Hello, fellow residents of our fair, micropolitan dreamtown. Here’s a pop quiz for the week, answer to appear on Friday.

What possible electoral contest in Whitewater in 2009 would most resemble the local, political equivalent of the Iran-Iraq War?

Guesses may be sent to adams@freewhitewater.com. Please submit entries no later than Friday, January 9th at 6:02 AM.

Rest assured, free thinkers, creative readers, and lovers of America’s tradition of constitutional liberty: pseudonyms are happily accepted here!

Here is my early January 2008 post with predictions for the year. How did I do?
Results below the post….

Former New York Times columnist William Safire used to write an annual predictions column, with multiple choice answers to questions, each new year. Here’s my local, amateur version in honor of Safire’s efforts. My predictions from last year are listed below the questions.

1. In 2008, the biggest Whitewater event will be
A. July 4th holiday
B. Memorial Day Parade
C. Christmas Parade
D. Celebration of another UWW national athletic championship

2. Winner of the 2008 election for Whitewater Municipal Judge will be
A. one among challengers (Ben Penwell, Art Coleman, or Colin Cheever)
B. incumbent Dick Kelly
C. Steve Spear as a write-in candidate
D. no one will vote

3. Leading vote-winner of the City of Whitewater presidential election results in November will be
A. John McCain
B. Barack Obama
C. Hillary Clinton
D. Rudy Guiliani

4. Whitewater will see the resignation of
A. a Common Council member (other than Kim Hixson)
B. a City of Whitewater department head
C. the leader of a prominent community group
D. none of the above

5. Between now and year’s end, the unemployment rate in Whitewater will
A. drop sharply
B. drop slightly
C. remain unchanged
D. increase slightly

6. The challenge of housing for students will be
A. solved
B. unchanged
C. worse
D. students? They’re not supposed to be off-campus anyway!

7. Overall vacancies in our downtown, and across the city will be
A. up significantly
B. basically unchanged
C. down slightly
D. down significantly

8. A local dentist will be nominated for a Nobel prize in
A. medicine
B. economics
C. peace
D. crowd-control

9. Market-penetration rate of the Whitewater Regsiter will
A. remain unchanged
B. decline slightly
C. decline significantly
D. increase after a subscription drive targeting lunatics

10. In 2008, Whitewater will receive news on how many new, large commercial businesses will locate to our city?
A. one
B. two
C. more than two
D. none

Adams’s guesses:

1. In 2008, the biggest Whitewater event will be
A. July 4th holiday (although I think that UWW will win another national championship; my answer is based on attendance alone)

2. Winner of the 2008 election for Whitewater Municipal Judge will be
A. one of the challengers (Note: I have no preferred candidate at this time; I merely think it’s a hard office to hold.)

3. Leading vote-winner of the City of Whitewater presidential election results in November will be
B. Barack Obama (Note: I have no preferred candidate at this time; I do think Sen. Obama will be the Democratic nominee, and would easily carry the City of Whitewater.)

4. Whitewater will see the resignation of
A. a Common Council member (other than Kim Hixson) and
C. the leader of a prominent community group

5. Between now and year’s end, the unemployment rate in Whitewater will
D. increase slightly

6. The challenge of housing for students will be
C. worse

7. Overall vacancies in our downtown, and across the city will be,
B. basically unchanged

8. A local dentist will be nominated for a Nobel prize in
D. crowd-control

9. Market-penetration rate of the Whitewater Regsiter will
B. decline slightly

10. In 2008, Whitewater will receive news on how many new, large commercial businesses will locate to our city?
A. one

We’ll see how we did at predicting at year’s end.

I’d say correct on Numbers 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9. Partially right on Number 4 (Craig Stauffer resignation) and Number 10 (we have had large additions, but the question was ill-defined, and ‘one’ or a greater number are both possible answers).

On Number 8, where I predicted a Nobel Prize in crowd control for a local dentist-politician, I would suggest not that I have been proved wrong, but that I remain, instead, ahead of the curve. It’s only a matter of time until the Nobel Committee sees what I see.

Good morning, Whitewater

Here is the beginning — the first full week — of your new year.

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today. One never knows, though, if something terribly important, and offered as an exception to Wisconsin’s open meetings law, will arise.

School’s back in session. Hope you enjoyed your break as much as I did mine. Back to studying for you, and posting for me.

