Category: Local

Buried Treasures

Amazing what one runs across when cleaning out surplus stuff. Also amazing what one never notices until…when one notices it. I rescued this old label some time ago from a box that had been used for storage since whenever. Then it knocked around here and there and was buried, until I dug it up yesterday and scanned it.

Today, I took a close look at the scan image while touching up the color. There it was. The street address of my grandfather’s gas station. Yes, the old postcard that I spoke of here does show it.

I don’t know why the package was sent there instead of to my grandparents’ residence, but it makes a remarkable contribution to my growing collection of digitized memorabilia. In all the stuff I have gone through over the years in this house, it is the only thing I can recall that has that address on it.

Old shipping label
Old shipping label

I’m sure that I will discover more occurrences of the address as the “house arcaeology” progresses — and plenty of other interesting things long shoved aside. I also dread finding them after they have been destroyed by mice, silverfish, and leaky roof. 🙁

A Bed of Roses

Minding one’s own business doesn’t pay very well.

I’m pretty quiet. I don’t have loud parties, don’t play a radio outside, don’t have a constantly barking dog.

Many of my neighbors do.

I don’t throw trash in my neighbors’ yards — although I may sometimes “return” something that I know is not mine.

My neighbors habitually toss cans, broken things, and sometimes tree limbs into my yard.

I do not vandalize my neighbors’ property.

My neighbors trample my fence, and one has cut my roses to the ground.

What a nice place to live is Sturgeon Bay.

It can’t be envy; I live so far below poverty level that I will never see over the edge. So what is it? Do they hate me because I’m not young and live alone? Is it because I’m not healthy and wealthy?

Is it just because I don’t make a lot of trouble?

Off Our Walker — Rap

Another contribution by A. Nonymous:

Knock-Rap for the Guv

Little Scotty Walker
Playun with his Raygun
Shootin down people
Who dare to be prayin
For jobs and food
For their family
He got a news slant
On the economy
The few should be great
And the many, little
To make ends meet
Just throw out the middle

Little Scotty Walker
Wanna shut down the state
If the cameras are runnin
That gonna be great
Think about winning
Politics is a game
If something not working
Just pass the blame
Keep your eye on the lens
Givin fisheye looks
Americans for Prosperity
Be Koch-in the books

Scotty flappin his flags
An wavin his bats
Got no clue people died in the past
For GI Bills
Social Security
Stuff to help him climb
His family tree
That he’d conservatively take
From you and me
He tryin to sound like a
Super smooth talker
But if you misjudge him
You off your Walker

Off Our Walker — Rant I

Guest posts by A. Nonymous, via e-mail.

Went to a Democratic Party meeting in Sturgeon Bay Thursday night — very interesting. Jon Erpenbach, the minority leader of the state senate, spoke to us by phone from Chicago and answered questions. He said morale is good among the 14 senators holding out on the budget vote and he personally would like to see the entire budget redone not just the section on unions. Walker is trying to privatize state jobs and eliminate accountability. It gives him the power to rewrite the rules for who is eligible for Medicaid and Senior Care and he is interested in selling power plants to his friends. He said the Republican senators are not happy with the Walker phone call and the cavalier tone he has adopted, and they need to hear from people who will encourage them to consider individual issues rather than be in lockstep with Walker. The minority Democrats are seriously worried about saving the American dream and the middle class from this power grab with political payoffs.

The local Democrats are staging a protest Friday on our steel bridge (make your own sign) Friday in connection with rallies on bridges all over the state. About 100,000 people are expected in Madison Saturday but you will never hear it on Fox, as they have consistently underreported numbers of previous groups except for the tea party which mysteriously swelled to thousands instead of hundreds. The bus drivers bringing people from parking areas to the downtown say the protestors have already numbered 100,000 at the Capitol, which is the goal for this weekend too. The local people who went last week said it was a very moving experience with everyone becoming very energized but staying courteous, no pushing and shoving.

Somebody researched what the Koch brothers are making their billions from and discovered it is just about everything — Angel Soft, Soft n Gentle and Quilted Northern toilet paper; Brawny towels; Dixie Cups products; Mardi Gras, Vanity Fair and Zee napkins; Stainmaster carpets; Dacron fiber; Comforel fiberfill; all the Georgia Pacific products, and that’s just for starters. They have been making donations to conservative candidates all over the country, but Walker may be the most enthusiastic in trying to pay them back.

appended from e-mail reply:

Yay for working. It’s becoming increasingly rare. Just think — with the cooperation of some business moguls who are not expanding at the moment, the US could raise the GNP by 3 or 4 points and generate enough in taxes to solve the budget shortages. For some reason said moguls are sitting on their hands until various
states use draconian measures to increase the dictatorial power of governors and reduce the options and
benefits of workers, thus generating a bigger future percentage of profit for those who need it least. Does anyone remember Teapot Dome, trustbusting, etc. at the beginning of the last century? Why do we have to replay the Greed card vs. the Fair card over and over? And in the future will anybody hear about it even once with a new crop of teachers whose boss lives in Madison?

For your entertainment:
Koch-Walker Prank Call — Part 1
Part 2

Fractal Sturgeons

The living sturgeons that gave their name to the bay that divides the Door county peninsula — and the city that straddles it — have been nearly wiped out by overfishing and pollution. But their ghosts now haunt the summer streets.

Ten years ago the first “Sturgeons Around the Bay” brought out interesting variations on the fishy form by local artists. This year they are back. I took a walk a couple of days ago and found two within a few blocks of my home. Both of them made me think of my large accumulation of fractal images. So I went digging into the seven years or so of Fractal Explorer archives for matching pics. Some of the collection is on CDs, but I found enough of what I was looking for on my current hard drive.

