It’s a snowy day in Whitewater, with a high temperature just above freezing.
On this day in 1868, the U.S. House impeached Pres. Andrew Johnson, who was later acquitted by the Senate.
From the Wisconsin Historical Society, a reminder that Milwaukee once had a socialist mayor, among other socialist politicians:
1972 – Socialist Leader Otto Hauser Dies
On this date former Baptist minister and Milwaukee Socialist leader, Otto Robert Hauser, died in Madison. Hauser was born in Tubingen, Germany, on May 11, 1886 and immigrated to the United States in 1906. In Chicago, he found employment with Marshall Field & Co., and attended the University of Chicago Theological Seminary.
In 1915 he accepted a call to the First German Baptist Church in Milwaukee where he remained until late 1927, when he resigned to enter politics.
In 1916 Hauser joined the Socialist Party. He held a variety of posts in the party including serving as director of the “Milwaukee Leader.” Between 1932 and 1940, Hauser was secretary to Milwaukee’s Socialist mayor, Daniel W. Hoan. In 1945 Hauser helped to organize American Relief for Germany, and served as the organization’s president from 1945 to 1951. Hauser’s fundraising efforts enabled American Relief for Germany to send approximately $3.5 million in aid. In appreciation, the German Federal Republic awarded him the Cross of Merit in 1956. [Source: University of Wisconsin–Archives Department]
Google daily puzzle tests one’s knowledge of the states, and of public policy, today: “If you go for scenic drives in the states that rank 40th, 41st, 47th and 49th in population, you will be unable to see something visible in all the other states. What won’t you see?”
Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun became the first major-league player to have a positive drug test overturned when he was informed Thursday that an arbitration panel ruled in his favor on appeal and decided against a 50-game suspension for the reigning National League most valuable player.
Many Wisconsinites have never heard of Kathleen Vinehout, a Democratic state senator representing western Wisconsin’s 31st Senate District. (Vinehout lives in tiny Alma, population 781.) She, like all her partisan senate colleagues, left the state in 2010 to prevent a quorum. She was not, and is not, as well-known as some of those who left with her.
She’s an educated woman (it’s Kathleen Vinehout, PhD.), an owner of an organic farm, and a relative newcomer to state politics (first elected to the senate in 2006).
More biographical information awaits in a column from Steve Walters of the Journal Sentinel appropriately entitled, Just Who is Kathleen Vinehout?
I’ll offer a few remarks on her delivery and appearance, and the look and feel of her campaign.
Appearance and delivery. Vinehout is a woman in her fifties, of conventional appearance. That she’s not as telegenic as Kathleen Falk is true; Vinehout lacks Falk’s elegant, finer features.
It’s just as true that Vinehout has no reason to be concerned about her appearance; on the contrary, there’s nothing of it that’s different from many other Wisconsinites. If anything, she will look familiar and reassuring to many voters. Wisconsin is not Palm Beach, nor need it be.
(More pointedly, it’s rival Kathleen Falk who looks out of place when compared to many Wisconsinites. I’ve suggested that Falk should accentuate an elegant look – Falk is better off highlighting a difference than trying to fit in.)
Vinehout looks like many Wisconsinites one meets and on whom on relies each day. One’s own preferences matter not at all; it’s simply a calculation of how readily voters will accept a candidate’s appearance. Vinehout would have no trouble statewide in this regard.
As for her delivery, it’s quite good – she speaks naturally and well. See, immediately below, a clip from Vinehout discussing why she’s running:
She will need, however, a more specific, concise message. She describes herself as genuine, and I’d say she comes across that way in the video. She’ll need, however, to use that aura of the genuine to deliver a strong, sometimes biting, message.
Her campaign website. Vinehout lacks Falk’s high-profile endorsements (AFSCME 40, WEAC teacher’s union, EMILY’s List). In a Democratic primary between Falk and Vinehout, those endorsements are nearly invaluable. (Nearly: if Vinehout’s task were impossible, she wouldn’t be running.)
Yet, an endorsement-deficit has not kept her from putting together a first-class campaign website.
Bright, confident, optimistic: there’s a sunniness to her website that’s comforting, and distinctive from other campaign sites (others being so serious and affected, often with dark blues and reds to convey gravitas).
Vinehout will have trouble against Falk’s endorsements, and would have a much tougher time if a bigger Democrat jumped into a recall primary. Her problem is becoming Gov. Walker’s opponent.
