FREE WHITEWATER

City

America, City, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.6.24: Eight Years On

by  • 

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 6:36, and sunset is 4:36, for 10 hours, 4 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 23 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1971,  the United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

Eight years ago, after an election night, I wrote a post entitled Unexpected and Expected. The first paragraph from that post, with a few changes, is fitting yet again:

Last night’s election results are both [generally] unexpected (nationally) and expected (locally), I’d say.  Few thought that Trump would win the presidency, but many of the other results for Wisconsin or Whitewater were easier to predict.

Trump’s victory nationally will be the big topic for years, first about its cause and then about its effects. Because I believe that national shapes local (and that purely hyper-local assessments are short-sighted), Trump’s win (coupled with a Republican Congress [Senate and possibly House] and a conservative Supreme Court) will transform this city as it will much larger places.

None of us can say how this story unfolds, and in any event it matters still more how we in this small city respond to what unfolds. Each day, one begins anew, confronting the challenges of the moment.

For national, state, and local election results see AP Election Results and Journal Sentinel 2024 Wisconsin General Election Results.

NASA’s Perseverance rover captures Martian moon Phobos eclipse the sun:

The Mastcam-Z camera on NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the Martian moon Phobos on Sept. 30, 2024 as it eclipsed the sun.

America, City, Daily Bread, Elections, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 11.5.24: Election Day

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will see afternoon showers with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:34, and sunset is 4:41, for 10 hours, 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 15.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1872, in defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.

A wooden ballot box used in the northeastern United States circa 1870. From the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution in the Vote: The Machinery of Democracy exhibit.

Fireball lights up skies over Ohio, Pennsylvania and Toronto:

The American Meteor Society recieved several reports of fireball in the skies over Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ontario and more on Oct. 21, 2024.

43rd Assembly District, City, Daily Bread, Elections, Legislature

Daily Bread for 11.4.24: In the 43rd District Race, Scott Johnson’s Disqualifying Situation

by  • 

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 69. Sunrise is 6:33, and sunset is 4:42, for 10 hours, 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 8.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Tutankhamun‘s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

In the 43rd Assembly District, Whitewater resident Brienne Brown is running against Jefferson resident Scott Johnson.

Here is a map of the 43rd Assembly District’s boundaries:

Whitewater, the largest city in the district, is at the northeast corner of the map. Jefferson is in another district.

On April 11th, Scott Johnson published an announcement for his candidacy for the 43rd Assembly seat.

On August 12th, Johnson attended a meeting of the Whitewater Planning Board. At that meeting, Johnson spoke during public comment on a proposed apartment complex on the east side of Whitewater.

Here’s how Johnson began his remarks (with his full remarks available online):

“Good evening. I’m Scott Johnson, I’m not from this local community…”

Johnson does not live in Whitewater, and he does not live anywhere else in the district. It’s lawful to do what Johnson is doing, but it’s irresponsible and selfish.

The proper order for a candidacy goes like this: live in the district, learn about the district, and run only after you have lived here.

This reasonable & responsible sequence applies to Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

All the rest — claims and counterclaims, opposition research and replies — should be secondary and subordinate to a candidate’s residency in this community before he runs for office.

I have always — always — encouraged people to move to Whitewater. Johnson should first sell his out-of-district residence, move here to Whitewater (his best option) or elsewhere in the district (a second-best choice), live here with us, and only then consider a candidacy after living with us.

It’s beautiful here. Whitewater has options for homes and apartments, including among them several senior living facilities.

If Johnson does not believe this district is good enough for a residency-first approach, then this district is too good for Johnson.

No yielding whatever on this fundamental point.

