Both Sides of the Fence

 Last weekend I hiked a couple miles through the county grounds, stalking the rhubarb that still grows, despite all odds, behind the Eschweiler buildings. It's a lot more difficult than it was when I wrote about it here in my first blog entry in June 2006:

I pick bouquets of rhubarb from the abandoned garden plots . . . Pies, cakes, breads and muffins ensue. The world is good when there is rhubarb pie in it.

And that’s how I discovered the disappearance of the tennis courts and emergence of silt fence markers across from Hansen Golf Course.

Bottom line, in case you don’t know, is that a huge retention pond shaped like a reproducing amoeba will cover the old county nursery--one of the prettiest places in the county—behind the tennis court area. You may not have seen it because walking there has been perhaps a tad illegal. . . 

How much has changed since then. The nursery is completely obliterated. I suppose traipsing is even more illegal now than it was then. Plastic fences in trash-bag black and orange mesh have been strung along the silt fence markers. And the roads have been dug out, their entries chained, to make it hard for the scavengers in SUVs to poach wild asparagus and domestic rhubarb. It all  seems a little extreme. 

The retention ponds are in, though still not finished. You can walk around them now and wonder if they will ever look like something other than craters left by strip mining or meteors. But walking into the landfill is even worse. The great views from almost any vantage point are gone. No matter where you stand, you can only see a short distance before your sight line is interrupted by another odd mound. It's like no terrain I've ever encountered: defensive berms everywhere, with nothing to defend.

Was this the plan? Or was the dirt just dumped anywhere? If so, it will have to be completely regraded for any use that might be made of it. And that will cost more money.

The rhubarb, though thin (it's late this year), was good and made a splendid pie.  Something lives, still, on the edges of the desolation. I hope more will creep in: it will make the place less creepy.

When I was 17 my dear friend Sheina Lerman yanked me aside after watching an interchange with my mother.

"Why are you doing that?" she demanded.

"Doing what?"

"Hiding who you really are from your mother. It's disrespectful not to let her know you. You think she can't handle it? You're wrong."

"What are you talking about? She doesn't want to know me: she wants to think I'm who she wants me to be. I'm not gonna ruffle her feathers. What would be the point?"

As you have figured out by now, Sheina was really wise for a 17-year-old, and also brave. I was neither.

But my mom and I were lucky. Somehow, along the way, we put aside roles and facades and became utterly honest with each other. And that honesty, painful as it sometimes was, deepened our love and added the bonus of friendship to it. She liked me even when she knew who I really was. And why, I now think, wouldn't she?

While Mom and I knew everything about each other's lives in the last decade or so, there's much I never learned about who she was before we kids came along, before she was a wife and mother. I know she was a nurse, a stepsister, an orphan. I don't know enough about what all that meant, though.

Do you know who your mother is, besides being your mother? Do you know who she was when she was your age now? In high school? What was it like growing up where she grew up? What her role in her family was--was she the smart one or the pretty one or the funny one, and did that fit?  What was her search for love like? Her best and worst days in high school? Did she dream about something she didn't get to do? How does she feel about that now? What do her friends know about her that you don't?

This Mother's Day will be hard. It's the first without Mom, and in our family, Mother's Day was always about the matriarch mom, the oldest one in the line. I've moved into that slot, but my kids are too young to be willing to obligate themselves to making the day be all about me. Like most kids, they love me deeply but have very little interest in me, in who I am when I'm not being Mom.

You may be giving your mother brunch, flowers, jewelry, a cruise or spa trip. But maybe you should try this, too: have a conversation. Ask her about her life, what happened in it that shaped her, what she thinks and feels about the things you don't often talk about.

 And moms: give your kids real answers, not just the ones that you think moms are supposed to give.

Watching really bad television is one of my former guilty pleasures.

I say former not because I've stopped watching. I've stopped feeling guilty. 

Last night, too lazy to get up to change the channel (the remote control batteries having escaped to perform some other task just as easily done manually), I slid directly from American Idol into Hell's Kitchen.

If you haven't watched it, Idol achieves some redeeming value.

There's the whole American Dream thing. Someone cuts through your back yard, hears you singing in the shower, and is stunned by your brilliance.  Turns out he's not just your ordinary peeping Tom but a top talent agent, and presto: next thing you know, you're a star.

There's also the whole Joseph Campbell journey of the hero educational component. You start out leaving home to accomplish a big fuzzy goal, usually something macho like world domination. Along the way through the dark scary woods, you encounter monsters and dragons and have to sing songs by Neil Diamond. Someone, say Dolly Parton, comes along to help you. You finally reach your goal, which is to hear Randy Jackson say "yo, check it out. Now that's who you really are." In other words,  you've come full-circle back home, only with a really lucrative recording contract.

Hell's Kitchen has no redeeming value. You watch it for the food pornography and also to see odd people, people you wouldn't want to ever know in real life, smoke cigarettes, mess up in the kitchen, and be emotionally and possibly physically abused by master chef Gordon Ramsey before heading off to be emotionally and possibly physically abused by their team mates who are plotting to vote them off the island.

