In Dodd We Trust

Parental Guidance

2012-02-12T16:24:00.003-06:00

This is an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times about the same-sex marriage debate. If the topic disturbs you, stop reading now.

I highlighted some parts because they struck me. They were not emphasized in the original article.

Why is gay marriage inevitable? First, the basic insight of the gay rights movement over the last four decades has proved powerfully correct: As more gays and lesbians have come out of the closet, the social environment has become more gay friendly. In turn, as the social environment has become more hospitable, more gays and lesbians have felt free to come out of the closet. This social dynamic is powerfully reinforcing and unlikely to be reversed.
One factor that most strongly predicts support for gay equality is knowing someone who is gay. As more gays and lesbians come out of the closet, more parents, children, siblings, friends, neighbors and co-workers know or love someone who is gay. Because few people favor discrimination against those they know and love, every gay person coming out of the closet creates more supporters of gay equality.
The number of Americans reporting that they know somebody who is openly gay tripled between 1985 and 2000, reaching 75%. One study in 2004 found that among those who reported knowing someone who is gay, 65% favored either gay marriage or civil unions, while only 35% of those who reported not knowing any gay people supported them.
A second reason that gay marriage seems inevitable is that young people so strongly support it. One study by political scientists found a gap of 44 percentage points between the oldest and youngest survey respondents in their attitudes toward gay marriage. A 2011 poll found that 70% of those age 18 to 34 supported gay marriage. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which young people's support for gay marriage dissipates as they grow older.
The trend in favor of gay marriage has accelerated dramatically in the last three years. Before 2009, the annual rate of increase in support for gay marriage was about 1.5 percentage points, but since then it has been closer to 4 percentage points. Statistical models predict that in another dozen years, every state will have a majority in favor of gay marriage.
In recent years, many conservatives have begun to acknowledge the inevitability of gay marriage, even as they continue to strongly oppose it. In March 2011, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on a Christian radio program that "it is clear that something like same-sex marriage … is going to become normalized, legalized and recognized in the culture."
"It's time," he continued, "for Christians to start thinking about how we're going to deal with that."
That a particular social change may be inevitable, given certain background conditions, does not mean that opponents will cease fighting it. White Southerners continued to massively resist Brown long after most of them came to believe that school desegregation was inevitable.
Similarly, those who believe that gay marriage contravenes God's will are not likely to stop fighting it simply because their prospects of success are diminishing. Moreover, because religious conservatives are both intensely opposed to gay marriage and highly mobilized politically, they are likely for the next several years to continue exerting significant influence over Republican politicians who need their support to win primary elections.
Although the ultimate outcome of the contest over gay marriage no longer seems in doubt, plenty of fighting remains until that battle is over.

And a happy ...

2012-02-12T09:31:00.003-06:00

Happy birthday to Riley on the thirteenth and to Brooke on the fourteenth.

And a happy Valentine's Day to everyone!

Bishops

2012-02-12T07:29:00.003-06:00

As the American Catholic bishops draw themselves up in shocked horror over birth control -- something that a vast majority of American Catholics have used -- this story is making headlines here in Wisconsin:

Sealed documents filed in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy identify at least 8,000 instances of child sexual abuse and 100 alleged offenders - 75 of them priests - who have not previously been named by the archdiocese, a victims' attorney said Thursday.
Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said she did not have enough information to respond to the assertion, made by attorney Jeffrey Anderson during a pivotal hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley. Anderson represents about 350 of the 570 victim-survivors who have filed claims in the case.

But Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests speculated that some are likely members of religious orders, such as Capuchins or Franciscans. Order officials do not typically make public the names of their accused members, and the archdiocese claims it is not responsible for them, though they have historically helped to staff its parishes and schools.

"This is a public safety crisis, a child safety crisis that needs to be investigated," Isely said at a news conference on the federal courthouse steps, surrounded by fellow survivors and reporters.

"We need to know who they are and where they are. How can there be 8,000 crimes committed by over 100 offenders and there be no accountability?" he said.

Kelley let stand, at least for now, two survivors' claims that the church had sought to bar, arguing they were beyond the statute of limitations.

In the split decision, Kelley also granted the church's motion for summary judgment, effectively dismissing a third claim in which a victim had signed a prior settlement agreement with the church.

In an emotional preamble to her ruling, before a packed courtroom, Kelley expressed a reverence for the Catholic Church and compassion for the victims, saying she was "brought to tears more than once" reading the accounts of the men and women who allege they were sexually abused as children by priests, deacons, nuns, teachers and others over the past 60 years.

"But I cannot let compassion be the basis for my decision. It must be governed by law," Kelley said.

Archdiocese attorney Frank LoCoco acknowledged the gravity of the allegations at the outset of the hearing.

"This will be the most difficult professional decision you will ever make," LoCoco told Kelley.

Kelley made it clear that her rulings applied to the three individual cases at hand, not broad classes of claims they may represent. Allowing the two claims to stand doesn't guarantee they will be paid in the bankruptcy, only that the legal debate over when the statute of limitations begins ticking must be decided at trial.

The archdiocese had sought the dismissal of three claims involving two priests and a parish choir director who were accused of molesting boys in the 1970s and '80s. Church lawyers argued that the cases were beyond the statute of limitations and involved a victim who signed a previous settlement agreement and a perpetrator - the choir director - who was not a direct employee.

Victims' attorneys had characterized the church's objections as a test case that, if successful, would have eliminated 95% of the claims in the bankruptcy.

Kelly disallowed the claim involving the prior settlement because the victim didn't meet all of the criteria for voiding a signed agreement.

Much of the debate Thursday centered on how to apply the state's six-year statute of limitations on fraud allegations. LoCoco argued that the clock began ticking at the latest in 2004, when the archdiocese posted its online list of 44 priests with substantiated allegations of abuse.

Anderson said the victims didn't know they were defrauded until 2006 and 2009, when they learned, in some cases through documents released as part of a California settlement, that the archdiocese had lied to them about their abusers' histories.

"When a few did go forward and asked questions, what were they told? Lies," Anderson said.

Anderson raised the issue of the 100 additional accused offenders, culled from his own clients' claims, as part of his defense of the claims.

The archdiocese has said that it turns over all new claims of allegations involving living priests to the appropriate district attorney's office, though it is not clear whether that includes religious order priests and others it doesn't consider its employees.

The victims were not identified in court or in the documents filed on the issues raised Thursday. The claims of all but about 30 victim-survivors are filed under seal as part of a court order intended to protect the identities of any victim seeking anonymity.

Yes, the bishops are SUCH models in issues of sexual morality!

Thinking about ...

2012-02-08T19:52:00.006-06:00

We're thinking about taking a train trip west. It looks like we could take the Empire Builder from the Dells to Glacier National Park (Essex, MT) and back on a long weekend. We could catch the train here after I get off work on Thursday, arrive Essex on Friday evening, spend the night at the Izaak Walton Inn, catch the train back Saturday morning and arrive back at the Dells on Sunday afternoon. Timed properly, this would be something I could do without even taking a vacation day.

The trick, of course, is that it is not likely to be something we can manage this year. I am planning (hoping) to go to Texas in April. Since the trip to Montana would mean spending two days looking out the window of a train, I want to go when the land won't be bare or snow-covered. And Tom has commitments that will likely keep him occupied on weekends all summer and fall. Also, the Inn, while reasonably priced, is probably booked up a year in advance.

We are still thinking. It may make more sense to go all the way into Washington State, stay over a day or two, and then come back, taking a week do it with no hurry.

We'll see. I have seen most of the southwest and California, but I have never seen any of the northwest. The train would be a fun and easy way to do it.

2012-02-08T19:51:00.002-06:00

As a friend of mine says,

2012-02-08T07:49:00.001-06:00

Little by slowly ...

On being Sheldonesque

2012-02-04T20:57:00.004-06:00

The problem with being like Sheldon (Big Bang Theory, Jim Parsons) -- if indeed it is a problem -- is that when one's head is full of information that one finds interesting, it is hard not to want to share that information with other people. Of course, other people often do not find it interesting or remotely relevant to the topic at hand.

Sheldon and I are perplexed by this. But we shall carry on.

Even so ...

2012-02-04T16:51:00.002-06:00

Lots of people don't like Alcoholics Anonymous, and I can understand that. But I will say one thing for it -- AA's tradition is that it keeps its nose out of everything else. Individual members of AA may stick their nose into anything, but the group as group sticks to one thing and one thing only: trying to help alcoholics who want to quit drinking do just that. AA doesn't endorse any political issue, not even prohibition. Huh! Who would have thought? AA is not about changing the political system or the laws. It is about helping one person at a time quit drinking when and if that person wants to do it. It is not the only way you can quit. You may not need to quit. But if you want a way that has worked for some people and want to give it a try, AA members will be happy to offer their experience, strength and hope. If you don't find it helpful, they will wish you well and let you go your way.

I think of this when I see groups like the Komen folk get drawn into political controversy. One of their board members complained that they don't know what to do. If they move this way, they anger That Group. If they move the other way, they anger The Other Group. "What are we supposed to do?" she asked.

I suggest you do what AA does: Find the one thing you want to do -- in this case, work to fund research to cure cancer -- and then just do that. If people complain that the people working on cancer cures are also working on other things they don't like, tell them that is not your concern. You pay the bills associated with the cancer research. If people complain that you aren't saving babies, point out that there seem to be lots of people working on that project. What you are trying to do is save women who have babies, and maybe save some of those babies when they grow up and may get cancer themselves. If people complain that you aren't stopping violence in the Middle East, tell them that other people are working on that and you are paying for cancer research. If people tell you that you are funding crazy liberals or wingnut reactionaries, tell them that you do not fund people. You pay bills for cancer research. That is what you do. You do it well and you do it as equitably and responsibly as you can.

The way you win the race, including the Race for the Cure, is to keep your eyes on the finish line and don't worry about all those other roads people keep pointing to on the side. Those may be great roads with beautiful scenery and great destinations. But that is not your race. Keep running. Women and their families are counting on you.

I admit it ...

2012-02-04T15:23:00.000-06:00

I ordered the t-shirt.

Time to pay the piper

2012-02-04T09:11:00.004-06:00

Because Tom needs to be around the house most of the day for one of his telephone-heavy projects, we decided it might be a good day to do my taxes. Tom files his estimated taxes quarterly, which is why he is doing mine and not his today.

Fortunately this year my return is pretty simple. All he has to deal with for me is the W-2 and the interest earned at the bank on my CDs and checking account. In past years up here, there were often four or five documents to deal with: W-2 from the library, W-2 from the railroad, income report from the Carmelite Institute for distance learning teaching, income from the books when I was actively marketing them, bank report on interest, whatever. Now all these things did not add up to much in terms of dollars and cents, but it made filing a bit bulky and complicated. This year much less so on the complexity and better on the shekels. That's the way I like it. (Well, Tom does all the work on the filing, so that's the way he likes it, too.)

