Monthly Archive: September 2008
Green Wausau: Overflowing With Ideas
Ideas for a Green Wausau, for a sustainable future, sometimes seem far-fetched or too costly, but I assert that this doesn’t have to be true. By taking some first steps to sustainability, we can achieve a more environmentally healthy city and hopefully, less of a dependence on foreign oil. With a media focus on T. Boone Pickens’ plan, we can take this moment to talk about the first steps that Wausau can take, should take, since we are a community packed full of conscientious, brilliant people with determination and grit.
6 Questions to Mull Over Mulled Wine
When summer fades and autumn moves in and winter looms, I feel bad about putting my bicycle up for the season, but I feel good about wearing boots again. I’ll miss the porch, but welcome the fireplace back into my life.
1. Do you have an autumn activity you like returning to, like making soup or reading the classics?
2. If you had to choose your last meal (like on Death Row), what would it be? I’m going with all-you-can-eat snow crab legs with drawn butter and fresh raspberries with real whipped cream.
3. Did you attend Exhibitour last week? Have you ever …
Green Wausau: The Rosenberg Opportunity
The City of Wausau is a small town. Like a small car, the City of Wausau can be a nimble thing, darting through changes, looking forward, wind in its hair. But like a badly maintained small car, the city of Wausau can be an underpowered, unresponsive car without any room for friends or family or even the dog. I think that this is a challenging time, a time with opportunity, and a time where we have the resources to make our City the best small car we can make it.
As the Fourth of July just passed, I am left with …
Five Questions Before Dino Goes to Vegas
A lot of puzzles present themselves to me every week. Why does my son only color with the red crayon? Why does my daughter rub peanut butter in her hair? Why do I keep forgetting which week is recycling week? The following questions should be easier to answer. They were carefully culled from some of the best of the internet’s “memes,” and I found them intriguing and interesting. Bonus points if you can answer any of my personal puzzles.
- If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the body or the mind of a 30-year-old …
Early Casualty of the Election
Well, the heat is really turning up in the Presidential election. Intense debates, emotions running high, personal attacks, accusations, spurious claims, twisted facts, falsehoods — and all that is just between regular citizens on different sides of the fence!
I had a pretty involved debate recently with a friend who’s way at the other end of the political spectrum from me. In typical fashion, I was loud and overbearing, and I wagged my index finger often to make “points.” This is the sort of thing I’ve seen or been part of lots of times in my life, like a heated encounter …
Sensible questions
I remember recess at my grade school in Milwaukee. They’d barricade both ends of the street, which then became our playground. I remember candy pencils and pretzels and the smell of the breweries. Friction tape, my army surplus shoulder bag, the lumberyard, plums, pork chops, the dry cleaners. Sometimes, a whiff of something, a taste, a sound, a texture or a shape will send me hurtling back in time like Tooter Turtle to very real moments and places. Then, Mr. Wizard the lizard intones, “Trizzle, trazzle, truzzle, trome, time for this one to come home” and I’m back here, now.
1. …
Those two magic words, Thank You
I was reading an article on CNN.com about the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon when I remembered something that happened to me on Friday night.
I was in the Wendy’s in Marshfield with my daughter on our “date night.” She was trying to get through her hamburger so she could have her Frosty and I was gobbling the sour cream on my baked potato. I looked up and saw an older gentleman at the condiment counter, and the whole evening changed for me. The gentleman was wearing a retired Marine hat and t-shirt and was leaning on a cane. He started …
Your Voice: Sept 9
We must be out of the summer doldrums, because we have had a flurry of activity on the CW personal blogs. It is my pleasure to showcase a few, with the understanding that these links are merely a sampling, and that in fact you should be spending lots and lots of time exploring the Citizen Wausau community:
• I really feel it’s necessary to start off this week with a shout-out to the Green Bay Packers News blog, because the football season is upon us.
• Our own politicalactorvist, now a freshman at UW-Eau Claire, has a close call where he …
A Night at the Fillmor
After the show was over last night, Dino said he couldn’t wait to read what I write about my first rock concert. I hope he’s not disappointed, and I hope he treats this with kindness.
I went to my first rock concert last night at The Fillmor. The venue is beautiful and large and sparkling. Everyone I met was warm and enthusiastic, and I made new friends and had some fantastic conversations between sets. I even *gulp* drank some alcoholic beverages. My experiences are filtered through that boozy haze, and my head feels like it’s filled with angry cotton balls this …
Words
Lately, I find myself grasping for meaning. What does this or that word really mean now? I mean, in today’s parlance, what do we mean, deep down, when we use certain loaded or supercharged words — words that might have meant something different a century ago, decades ago, seven years ago? Words twist and spin and reverse direction, taking on new identities and powers. Like, at what precise point in our history was “cheap” dropped in favor of “inexpensive”? Cheap used to be a good thing. Words.
1. On the self-image front, in your opinion, what is a liberal and what …