Still, if she were to win the primary, I’d guess she’d be as strong an opponent to Walker as others now talked up. Mostly unknown statewide, to be sure, but smart, educated, straightforward and relaxed in appearance and manner. She’d do particularly well in a crowd or before a live audience. (I’ll illustrate this more fully tomorrow.)
The Walker campaign has talked about the ‘two Kathleens’ as politically indistinguishable and equally unworthy of the governor’s office. Nonetheless, one can be sure that they see Vinehout’s engaging, optimistic presentation as a significant challenge in a general election.
Whitewater’s Thursday forecast calls for snow, with a high temperature of forty-one.
Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
Google’s puzzle for today is one for travelers: “What word will you use for “taxi” if the airport code of your destination is OSL?”
Can a baby aardvark be cute? Yes:
Brookfield Zoo is happy to announce the birth of an aardvark on January 12, 2012. Because of the dedicated care provided by the Society’s zookeepers, veterinarians, veterinary technicians, and nutritionist, the now healthy 13-pound calf has a bright future ahead of it. Although the calf will not be on exhibit for several months, zoo guests will be able to view it via a live video monitor In the near future.
A newborn aardvark, which weighs about 4½ pounds at birth, is very fragile for its first few weeks of life. To ensure its best chance for survival, Animal Programs staff decided to assist the calf’s 7-year-old mom, Jessi, in rearing her infant. Since its birth, the unsexed calf has received around-the-clock care that has included a neonatal examination and extra hydration and supplemental feeding when needed to make certain it is healthy and gaining the proper amount of weight. The supplemental aardvark formula the calf receives replicates the fat, carbohydrates, and other nutrients of a mother aardvark’s milk composition.
For several weeks following its birth, the calf spent nights at the zoo’s Animal Hospital being cared for by the veterinary staff and brought back to its mom in the mornings. Aardvarks are nocturnal and Jessi sleeps during the day, giving the calf uninterrupted time to nurse and get all the nutrients it can from its mother’s milk. This scenario mimics what would take place in the wild: a mother aardvark would leave its burrow to go forage for food during the night and return in the morning to sleep while the calf nurses.
Since 1992, there have been nine aardvarks born at Brookfield Zoo…for more on aardvarks go to www.CZS.org/aardvark
I wrote before, at FREE WHITEWATER, about Democratic recall candidate Kathleen Falk’s campaign announcement. (See, Reviewing Kathleen Falk’s Recall Campaign Announcement.) The post was part of an ongoing series on candidates and advertisements during the 2012 Wisconsin elections. I’ll survey the range of candidates for state and federal office, and I started with Falk.)
These were impressions only of the politics, and not the merits, of Falk’s campaign.
Readers may recall that I thought her first video was poorly done, and displayed her to her disadvantage. Considering her long time in politics, her appearance, delivery, and website were surprisingly mediocre.
Since that time, her campaign has a kept the same video on her campaign website, but the presentation frame for that video shows a more attractive candidate (with her hair down) than the one who speaks in the video (with her hair pulled back.) I’ve embedded that video, again, and a second one from a subsequent, outdoor campaign announcement. Remarks on each follow thereafter.
The videos. Falk should always appear with her hair down, as she does in the photo below, and as she does in the presentation frame of her campaign announcement video. Her campaign tacitly acknowledges as much by using a presentation shot that shows her with her hair down, before she begins speaking (with her hair pulled back). It’s as though they want to offset an unflattering, two-minute video with an attractive still shot.
It would have been better to re-shoot the original than merely to augment the original with a still image that presents an awkward contrast to Falk’s appearance while speaking.
She’s naturally lovely, with an elegance in her features – it’s foolish not to show a candidate to his or her best advantage.
Falk should always adopt the style from the photograph immediately above.
In the second video, where she addresses a crowd outside, she’s at a better advantage. It would have been stronger still if she stood away from a lectern, with only a microphone between herself and the crowd. A long, cloth coat (navy) would have been her best choice.
Why do I write about these apparently small matters? Because they’re not small – there’s a role in a campaign like this for an attractive, serious woman who presents herself as an elegant, stylish alternative to Gov. Walker. To be delicate in my answer, if there is to be such a Democratic woman in this race, it’s Falk alone.
As for the GOP governor, whatever his strengths, and however many his supporters, Gov. Walker is neither handsome nor graceful.
