Point Made

Someone on Facebook asked their readers what was the most memorable book they read when they were young. I answered with little hesitance with "The Black Stallion" series by Walter Farley. I No doubt Farley was influenced by the worldwide success of Anna Sewels, "Black Beauty". She, unfortunately, passed away five months after she published.  At the age of ten, Farley's tales of his protagonist, Black Beauty's adventures of hardship and triumph influenced me in ways that persist even today. His stories took place when horses were the major form of transportation. Black Beauty and his protege were used and abused in many roles from racing to cart pulling, in city and country and in peace and war. By reading these books, I acquired a love for horses that has stayed with me. No horse could have lived through all of the situations Farly put his through. But I like so many others, loved that horse and couldn't wait until the next book came ou...

I was admitted to The Recovery Inn on October 27th. I was allowed to go home on December 6th. During that period I experienced the finest care one could hope for. The professional staff of nurses and assitents were outstanding. The food, from a varied menu, was excellent. The rehab treatments from both physical and occupational therapy were rigorous but helpful. In other words, if you need to go to rehab post operation, this is the place you want to end up. It was pure luck I got admitted. On the day I was to be released from the hospital there happened to be an opening at The Recovery Inn. This facility services a group of orthopedic doctors who own the hospital and the rehab unit. Many of their patients are replacement knee and hip procedures. Normally patients are in rehab for about three days. With only twelve rooms in the rehab unit, their census goes up and down at a rapid pace. At one point, for one night only, I was the only patient in...

Some of you may be wondering why you you haven’t received my weekly blog post. A funny thing happened to me on my way through life. On a follow up appointment with my orthopedic doctor, I got blindsided big time. I was experiencing some pain in my left knee and the lower leg was swollen. He took one look at my leg, ran off, then returned with a needle that looked like a super soaker and proceeded to draw off what looked like a half gallon of fluid from my knee. A negative wag of his head followed by a few clucks propelled me into the hospital that evening and surgery the next day. I had a form of staph infection in my leg. To fight and prevent spreading, I needed to have the artificial knee replacement, installed in 2013, removed, a “spacer” inplanted, and submit to rounds and rounds of interviense antibiotic treatments. After six weeks of this treatment they will check to see that i’m clear of the bug. There will be a twro week suspension of antibiotics. If I still test clear of the...

I know I'm moved into the castle on the hill because not only have I waved at my neighbors, which they returned by using all of their fingers, but I know the school crossing guard, Dennis. Dennis is a ten-year veteran of the Appleton School District crossing guard organization. He volunteered that his wife is also a crossing guard. Dennis also expressed his happiness in that our house was occupied. He was watching it lay empty for the last two years. He knew the lady that occupied the house before. She was taking care of her invalid mother when the bank finally foreclosed on her. Ouch! that kind of hurts.  He was a little surprised when he discovered that I didn't come out of the house to introduce myself to him, but I was actually waiting for the bus. I had an interview downtown for my restaurant column in Appleton Monthly. I've mentioned before in this space my enjoyment in meeting the people who run restaurants in the Fox Valley. Man...

No, not the fitness course at Xperience, my gym of choice. I've now become, after 5 moves in five years, an expert at packing boxes. I thought I was doing well when I worked in Bob Va Asten's Halloween Pop Up store, Spirit . The merchandise we had was on consignment. At the end of the season, we closed down the store which entailed boxing all of the leftover product for shipment back to the consigner. Trust me, we had to be careful how we packed all of the product since we were probably going to get it all back next season. Packing for a personal relocation is not much different. There is a difference in moving across the country as we did when we moved to and then back from Louisiana. First of all, you try to balance the weight of the loads. You do not fill, even a small box, with books.  You wrap (Yes I'm a Wrapper, Watch out Snoop Dog) all breakables with bubble wrap and you secure all boxes with good carton sealing tape, one strip to close the flaps a...

We are not frozen yet, but we got a bite of Jack Frost the other day. You know the days are getting colder when you observe the person waiting for a bus that has a parka on, back to the wind and gloved hands. Confusion could result because walking past him is the high school student in shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt. Never judge the weather by what young people wear. They have all of those raging hormones keeping them warm. It felt really cold. How cold was it Oh Great One? It was cold enough to end the invasion of mosquitos. The biggest downside to this was that nobody had anything to complain about until they realized it was cold. It was so cold I had to pull on a jacket when I took the dog out for her tour of the yard. She didn't need to put on her coat of course. Lucy makes me so mad. She never flushes, puts the lid down, or washes her paws. It felt so cold that the day we took the air conditioner out of our bedroom window, Maria put the...