Of course, Wisconsin is one of over 40 states that have income tax, so he has to generate that report, too. But it is not too bad, since he has already had to figure out all the stuff for the federal. Since unlike most presidential candidates, I don't make enough to be able to profit from various and sundry deductions and nuances, it is pretty much click on standard stuff and total it up.

I know I complain about taxes, and I certainly complain about how some of the tax money is used. But on the whole, I am more than satisfied with my return on the investment. Due to my tax money, someone else gets up on cold days and plows my roads so I can get to work or to fun. Someone else goes out in the hot summer sun and patches the potholes in the roads. Someone else stays up all night keeping watch over my security, someone teaches the kids and takes care of the elderly, someone takes in foster children, someone makes sure the food I eat is safe and the drugs I take won't turn me into Mr. Hyde. Taxes helped make sure that Daddy got the health care he needed in his last months and that Mama got regular support as she cared for him. She has told me time and again that if it had not been for what Medicare helped provide, she thinks it would have killed her. So I am particularly happy that I helped make that possible in 2010, for Mama and Daddy and for countless others like them.

This year I will be getting a little bit back that I had paid in to the State of Wisconsin and the United States of America. Which makes for a nice feeling this time of year, too. Remember way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and McDonald's slogan was "Change back from your dollar"? It feels a little bit like that.

And thanks to Tom for taking care of this for me. The state form made trouble when he came to print it out, but eventually he resolved that and got everything done. He's a treasure.

Who is that?

2012-01-31T20:10:00.003-06:00

Okay, if that shirt and tie look incredible, the Open House had a winter theme, the shirt is black and white flannel check and the tie had snow men.

I am demonstrating to these folks how to download library books to their e-readers.

E-readers reprise

2012-01-30T08:34:00.005-06:00

We had our annual Open House at the library Saturday, and my station was a demonstration of how to check out and download books to electronic readers and such things. A lot of people showed up just for that, I enjoyed it and feel pretty comfortable now with showing people how to use their Kindle as well as Nook, Kobo and so on.

Two things about the experience Saturday and in the last few weeks of trying to help people with the e-readers they got for Christmas, though, made me think that the distributors have a way to go to make this the best experience for their people.

One, Kindle especially seems to show up with insufficient instructions for registering and starting to use the reader. I realize that young people are born knowing what to do, but so many of our patrons are not computer savvy at all. When they open the box and discover essentially a 3X5 card that tells them pretty much what the buttons do, that is totally inadequate. This is the equivalent of giving someone a laptop, showing them how to more the pointing device and then leaving it up to them to figure everything else out. This needs major attention.

Two, all of these manufacturers need to make it clearer somehow that you cannot use the things without some access to the internet through WiFi or another connection. I had a lovely older woman whose daughter had given her a Nook so that she would not have to come into town in winter to get things to read. The lady does not even have a computer, which means she had to come to town to register the thing through a public access computer. Since she doesn't have a computer, she doesn't have an e-mail adress. And without an e-mail address, she cannot even complete the registration so she can start using the thing. Because her Nook is not a one that is really a mini-computer, she has to be able to download books onto a regular computer (which she does not have) and then transfer them to her Nook. This is easy, but in order to do it, you have to be able to download software to your own computer and register the account. This cannot be done on public access computers for the simple reason that privacy requirements make them erase everything every time someone finishes using them. I talked to her about working with her daughter, who has computers and so on, to solve this problem. But I know she is not the only one out there with this problem.

E-readers are great for people who live in the boonies and are not able to get into towns with bookstores or libraries all that often. But people in the boonies are also likely to be the ones without good internet access and, therefore, less likely to have e-mail. Nook, Kindle and their ilk need to make it clear when they sell these things that the customer will be able to use it. Otherwise they wind up with a lot of disappointed adults who were fooled by commercials into thinking the X-ray glasses would actually let them see through walls!

This is a good product! Don't let your own carelessness make it a customer service and PR nightmare.

Weasel?

2012-01-23T08:58:00.006-06:00

It is snowing this morning -- expect no significant accumulation -- and I was watching the birds around the bird feeder. There were lots of finches and chickadees in the trees, and I saw a juncoe for the first time in a while. (Tom had recently noted their absence.) There were a couple of doves on the ground, which is pretty common around here.

Then I noticed a flurry of activity behind the base of the post, what looked like a squirrel having a seizure. At first I figured it was just trying to dig down in the snow to get more seeds, but then I realized it was too big for a squirrel and seemed to be fighting with something. Assuming it was two squirrels battling over a sunflower seed, I went out onto the deck. Turns out it was no squirrel, but what looked to me like a weasel with a small bird or animal in its mouth. I only had time to look at it before it turned and disappeared into a tunnel in the snow.

I looked up photos of weasels and think that must be what I had seen. Tom is hoping it will hang around and get rid of some of the red squirrels and mice.

Updates as events warrant.

Happy 4710!

2012-01-22T11:30:00.006-06:00

January 23 is Chinese New Year. Or, perhaps more globally, lunar new year, since the Chinese are not the only people who use the lunar calendar. At any rate, have a great Year of the Dragon!

In contrast to European dragons, which are often considered evil, Chinese dragons traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, hurricanes, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck.

May your 4710 be free of hurricanes and floods and filled with life-giving rain, power and strength to do good and blessings of all kinds.

Volunteers

2012-01-21T09:03:00.004-06:00

When Tom took off to plow and shovel snow at the little railroad this morning, it was -10 (-23.3 C) outside. And he's a volunteer. The little railroad is a volunteer-powered organization, and people give an amazing number of hours to keeping the little trains puffing along and delighting children.

At the library, volunteers provide the equivalent of a full-time staff member, saving the library (and the city and village taxpayers) between $35,000 and $40,000 annually.

Locally volunteers provide free tutoring for school kids as well as free language tutoring for adults who want to learn to speak and/or read English. They deliver meals to the elderly year-round and a special free lunch program for children in the summer. This year they will be adding art classes in the summer for the kids as well.

Volunteers go out into the community and read to daycare and HeadStart children. They visit people in hospice and in nursing homes. They rescue animals and help clean up the highways. Both Lake Delton Village and the City of Wisconsin Dells rely on volunteer fire departments.

So as I sit here snug and warm at home with the cats this morning, I think about those like Tom who go out there and just keep things going. Many of these folks get no recognition at all. In fact, I only know about some of the things they do because of the rounds I make in the bookmobile and what I see happening.

Thanks, folks! You done good!

Baby, it's cold outside!

2012-01-19T08:07:00.003-06:00

Woke up to -4 (-20 C), looking forward (?) to a high of 4 (-15.6 C) and wind chills of maybe -27 (-32.8 C).

The good news? I will spend most of the day inside, because the Bookmobile goes to nursing homes and senior centers today. Bad news? We have to load and unload carts to take things in, and there is no shelter from the wind.

Because the sun is shining, the cats don't get why we won't let them outside in this. And tomorrow it will be a bit warmer but with snow much of the day. They are going to be cranky kitties by Saturday!

Time flies

2012-01-06T01:00:00.000-06:00

Nine years, or 3287 days, one day at a time.

And so it begins ...

2012-01-02T09:13:00.004-06:00

For New Year's Day, we had howling winds and snow showers. The snow showers didn't amount to much, no significant accumulation.

This morning (January 2), it is 18 degrees (-7.8 C) and we anticipate 4 degrees (- 15.6 C) tonight. Then it is supposed to climb back up safely above freezing by mid-week. Who knows from there?

Of course, many/most Wisconsin folks are interested in what the weather will be like in Pasadena today for the Rose Bowl, where the University of Wisconsin Badgers will be playing the Oregon Ducks this afternoon. I hear it will be close to 80 degrees (26.7 C), which seems absurd. One of my co-workers and her husband are visiting their son in Los Angeles this weekend, and she said her husband might try to go to the game. She plans to stay at home and play with her grandbabies.

And a happy ...

2011-12-31T16:36:00.002-06:00

E-readers

2011-12-29T20:26:00.002-06:00

Just a sign of the times:
Normally when I go to the library website to download an electronic book to my Nook, there are several hundred titles immediately available. (Our state-wide system allows access to a few hundred thousand titles, but most of these are checked out at any given moment.) Today when I went online to look at what I could get today, there were -- drum roll, please -- 31 books not checked out!

Everyone who got an e-reader had gone online and checked out everything they could get their hands (or wi-fi) on. This will even out over the next few weeks, but it was interesting.

I am the go-to guy for e-readers at the local library at the moment, and I have been fielding calls and holding mini-classes or one-on-one training sessions all week. I am even getting fairly comfortable with Kindle, even though I don't own one, because I have been showing so many people how to use theirs.

Going ,,, going ...

2011-12-29T19:55:00.004-06:00

Although not a business person, I read the business pages from time to time. You may have seen that Sears [+Kmart] had a bad Christmas season and is in real trouble. One recent article listed it among ten brands that are likely to disappear within the next year or so, and the company already announced that over 100 stores would be closing.

Today we heard that the store in Baraboo, our nearest Sears outlet, is among those that will disappear, probably this spring. It is not a big mall anchor store, but it is a real store, not just a small outlet. Around 50 people are likely to lose their jobs as a direct result, but the impact will be greater. The store is one of the largest taxpayers in the village of West Baraboo, and if the building remains unoccupied, the reduced tax income will create other problems. So we hope that someone else will move in soon.

The rest of the story

2011-12-26T14:58:00.005-06:00

This is the Feast of St. Stephen, honored as the first Christian believer to die for his faith. There are a bazillion Stephen/Steven/Steve's who have been an important part of my life, and I think of them all today.

Of course, this is the "feast of Stephen" mentioned in that mysterious Christmas carol, Good King Wenceslas, of which one usually hears only the first verse and wonders what on earth it has to do with anything. The feast of Stephen connects it to the Christmas cycle, and the entire story is one of charity and connects it to the spirit that we all wish would mark the season. Here again are the lyrics and "the rest of the story."

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel

"Hither, page, and stand by me
If thou know'st it, telling.
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence
Underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence
By Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither.
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither."
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together,
Through the rude wind's wild lament
And the bitter weather

"Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, my good page;
Tread thou in them boldly.
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian folk, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing:
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.

As you can see from this photo, although there was a hint of the white stuff left this afternoon, it is not exactly deep and crisp or even:

But even without snow, there were blessings. One of our Christmas blessings this year was a new flamingo to decorate the fire number sign at the entrance to the drive. Several years ago, Peggy decorated one and we discovered it at the end of the sidewalk on Christmas morning. This year she sent Rich over in the dark of Christmas Eve to deliver it. And here it is ...

Hope it's merry and bright!

2011-12-25T07:56:00.001-06:00

Happy Hanukkah/Feast of Dedication

2011-12-20T20:59:00.003-06:00

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.

And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch.

John 10:22-23

Stilll looking for the perfect gift?