You also get to see the chef apprentice hopefuls be humiliated by nasty diners. This gives you the chance to enjoy their come-uppance while feeling smugly superior to the guests, who are as icky as the apprentices only better looking.

Especially the mother of the daughter trying out Hell's Kitchen for a Sweet Sixteen party. Now there's an idea I can get behind.

Anyway, she bristles and pouts in a way you can see she imagines is fetching, and you want to slap her even though you are a Quaker and allegedly nonviolent except, apparently, in your heart. The journey to Hell's Kitchen makes you nasty, too. It's enjoyable.

The daughter is surprisingly normal, actually sweet, perhaps. You pity her not just because of the mother but because you are certain she'd prefer McDonald's, which is where she'll go as soon as she gets the keys to the Mercedes-Benz ML320 that probably awaits her, payment for putting up with posh food and camera crews.

Liz, my companion in time-wasting, was 16 two years and four days ago. I think she has opinions about all this. But she watches quietly while I prattle on.

"Desserts," I say, as the competing teams try to come up with suitable menus. "That's how I'd go. The rest of the meal doesn't matter as long as there are big honking chocolate confections tortured into fashionable shapes or served in martini glasses. It's all about ostentatious presentation of stuff they're already familiar with." More prattling ensues.

Liz ignores me. Then she offers The Look.

The apprentice chefs present a dessert, something puddingish with a large banana garnish. We smirk in unison. "That's so wrong," we say, also in unison. 

I try to engage her in conversation again. "Well, you know 16 year olds better than I do."

"Not ones like that."

"What do you think rich California girls who have never tasted shrimp and get all excited when they see chicken wings would want to eat, then?"

"Ice cubes. And laxatives."

She has a point.

And somewhere in here, so do I.

Oh. I remember.  Have you ever noticed how often quality shows, pumped up with good messages and important values, leave you with nothing to say at the end? Just, "Wow, that was really good!"

On the other hand, trash on Fox TV leads to an examination of  the Seven Deadly Sins, culture and values, economics, mythology, eating disorders, and why it's better to live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where most of the people are. . . reasonable. 

Most of the time. We all get a little exercised now and then.

What are you supposed to do you do when you’re not raising kids anymore, anyway? The easy answers to that question aren't always very satisfying, as I was reminded today listening to a Wisconsin Public Radio call-in show.

The topic was having children late in life. Author Elizabeth George had only positive things to say about the experience. The women she interviewed for her book, Why Women are Embracing the New Later Motherhood, didn't seem to be encountering any downsides, either. 

One gentleman asked about children becoming caregivers to their parents at a younger age. Not a problem, George replied. We're all in the sandwich generation. Besides, older people are healthier now. And they have better financial plans.

Well. Maybe. Let's hope.

Then caller Molly from Baraboo threw both George and host Joy Cardin off balance with a question about the developmental tasks of aging. The conversation, which I’m recreating loosely from memory, went something like this:

“I had my child at age 39 and then had an early menopause. We thought about having another child but by that time, I found I wasn’t really all that interested in children. I’d heard that you change after menopause, that you are ready start to begin a new life, and I felt like that was happening to me. I was ready to do that, but I couldn’t because I had a three year old. Do other people have that experience?”

You could hear the author frowning. “What do you mean about differences after menopause and being older? Do you mean retirement?”

Host Cardin jumped in and offered some other suggestions for what women do in that “next stage” of life: traveling around the world and self-improving. Lots and lots of self-improving. (Apparently she's not old enough yet to discover that sometimes that's an exercise in futility, not to mention boredom.)

“But with only one child, you can travel around the world easily enough anyway,” said George. The awkward conversation ended with an uneasy dismissal suggesting that Molly’s case might be interesting but didn’t really apply to others: “Early menopause is an anomaly,” George concluded.

Actually, it’s not. But besides that, I was stunned by the lack of vision of what it might mean to be in the world after menopause, after children.

As an older mom, I knew exactly what Molly was talking about. My friend Kathleen, also an older mom, used to say, “I’d be standing at the refrigerator, my mind drifting off on lofty and spiritual thoughts, thinking about God and peace and ways to save the world, and when that little hand tugged my shirt and asked where the juice was, it took me a few seconds to come back to earth.”

There’s a lot more out there than recreation and holding the line against a widening waistline. Apparently George and Cardin have never heard of the Grandmother Hypothesis. This intriguing idea says that post-menopausal grandmothers (and older men, too) created culture, if not the human race, by helping younger people nurture their children. This not only meant more calories in the family pot, which meant more children surviving, but it meant that everyone had more time to do interesting things like carve spoon handles, compose songs, and create political intrigue.

Time spent lingering in the sun at a table in Turino sounds lovely. But now that my babies are heading for college, I need to add calories in the form of money to both their pot and my own retirement one.

That, and save civilization as we know it. I’m also looking forward to writing books, getting a promotion, and saving some little corner of the world.  Maybe even a little light romance.

There’s so much to do, and almost all of it interesting. Even necessary. Who has time to waste on self-improvement?

A version of this blog also appeared in Aging Maven 

    I love this photo of Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier's swearing in.  It's so . . . lively and unconventional. And it practically cries for inventive captioning.