Many of the Left’s most successful candidates have been elegant, graceful, affluent champions of working Americans. It matters little that there’s a seeming contradiction between candidate and constituency – it matters more that it’s effective. If the Right will describe her as a limousine liberal in any event (and they will), she might as well get some mileage out of it.
The message. If no one’s thinking about Falk’s appearance, it’s because of the contention that she promised to veto a budget that did not repeal collective bargaining restrictions in exchange for union support.
Conservatives are gleeful about what they consider a candid but damaging admission; even some liberals think the charge was damaging.
Falk and a state teachers’ union (WEAC) were quick to deny a direct promise. Falk contends that she’d veto a budget without restoration of collective bargaining rights in any event. (It’s a contention she offers in the second of the videos I have embedded, above.)
I don’t think the harm is a charge (servility to unions) that any Democrat except Herb Kohl would face; it’s that Falk began her campaign this way. On the defensive is no place to be. It’s a worse place to begin.
If it should be true that Kathleen Falk and Kathleen Vinehout are the only two Democratic candidates in the race, then Falk’s union endorsements are all to her advantage (and wasted time on a kerfuffle about them won’t matter).
But if, as just about every progressive that one meets believes, there will be other Democrats candidates, then lost time may matter a great deal. Falk’s problem is not Vinehout, but candidates not yet declared.
She could have used a smoother start to solidify an effort against those yet to enter.
Best to all the contestants, and appreciation to those supporting the contest —
Mark Twain T-shirt Art Contest for K-12 Students
For the fourth year in a row, the National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a local partnership to bring the national Big Read initiative to Rock, Walworth and Jefferson County. Mark Twain in the Rock River Basin will be the focus of this year’s Big Read in southeastern Wisconsin. Led by the Irvin L. Young Library in Whitewater, the Arrowhead Library System in Rock County and UW-Whitewater’s Young Auditorium the Big Read will provide a host of activities and in-school outreach.
The Big Read activities begin with an art competition for K-12 students. Students in Rock, Walworth, Jefferson Counties and surrounding communities are invited to submit their own Mark Twain inspired artwork. One design will be chosen as the official Big Read 2012 logo and printed on 100 give-away Big Read t-shirts. Up to 20 other designs will be chosen and exhibited at Studio 84, in Whitewater.
The competition submissions are due on March 15th by noon to the Young Auditorium. The winning entry will be given a hardcover copy of The Collected Works of Mark Twain, two free t-shirts with their artwork, and four tickets to Mark Twain Tonight! starring Hal Holbrook, April 21, 2012 at 7:30 pm. The student’s teacher will receive 2 tickets to Mark Twain Tonight! Finalists have their work displayed at Studio 84 in Whitewater. Interested art teachers and students may receive full details by contacting the Young Auditorium at 262-472-4444 or online at http://youngauditorium.wordpress.com/.
This National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Grant gives young adults the opportunity to learn more about reading, writing, different cultures, and encourages them to explore their interest in these areas. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Local sponsorship supported is provided by Fort HealthCare, American Family Insurance, The Janesville Gazette and the Daily Jefferson County Union.
“This year’s Big Read already has twenty-two area libraries signed on as partners which is the most we’ve had yet,” noted Ben Strand, Development and Assistant Director of the Young Auditorium. “The T-Shirt Competition is a great addition to the list of Big Read events, because it is another way for young adults to get involved and be active in learning, and also because it helps them express themselves through their designs. We are still looking for more volunteers to help coordinate children’s events, lead book discussion in their communities and to promote activities in throughout the area. The full roster of Big Read events keeps growing. Check with your local library or the Big Read blog for updates.”
For more information about The Big Read please visit www.neabigread.org.
The Young Auditorium is a 1,300 seat performing arts center located in Whitewater that serves southeastern Wisconsin. Each season the auditorium presents the best in touring professional productions from Broadway, Rock & Roll, Shakespeare, Family Friendly Favorites and Ballet. Over 500,000 K-12 students have experienced educational performances through the Horizons Matinee Series. The facility boasts two all-purpose rooms for up to 120 guests for special receptions, dinners, or business meetings. A non-profit organization, the Young Auditorium has special benefits for Members; and discounts for groups. Special email offers and giveaways area available via free email updates from ArtsENews. www.uww.edu/youngauditorium Information: 262-472-4444 Tickets: 262-472-2222
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts—both new and established—bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. For more information, please visit www.arts.gov.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. The Institute’s mission is to create strong libraries and museums that connect people to information and ideas. The Institute works at the national level and in coordination with state and local organizations to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge; enhance learning and innovation; and support professional development. For more information, please visit www.imls.gov.