2011-12-18T08:52:00.005-06:00

It's one of the times of year when we pack up clothes and such to donate to St. Vincent de Paul or Goodwill. Friday I took about a hundred children's books that the library had collected to be distributed to kids in our area to brighten their holidays. And I ran across these reports in the news:

Though a recent American Red Cross survey found that donors plan to cut back on gifts, not charity this holiday season, several major nonprofits have reported decreases in contributions.

From toys to cans of food; loose change to big checks, donations are on the decline this year. And the problem is that as donations decrease, the need for help increases.

Paul Grogan, president and chief executive office of The Boston Foundation, told the Boston Globe he isn't surprised this fact, or by disappointing numbers in donations, considering the current state of the economy.

“They also underscore the level of need we face this winter, at a time when aid coming to the region for critical winter needs is being cut sharply," he said.

The Marine Corps Toys For Tots Foundation in Connecticut's Kings County is just one local example of that national concern.

The group collected about 18,000 toys and $40,000 in donations last year, but reported that this year only 6,200 toys and $24,000 had been collected.

Food banks across the nation have also seen a drop in donations.

Martha Buccino, the vice president of Philabundance, a Pennsylvania-based food shelter, said that its food donations have not been keeping up with the rising demand, stating the organization was down approximately 32 percent from last year, and 40 percent from two years ago.

''That's something that is very sobering," she said.

Food concerns on the West Coast continue to grow as well, with the San Diego Food Bank donations dropping 54 tons, according to NBC .

"Our total food drive donations last year was 656,247 pounds of food so we have a long way to go to reach last year's total," Chris Carter, San Diego Food Bank spokesman, told NBC. "We are also concerned because we use the Holiday Food Drive to build our food supply for the winter months, but this year the food is going out as quickly as it is coming in."

And in regard to one of the most well-known ways to give, those famous red kettles have been tossed less coins then usual this year.

As one telling local example, The Nonprofit Times reports that the Salvation Army kettle donations are down 22 percent this year in Massachusetts alone.

Even the convenience of virtual donations aren't bringing in expected amounts very quickly. The Salvation Army's national internet campaign Online Red Kettle has reached just 20 percent of its $3 million goal as of today.

The places mentioned in this article are perhaps not near you and you may know no one there. But there are families nearby that are having a hard time, too. So if you have a chance and a nickel to spare, I encourage you to give to a local food pantry or to some other organization you know and trust to help deliver help to people where you live this year. If it matters to your finances, the donations may be tax deductible.

And, of course, if you have already given -- as I assume all of you have -- thank you!

Here's a little music from the Glee kids. The song was written originally to raise money during the drought-induced African famine of the early 1980s, and you will hear the references to that, but the clip itself shows that there is need here as well.

Saturday

2011-12-17T08:42:00.004-06:00

We had a bit of snow last night, enough to cover the ground, more or less. It is 16 degrees this morning (about -9 C), but supposed to warm up to just above freezing. So what's on tap for the day?

Holiday housecleaning! (Yay?)

Next Friday a whole houseload of Scharbach-kin will arrive for the weekend:Helen and Jay from St. Paul; Lucy, Armand, Rebecca and David from Chicago; John and Chelsea from Oklahoma/Texas. Peter is due from Mississippi this weekend. So we are doing the prep for landing.

I have to get my room and bath cleaned up and ready, and I am going to bite the bullet and use the opportunity to get the dreaded closet in better shape. The bathroom needs some serious re-organization time, too, and the toilet and shower need cleaning and probably scalding. Shelves to dust, year-round tchotchkes to put away, seasonal tchotchkes to be put out, seasonal linens to be washed and readied. All that kind of stuff.

Why, then, you ask, and it is perfectly reasonable of you to do so, am I blogging rather than slogging away at this? But you already know the answer to that, don't you?

This heated bird bath, our gift from Helen and Jay, keeps the water warm enough to prevent ice from forming and provides water for birds during the winter. Tom got it set up about a week ago, and it has proved very popular. If you look very carefully at the rim on the right side (your right side) of the bowl, you can see a little bird, all fluffed out and enjoying the warmth. Thanks, Helen and Jay!

Happy St. Nicholas Day

2011-12-05T20:42:00.005-06:00

Today, December 6, Catholics, Orthodox and some other Christians celebrate the memory of the fourth-century bishop Nicholas of Myra (now a part of Turkey). He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose modern name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself from a series of elisions and corruptions of "Saint Nikolaos". His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints. It is easy to see how his feast, so close to Christmas, associated him with that feast.

The Carmelite community I used to belong came to the United States over a hundred years ago from Germany, and among the traditions they brought along with them (as did the Germans who had already settled in Wisconsin) was the celebration of St. Nick's feast on December 6 with the giving of small treats. This year I am continuing the tradition by making candy for the staff at the library.

Signs

2011-12-05T08:32:00.003-06:00

There was a dusting of snow on the ground this morning, but the weather report doesn't call for any significant precipitation this week. Yet winter is clearly on its way. The signs are everywhere.

My least favorite sign? The cats are using the litter boxes regularly and I have to scoop those out every morning.

Favorite sign? Migratory birds. The bird feeders are covered with birds this morning, and on our way to Portage Saturday evening we saw huge flocks of sandhill cranes flying over. At first we thought they were geese, and I had commented about how many there were -- wave after wave after wave. When we got closer, we could see that they were cranes, not geese. I saw more yesterday afternoon on my way back from Madison. It is a beautiful sight. The sandhills are not considered endangered, being instead the most numerous cranes in the world. But you don't have to be rare to be lovely.

And now for something serious ...

2011-12-01T08:08:00.004-06:00

On the first of December, World AIDS Day is celebrated. This day is an opportunity for people to unite in the fight against HIV/AIDS, to remember those who have died of the disease and to celebrate accomplishments, such as increased access to treatment and prevention services.

Today, despite advances in HIV treatment and in laws designed to protect those living with HIV; many people do not know the facts about how to protect themselves and others from HIV or about the stigma and discrimination that remain a reality for many people living with HIV. World AIDS Day is an important reminder to individuals and governments that HIV has not gone away – there is still a vital need to raise money, increase awareness, fight prejudice and improve education.

The theme for World AIDS Day 2011 is "Getting to Zero." After 30 years of the global fight against HIV/AIDS, this year the focus is on achieving 3 targets: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.

It is estimated that 33.3 million people have HIV worldwide, with 1.2 million persons who are living with HIV in the United States, according to the Center of Disease Control (CDC) estimates. This number is expected to continue to increase over time, as advances in treatments prolong the lives of those who are infected and more people become infected with HIV each year. Despite increases in the total number of people in the U.S. living with HIV infection in recent years, the annual number of new HIV infections has remained relatively stable. However, new infections continue at far too high of a level, with approximately 50,000 Americans becoming infected with HIV each year. Worldwide, the rate of new infections, or incidence, has decreased. In 33 countries, the incidence has decreased more than 25 percent since 2001, including countries in the hardest hit areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

The CDC estimates that one in five people living with HIV in the U.S. are unaware of their infection. This highlights the importance of reaching all infected individuals with HIV testing and prevention services. HIV can be transmitted in three main ways: sexual transmission; transmission through blood; and mother-to-child transmission. These three routes of transmission work in tandem to affect segments of the population. The number of infections resulting from each route will vary greatly between countries and population groups. HIV counseling and testing are fundamental for HIV prevention, as is access to essential commodities such as condoms or sterile injecting equipment.

According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, "Stigma remains the single most important barrier to public action. It is a main reason why too many people are afraid to see a doctor to determine whether they have the disease, or to seek treatment if so. It helps make AIDS the silent killer, because people fear the social disgrace of speaking about it, or taking easily available precautions. Stigma is a chief reason why the AIDS epidemic continues to devastate societies around the world."

Discrimination against those infected with HIV/AIDS includes both the fear of getting the disease and also negative assumptions about people who are infected. AIDS-related stigma has had a profound effect on the epidemic’s course. The World Health Organization cites fear of stigma and discrimination as the main reason why people are reluctant to be tested, to disclose their HIV status or to take antiretroviral drugs.

"We can fight stigma. Enlightened laws and policies are key. But it begins with openness, the courage to speak out. Schools should teach respect and understanding. Religious leaders should preach tolerance. The media should condemn prejudice and use its influence to advance social change, from securing legal protections to ensuring access to health care." Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

I know people who have been living with HIV for many years, and I know people who died because of AIDS. My hope is that no one who reads my blog is at high risk for contracting any sexually transmitted disease. It is my greater hope that everyone make sure that they and their loved ones are at zero risk. Do what you need to do, please.

Turkey Day Delights

2011-11-24T14:18:00.010-06:00

While Tom worked putting together our feast,

Sundance rested on the bed

and Cassidy on her cushion in Tom's office.

After lending me a hand with getting the table set up

Peter watched a bit of the Packers-Lions game

before Tom called us to the table, loaded now with turkey, gravy, stuffing, green beans and mushrooms, salad and pie. Then he and Peter laughed at me for taking photos.

The food and company, of course, were great.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T20:06:00.006-06:00

From all of us -- Tom, Peter, Michael, Sundance and Cassidy -- to all of you, a happy Thanksgiving!

(I have no idea why, but I always -- and I do mean ALWAYS -- spell Thanksgiving wrong the first time. I type Thanskgiving. And I did it the first time when I was trying to type it correctly in this parenthetical remark.)

Deer and ...

2011-11-19T09:50:00.007-06:00

A friend of Tom's has permission to hunt on Tom's property and deer season began this morning. Dan always brings a gift bag as a thank you, usually with some high-quality crackers, cheese, sausage, wine, mixed nuts -- that sort of thing.

This year he added something new: a flamingo coffee mug from Pier 1.

That plus the glittery bag it all came in is a sure sign that Dan has totally gets us and that he has a sense of humor.

Thanks!

CenturyLink

2011-11-12T11:13:00.005-06:00

I realize you may have limited options for telephone service, but I would like to report on problems I have been having with CenturyLink. This is for an account that belonged (past tense intentional) to District 19, and which I paid regularly in my capacity as treasurer.

Back in July, the District decided to cancel the account and have someone else handle incoming calls for us. The reasons for that had nothing to do with the service we had received from CenturyLink, which had been fine.

Because of my travels to Texas in August, I was not informed of this decision until early September and then began the problems.

First, when I called to cancel the account on September 9, I discovered that I was not authorized to cancel it. It had been set up some years ago and the two names on the account were people long gone from here. After a couple of telephone calls and talking to a supervisor, Vince, I was told all I needed was a letter on our letterhead faxed to them authorizing the change. I explained that the nature of the organization precludes letterhead and that I had no way of obtaining a letter from either of the people whose names were on the account. Ever helpful, the gentleman on the phone told me to just get anyone to sign a letter authorizing the cancellation and to fax same to them. They would get back to me.

This I did. Heard nothing.

I called again, got hold of Vince's secretary/assistant/whatever, who assured me that her boss had not received the fax. This despite the fact that I had in my grubby little hand a receipt showing that the fax had been sent and received at the number I had been given without errors. Solution? Fax again. (All this is not free, BTW.)