Judge rescues woman from attackers

Child, husband, try to stop mom

Many rush to help as woman collapses

Gang creates diversion in Tosa pickpocketing crime spree 

I'm sure you can come up with better ones. Meanwhile, I'll just congratulate Jill and wish her the best as I ponder the unintended stories in this candid tableau. One, from famous Milwaukee ex-pat politician Golda Meir, seems especially apt:

At work, you think of the children you've left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself, your heart is rent.

Here's to doing good work anyway, rent hearts and all!  

 Liz and I were watching the news. The story was about preemptive reduction of cruising in the streets of Milwaukee--stopping it before anything bad actually happens. A police officer intoned seriously into the off-screen microphone, "The problem with cruising is that it leads to stopping."

We looked at each other and burst out laughing. That's sort of like saying, "The problem with life is that it leads to death." It's true, I guess, but what can you do with a comment like that?

 Speaking of death, an Associated Press story being widely disseminated is Soldier son of Dutch defense chief killed (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline). Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm was the victim of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende characterized this loss as "an unprecedented tragedy."

Well, no. It's a very "precedented" tragedy. Van Uhm is the 16th soldier from the Netherlands to die there. Nearly 500 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and the death toll for soldiers from the West there is nearly 800--and continuing to rise. In Iraq, 4,000 US soldier deaths have preceded the next one. And the one after that. In war, tragedy is the coin of the realm.

Since my mother's death a couple weeks ago, I've had a harder time than usual listening to pious rhetoric and words that sound like they mean more than they do. Maybe if I'd lost a soldier son, I'd feel differently about the inflated language used to turn a personal loss into a political lever. I'm glad not to know the truth that would come from that experience.

 It's 45 minutes into the Democratic debate between Clinton and Obama, and not a single important question has been raised.

 Instead, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulus have continued to grill the candidates about their ministers, their faulty recollections, and their failure to wear flag pins.

Stephanopoulus, more vigorous than Gibson, actually asked whether Obama's controversial minister was as patriotic as he was. Astonishingly, Obama spent what seemed like hours attempting to answer the question in a reasonable way.

The proper response? "What on earth are you talking about? It's ridiculous to ask anyone to speculate about anyone else's patriotism. Let me tell you about what my patriotism means in terms of how I'll lead the country."

 And Clinton also spent what seemed like hours responding to the question about her blooper about ducking fire in Bosnia. She should have said "Look. I misremembered. I blew it. Let's talk about what I'll do as Commander in Chief."

 Now someone's asking Obama about a Weatherman fugitive who lived in his neighborhood when he was eight years old. And again, the candidate is responding as if it's a serious and reasonable question.

There are two issues for this campaign: the war and the economy. Time for the Democrats to take control of the issues--and the conversation. And since the media won't do it, it's time for us, the electorate, to start asking better questions--and insisting on real answers.

One more thing: regardless of party, there's not a single candidate who can properly claim to be like us. They are all richer, more privileged, better educated, and well removed from the reality of everyday life. So just stop pretending, please.

 

Let's face it: what women really want is jeans and bras that fit. Also swimming suits, but that may be beyond the realm of the possible.

If you haven't discovered zafu yet, you're in for a treat. It just takes a few minutes of answering questions about how clothes usually fit (too loose here, too tight there) and you'll get a report ranking your best fit brands in a whole range of prices.

The answers may be surprising, but they're right on target. I'd never have guessed my top two jeans fits: Baby Phat and Lucky Brand.

No. That's not me. I'm waiting for zafu2, the version that makes you look like the model when you're

in the pants. 

Americans don't much like to talk about death. Which is odd, because it is both huge and universal. So I will write once more about my mother's dying. 

I went  to Oshkosh the morning of April 1st because my sister and I weren’t sure whether Mom, who had pneumonia, was getting any better. She’d also been having frequent episodes of cardiac arrhythmia that caused her implanted defibrillator to go off, shocking her, something she hated.

We’d asked her to give the powerful heart medication she also hated a month, and if she still wanted to, then she could stop it all.

When I arrived at the assisted living community where she lived, Mom was in her chair, very vacant. She’d fallen in the night, bruising her hip and elbow. She knew I was there and who I was but registered no emotion. Then her defibrillator went off (the second time that morning).

Her cardiologist had told her to call 911 next time it happened. We did, and I beat the ambulance, which wasn’t in a hurry, to the emergency department where my sister, Karen, was working.

The doctor asked what we were there for.

“We want you to turn off her defibrillator, stop her amioderone, and order home hospice for her.”

 I guess he thought I was a little direct, perhaps the merest bit bossy even. He checked with Mom, who was dozing.

 “What year is it?”

“Oh 8.”

“Who’s the president?”

Pause. Then, with a touch of distaste, the lifelong Republican said, “Bush.”

“Do you know what will happen if we turn off the defibrillator?”

“I will die.”

Karen called her son, Casey, to bring the new baby, William, so great-grandma Doris could meet him. Niece Molly came too, and Heather, Casey’s wife. Mom brightened with the baby, who’s named after my dad, the love of her life.

