in the Milwaukee Journal-

Sentinel,

finally get it.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Raccoons return to favored haunts; salt tattoo; bicycle races

This raccoon swims laps back and forth across the Fox River on a recent workout to exercise his limbs, cramped from habituating narrow Waukesha sewer passages. He uses a last year's cattail as a spotting object where he makes a turning dive and paddles to the other side, and so on, back and forth, back and forth across the likewise narrow downtown Fox.

^.^

The Sewer Raccoons of Waukesha are said to be grateful for the cleaning up of the river water in this town. They find it swimmable and potable, seemingly unaware or unconcerned that humans' usage of time-gloried deep well water is a ticking radioactive time bomb. Some say.

The Sewer Raccoons, who many ignore (including the Business Improvement Districters and about that the raccoons are also thankful) often emerge from the depths beneath the city after a night of revelry, sometimes clustering in a meeting hall in the catacombs beneath the old post office - now known as the fancy Rotunda. That is where their squatters-rights hub in the sewer network is sited. Allegedly.

Ref: http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/03/flow-gently-sweet-afton.html

When it rains it pours

may or may not be a credo

of a here-protected anonymous waitress
at Dady-Oh's Restaurant.

Maybe she just liked the design.

But we remember from childhood
that still famous trademark.

How clever of this smiling young woman

currently passing
through a waitress stint

undoubtedly destined for greater
things in her life.

She picked a fine cafe
in which to do this act.

Shy, she hesitated
but only briefly before
allowing

a working arm to be photographed.

Just as the Raccoon News is hesitant

to recommend tradesfolk or eateries

on these 'money cannot buy' pages
in pursuit of our own quieter downtown
denizenry,

we take no delay
in citing the former Paul's Restaurant

now known as the purposefully
mispelled but well-run Dady-Oh's

for a delicious breakfast or lunch

- or Friday Fish Fry .

~~IF/~~WHEN you go

keep your eyes out for an arm

with a Morton's salt tattoo!

Have the American fries.

................

Having more eyes out:

Yesterday's bike races
were watched by us from our air-conditioned
aerie windows
at the Odd Fellows building.

A mourning dove
hunted by a few ill-mannered Wisconsin
shotgun wielders
sought his/her usual sanctuary
on our window sill.

Due to unusual eye placement
the bird was able to warily watch us
with one eye
and with the other eye
survey the speeding bike racers
as they prepare to slant into
a sharp turn off Main Street
and up Grand.

There was a pile-up of six cyclists
at one point in the day-long excitement.
A tight cluster of side-by-side strivers
crashed into each other
making that turn.

It was an earlier in the day race
in a learning, too-far leaning (?)
younger classification ranking.
No serious injuries but fragile
and expensive machines might have
been damaged.
We couldn't see.

From the outer Silurian limestone ledge
the mourning dove might have told them
they were flying too close
to synchronize that tight turn.

At the end of race day, cow bells
and hootings silenced,
the sun set beautifully.

to be continued

Friday, June 15, 2012

Call first

Let me set the stage

very early Friday morning

just starting to get light

street cleaner making passes beneath us

to prepare for Friday Night Live

55 degrees outside, cloudy,

mourning dove on sill

flies, startled by me,

across the street to a tree

in front of the now vacant

recall office

I ascend a little ladder

a kitchen folding device

to get high enough to

catch the onion-skin picture

taped to the window

a likeness of Dee taken

at People's Park one recent

evening

The way I positioned the picture

she appears to be studying

the beveled glass cross

that hangs in the window

the sun brushes through clouds

in the breaking eastern sky;

I've flicked on our electric

window candle

to answer waitress Pam

across the street at Dave's

we too are open

at the Odd Fellows

Some may wonder what

the yellow wedge-shaped thing is

in the taped transparent picture

that from the street just looks

like a sheet of white paper

stuck to our particular pane

A glass of water sat before me

with a lemon wedge

it's Dee's water actually

and it could be said

that with me

she got a lemon.......

but she always looks up and beyond

such facts or interpretations

and the passers-by below

when they arrive in droves

tonight at dusk

and the music rushes in
cacophonous

from the many street bands,

and the crushing crowds

peer past that sheet

if they look up at us at all

looking down at them

will pay note of

our electrified

stuffed fox

and wonder what
goes on up there

- so many windows
so many questions -

Thursday, June 14, 2012

When you own the newspaper you can do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwZsFKIXa8

Money cannot buy

So we say regarding the raccoon news;
it is free,
and we do not sell advertising;
that means when we recommend something
in our little blog
such a recommendation is given freely.

But if this mechanic benefits
at all from our good words
of endorsement, so much the better.........
He deserves business
which he already gets because of
his knowledge, kindness, willingness
to explain what he's doing,
speed and high focus...............
and because his rates are more than fair.

A little garage in a cool location
on The Strand.

The chair allowed him to pull down on the keys rather than striking them from above

Glenn Gould

by Stanley Plumly

I heard him that one night in Cincinnati.
The concert hall, 1960, the same day
Kennedy flew into town in perfect sunlight
and rode the route that took him
through the crowds of voters and nonvoters
who alike seemed to want to climb
into the armored convertible.
Gould did not so much play as address
the piano from a height of inches,
as if he were trying to slow the music
by holding each note separately.
Later he would say he was tired
of making public appearances,
the repetition of performing the Variations
was killing him. But that night
Bach felt like a discovery, whose repetitions
Gould had practiced in such privacy
as to bring them into being for the first time.
This was the fall, October, when Ohio,
like almost every other part of the country,
is beginning to be mortally beautiful,
the great old hardwoods letting go
their various scarlet, yellow,
and leopard-spotted leaves one by one.

"Glenn Gould" by Stanley Plumly, from Orphan Hours. © W.W. Norton & Company, 2012

Play

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAzIlIePItM&feature=related

and this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB76jxBq_gQ