So I fax again and add a note explaining the history of the situation and requesting an email confirmation that the fax had been received.

Again get a receipt from fax machine indicating that everything had gone through fine. Waited three days. No email.

I called again. This time I got through to Vince again, who said he had received the first fax after my call and sending of the second fax, and that now all was fine. No explanation for why a fax sent to a communications company had not been delivered for three days within the very same building. After all, the reason I faxed it was to speed things along.

At any rate, we cancelled the account and that was that.

The process had begun on September 9 and it was now September 15. Our billing date was the 16th of the month, and I was assured that everything was taken care of and there would be no more charges.

When I picked up the District mail two weeks later on October 3, there was a bill for the next month's phone service. I called and spoke to a nice man named John. He assured me that I could ignore the bill which must have just passed the cancellation in the mail. I had now been told by two different people that their records indicated that the account had been cancelled and that we were no longer being billed for services and owed no money on the account.

Today, November 12, I picked up the District mail. Its PO box is in an neighboring town, so I only pick it up occasionally when I am there and the Post Office lobby is open. There was a bill for the phone service for November and a reminder that I had never paid for October.

Sighing heavily, I gathered up all the paperwork on this, which I had fortunately kept clipped together, and called the 800 number yet again. And got the message that their office is only open Monday through Friday, 8 to 5 or some such thing.

I am not worried about this. For one thing, I have all the records, confirmation numbers, receipts, names and so on, to show that I/we have done our part. For another, the worst that can happen is they will cancel our service -- which is what I wanted all along -- and maybe put up a nasty note somewhere about our credit rating. But we have no corporate existence, no credit rating, no credit cards, no other accounts that have to be paid. Nada, nothing, zip. We are pretty much off the grid except for a PO box, which has been paid for faithfully and about which there are no questions.

But come Monday morning I will put in yet another phone call to try to straighten this out.

Ironically, the bill has this "IMPORTANT NEWS" in a sidebar:

"CenturyLink understands that your telecommunication service is your lifeline to your business.Thank you for trusting us to help you make connections that count with your customers..."

I should mention that everyone with whom I spoke at CenturyLink was polite and seemed genuinely interested in helping me.

I spy ... mustard!

2011-11-12T07:51:00.006-06:00

Yesterday I went for my eye exam. The news was mainly good, but I did have to get some new specs. They should be here in about ten days. Tom and John had helped me pick out new frames, which are neither a fashion statement nor much of a change.

About midday the three of us headed to Madison. John wanted to visit a bookstore and Tom wanted to find out more about the Nook. He is pondering whether to get an e-book reader and, if so, whether to go Nook or Kindle. So we did all that. John got a vegetarian cookbook. Since we were already in Middleton (west side of Madison), we looked around for a place to go and wound up at the -- I am not making this up -- National Mustard Museum.

The National Mustard Museum boasts a large display of prepared mustards. It is often featured in lists of unusual museums in the United States.

The museum was conceived and founded by Barry Levenson, former Assistant Attorney General (yup, assistant attorney general) of Wisconsin. It centers on a mustard collection he began in 1986 while despondent over the failure of his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, to win the 1986 World Series. The initial dozen jars have grown to a collection of more than 5,300 mustards from more than 60 countries, along with hundreds of items of mustard memorabilia and exhibits depicting the use of mustard through history.

The museum opened its doors in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin on April 6, 1992. It moved across the street to a larger site in October 2000. In November 2009, the museum moved to Middleton and changed its name to the present one.

The museum's gift shop occupies about half of its floor space and offers free tasting of mustard samples from a refrigerated case containing scores of varieties; the museum also operates a mail-order mustard business.

Among the displays are sweet hot mustards, fruit mustards, hot pepper mustards, horseradish mustards, and spirit mustards. The collection includes a large variety of French and English mixes, but many other countries are also represented. I noticed that there are several shelves of Texas-made mustards, many flavored with jalapeños or chipotles.

John, figuring you can never have enough oddball mustards, did a little shopping. I was all for getting Christmas gifts here, but Tom dissuaded me. One item was an inflatable full-sized Thanksgiving turkey. I thought we might pick up one to put on the table this year for Peter, who is coming home for the holiday. Again, Tom disagreed.

Anyway, if you want to visit the museum's website and buy some mustard or mustard-related stuff, click here. I thought Ted might want one of the Poupon U t-shirts or coffee mugs.

Every day I call Mama and we talk about what we did that day.She thinks Tom and I are the "going-est people", but when I told her about the mustard museum, she said, "Boy, y'all have really run out of places to go."

Well, you know what they say: Relish today, ketchup tomorrow -- if you must(ard).

Beautiful Ohio

2011-11-08T20:43:00.001-06:00

Ah, yes! That time of year

2011-11-02T17:33:00.001-06:00

It rained most of the afternoon, and when I came out of the library to head home, there were some big wet snowflakes mixed in. By the time I made it home, I had driven through areas of rain, areas of rain mixed with snow and a small area with just snow. The temp is slightly above freezing, but snow is still falling lightly. No accumulation.

But it is a sign of things to come!

Reminder

2011-11-01T19:12:00.002-06:00

Some time ago I stopped using my Facebook account. The main reason was that a friend had been hacked and all sorts of things were sent out allegedly from his account, resulting in a lot of time, money and effort to clean up the mess this made.

So if you ask me to be your friend, I am happy to be that. But not on Facebook or Twitter or the like.

Thanks for understanding.

Ah, yes, the movement to save marriage ...

2011-10-31T15:21:00.006-06:00

One does not want to see any marriage fail, and of course there is a well-funded and vocal religio-political movement afoot to "protect" marriage in America. Funny that the folks who want to protect marriage are often people who themselves have been divorced and re-married (perhaps several times) , and that they don't put much effort into the things that actually threaten marriage -- things like the divorce rate (highest among the most conservative religious groups and, interestingly, lowest in a place like Massachusetts with its legal marriage for same sex couples) or for the high profile diminishment of marriage by the sort of reality programming that television spews forth on a daily basis. Their only concern is to prevent people like, well like Tom and me, from getting married.

And then comes the news of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries, whose 72-day-old marriage is apparently colapsing under the weight of -- well, the weight of actually being married and not playing a lucrative role on television for the big bucks. This is an excerpt from a recent article--pre-divorce announcement -- about the wedding itself.

The television event of the year is finally airing! Kim Kardashian’s wedding to professional baller Kris Humphries last August will be airing on E! as a special four-hour, two-night extravaganza entitled “Kim’s Fairytale Wedding: A Kardashian Event” on October 9th and 10th. Meanwhile, leading diamond retailer Brilliance.com has released a cute and fun infographic detailing the costs of the reality TV darling’s wedding, pitting it against the costs of an average US wedding.
From the infographic, you can learn exactly just how over-the-top Miss Kardashian’s wedding was, from the cost of her wedding cake – a cool $10,000 big ones as compared to the $543 an average couple spends on theirs – to the total cost of the ceremony and reception: a whopping 20 million dollars, as opposed to the $26,000 or so that a normal couple would shell out for their own wedding.

Most interesting is the fact that second to the total costs of her wedding, the most expensive item on the list is her $2 million diamond engagement ring from Lorraine Schwarz featuring a 20.5 carat emerald cut loose diamond. Talk about excessive – most guys would just set aside 2 months’ worth of their wages for a ring, about $5,000.

I am waiting with bated breath for the National Organization for Marriage to respond.

Little bird, little bird

2011-10-31T08:09:00.002-06:00

Last night one of the cats (I think it was Sundance, actually) brought in a little bird. Tom and I were sitting on the sofa reading and there was this unfamiliar sound.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I don't know," Tom answered, lowering his book. "Uh-oh! There's something on the carpet"

"What?" I asked, figuring one of the cats had decided to spit up.

It turned out to be this bird, lying on its side with both cats hovering over it.

I didn't see any blood. Tom touched it and it weakly stretched out a wing. He decided it was not dead but soon would be.

Since I am the critter-disposal person most of the time, I took a paper towel, wrapped it around the bird and took it out the front door to toss into the woods. When I did this, the paper towel unrolled from around it, the bird flapped its wings and flew off, apparently not too much the worse for its adventure.

I hope it made it through the night.

The cats went back to licking their fur.

750 Words

2011-10-28T08:34:00.004-05:00

Back in 2003, I was introduced to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. It is about living the life of a creative person and includes a number of exercises. At the time, I was member of a group in the Hyde Park neighborhood who were interested in writing. Some of us had been published, others had not; some were academics, some were teachers, some were housewives and so on. One of the guys had been in a group in California that had used this book as an organizational tool.

Our group chose not to use it, but I read it and found some interesting things. One was the suggestion to do some daily writing called "morning pages." Morning pages are three pages of writing done every day, typically encouraged to be in "long hand", typically done in the morning, that can be about anything and everything that comes into your head. It's about getting it all out of your head, and is not supposed to be edited or censored in any way. The idea is that if you can get in the habit of writing three pages a day, that it will help clear your mind and get the ideas flowing for the rest of the day.The exercise is not intended for people who plan to write necessarily, just people who want to get their creative juices flowing.

I recently ran across a website devoted to this exercise called 750 Words. The idea is that this is about the number of words in three pages of writing. You go to the website, sign up and every day they send you an early morning email reminding you to type your 750 words. If you do it on the website, it keeps track of your writing and lets you know whether you are keeping regular with the exercise. It also offers some statistical analysis of your writing -- whether you use an average amount of adjectives, for example -- and some ideas about what your writing reveals about your inner life. I am a bit skeptical about this latter, partly because it is obviously done by computer and is based on word counts. Since English is such a rich language, many words can mean widely different things in context and syntax, and so one cannot assume a person who uses the word "rough" is a Clint Eastwood type, or a golfing type or a sandpaper manufacturer. But if you are interested in this sort of thing, I do recommend the book and the site.

One thing I discovered was that by writing on the site, I was neglecting my writing here. I was happy to discover that I can write on the blog, cut-and-paste to the site, and it works. It does throw off their record of how fast I am writing/typing, but I had done it on-site long enough to know that it takes me on average about 15 minutes to type 750 words, at a rate of 55 words per minute.

According to my word processing software, thus far I have written 501 words up to the end of the last paragraph. So I am only two thirds of the way to my goal for today. But don't worry. I don't intend to force you (or even invite you) to read 750 words here every day. Most of my entries on that website are just stream-of-consciousness ramblings about the weather, work, the cats, and that sort of thing. In some ways, it is more a mental dumping process to clear the mind for morecreative work later, although the tools do allow you to use it for sorting through ideas.

Okay, that is 609.