Karen and I sang some of the goofy songs mom used to sing when we were kids, Arthur Godfrey songs like Lonely Little Petunia and the Thousand Islands song. Mom smiled, while the kids listened in astonishment. I may be being a little generous in interpreting their reactions here.

The chaplain came, read some psalms and said the Lord’s prayer, which she repeated with him. “Thanks,” she said. I really needed that.” Then she asked, “What religion are you?”

“Catholic.”

“That’s okay. We won’t hold that against you.” Her last joke. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it wasn’t mean-spirited, and the chaplain laughed too.

There were many I love yous and kisses. When some who needed to leave left, we all pretended that the goodbyes were temporary.

The cardiac tech arrived and turned off the defibrillator. We took Mom back to her home, where hospice would be set up the next day. That was okay: I was staying overnight, and the assisted living aides would check in on her every hour.

Mom ate a little and seemed to enjoy it, especially the cream of tomato soup. Her brother called and they spoke a bit; so did my daughter Annie in Colorado.

Mom perked up some and was smiling, talking a little. We watched American Idol together. “I don’t like that Jason Castro,” she said.

 “He’s a weak singer, but he sure is pretty,” I said.

About ten to 8 she said, “I’m tired now.”

“Should I call the aide or can you wait until 8 when she’s planning on coming?”

“I can wait.”

The aides came, walked her to the bathroom, cleaned her up. She was smiling. Walked her to her bed. I put her favorite pajamas on her and was just laying her down to sleep when her heart went into ventricular fibrillation. The aide came in to help. I called Karen and told her to get over fast.

I was saying the Lord’s Prayer again, King James style,  when I heard Karen’s voice join in behind me: “Thy will be done. . .”  We finished, and moments later, around 8:30, Mom softened and took her last breath.

It was as good an end as you can hope for, I think.

Then the same paramedics who took her to the hospital earlier came—a legal thing. Their arms were loaded with equipment. I told them if they tried to resuscitate her I would jump them and wrestle them to the ground. They assured me they weren’t going to do any such thing. A young woman police officer arrived and ended up staying the rest of the evening, in a companionable way. Then the coroner showed up—a friend of my sister’s. He stuck around, too. The facility administrator came. The funeral home guy.

Everything that needed doing was done by 10:00.

I went to Karen’s house to toss and turn. I couldn’t stop wondering where all that love Mom had for us went. Then I realized it hadn’t disappeared: it was in me, in all of us, just getting bigger. Then I could sleep.

The Norwegian solje pin commemorates special occasions. This is a wedding solje, given to a bride by her husband on the morning of her first day as a wife.

My mother, Doris, died on April Fool's Day, also the birthday of her oldest grandson, Casey.  As deaths go, this was a good one: more about that later.

But yesterday was a whirlwind of meeting with funeral directors and bankers. Mom had things carefully lined up, and by noon my sister and I were done with what needed doing right away.

We met Karen's grown children, the aforementioned Casey and his sister Molly, for lunch.

Casey's forearm, a pretty massive one, was bandaged. We'd been forewarned, but we feigned ignorance and asked what was up. He lifted the gauze to reveal a tattoo, about six inches long, with a shamrock and in large script, "Doris." 

"Oh, that's just what Grandma would have wanted you to do," said Karen, sarcastically. Mom was not fond of tattoos, especially Casey's "sleeve," an elaborate design covering his entire arm.

"Casey, you look like you were in the Navy during the Big One," I said. "Nobody younger than that has 'Doris' on his arm. And what's with the shamrock?"

 "Grandma was Irish, wasn't she?"

"No, she was Norwegian. A little bit Irish. Her grandpa Duffy was."

Casey's dad, brother-in-law Larry, has a St. Patrick's Day birthday, so the tattoo will do double duty in the memorial and honoring departments. 

"You could have gotten one of those Norwegian pin designs," said Molly, no stranger to the inked needle herself. "But that's pretty complicated."

Like life--and death--I thought. 

I'm writing this wearing my great grandmother Sofie's wedding solje--even more lovely than the one pictured--and a boiled wool jacket my mom gave me just before she died. Like her, they are warm and beautiful.

Casey's tattoo, not so much, if you ask me. But it will raise delight and laughter each time we see it. Grandma would have laughed, too, after scolding him for having no taste and less judgment.

Everyone is pretty sure that we vote for candidates based on rational decision-making. But the research says we're not rational. Instead, we are rationalizers. We hunt and sift for good sounding reasons for our decisions after we've already made them.

That sounds about right to me. Researcher Richard Lau says that the real reasons for choosing as we do are:

1. The candidate shares our biases.
   
2. Our neighbors say nice things about them.  

According to Lau, who's coauthor of How Voters Decide: Information Processing in Election Campaigns, what doesn't sway people are policy analyses or arguments.

What's more, "the people who look at the most information. . . are not necessarily the people who are going to best be able to determine which candidate is best for them. Really, people often do better with little information than with a lot of information."

Who knew?  

If you're voting Tuesday, chances are you fall into one of these voting types:

1. Fast and frugal (the one issue voter)
2. Cognitive miser (looks for cue words and goes with them)
3. Rational (try to learn as much as possible)
4. Confirmatory (you already know you're going to like the liberal or conservative candidate better).
   

