Nothing comes after “Amen” – Col. Sherman T. Potter

Well, in newspaper terms, it’s time to put the Chronicle to bed. From the entire staff of the Spring City Chronicle, thanks to everyone for reading and a sincere apology to anyone I’ve offended. Everybody: my honest-to-God, heartfelt wish for a good life for you all. Oh, I meant to use the word “precipice” in a post but never did. So now I have. My work here is done.

Tao Te Ching #9

Fill a cup to its brim and it is easily spilled;
Temper a sword to its hardest and it is easily broken;
Amass the greatest treasure and it is easily stolen;
Claim credit and honour and you easily fall;
Retire once your purpose is achieved – this is natural.

From “The Black Cottage”
Robert Frost (1874–1963). North of Boston. 1915.

For, dear me, why abandon a belief 105
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86). Complete Poems. 1924.

Part Four: Time and Eternity

XXXIV

THE DAISY follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
“Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?” 5
“Because, sir, love is sweet!”

We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee,—
Enamoured of the parting west, 10
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night’s possibility!

Let It Be Forgotten

BY SARA TEASDALE

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.

- Sara Teasdale, from Flame and Shadow (1924).

The Road and the End
BY CARL SANDBURG

I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.

I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the travelled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

The Irish Blessing

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Amen.

powered by Splicd.com

Saturday Night

Dare I say, one of the best music videos ever made. If I’m not mistaken, the first in the glory years of music videos in which the artist never appears.  Ironically, what we have learned in the subsequent years about the models and the artist involved actually serves to reinforce the theme of the song: A reminder to us to not confuse the artist with the art.

“The Time Has Come …”

“… the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.” – Lewis Carroll (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

I’m closing the Chronicle, for good this time. The last post will be tomorrow. Closing it on 10/10/10 has a certain je ne sais quoi which appeals to me. Before my hiatus, last year at this time, I was wondering whether I needed to stop of just take a leave of absence. This time, there is no question that it’s time to move on.

Actually, I’m leaving you where you found me more than 5 years ago: painting. This, too, has a sort of Pythagorean perfection to it. There’s always painting to do in a house which is closing in on 90 years old. I’m currently painting parts of the porch. It seemed a shame to waste those days I was speaking of last week. It was 78° yesterday and I couldn’t waste a moment. I rose just after 5:00 and watched the dawn on the road. I passed farms and saw the farmers moving about in the dark and the cows leaving the barns. I got home after 10:00 and began to paint. I need to do these things when I’m in the mood. My natural state is inertia. Sooner I get back to it, the better … the painting, not the inertia.

But let’s spend one more day together, like the old days, you and me. Let’s pretend it’s like it was and will always be in our minds.

• This might come as a shock to you but Dr. John Bartkowski, CEO of the 16th Street Community Health Center in Milwaukee says of Waukesha, “It is a poor community.” There are poor people in Waukesha. There are poor everywhere, it’s a relative term and there will be poor always, as it says in the Bible. No one who lives here would ever describe Waukesha as a “poor community” Better work on those PR skills, doc.
• Maybe ProHealth Care can rehire some of the employees it just laid off.
• Pete Kennedy gives us an update on the never-ending road reconstruction in town. Want to save some tax dollars? Delay all scheduled road construction for 12 months.
• Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. on the Travel Channel is “Food Wars“, featuring Sobelman’s and AJ Bombers in Milwaukee. Sobelman’s I can see. But I’d have thought Solly’s or Elsa’s or Fourth Base or any Kopp”s before I’d think AJ Bomber’s. But I don’t get out as much as I used to.
• Jessica McBride talks about the move to ban fake pot. Look, if we’ve learned anything since the 60′s, we’ve learned that young people want to experiment with consciousness-altering substances. Banning the substances doesn’t help, those who want to use will just find something else. Spray paint, glue, cold pills have all been used and controlled and then they just moved on to something else. The problem isn’t  the substances. It’s in the culture, the schools, the family. There’s no easy or painless fix. There are inner city gang members on Indian reservations. There is drug abuse among the young of the closed communities of the Amish and Mennonites. I’m not smart enough to think of a solution but I know that banning legal substances and making illegal substances legal are not the answers.
• Just as banning “Indians” at Mukwonago High School is not going to do but make the State of Wisconsin look like a bunch of tight-assed, prissy boneheads.
• Just as calling Oconomowoc High School’s teams “Raccoons”, instead of the “Coons” they have have always been called, does absolutely nothing about alleviating racism in the world.
• The Frugal Home Brewer is going out of business after 20 years.
• The last Sound Off.