This morning I am heading off to run some errands -- make a deposit in the joint account at the bank, mail in some bill payments and run over to Baraboo in a probably futile attempt to find a gift for our retiring Youth Services Librarian. Cornerstone Gallery used to have some very nice pins (brooches?) that featured postage stamp designs taken from book covers of classic children's books. If they still have them, I think one would be a perfect small gift for Charlotte. In the best of all possible worlds, not only would they still have them, they would have one for E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. I know it is one of Charlotte's favorites, and she even has a spider's costume that she wears sometimesat story hour when she is reading the book to the children.

750 words.

Another photo

2011-10-22T16:27:00.003-05:00

Angie e-mailed me this photo that they found while helping sort out a bunch of stuff at Mama's house. It was taken by my friend, Fr. Steve Payne, in December 1983, I think. I am standing in front of what was then the Discalced Carmelite Friar's monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts. The property had originally been part of the Cabot estate, and the house had been purchased and given to the friars in 1942. I was stationed there from 1981 to 1985, fist as assistant to the novice master and then as master of postulants. The friars sold the property and moved to another location in Brighton, MA and the new owner eventually tore it down, even though it was on both the state of national registers of historic places. It was a beautiful place, with intricate molded plaster ceilings and about fifteen handcarved fireplace mantles and so on. They salvaged a lot of the artistic architectural features and sold them, but the amazing ceilings were impossible to save.

2011-10-17T20:58:00.001-05:00

Happy 180th birthday, Daddy!

Art

2011-10-16T21:31:00.003-05:00

Today was the last day of the annual Fall Art Tour in our area, and I felt recuperated enough to go with Tom on an excursion through the hills and dales of Sauk County to visit about a dozen artists in their studios. These ranged from a man who makes stained glass panels -- one of which we bought a few years back and installed next to Tom's reading spot in the library area of the house -- to a truly macabre woman who made strange pieces from cast beeswax and dead insects. Yes, actual dead insects. They looked like something you would find in the parlor at the Addams Family mansion.

It was a beautiful day to be out for the drive, cool but not cold, rather windy but dry. Besides seeing some intriguing art and furniture, we met a charming orange kitten who had shown up on the front porch of one of the studios this morning and whom the artists were trying to keep outside, hoping a warm-hearted visitor would take it home and adopt it. While Tom chatted with one of the artists inside for a while, I sat on the porch and held the cat, telling each new arrival that they were the 100th visitor and had won a new pet. Everyone laughed but no one took the kitten home. When we left, it was sitting on the bench in front of the studio, nibbling on a piece of fancy cheese one of the other visitors had snagged from the refreshment tables for it.

At the first place we stopped, besides the stained glass maker, there was a woman who does batik designs and also makes prints of her pieces. I bought a red dragon (for Wales, of course) and it now hangs next to my reading spot in my bedroom.

All in all, a good day. (With a few sniffles still, I admit, but not too bad.)

Kermit The Frog's "It Gets Better" Video

2011-10-16T09:10:00.002-05:00

Remember Kermit's song, "It isn't Easy Being Green"?

Greetings! Kermit the Frog here, and today I'd like to tell you a little bit about the color green. Do you know what's green?
Well I am for one thing. You see, frogs are green, and I'm a frog. And that means I'm green, you see?

It's not that easy bein' green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy bein' green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean
Or important like a mountain
Or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green and it'll do fine
It's beautiful!
And I think it's what I want to be!

Now listen to this important message. Click on the arrow in the middle to start it.

A nook for hiding a Nook

2011-10-14T19:38:00.009-05:00

A couple of weeks back, I purchased a Nook. This was partly due to wanting to become familiar with how to use this particular e-reader (the one marketed by Barnes and Noble) so that I can help library patrons use theirs and show them how to download e-books from the library. I did not expect to find it as enjoyable as I have for personal use. I got (naturally) the small and simple version, which is about the size of a thin, smallish paperback book, weighing in at under 8 ounces, yet holding up to 1000 books. It is designed to encourage you to purchase books from B&N, of course, but I can download things free from the library and have discovered that B&N also has over a million titles available free, all sorts of things from children's books to classics to nonfiction.

Turns out the size is perfect for reading in bed, too, and the cats don't seem as inclined to bump up against it the way they did regular books.

I did not get a custom-fit cover for mine, but since I am using it more and more, I decided it needs a cover/case to prevent it getting damaged. So I made my own.

This is a 7"x9" journal that I had filled up some years ago. The cover design is taken from the ninth-century illuminated Book of Kells. This is the classic example of Celtic illumination, and the colors even on this reproduction are rich and warm. The journal is only about half an inch thick, but that was enough for me to cut out space inside in which to place the Nook.

I had downloaded instructions a year or so back about how to turn a book into a box and it was fairly simple to do, although a bit time-consuming. Basically I cut out the pages with a box cutter, glued the edges together with white glue, clamped it between a couple of board down in the Tom's shop and left it to dry overnight. In the morning it took some cleaning up inside, but when I was done, it was a perfect fit.

Tom suggested I use some Velcro dots on the cover page and the box part so that it will stay shut when I am carrying it, which I plan to do.

I showed it to a friend who was visiting this evening and he laughed. It reminded him, he said, of when he was in high school and they would put Popular Mechanics covers over Playboy magazine so people wouldn't know what they were "reading". I pointed out that I am reading a history of Zen Buddhism on the Nook right now, so it is not naughty. But he still laughed.
------------
FYI, I chose to get the Nook because the library had not been able to offer downloads to Kindle, the popular Amazon e-reader. That changed right about the time I bought the Nook. The fancier versions of both Nook and Kindle, though, besides costing more, are basically tablets-with-e-reader capacity. They are larger and heavier of necessity, and I already have a laptop that provides me with all they offer and more. As it turns out, I was able to synchronize my Nook with my laptop for free -- so I can read things I have downloaded to the Nook on the computer if I want. This gives me a better screen size for things like comics and illustrations that are too small on the little Nook screen.

Uhhhh...

2011-10-14T09:18:00.003-05:00

Nothing too serious, but I coughed a lot all night and woke up stopped up and sounding a bit like Darth Vader. So I stayed home. No reason to spread the germs to the general public and all the kids at Neenah Creek School. I would be in bed, but the OTHER cats have taken possession of that. I will have to figure out how to curl up between and around them.

Tomorrow the library has its last book sale of the year, and Tom went over this morning to help them set up.

We were going to go to Tomah tomorrow for a birthday party for Rich's mom, Frieda. She is 100 years old. But I called to let them know we won't be putting her at risk by attending with me in this shape. Peggy understood, but she told me my lower decibel voice sounded sexy.

Yeah, that's how I feel. Sexy ...

It'snot just in Pennsylvania ...

2011-10-10T20:54:00.002-05:00

St. .Michael's Summer

2011-10-06T08:19:00.004-05:00

We are having a lovely bit of Indian Summer - temperatures around 80 (28.6 C), sunny and clear. The leaves are beautiful, although color is spotty. Tom is clearing brush and has started tagging all the maples so that he can clear around them. Maple leaves are classic fall shape and colors, and we are lucky to have so many. The oaks, on the other hand, have a good leaf shape but turn a drab and lingering brown.

Kathie and I were wondering yesterday about the origin of the term Indian summer, and in researching that (without finding a satisfactory definitive answer) I discovered that this weather pattern is called St. Michael's Summer in some European locales. That is because the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel is September 29.

So now I can say we are having a bit of Me Summer.

2011-09-28T07:40:00.001-05:00

Shana Tova
Happy New Year
2011 - 5772
We wish you and your family a year filled
with health, happiness and prosperity

Michael Potter

2011-09-25T17:30:00.001-05:00

Kristin recently went through a lot of old family photos with Mama and sent a bunch of them to each of us in the family. Included in my batch was a photo taken when I was a novice in 1974 at the ripe old age of 24. A friend who was majoring in photography at the local state university wanted to take my picture for a portrait class and posed me for this in the Episcopal church in Huntsville. It used to hang in Daddy's home office until he replaced it with a picture of him with his arm around Dolly Parton. (Sniff!)

Anyway, the ladies at the library all said that I look like Harry Potter in this picture. Well, I did once write a little story for Kristin in which I was a wizard ... though not a very competent one.

Big Book News!

2011-09-23T10:02:00.005-05:00

Okay, not really. But it was fun ... for about ten minutes.

The activities director at Golden Living -- one of the places the bookmobile goes -- recently learned that I had written a book that the library owned. So she checked it out. A resident, overhearing the conversation, wanted a copy, too. So I got the one that the neighboring library in Baraboo owns. The resident liked it so much and talked it up, and I wound up getting the the third library copy for yet another patron.

As far as I know, these are the only public-library-owned copies of the book out there. And for one brief, shining moment, they were all three checked out!

Of course, ten minutes after the third one was checked out, the first one was returned. So when I say "brief, shining moment", I mean brief.

Still, a guy can glory in a moment, right?

On the other hand, one of the guys asked to read the Elijah book, too. (The library does not own a copy of that or the Gratian translation.) So I took him a copy but reminded him that it is not a mystery novel. So I am not sure how excited he will be by it -- but at least it is not long!

Jamey

2011-09-21T07:44:00.002-05:00

Another tragic reminder that bullying against gay youth is a continuing problem comes with the suicide of a 14-year-old boy, Jamey Rodemeyer, who had asked for help repeatedly.

The Buffalo, New York, teen died on Sunday, his body found later outside his home after an apparent suicide, according to the Buffalo News. His death followed his blogging about the bullying at school that just wouldn't stop.

"I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens," he wrote on September 9. "What do I have to do so people will listen to me?"

Wooly potty?

2011-09-19T09:26:00.004-05:00

Today many think the mere appearance of the woolly caterpillar is a prediction of a harsh winter. We forget if the orange rings mean a long or short winter. The legend dates back to the Native American Indians who taught colonists about the woolly bear caterpillar's ability to presage the winter weather. In the the article, “Woolly Bear Caterpillars: Weather Predictors?” in the 1999 Old Farmer's Almanac, the real tradition is that more and wider rusty orange segments on the woolly bear caterpillar predict a winter that will be less severe than usual. If the orange rings are thin or few, the winter will be harsh.

Whatever.

I am reminded of a story about the young man who became chief of his tribe after the death of his uncle. The uncle had been famous for his accurate predictions about the severity of upcoming winters, and the tribe had always followed his advice about how much preparation they needed to make in the months prior to the onset of the cold. As a result, they had prospered.

The nephew, because he had not expected to become chief, had not learned how to predict the winter in the traditional ways and instead had obtained an MBA from Harvard. He had expected to live out his days as an accountant at the tribal casino.

But that was not to be.

So when the first September rolled around, he did what any modern young man would do -- he contacted the local office of the National Weather Service. They explained that all indications were for an average winter ahead.

The young chief returned to his people with the good news, but because of his business training, he knew the importance of putting in a disclaimer. So he decided to hedge his bets a bit by saying that the coming winter, while not harsh, would be a bit worse than usual. As a result, the members of the tribe began to store up more firewood and to lay in more canned goods.

A few weeks later, tribal elders came to the chief to see if he had any more details. He told them he would consult the Great Spirit and get back to them.