In Wisconsin history on this date, in 1813, the Wisconsin Historical Society reports that “Utopian Community Leader Kevin Brunner Warren Chase was Born”:

On this date the founder of a Fourierite Utopian community in what is now Ripon was born. Their inspiration came from the writings of Charles Fourier, a French Socialist who urged the rebuilding of society from its foundation as the only cure for economic ills such as the depression of 1837. The idea was supported by Horace Greely in New York and caught the eye of Warren Chase.

Chase and others built a successful, non-religous communal society in which everyone recieved wages according to their skill, need, and work ethic. The community reached their greatest population (180) in 1845 but soon dissipated when members began moving toward agriculture as an economic tool.

Families gradually left the community to live in their own houses and work their own land in the same area.

In 1850, the community disbanded and $40,000 in assets was divided among the remaining members. Warren Chase moved around the country and finally settled in California, where he held many public offices.

Oh dearie me, the story of so many efforts where an official exists to build a better community –

High hopes, initial success, community rejection of idealistic socialism for private property, collapse of the scheme, and the retreat of the community leader into — what else? — public office (at public expense!).

Thank you, Wisconsin Historical Society, for your apt account of this asinine scheme! You have made me deliriously happy, really you have. I admire your organization 22.9% more than I did last month, for this account alone.

I received the following press release from the Alzheimer’s Association — no better post to begin a new year than a charitable one —

Dementia Basics Workshop Offered at Lincoln Lutheran

Milwaukee, WI – January 2, 2009 - The Alzheimer’s Association is offering a two-part “Dementia Basics” workshop on Thursday, January 22nd and Thursday, January 29th from 11:45 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. at Lincoln Lutheran Building, 4th Floor Training Room, 2000 Domanik Drive, in Racine. This program is a two-session workshop for those who have experienced the recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia in their family, friend or neighbor.

Session one of this program will cover the warning signs of dementia, treatment options and progression, risk factors, and research. Session two will focus on understanding communication difficulties and behavioral challenges, and strategies for both. There will also be an opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences with others who are coping with similar situations.

The program will be presented by Krista Scheel, Program Director, Alzheimer’s Association. This program is free and open to the public; however registration is required. A lunch will be served at each session. For information or to register please contact Paulette Kissee at 262-595-2387 or via email at paulette.kissee@alz.org. This program is made possible in part by a grant from the Southeastern Wisconsin Area Agency on Aging.

The Alzheimer’s Association is a national non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research and to enhance care and support for individuals, their families, and caregivers. The Alzheimer’s Association of Southeastern Wisconsin provides information, education, and support to people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias, their families, and healthcare professionals throughout an 11-county region. For more information about Alzheimer’s disease and chapter services visit www.alz.org/sewi or call the toll-free, 24-hour Helpline at 800-272-3900.

Good morning, Whitewater

Happy Birthday, General Mitchell. More on that, below.

The last week of your year.

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today. I am sure that someone will talk about something with someone else at the Municipal Building, but nothing useful is likely to come of it. Your local government — committed by its own account only to a better community — at work for you.

The National Weather Service predicts a windy day, with a high of 38 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will offer fair skies, and later in the week increasing clouds will follow.

There is no school today, of course. What is to be done with so much youthful energy set lose in the community? I see no risk in it, but there is a possibility that our school board may yet have left unexplored. Could we not harness so many unoccupied students for a group project, perhaps connected through a home computer network?

How about a project easy to undertake, that will require little computational power, to begin? Perhaps, this assignment: Effort and dedication of the District Administrator to the district from which she is compensated over the last few months?

I’d start there — the students of Whitewater could complete a scientific study (great for a college application), and still be back to World of Warcraft in short order.

In Wisconsin history today, the Wisconsin Historical Society marks the anniversary of General William “Billy” Mitchell’s birth in 1879.

On this date aviation pioneer Billy Mitchell was born in Nice, France. Mitchell grew up in Milwaukee and attended Racine College. During World War I, Mitchell was the first American airman to fly over enemy lines. He also led many air attacks in France and Germany. Upon return to the U.S., he advocated the creation of a separate Air Force. Much to the dislike of A.T. Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, and other contemporaries, Mitchell asserted that the airplane had rendered the battleship obsolete, and attention should be shifted to developing military air power. Mitchell’s out-spokenness resulted in his being court martialed for insubordination. He was sentenced to five years suspension of rank without pay.

General Douglas MacArthur — an old Milwaukee friend — was a judge in Mitchell’s case and voted against his court martial. Mitchell’s ideas for developing military air power were not implemented until long after his death. In 1946 Congress created a medal in his honor, the General “Billy” Mitchell Award. Milwaukee’s airport, General Mitchell International Airport, is named after him.

