Monthly Archives: June 2012
Poll
Favorite Summer Food
by JOHN ADAMS •
From among a set of possibilities, which are your favorites (multiple answers being possible)?
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.8.12
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
A warmer and mostly sunny Friday’s in store for Whitewater, with a high temperature of eighty-six.
The Wisconsin Historical Society records that on this day in 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright was born:
On this date Frank Lincoln Wright (he changed his middle name after his parents divorced) was born in Richland Center. An architect, author, and social critic, Wright’s artistic genius demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to create architectural space and vocabulary that drew inspiration from both nature and technology. The son of William Cary Wright, a lawyer and music teacher, and Anna Lloyd Jones, a school teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright’s family moved to Madison in 1877 to be near Anna’s family in Spring Green.
Wright briefly studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, after which he moved to Chicago to pursue a career in architecture. Wright started his own firm in 1893 and between 1893 and 1901, 49 buildings designed by Wright were built. Some notable Frank Lloyd Wright structures in Wisconsin includeS.C. Johnson and Son, Inc. Administration Building in Racine, the A.D. German Warehouse in Richland Center, and Taliesin and Hillside in Spring Green. The Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison was also based on Wright’s design. Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959, in Phoenix, Arizona. [Source: American National Biography, Vol. 24, 1999, p.15]
It’s breakfast time, not just for people, or even ordinary animals, but for Hamlet the Mini Pig, famous on the Internet, and seen here eating a breakfast of oatmeal (wait ’til the end and you’ll see how he digs in):
Google’s daily puzzle asks about ancient architecture: “What is the first building in Greece known to use draped, female-shaped columns like the ones pictured?”
Science/Nature
NASA Video of the Transit of Venus
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Development, Economy, Laws/Regulations, Planning
The 6.11.12 Joint City Council and Plan Commission Zoning Rewrite Workshop
by JOHN ADAMS •
There’s a combined meeting of Whitewater’s City Council and her Planning Commission scheduled for Monday, June 11th at 6 PM. The agenda for the meeting includes a packet describing the work of the Zoning Rewrite members, proposals they are considering, and a timeline for the zoning rewrite effort (extending from this year into next).
I have embedded that packet below. The work and proposals are more ambitious than one would have expected, and include both commercial and residential neighborhood rewrite proposals.
(From my own point of view, it’s the business area changes that matter most; many did not expect, candidly, any residential changes from this project. The review has been more comprehensive than one would have supposed, but then a review like this would be the occasion for a city-wide look.)
In any event, here’s that packet, sixty-two pages in length, available for printing or download. (The sideways orientation of the document is from the original.)
Public Meetings
Joint City Council and Plan Commission Zoning Rewrite Workshop
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.7.12
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Whitewater’s Thursday will be sunny, with a high of eighty-two.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1913, America saw the first successful assent of Mt. McKinley (Denali):
In March 1913, the adventure-seeking [Hudson] Stuck set out from Fairbanks for Mt. McKinley with three companions, Harry Karstens, co-leader of the expedition, Walter Harper, whose mother was a Native Indian, and Robert Tatum, a theology student. Their arduous journey was made more challenging by difficult weather and a fire at one of their camps, which destroyed food and supplies. However, the group persevered and on June 7, Harper, followed by the rest of the party, was the first person to set foot on McKinley’s south peak, considered the mountain’s true summit. (In 1910, a group of climbers had reached the lower north peak.)
The Wisconsin Historical Society writes about recognition for an extraordinary inventor:
1924 – Monument to Wisconsin Inventor Unveiled
On this date the bronze tablet memorializing C. Latham Sholes was unveiled. Sholes, who lived in Milwaukee, invented the typewriter in 1867. The plaque gives thanks to the “one who materially aided in the world’s progress,” and can be seen at the Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, where Sholes rests. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Homes]
Google’s daily puzzle‘s right up the alley of a materials scientist: “What material is your fork made of if it contains the same polysaccharides (C6H10O5)n as the corn that you’re eating?”
City, Elections, Politics, Recall
The (Red) State, the (Blue) City
by JOHN ADAMS •
A few remarks on the recall elections:
There are thousands of happy and thousands of disappointed Wisconsinites today.
A third-party voter looks at elections differently, because in many cases he or she doesn’t have a partisan candidate in the race; one votes for or against the candidates of other parties. This places a certain distance between the third-party voter and the candidates – there’s just not the same ardor or abhorrence. The legitimate appeal of a major party’s chance to form an administration isn’t present (or isn’t appealing enough to entice membership in either leading party).
One goes on, to the next debate, the next elections, with neither the hope nor the worry that one’s own party members will win or lose.
Although control of the state senate may change hands, this is for now a predominantly red state. How long that will last I’ve no idea, but at the state level Gov. Walker has a comfortable base: 1,331,076 to 1,158,337, 53-46%. That’s more than adequate.