Maria and I had finished our traditional Saturday morning trip to Mary's Restaurant for breakfast and were on our way to look a gas fireplace insert for Maria's new house. It was on this journey we met the nicest lady. I'm glad to say we didn't run into her but sad to say she did run into us. As we approached the intersection of County Road CE and Railroad St in Darboy, the light turned yellow. Maria remarked afterward that she checked the rearview to make sure no one following her was counting on her running the caution. Seeing no one, she stopped. Seconds later, we were hit in the rear. According to the police report, the woman was distracted by devices (phone, GPS). She wasn't aware she was approaching an intersection at an estimated speed of 40 MPH. Upon seeing us, she attempted to avoid the collision by pulling to the left. To little to late, but she did prevent full front on rear contact. Interesting fact, rear-end collisions don't trig...

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...

Picture me as hair-faced Chuck Todd moderator of "Meet the Press". He usually starts his program with the line, "If it's Sunday, It's Meet the Press". In my case? "If it's Wednesday, my blog is a day late." No excuses. And my apologies to new blogger and old friend Julie Rowley, who I was advising on her attempt to Blog. Not a good example here Julie. First of all, let me get this off my mind. I was at "The Game" Sunday night in Green Bay. My old friend, John B. and traditionally go to the opening game in Green Bay every year. I have been going to Packer Games since the mid-sixties. That means I've saw Gerry Kramer lead Paul Horning around the end on the famous Packer Sweep and I saw him Sunday night hobble out to receive an ovation with the rest of the veterans that returned for recognition, which by the way included Paul Horning. So it goes without saying, I've seen a lot of great games and players on that field. Many of...

I'm not going to go on and on about my playing the worst round of golf I've played in 2018. The best round is laughable enough. And then no one remembers when I was a good golfer because, sadly, that's a day that never was. As always, the company, the weather, and the course were excellent. (Lenny Nagler, warm and sunny, and Ried GC). No, it was the golfer that let me down. Aretha Yes, we lost two important and admirable people this week. When I was a child one memory of my father my father was his unabashed love for black music. An interesting note, I believe that on my fathers side of the family that we had kin on both sides of the civil war.  Let me remind my peers that when we were young there were black radio stations and white radio stations. When my dad heard Nate King Cole, Little Richard, Ray Charles or Aretha on the radio or from one the records in his collection, the volume went up and everything else went on hold. R...

Sorry about last week. Sorry about what? Ah, I'm sorry I didn't publish my weekly post. Oh, you didn't notice. Okay. Moving on. The week before this, I attended the Annual Bud Wittwer / Mark de Young Memorial Golf Tournament. It has been a tradition of many years and is always held at Pine Hills Golf course in Gresham and hosted by Sue and Dave Lee. The gathering memorializes those members of the Royal Order of Toads who have received the Croak Award. They are awarded this distinction because they have passed on. The day begins at Sue and Dave Lee's cabin on Pine Lake for breakfast, then eighteen holes of golf at Pine Hills, followed by a cookout and awards ceremony back at the cabin. The day was hot and humid. I played, or at least hit shots, on all eighteen holes for the first time this year. I knew something was wrong when I found that I had to lay down and rest after we got back to the cabin. I took about a forty-five-minute nap, fo...

Time heals many wounds. Forgiveness seems to come slower. Forgetting may be impossible until a number of people die. I think of the way our society is today with its multifaceted divisive issues. Some say the problem is the internet and social media. I disagree to an extent. I believe the divisions in our society over many issues has been in place for a long time. However, I will grant you not having to face our neighbors face to face, by inventing an online identity name with the randomly drawn letters from a Scrabble game and being able to imitate the many talking heads on television Social media provides a place to exercise our frustrations. We all look outside of our silo for a world we wish would exist. When we don't find it, we are disappointed which can fester into anger. When we find people that don't agree with us, we question their intelligence and motivation. Even in the face of good evidence, facts become disputed We use and invent derisive na...

