Past Blogs

In honor of Groundhog’s Day and the groundhogs’ number one fan, Donna, aka the Chicken Lady, my Tuesday blog is on Monday this week. To clarify, Donna was the Poultry Superintendent of the Wisconsin State Fair for many years. This fact does not cause the groundhogs of the world to doubt her devotion to them.

Friends immeasurably enrich our lives, and we count Donna among our friends, as do many. Donna is also an experience. Who else would send us 38 consecutive years of Groundhog’s Day cards?

In 1990, Donna gave a gigantic Groundhog’s Day party at a downtown Milwaukee restaurant……a true highlight of that winter’s social season.

After 25 years, memory is selective, but I vividly recall Donna greeting all of us with her million dollar smile and her feet clad in enormous groundhog slippers. What my husband and I did not recall was that she asked all of her guests to write a piece for a time capsule. She declared, “Tonight these words of wisdom will be sealed in a box to be guarded by the Grand and Regal Patron of the Royal Order of Groundhogs (in other words, our lovable and sometimes a little wacky Donna). If she does not lose this national treasure in her studio, we will have a formal reading on February 2, 2000. It will then be time to marvel at our insights and great visionary abilities….”

2000 came and went without a reading. But in our mail last week our words and picture came back from twenty five years ago. Here are our words of wisdom. Thanks, Donna, for ALWAYS SAVING EVERYTHING.

We predict that in the next decade we will see Groundhog’s Day proclaimed a national holiday….of course, it will be celebrated on a Monday. Chickens and groundhogs will take their rightful places in society. The groundhogs will use computers to make better weather forecasts and the chickens will scratch their way to the top.

We  think some things that should be buried with the 80’s are cholesterol microwave ovens, car oil change places, fast food, 6:00PM meetings, sequel movies, blackened Cajun food, VCRs and Northwest Airlines.

Even if the groundhog sees his shadow today, there always will always be sunshine when Donna is around.

There are two words no child should ever say to me. Those words are “I’m bored”.

I have occasionally even given kids a peremptory warning: “Don’t tell me you’re bored because you won’t like what I will tell you.”

When a young person does whine, “I’m bored”, I simply tell the truth. “Only boring people get bored.”

That reply can shock an entire classroom into momentary silence. Seldom do adults speak concisely and directly to kids in today’s politically correct world. “Have you made a good choice?” or “What can I do to help you?” are more commonly heard reactions to rotten behavior. I do not wish to be a character out of Lemony Snickett, but I don’t want to be an enabler, either. I am not responsible for anyone’s boredom.

So it was with great interest that I read a review of the book, A Country Called Childhood, by Jay Griffiths. Here is an excerpt by the New York Time’s reviewer, Andrew Solomon:

Griffiths points out that the word “bored” appeared only after 1750, in the beginning of the capitalistic age, and that Dickens coined the word “boredom”. “Children reared on toys and products provided by corporations are learning a terrible lesson: They are learning that they have a scarcity within, that they cannot provide for their own play, or rely on their imagination, that they are impoverished beggars of the entertainment industry.” She explains, “If children can’t pretend, they are condemned to someone else’s reality.” This, in turn, leads to children who become “the possessions of their possessions.” She describes manufacturers as “privatizers of the commons of dream” and says that “consumerism for children is a form of cultural pedophilia.”

Nature has generously provided all of us (both young and old) with the resources to stave off boredom. Look within, not in your wallet for a credit card.

My mother only had one punishment that worked on me when I was a kid. If I misbehaved (in today’s parlance, “made a bad choice”) I couldn’t watch my favorite television program, the puppet show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Since that was unthinkable, I shaped up.

To this day, I love hand puppets. How else can you get another personality without being bipolar or in constant celebration of Halloween? I am not as big a fan of marionettes. A good basic rule in life is to avoid things with strings attached.

