Good morning.

It’s a mostly sunny day, with a high of thirty-seven, ahead for Whitewater.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets today at 8 AM.

The agenda posted at the City of Whitewater website for that Tech Park Board meeting is unprofessional and sloppy at best, and legally deficient at worst. Here’s the full text:

MEETING NOTICE
Whitewater University Technology Park Board Meeting Wednesday, Feb 13, 2013 at 8:00 a.m.
Whitewater Innovation Center
1221 Innovation Drive
Whitewater, WI 53190

Agenda
1. Call to Order
2. Approval of Minutes from Jan. 16, 2013 Meeting
3. Review/Acceptance of Jan. 2013 Financial Reports – Clapper
4. WUTP Architectural Review Committee Discussion – Telfer & Clapper
5. Innovation Center Facility / Security Discussion – Ehlen
6. City of Whitewater Seed Capital Fund Update – Knight
7. Whitewater Incubation Program (WhIP) Updates – Ehlen
8. Strategic Priorities and Development and Plan
9. Reconvene into Open Session
10. Future Agenda Items
11. Future Meeting Dates Mar. 20, Apr. 10, May 8, June 19
12. Adjournment

Did anyone bother to review and proofread this notice? At best, there’s a stray entry at item 9: “9. Reconvene into Open Session.” At worst, there’s a missing entry for a closed session, somewhere before item 9, that’s been wholly omitted.

The law requires that a closed session be expressly noticed, and that its purpose be expressly stated, under one of 13 possible purposes. Wis. Stat. § 19.84(2), § 19.85(1).

The notice looks like it was dashed off hastily, but there’s no exception for this public body under Wisconsin law for “I didn’t feel like complying,” “I can’t do any better,” or “I’ll tell the public only what I feel like telling them.”

These are clear and simple provisions, and in any event, gentlemen who’ve taken millions in others’ money should be expected to do a bit of proofreading for their publicly-financed undertaking.

If the minimum standards of law and professionalism are too hard, one may always quit the project.

On this day in 1861, America awards the first Medal of Honor to a soldier:

The earliest military action to be revered with a Medal of Honor award is performed by Colonel Bernard J.D. Irwin, an assistant army surgeon serving in the first major U.S.-Apache conflict. Near Apache Pass, in southeastern Arizona, Irwin, an Irish-born doctor, volunteered to go to the rescue of Second Lieutenant George N. Bascom, who was trapped with 60 men of the U.S. Seventh Infantry by the Chiricahua Apaches. Irwin and 14 men, initially without horses, began the 100-mile trek to Bascom’s forces riding on mules. After fighting and capturing Apaches along the way and recovering stolen horses and cattle, they reached Bascom’s forces on February 14 and proved instrumental in breaking the siege.

Also on this day, in 1935, Wisconsin rejects a true market in gasoline for a fixed and arbitrary price:

1935 – Gasoline Price Wars Quelled
On this date, in an effort to stop gasoline price wars, the state of Wisconsin established a minimum price of 16 cents per gallon for gasoline. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Google-a-Day offers a geography question: “What’s the southernmost province of the country that occupies approximately one sixth of the Iberian Peninsula?”

Good morning.

Today brings mostly sunny skies and a high of thirty-two to Whitewater.

It’s Lincoln’s birthday, and in 1859, while a presidential candidate, he spoke in Milwaukee at the Wisconsin State Fair.  Here’s a part of the text of that address, ostensibly about agriculture (but truly about even more):

The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point. From this point, however, men immediately diverge. Much disputation is maintained as to the best way of applying and controlling the labor element. By some it is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital — that nobody labors, unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow, by the use of that capital, induces him to do it. Having assumed this, they proceed to consider whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent; or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far they naturally conclude that all laborers are necessarily either hired laborers, or slaves. They further assume that whoever is once a hired laborer, is fatally fixed in that condition for life; and thence again that his condition is as bad as, or worse than that of a slave. This is the “mud-sill” theory.

But another class of reasoners hold the opinion that there is no such relation between capital and labor, as assumed; and that there is no such thing as a freeman being fatally fixed for life, in the condition of a hired laborer, that both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them groundless. They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed — that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior — greatly the superior — of capital.

They do not deny that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital. The error, as they hold, is in assuming that the whole labor of the world exists within that relation. A few men own capital; and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital, hire, or buy, another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class — neither work for others, nor have others working for them. Even in all our slave States, except South Carolina, a majority of the whole people of all colors, are neither slaves nor masters. In these Free States, a large majority are neither hirers or hired. Men, with their families — wives, sons and daughters — work for themselves, on their farms, in their houses and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor of hirelings or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, labor with their own hands, and also buy slaves or hire freemen to labor for them; but this is only a mixed, and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class. Again, as has already been said, the opponents of the “mud-sill” theory insist that there is not, of necessity, any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. There is demonstration for saying this. Many independent men, in this assembly, doubtless a few years ago were hired laborers. And their case is almost if not quite the general rule….

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! — how consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Good morning.

Snow showers and flurries, with no expected accumulation, and a high of thirty-three start our week.

Downtown Whitewater’s board meets today at 8 AM, and Whitewater’s Planning Commission later today at 6 PM.

On this day in 1861, Lincoln leaves for Washington:

On a cold, rainy morning, Lincoln boarded a two-car private train loaded with his family’s belongings, which he himself had packed and bound. His wife, Mary Lincoln, was in St. Louis on a shopping trip, and joined him later in Indiana. It was a somber occasion. Lincoln was leaving his home and heading into the maw of national crisis.

Since he had been elected, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union. Lincoln knew that his actions upon entering office would likely lead to civil war.

He spoke to a crowd before departing: “Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young man to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being… I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail… To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

A bystander reported that the president-elect’s “breast heaved with emotion and he could scarcely command his feelings.” Indeed, Lincoln’s words were prophetic—a funeral train carried him back to Springfield just over four years later.

It’s an understatement to say that 2.11.1842 was a low point in Wisconsin’s legislative history:

1842 – Shooting in the Legislature

On this date the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin met in Madison, only to be interrupted by the shooting of one member by another. The legislature was debating the appointment of Enos S. Baker for sheriff of Grant County when Charles Arndt made a sarcastic remark about Baker’s colleague, James Vineyard. After an uproar, adjournment was declared and when Arndt approached Vineyard’s desk, a fight broke out during which Vineyard drew his revolver and shot Arndt. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes]

Google-a-Day offers a history question: “What nation was the source of the missiles found aboard the Yemen-bound unflagged freighter intercepted by the Spanish SPS Navarra on December 9, 2002?”

Good morning.

Sunday brings rain or freezing rain, with a high of forty today.

On this day in 1763, it’s the end of the French and Indian War:

The Seven Years’ War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by France, Great Britain, and Spain.

In the early 1750s, France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought the country into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756, the British formally declared war against France.

In the first year of the war, the British suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia’s struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America. By 1760, the French had been expelled from Canada, and by 1763 all of France’s allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India.

The Seven Years’ War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south.

The end of that war brings a change to Wisconsin:

1763 – Treaty of Paris Cedes Wisconsin to England
On this date the Treaty of Paris ceded formerly French-controlled land, including the Wisconsin region, to England. [Source: Avalon Project at Yale University]

Google-a-Day asks about a book proposal’s original title: “When Maurice Sendak first pitched the idea for the book that would eventually become “Where The Wild Things Are”, what was the title?”