Uncovering a lost mountain metropolis:

An isolated plateau in the highlands of southeastern Uzbekistan in Central Asia, looks like an expanse of rolling hills. But look closer and a shard of pottery or the stony remnant of an ancient wall might hint at an archaeological secret hidden for hundreds of years. Now a team of archaeologists have used drone-mounted LiDAR to virtually peel back the layers of sediment and vegetation. Revealing two ancient cities, much larger than previously imagined, built 2,000 metres above sea level. The finding of these urban centres, called Tashbulak and Tugunbulak, at such high altitudes, may mean that highland areas may have played a more important role in medieval trade than previously thought. Read the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158…

City, Good Ideas, New Whitewater

Hurrah! List of Reassuring Things in Whitewater, 2024

by  • 

Here’s the first annual FREE WHITEWATER list of reassuring things in Whitewater. (It’s a companion to the eighteenth annual Boo! List of Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2024.) The list runs in alphabetical order.  ALDI.  This administration brought ALDI. Whitewater wanted a supermarket and the new administration brought one. Well done. The old guard mucked around for…

City, Holiday

Boo! Scariest Things in Whitewater, 2024

by  • 

Here’s the eighteenth annual FREE WHITEWATER list of the scariest things in Whitewater. (The 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 editions are available for comparison.) The list runs in reverse order, from mildly scary to truly frightening. 10. Crazed Foxes. For many years, I’ve warned the…

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy, Immigration, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.17.24: Mass Deportation Would Be Economically ($1,000,000,000,000) Devastating

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:11, and sunset is 6:08, for 10 hours, 57 minutes of daytime. The moon is full, with 100 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM, and the Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1781, British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders at the Battle (Siege) of Yorktown:

The British Prime Minister, Lord North, is reported to have exclaimed “Oh God, it’s all over” when told of the defeat.[87] Three months after the battle, a motion to end “further prosecution of offensive warfare on the continent of North America” – effectively a no confidence motion – passed in the British House of Commons. Lord North and his government resigned.

Anti-immigrant rhetoric often proposes with mass deportation, although in neither Wisconsin nor Whitewater is there majority support for that extreme approach. See The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night and Wisconsin Polling on Immigration.

Mass deportation would be a moral failure, as wholesale detention and dispossession would be an ethic cleansing abhorrent to the reasonable & civilized. It would, secondarily, be an economic catastrophe for America.

In a review of mass deportation, Eric Boehm @ Reason writes Trump’s Deportation Plan Would Cost Nearly $1 Trillion (‘And it would wreck the economy’):

The governmental infrastructure required to arrest, process, and remove 13 million undocumented immigrants would cost nearly $1 trillion over 10 years and would deal a “devastating” hit to economic growth, according to a report published last week by the American Immigration Council (AIC). The think tank estimates that a mass deportation plan would shrink America’s gross domestic product by at least 4.2 percent, due to the loss of workers in industries already struggling to find enough labor.

Trump has promised to create a “deportation force” to round up undocumented immigrants and eject them from the country. This would entail targeting two groups: the roughly 11 million people who lacked permanent legal status as of 2022 (that’s the most recent number from the American Community Survey) and the estimated 2.3 million people who have entered the country without legal status since January 2023 (that figure come from the Department of Homeland Security).

The notion that the native born would fill jobs and gaps is false, as Boehm writes:

The costs of mass deportation would rebound into the economy in several ways. The economy would shrink and federal tax revenues would decline. The construction industry, where an estimated 14 percent of workers are undocumented migrants, would be particularly hard hit, but the effects would be felt throughout the economy.

“Removing that labor would disrupt all forms of construction across the nation, from homes to businesses to basic infrastructure,” the AIC notes. “As industries suffer, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-born workers could lose their jobs.”

That’s an important point. Immigration restrictionists often assume that deporting millions of undocumented workers would allow more Americans to fill those jobs, but the economy is not a zero-sum game. A shrinking economy would be bad news for many workers who aren’t directly impacted by Trump’s deportation plan.