He was right about airpower, of course — but then, Mitchell was right from the beginning. From Nice, actually — a fine place, a fine country, indeed.

Good morning, Whitewater

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater again today. Whitewater, did you get your Christmas wish early? I think you did.

The National Weather Service predicts a certainty of snow, with a high of 26 degrees. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will be fair and pleasant.

Yesterday’s better prediction: NWS.

In world history on this date, in 1970 Wired reports that the “World Trade Center Tops Out”:

Construction workers place the highest steel on the highest building in the world. New Yorkers will first hate it, then get used to it and eventually mourn its destruction.

The massive project was conceived in the 1950s to energize lower Manhattan. Architect Minoru Yamasaki worked in conjunction with Emery Roth and Sons to design twin towers 110 stories high.

Ground was broken Aug. 5, 1966, and steel construction began in August 1968. The North Tower topped out at 1,368 feet (some sources say 1,353 feet) Dec. 23, 1970. Ribbon-cutting took place April 4, 1973.

The twin towers knocked New York City’s own Empire State Building (1931, 1,250 feet) off the top of the list of the world’s tallest buildings, but lost out in 1974 to Chicago’s Sears Tower at 1,451 feet. The twin 1,483-foot Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, surpassed Sears in 1998, only to be overtaken by Taipei 101 in Taiwan at 1,667 feet in 2004. But Burj Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is already above 2,250 feet and slated to reach 2,300 feet soon.

With an acre of rentable space on each of the upper floors of each tower, the WTC’s 110 stories were occupied by about 50,000 people. The South Tower had an observation deck on its 107th floor, offering views for 45 miles in all directions, skies permitting.

The architects and engineers had solved a number of problems with great ingenuity. To keep the nearby Hudson River from flooding its foundations, the buildings were constructed in a vast concrete case, called the Bathtub. A central core in each tower carried the dead (or gravitational) weight of the building’s materials, while light walls were designed to withstand the force of wind on a tall, giant building.

The amount of space taken up by elevators was reduced by creating “sky lobbies” at the 41st and 74th floor, served by express elevators. Local elevators could stop at any floor within each zone. It was a vertical model of a New York subway line.

Despite these innovations, many New Yorkers greeted the towers with derision. They were assailed for being out of scale with the surrounding neighborhoods and a distortion of the classic midtown peak of the Manhattan skyline. Some rudely suggested that the towers looked like the plain boxes out of which two Art Deco classics, the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, had been unpacked.
Yamasaki died in 1986. The final building in the 16-acre complex, 7 World Trade Center, was completed the following year.

Terrorists exploded a massive bomb in the WTC’s parking garage Feb. 26, 1993, killing six people and
injuring more than a thousand. The towers withstood the blast.

But they could not withstand the impact of the fully fueled jetliners that terrorists crashed into the twin towers Sept. 11, 2001. That attack brought them down within hours, killing almost 2,800 people.
Construction on new WTC buildings, including the Freedom Tower to replace the twin towers, is now underway.

I get a good deal of email, but imagine my surprise when Libertarian Bob Barr wrote to me, using my given name, to wish me a Merry Christmas. I will walk around all day, now, with a warm, holiday, free enterprise glow.

(Quickly, before someone writes to tease me - Yes, I know that, really, I received the email as part of a political party’s email list. It’s no ordinary party, though, so I am contented.)

Here’s part of Barr’s message (he’s not known for the delicacy of his expression):

My wife, Jeri, and I want to wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and Happy New Year.

In our home, we have a lot to be thankful for and we are happy to be able to share this season with our family, our long time friends and our new acquaintances.

This past year has brought us joy in many ways, not the least of which has been giving a voice to the direction you and I would like to see our country take.

It’s easy to say “Someone should do something about  . . .” But it’s far more difficult to accept that challenge and realize you are that “someone.” And, if you will not do it, why should someone else do it? How can we expect them to?

You and I accepted the responsibility of our citizenship and got involved. Together, we made a difference. We raised the issues that no one wanted to talk about.

While other candidates tried to make the case that $17 billion of “earmarks” are the source of our country’s fiscal problems, you and I know the problems go much deeper. You and I know that runaway federal spending and the long term impact that will have of creating a $100 trillion dollar unfunded liability on our children and grandchildren, is the real problem.

When the public debate in recent months was all about granting immunity to telecoms for their role in domestic spying, you and I focused on the government’s intrusion into our personal privacy through the use of warrantless searches and abuses of the Patriot Act.