Arts Midwest connects people throughout the Midwest and the world to meaningful arts opportunities, sharing creativity, knowledge, and understanding across boundaries. Arts Midwest connects the arts to audiences throughout the nine-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. One of six non-profit regional arts organizations in the United States, Arts Midwest’s history spans more than 25 years. For more information, please visit www.artsmidwest.org.
It’s a Wednesday of scattered sprinkles and a high of forty-three for Whitewater.
On this day in 1980, in an astonishing upset, the US Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviet team at Lake Placid, N.Y., 4-to-3. The U.S. team went on to win the gold medal.
Here’s the last minute of that historic — still exciting — game —
From the Wisconsin Historical Society, a reminder that our weather could be much worse, as it was on this day in 1922 –
1922 – Ice Storm Wreaks Havoc
Unprecedented freezing rain and snow assaulted the Midwest February 21-23, 1922. In Wisconsin the central and southern parts of the state were most severely affected, with the counties between Lake Winnebago and Lake Michigan south to Racine being hardest hit. Ice coated trees and power lines, bringing them down and cutting off electricity, telephone and telegraph services. Cities were isolated, roads were impassable, rivers rose, streets and basements flooded, and train service stopped or slowed.
Near Little Chute a passenger train went off the rails, injuring several crew members. Appleton housed 150 stranded traveling salesmen, near Plymouth a sheet of river ice 35 feet long and nearly three feet thick washed onto the river bank, while in Sheboygan police rescued a flock of chickens and ducks from their flooded coop and a sick woman from her flooded home. Icy streets caused numerous automobile accidents, but the only reported deaths were a team of horses in Appleton that were electrocuted by a fallen power line. Sources: Wisconsin newspaper accounts, February 22 and 23, including the Appleton Post-Crescent, the Sheboygan Press, Waukesha Daily Freeman, Oshkosh Daily Northwestern.
Google’s puzzle of the day is one an engineer could love: “Over the Hooghly River stands an iconic cantilever truss bridge that uses a surprising number of nuts and bolts. How many?” more >>
One finds all one would ever need to know about candidate Newt Gingrich in his remarks on Reagan from a 1992 speech to the ‘National Academy of Public Administration’:
….he didn’t think government mattered….
The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.”
There’s Gingrich: the sweeping and ill-considered generalization, the pandering to whatever audience is before him, iced so nicely with his typically awkward usage.
That Gingrich is still in this race, and has been the recipient of millions from wealthy donors, is one of the mysteries and embarrassments of the season.
I posted Parts 1 and 2 of these sketch-posts previously.
One suggestion, here: Embrace the Poor. To be prosperous, a community may have to focus on its poor.
Americans aren’t supposed to talk about class, but much of that enduring rule recently fell away with the Occupy movement (as it has in earlier episodes of our long history).
(This suggestion is a more direct discussion of two earlier ones: Be candid about problems and Tackle real problems in big ways.)
A community with poverty, with working poor, and with a precariously-placed middle class will be obvious to outsiders as a community with poverty, with working poor, and with a precariously-placed middle class. There’s no hiding as much.
It’s neither right nor practical to pretend that difficult conditions aren’t difficult. The morality of caring for the poor should be evident, but even if not, there’s a prudential interest in making their cause a community cause.
Their condition is inescapable within a community. The marketing of success can neither divert nor obscure a poor economy. Those who visit to invest in Whitewater will seldom accept merely what they are told; they will travel the small town for themselves, seeing problems officials leave unmentioned.
Even if one doubts the morality of care, one should see its prudence: we’ll have to talk about and address that elephant if we are to convince successful newcomers to take a chance on Whitewater.
Making help for the disadvantaged a centerpiece of our policy seems counter-intuitive to some, and that’s where the impulses of socio-economic class hush any discussion. For some among the lower-middle class, talk about the poor is not a matter of compassion, but a social embarrassment, a reminder of their own origins, insecurities, and to them a stigma against their own station.