The AIC’s estimates are generally in line with the estimates made earlier this year by analysts at the Penn Wharton Budget Center (PWBM), a fiscal policy think tank housed at the University of Pennsylvania. “The costs of the former president’s plan to deport the more than 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. today could easily reach more than $1 trillion over 10 years, before taking into account the labor costs necessary for such a project or the unforeseen consequences of reducing the labor supply by such drastic amounts over a short period,” reported Marketwatch, which requested the PWBM estimate.

Of the AIC report, see Mass Deportation Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy.

Mass deportation would be morally reprehensible and economically devastating.

Commuter distracted by phone survives close call with train:

A commuter distracted by their phone survived a close call with an oncoming train in Buenos Aires.

City, Daily Bread, Immigration, Wisconsin

Daily Bread for 10.14.24: The Curious Case of the ‘Invasion’ that Didn’t Bark in the Night

by  • 

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 53. Sunrise is 7:07, and sunset is 6:13, for 11 hours, 5 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous, with 87.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning & Architectural Review Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1947,  Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to exceed the speed of sound.

Whitewater is a beautiful city, there is no better place to live, and I hope that more people of all kinds would join us here.

Some weeks ago, Steve Cortes, a rightwing nativist from far away, mentioned online that he had visited Whitewater.

I thought at the time: what would this tumbledown1 nativist have to contribute to Whitewater?

Well, now we know: a seventeen-minute video entitled Heartland Invasion: Cortes Investigates.

This is the Curious Case of the Invasion that Didn’t Bark in the Night.

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story from his Sherlock Holmes series, Silver Blaze2, Holmes discerns a critical clue in the disappearance of racehorse Silver Blaze:

[Inspector Gregory] “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
[Sherlock Holmes] “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
[Gregory] “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
[Holmes] “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The dog’s silence tells Holmes something significant about the scene.

Cortes, in seventeen minutes3, describes Whitewater’s situation as “turned upside down by globalism,” and that Whitewater might as well be “on banks of the freaking Rio Grande River,” etc.

If all this were true, as an invasion, more than one woman in her out-of-city house, two men at a picnic table, and one man in a bar would have been visible in protest for these many years. That hasn’t happened here.

One would have to believe that Whitewater’s fifteen-thousand residents, excited and demonstrative over Warhawks and Packers, over the Fourth of July and dozens of community gatherings, didn’t care enough about their own physical safety for several years.

The concern about whether the police force is overworked (fair enough, that can be fixed with hiring) is separate from the lie that Whitewater is dangerous place from immigrants (it’s not). The serious misunderstanding was thinking that entreaties as crafted at the time to increase staffing would not be exploited by out-of-the-city nativists exaggerating and lying about dangers from newcomers4.

As one began, so one concludes: Whitewater is a beautiful city, there is no better place to live, and I hope that more people of all kinds would join us here.

A palate cleanser with something better than Cortes will ever produce. Silver Blaze: A Classic Sherlock Holmes Mystery – Full Audiobook:

  1. Cortes’s career arc points downward: CNBC, Fox, Newsmax, Trumpist, then a DeSantis man, then Trump again when DeSantis went bust, and now a would-be leader of a laughable ‘labor group’ that has only a few as members. ↩︎
  2. Silver Blaze is one the of best of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. ↩︎
  3. The video is lightweight and overwrought. An editorial in WhitewaterWise aptly describes it as a political infomercial rather than a documentary. Yes, certainly so. See WhitewaterWise Our Take: You are what you digest; Left or right, it’s important to consume with clarity. ↩︎
  4. On the Johnson-Steil press conference see The Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference. On advice from FREE WHITEWATER to consider staffing after the 2024 election to avoid politicization (posted 12.4.23) see More on the 11.21 Council Session (“There’s sure to be a desire, from city staff and the department, to address all of this now. Choosing among justifications, however, has political implications. How to present a referendum is a matter that can be addressed when the city is closer to a vote (likely spring 2025). 2025 may seem close, but there’s plenty of time.”) There should have been no doubt whatever that the residents of this city would and will support a referendum for additional officers. I have been a sometime critic of past policing in this city, and yet I would support (and can see that my fellow residents would support) a staffing referendum to boost headcount. See also In Support of Whitewater’s Fire & EMS Referendum and Fire & Rescue, Whitewater’s Most Important Public Policy Accomplishment of the Last Generation. ↩︎

America, City, Daily Bread, Economy

Daily Bread for 10.10.24: National Inflation Rate Falls Again

by  • 

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 73. Sunrise is 7:03, and sunset is 6:19, for 11 hours, 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 48 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Board of Zoning Appeals meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1985,  US Navy aircraft intercept an Egyptian airliner carrying the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking, and force it to land in Italy.