If there ever was a time to review my lifestyle it was when I found out I gained five pounds. Yup there it was. My jeans didn't feel tight because they always need stretching when they come out of the wash. The need to wear my belt over one hole wasn't because I was tucking in my shirt. No, I had put on weight. I checked my food log.  (A habit I developed while on Weightwatchers. If you bite it, write it) Was I truly using only two teaspoons of peanut butter on my morning toast? Is that Skinny Cow treat really only 150 calories? Did I count my gummy bears or guess? All the important questions. The thing that disappointed me is I know I'm exercising more besides going to the gym, I'm mowing the lawn, bike riding and walking more. Oh, Wait! I've only been to the gym once in two weeks. But that was because I was on vacation in Seattle. So then, there was all of that walking in the airline terminals. Well, Twice anyway. How about...? Nothing ...

Vacation. How's the Weather? After my wife and I returned from our visit to Seattle, with an unexpected side trip to O'Hare in Chicago, I'm back in my writing chair. First the Seattle trip. We always seem to be in Seattle when the weather is nice. Don't ask me why. I haven't a clue. I think it might be just a comparative thing. Anytime people from that area complain about their cold and damp climate, I tell them what cold means in Wisconsin and that when they have to shovel the rain they are complaining about I feel bad for them. While we were there, the sun shined brightly even if it occasionally had to fight some big puffy clouds. Truth be told like Wisconsin, Washington needs some rain. The true test of weather in Seattle is your ability to "see the mountain". In the gloomiest of circumstances seeing Mount Rainer is impossible. On a clear day, you can't miss it. We were leaving the downtown stadium where the Seattle Sounder's, the Major Lea...

Tis Summer,   where every weekend seems to be hot, humid and eventful. We are in the midst of, what I call, the one hundred and twenty days of possible good weather in Northern Wisconsin. Our drought continues. As a result, my lawn experiment reveals unintended but interesting outcomes. I and this was against my better judgment, treated our lawn with "Weed and Feed". This branded product is supposed to eliminate weeds and promote the growth of green grass. The other thing, the thing you have to think about, it does is increase the number of times you have to cut the grass. I've often stopped people in the middle of their tirade about how many times they cut the grass to inquire if they fertilize their lawn. If they tell me they do, my mindset switches from empathy to contempt. Because I volunteered to cut my neighbor, Harley's lawn this summer, I thought about treating his also. In the end, I did not spread the chem...

We old folk at some point start thinking of how much time we have left. Some of us think about it a lot and others not so much, but we do think about it. Having looked at life, I would have to say I lived it both rationally and often irrationally. I would categorize my taking the motorcycle safety courses at the age of 68 as one of those irrational moments. It was only when I was satisfied with the options I had left, I calmed down a little. I recognized there are some things older folks have in common during this period. Those of us who are healthy want to be relevant. By that I mean, we want to be doing something useful. We want to be doing something that if we couldn't do it anymore, they would have to get someone else to do it. In reflecting back on my life, I have to say that I have a restless spirit. Endlessly curious, I have done a lot of things, but none of them particularly good. I was what we used to call a jack of all tra...

Living in a racist society: So much has been said and written about how we fooled ourselves into thinking we were in a Post Racist Society because we voted for a black President and even re-elected him. It took the nomination of Donald Trump with his blatant and outright legitimizing of Far Right Wing of bigots and white supremacists to require us to recognize how wrong we were. If anything, The election of Barak Obama was a rallying point for that part of our society that is frightened of losing its control of their relevance in our future. To them becoming a minority and to coexist with people that don't look like them is incomprehensible and unacceptable. Their leaders are varied but most visible in the political world are what many, including myself, refer to as "old white men". They could be called silly old white men except that what they do and say causes so much pain and suffering to people who for the most part cannot defend themselves, that it's not fun...

Louisana Hot. If you've never been in the deep south in the summer, you won't understand what I call Louisiana hot. We moved to Mandeville LA in July. when we arrived the temperature was in the nineties with dew points in the seventies. In the north, we talk about wind chill. Wind chill is the effective temperature that we feel when the wind on our bodies affects the temperature we experience. It's that blast of cold air you feel when you walk outside. In the south, the problem is the "feels like" temperature, that combination of high humidity and air temperature that sucks the fluids out of your system and stamina out of your ability to function. If you ever wondered why the South got a reputation for being slow and sleepy, you haven't been there in the summer. From that first day in July when we arrived in Mandeville, it was over ninety degree's every day for three months. It was over ninety degree's for weeks before we got there. That is Lo...