This time when he called the Weather Service, they said that it was beginning to look like the winter might be a bit more severe than they had expected, but nothing to be too worried about.

Hedging his bets again, the chief told the elders that now the Great Spirit and all the signs of nature indicated that winter might be middling bad. So they went back with this message and all the people chopped more firewood, canned more vegetables and starting buying up heavier blankets at the local shops.

In late October, the elders returned, a bit concerned now because it was beginning to look like there would be a shortage of food and perhaps even of firewood. There were no blankets left to be had in the area. The chief wiped the sweat from his forehead when he heard this, and promised to see what he could learn.

This time when he called the Weather Service, he was agitated by their message: It looked like it might be a record cold winter.

"Look, guys," he said. "In early September you told me the winter would be nothing big. Then you said it was going to be middling. Now you are predicting record low temperatures and blizzards. What happened to change your earlier forecast?"

There was along pause on the other end of the line and then an embarrassed voice said, "Well, this is just between you and me, okay? Our equipment and computer models still all say it will be a mild winter. But for some reason the local tribes have been putting up food and firewood and buying up blankets like mad, and we figure they must know something we don't know!"
--------------
Why do I say this? The cats seem to have begun using their litter boxes weeks earlier than usual this year. They normally are happy to poop and scoop outside until later in the fall, but they have been doing their business inside for the past couple of weeks. I don't know if they have been consulting the weather service or if -- more likely -- they have just decided it is more convenient to use the indoor plumbing.

But you may want to lay in a supply of blankets.

Happy birthday, Tom!

2011-09-16T04:54:00.002-05:00

What would Cassidy, Sundance and I do without you?

Not to mention the Riverside & Great Northern Preservation Society, Kilbourn Public Library, Stewards of the Dells, the Democratic Party ...

Two-cat nights

2011-09-14T20:10:00.002-05:00

They say the low tonight will be 32 degrees ( 0 C), and Tom dismantled the fountain on the deck to get ready for it. High today and tomorrow around 56 (53 C). Ah, mid-September in Wisconsin!

The bookmobile was at Lake Delton Elementary School this afternoon and there were kids running around the playground in flip-flops, shorts and sleeveless t-shirts.

It's all what you're used to, I guess.

Fish tacos

2011-09-10T19:20:00.005-05:00

Sprecher's opened a place on the strip in Lake Delton this summer, and I have been wanting to try it. We waited until after the crush of the tourist season was over, though, to give it a shot.

Tom had a roast turkey sandwich -- figuring it was the least poisonous thing on the rather eclectic menu. (It is hard to get him to go somewhere new or try something unfamiliar. But he can be converted pretty easily is he has a good experience.)

I decided to give the fish tacos a try. They have never sounded particularly good to me, not being much of a fish fan to begin with. But I gave it a whirl along with sweet potato fries, which have lately become a favorite alternative side. And I have to say, I am a fan. They were pretty messy to eat, but that comes with the territory when you're talking tacos of any kind. Now that I have taken the plunge, I will experiment with them at other places. It would be good to find ones with grilled fish instead of fries; at least that's what my meddlesome doctor would tell me.

Path in Dodd Wood, Lake Country, England

2011-09-05T18:35:00.002-05:00

Ironing Man

2011-09-05T11:28:00.006-05:00

For 30 years in the monastery, getting dressed for work was easy: I threw on my habit, tied the leather cincture around my waist and I was set for most any occasion.

Now life is more complicated. Tom convinced me that wearing casual long sleeve business shirt with a tie was the way to go for work, and I have followed his advice -- adjusting it a bit by wearing cartoon and other novelty ties to keep things light. But long sleeve business casual shirts need to be ironed, again according to His Lawyerlyness. Which was fine back when he was happy to do my ironing, although he was a bit heavy on the starch. But since he retired and got involved in everything under the sun from quarter-scale steam trains to local political campaigns and saving-the-Dells, the ironing has fallen to my lot.

During the summer, I am not so into the casual-business-shirts-with-ties, although I do wear them from time to time. But it is Labor Day, the weather is changing (high of 65 [18.3C] today), and I spent part of the morning ironing enough of those long sleeve business casual shirts to keep me going for the next couple of weeks.

Reminds me of a joke I heard a few years ago:

The good news, ladies, is that there are men who will iron their own shirts.

Bet you already guessed the bad news.

Family ties (liens de famille)

2011-09-04T20:58:00.006-05:00

We went into Madison today to do some shopping. Tom wanted to get some art supplies and I had several things I was looking for. Among things I picked up was this book on the history of Wales. Since we have been looking into family origins and all, I have become more interested in the Welsh connection.

Kristin meanwhile is looking across the English Channel and thinks she has now linked us to Pepin of Landen and Charlemagne. This is a source of some amusement to me, because I wish I could see my brother's face when he realizes he has French blood! Even without the Carolingian connection, the French part seems assured. Our Norman ancestors -- de Venables -- apparently came over to England with or shortly after the Conqueror in 1066, but I don't think this will make Ted happier. Dodds with their Welsh/Cheshire/Shropshire roots were already there holding lands, the name appearing in the Domesday Book.

Tom is unimpressed. He pointed out that his Jewish ancestry makes him a relative of Jesus. He figures nothing the Dodd-Morgan-Hedricks-Mitchum crowd or even the de Venables can come up with will top that.

Round, plump, bald?

2011-09-03T09:24:00.004-05:00

Since Daddy died, Kristin and Kirstin have been burning up the internet researching the family tree. They seem to be having fun -- and the occasional difference of opinion -- and I am observing with interest. At the moment, Kristin and I are working on the origin of the surname, something I looked into a few decades back. Some of the possible orgins are boringly probable -- derivation from Roger (or Roderick) which became Dodger, became Dodge, became Dodd. Others are more entertaining. My favorite is this gem, found on a number of sites about the coat of arms:

This name is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and is one of the earliest surnames recorded. The name derives from a Germanic word used to describe something round and plump, used in Olde English pre 7th Century as a byname or nickname for such a person, and also found recorded as a personal name. The surname Dodd and Dod, and the patronymic forms Dods and Dodds, "son of Dod(d)", may mean "the hairless or close-cropped one", from the Olde English "dod", to make bare, but in the majority of cases the surname is from the medieval personal name.[This means the dude -- er, Dodd -- was bald.]

I'm a librarian

2011-08-30T14:14:00.001-05:00

Fast facts about Wisconsin public libraries in 2010

Over the last five years, public library visits have increased by over 10% and circulation has increased 15%. The number of paid library staff decreased 0.6%. Public library staff per capita has decreased 2.6% over this period.
In comparison with other states, Wisconsin ranks 8th in per capita in circulation, but 22nd for total operating revenue and 21st for total operating expenditures per capita.
Six out of 10 state residents are registered library users. These library users made over 35 million visits to Wisconsin public libraries in 2010. Season attendance for Brewer home games in 2010 was 2.8 million.
The average number of user visits per week to Wisconsin public libraries is 676,000. Season attendance at Packer home games is about 566,000.
Over 65 million items were circulated by Wisconsin’s public libraries in 2010. Wisconsin ranks 8th in per capita circulation nationally.
On average, 1.25 million items are checked out of Wisconsin public libraries each week. More than one-third of these circulations are children’s materials.
Each year 9 million items are shared between libraries to fill requests for materials not available locally. Wisconsin ranks 1st nationally in per capita interlibrary loans. Resource sharing coordinated by public library systems and the DPI is a model for how to use public resources efficiently.
Wisconsin has 385 public libraries and 80 public library branches. Almost all of these libraries will serve any Wisconsin resident. All of Wisconsin’s public libraries have voluntarily chosen to participate in one of the states regional public library systems that provide efficiencies through sharing and consolidation of services.
The average per capita municipal and county property taxes paid by Wisconsin residents for public library operations in 2010 was $36.27. Wisconsin ranks 18th in per capita local and county tax support.
Nearly all of Wisconsin public libraries offer wireless Internet access to library users. Over 93% of Wisconsin public libraries provide access to licensed electronic books and downloadable audio and video files.
Every Wisconsin library and citizen has access to thousands of online newspapers, magazines and books through the DPI’s BadgerLink service.
Over 98% of Wisconsin public libraries help people access and use employment resources, including help with job searches, creating resumes and submitting employment applications
Programs provided by public libraries and directed toward children had attendance of over 1.6 million. Summer library program attendance for children and young adults was nearly 500,000.

More Sunday Fun (?)

2011-08-28T12:28:00.006-05:00

So after I finished the earlier post and went outside to see what Tom had decided, he was examinng the front door and deciding it needs to be touched up. (No question about that.) Then I pointed out that the whole entry way looks terrible -- dirty siding, dead bugs, spiderwebs, a coffee can filled with cigarette stubs on an unpainted bench alongside an assortment of clippers and garden spades. This led to some discussion of power washing and the next thing I know, I am taking the carpet shampooer down to the basement and looking for the wet-dry shop vac.

The wet-dry shop vac turns out not to be in the basement but in the garage. What is in the basement is a mess by the litter box. The cats have apparently found the new kitty litter wanting and have taken things into their own hands by thinking outside the box. And doing other things outside the box, too. So Tom begins working on the entry way and I begin cleaning up the cat's mess. I have to agree with them that the new litter is not up to standard. It is sandy in texture, does not clump adequately, does not absorb all the moisture of the cat by-products deposited there and seems to be no discernible help in the whole odor department. But of course that may be blamed more appropriately on all the by-product splashed around the box without benefit of the litter at all. For those of you who want to avoid this brand, it is sadly misnamed Cat's Pride Scoopable. It is guaranteed safe to flush, but you might just want to skip the middle person and teach your cats to use the toilet directly if this is your only other option.

Here is Tom totally not power-washing the entryway and siding but doing things the old fashioned way with sponge, hose and soap.

Now you may wonder why all the photos of work actually happening are pictures of Tom. To this I make the following points.

I am holding the camera, and therefore it is natural that the pictures are of someone else.
Do you really want to see pictures of me scooping up cat by-products?
My work is keeping a record of Tom's virtues for all to see and appreciate.

Make sense?

The other librarians constantly point out to me that Tom spoils me, and I cannot deny this. But I am the one who scooped up the cat by-products, and surely that counts for something. And to show my appreciation, I promise to compliment Tom on the wonderful dinner he will no coubt prepare for me later this evening.

Eat your hearts out!

Sunday is Fun Day!

2011-08-28T10:29:00.012-05:00

The librarians asked me yesterday what we planned to do on this, my day off. Assuming we would go somewhere exciting or do something exotic, I suppose.

We had planned to go to the Ho Chunk Nation Pow Wow nearby yesterday evening with John, Judy and Matthew, but that got cancelled at the last minute. So we decided to go eat in Reedsburg and do our grocery shopping on the way home. That would leave all of today free for fun and edutainment.

