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.
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.” ↩︎
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. ↩︎
The account’s tagline is invitingly self-aware: “If you don’t roll your eyes, what are we even doing here?” ↩︎
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:57, and sunset is 6:28, for 11 hours, 31 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 7.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater Pride will hold its 4th annual Pride Rally from 11 AM to 2 PM at the Cravath Lakefront.
On this day in 1921, the World Series is first broadcast on radio (the last experimental best-five-of-nine series, which the Giants won in five games to three over the Yankees).
The U.S. economy added 254,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.1%, blowing away expectations. NBC News’ Christine Romans and editor-in-chief at Investopedia Caleb Silver break down the promising numbers from the September jobs report.
No reason for Whitewater to waste today’s good national economy on yesteryear’s old–guard fumblers.
Michael T. Miller is a big fan of the Indiana Jones films. His home in Sheboygan houses a vast collection of Indy memorabilia — from movie props to signed Harrison Ford photos — spanning decades of fandom. The quest to collect it all, sparked by early childhood memories, has taken Miller and his wife Martha across Wisconsin and beyond.
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 low–budget monster flicks, sneak-previewing his latest schlocky monster mash of a movie at a Key West theater — on the weekend of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. A real hoot! Wait ‘til you see “The Mant”! (half man/half ant)…
Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 70. Sunrise is 6:56, and sunset is 6:29, for 11 hours, 34 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 2.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1957, Sputnik 1 becomes the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.
There’s no one who now knows, truly, what will be the outcome of the 2024 presidential race, in Wisconsin or anywhere else. It’s enough to take a position, first to hold that position against opposition, and thereafter to advance from it against opposition. One watches and acts without foreknowledge of the final result. A letter yesterday is like that, as Erik Gunn reports Wisconsin GOP group launches pro-Harris campaign with open letter:
Two dozen Wisconsin Republicans, including former lawmakers, other former elected officials and a GOP sitting district attorney, have signed an open letter declaring their support for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in her campaign for president and condemning the Republican nominee former President Donald Trump.
The Harris campaign released the letter early Thursday, describing it as the product of months of outreach by the campaign and by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to Republicans.
“We, the undersigned, are Republicans from across Wisconsin who bring the same message: Donald Trump does not align with Wisconsin values,” the letter says. “To ensure our democracy and our economy remain strong for another four years, we must elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the White House.”
The letter was released as part of the launch of a formal Wisconsin Republicans for Harris-Walz organization, with just over a month to go before the Nov. 5 election.
“Wisconsin Republicans for Harris-Walz will play a pivotal role in facilitating Republican-to-Republican voter contact,” said the Harris-Walz campaign announcement Thursday. Through phone banking and networking with “Republican organizations, businesses, and community groups,” the GOP-oriented group will focus “in part on the more than 120,000 Wisconsinites who voted against Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year,” the campaign announcement said.
Trump’s Wisconsin primary opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, finished with more than 16% of the vote in Ozaukee, 12% in Washington and 14% in Waukesha counties.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 6:55, and sunset is 6:31, for 11 hours, 37 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent, with 0.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
There will be a Home Buyer’s Educational Event at the Community Engagement Center, 1260 W Main St. in Whitewater from 6 to 7:30 PM.
On this day in 1952, the United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon in the Montebello Islands, Western Australia, to become the world’s third nuclear power.
The Marquette Law School Poll, a respected survey of political preferences, issued its latest findings yesterday. Here are some key results of their latest work:
New Marquette Law School Poll of Wisconsin voters finds Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris supported by 52% and Republican former President Donald Trump supported by 48% among registered voters. Among likely voters, it is also 52% for Harris and 48% for Trump. #mulawpoll
In the U.S. Senate race, Sen. Tammy Baldwin is supported by 53% to Eric Hovde’s 46% among registered voters. Among likely voters, the results are the same. #mulawpoll
In the Senate race, including independent candidates, it is Baldwin 51% and Hovde 45%. Phil Anderson, the “Disrupt the Corruption” party candidate, gets 1%, and Thomas Leager, of the “America First” party, gets 1%, among both registered and likely voters. #mulawpoll
I’ve reported poll results before, in these races and others, and yet one should be clear with oneself: these are no more than possible descriptions of sentiment at those brief moments when respondents answered a pollster’s questions.