When the financial policy makers in this administration were declaring their friends in huge financial institutions were ‘too big to allow to fail’ you and I said, “Wait!” Let the good businesses buy the good parts of the failures and let the Brainiacs who that created the problems suffer the consequences.
Instead, the establishment decided to reward bad businesses with the gift of your hard earned tax dollars, and allowed them to continue to do bad business as usual. There have not been any meaningful fraud investigations. No perp walks!

One alleged Wall Street fraudster is sitting in his $7 million dollar apartment under “house arrest” accused of bilking investors out of tens of billions of dollars. While he resides in luxury instead of jail, you and I will be expected to bailout his victims.

Our state elected officials are doing little better than their federal cohorts. Scandals abound. And yet another governor is probably going to declare that a US Senate seat is a birthright to the Kennedy dynasty. We have had enough of family dynasty politics; we deserve principled, legitimate representation, not socialites and prima donnas.

We have a lot to do in the New Year, and we need to get prepared now! We have just begun to be heard….

Again, Jeri and I wish you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Sincerely,

Bob Barr

Good morning, Whitewater

There are no scheduled public meetings in the City of Whitewater today. Not, it seems, even a special meeting. Not, even, an extra-special meeting. You may be particularly relieved.

The National Weather Service predicts a cold day, with a high of 4 degrees, and snow tonight. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts that today will be fair and pleasant. For a penguin, that’s surely true.

Last week’s better prediction: NWS.

In science history, Wired reports on “Looking at Christmas in a Whole New Light”: 1882: An inventive New Yorker finds a brilliant application for electric lights and becomes the first person to use them as Christmas tree decorations:

Edward H. Johnson, who toiled for Thomas Edison’s Illumination Company and later became a company vice president, used 80 small red, white and blue electric bulbs, strung together along a single power cord, to light the Christmas tree in his New York home. Some sources credit Edison himself with being the first to use electric lights as Christmas decorations, when he strung them around his laboratory in 1880.

Sticking them on the tree was Johnson’s idea, though. It was a mere three years after Edison had demonstrated that light bulbs were practical at all.

The idea of replacing the Christmas tree’s traditional wax candles — which had been around since the mid-17th century — with electric lights didn’t, umm, catch fire right away. Although the stringed lights enjoyed a vogue with the wealthy and were being mass-produced as early as 1890, they didn’t become popular in humbler homes until a couple of decades into the 20th century.

Over at Cato’s website, there’s a post from Daniel J. Mitchell on how, despite the rush to spend and tax our way to prosperity, it’s clear Keynesian economics is, still, bad economics. 

Who, by the way, said we’re all Keynesians now? That’s right, the man who was wrong about almost everything — Richard Nixon.  Goldwater hated Nixon for a reason — lots of them, actually, and each one completely justified. 

How bad is Keynesian economics?  So bad, its principal errors are readily understood after only 7 minutes and 29 seconds, even including about 30 seconds taken up with introductory chatter. 

See, now, the awful truth that confronts government interventionists…

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, AWARD WINNING POTTER OFFERS CERAMICS CLASSES IN LAKE MILLS STUDIO

Lake Mills WI –December 17, 2008 Bruce Johnson’s distinctive raku ceramic pieces have been enjoyed by people all over the nation for over 25 years. For the first time ever, Johnson is offering to share his knowledge and technique with others by offering lessons in wheel thrown and hand built ceramics.

Johnson has received invitations to show his work at juried art shows throughout the country. His decorative vessel, “Cosmo,” was selected for the Niche Award in wheel thrown ceramics from Niche Magazine, a national trade publication for retailers of American craft. “With my years of experience as a full-time artist, I believe I have much to offer those interested in ceramics,” says Johnson, “whether they are just beginning or already experienced in working with clay.”

In this unique learning opportunity, students will learn the art of making functional and decorative pottery, both hand built and wheel thrown. The pieces will be fired in food-safe, high-fire glazes, and in the ancient technique of raku firing.

All sessions will take place at Bruce Johnson Clay Studio, 302 W. Campus Street, in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, beginning the week of January 5, 2009. The class includes one session a week for seven weeks, 25 pounds of clay, and all glaze materials, including firing. Classes will be held Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6:30pm to 9pm, and Saturday mornings from 10am to 12:30pm. Each class is limited to six students to ensure individual attention for each student.

To register, or for further information, contact Johnson at 920-648-3049 or bruce@brucejohnsonclaystudio.com. Samples of work can be seen on his website, www.brucejohnsonclaystudio.com.