Sadly, a thorough search online and of the area print events listings showed nothing particularly attractive. It is a sunny, dry day and thus Tom was moved to have us shampoo the large rugs in the dining and living rooms. We moved furniture, he rolled them up and took them out to the pad outside the garage and got to work. I swept and mopped the floors, straightened up the kitchen a bit and scoured the cutting boards.

At first our carpet shampooer did not want to work, but Tom got it going and went at it. Here he is doing his due diligence:

While he was doing the first rug, he realized we were going to need more Bissel Fiber Cleansing Formula for Carpets and Upholstery For Use in All full Size Cleaning Machines and Containing Scotch Guard. (Whew!) I headed off to Home Depot to restock while he finished up.

To my surprise and dismay, Home Depot did not have this product, which I would have assumed was the standard for all etc. I looked first in the cleaning materials area, which I located after discovering that it was no longer located near the sign that said "Cleaning supplies". I then tried over by the carpet and rug area, where we had purchased said rugs some years back. (I thought we got them from Kohl's, but that was the rug in the library. Kohl's did not have rugs large enough for the dining and living rooms.) No luck there. Then I tried by the actual carpet shampooers and steamers. There were some cleaning products, but no Bissel Etc. Frustrated I did what no male likes to do -- I asked for help.

And they told me they did not carry it.

This meant I needed to go next door to Walmart -- a thing I hate to do on any occasion -- to see if they had it. Wetry to avoid Walmart if we can, but living out here in the back of beyond, in the Waterpark Capital of the World (registered trademark), sometimes Walmart is the only place you can get things. So I went in and discovered that I was to be spared the ignominy of giving them any of my hard-earned cash. They did not have it either. In fact, they had nothing except the spray on foaming spot cleaners.

I called Tom and explained the dilemma. He told me to get whatever I could get, as if we had any option, being unable to get whatever we could not get pretty much by definition. So I bought some Zep stuff and brought it home. Not that I have anything against Zep products, but seriously, is that the best name you could come up with? Zep? Makes me think of old cigarette lighters or one of the Marx brothers.

As I write this, Tom is out working on the second rug. And I am noticing how lovely the floors are without the rugs. Here you see the dining room opening into the kitchen. Of course, the table and chairs are not there, but you get the idea. (Those old coffee cans stacked in the corner contain bird seed.)

And here is a view of the mostly empty living room, looking through the door into my room where some of the furniture has been temporarily moved.

I think these photos make the house look tiny. But the kitchen/dining area/living area/library are all one big open space divided by bookcases and a buffet Tom built. The rooms all have over- sized windows looking out onto the back yard and woods. The ceiling in dining area/living area/library is a sort of cathedral thing, so it feels spacious, light and roomy.

Plus we have great art on the walls, most of it done by Tom. That painting you can barely see over the stove in the kitchen photo above is one Tom's father painted. We have several of his things, too.
.
This 4'X4' [1.22 m x 1.22 m] painting hangs on the wall in the living room. It represents the house Tom and Helen had in Hyde Park next to Helen's parents. When it hung in our apartment in Chicago, people waking down the sidewalk would stop and peer into our window to look at it. I apologize for the angle of the shot, but it was the only way I could avoid a glare spot.

More typical of Tom's work are the monochromatic portraits. They are of a variety of people, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, a homeless street vendor who sold Streetwise down on 57th Street and so on.

They are also rather large.

Well, Tom has finished the rugs and now they have to lie out there and dry for a few hours. We are trying to figure out what to do for the afternoon. But as you can see, it can be entertaining just walking around our place.

St. Mychal of the Towers

2011-08-26T19:18:00.007-05:00

When All Saints Church sought to signal its hospitality to gays and lesbians, the Catholic parish in Syracuse, N.Y., turned to a well-known image from the 9/11 attacks: five firefighters carrying a body from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The body belonged to the Rev. Mychal Judge, a Franciscan fire chaplain who rushed to the burning buildings and was killed by falling debris. Later, a half-hidden secret emerged about the gallant priest: he was gay. All Saints hopes the statue will demonstrate that the parish, following Judge's lead, is committed to closing the chasms between rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, said the Rev. Fred Daley, the church's pastor. Moreover, Daley said, the monument will memorialize a man who, like many gays and lesbians, struggled to fit into a church that considers homosexual desires "an intrinsic moral evil" and seeks to prohibit gay men from becoming priests.

"Here's a gay person who was committed to celibacy, flourishing in the priesthood. It breaks so many stereotypes that people have," said Daley, who came out as gay himself in 2004."For young gay people in particular, how good it is that Mychal Judge can be a role model for them."

Of 9/11's myriad effects on American life, among the more surprising is the emergence of a New York City Fire Department chaplain as a gay icon -- a hero bordering on sainthood to scores of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics.

A gay civil rights group has produced a documentary called Saint of 9/11; gay activists hold vigils on the anniversary of his death; statues and icons of the sandal-shod Franciscan crop up nationwide; and his example has been employed to oppose Vatican policies that bar men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from the priesthood.

The gay Catholic pundit Andrew Sullivan has called Judge's death an "emblem of service and holiness and courage," and argued that, by the Vatican's logic, the priest "should never have been ordained."

Researchers estimate that thousands of gay priests like Judge serve the church while remaining faithful to their vows of celibacy. Only a few, however, have publicly revealed their sexual orientation, leaving a dearth of positive role models for gay Catholics, Daley said.

The Rev. James Martin, culture editor of the Jesuit magazine America, said some Catholics are uncomfortable with Judge's sexual orientation and downplay that aspect of his life.

"But why should they be? For all we know, he lived a perfectly celibate life," Martin said. "He lived as the Catechism asked him to live and kept his ordination promises. Gay, straight or somewhere in between, he's a hero. If you rush into a burning building to minister to people, while knowing that you might die, that's true holiness."

Omitting any mention of Judge's sexuality, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has used Judge's heroic life and death for its own ends: in promotional materials encouraging men to join priesthood.

"One's orientation should never dominate one's ministry as a priest," said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the bishops. "Clearly, it did not dominate the ministry of Father Judge, who by all reports was held in high esteem by many, especially by the fire department he served so well."

Charismatic and witty, Judge made legions of friends and admirers during his 68 years -- from President Clinton to homeless addicts. His funeral was packed with conservative Catholics, politicians, firefighters, recovering alcoholics and gay activists, recalls friend Brendan Fay.

"He had a strange way of weaving his way through communities that could barely tolerate each other," said Fay, a gay rights activist in New York.

Journal entries published in The Book of Mychal, a 2008 biography, show Judge struggling with the secretiveness his sexual orientation sometimes required. "I thought of my gay self and how the people I meet never get to know me fully," he wrote.

The priest bent church rules by joining the gay Catholic group Dignity and allowing it to meet in his Franciscan-run parish. He counseled gay couples and the parents of gay children, according to Fay, and began ministering to AIDS victims during the 1980s, when the disease was considered a gay scourge.

But even some of the Judge's closest friends didn't know he was gay, said David Fullam, whose firehouse sat across the street from the Franciscan friary. The former firefighter wears a bracelet emblazoned with Judge's name and donated $240 recently to All Saints' monument fund.

"We knew that he ministered to the AIDS population and the gay population," Fullam said. "He was very inclusive." While some firefighters were taken aback when they learned that Judge was gay after his death, they would have accepted him regardless, he said.

"We didn't care if he was gay or straight," Fullam said. "We loved him."

Although the Roman Church has not officially canonized Fr. Mychal, he was declared a saint by the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America in 2002.

Fr. Mychal's Prayer:

Lord, take me where You want me to go,

let me meet who You want me to meet,

tell me what You want me to say,

and keep me out of Your way.

Under the Big Top

2011-08-25T07:53:00.003-05:00

Saturday night Tom and I attended the wedding of Fred Clark and Kerry Schuman in Baraboo. Fred is our state assemblyman. They got married at Circus World Museum at the Hippodrome. It was a fun wedding and they looked great. From the wedding they rode an elephant to the reception hall two blocks away, accompanied by Fred's son Joe and Kerry's daughter Emma. I had joked with Mama that I didn't know whether to wear my clown nose, but they handed out clown noses at the reception hall for everyone to wear to greet the elephant and its happy riders. If you look carefully at the person in the front right on the photo with his back to you, you can just make out the spot of red indicating his clown nose.

A good time was had by all, and we wish Fred, Kerry, Emma and Joe the best in their new family.

A bit of American Revolutionary thinking from 1776

2011-08-24T20:15:00.000-05:00

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Thomas Paine
Common Sense

Limelight

2011-08-20T13:19:00.006-05:00

Kathie Holly, my companion on the Bookmobile, gave me this hydrangea as a living memorial for Daddy. It is named Limelight, because the flowers are a light green all summer, then turn to pink in the fall. The bush is about three feet tall now and should grow to about six feet tall and six feet around eventually. This photo shows it after Tom got it in the ground, and so you see the garden hose there.

We decided to position the hydrangea at my end of the house, where it will get morning sun and afternoon shade, down far enough to be visible from the deck in back ...

and partly visible from the front drive as you pull in and then fully from the sidewalk as you walk to the front door. That spot of red up there is Tom's truck on the pad outside the garage, so you get an idea of where this is in relation to the house. (Sundance had to get in the picture.) These two pictures were taken when the plant was still in its pot. Now it is in the ground and Tom is already building up a bit of garden around it, featuring wild roses, of which we have an abundance, and some other things. Next year I will try to get a picture of the whole arrangement in situ.

Thanks to Kathie for this thoughtful gift and reminder.

Daddy

2011-08-15T18:32:00.004-05:00

I just got back from Texas this evening. My father died peacefully in his sleep last Tuesday morning, August 9. The obituary notice is below. The photo was taken in December 2009.
Everything went well, and I think my mother and the rest of us are doing well. Thanks to those of you who were aware of this and sent messages of condolence. The family is grateful for your prayers and thoughts at this time.

Tom, ever generous, filled in at the library while I was away so that things there were as little disrupted as possible. As my mother said, he is a great friend.

My good friend in the Carmelites, Fr.Steven Payne, lost his father Larry to lymphoma two days after my father died. I commend his family to your prayers, too.

James Byron Dodd

Funeral services for James Byron Dodd, 89, of Whitehouse are scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday, Aug. 12, 2011, at Whitehouse Church of Christ with J.C. Tate officiating.

Following the service Mr. Dodd will be laid to rest in Whitehouse Cemetery under direction of Burks Walker Tippit Funeral Directors.

Mr. Dodd was born Sept. 17, 1921, in Hoschton, Ga. Byron served his country while in the United States Navy during World War II and retired as a teacher with Windham Independent School District. Mr. Dodd was a member of Whitehouse Church of Christ and lived in Whitehouse the past 15 years. He was preceded in death by brothers, Ray Dodd and Weldon Dodd; and sisters, Peggy Ray and Tacky Mitchum.

