HATE CRIMES

FLOWERING CRAB TREE OUTSIDE THE DINING ROOM WINDOW

Saturday, posted Friday evening.

   We are leaving for Milwaukee early, where Joan will attend Niece Emily's baby shower on Sunday.  Joan is recovering from carpel tunnel surgery on both hands and it may be a challenging trip, but she does not want to miss being with her family.

   Buddy is on vacation at a friends home in Washburn, and we hope he will actually want to come back home after he gets spoiled for a week (I have shoulder replacement on my injured left arm on Wednesday).  This getting older business is getting complicated, but we will press on.

  

OFF THE CUFF

The Chicago "Hate Crime" 

   As regards the four Chicago black young people accused of hate crimes in the bizarre torture of a mentally deficient young white man posted on Facebook (you can't make something like this up):  if convicted as charged they would spend the rest of their lives in jail.

   Here is a case of a mentally deficient victim, and four equally mentally deficient defendants that are accused of an  absurd "hate crime."

   A jury of the defendants' peers in this case would by definition be of equal mental deficiency.  I don't know about a judge, but the society which spawned these idiots is obviously of questionable mental ability as well. 

   The whole sorry incident is like looking in a fun house mirror and recognizing oneself as a familiar figure, but grossly distorted. 

   Drugs, mental illness, gangs, death cults posing as religions, total amorality... these are misshapen  mirrors that produce a carnival reflection of the greater society.  If society does not break the fun house mirrors, there can be no end to these absurdities.
   If convicted, the defendants will spend decades in prison at taxpayer expense.  I propose all involved, perpetrators and so-called victim, be turned out on the streets of Chicago, where they will not last until next summer.  Case closed.

  

  

FROM RUSSIA, WITHOUT MUCH LOVE

BAD ROADS

BAD DUDES (Google Image)

Friday, 9:30 AM.  -2 degrees F at the ferry dock, -1 on the back porch.  Wind SW, mostly calm with light to moderate gusts.  The sky is overcast and foggy, with the sun trying to shine through the gloom.  The humidity is 84% and the barometer is rising slowly, currently at 30.25".  We have had an accumulation of about 6" of new snow over the last several days.  The forecast is for more of the same weather we have been having.  Yuck!  Yesterday we saw a pickup truck far out on the ice of the Bay off Ashland.  You know what I think of that.
   Our trip to Duluth yesterday began at 4:45 AM, in a blinding snowstorm, which we negotiated with considerable trepidation and even greater determination.  By the time we got to Iron River, about half way, the temperature was -14 degrees F.  Thank heavens for modern vehicles with all-wheel drive and dependable mechanics.  The "good old days" of automobiles were not that great.  Anyway, we got to the hospital on time, Joan's double carpel tunnel procedure went fine and we got back home by late afternoon.
   The Almanac is just a blip on the internet radar screen, a home-town blog of little interest to all but a small group of individuals (I have never been able to figure out why anyone would  bother to read it, but obviously some who have an interest in local Bayfield news do).
   So imagine my amazement when I noticed, about six months or so ago, a surge in page views from Russia, of all places.  Lots people from all over surf the web for lots of reasons, so I usually get "hits" from a variety of foreign countries.  But this was amazing; hundreds of hits from Russia, some days more than from the US.  Was I writing about Russia? No.  Did Bayfield sound like Siberia? Maybe.  Did that explain anything? Nyet.
   And then, just before the election, there was an article in the local paper about area Chamber of Commerce and some nonprofit web sites experiencing a lot of traffic from Russia.  It was obvious I was getting some of the overflow traffic.
   But why those sites, and mine along with them?  It had to have had something to do with the election, since as of today I have no page views from Russia at all, where it had been as many as a hundred a day previously.
   I don't know what the Russians were up to, perhaps trying to hack into local voting machines; I do know they weren't booking motel rooms to come for a visit.  We  have been Trump supporters and voted for him, and believe the election was fair, and a legitimate landslide.
   That doesn't mean we we want a Russian bear in our woods; we have enough of our own to deal with.