The genuinely religious or the naturally charitable do not feel this way, but others worry that a discussion of poverty reflects poorly on their own accomplishments. One may deny this all one wants, and yet it remains so very true.
We should wade into this issue, speak about it, organize to assist others, and make this cause a civic cause, one that government also helps publicize whenever possible.
To address it is to simultaneously improve the lives of others and to advance the community’s reputation. Prosperous newcomers will not reject a struggling city. On the contrary, they will join a community that shares their often-considerable charitable impulses and means.
They will, however, reject a struggling city that denies the present condition of many among its own residents.
Many offer assistance, every day, even at risk to their own condition. City government should make those private efforts at the heart of its own relationship to the community.
Just a bit of snow for Whitewater this Tuesday, with a high temperature of forty-three.
It’s primary election day in Wisconsin, for those communities (or parts of them) where there are a few challengers for an office.
On this day in 1918, a controversy over political dissent:
On this day, a move to denounce Sen. Robert LaFollette and the nine Wisconsin congressmen who refused to support World War I failed in the State Assembly, by a vote of 76-15. Calling LaFollette “disloyal,” the amendment’s originator, Democrat John F. Donnelly, insisted that LaFollette’s position did not reflect “the sentiment of the people of Wisconsin. We should not lack the courage to condemn his actions.” Reflecting the majority opinion, Assemblyman Charles F. Hart retorted that “The Wisconsin State Legislature went on record by passing a resolution telling the President that the people of this state did not want war. Now we are condemning them for doing that which we asked them to do.” [Source: Capital Times 2/21/1918, p.1]
Via Wisconsin Historical Society.
Google’s puzzle for today asks the name of a public-spirited man: “I once paid off the U.S. national debt. How much was it when I began my term?”
NASA’s recorded images of plasma on the sun, images that are both lovely and startling —
The accompanying description:
Darker, cooler plasma slid and shifted back and forth above the Sun’s surface seen here for 30 hours (Feb. 7-8, 2012) in extreme ultraviolet light. An active region rotating into view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma. The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines. This kind of detailed solar observation with high-resolution frames and a four-minute cadence was not possible until SDO [Solar Dynamics Observatory], which launched two years ago on Feb. 11, 2010.
Phil Keoghan’s 2011 documentary, The Ride, is about a charity bike ride across America to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. I saw the film this weekend on Showtime, and it was interesting from first to last.
It was more than interesting – it was inspiring. Along the way, Keoghan and his comrades meet thousands of people, at scores of stops, who cheer them along.
The Ride is a film about a bike trip, but it’s just as much about the good-hearted people Keoghan meets on the long ride from one side of America to the other.
From Whitewater’s city manager and acting Community Development Association director comes word of a second public loan for DR Plastics. To follow the agendas, proceedings, and minutes of the CDA was to see this a mile away —
CDA Approves Business Development Loan to DR Plastics
The Community Development Authority (CDA) this week approved a business development loan for DR Plastics Inc., located on Commercial Avenue in the Whitewater Business Park. The loan, which is for $150,000, will allow the firm to construct its third converting machine at its Whitewater facility and eight additional employees will be hired as a result of the firm’s increased production capability.
DR Plastics received a similar CDA business loan in early 2011 to assist with the purchase of its first two converting machines here in Whitewater. That loan has subsequently been repaid by the company.
One public loan last year, another one for the same company this year.
The last loan was a mistake; this one is worse. Even if one thought the applicant was worthy before, a second loan should either have come from the private market or not at all. Use of public money gives this applicant more favorable terms than those of a bank. Worse, the applicant – for all its supposed prior success – still seeks (or needs) public money rather than that of a conventional, private lender.
It’s just a measure of the confusion in the city manager-acting director’s thinking that he touts this second loan as an accomplishment in his 2.17.12 Weekly Report.
If anyone, then new applicants would have been better. Lack of suitable new applicants doesn’t justify lending to prior ones; the lack calls, instead, for a more diligent selection effort.
It’s a mostly sunny day with a high of forty-two for Whitewater’s Presidents’ Day.
There’s a Whitewater Parks & Rec Board meeting this afternoon at 5 PM.
On this day in 1962, “astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule.” He orbited Earth three times before a safe return. These decades later, his achievement is still inspirational:
Google’s puzzle for today asks a question about a faraway animal: “What creature uses nitric oxide to produce the starry effect you see in a New Zealand cave?”
