Madison in Early Summer

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We recently came home from a week off visiting Portage and Madison. This was a trip we would normally take to beat the winter doldrums, so this year we were kinda late. On the other hand, early June is a good time to be in Madison since most of the students are gone for the summer and the locals have room to breathe.

We lived in Portage for about a year in the mid-90’s, and we had an open invitation to stay with an old friend we have there. So we took the train to Portage and spent three quiet days in the country before being delivered to our friends in Madison just in time for the weekend.

A derelict traffic light controller was converted into a whimsical grotto on Willy Street in Madison.

The first thing we noticed when we got there was an ancient and defunct traffic light controller along Willy Street that was turned into a miniature grotto by a creative member of the neighborhood. Later, we found a makeshift book exchange on a street corner.

Our favorite part of town was having a neighborhood festival Saturday, and we ran into almost everybody we still know in town. The Marquette Neighborhood Festival had all kinds of great food, music, beer, and wine, but no coffee. If someone had set up a coffee cart, they would have made a LOT of money.

RoZ browses the titles in a book cabinet near the sidewalk bearing the words "leave a book - take a book" in a Madison neighborhood.

Last winter, there was a lot of political upheaval in the state capitol, and it continues as a prominent feature of Madison life. The focus of Madisonians is to recall Governor Scott Walker, and there’s also a strong movement encouraging Russ Feingold to run for governor in the recall election. But as visitors from “upstate”, we have a problem with this focus. The recall campaign against Walker can’t start until next winter – seven months from now. But we have a recall election against Dan Kapanke in less than a month. We’re all for recalling Walker, but first we need to get rid of Kapanke and five other Repugnantan state senators, so this focus feels premature to us.

RoZ relaxes on a bench in the Eagle Heights Community Garden in Madison.

We spent a lot of Sunday with a member of Obbie’s family who wanted to show us her plot in the community garden. Expecting to see a few vacant lots converted to gardens, we were taken to the Eagle Heights Community Garden and were amazed. Hundreds of gardeners have plots that stretch out over at least dozens of acres of what was once a lakefront farm. For something like $30/year, each gardener has access to wheelbarrows, shovels and other tools; a huge pile of mulch and compost is maintained by a front-end loader on a corner of the farm; and water is piped around the farm to be easily accessible to each plot. We felt like we were in the country, even though one of Madison’s busiest streets was just blocks away. We have seen many community gardens in many locations, but nothing of this scale anywhere, and we were impressed.

We spent the rest of the afternoon killing time on State Street before a rally at 5:00 where Russ Feingold was scheduled to speak. We met and hung out with some La Crosse friends who now live in Madison while Feingold rallied the activists. There were rumors (hope? fantasy?) that Feingold would announce his political intentions at this rally, but that didn’t happen.

Senator Russ Feingold greeted supporters following a rally on State Street in Madison, Sunday June 12, 2011.

Russ Feingold is under a lot of pressure to run for governor in a recall election, but he would also be a formidable candidate for Wisconsin’s other US Senate seat which is open for the 2012 election. Some political reporters have said that he’s interested in being governor, but that was before Herb Kohl’s Senate seat became available. Whatever Feingold decides to do, we have to deal with getting rid of Kapanke and his ilk first, and he pretty much said so in his speech.

We got on a bus for home the next morning. If you buy tickets three weeks in advance, you can get between Madison and La Crosse for $24/person in three hours. It let us off at the new downtown transit center just in time to get the next city bus home.

Egrets, Geese and Cranes on La Crosse River Marsh

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We’ve said it before, that one of the great things about living in our part of the world is the bird population. Our favorite bike route is the La Crosse River State Trail, and the first few miles from the Medary trailhead would be a birder’s paradise.

Canada geese are overabundant around here, but at this time of year you can see them out with their babies.

Two families of Canadian geese on the La Crosse River Marsh, as seen from the nearby bike trail.

Two families of Canada geese on the La Crosse River Marsh, as seen from the nearby bike trail.

We’ve been noticing sandhill cranes for the past two years now, and we see them on at least half our rides.

A family of sandhill cranes forages for food in a young cornfield near the La Crosse River Bike Trail.

A family of sandhill cranes forages for food in a young cornfield near the La Crosse River Bike Trail.

This pair of birds was chattering to us while we were taking a break as we approached West Salem. We’re not sure what they are, so if you can help identify them we’d appreciate it.

A pair of small birds pose for photographers along the La Crosse River Trail near West Salem.

A pair of small birds pose for photographers along the La Crosse River Trail near West Salem.

We see a lot of great egrets and great blue herons, but the herons haven’t posed for us yet. The birds are related and look very much alike. The link below opens a three-second video. It’s a 6-frame burst of a great egret landing on its perch overlooking the La Crosse River Marsh as seen from the bike trail.

The video will load in a new window or tab. If you have trouble viewing it, make sure you have QuickTime extensions installed.