WHEN THE GOIN' GETS TOUGH...

HWY 13, THE FLATS, WEDNESDAY MORNING

Thursday:this is posted early Wednesday evening, as we leave for Duluth very early tomorrow mornng for Joan's carpel tunnel surgery.  

   The roads and weather have been terrible, with snow, ice and temperatures around zero.  But as we used to say, "When the goin' gets tough, the tough get goin'."
    Hope we're among the tough.

STEERING WHEEL SPINNER: FINAL REPORT

STEERING WHEEL SPINNER POSITIONED AT 2:00 O'CLOCK

Tuesday, 8:30 AM.  30 degrees F at the ferry dock, 29 on the back porch.  Wind WNW, mostly calm with light gusts.  teh sky is overcast and cloudy, with fog over the channel and humidity 91%,  The barometer is steady at 29.88".  It is very slippery, with a dusting of snow over ice.  The atmosphere is thick with moisture.  The forecast calls for snow showers and overcast skies for the coming week.  At least we didn't get the heavy snow that was predicted.

   I can report that the steering wheel spinner I have been discussing has reached its final position on my truck steering wheel: 2:00 o'clock, located on the inside of the wheel, leaving enough room for my right hand to rest beneath it and above the wheel spoke.  It works well and is not in the way for normal use of the wheel once one becomes accustomed to it, and it is a great assist in turning, even with power steering.  It would work great for backing up to hitch onto a trailer as well.  I don't know if I will leave it on after my arm is healed; we'll see.

A TREATISE ON MINCE MEAT PIE

MY MOTHER'S MINCE MEAT PIE

A WISCONSIN HODAG

A JACKALOPE

Wednesday, 8:30 AM.  1 degree F at the ferry dock, 0 on the back porch.  Wind NW, calm with light gusts.  The sky is overcast, there is heavy fog working its way up the bluffs from the channel and it is snowing lightly.  The humidity is 84% and the barometer is steady, presently at 30.66".  The rest of the week will be similar, then warming up some by Sunday.

   I have been longing hungrily for a real mince meat pie, such as my mother used to make, and I cannot find one in any of the bakeries.  I have found jars of so-called mince meat for pies on the shelf at the Washburn  IGA, but upon close inspection of the label I find no mention of what should be the first and foremost ingredient, meat of the American Mince, Mincus americanus.  In any case, Joan has refused to bake a mince meat pie from the contents of a jar, claiming that it would make a mockery of the real thing.

   The American Mince was once a fairly common denizen of the woods of Northern Wisconsin, but was extirpated from the state early on, before photography, so only descriptions by the first Scandinavian settlers and local Indians exist, although rumors of sightings in the pine barrens persist, even to this day. It is also rumored to be found in the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest.

   The American Mince is a close relative of the much  larger Wisconsin Hodag, Hodag wisconsinensis, of the family Hodagaceae, which was  last seen in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, in1896. Although only the size of the more western Jackalope, the Amerian Mince had all the fierce characteristics of the Hodag, which probably accounts for its rarity in pies.  It was said that in the early days in Wisconsin settlers refused even to venture to the outhouse in the winter if a Mince had been sighted, and it was below zero outside.  Among the local Indian population only the mightiest of hunters could track and kill a mince, and wear its pink pelt with blue polkadots in the Sacred Mince Dance. 

   As fearsome a beast as it was, the mince had the sweetest tasting meat for pies, and was soon hunted to the brink of extinction, until a decree by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 established the National Mince Monument, comprised of  8 million acres of prime northern Wisconsin timberland, located within the perimeter of the fabled Round River, which has no source and no outlet, but continually flows into itself.