You'll have to read the article if you want to find out why "less information is more." But I'll use the advice for my endorsement:

Vote yes for the fire station. We need it, it's cheaper now than it will be later, and Dean Redman is an upright kinda guy who wouldn't steer us wrong.

As for the mayoral candidates, you've already known for a long time who you were going to vote for, haven't you? 

The past two weeks have been full of encounters that could have been  painful--but weren't. Trips to auto repair shops and trips to refinance a mortgage at a higher interest rate aren't on anybody's top ten list of life experiences. But both neighborhood trips were painless, even pleasant.

Kudos to Landry's Automotive Service Station at 115th and  Bluemound and Central States Mortgage on North Avenue across from Mayfair Mall.

Car repair

I walked into Landry's knowing I had a bull's eye tattooed on my forehead.

"Ah, well, she's running really rough. I don't know if it's the body or the engine, maybe both, but something's off. Oh, and the brake light's on. Just. . .fix it, you know? " The young woman who took the order smiled and nodded, but I wondered if she was thinking "could you be more stupid, lady?"

"Oh, don't worry. They'll figure it out for you," she said.

A couple hours and conversations later, I drove away in a car that was running much better. Total damages: $44 and some odd change.

The only problem was the mechanic guy didn't laugh at my jokes. As some of you know, I'm enormously entertained by myself and think everyone else should be too. When he said, "Those brakes'll last you another 20,000 miles, depending on how you drive," I rolled my eyes and tilted my head the old Nissan's way. "How do you THINK I drive?" I asked, looking at the crumpled bumper and missing side mirror.  The poor man looked puzzled. That, or he was a kind sort.

Mortgages

Now for the longer story. The other day at about 11:45 am, I locked in a new 30 year mortgage at a decent rate. If I'd have done it 15 minutes later, the rate would have been higher. That's how crazy the market is. I'm not going to mention the rate because it will sound high to some and low to most. It's all relative--these days, more than ever.

I might have found a cheaper rate, but not one that I could put so much confidence in. No hidden points or fine print hiding scary changes. No prepayment penalties. I know who they'll sell the loan to.

This will be the third mortgage I've gotten with the able guidance of Wendy at Central States Mortgage (CSM)

Maybe you don't know that CSM is the largest mortgage company in Milwaukee. A regional business headquartered here in Tosa at the Fairview Building, it employs 500 people at 14 offices in eight states. And while some mortgage giants are being cut down at the knees, Central States is doing very nicely, thank you. 

I called company CEO Dick Jungen to ask why.

He laughed and said, "In business there's a saying: if you can't win by being good, be lucky. I guess I've been lucky. We've been blessed with great partners in the credit unions and with working in the Midwest where housing prices never went crazy."

"Our niche," he added, "is our partnerships with credit unions. We've always been oriented to helping people buy houses, with not as much emphasis on refinancing. Like the credit unions, we're home-buyer advocates. It's great to put people into their first houses. And if they're happy, they come back to us."

One reason credit unions make great partners, according to Jungen, is that "they do a lot of consumer education, and when people come to us they are pretty knowledgeable--and often prequalified."

Educated consumers. Lasting relationships with customers and business partners. Straight-forward business practices. What a concept!

Jungen and four others started the business 24 years ago. CSM is now a Credit Union Service Organization with 26 credit union shareholders and relationships with hundreds of other credit unions. They've expanded into other related business.

But Jungen and his wife "live what we practice in business," residing in Wauwatosa and investing in real estate here. Some employees have been there 15 or 20 years. The company rewards them with certificates for local businesses, including Mayfair Mall across the street. And Jungen shapes the local scene as a board member for the Wauwatosa Economic Development Corporation, Educational Foundation of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin Mortgage Bankers Association, Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin, and more.

There's no question in my mind that this business has a stake in Wauwatosa and its homeowners doing well.

And you have to give props to a CEO who gives his direct line phone number to someone he's never met. It's so. . . neighborly!

This is the second snowiest winter in Milwaukee's history, according to this morning's Journal Sentinel.

I'm not surprised, having lived through six of the top ten snowy winters. And if that doesn't make a person feel old, I don't know what does.

Snowy winter #4 was 1959-60. I was a little girl, and I remember jumping off the roof into snowbanks. Children were hardier then. I also remember my parents digging a tunnel from the house to the garage. (That summer, my dad built an attached garage and sold off the lot where the old one had stood. He figured it was less work than digging tunnels.)

A huge storm came the night before my birthday party. We figured no one would come, but as the time neared, cars started showing up in front of the house. Back then, parents were eager to discharge their kids for awhile, and we all agreed to turn it into a slumber party. We had pink cake and sloppy joes, a fire in the fireplace, and a rollicking good time digging more tunnels in the snow. To us, that was fun. And child safety hadn't been invented yet. 

Now I will don my blue rubber boots and once again remove the wall of snow deposited in front of my driveway. This is the second time in 24 hours the plows have turned the plowfull of snow directly into my driveway apron. That has never happened before. I figure it's punishment for complaining ever so sweetly about their doing it last night.

After that, I'll really feel old. Or my back will.

