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Pessimism & Weather in Badgerland

If you talk about nothing but the weather in our fair state, eventually you'll hear something like, "Yeah, it's a nice day, but you know we're going to pay for it down the line." It's the rock-solid belief that if you enjoy something you'll pay for it with an equal amount of misery. A win on the field, (You pick the sport and the team) and it's payback for years of misery or watching for the misery to come.
Some might think it's a charming holdover from a culture that doesn't like braggarts and self-promoters. Garrison Keillor once said it was the Luthern mindset that there is no joy in life just the pain we feel from trying to find it. With that in mind, I suggest that there is no force in nature that is charged with evening the scales. Making sure for instance, that for every eighty-degree day that occurs in September there will be a horribly cold day in October. Yeah, you just wait.

One thing we know about the weather in Wisconsin. It will get cold. There will be snow. The leaves will fall, and then the whole thing will go in reverse. All of the doomsayers will be correct, in a certain way. How you square all of that with football, baseball, and basketball scores is difficult to rationalize.

This last week on a facebook challenge from my Conservative Son in Seattle, I called for a moratorium on bashing Melania Trump. I asked for that for humanitarian reasons. After all, is said and done, wearing high-priced shoes to an event in Houston is not an unusual occurrence. Besides, she is functioning as a single mother, immigrant in the White House. The other reason I'm concerned about this is, we all know what happens to people who are close to the President who get more headlines than he does. Yes, They get fired.

I also am a little tired of hearing about Hillery and her book. I said, and I was not attempting to be humorous, don't buy her book, quit talking about her and she will go away. But let me make one observation. It is said by many a pundit, that one of the reasons she lost the election was the midwestern, disenchanted, white male vote. I don't think she would have ever gotten a significant portion f that vote because of who she is. The reason she lost is that enough women didn't vote for her. And that in many ways is sad.

My wise observation of this week: I commented to many of friends and acquaintances on this last Tuesday morning that it made no difference if you watched Ken Burns documentary, The Vietnam War or the Green Bay Packer v. Atlanta Falcon football game the night before. We lost both of them.

I have a new, albeit self-appointed, job as a fringe member of the Common Ground Initiative, Watershed. Common Ground is an organization that has worked in many areas of Southeastern Wisconsin's social Issues. Out front on the foreclosure issues in Sherman Park, the group championed reform in after-school programs and worked to get funding for rehabilitation and construction of recreational space for young and old in the Milwaukee area.

Watershed is looking to call attention to and promote the better use of water. One of the problems with water as an issue in Wisconsin in general and Milwaukee in specific is, there appears to be a lot of it, so why worry? There is a lot of water available in Wisconsin, but as our friends in Waukesha have discovered, plentiful doses not always mean quality and as our neighbors in Flint, Michigan found, it might not be as safe as it appears.

My new job is turning off the faucet on the left sink in the men's locker room at the Xperience Gym in Menasha.The faucet is one of those single handle types that you lift to get water flowing. You push it left to get warmer water. You push it right to get cooler water. You push it down, and I mean all of the way down,l to turn it off. Apparently, there is some type of valve function that is not working on this faucet. It is admittedly hard to turn off. However, It can be done. Since I have noticed it running or dripping every time I walk by this sink, I have appointed myself the caretaker of the faucet. I know how to turn it off. This is my minuscule contribution to water conservation.

From NOWHS this is Poppa Jeff @ Camp Jeff bidding you adieu.

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