Sunday in town will be cloudy in the morning, but sunny in the afternoon, with a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset 4:26, for 9h 29m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 84.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Friday’s FW poll asked readers how much snowfall they thought Whitewater would get over this weekend. We easily passed the ‘more than 6 inches’ choice (that 25% of respondents picked).
On this day in 1963, America experiences a tragic loss and a depressing statistic of her politics: Pres. Kennedy becomes the fourth U.S. president to be assassinated:
On this day in 1963, the nation is shocked by the assassination of its president, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was riding in an open car in Dallas, Texas, when a gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at him from an upper-level window of a nearby building. Kennedy was pronounced dead upon arrival at a Dallas hospital. He was the fourth president in U.S. history to be assassinated….
In 1865, Abraham Lincoln became the first president to be assassinated when he was shot by a Confederate sympathizer while attending a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. In 1881, James Garfield was shot by a disgruntled federal employee and lived 80 days before succumbing to his wounds. William McKinley was killed by an anarchist in 1901. Several other presidents have survived or narrowly avoided assassination attempts. Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest in 1981, but survived. Gerald Ford escaped two assassination attempts. An attempt on Andrew Jackson’s life in 1835 was foiled when both of the gunman’s two pistols failed to discharge properly.
We’ll have continuing snowfall in the morning and cloudy skies this afternoon, with a daytime high of thirty. Sunrise is 6:54 and sunset 4:26, for 9h 31m 50s. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 75.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
This month, Théo Sanson probably set a world slackline record. What’s that like? It’s like this —
The first public demonstration of a balloon by the Montgolfier brothers took place in June 1783, and was followed by an untethered flight of a sheep, a cockerel and a duck from the front courtyard of the Palace of Versailles on 19 September. The French KingLouis XVI decided that the first manned flight would contain two condemned criminals, but de Rozier enlisted the help of theDuchess de Polignac to support his view that the honour of becoming first balloonists should belong to someone of higher status, and d’Arlandes agreed to accompany him. The King was persuaded to permit d’Arlandes and de Rozier to become the first pilots.
After several tethered tests to gain some experience of controlling the balloon, de Rozier and d’Arlandes made their first untethered flight in a Montgolfier hot air balloon on 21 November 1783, taking off at 1:54 p.m. from the garden of the Château de la Muette in the Bois de Boulogne, in the presence of the King. Also watching was U.S. envoy, Benjamin Franklin. Their 25-minute flight travelled slowly about 5½ miles (some 9 km) to the southeast, attaining an altitude of 3,000 feet, before returning to the ground at the Butte-aux-Cailles, then on the outskirts of Paris. After the flight, the pilots drank champagne to celebrate the flight, a tradition carried on by balloonists to this day.
D’Arlandes proposed a flight to cross the English Channel in 1784, but the plan came to nothing.
Friday will grow cloudy, with a daytime high of forty, and snow beginning in the evening. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset is 4:27, for 9h 33m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 64.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
The American whaler Essex, which hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts, is attacked by an 80-ton sperm whale 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America.
The 238-ton Essex was in pursuit of sperm whales, specifically the precious oil and bone that could be derived from them, when an enraged bull whale rammed the ship twice and capsized the vessel. The 20 crew members escaped in three open boats, but only five of the men survived the harrowing 83-day journey to the coastal waters of South America, where they were picked up by other ships. Most of the crew resorted to cannibalism during the long journey, and at one point men on one of the long boats drew straws to determine which of the men would be shot in order to provide sustenance for the others. Three other men who had been left on a desolate Pacific island were saved later.
The first capture of a sperm whale by an American vessel was in 1711, marking the birth of an important American industry that commanded a fleet of more than 700 ships by the mid 18th century. Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick(1851) was inspired in part by the story of the Essex.
(Of the sinking of the Essex, there is a major motion picture to be released this December, In the Heart of the Sea.)
Here’s Puzzability‘s final game in its Partners in Rhyme series:
This Week’s Game — November 16-20
Partners in Rhyme
Here’s our business plan. For each day, we started with the name of a company or brand, past or present, of the form ___ & ___. The day’s clues lead to two answer words (around the ampersand) that rhyme with the company or brand.
Example:
Beach collectible & A, E, I, O, U, or sometimes Y
Answer:
Bell & Howell (shell & vowel)
What to Submit:
Submit the company or brand and the rhyming words (as “Bell & Howell (shell & vowel)” in the example) for your answer.
So a local paper complains that a local school superintendent won’t comply with a public records request, won’t put the paper on a media contact list, and simply ‘must’ improve communications.
A few points —
1. Compliance with a public records request isn’t a ‘communications’ issue; it’s a legal issue, of rights of residents under Wisconsin law.