Gilda, by Emily Baker
Gilda, by Emily Baker

Soul-mate fractal
Soul-mate fractal
Menagerie of Mandalas, by Margaret Lucas
Menagerie of Mandalas, by Margaret Lucas

The mandala-like fractal forms that I dug up are a little disappointing in these small images. You really have to see the whole array of mind-boggling patterns of which they are a part. But then you would end up sitting at your computer, diving into fractals for hours, like I do.

The point is, I suppose, that art does not originate in our thpughts. It is, in some way, mathematically hard-coded in our cells. Everything is fractal.

One perfect stone

I live on a peninsula carved out of solid stone by glaciers, long ago. Stone has been quarried extensively in this area for building. Once there were many stone masons here; they are a rare breed now. Knowing one gives me interesting opportunities for exercising my cinematographomania.

It was raining off and on, but I took my chances and though I got a bit damp and cold, I managed to capture some real “rockin'” action. This is a small sample that I threw together. I’m saving the “building the pyramids” scenes, in which they maneuver the big ones, for later. This is a low-quality video too; the original is better.

The flagstones are up to 6 feet wide, and only a few inches thick. They are laid on fine gravel. Fitting them together and making the entire surface level requires an enormous amount of strength, patience, and care. This is true craftsmanship. Art is nothing without it.

Lost or…what?

It was a day.

The worst of it is not knowing what happened. I remember starting out on the walk back home, I know what direction I was headed. I had thought I could get through that maze of streets. Even if I had to cut through a back yard or two, it should have been possible to make a shortcut to where I was going.

The maze turned out to be more impenetrable than I remembered. There were also dogs. I had to backtrack.

Then things get weird. I was again walking in the right direction, but I was a couple of blocks on the wrong side of a street that I should never have crossed and don’t remember crossing. I know that street. It is the one I should have gone down instead of trying to angle away from it toward my destination. It has several times as much traffic as the side streets that balked me; I always have to wait to cross it. There are familiar landmarks everywhere; I do not remember passing them. There are no streets in the right places. How did I get that far off?

The longest and worst stretch of the walk was still ahead of me. When I finally got to the top of the hill, my home and my workplace were equally distant. I figured if I went home first, it would be too long before I felt like walking that one extra block. So I took the shortest route to JAK’s Place and revved up a computer to do the newsletter mailing labels. I went home a couple of hours later, after planting some sick looking cucumbers.

Several hours and a short nap later, I’m still wondering where I was. I’ve been looking at maps, crawling over it with google Earth. It’s imposible. But it happened.

I think I have watched too many episodes of The United States of Tara in too short a time.

More nostalgia

Today I unearthed a memo that is over twenty years old — a note from my employer, left for me to find when I opened the shop. Old, but unforgettable.

It was a pet shop, operating on a frayed shoestring. I was in charge for most of the day on weekdays. While the boss worked his day job, emptying septic tanks, I cleaned fish tanks and bird cages, hand-tamed parakeets, waited on customers, fed everything, answered the phone, labeled and priced, made excuses….

The note was short and to the point. Three neatly bulleted points, in fact:

  • Label fish double + mark up
  • Catch all ten keets
  • Yes its going to be one of those days

It was summer, no air conditioning, and I couldn’t open the door for a breath of air until I had caught all ten escaped parakeets. Of course someone came in before I was finished.

Peninsula Pets memo
The note

Dining out

I don’t, generally. But there’s a new restaurant in town, and I’m involved with it, and with activity related to it. Not in a big way, but enough to spice up my life.
The New Leaf Café is a quickly growing enterprise in downtown Sturgeon Bay. The theme is organic, raw, whole food. And if you think that’s ucky, you haven’t had lunch there. I have. Among other things, the stuffed tomatoes are to die for.

Word is gradually getting around. An article in the local paper, word of mouth (happy mouth, nom nom nom), and perhaps something in the air.

I’m the webmistress 🙂

Man-made Mini Sinkhole in Sturgeon Bay

I love karst landscapes. Wisconsin’s Door County, where I was born and currently live, is a monumental block of cracked, leaky Niagara dolomite, riddled with caves. Southern Poland, where my novel, A Drum Is Empty, is set, has it beat all to heck for caves, sinkholes, water-sculpted limestone cliffs, and monadnocks (huge free-standing rocks).

A shallow sinkhole provides a convenient camping place for kidnappers with evil intent in ADIE. It’s out of the wind and concealed from view. Un?fortunately, it makes sitting ducks of the bad guys for a sling-toting stone age sharpshooter like my MC.

This morning, I discovered a much less handy hole half a block from my home. Apparently the large snowblower that clears some of the sidewalks knocked an old storm sewer lid half off last week. I have walked past it every day, but didn’t see it until I was coming back from the laundromat today. It must have been concealed by snow until the weather warmed up; then the snow fell in — a man-made sinkhole!.

When I saw the hole, I said a couple of rude words, stared a bit, and then hastened home. Leaving my bags of wet wash to amuse themselves for a while, I scrounged up the makin’s for a couple of small marking flags. (Damned if I had the energy to drag a plank out of wherever….) I went back with two blaze-orange markers and my camera, shot some pics, and then returned home to leave a message on the street department’s answering machine.

Then I hung the wash and fed my hungry face.

The hole
The hole
Inside the hole
Inside the hole

It’s plenty big enough, and deep enough, to swallow a small child or an animal, and an adult could be trapped and/or injured.

The lid is not only heavy, it’s covered with snow and frozen down. Owoo.