10-5-10

I’m watching the forecast for that last 75° day which we get in in Wisconsin in October. Tomorrow’s supposed to be 70°, but that’s not the day I’m looking for. The digital tells me we got down to 33° the other morning and there was a thin coating of frost on the car’s windshield. After the first frost, sometime in the next few, dwindling weeks before winter sets in, there will be one more warm day sent from the southwest, sometimes brought to us on gusty winds. To me, it’s the most wistful day of the year. It’s the last breath of summer, the dying echo of Summer’s parting footsteps down the hall, its tail lights shrinking into the distance on a long, dark road before we turn and go back inside.

• The weekend police blotter.
• The mural at Warehouse Liquor is finished and it is a good thing.
• Katydids is closing, in part due to the too-frequent street closures in downtown Waukesha, which is a bad thing.
• Good to see Mayor Larry at a ribbon cutting again. I don’t regret not voting for him, I regret that Mayor Scrima has been a disappointment. He been in the job long enough now for me to say that I would not vote for him again.
• The current mayor received an unflattering review in the Journal yesterday.
• Scrima has appointed yet another person to the suddenly important Water Utility Commission.
• The Mayor gives his reasons in a guest editorial. The mayor calls it “forging a new alloy”, I call it “adding more allies” as he’s obviously adding people who would support his position that Lake Michigan access is not the best option for Waukesha’s water problem.
• Alderman Duane Paulson writes about separation of powers in Waukesha’s city government.
• County Exec Dan Vrakas defends his budget which raises taxes, albeit modestly. Realistically, Scott Walker’s budget proposal is rather wishful election-year thinking, as  he faces a county board which will reject many of his proposals, plus he hopes that he will be governor by the time it is enacted anyhow, so it doesn’t cost him anything to propose.
• I’m no longer as confident as I was that there will be a tidal wave of GOP success in the November elections. I’m worried that Republicans peaked too early and that Liberals are going to use their money advantage to spend their way back into contention. Tom Barrett’s money advantage, aided by Diamond Jim Doyle’s $1 million contribution, is showing outside of southeast Wisconsin and Barrett could win, which would be a tragedy. Even if Walker wins, I am not confident that the GOP will gain control of either the assembly or the state senate which would result in, at best, gridlock, not progress. I’m still reasonably sure that Feingold will be beaten, though there are rumors that Libs will mount court battles and fraudulent write-in campaigns to try and overturn such the result. It will all come down to turn-out, which explains why the POTUS is putting on such a full-court press in Wisconsin.
• If you disagree with any of the above items, take heart, because I’m usually wrong.
• Until Saturday, I leave you with a little political commercial I made endorsed by no one.You’ll need to “X” out the silly “Super Poke” ad and start the video:
• 

Sunday Art

Graveyard at Old World Wisconsin

From “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

by

Thomas Gray, 1750

THE EPITAPH.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark’d him for her own. 120

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav’n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear,
He gain’d from Heav’n (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 125
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

October 3, 1913

The Income Tax becomes law. Much to my surprise, the very first IRS-1040 was not a simple two items:

1. How much did you earn last year?
2. Send 1% of Line 1 to the U.S. Treasury.

In fact it’s nearly as confusing as today’s forms. Here it is.

Saturday Paper

Very productive four-day weekend. Finished a thorough carpet cleaning, fixed the light on the drier, washed the glass shades on the chandelier, had the plumber replace the relief valve on the hot water heater to stop a leak, had the heating guy check out the boiler, mowed the lawn, vacuumed and dusted the radiators upstairs and down. If only I had that kind of ambition when it came to painting.

My nose is still running and now I’ve got a cough. It’s been a week today. Go away, cold.

