Category: Tales from the front lines
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Hey Democrats, quit kvetching and pick the flowers
Grievance is not a governing philosophy It’s all too beautiful (as the Small Faces sang), this twenty-second day of August 2020, on the Blaska Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony). The phlox is in full bloom — pink, purple, and white. A field of zinnias (red dwarf Holi Scarlet hybrids and 4-foot tall Jung Super…
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We’re planted in low clover
“It’s summertime summertime sum sum summertime Summertime summertime sum sum summertime” — the Jamies, 1958. Just like that, it’s summer in southern Wisconsin this beautiful Sunday, Memorial Day weekend. A goodly rain Saturday preceded today’s sunshine and temperatures in the 80s F. (05-24-2020)! We thank the WI State Journal for heckling Dane County’s paranoid coronavirus lockdown.…
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Letter from mother on Mother’s Day
My brother Richard is the youngest of six siblings. Our mother died March 3, 1981 of a sudden heart attack. Richard writes: Helen and I were pen pals. I think we wrote never less than monthly. While living alone in San Diego, having broken up a 4-year relationship with Ildi, I received a very comforting letter…
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No helmets, no masks, no worries?
How much risk for how much reward? Simon and Garfunkel sang about looking for America. Blaska thinks he found it in the unincorporated hamlet of Leland, in northern Sauk County WI. There he found kindred spirits yearning to breathe free on a Sunday (05-03-2020). It was another chapter (dating back to the 1970s) of the…
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Is Joe Biden melting in the heat?
It’s all too beautiful, as the Small Faces sang. Rode my Softail Slim into Sauk City from Madison WI and asked attendant at the Kwik Trip if she knew of any speakeasies. “No,” she said. “Everything is closed.” But this old settler had a hunch and weaved his machine through the hills and dales of Sauk…
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Wisconsin is opening up
Experts or no, ultimately the People decide Temperatures this week in the mid-60s. The crop of daffodils is as good as we’ve seen. It is Spring in Madison WI (our shortest season) and people are emerging into the open! Speaking of emerging, a chubby groundhog (perhaps loaded with pups) lumbered its way through the city…