Egret on the Marsh

That’s the Spirit

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A view of Mars from the rover "Spirit"

A panoramic view of Mars taken by the rover "Spirit" from a hilltop several miles from its original landing site.

Many years ago, some scientists and engineers designed a robot to crawl around on Mars, taking pictures, gathering data, and performing experiments along the way. In most space projects, the design work is a big part of the cost, so to build two robots doesn’t cost much more than to build one, and they can back each other up in the event something goes wrong with one of them.

They launched the robots – named Spirit and Opportunity – in 2003. At that time, space machines on their way to Mars were haunted by a streak of bad luck where they had a tendency to disappear when they should have been landing. But these machines both landed on opposite sides of the planet as planned, overcame some early glitches, and went on to perform beyond expectations.

Each rover had its own team of scientists minding it back on Earth. With the rovers on opposite sides of Mars, one crew slept while the other crew worked. They were scheduled to work for the expected life span of the rovers, which was 90 Martian days… just over three months.

Last week, the space agency announced that Spirit has gone dark… six years after it first landed on Mars. Scientists have learned many amazing things about Mars that we didn’t know before. For the rest of us, we get to see Mars as a place that doesn’t look much different than some parts of Arizona.

We now have a better understanding of that world and our own world, but when we find answers we also find more questions. But we’re not finished yet… Opportunity is still running, roving around, taking pictures, digging up dirt, drilling into rocks, and doing all the other amazing stuff that was designed into it nearly a decade ago.

Many people say we shouldn’t spend money on exploring the solar system, that we have far more pressing needs at home. The total cost of designing, building, launching, tracking and controlling the two rovers is about a billion dollars. That’s less than one B-2 bomber, or one day of the Iraq war. I think our great scientific minds are put to better use building space robots instead of war machines.

The same factories that build military hardware also build machines for interplanetary exploration. The rocket scientists who design cruise missiles can also design Mars landers. And the technology that enables these missions benefits all of us… after all, the first digital cameras were designed for robotic spacecraft.

The life of Spirit says so much about the kinds of amazing and cool stuff we can do. We need fewer bombers and tanks, and more Spirit.

Voter Suppression and Journalistic Bias

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The latest power grab by Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is the “Voter ID” bill, or more accurately, the “Voter Suppression” bill. It requires the presentation of a photo ID with the current address before one is allowed to vote. For most of us, that means a drivers license.

But students wouldn’t be able to vote where they live for most of the year, since their drivers licenses (if they have one) usually have the address of their parents’ home. Student IDs don’t meet the requirements of the law. Many older people and urban people don’t have drivers licenses. Coincidentally (NOT!), these groups tend to vote for Democrats.

The legislature railroaded this thru the other day, violating a host of procedural rules in the process. Republican leadership refused to consider a host of amendments which would have made this bill less of a barrier to legitimate voters. At the signing ceremony in Walker’s office, a member of the opposition managed to infiltrate the press pool and ask questions about this.

As reported by The Progressive, the reaction of the rest of the press corps was unprofessional at best:

…several of the reporters who had until then been busily taking notes put their pens down, crossed their arms over their chests and rolled their eyes at each other. What is arguably one of the central questions of this crisis in Wisconsin state government — the majority party not listening to the minority party or masses of their constituents — was evidently not worth reporting on.

So somebody raises serious questions about a legitimate issue affecting the core of democracy, yet the people we depend on for “news” react as if this were an annoyance. I’d like to know who these “journalists” are, because to me it sounds like they’re little more than cheerleaders for the corporate Repugnantan agenda.

La Crosse Tornado

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Today a tornado touched down in our neighborhood. In the Grand Scheme of Things, it was a relatively minor tornado, but it did some strange things to our neighborhood.

Our situation: We’re OK, and our house is OK. There’s a small corner of our metal roof that’ll have to be nailed back down, and some pieces of our neighbor’s maple tree that need to be picked up, but our “damage” is minor compared to others within a block or two of us.

Read our storm story after the jump, and look at our photo gallery of the aftermath.

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La Crosse Tornado – photo gallery

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A series of photos from our neighborhood in the aftermath of the tornado we got yesterday (Sunday, May 22, 2011).

You can read our tornado story here.

Hawk Encounter

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red-tailed hawk from below

A red-tailed hawk stands watch above our front sidewalk.

We saw a large bird in our neighbor’s maple tree 18 months ago. Today a similar bird (a red-tailed hawk, please comment if you disagree) appeared in the large tree in front of our house. It was the robins who brought it to our attention, sounding uncharacteristically alarmed in the outer branches.

Just like last year’s bird, it was kind enough to pose for pictures. But this year we have a better camera, so we got better pictures. Seven-image phototale after the jump. Read on →

Pulled from the Shelves!

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Back in late March, we published this post about boycotting products from Koch brothers companies. Among those products is Georgia-Pacific toilet paper.