A question no doubts had bubbled up in my mind as a clarified the status of my Milwaukee County Transit M-Card the other day. I wanted to check the balance, as I'm going to visit the City by the Inland Sea in a couple of weeks. The M-Card is like an electronic Passport for me. I can get on any MCTS bus, tap the card on the pay pedestal, and I have paid for my ride and received a transfer for another bus in my route. I understand because of a new agreement with Bublr Bikes, I will be able to also use the card to rent a shared bike for the all-important last mile. Some might just say that it just makes sense for me to keep my M-Card since I will continue to visit Milwaukee, but I know different. .Just looking at the thing brings back memories. I think of the first one I got when the concept was being developed. I was a member and then Chair of Transit Services Advisory Committee (TSAC) We were issued the passes in order to test the system. I glad to say th...

Sunday Morning is spent watching CBS Sunday Morning at our house. both Maaria and I have been watching this program from the Days of Charles Kuralt through, as I called him, Chuck The Second and now with Jane Pauley. Lately, I've been recording Chuck Todd's Meet the Press. This last Sunday, one of his interviews was with Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister. Trudeau was skillfully and forcefully telling Todd why Canadians were taking Trump's Trade Tariff's so indignantly. Trump's reason for the tariffs was that importing steel was a security threat to the United States. Trump's reasoning is that raising tariffs on steel and aluminum would foster a better competitive situation and promote US Steel production. This production would make US steek available in the event of a threat to the United States. After pointing out the long-standing record of mutual trade benefits the relationship between the US and Canada, Trudeau vigorously ...

If there were a word similar to chameleon, which refers to a trait of being able to change colors to fit into the environment, I would say that is how my friends name our band. I've heard of a number of names they have used. One which I thought was illuminating was "Bob and The Hip Replacements" Read that slowly and take it apart. There is a lot going on inside of that moniker. The more generic name or maybe I should say geriatric, was, "The Old Man Band." Lately, we seemed to have settled on,"The Expansion Band." Now, The Expansion Band sounds cute but it also is descriptive. The group gathers on Wednesday evening and plays for about two hours. The makeup of the group depends on who can show up. I've played with a few as six and as many as fourteen. So, as you see, it will like the watch band expanding or contracting in size. It would be silly to call it the Expansion and Contraction Band. Or would it? I'll ask. The group has been meeting ...

There are two groups I belong to that actually have a name. If there ever is a group photo, I am courtesy of my height always in the back row. The Royal Order of Toads has the unfortunate acronym of ROT.  I'm told this occurred without an intention. Not planning anything is a trait of toads.   Follow us, if you dare . The groups' creation myth is that three or four like-minded fellows were sitting at a bar in downtown Appleton, Wisconsin when one of their wives came in with her gal pals. She looked at their rearview profile and remarked that they looked like a bunch of toads sitting on a log. Now forgetting that frogs not toads would be more likely to be sitting on a swamp log. The men decided to form a loose organization that would be home to individual men who would not be welcome in the Rotary Club, Lions Club, The Chamber of Commerce...etc. Giving the group a false air of dignity by calling it Royal, required title...

Overheard, at the gathering of people for a 6:00 am meeting. "I've been up this late before, but I've never gotten up this early. " I've always told my friends ( a bit of wisdom from an old white man.), "Pay attention, you never know when you're a witness to significant history." I often recall my Dad taking me to a minor league baseball game in Minneapolis to see a young kid named Willie Mays. Actually, the attraction was some major leaguer who was playing his way back into shape before being called up. Mays was playing to earn his way up to the big leagues. The next time I saw him play in person was in the 1954 World Series in Cleveland. This week I think I witnessed one of those historic, "I was there when it started"moments. My friends Janet and John Brownson and I were having our traditional after gym breakfast. We were finished eating, enjoying our conversation and coffee when the waitress came up to the table with two coffee p...

No, I'm not going to rant about politics Certainly, we have no problem ingesting the crap that is in that area. We need only go to the internet or cable news station and listen and watch the reality show that passes for government. No today I'm reminiscing about golf. You know that silly game where grown men dress in ridiculous colored clothing and chase a small, hard white ball around a field occasionally hitting it with sticks with specialized metal ends on the end of the shafts. Crazy what? Golf clothing is an important part of the game. There are some things non-golfers should know about the pastime and golfers might want to revisit. Appropriate clothing for golf is like any other activity. The player that comes to the course in blue jeans and a collarless shirt is an amateur and more often than not a weekend player. If he comes in shorts he is definitely a weekend player or a caddie. Players wear long pants and a c...