• President Vice President Senator Congressman Paul Ryan talks to the Freeman editorial board.
• Scott Walker and Mark Neumann will appear together at GOP headwuarters on Pearl Street at 1:00 today.
• Pete Kennedy’s column is about the creepy, cult-like threats to city administrator Lori Curtis Luther. Mayor Scrima needs to make a strong statement that his supporters should be civil, well-reasoned, respectful and beyond reproach. Silence on the issue would appear to be tacit approval. That would be disturbing.
• Her job is just a job. Leave her family out of it and when she leaves work for the day, leave her alone. Quit being creepy, for God’s sake. Boneheads.
• Only in Waukesha would selections to the Water Commission be such an issue.
• When you go to the polls in a few weeks remember that property taxes are higher in blue states. (via Instapundit)
• Jessica McBride talks about Obama’s visit to the Peoples Republic of Madison.
• Another dirty DA?  The Wood County district attorney, a Jim Doyle appointee, avoided charges of lewd and lascivious behavior at a resort late last year.
• 
• Perhaps getting a start on funding two new parking checkers, the police ticket Curt Otto’s vehicle. Never mind the fact that he pays for a monthly parking pass.
• Saturday Sound Off.

We Beg To Differ

Rahm Emanuel leaves the White House for a city which deserves him:

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel gestures prior to the inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, in Washington, January 20, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)

In his outgoing remarks, Emanuel addressed his soon-to-be ex-boss, President Barack Obama, “I want to thank you for being the toughest leader any country could ask for in the toughest times any President has ever faced.”

We beg to differ.

Library Overdrive

I go to the Waukesha Public Library quite often because I believe it is a very good library. Today, when I was going to pick up a book called “Mere Christianity” by C. S. Lewis I saw something in the catalogue I had never noticed before:

I wondered what “Overdrive” was. Well, if I didn’t know about this, so I figure that there’s some others of you all who didn’t know that, via the library, we could download an audio book to my laptop, Ipod or burn a CD of the book. For free. Why, it’s like a virtual library©.

Last Day of September 2010

Looks like a nice day. I’m waiting for the heating guy to come by and do a pre-season checkup on the boiler and my three-year old water heater is leaking from somewhere. I’m vacuuming in preparation for my first use of my brand-new carpet steamer. Boy, that cat left a lot of hair behind. Made my first forays out to find a new chair for the living room. There was no point in replacing a chair which the cat would rip to shreds, but now … maybe the seasons are changing and so am I.

• ProHealth Care CEO Ford Titus is retiring.
• I wonder if his health care is being continued?
• MetalTek had a minor industrial accident which wouldn’t be worth mentioning, but it breaks their impressive streak.
• So you’re telling me that the Crime Victims Rights Board received a complaint about the dirty DA sending suggestive text messages, but they made their a decision not to discipline the DA without ever reading the messages themselves? It sounds like lawyers helping lawyers.
• The Waukesha County Democrats bring some weak criticism to bear on my Rep. Bill Kramer. I could point to Kramer as planting the seeds of the Tea Party tidal wave which will return the governor’s mansion to the Democrats and upend an incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator when he gained the moniker of “The Lone Clapper”.
• Tell me what effect this decision could have on high school athletics. Could a district “recruit” enough athletes to become a perpetual powerhouse?
• There’s an Art Crawl this weekend and crawlers will be able to preview Bodway’s on West Main. Looks nice.
• Wigderson on Obama’s trip to Madison.
• It seems to me that if a politician has to appeal to those people who would normally vote for him under any circumstance, rather than to convince those who are undecided, that politician is in trouble.

Quick Takes At Lunch

• Mark Belling on the Final Days of Diamond Jim Doyle
• Your light bulbs will be illegal to sell soon.
• Wednesday Sound Off.

This Is What Has To Change

If we are to get out of the hole created by the federal government: Faced with the fact that the Oconomowoc school district received $2,200,000.00 to save jobs it didn’t cut, school board members knew in their hearts that they should return the money they received from the federal government. Still, they chose to keep it:

On Sept. 21, the school board approved the timeline for submitting claims for reimbursements from the funds to the Wisconsin Department of Administration. Board member John Griswold voiced the only dissenting vote and stated, “I don’t want to be a part of it.”

…

“In my heart, I side with John (Griswold),” said board member Sandy Schick. “But in reality, it’s going to be spent by some other district if we don’t. We should be good stewards of the district and spend the money.”

Kudos to board member John Griswold. He has it right. I vote him King Griswold I of Oconomowoc.
Here’s a rule I use: if it feels wrong, it probably is wrong. Don’t let your greatest enemy, yourself, talk you out of making the right decision.