Peoples Food Coop in La Crosse, as it looked during a snowstorm in February, 2004

We were distressed to learn that the single-roll toilet paper we’ve been buying for years from our local co-op bore the Georgia-Pacific logo. I brought this to the attention of Margaret, the grocery manager, who shared our motivations to remove this product from the shelves. She instructed her buyer not to stock this product any more, and even though it took several weeks for the existing stock to be exhausted, it was replaced by another type of single-roll toilet paper.

It turned out the co-op’s main supplier only carries this one type (Georgia-Pacific) of single-roll toilet paper, so they had to go “above and beyond” to find a source of an alternative product. They didn’t have to do it, but they did it anyway.

We can often be quick to complain about the things that businesses do that annoy us, so it feels important to applaud the People’s Food Coop for doing something right.

Harmon Killebrew – When Baseball Players were Heroes

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I grew up about 80 miles from Metropolitan Stadium, which is where the Minnesota Twins played during the 1960s. Our local TV and radio stations played Twins games, so they got more of our attention than the Braves, who played in Milwaukee at the time.

One day we were watching the highlight reel on the six-o’clock sports report, and I saw a grainy film of Harmon Killebrew hitting a home run. But this wasn’t just another home run floating over the fence; it was a line drive that rocketed into the nosebleed seats high above left field. At over 500 feet, it was one of the longest home runs ever hit.

A summer or two later, my mother bought a pack of baseball cards for each of her five kids. My sister’s pack included a Harmon Killebrew card like this one. I don’t remember how I got it from her. I probably stole it. I don’t know where it is any more. I wish I did.

My life as a young baseball fan was all about rooting for Harmon Killebrew to hit home runs, and he did so often enough to hold my interest for several years. Even though a lot of people have hit more home runs than he did, only Babe Ruth exceeds Killebrew in consistency. When he wasn’t hitting home runs, he was hitting doubles off the outfield walls. He didn’t hit many triples… he couldn’t run fast enough. Like Ruth, he struck out a lot, but that’s what happens when you’re swinging for the fences all the time.

In my early teens, a group of friends and I were brought to a Twins’ game by our fathers. There was a chance we’d see Killebrew hit his 500th home run, but we had to settle for a line-drive single. The only home run we saw was a game-winner by Tony Oliva, which barely snuck into the bleachers as it hooked into the right-field corner.

But the highlight of the trip was sitting in the cheap seats on the third-base side, looking to my right to see home plate, and then looking to my left and high up to the vast pavilion in the sky above the left field wall, where all the seats were painted green except for a small cluster in the middle that were painted red. The red seats marked the landing spot of that massive home run, and I could not fathom a ball getting hit that far. The distance looks a lot different when you’re standing there than it does on TV.

The best thing to remember about Harmon Killebrew is that he had massive upper body strength without the need for steroids, and that he played at the top of his game year after year without getting full of himself, trash-talking or taunting. Even when he developed into the older player that Jim Bouton called “the fat kid,” he was a fat kid that pitchers had to take VERY seriously.

It’s too bad that baseball no longer produces the kind of players that kids can revere the way that some of us revered Harmon Killebrew, who became the model for the silhouette of Major League Baseball’s logo, and who was rumored (not true) to be the model for the “Arm and Hammer” logo. Harmon Killebrew represents a baseball era that – sadly – is long gone.

We Don’t Need a Head on a Pike

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Back in the dark days of semi-ancient history, victorious armies would kill the leader of an opposing nation or notorious band of villains, cut off his head and parade it around town at the end of a pike. It was a way to gloat and to taunt.

Today, to put a “head on a pike” is a mostly a metaphorical term, but it can still be literal if only in a sanitized form. Such was the behavior of the Bush regime when it killed the Husseins of Iraq. Uday and Qusay (sp?) had their morbid mug shots published in newspapers around the world, and Saddam Hussein had video of his hanging leaked to the Internet.

So when word came Sunday night that Osama bin Laden had been killed, we asked each other how long it would be before we saw pictures of dead Osama on the Internet, and the answer was, “tomorrow morning.” A very large segment of the American population is glad to know bin Laden’s dead, but they wouldn’t believe it until they saw his head on a pike, and the Internet picture of the bloodied skull is the head on the pike of the twenty-first century.

Word came out that such pictures exist, and that they are “gruesome”. But today it was announced that these pictures will NOT be made public.

We applaud this decision. The head on the pike is so tenth century. It’s a barbaric act of gloating and taunting, and such blood sport would be offensive to our enemies and our friends. There is nothing to be gained by doing this. To those who claim it would offer “proof” to the doubters, I say that there will be doubters anyway who will see the “head on the pike” picture and scream, “That’s Photoshopped!”

We have enough gruesome images polluting our collective mind, we don’t need a bloodied skull of Osama bin Laden to become an iconic image for a generation. I want to believe we’re classier people than that.