   Sadly, even that huge preserve could not stop  the precipitous decline in the numbers of the American Mince, and biologists of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources now theorize that it was not mince meat pies that doomed the mince, but competition for its primary food source, lutefisk, which grows only under Norway pines, and was over-harvested by Scandinavian immigrants, causing a population crash from which the species never recovered (the mince, not the Scandinavians,  which remain a major component of the Northern Wisconsin ecosystem).
   So, we find that in reality the demise of the American Mince is not so much a study in biology but of sociology, and is undoubtedly destined to become a prime topic for University of Wisconsin and other doctoral theses in that scientific discipline, along with Global Warming and the melting of ice cubes in martini glasses, which will overflow and inundate cocktail parties worldwide by the year 2050, with great loss of life at lower elevations.

   All in all, the story of the American Mince and its present day absence from pies is sad but true, and it makes me wonder where Mom got the mince meat for the pies she baked when I was a child.  I like to think that Dad encountered and subdued the mince on his way home from Gruenwald's, the tavern on the corner.
    As is so often the case, the truth concerning the mince of yesterday, even if compromised today, will live on  forever in legend and myth.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

IT'S BACK TO THE FUTURE...

...WITH A 1930'S WHEEL SPINNER

Monday, the official  New Year's  Holiday.  8:15 AM. 28 degrees F at the ferry dock, 25 on the back porch.  Wind E, mostly calm with light to moderate gusts. The sky is overcast, the humidity 88%.  The barometer is falling, currently at 30.30".  The forecast calls for snow today and tomorrow, heavy at times this evening, but with less accumulation than predicted.  The week ahead will be a wintry mix of snow showers and mostly overcast skies, and much colder.  We could use a break.
   It took two days for the usual cast of avian characters to find the new feeders.  The downy woodpeckers never left, as a suet log remained.  The ubiquitous chickadees were the first to return, followed by nuthatches and a lone male cardinal. This morning there are tufted titmice and juncos. I sure hope it will be an interesting bird watching winter as I will be laid up for a while.

   I haven't had an easy time of driving since I broke my arm four months ago (shoulder replacement due January 11), and Joan suggested I get one of the old "suicide" wheel spinners that used to be popular before cars had power steering.  That's a while back, power steering being introduced in  1951 by Chrysler.  I remember having a spinner on my 1939 Ford pickup truck, also on a tractor or two.  Anyway I thought it worth a try, although I doubted they were still available.

   A little research on the 'net produced a number of spinners, not much different than those I remembered, and I actually found one at an auto parts store in Ashland.  I have tried installing it in several different positions on the wheel, and it is currently at 2:00 o'clock, but I may fool around with positioning it a bit more.  It really works great, even with power steering, and solves my current mobility problems pretty well.

   I was a bit concerned that wheel spinners might not be legal, but my cursory investigation finds no restrictions for use on cars in any state, although some cities may have restrictions, and evidently federal law prohibits their use on large trucks.

   One problem with the spinner being located on the right hand side of the steering wheel; hard to put your arm around your girlfriend while driving.
   Come to think of it, that was probably more dangerous than texting.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017

A BEAUTIFUL, TRADITIONAL SERVICE...

...FOLLOWED BY DINNER AT THE PARISH HOUSE

Sunday, New Year's Day, 9:00 AM.  28 degrees F at the Ferry Dock, 24 on the back porch.  Wind variable and mostly calm, with occasional light gusts.  The humidity is 78%,  and the barometer is rising, currently at 29.96".  Skies are overcast and cloudy.  We are expecting heavy snow Monday through Wednesday morning, with additional snow showers, overcast skies and falling temperatures thereafter.  We could use a break.

  We enjoyed a quiet New Year's Eve, begun with an early evening service at Christ Church; a traditional sung Mass, with all the bells and whistles and lots of carols to usher in the new year. Dinner at the parish house followed.  The weather is lousy and the roads slippery so that was the extent of our celebration, but that sufficed for a couple of old folks.

   Happy New Year to all, as we look forward to a better year for everyone.