2. Perhaps there would be a greater willingness of public officials to comply with the Public Records Law (Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31-19.39) if newspapers hadn’t made clear that they’re too weak or too miserly to challenge officials’ non-compliance at law.
3. A newspaper can say all it wants that it’s the ‘leading media company’ of its area, but that doesn’t mean much in a diverse media environment in which newspapers are doomed (as almost everyone knows them to be).
In any event, social media messaging in many communities – by itself – vastly outstrips the reach of any media company. Sorry, gentlemen, there is no ‘leading’ force anymore.
4. When a resident or publisher thinks about pursuing an issue in which a public records request might be needed, he or she should consider what might be next if officials slow-walk, respond only in part, or simply deny the lawful request. One would prefer that local officials felt a duty other than self-interest disguised as public interest. What one would prefer describes – less and less – the environment in which we live.
Residents, bloggers, and community groups that seek information under a public records law should be prepared to defend that request at law. One hopes that won’t be necessary, but rights are more than hopes, and so one should think ahead, even before a request is submitted: what’s next at law if officials obstruct this request? See, along these lines, Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal.
That’s a big commitment, but a commitment one should be prepared to see through.
At the New York Times, there’s an interactive holiday meal planner:
Tell us how many guests are coming, their dietary needs and your culinary dreams. In return, we’ll offer recipe ideas and tips for an extraordinary meal….
Thursday will be partly cloudy and windy with a high of forty-two. Sunrise is 6:52 and sunset 4:28 for 9h 35m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 52.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Police and Fire Commission meets this evening at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1863, Pres. Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address as part of a dedication ceremony for a national ceremony in that city. The New York Times hardly mentions Lincoln or his speech in its account of the dedication, leaving us with confirmation that (then and now) the press often overlooks what’s truly significant and memorable:
The ceremonies attending the dedication of the National Cemetery commenced this morning by a grand military and civic display, under command of Maj. Gen. Coucs. The line of march was taken up at 10 o’clock, and the procession marched through the principal streets to the Cemetery, where the military formed in line and saluted the President. At 11-1/4 the head of the procession arrived at the main stand. The President and members of the Cabinet, together with the chief military and civic dignitaries, took position on the stand. The President seated himself between Mr. Seward and Mr. Everett after a reception marked with the respect and perfect silence due to the solemnity of the occasion, every man in the immense gathering uncovering on his appearance….
Mr. Everett then commenced the delivery of his oration, which was listened to with marked attention throughout. [The oration of Mr. Everett will be found on our second page.]
Here’s Puzzability‘s Partners in Rhyme puzzle for Thursday:
This Week’s Game — November 16-20
Partners in Rhyme
Here’s our business plan. For each day, we started with the name of a company or brand, past or present, of the form ___ & ___. The day’s clues lead to two answer words (around the ampersand) that rhyme with the company or brand.
Example:
Beach collectible & A, E, I, O, U, or sometimes Y
Answer:
Bell & Howell (shell & vowel)
What to Submit:
Submit the company or brand and the rhyming words (as “Bell & Howell (shell & vowel)” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, November 19
Causes to jump in surprise & insurance adjuster’s cases
Wednesday in town will be windy and rainy with a high of sixty. Sunrise is 6:51 and sunset is 4:28, for 9h 37m 42s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 41.9% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets today at 5 PM.
On this day in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to deliver a short speech at the dedication of a cemetery of soldiers killed during the battle there on July 1 to July 3, 1863. The address Lincoln gave in Gettysburg became one of the most famous speeches in American history.
Lincoln had given much thought to what he wanted to say at Gettysburg, but nearly missed his chance to say it. Shortly before the trip, Lincoln’s son, Tad, became ill with a fever. The president and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln were no strangers to juvenile illness: They had already lost two sons to disease. Prone to fits of hysteria, Mary Lincoln panicked when her husband prepared to leave. However, Lincoln felt the opportunity to speak at Gettysburg and present his defense of the war was too important to miss, so he boarded a train and headed to Pennsylvania.
Despite his son’s illness, Lincoln was in good spirits during the journey. He was accompanied by an entourage that included Secretary of State William Seward, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, Interior Secretary John Usher, Lincoln’s personal secretaries John Hay and John Nicolay, several members of the diplomat corps, some foreign visitors, a Marine band, and a military escort.
When Lincoln arrived in Gettysburg, he was handed a telegram that lifted his spirits: Tad was feeling much better. Lincoln enjoyed an evening dinner and a serenade by the Fifth New York Artillery Band before he retired to finalize his famous Gettysburg Address.
