Wet Snow

Sue is at Bywater Lane helping out with sick (although mending) kids.

Well.

It really is too bad that the Squarespace blog document I was working on last night blew up just seconds before I was about to hit SAVE. What I had down in electrons at that time was probably the best writing of the year—lilting, Insightful, humorous, lucid—all that sort of thing. Up there with Calvin Trillin, if I do say so myself.

But, then it blew up, and once that happens one tends to feel deflated and disinclined to try to go back and re-write. Certainly, I should have, but I just couldn’t, so now the world is a lesser place. Sorry about that.

Today was not nearly so interesting, (fortunately). Although yesterday was good for material material development, I would not want to groundhog-day it again and again, or even repeat it once.

So, on to today. Snow, but amounting to nothing. Sue in Fox Point helping out with Katy and Will who have hoof and mouth disease (though now rapidly improving) (adults don’t seem to get it). 

I tried taking Pax for a walk in the prairie, but he heard noises and vetoed that idea.

Speaking of vetoes—at the present moment in history, this week, we have the president of our nation, a leader respected around the world, in Paris working hard to persuade delegates from everywhere else (some of whom are seeing their countries sinking beneath the ocean) to come together and adopt a program that will keep the planet from boiling over, thus giving our kids and grandkids a chance at survival. But meanwhile, back in Washington, the gang of oil-and-coal-financed Republican thugs in Congress are passing legislation intended to directly cut him down, and announcing to the world that we don’t give a damn. Money and re-election first, far more important than a livable planet.

I worked one summer in high school for the Crystal Lake sewer department, and as my boss was there was wont to say, dozens of time a day, "holy horse shit."

Tired Out

Sue's Prius has 85,884 miles on it, although that hardly seems possible. Original tires. In theory, winter coming on. Taking all that together it looks like a recommendation for new treads. But that's where things got complicated.

The Toyota dealer in Janesville, where we bought the car, gave us a quote on four new, but the quote seemed high. I therefor went online this morning and spent an hour researching the best replacements for a Prius. Armed with that information I called the nearest Costco to see what they could do. They didn't have the exact tires, but they did have things that were equivalent, or better, or almost as good. And they were on sale. 

I therefore spent the next half hour trying to sign up online for a Costco membership. I filled out and clicked down, and filled out and clicked down, and eventually found myself in a cul-de-sac.

"Okay, Sue, you try it."

Half an hour later: "No way, this is ridiculous."

And...the rest of the story, which I spent a good while writing has just disappeared before I could save it. So I leave it to the imagination. Maybe tomorrow I will feel like re-writing.

Dark and Dank

Drizzle or rain all day, with nothing resembling sunshine. Temperature hovering right above freezing. On the upside, hunting season seems to be over.

This spruce has cohones.

Almost nothing of significance accomplished today.

I am reluctant to mention medical matters in a blog, but now that I am enrolled in PT I spend about 45 minutes a day gently trying to push down the walls of the house. My therapist says it's okay, but I wonder what a shrink would say.

Luckily, and also on the upside, I'm too old to die young. 

Avidly following the Paris climate conference.  

Penultimate November Day

Hard frost overnight, but sunny and warming after sunrise. It appears that we are continuing in our El Nino inspired endless autumn. Heading out to the prairie for our late afternoon walk I wore nothing more that a sweatshirt (of course the walk lasted no more than 5 minutes because Pax heard a gunshot. ) Both Pax and I are looking forward to the end of hunting season, as I suspect are the deer. Furthermore, I'm beginning to think iceboating may have to be postponed 'til next year.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. 

Ice on Puddles

Mostly sunny, with a cool northerly breeze. To Fort in the forenoon for a walk along the Crawfish where Pax rolled an agressive ittle dog that had the temerity to charge. Then to the library, and then a nearby coffeeshop for a cup of chili and an Italian seltzer.

After noon to Victoria Lane, with a big pot of turkey soup, to see Bri and the kids and have a bit of supper. 

The most exciting adventures are usually caused by bad judgment or lack of knowledge.

—Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Gray Friday

Chily and gray, more like November.

This was yesterday. Today not a trace of snow. 

Whitewater creek, which a few weeks ago was just a trickle, is now to the top of its banks rushing along. Pleasant day with Irene—leisurely breakfast, much conversation, long dog walk, computer and graphic arts projects.

Small Crowd, Big Feast

Irene and Emmee visiting. So just three people and two dogs, but still we had every possible dish, from Brussels sprouts to mincemeat pie, and all beyond delicious.

Rain all day, and warm. 

Feel the Bern

You gotta love Benie Sanders. 

A sign in a neighbor's yard (We do live in a leftist 'hood).