When it comes to political candidates, most of us are pretty clear about what we believe makes a good one. There's really not much variety in those beliefs. They fall into the pot labeled "conservative" or the one labeled "liberal," with a few variants and outliers. 

From my pot, your pot doesn't make any sense at all. You can say the same about me. So we argue back and forth the same old predictable arguments and stay firmly planted wherever we were in the first place.

I'd rather hear how you came to believe what you believe. I'm not talking about books you read or philosophical arguments but the moments that seized your gut and told you "this is true, this is how things should be."

One of my deep beliefs: question everything with courtesy, curiosity, and deep skepticism until you are completely satisfied. Some people call this "negativity," and it makes them wild. I see it as looking for ways to make things better--a positive trait.

I certainly didn't get that idea at home. Mom hated controversy and wanted everything calm and nice. Dad was a dogmatic German--and I welcome you to apply the stereotype liberally in imagining him. His way was the only way, at least until he got old and was blessed with a blossoming of the heart and an opening of the mind.

It was the pastor of our church, William Downey, who set me on that path. He was a charismatic, brilliant man, and no one dared sleep during his sermons. Some resented that, believing that church was a good place to be lulled and soothed. A Lutheran, he'd been raised Catholic, and that complicated his viewpoint considerably. Even as a kid, I sat on the edge of my seat as he afflicted the comfortable in Fox Point.

But never in the front row. When he got brimstoney, you'd be showered with real spittle and metaphorical sparks if you sat there.

He had also been an army chaplain. If you collect WWII memorabilia, you may have heard his prayer for the crew just before the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima.

As my father's daughter, I carry the authoritarian gene, which comes into full expression in adolescence. Church was my first experience with someone who both let you turn things upside down and held you accountable for what fell out. If you were going to dissent, you'd better be able to back up your eccentric positions, and you'd better be prepared to be called on any claims that grew from only hot air and an elastic imagination.

I'm quite sure it was not Bill Downey's intention to raise up little hard-headed liberals who refused to walk the party line. But that was the effect he had on me. I was supposed to learn the catechism. Instead I learned to love questioning, argument, and the rhetoric of shaking things up.

Like too many ministers, this one went down in a sex scandal. Like many churches, ours put considerable effort into vilifying the woman involved. Unlike most ministers, however, this one took full responsibility for his actions. He'd never backed down from truths and right actions that weren't pretty or easy. He kept his family and atoned in a smaller, distant church. I don't know what happened to the woman. We almost never do.

My spiritual meanderings have moved me far from the beautiful Federalist church in North Shore, but never far at all from believing that the Word is supposed to wake you up, not put you to sleep.

Now it's your turn. Tell me one of your core beliefs and how you got there. Please.

Walking along the Underwood Parkway, Idgy and I came upon a section of yellow crime scene tape.

Of course, it wasn't surrounding a crime scene. It was just part of the jetsam tossed up by the receding snows. Not the best sign of spring, but a sure thing.

And then there was the toll of pot-hole-pocked roads. We found bits of housings, hub caps, tire shreds, and most of a motorcycle exhaust system.

I don't know if we should be encouraged by a better class of litter this year. Along with the parkway litterer's usual beverages of choice (Mountain Dew, Pabst, and Southern Comfort) were the remains of vitamin waters, Bitter Woman IPA, and a nice French Chardonnay-Viognier, Le Grand Noir (The Black Sheep). Inexpensive, but it pairs well with salmon.

I didn't see any gourmet dinners, but I did learn that Taco Bell offers The Fourth Meal. Apparently, this is for the starving people of America who can't make it from dinner to breakfast and need concentrated nourishment to make it through the night. Judging by the leavings, there seem to be many of the were it not for this wasting away's right here in our town.  

People are still smoking Marlboros. Lots of them, judging by the crumpled packs under the evergreens. That brand, in case you didn't know, is owned by Altria, a Kraft Foods spinoff that bought Phillip Morris, got rid of Kraft, and bought up SABMiller, which owns you know what. If you want to know what business values, there's the story in a softpack and a six pack.

Next time we'll bring along a black trash bag and declare ourselves Tosa anthropologists. And we don't have to disturb a single bone to study the habits of the natives.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, had an embroidered pillow on her settee that said "If you haven't got anything good to say about a person, come sit next to me."

I was going to analyze the candidates' website vision statements. But there are no rewards in blogdom for doing the hard work, so do your own! Plus I'm feeling cross. So tonight is take no prisoners night.

Wauwatosa mayoral candidates Jill Didier and Jerry Stepaniak are both decent and competent people, so the targets and wounds, if any, will be small.

The first clay pigeon: Thursday night's "debate" at Tosa East. Kudos to the students for getting involved and being young and serious and idealistic.

(Pull!) Lukewarms to the others involved in planning the forum. They did a nice job of nurturing the students. But with a few exceptions, the questions asked were the same old questions. The answers were the same old answers. The format was the same old format. No one challenged or pressed the candidates to expand on or clarify earlier statements. There was no debate. Only one audience question was permitted, a snoozer at that.

(Pull!) Summing up the candidates in five words each: Didier--passionate; substance not so much. Stepaniak--substance; passionate not so much.