Byron is survived by his loving wife of 64 years, Roxie Mitchum Dodd of Whitehouse; sons, Michael Scott Dodd of Wisconsin Dells, Wis., and Ted Byron and wife Cynthia Dodd of Borger; brother, George Talmadge and wife Ann Dodd; brother-in-law, Rayburn Mitchum; sisters-in-law, Bobbie Mitchum Stevens and Florence Dodd; three grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Pallbearers will be Randy Arnold, Vincent Broccolo, Justin Dodd, Billy Ray Duren, Acker Hanks and Jason Kirk. Honorary pallbearers will be The "42" Gang.

Will you have one slump, or two?

2011-08-08T15:51:00.000-05:00

I am so hacked!

2011-08-07T08:20:00.003-05:00

Someone hacked my Yahoo email account and sent out a link to unsuspecting friends and family. I sent a follow-up reminding them/you that emails claiming to be from me will always end with this quote:

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
- Augusten Burroughs

If that is not there, I did not send the message and you should not click on any link or follow any instructions. Delete, delete, delete!

Happy 100th!

2011-08-06T21:08:00.003-05:00

I remember reading once that every hour of every day, an episode of one of Lucy's television shows is airing somewhere in the world.

Aren't you a little young to be a role model?

2011-08-04T20:36:00.000-05:00

Why, yes! Yes, I am.

2011-07-25T10:33:00.002-05:00

When it absolutely, positively should have been done long ago

2011-07-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

Burma Shave

2011-07-23T16:35:00.001-05:00

Train approaching,
Whistle squealing.
Stop!
Avoid that run-down feeling.
Burma-Shave

2011-07-23T14:41:00.001-05:00

While Rome burned ...

2011-07-22T17:51:00.002-05:00

Google+

2011-07-21T16:49:00.001-05:00

I have been receiving suspicious emails, apparently from family members, that seem to be coming from Google+. If you are sending me messages to try to lure me onto Google+, I remind you that I no longer use such social networks after two friends had disastrous experiences of being hacked on them. If, on the other hand, you are NOT sending me things related to Google+, then you may want to check to see if someone has hacked you -- or if Google+ is using your contact list to push their product.

Just saying!

Beautiful!

2011-07-21T07:57:00.001-05:00

Identify the source of this quote

2011-07-19T19:45:00.002-05:00

"Forget the cats! Who's going to train the spider monkey?"

Hint: It's not from The Wizard of Oz.

A-feline-iative

2011-07-17T09:48:00.003-05:00

affiliative: the urge to form friendships and attachments, typically prompting a person to attend social gatherings and join organizations as a way of preventing loneliness and gaining emotional security.

Kathie, my Bookmobile co-worker, is on the Board of the Sauk County Humane Society, and she refers to affiliative animals as those that quickly bond with owners and sometimes act needy for attention and affection, even to the point of becoming a nuisance.

Although Cassidy is the more typical cat, quite happy to take what we hand out and ignore us the rest of the time, Sundance is most affiliative.

This morning, in particular, she is all over the place, following me around, whining and staring. She has been given her morning snack, her food dish and water supply are full, she has been picked up and stroked and had her belly rubbed and canoodled and fussed over.

All to no avail.

Do you think she wants some tuna with that whine?

Brought to you by the same fine folks who bring you the evening news on That channel ...

2011-07-16T15:06:00.001-05:00

A former News of the World deputy features editor, Paul McMullan, said in an interview that the paper routinely paid cops for tips, with cash dished out from a safe “in the managing editor’s office.”
“That was true especially with Diana,” McMullan said, referring to the late Princess of Wales. “We would get calls from our police contacts telling us what airport she was landing in, and who was with her. That kind of information was worth several thousand pounds.”
He recalled one story he worked on when $5,000 worth of British pounds was paid to a beat officer who had found the daughter of award-winning actor Denholm Elliott — known for roles in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “A Room With a View” — impoverished and living on the streets. “He called us up and told us about it, and we covered the story,” he said. “He got the money, we got the story. She killed herself a few years later. I felt particularly guilty about that one.”

Do you now?

Equinox

2011-07-16T08:39:00.005-05:00

Well, we said goodbye to the Vibe and got a new vehicle: a 2011 Equinox. (Thanks, Vince, for your glowing report on the Escape, but we were able to get a better deal on the Equinox.) It seems huge by comparison with the Vibe, but I think that is mainly because it sits higher, one of the things we wanted. Tom and I are getting to that age where it is not so easy to climb up out of a car that is sitting low. We expect to have this one for a number of years and realize we won't be getting any younger or more flexible as time goes by. So we wanted to get a bit more comfort without going all Cadillac on our budget.

It doesn't seem to take up that much more room in the garage, although Tom is out moving things around so that there he can put the snow blower where he wants it come winter.

The Equinox is reported to get 32 mpg highway, but just about everyone says you will probably get less. Still, 28 mpg is probably about right and within the ballpark on what we wanted.

We paid cash and I wrote the largest check I have ever written, or expect to ever write.

Anyway, now Mama won't have to avert her eyes if I pull into her driveway. She thought the Vibe was the ugliest car she had ever seen. There was a lime green Vibe on the lot, and Tom wanted to get it so I could take it home and show it to her as the REALLY ugliest car she would ever see.

Anyway, I am getting used to all the bells and whistles on the Equinox, even though it is the base model. I guess the Vibe, which I liked, was sub-basement. And the higher perch is funny. Now I have to step down to get out of the thing instead of climbing up. Just hope I don't fall!

PS -- That is not our actual Equinox in the photo. I will try to post a picture later.

Perhaps not the way to make fiscal policy ...

2011-07-16T06:56:00.004-05:00

Meanwhile the mice are rolling on the floor laughing.

2011-07-14T16:06:00.001-05:00

Weather wimps

2011-07-13T07:45:00.003-05:00

First, a disclaimer. I acknowledge that when it comes to Wisconsin winters, I am a wimp. Several consecutive days of sub-freezing weather is no fun for me, and I tire quickly of ice and snow-covered roads. All you have to do is look back at some winter postings on this blog and you will see.

On the other hand, in the summer this old East Texas boy has to listen to the Wisconsin weather wimps whine about how hot it is. Today and tomorrow -- in the middle of July, mind you -- the highs will be in the mid 70s (23.8 C), and then it will climb to 85 (29.4 C) on the weekend. Typical comment: "It's okay today, but it is going to be unbearably hot again this weekend."

85 (29.4), unbearably hot?

Man up, people!

2011-07-12T20:53:00.000-05:00

You're kiddin', right?

2011-07-11T09:58:00.003-05:00

About three this morning we had a severe thunderstorm roll through. For about 45 minutes there was constant bright lightning and ferocious thunder. When I got up at one point to go to the bathroom, Sundance jumped off the bed and followed me and when I returned to bed, she trotted behind me and hid under the bed.

A bit later we lost power, and I got up to call in the outage. The phone that does not require electricity is in the basement, so I took a flashlight and found my way down there and over to the corner where the phone is on the wall behind boxes of Christmas stuff and exercise equipment. Just as I picked up the phone, the flashlight went dead. So in the dark but with the help of the lightning flashes through the small basement windows, I made my way back through the obstacle course and upstairs to get another flashlight. There is an ample supply of these fortunately, and I was able to get back to the basement and complete the report by phone.

As I came back up the stairs, I discovered Cassidy huddled in the corner by the basement door with her head hidden behind the door. Like an ostrich with her head in the sand, she apparently had decided she would be okay if she couldn't see the lightning.

After all the excitement, I had trouble getting back to sleep and got about a half hour right before having to get up at 6:45. Because of a mysterious leak in the Vibe, we had to be at a local dealer's service department at 8:00. We took a bit longer there than anticipated because we looked at a possible replacement vehicle. I was anxious to get home to catch a little sleep before heading to work. Today I am at the library from 11:45 to 8:15. It is only an 8-hour work day, but it is a late one and I was short on sleep. We left the car there and came back home.

I set my alarm clock and tried to doze. Tom had planned to go and help Debbie with something and he had joked that he would be at the library before I was. As this thought wandered around in my head, I realized that Tom was my ride to work. So he could not be there before me and I had to get up and make sure he didn't drive off and leave me stranded.

About the time I got dressed -- still sluggish -- a guy banged on the door to see if we had any scrap metal for him to haul away. Tom got the old grille out and down the driveway, but the dude wanted to just back in and load it. In doing so, he managed to back into one of our trees. Once they got that undone, he discovered that he had damaged the trailer and the connector to the truck was near breaking. He tried to fix this and eventually called his son to come take all the stuff off the trailer for him. Meanwhile our driveway is blocked and Tom had to call Debbie to cancel out on that.

Everything did get cleared up enough for me to make it to work.

What a day! And it's just Monday morning!

News, good and sad

2011-07-11T07:10:00.004-05:00

Steve Payne was recently back in the States for a few weeks from Nairobi. While he was here, Liturgical Press released his most recent book, The Carmelite Tradition. This is taken from the press release:

Eight hundred years ago Albert of Jerusalem gave the hermit-penitents of Mount Carmel a way of life to follow. Since then, this rule has inspired and formed mystics and scholars, men and women, lay and ordained to seek the living God. In The Carmelite Tradition Steven Payne, OCD, brings together representative voices to demonstrate the richness and depth of Carmelite spirituality. As he writes, Carmelite spirituality seeks nothing more nor less than to stand before the face of the living God and prophesy with Elijah, to hear the word of God and keep it with Mary, to grow in friendship with God through unceasing prayer with Teresa, to become by participation what Christ is by nature as John of the Cross puts it, and thereby to be made, like Therese of Lisieux, into instruments of God s transforming merciful love in the church and society. The lives and writings in The Carmelite Tradition invite readers to stand with these holy men and women and seek God in the hermitage of the heart.

About the Author
Steven Payne, OCD, of the Washington Province of Discalced Carmelite Friars, is a member of the Carmelite Friars formation team at the Monastery of St. John of the Cross near Nairobi, Kenya, and director of the Institute of Spirituality and Religious Formation (ISRF) at Tangaza College, a constituent college of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi. He is the past editor of ICS Publications and of Spiritual Life magazine and the author of several works in philosophy of religion, theology, and Carmelite spirituality. He is a member of the Carmelite Forum and of the Carmelite Institute in Washington DC, of which he is a past president.

Steve, as some of you know, was my closest friend among my brothers in the Carmelites, as well as one of the most brilliant men I have ever known. I congratulate him on the book. I also thank him for including an excerpt from my translation of Gratian's Treatise on Melancholy, a translation project I had undertaken with his encouragement.

On a sadder note, right before he left to return to his duties in Kenya, Steve told me about some health problems his 87-year-old father is having. Larry is a retired mathematics professor who taught for many years at Cornell and has received international recognition for his work. He and his late wife Ruth were often my gracious hosts at their home in Ithaca and generously providing many a restful week of relaxation at their cabin on a small lake in the Adirondacks. After getting back to Africa, Steve learned that his father may have lymphoma. The doctors are still running tests, but that is a grim possibility. So I commend Steve, his father Larry and the rest of the family to your prayers at this time.