With differences between the candidates so stark, and thus stakes so high, the course both practical and moral is simply to carry on, march on, and slog on in support of one’s candidates.
If ever one’s conscience were to be one’s guide, now’s the time.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 71. Sunrise is 6:53, and sunset is 6:33, for 11 hours, 39 minutes of daytime. The moon is new, with none percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater will hold a Healthy Lakes Summit today at 5 PM.
On this day in 1980, Michael Myers becomes the first member of either chamber of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War.
Readers may recall that last week, Wausau Mayor Doug Diny removed “[a] drop box, located outside of City Hall, on Sunday and distributed a picture of himself doing it while wearing worker’s gloves and a hard hat. Diny is a conservative opponent to drop boxes. He insists he did nothing wrong.” See from FREE WHITEWATERPerformative Voting Disruption in Wausau.
The Wausau city clerk said the box was available outside of city hall “for residents to submit absentee ballots, payments, and other important city requests as was intended.”
Mayor Doug Diny removed the drop box on Sept. 22 without consulting with the clerk, who has the authority under a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling legalizing drop boxes to make one available. They are not mandatory in the state.
Emphasis added. Wausau’s major is not a king1. He’s not even a duke, marquess, earl, viscount, or baron. The lawful authority over drop boxes was not his; he acted outside legal authority.
The law assigns the roles of public officials, and in a free society of limited government they do not (and should not) have more authority than the law allows.
A reminder to what’s left of Old Whitewater: this city did not have a mayor during your time, and if not a mayor then neither did Whitewater have a worthy and legitimate ‘unofficial mayor.’ When a few once declared someone an ‘unofficial mayor,’ the term was either a false & arrogant boast or an implicit insult against illegitimate overreaching. Those who thought the term praiseworthy confused praise with condemnation. ↩︎
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 80. Sunrise is 6:51, and sunset is 6:36, for 11 hours, 45 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 4.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1859, Abraham Lincoln delivers remarks to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society at the Wisconsin State Fair. The last paragraph of that address remains is both haunting and hopeful:
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.
Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:50, and sunset is 6:38, for 11 hours, 48 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 9.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
The Prairie du Chien Area Arts Center, where Trump held an indoor rally yesterday, is 142 miles by road from Whitewater. Not far at all. Whitewater has had a bitter taste of what grandstanding and lying against immigrants can mean. SeeThe Local Press Conference that Was Neither Local Nor a Press Conference. We are fortunate that we have not experienced even worse lies about our city. SeeIt Might Have Been Us.
Trump: "I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members. We're going to liberate our country." pic.twitter.com/EgsrwuAhQh
1. Trump lies about conditions in Wisconsin when he says that “I will liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion of murderers, rapists, hoodlums, drug dealers, thugs, and vicious gang members.”
Wisconsin is not beset this way; Whitewater is not beset this way. Whitewater, in particular, is a beautiful place to live. Indeed, I wish more people would move here. There’s no better place to live.
Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically about criminal offenders who entered the US during the Biden-Harris administration; in reality, the figures are about offenders who entered the US over multiple decades, including during the Trump administration. And Trump falsely claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.
Trump: "You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You're gonna lose your culture." pic.twitter.com/i4h4Q2ZDhN
2. Trump insists “You gotta get these people back where they came from. You have no choice. You’re gonna lose your culture.” Which culture? He’s speaking to his audience, not all Americans. Many have forefathers who came here generations ago, before the Revolution, whether willingly or in enslavement — Trump’s culture is not their culture. He, himself, looks — and is — unacculturated. It is instead many newcomers from so many parts of the world who look — and are — properly acculturated. The nation benefits from their presence.
3. Trump insists that “these people [immigrants] are animals.” Immigrants aren’t animals; Trump’s crowd wants to believe immigrants are animals. Trump’s audiences feel better about themselves if they’re given his permission to feel worse about others.
"Oh, there's a fly. I wonder where the fly came from" — Trump suggests migrants are to blame for the fact a fly is bothering him during his speech pic.twitter.com/PULwkCPPVv
4. Trump notices a fly in the room (“Oh, there’s a fly. I wonder where the fly came from”) and implies that immigrants brought the fly. There were no immigrants in the room, so perhaps that insect’s presence has another, more proximate cause.