(Pull!) The "vision thing" in three words each: Stepaniak--big, not focused. Didier--small, adjective-dependent. (Hers is a "bright" vision.)

(Pull!) The voters: Conservatives figure people won't bother to check the facts and are seldom wrong about that. Liberals figure people will come to the "right" conclusion if you lay out the facts for them and are usually wrong about that.

(Pull!) What's changed since last month: almost nothing.

• Stepaniak has allowed Didier to frame the issues, placing crime about all. His strength is redevelopment and strategic (and occasionally imaginative) investment for future dividends, not putting on the crime-fighter's cape. I guess many find "crime's our number one priority" comforting--especially if they don't bother too much about the hows of fixing it. (Didier plans to heal all through "communication," while Stepaniak will lean on block watch captain recruits. His strongest idea, camera surveillance, gets no response from the audience.)

• Didier acknowledged that the state needs to take a role in smoking ban legislation to create an even playing field, an idea she previously scoffed at.

(Pull!) A couple weeks ago, I asked both candidates to respond to one question for this blog. It went something like this:

People only remember one or two things about past mayors. At the end of your term in office, what two accomplishments will be your legacy, and how will you have accomplished them? And what two issues that are important today will you be willing to put aside to focus energy and resources on the most important aspects?

Those answers, I figured, would help me understand the candidates' real visions. Thursday, Didier mentioned that she got the question but didn't have time to respond. I appreciate that acknowledgment. Stepaniak never responded in any way. By last week, I was already too bored to follow up. (I also put myself on the mailing lists of both candidates and have received two messages from Didier, none from Stepaniak. What's with that?)

Finally, unasked advice to the candidates:

(Pull!) Jerry, pick your spots and sell 'em! I'm already a believer, but you are making me forget in what!

(Pull!) Jill, if you try to follow through on your promises to listen to everyone all the time, you'll go mad. Plus you'll have to actually do it. Make sure that you listen to people who don't agree with you more than those who do.

There now. A little raw meat and a nap should fix what's ailing me.

I’m sure many of you are watching the train wreck of the sanctimonious Governor Eliot Spitzer with the same degree of fascination and disgust I am. It's like watching Jerry Springer's show, only we get to say we're following the news.

It turns out that Client #9 for the inflated-price rent-a-mistresses at the Emperor’s Club also went by the name “George Fox.” Which offends Quakers everywhere. For us, it’s sort of like appropriating “Martin Luther” or “St. Francis of Assisi” as your sin alias.

George Fox founded the Quakers and spent a lot of time in prison for insisting on the right to practice faith in his own way. Spitzer was more interested, it seems, in practicing on “Faith,” whoever she might be, in his own way, which sounds to have been possibly unpleasant, not to mention unsafe.

The Quaker George Fox was given to saying things like this:

Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you.

That is so not Eliot Spitzer.

Apparently Spitzer wasn’t thinking of Friends, the real name of the Quakers (The Religious Society of Friends). He used the name of a personal friend and campaign contributor. That’s almost more tacky than using the name of some upright guy who died 300 years ago.

I’m thinking the Friend-of-Eliot was probably the hedge fund consultant George Fox who said:

People have no clue there are 100-percent or 97-percent down mortgages they can qualify for. What the buying public needs to do is sit down, put a financial plan together and see what products are available out there.

Creepy though this other Fox may be, friends don’t use friend’s names to visit houses of ill repute. I'm pretty sure of that rule, even though I don't think I know anyone who does that kind of thing--and if they do, not at $4,000 a pop.

Power corrupts. It makes people think the rules don't apply to them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sort of glad to be an ordinary, oatmeal-eating, God-and-mom fearing Midwesterner living a small life in the pleasant, pretty darn decent town of Wauwatosa, and trying to do it in a  kind and F/friendly fashion. Most of the time.

I thought I'd toss in a totally irrelevant teaser to remind you that you'll also get to vote for county executive and supervisor on April 1. As far as I know, the only scandal is the lack of voter interest here in Milwaukee County elections.

Just in case you didn't know, Lena Taylor is running against Scott Walker for county exec, and in Tosa, Daniel Wycklendt is opposing incumbent Lynn De Bruin in the 15th District.

On Tuesday, March 11, a group of advocacy and human service organizations are hosting a briefing session and dialogue with county supervisor candidates specifically about health and human services. That's right: the county does more than parks and buses. It also provides critical services for older people, children, people with disabilities or mental health concerns, and more. Please join us from 6:30 - 8:30 at Summit Place, 6737 W. Washington Place, West Allis, in the 1st floor conference room.

Supervisor Jim "Luigi" Schmitt, my supervisor, plans to attend part of the session. He tells me that he hears more from you about the county grounds, parks, and taxes than he does about human services. If you care about services for people, make sure you let your supervisor know! Lynn De Bruin will also be there.

Oh, and please educate yourself about the candidates and vote. It makes a difference. 

If watching political ads makes you feel like you need a shower, we're at the same heath club. It's bad enough on the executive and legislative sides of our government triangle. But when distortions, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and plain old lies come into play for judicial campaigns, the icky-ness factor doubles.