On this date federal agents and county deputies raided Otto Matschke’s home, north of Beloit, and seized an illegal still and 300 gallons of contraband moonshine. [Source: Janesville Gazette November 19, 1930, p.1]
Here’s the midweek game from Puzzability, the third in the Partners in Rhyme series:
This Week’s Game — November 16-20
Partners in Rhyme
Here’s our business plan. For each day, we started with the name of a company or brand, past or present, of the form ___ & ___. The day’s clues lead to two answer words (around the ampersand) that rhyme with the company or brand.
Example:
Beach collectible & A, E, I, O, U, or sometimes Y
Answer:
Bell & Howell (shell & vowel)
What to Submit:
Submit the company or brand and the rhyming words (as “Bell & Howell (shell & vowel)” in the example) for your answer.
Post 46 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
In this post, I’ll offer questions based on the 9.17.15 remarks of Whitewater’s city manager, Cameron Clapper, about a waste importation program. His remarks were unforced (and possibly scripted in response to a question known to him), and thus offer a fair assessment of city planning on this topic. Yesterday, in Post 45, I posted a transcription of his comments. Today, I will pose questions in the order of his comments.
Today’s questions begin with 270. All the questions in this series may be found in the Question Bin. (Questions that are similar to earlier ones reveal how little responsive, relevant information the municipal government has provided about this project.)
Q: The wastewater treatment plant, there has been some discussion in the community about the fact that originally there was a fairly ambitious plan about possibly importing waste from outside the community and processing it there. That’s now been scaled back but there is still an element of that in the proposal.
270. The questioner, a member of Whitewater’s local government, helpfully says that there is ‘an element’ of waste importation in this program. What does he think that element is? Isn’t that element six years of waste importation, with an assumption of thirty-thousand in fees received from waste haulers dumping waste into the digester?
Whitewater City Manager Clapper: Yep.
Q (continues): Would you like to address that in terms of the concern for environmental issues and the like?
271. The question asks about ‘environmental issues and the like.’ Shouldn’t environmental issues deserve greater attention that a sexagenarian’s dismissive inclusion of them as ‘environmental issues and the like’? What, by the way, are environmental issues if not, especially for those far younger than the questioner, health issues?
272. As I’ve written more than once that waste importation concerns fiscal, economic, environmental, health, and business culture issues for a community. Other than a question or two, and a few vendor-crafted PowerPoint slides, what can either the questioner or Whitewater’s city manager show of original work and thought on these subjects?
Clapper: Yes, I will. And I will go back just a quick second to one of these aerials of the whole facility. So, the digester complex is up in the upper right corner of the screen. And that is where, we, I already mentioned the process and the methane gas byproduct that could be utilized more effectively.
273. Why would anyone claim that the methane ‘could be utilized’ when the very plan that the municipal government has put forth promises six years of actual gas savings? Despite an investment of over two-million in this part of the project, is City Manager Clapper uncertain about gas production even now?
274. Methane gas production is promised to generate significant sums in each of the initial six years of waste importation, as part of a ‘simple payback’ of the costs of importing it. Will City Manager Clapper guarantee those savings from his own salary? Much is said from city government about entrepreneurship and economic development: wouldn’t a private business have to provide assets as collateral for a project?
In addition to what we process onsite we have in the community, we have, umm, grease traps every restaurant and some other food processing places have grease traps and other traps for food waste that then gets collected by a private entity and as their traps are cleaned out and then that material is dumped somewhere. Very often that material comes to our wastewater treatment facility.
275. City Manager Clapper contends that – based on the very plan that he has proposed – waste importation from grease traps will provide a significant part this importation. Does anyone – anyone in all the world – think that local restaurants’ discarded grease will produce vast quantities of methane and tipping fees for even the ‘baby steps’ project he proposes? If some of these restaurants are – by his account – already supplying this grease to Whitewater, of what use is that quantity to the incremental waste dumping he needs to generate tipping fees, etc. for the digester?
We also have food processing plants in the area beyond just our city boundaries, but in the area, that have food waste, ah, high concentrations of byproducts from food processing, all organic material, umm, that they need a place to deposit.
276. Key question: Does City Manager Clapper contend that organic material – discarded from others – is inherently safe? Are not rotting food, human feces, animal feces, and animal carcasses also organic material? How many of those substances would he eat, touch, or willingly slip into the water table?
And so, we have currently, and I wish I had a laser pointer, maybe I can with this cursor, no, I can’t, umm, in the lower right corner of the screen our administration building, right next to the well and right through the door into the place where we have people working there is a dump spot for that waste. Which is very aromatic, to say the least [laughter from audience].
278. About the smell – a complaint that a project in Janesville, WI has elicited from many residents there: does the city manager think that increased importation will make the stench better or worse?