Christopher Rugaber reports US inflation reaches lowest point since February 2021, though some price pressures remain:

Inflation in the United States dropped last month to its lowest point since it first began surging more than three years ago, adding to a spate of encouraging economic news in the closing weeks of the presidential race. 

Consumer prices rose just 2.4% in September from a year earlier, down from 2.5% in August, and the smallest annual rise since February 2021. Measured from month to month, prices increased 0.2% from August to September, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the same as in the previous month.

These favorable national measures are beneficial throughout the county.

Go ahead, Whitewater, make the most of these better times. Take someone’s recommendation and turn the page.

Nearly One Hundred — 100! — Raccoons Surround Seattle-Area Woman’s House:

City, Daily Bread, Humor, School District

Daily Bread for 10.6.24: Scenes Clever, Dull, and Clever

by  • 

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 75. Sunrise is 6:58, and sunset is 6:26, for 11 hours, 28 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 12.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Run for Trey 5K Fun Run takes place today (registration open at 8 AM, race at 10 AM, at Treyton’s Field of Dreams, 504 W Starin Road in Whitewater.

On this day in 2010, Instagram, a mainstream photo-sharing application, launches.

Consider three vignettes on humor: a prank, a response to it, and a contemporary rendition of puns. These vignettes are respectively clever, dull, and clever.

The Prank: Students have for generations strewn toilet paper into trees. The prank is part of Americana. It’s time-honored and harmless. One such TP mission took place recently on the grounds of Whitewater High School.

Clever, and in keeping with American culture.

The Response: Whitewater’s high-school principal and athletic director rode around on a golf cart, with a mechanical claw, picking up pieces of toilet paper, and later posing for photographs.

There’s a backstory to the recent Whitewater incident. This same principal, Brent Mansky, only a year ago was accused in his hometown of Williams Bay of pursuing and tacking a teenager for trying to place toilet paper on Mansky’s house1.

Whitewater Principal Mansky, after the recent Whitewater High toilet papering, gave a statement to the Banner, a publication of the Whitewater Community Foundation:

Principal Brent Mansky and Athletic Director Justin Crandall displayed no irritation while cruising the campus in a golf cart to retrieve paper from the lawn on Friday afternoon. “They have to learn to do it better,” Mansky told The Banner. Noting how the perpetrators seemed to hit each tree only once, he continued, “Next year we’re going to make it into a competition between the classes; each grade will be assigned a section. They’ll have to clean up what’s on the lawn by Friday evening.”

Consider that statement, in light of Mansky’s past overwrought and under-thought conduct in Williams Bay. His present remarks are humorless and, truly, backwards. Humor, if any at all, after his past conduct should have been contrite and self-effacing (well, I had that coming, etc.) Instead, Manksy’s reply brittlely repeats part of his past mistake: a false projection of strength (“they have to learn to do it better”) like the false strength of turning off his yard camera while waiting for minor children to come into his yard.

His humor’s backwards because his perspective is backwards.

The Banner‘s subject line, “WHS Principal Takes Homecoming TP in Stride: “They have to learn how to do it better” is obtuse. That’s not taking this harmless prank in stride. If Mansky took it in stride, he wouldn’t be projecting demands for more onto his pranksters. He would be self-deprecating. More likely: this is an embarrassed man who found a soft-touch staff member at the Banner to salve his embarrassment.

