We are having the most delightful weather - like sauvignon blanc, so clear and refreshing - and I have been out enjoying it. The weather and the white wine.
My friend Paul invited me to play 18 holes at the wooded course at Lawsonia golf course in Green Lake County. It is one of the most beautiful in these United States. The golf course, not my game. Beautiful and fiendish, like one of those sirens of mythology. It dares you to go for the flag but penalizes you with sand, water, even a deep quarry pit if you fail.
I have gone entire months without achieving par on a single hole. So I golf for the scenery. Mark Twain said golf was a good walk, spoiled. But nothing could spoil Sunday at Lawsonia or the 19th hole at Paul's lakeside retreat north of Montello.
Otherwise I attended to the renovation of Stately Blaska Manor, historic seat of the Blaska Policy Research Center and Experimental Work Farm. Seems fitting to spend Labor Day weekend golfing and fixing.
That is why Madison's Left has been spared my mighty rod this past week.
Stately manorial housing in New Iberia, Louisiana
Stately Blaska Bambi
I've had the bug for years but the June encampment (or jamboree) at the Alliant Energy Center of over 900 aluminum-clad Twinkie-shaped trailers put me over the top. I met the friendliest people! Every one I asked was more than happy to show me their little on-road palace. No, not all of them wear white belts and white shoes. One fellow from Florida tipped me on a 19-foot Airstream waiting for a responsible owner in Louisiana's Cajun Country.
I guess I'm a sucker for well designed small spaces that make every square inch count. That's why I like the sleeper cars on Amtrak. Your own little space. And for an RV it treads pretty lightly. (Cue Cousin Eddie imitation.) But this is no "tenement on wheels."
Two delightful people of French descent put your blogger and the lovely Lisa up for the night, fed us, took us to a Cajun roadhouse for some zydeco and alligator meat, and explained the workings of the Airstream.
Kathy and Howard lived in it when a tornado blew down much of their house two years ago. Yes, a tornado - rare in those parts - and not a hurricane.
They live just out of New Iberia, La., founded by the Spanish. It's just up the road from Avery Island on the Gulf Coast where Tabasco sauce is made. It was incredible to see sugar cane growing right outside our hosts' door. As in New Orleans, the deceased are buried above ground because the water table is just about underfoot. The Cajuns are descended from French Canadians kicked out of what had been Acadia (hence the contraction, "Cajuns") and is now Nova Scotia when the English took control of the area from France in the mid-18th Century. Imagine going from cold Canada to the bayous of Louisiana, where temperatures were in the mid-90s during our early August visit Humidity, too!
On the way down, we visited the Civil War battleground at Vicksburg, Mississippi - the Gibraltar of the South, which the Union under General Grant won after a 47-day siege on July 4, 1863 - just one day after Gettysburg. Wisconsin was a major presence at this battle under the overall command of General U.S. Grant. Our state has a huge and impressive monument. We'll go back because our 3-hour tour did not do it justice. The battlefield is significant and beautiful at the same time.
Just south of Vicksburg a sign announces the city of Port Gibson, "The Town Too Beautiful to Burn." You see, General Sherman was practicing his specialty in Mississippi even before his later March to the Sea through Georgia and South Carolina in 1864. It was as pretty as advertised and U.S. Highway 61 is a lovely road, well maintained, all the way from Memphis to Louisiana.
I read somewhere that Mississippi leads the nation in population housed in manufactured housing. So we felt right at home. You got it: for a few weeks every year your Blaska blogger is trailer trash.
The valiant departed of the Battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi, are buried overlooking the Mississippi River.
A mobile work of art
Our first night in a campsite just outside of Natchez, Mississippi, Bill Evans played jazz piano in the built-in CD player. The fridge yielded up a bottle of sauvignon blanc cold, the way we like it. Wonderful to see morning's first light stream through the curtains.
Neil Armstrong piloted the Lunar Exploration Module (LEM) 40 years ago. I'm calling this my Terrestrial Exploration Module (TEM). Shower, toilet, sink, fridge, closet, breakfast nook, queen-size bed, heat and AC - that's roughing it, Blaska Blog-style. It has a powered ceiling air vent that automatically closes if the weather brings rain while you're day tripping.