5. Trump pits racial minority against racial minority: “They’re taking all of our Black population’s jobs.” Trump has a long history of racial discrimination in his businesses; his professed regard for Black workers is disingenuous.
Trump: "And then I have to sit there and listen to her bullshit last night. And who puts it on? Fox News. And they shouldn't be allowed to put it on." pic.twitter.com/eayl6F7piR
6. Trump whines about Kamala Harris’s border remarks from Friday that “then I have to sit there and listen to her bullshit last night. And who puts it on? Fox News. And they shouldn’t be allowed to put it on.” He’s a weak & vain man who wants to talk but cannot brook the contrary speech of others. (Kamala Harris’s thorough assessment of immigration is available at Harris delivers campaign remarks in Arizona after visit to border.See also FREE WHITEWATER, VP Kamala Harris (and Republicans & Trump) on Border Security.)
7. Trump remarks that “global warming doesn’t work anymore, because it’s actually cooling.” He confuses a change in terminology with a change in environmental forces, and fallaciously implies that the former negates the veracity of the latter. Trump plays to the willing, delighted ignorance of his audience.
Trump: But outside, we have thousands and thousands of people. 40 to 50,000 people at least out there.. It looked like when Lindbergh landed in New York., Do you remember that? Thousands of people.. they’re probably leaving and walking home pic.twitter.com/gFG8T4gq6T
8. Trump contends that there were “40 to 50,000 people at least out there… It looked like when Lindbergh landed in New York. Do you remember that? Thousands of people… they’re probably leaving and walking home.” The entire city of Prairie du Chien has a population of only about 5,500. There were never forty to fifty thousand people outside. Indeed, the ordinary venue at which he spoke holds only 766 at capacity.
A small point, by the way, in light of his other remarks: Lindbergh did not land in New York — he landed in Paris.
Trump has his history, like so much else, backwards.
Saturday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 77. Sunrise is 6:49, and sunset is 6:40, for 11 hours, 51 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 15.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1781, French and American forces backed by a French fleet begin the Battle of Yorktown.
Trump: I sabotaged the bipartisan deal to secure the border because “it made it much better for the opposing side”. (February 2024) pic.twitter.com/3njkH7ghkS
— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) July 28, 2024
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:48, and sunset is 6:42, for 11 hours, 54 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 23.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Believe in election conspiracies long enough (like the notion that ballot drop boxes lead to fraud), run for office on that theory, and soon you’ll be mugging for the camera while carting away a ballot drop box.
In this photo provided by Wausau Mayor Doug Diny, Diny uses a dolly to remove the city’s lone drop box from in front of City Hall in Wausau, Wis., on Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (Doug Diny via AP)
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin district attorney said Thursday that her office is pursuing an investigation into the removal of an absentee ballot drop box by the mayor of Wausau.
Mayor Doug Diny removed the drop box, located outside of City Hall, on Sunday and distributed a picture of himself doing it while wearing worker’s gloves and a hard hat. Diny is a conservative opponent to drop boxes. He insists he did nothing wrong.
The drop box was locked and no ballots were in it. The city clerk notified Marathon County District Attorney Theresa Wetzsteon and she said in an email on Thursday that she is requesting an official investigation with the assistance of the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
Wetzsteon said she was waiting to hear back from DOJ on her request.
A spokesperson for DOJ did not immediately return a message Thursday.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers weighed in on Thursday, calling the removal of the drop box “wrong.” Evers said it should be restored “immediately”:
“Drop box voting is safe, secure, and legal,” Evers posted on the social media platform X. “As elected officials, we should be working to make it easier—not harder—for every eligible Wisconsinite to cast their ballot. That’s democracy.”
Diny wears a hard hat in his posed publicity photo. It’s a smart move — you never know when an incontinent pigeon might be flying overhead. Honest to goodness — he looks ridiculous to the sensible, and sensible only to the ridiculous.
The International Space Station flew directly over Hurricane Helene on Sept. 26, 2024. Full Story: https://www.space.com/hurricane-helen… Major impacts from inland flooding is expected along the path of Helene well after landfall, according to statement from NOAA. Credit: Space.com | footage courtesy: NASA | edited by Steve Spaleta (https://x.com/stevespaleta)