Here’s a saying that describes this local effort: can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. It’s a dull and humorless effort.

A Contemporary Rendition of Puns. I’ll offer a palate cleanser by way of a truly humorous rendition of old-school puns2. I’m not much for puns, yet listen to a talented Instagrammer, contemporary in style and delivery, make something old vibrant again:


Now that’s clever3: someone of a new generation (about the age of my daughter-in-law, I’d guess), through fashion and manner, transforms the old into the new (and, I’d say, even better than before).

Delightful.

  1. Rachael Perry of WKOW reported after the incident that Bodycam video released after Whitewater principal accused of tackling teen: “”When they came up through my property they started chucking the f toilet paper in my yard,” Mansky said. “I got one kid,” he told the officer. The officer asked what Mansky meant by that, and he replied “I got his hoodie from him.” Mansky later admits to the officer that he watched as the teens were TP-ing area houses and waited for them to approach his. He said he ran after them and tackled one to the ground. That’s when he explained he got the sweatshirt from the teen. The officer asked Mansky if his cameras caught the teens on video. He replied, “I turned them off so they wouldn’t get activated when those little d*** heads came rolling through”….One teen told officers Mansky tackled him to the ground. “He gets me into the headlock, and then I slip again,” the teen said. He claims Mansky stood over him before grabbing him by the neck. “He picked me up from my neck and started strangling me,” he said.” ↩︎
  2. Serendipity and Synchronicity are with me: Although it’s not my normal fare of cat & nature accounts, the Instragram algorithm recommended this account to me only a few days ago. ↩︎
  3. The account’s tagline is invitingly self-aware: “If you don’t roll your eyes, what are we even doing here?” ↩︎

City, Film

Film: Tuesday, October 8th, 1:00 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Matinee

by  • 

Tuesday, October 8th at 1:00 PM, there will be a showing of Matinee @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building: Comedy/Drama Rated PG 1 hour, 39 minutes (1993) Remember “The Fly,” “The Mole People,” and “The Alligator Man”? In a deft spoof of 50’s-60’s horror films, John Goodman portrays a B-movie producer of…

City, Daily Bread, University

Daily Bread for 10.1.24: Keep Going, UW-Whitewater

by  • 

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 66. Sunrise is 6:52, and sunset is 6:35, for 11 hours, 42 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 1.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1908,  Ford Model T automobiles are offered for sale.

The Universities of Wisconsin (UW System) writes that UW-Whitewater welcomes 20,000 visitors for summer programming:

Thousands of people visited the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater during the summer of 2024 as the Whitewater and Rock County campuses hosted scores of events between the spring and fall semesters.

A total of 6,330 campers and 700 camp counselors participated in the university’s 67 summer programs. Another 5,538 people were served through events run by external partners, including the Special Olympics Wisconsin Summer Games and the Drum Corps International Whitewater Classic.

UW-Whitewater’s First Year Experience office welcomed 2,182 students and 2,493 guests for Student Orientation, Advising, and Registration (SOAR). The Department of Admissions held three preview days and 126 campus tours over the summer for prospective students and their family members and guests, attracting another 3,279 visitors to campus.

“It was an incredible summer at UW-Whitewater, and I’m so proud that nearly 20,000 people visited our campuses,” said Chancellor Corey A. King. “We have a vibrant community, and it was on full display across the wonderful plethora of events we hosted. I’d like to thank our students, event volunteers, faculty, and staff, including our camps and conferences office, for fostering a welcoming, inclusive environment for learning and engagement.”

Keep going: Whitewater is made happier and more prosperous when she has visitors.

Night Sky Oct 2024 Events:

As in years past, the Night sky October is meteor season – there are seven meteor showers that reach peak activity during the month! There are also chances to see asteroids, dwarf planets, and other planets in our solar system too. Also there will be a Annular solar eclipse on October 2. Be sure to mark your calendar for October 21st, the peak of the Orionids meteor shower and highlight of the month.