Spent our second night at an RV campground in Sykesville, Missouri (just north of the Arkansas state line) next to a cotton field. A 10-year-old boy bicycled past and yelled, "Cool camper."
Our trip to Cajun Country and back covered 2,200 miles. We saw a grand total of five Airstreams during that time. You don't see too many of these guys.
I just like looking at the thing. The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York has a Bambi on display and for good reason.
The Jeremiah Wright Psych Ward
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme." - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, 2003.
- Assembly Bill 353, you may recall, would permit felons on probation or parole to vote. Why? Reverse racism is why. State Rep. Joe Parisi frets that while African-Americans make up about 7 percent of Wisconsin's population, they account for 50 percent of the state's prison population - and that one in nine African-Americans in Wisconsin is unable to vote due to a felony conviction while the number for white Wisconsinites is one in 50. To so Democrat(ic) a mind, that justifies re-jiggering the results rather than equalizing the opportunities.
Comment: Either find and root out the bias in our court system or - here's a notion - don't do the crime. - The Dane County Board passed the Fair Housing Ordinance just before the Labor Day weekend by a vote of 19-17. The ordinance does three odious things:
- Makes ex-convicts a protected class if they are two years beyond their sentence. Let's understand this: existing law did not require a landlord to exclude a con; it only permitted that property owner to consider the applicant's criminal history. There's nothing to prevent a landlord from taking an ex-con the day he walks out of Waupun. "You look like a square-shooter son, I'm going to give you a second chance."
- Prohibits asking for a Social Security number - the surest way to screen out illegal aliens.
- Restores Section 8 vouchers as a "lawful source of income" that cannot be discriminated against.
Aye: Wheeler, Bayrd, DeSmidt, Downing, Erickson, Hendrick, Hulsey, Levin, Manning, Matano, Miles, Richmond, Rusk, Schmidt, Stoebig, Stubbs, Vedder, Veldran, McDonell - 19
No: Wiganowski, Willet, Bruskewitz, Ferrell, Gau, Hampton, Hesselbein, Jensen, Kostelic, Martz, O'Laughlin, Opitz, Ripp, Salov, Schlicht, Solberg, Vogel - 17
Absent: DeFelice - 1
Because a tie vote defeats the ordinance, if just one supervisor - say, for instance, Matt Veldran - had voted against, the damn thing would have failed. - Makes ex-convicts a protected class if they are two years beyond their sentence. Let's understand this: existing law did not require a landlord to exclude a con; it only permitted that property owner to consider the applicant's criminal history. There's nothing to prevent a landlord from taking an ex-con the day he walks out of Waupun. "You look like a square-shooter son, I'm going to give you a second chance."
Two wonderful blogs
- The Capital Times lost two of its stars when they executed (seems the appropriate word) its first buy-out early last year. Linda Brazill remains Madison's most eminent garden writer. Her website, Each Little World, is a soulful oasis of good taste. The photography is accomplished by Linda's husband Mark Golbach. Plus, she's a neighbor here in Orchard Ridge.
- There is no more accomplished a travel writer in Madison than Mary Bergin, a fellow graduate of UW-Oshkosh (but much more recent) and a former colleague, like Linda, at The Capital Times. Read her at Roadstraveled.com.
The blind squirrel phenomenon
Forward Our Motto (Backward Our Politics) catches an acorn:
Recently, there was a neighborhood meeting on the Southwest side of Madison about public safety, politicians of all stripes attended (conservative to progressive). However, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz was not in attendance nor was anyone from his staff. This is very disappointing, because public safety is part of any Mayor's job and because a large part of getting things done is just showing up. And, I'm not saying that Mayor Cieslwicz needs to show up in person (I know how busy the city schedule can be and politicians are allowed to have lives outside of politics too). But to not even send a representative? Well, that's just being negligent of his duties.
Now, contrast that with Mayor Cieslewicz meeting with Hammes Company of Brookfield at least 10 times since Nov. 14. For those not following this, Hammes is the company pushing for TIF money (basically tax subsidies) to redevelop the Edgewater Hotel in downtown Madison.
Well put.