So, umm, and an inadequate site, any big trucks that come in have to snake through, they come down a long road by the power plant and by John’s Disposal, come in, come around down, around again, and back up to that area to dump. What we want to do is establish a more effective, efficient way for them to do that.
And so we’re looking to build a concrete pad on the north side of that digester facility that would allow, it’s actually two or three concrete pads, to address all the different types of waste that would be deposited there, and the different types of, umm, trucks or tankers that would be supplying it.
279. Isn’t a plan for stronger roads for waste haulers’ trucks, and multiple concrete pads confirmation of the size of this effort, and that it’s more than a few grease traps’ of waste?
The material, that, so that’s what we’re doing as part of this project. It’s a few hundred thousand dollars which is a lot of money. It sounds kinda, it makes me ill to say that as if it’s just 300,000 dollars, but it’s a few hundred thousand dollars out of the two-million for this facility that would allow us to have those pads. What that gives us is an opportunity to allow for additional waste to be deposited in our facility and processed.
280. How much additional waste by volume?
Umm, if that were to work, and we found that it was in high demand and the facility was able to function properly without any problems we would go on to explore in future years, five years, ten years, ah, eight years, look at doing more with the equipment inside the digester facility to incorporate the methane, the energy generated by the methane gas that we could then burn into the heating and electricity of the rest of the facility.
281. Isn’t it obvious that this is the thin-entering wedge of a much bigger program? Why, by the way, is there talk about eight or ten years, when supposedly ‘baby steps’ plan is for six?
So, originally, I think the very first time it was brought forward was all kinda one package and the idea that we would be building new digesters, which we are not doing, because we have them already, and in addition, put in all this other stuff in.
282. Why does Cameron Clapper persist in the claim that there was concern about more digesters being built, when that claim has been debunked? See, The City of Whitewater Digester Clarification That Could Use a Clarification. Isn’t it clear by now that the relevant and material concern is hauling waste into Whitewater?
We’re not doing that we’re taking it slow and easy to see if it’s even a viable thing to do.
283. Is better road for trucks and multiple pads for dumping other cities’ unwanted waste is taking it ‘slow and easy’?
But right now many communities throughout the state are switching, their, I guess their focus and mentality with treating wastewater from wastewater treatment to nutrient management, is what it’s called and basically it’s trying to derive from the byproduct of a wastewater treatment facility energy and taking advantage of that sludge and what it can do.
284. If other cities were using all their waste for their own needs, what would there be left for Whitewater? Isn’t it clear that whatever Mr. Clapper considers ‘nutrient management’ to be, it’s not other cities taking waste, but rather other cities dumping their waste in places like Whitewater?
So, umm, another part of the concern, to the question that you asked, Lynn, I think has been that we’d have these tankers with toxic waste driving through our city and dropping waste off at our wastewater treatment facility. That’s not the case.
285. What does Mr. Clapper think toxic means? (See question 277.)
Umm, I think of [sighs] a good example, umm, Hidden Valley Ranch bringing a truck load of all the cream and material that they didn’t use, for their ranch dressing. Bringing it here and dropping it off. Umm, some of those trucks are already coming through anyway whether it be through the bypass or because they have to make stops at different facilities or different buildings in this city.
286. Does Mr. Clapper possibly think that he’ll power this project from unwanted salad dressing?
So, it wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be anything we’re not already used to and it wouldn’t be toxic, umm, my children are not gonna to glow in the dark when we’re done kinds of stuff [audience laughter]. It’s high concentrations of the same material that’s already going in.
287. Do children only get sick or develop abnormally when they are exposed to substances that make them ‘glow in the dark’? In fact, isn’t it true that every child in the history of the world who grew sick or developed abnormally did so without glowing in the dark? Don’t chemicals cripple and destroy lives each day without fluorescence?
Follow up on 287: Whitewater, is this the quality of your appointed manager’s analysis and understanding?
So in order for that to work we have to evaluate every, every time someone wants to come and drop material off they would have to call ahead, and we would have to get a chemical sample and test that material before we would allow it to stay at our facility, to make sure it doesn’t damage our system and it’s not something other than what we’ve said we’ll accept.
288. What volume does Mr. Clapper expect, that someone would call ahead, and have each truck tested? How does he imagine that system to operate?
289. Isn’t the principal concern not that waste would damage the city’s industrial system, but that it would damage human systems, so to speak, of actual people?
290. Will Cameron Clapper stake his personal assets and his continued municipal employment on a promise by sworn affidavit in which he guarantees that he will provide a verifiable sample from each truckload of waste into the city for testing (by an independent party not of his exclusive selection, available for direct review by any resident), provide proof of the origin of each truckload, and provide proof of the destination of each truckload of sludge (his term, see above) that Whitewater processes? more >>