The City of Whitewater’s moved in the opposite direction: without campus being in session, Whitewater still chose Barrett over Walker, by about 1,988 to 1,460. There may be some adjustment to these totals, from Jefferson and Walworth Counties, but that’s a greater margin than I would have expected. (Walworth County – now with a much better, much needed election details pdf – and Jefferson County results are online. Walworth County chose Walker 26,201 to 14,330; Jefferson County went for Walker 22,461 to 14,678.)
Barrett carried each of the precincts in the city, in either county. Whitewater’s progressives have typically done better in bigger elections, not as well in smaller, spring elections. (See, Why Whitewater Isn’t a Progressive City; Why Whitewater’s ‘Conservatives’ Hold the City Tenuously.)
What they haven’t been able, or wanted, to do is to remake the city as a blue town, so to speak. A recall election won’t change any of this, and the town fathers remain principally conservative. Over time, however, there is likely to be a generational change to a blue(r) city within red or redder Jefferson and Walworth counties. That’s not simply because of how people in the city and counties will be voting; it’s because I’d guess the next generation of voters will be assertive about shaping their communities’ institutions along more ideological lines.
That kind of transformation has already happened in other parts of the state, in communities dominated, respectively, by the left or right.
It’s likely to come to our area, too.
Public Meetings
Common Council
by JOHN ADAMS •
Public Meetings
Landmarks Commission
by JOHN ADAMS •
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.6.12
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
It’s another beautiful day for Whitewater, with sunny skies and a high of seventy-five.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets today at 4:30 PM.
On this day in 1944, Allied forces landed at Normandy to begin the liberation of Europe.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls this day in 1822 as the date on which an odd series of experiments began:
1822 – Shooting Leads to Medical Experiments
On this date Alexis St. Martin was accidently shot in the stomach at Mackinac Island. St. Martin was treated by Dr. William Beaumont, who saved his life but left an open wound in the young man’s side. Over many subsequent years, Dr. Beaumont conducted experiments through the opening in St. Martin’s stomach. Beaumont and the St. Martin family moved to Prairie du Chien for a period, where the doctor conducted 238 scientific experiments on St. Martin’s exposed stomach with only a spool of thread, a scissors, various foods, and a thermometer. Beaumont’s important discoveries about digestion were published in 1833 in “Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion.” His experiments proved to be crucial to a scientific understanding of how human digestion works. More information is available elsewhere at wisconsinhistory.org. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p. 136-150]
Google’s daily puzzle asks about a simple pleasure: “How much would it have cost a family of four to enjoy patent #1,909,537 on the day it was introduced to the public?”
Liberty
The Right to Bargain with Government
by JOHN ADAMS •
It is a simple principle of liberty that any person, in any employ, should have the right to bargain peacefully with, and even against, his or her own government. No worldly thing is as powerful as the state: it alone possesses the right to tax and to arrest. No matter how influential other institutions may be, they don’t possess government’s vast powers to confiscate and detain.
No worker should be denied the right to join with others to bargain collectively against something so unmatched in power as government.
Our state has had difficult times, and has troubled finances. It does not matter; liberty requires citizens’ individual and collective rights even in the worst of times. Contrary views are possible, but to be genuinely libertarian and hold otherwise seems impossible.
There is not the slightest chance that I shall be a member of a union Still, liberty demands a general, rather than merely a particular, recognition of rights.
Gov. Walker has both admirers and detractors. Many hold their views of him passionately. I respect those strong feelings, but do not hold either view intensely.
Instead, on a matter of principle, I believe Gov. Walker has unjustifiably expanded the power of the government at the expense of workers’ rights to organize. Government should be much smaller and less expensive; this was not a libertarian way to achieve that end.
For this reason, simply held and without animosity, I believe it is contrary to libertarian conviction to stand with Gov. Walker.
City, Elections, Liberty, Wisconsin
The Secular Call
by JOHN ADAMS •
For the first time in her history, likely not to be repeated in our time, Wisconsin votes on the recall of her governor.
If you are well and able, will you not turn out today? From every part of this beautiful but divided state, citizens will pour out to vote, exercising their right to select who will govern the millions living here.
There are few human things so beautiful as people voting to select those who, for limited times and with discrete powers, will govern.
This is our secular call, the natural right and desire of any free people. This is true regardless of one’s partisan convictions.
Contentious, rancorous, messy and imperfect, yet beautiful: a good day.
Daily Bread
Daily Bread for 6.5.12
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Whitewater’s election day forecast calls for sunny skies, with a high temperature of seventy-three.
On this day in 1933, Pres. Roosevelt took America off the gold standard, and in 1968, Sen. Robert Kennedy was killed in California while campaigning for the presidency, among other events happening on June 5th in history.
Google’s daily puzzle asks of the image appearing above whether “this mathematical symbol [would] typically be placed before or after a logical consequence? I certainly don’t know, but I do know that there are readers who know the answer quite easily. more >>