The thing is, he's four years older than me, and I can't understand how that can be. He must be super-human to keep the schedule he does, and face the stresses he faces, and still sleep. I can hardly sleep when the most stressful thing in my vicinity is a burnt-out lightbulb. And then to want to spend four or more years dealing with ISIS and Putin, and Congress?

The thing is, he is right on every issue, and his ideas are exactly what this country desperately needs.  I hope to vote for him somehow, someway, though I suspect he will never be president— there's the clown car on one side, and a steep Hill on the other.

Moon Over Diamonds...

...Over baseball diamonds, that is. Sunny day, with the temp above freezing most of the time. By late afternoon it was possible to walk around the neighborhood and park without creepers.

Fascinating article in the NYT about genetically engineered mosquitoes, designed so that they are immune to malaria and therefore can not pass it on to humans.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/science/gene-drive-mosquitoes-malaria.html?_r=0)

Sacre bleu!  While I am opposed to genetically modified food, including the recently announced super salmon, I find this fascinating. And, adding to the fascination, is the technique of "gene drive" which pushes the genetic modification into the population very rapidly. Theoretically, malaria could be wiped from the face of the earth within a decade.

And this has me thinking about Asian carp. I'm wondering if using genetic engineering and gene drive it might be possible to turn them into super salmon. I'd try one then.

Oh, it's going to be a brave new world.

Puttering About

Slow warming and a little melt.  Various bits of project work around the house including some Santa's workshop pre-prep.

Not holly, just rose hips

Ice (with geese) in Cravath Lake, stirring thoughts of iceboats.

And, above, the cover of the Sept/Oct, 2015 issue of Wooden Boat. Vixen once again the cover girl. The current owners have been living aboard and sailing far for the past 10 years. The boat was built in 1952 and is still having fun. There's a lesson there.

Thanks to cousin Art for sending the magazine. (Note: Art was fond of climbing the mast and sitting up on the crosstrees.)

Bywater Party

Lots of fun and good things to eat at the pre-holiday party.

The brisket turned out well, though it may have been outshone by Mimi's cherry pie. 

The kids played hard and ate well, and then really tucked into dessert: the cherry pie of course, and apple crisp, and ice cream, and chocolate sauce on most everything. 

Snow Day

Lots of sandhills passing ovehead this afternoon. These are probably the less astute individuals, as yesterday large flocks, one over 100 strong, were moving south in advance of the snowstorm. 

And when the bird feeder went up yesterday, it was well attended almost immediately. 

Prepping for Un-Thanksgiving

Family get-together (all 5 grandkids included) Sunday in Fox Point. Sort of a pre-T'Gving party, but with no turkey allowed. And that puts me in the enviable position of getting to provide some alternative viande, and that gives me the opportunity to see if I can meet the high BBQ brisket bar Bri has established. (I am following his direction, but brisket prep is a delicate, day-long operation with much room for error.) So, the flat has been rubbed with a fabulous rub and is now chilling in the fridge. The Big Green Egg has been appropriately rigged, and loaded with hardwood charcoal. Pecan chips are soaking in the sink.

The only complicaton—snow. Winter storm warning in effect, with 6 to 10 predicted. It took repeated attempts, separated by many hours, to get the cranky snow-blower to start, but eventually, in a vast cloud of blue smoke, it sprang to life. Then, a few minutes later, when visibility was finally returning, neighbor Bill came over to tell me that when he tried starting up his machine yesterday the only result was a puddle of gasoline on the garage floor. Bill is an early riser, and a dedicated snow blower, so our trusty old machine is now in his garage; and I know that when I hear it roar by tomorow morning it wil be time go get up.

Aye, there's the rub. 

And here we have the brisket meister (on the left) issuing instructions, while the rooftop farmer (on the right) is sampling local foodstuff. 

Growing Power

While Mimi took Will to school at the Schlitz Audubon Center,  Ab and I went to Growing Power, the world renowned urban farm (which turned out to be) on the outskirts of Milwaukee (although we always thought it was somewhere in the inner city). I have been thinking about this place for decades. I've heard the founder, Will Allen, speak at conferences. And I've always meant to visit.

Today Ab and I did. 

In brief, it was interesting, but far, far, far, from what I was expecting—actually, something of a shabby reality check (which from time to time is probably a good thing).  The photos below are of the exterior, but it is only fair to say that most of the operation occurs in half a dozen decrepit greenhouses that Allen purchased long ago, and at other parcels of land located out in farm country.

Snarly wind and steadily dropping temperatures. Snow in the forecast.  

Puddles Everywhere

Lots and lots of rain, resulting in puddles. 

And here is homeroom at Will's preschool. A change of clothes was necessary before heading into the classroom. Meanwhile, Katy is writing a book titled, "The Boy Who Turned Into a Dog." 