Potter Road ends where the Research Park begins, a sprawling cluster of mostly forgettable buildings in which the work of progress is done. But if you thread through the unpeopled streets, under Highway 45, and into the Milwaukee County Grounds, you still might find yourself in a tiny fragment of Wauwatosa’s “Potter’s Field,” a burial ground for the poor and nameless.

The bones of 1,600 of the more than 7,500 people buried on the grounds between 1882 and 1974 were exhumed  during construction at Froedtert Hospital in 1991. Carted to Marquette University, soon they’ll be packed again and sent to UWM to be studied by future students.

Retired professor Ken Bennet told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “I think it would be bone-headed and stupid to rebury them.”

Strong language, considering the importance people in all times and most places have given to honoring the remains of their ancestors.

Even more extraordinary language from UWM’s John Richards: “This is an opportunity to give them a voice, to reconnect them to the community. . . and perhaps (give them) a role in extending the lives of living people, aiding in criminal investigations or helping with medical advances.”

I wonder what voice they’d have wanted, what connection to the community that storehoused them in the various residences for the poor, the ill, and the insane.

Reburying the dead isn’t stupid, it’s an act of the heart.

Consider  the story of Private Earnest Brown, age 31. Just a year after the unceremonious removal of bones from our County Grounds, Brown’s bones were found in an abandoned Belgian foxhole where they had lain since the Battle of the Bulge.  Whoever found them carefully wrapped them in a green blanket. In 2005, sent home at last to Bristol, Tennessee, Brown was buried with full military honors, the uniform he might have worn lain carefully atop the blanket.

Said a townsman, "This man has never had a formal funeral. This town needs to pay its respects now. He’s being brought a long way for his funeral and it'd be terrible if nobody comes. He's coming home. It just took him longer than many."

I wonder, too, how many of the dead in our Potter's Field had served in wars, from the Civil War on. 

In Europe, where land is more scarce, bones are stacked and moved all the time. The scientific arguments for studying the bones buried between 1730 and 1820 in Bern, Switzerland,  are the same as they are here. But there, scientists are studying the bones of the burghers as well as those of the poor. There’s a certain comforting equity there.

And the findings are fascinating. Among the upper class bones were many bent from polio and scoliosis, but among the bones of the poor were no signs of disease. There’s no question that interesting mysteries can be solved by reading the bones.

Still, I want the bones, our bones, to be treated with more reverence for the people who walked on them than for those who might crack them open in the name of science.  It's time to let them stop working.

I’ll leave you with a story from the Butte (Montana) Evening News. It’s long but compelling.

 
THE BUTTE EVENING NEWS, DECEMBER 18, 1905

The records begin halfway down the hillside for the graves were put here in rows as one might plant potatoes. Oh, there was no choice of graves or plots among the men and women who died unmourned at the county poor house. There were no spaces reserved for mothers or sisters or children. When one dies he is put beside the last one who died, and his grave is dug days before the end comes. 

For it is nice and handy to have the grave already dug, for the friendless often die suddenly and it is bothersome to have the body of a friendless one lying around. They keep a stock of graves on hand, a dozen or so ready.

THE MARBLE HEADSTONE 

There is in this pauper's cemetery one marble headstone, and the story that it tells no man can write.  "In memory of John Downie, Beloved Son of Mr. and Mrs. John C. Downie, Vancouver, Wash. 

Johnnie Downie, aged 21 years, died of black smallpox; Dr. Sullivan found him dying in the Cash Lodging house, where for three days he had lain unattended.  He had the proverbial 30 cents.  At first he refused to give his name when he found he had been taken to the poorhouse.  Finally, in delirium, he told of his home and aged parents, for whom he had started out to make a home.  But Butte had been too fast for poor, weak Johnnie Downie, prided as he was by his fond Irish parents.  Work was hard to find, he was qualified for few positions and made no friends.  He washed dishes, swamped in saloons. Finally his environment overcame him as did the germs of a dreaded disease. 

The slums became his home.  His parents lost track of him.  The day he died Dr. Sullivan sent word to them that he was dying. His mother wired that she was coming but the word went back that her boy was dead. 

She wrote a letter such as the doctor, accustomed to heart rending appeals, had never read before.  He was such a good boy her Johnnie, he was working so hard for them.  Oh, he was never careless to her when he was home, Johnnie never missed mass. She had prayed for him night and day, watched every mail for the letter that came not.  Page after page of letters came, written in the heart's blood of a mother.  

When Dr. Sullivan put the blanket over the wasted frame of the dissipated boy, who for three months had been little better then a vagrant, he sat down and wrote the mother a letter that would bring tears to her eyes and happiness to her heart. 

 "Yes John had been a good boy," he wrote. He had had the priest and died happy.  He sent her his love and told them not to worry as he was leaving for a better life.

Such a stone represents months of saving and self-denial for the old couple. But, somehow, they think of Johnnie's death with strange satisfaction which demonstrates sorrow is not always unhappiness. Looking over the pauper's cemetery one recalls the words of a man who saw humanity from the pinnacle and wrote:

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good shall be the final goal of ill: That not one life shall be destroyed or cast as rubbish to the void, when God has made his pile complete.