Kukla, Fran and Ollie was created by the amazingly gifted puppeteer, Burr Tillstrom. The show ran from 1947 to 1957 in television’s early years. Mr Tillstrom created, did the voices and operated nine puppets. Kukla was gentleness personified, Ollie was the enthusiastic one toothed dragon and Fran was Fran Allison the person who stood in front of the stage and ad libbed the entire show with Burr Tillstrom. They were all Midwesterners; the show originated in Chicago.

What began as a children’s program was soon watched by more adults than children. The characters made references to theater, opera and current events. Orson Welles and John Steinbeck were counted among its fans. And James Thurber said Burr was “helping to save the sanity of the nation and to improve, if not to invent, the quality of television.”

Many years ago, in the early 1980’s when Burr Tillstrom and Fran Allison were still alive, I dragged my husband to a rare revival of my beloved childhood program at the prestigious Goodman Theater in Chicago. I was scared to death. Could this simple, untechnical, no special effects puppetry be as good as I remembered it?

Yes, in fact, it was even better than I remembered, and my husband who never saw the program as a child became an instant fan. Our troubled world could use a giant dose of Kukla, Fran and Ollie right now.

Kukla, Fran and Ollie, like all great art, does not work well in sound bites. The viewer slowly gets to know and love the personalities of the puppets. Hopefully, this short sample will give an inkling of the show’s appeal.

http://youtu.be/kekg9g819Ks

This blog is about Las Vegas. If immediate thoughts of a million flashing lights, frenzied crowds and easy money come to mind, you’re forgiven. I want to talk about America’s other Las Vegas, the one in New Mexico.

Located  where the Great Plains and Rockies meet, Las Vegas, New Mexico, sits on high meadows, called Vegas in Spanish. The city, 65 challenging miles from Santa Fe, is 6,424 feet high and currently has 13,691 people. It’s 638 miles and light years away from the more famous Vegas.

In frontier days, Las Vegas was part of Mexico, sandwiched between America, the Comanches and the Apaches. It took the Mexicans in Santa Fe 225 years to push east and establish a village in Las Vegas in 1835. By 1850, the Americans took over and the wagon trains poured in finding an easy crossing at the Gallinas River. The town became a prosperous stop on the Santa Fe Trail. Millions of pounds of wool and hides were shipped from New Mexico via LasVegas to Missouri. In one year, 1855, the goods moved on the Santa Fe Trail were worth an estimated $5,000,000.

The  Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe arrived in 1879 and mayhem, crime and saloons soon followed. Las Vegas became a railhead for a region the size of France, and the boom and lawlessness continued full speed ahead. By 1900 the city was the largest in the region.

But the same railroad doomed Las Vegas to a quieter future when it built a flatter route through the old Comanche lands in 1908. Albuquerque became the new cross rails point and grew exponentially.

Any lover of history and architecture will relish a walk in today’s Las Vegas….it’s a town frozen in time with 900 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Many buildings are meticulously restored; many others patiently wait to regain their glory.

Click below to see a one minute photo essay I made on a recent trip. This is my kind of Vegas.

A friend recently told us a story that begged to be shared. It is a cookie story.

Last month at our friend’s workplace, everyone was bringing delicious homemade cookies to share; treats made with real butter, eggs, vanilla, nuts and other natural ingredients.

When one of our friend’s coworkers was offered a homemade cookie, the young lady declined stating, “I’m a vegan, I can’t eat that stuff. But it’s O.K.”, she added, “I can always eat Oreos, they don’t have any animal products.”

Needless to say, our friend, a lover of delicious and nutritious foods, was flabbergasted.

This small story may explain why America is in serious decline. We have lost our minds. Someone needs to get a Michael Pollen book to the Oreo eater post haste.

Because I do make an effort to be open minded, I did check out the supposed virtue of the Vegan’s “ethical” cookie. The main ingredient is sugar. The sugar is supplemented by high fructose corn syrup for added sweetness. Palm or canola oil and a handful of other artificial ingredients are tossed in the mix.

My conclusion? No animal is harmed by an Oreo, except the animal eating the cookie.