Day of Rain...

...causing forced idleness, some arm-chair reading, a trip to the coffee shop, computer work, and short dog-walks.

A fat ribbon of rain (as seen on on radar) has been streaming northward, from Rockport to Sault Ste. Marie, all day, just barely inching westward. Although it looks like the heaviest dumps have been in the St. Louis area, we are getting significant moisture, which is good for the Canada hemlock planted in the way-back a few years ago. I had pretty much given up on the tree, but am now delighted to see it staging a strong comeback.

Puddle at base of birch.  

Nervous on the Prairie

Pax is still under the influence of the Blackhaws football game— very ambivalent about what is normally his favorite thing, walking in the prairie. He must still be hearing echos of touchdown canon fire. 

It seems I've always been a commoner, that is a person who believes in the concept and in the actuality of various commons.

In France, all along the foothills of the Jura Mountains (to the west of Geneva, Switzerland) each lovely little farm has a right to a certain amount of wood (timber, firewood) from the forest up above.

On Turtle Island (North America pre-Columbus) almost everything was held in common, and private property seemed incomprehensible.

Then in 1968 Garrett Hardin wrote the influential essay, "The Tragedy of the Commons," in which he argued that a commons will never work because individuals acting rationally in their own self interest will always try to take more than their fair share, more than is sustainable, and the commons will be destroyed.

Luckily, Elinor Ostrom came to the rescue and proved that a commons does not always end in tragedy. Ostrom, professor at University of Indiana and long time Manitoulin summer resident, won a Nobel prize researching and demonstrating how commons around the world, like those in the Jura foothills, can prosper over millennia. The secret, she discovered, is local control—the people who actually live near and use the commons, common as they might be, developing and implementing their own system of management.

Of course, I think of the Great Lakes as a commons, as, of course, they are. And there is a movement now afoot to create a hiking trail around all five of them—exclusive, lakeside gated communities be dammed.

What I marvel about, given the extreme privatization ethic in the United States, are two amazing national lakeshores: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. How these two amazing commons places came into being is an amazing story (featuring Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, I might add).

**************

From Gary Snyder:

The commons is the contract a people make with their local natural system. The word has an instructive history: it is formed of ko, "together," with (Greek) moin, "held in common."... The root comes into Latin as munus, "service performed for the community" and hence "municipality."

The commons is a curious and elegant social institution within which human beings once lived free political lives while weaving through natural systems. The commons is a level of organization of human society that includes the nonhuman. The level above the local commons is the bioregion. Understanding the commons and its role within the larger regional culture is one more step toward integrating ecology with economy.

The Leaves Have Left

Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, for which, through naked trees, the winds a-mourning go? 

The three big white oaks and the two big green ashes in the back yard create a lot of leaf litter. Piles and piles of it, and as the back yard is enclosed on all sides by shrubbery or evergreens, the piles pile up. Past years it has been a fun ritual to rake evrything in to huge piles and then load up the trailer (Sue stomping) to deliver multiiple loads to the city compost site. This year, us being one arm short, we hired help, and mission accomplished. Now, everything is ready for snow (as long is it comes before the ice freezes).

A beautiful 65 degrees today, so talk of winter seems premature. I find myself constantly wondering if we will actually have winter this year, and will it be harsh like the past two, or not, and when it will start, if it does? Bri reminded me that last year we were iceboating on Lac LaBelle over Thanksgiving. 

Fifty-seven to Six

Breakfast this morning with the Nies clan at Amalia's in O'Wock. What with syrup and hot sauce and jelly and toast  and pretend coffee it was one crowded table. But also one fun time. We (Bri primarily) even turned a sour and crabby waitress into a bubbling fountain of friendliness.

After that we went to the Imaginatioin Station playgound, where it was wet, still a bit frosty, and a bit stinky because the breeze was wafting our way from he sewerage treatment plant. But, even so, it too was one fun time. 

Later this afternoon, back in Whitewater, we took Pax for his (routine) walk in the Prairie, but that turned out to be a bad idea because the UWW Warhawk football game was still in progress. It was the Warhawks against the Purple Martins, and, redicuously, every time the Warhawks scored a touchdown a cannon volley erupted.

Poor Pax. He prefers a score of three to nothing. 

A Fire in the Stove

Bright and cold, with the wind slowly diminishing.  A cheery fire in the breezeway stove as afternoon quickly  faded into night.

Some of yesterday's wind damage. 

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The most I can do is strive toward a different kind of conscience, listen to an older and more tested wisdom, participate minimally in a sysem that debases its own sustaining environment, work toward a different future, and hope that someday all wil be pardoned. 

—Richard Nelson