Past Blogs

I was hooked on newspapers by age five. The old weekday Milwaukee Journal had a section called The Green Sheet. Printed on pale, green newsprint, it featured three pages of comic strips plus kids’ features, contests and human interest photos. One of my childhood mysteries was how my parents possibly could reach for the white parts of the paper first.

I was gradually drawn into more and more sections of the paper, and, by adulthood, I was a newspaper reader for life. Or perhaps I should say,”as long as newspapers exist”.

The beauty of a good paper is in its eclecticism. Even when I’m a week behind on the Times and I say to myself,”I’ll just scan each page for headlines”, I’m always drawn in.

Using the computer, I go directly to the information I want. In the paper, serendipity reigns. I do not wake up in the morning knowing I will read about the politics in Botswana, the genetics of polar bears and the architecture in Finland…but my paper can deliver all that and much more in a day.

I confess to being a chronic clipper of interesting articles, a trait my friends know well. Snail mail to a friend has longevity that a”forward”can’t match.

My paper is also a trove of creative inspiration. I developed several lesson plans for my middle schoolers this year with ideas that came as I was reading gallery reviews in my newspaper.

I must add that I use old newspapers to cover the tables in classrooms when we do messy art projects. To my delight, some kids always start reading the papers and want to keep reading. I go over, fold up the paper, hand it to them and say, “It’s yours to take home and finish”. That may be more significant than the day’s art project.

I take great delight in finding the treasure in the trash. And since almost everything sold at the Wisconsin State Fair, food and otherwise, fits into the trash category, the fair is an excellent hunting ground. It’s also a solo expedition, as my husband dislikes smells, crowds and noise.

Armed with twenty-five dollars, I jump into the fray. After visiting the chickens, rabbits, sheep, cows and horses, I search for souvenirs. In my opinion, a good souvenir beats out a cream puff every time. So I visit The Exposition Building with its hawkers and snake oil salesmen. I love the art of the barker, but I do not need a wonder shredder. I still use a splendid shredder that my mother bought at the Fair seventy years ago.

My three best State Fair souvenirs are not stain removers, French fry slicers or wood-burnt signs; they are pieces of folk art. The first is an oil drum lid from Haiti which has been transformed into a lacy landscape of leaves, flowers and birds.

The second treasure is a retablo, or chest of San Marcos. These figure filled boxes are made by artists in Peru and were originally portable shrines. Ironically, I found the Peruvian shrine in the Chinese Pavilion.

The last treasure is a lady…an extremely heavyset, clay lady from Oaxaca, Mexico. To get her home, I had to convince my spouse to pay a quick visit to the Fair for the sole purpose of hauling her out.

She has graced our deck for many years now and has undergone a metamorphosis. She started out gray and gradually turned white. Then, one year, she was entirely electric blue. When the azul faded away, her true terra cotta color was revealed. She’s our fair lady.

I must add a postscript here. Since our friend, Donna, retired from the Wisconsin State Fair, the Fair has lost its lustre for me. Donna was Poultry Superintendent for many years, and I must say that the fowl building rocked when she was the mother hen. I won’t be going to the Fair this year, but I have my souvenirs.

Lizards do not cavort around in our backyard. The lizard family, however, is a favorite of mine, and I am fortunate enough to see many of them when I travel.

Although the vegetarian iguanas can grow to six feet and the fur ball spitting Komodos can reach 10 feet, the lizards I encounter in the south and southwest are usually in the three inch range. Watching wildlife is always fascinating, and these pint size lizards recently put on a good show.

We were staying on the ground floor of a hotel which had a view of the gravel, cactus and bushes outside the window. A steady stream of lizards were cavorting outside the window. Every few minutes one of them would stop abruptly and launch into a rapid series of tiny push ups.

Curious to know the reason for their humorous work outs, I turned to the computer and found the answer.

New research using robotic lizards indicates that anole lizards living in noisy environments do push ups to attract their neighbor’s attention. Traditional head-bobbing gestures do not work in high decibel urban settings; the more flamboyant push ups are an effective visual alert signal.

There is a lesson to be learned here. If you are feeling unnoticed or left out, throw yourself on the ground and do some quick push ups. Attention is guaranteed.

Click here to see the lizards in action.

Can any sound be more wonderful than the tick,tick,tick, whoosh of the oscillating sprinkler on a hot, still summer night?

Sitting on the porch at dusk, knowing how happy the grass and flowers must be as they soak up the cool water is a wonderful thing to do.

James Agee in his short story,  Knoxville : Summer, 1915, perfectly captures the mood of a summer night when the neighborhood fathers are out watering their lawns:

“So many qualities of sound out of one hose: so many choral differences out of those several hoses that were within earshot. Out of any one hose, the almost dead silence of the release, and the short still arch of the separate big drops, silent as a held breathe, and the only noise the flattering noise on leaves and the slapped grass at the fall of each big drop. That, and the intense hiss with the intense stream; that, and the same intensity not growing less but growing more quiet and delicate with the turn of the nozzle, up to that extreme tender whisper when the water was just a wide bell of film.”

My husband, who knows a great deal about the scientific workings of water, informs me that our sprinkler’s efforts aren’t as good as real rain. “Rain brings nitrogen as well,” he explains.

But I’m still content to know all those roots are lapping away. I’m also aware of how lucky I am to have the world’s fifth largest lake in my front yard. In a world where vast areas are drying up, I have water as far as I can see.

Some things should never be taken for granted. Water is high on that list.

Here is the surest way to get someone not to read a book. Tell your friend that the book is the greatest you have ever read, and they absolutely have to read it ASAP. This method virtually assures that your beloved book will not be opened.

It usually takes several similar suggestions from several dissimilar friends to motivate me out of my reading grooves. That’s how I finally picked up The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.  I was enchanted after the first paragraph and have gone on to read every book in the series plus others by him. How many other splendid books am I missing by this absurd procrastination?

The deplorable tendency of many of us to delay following up on book suggestions can probably be blamed on English teachers. Take the best book in the world, assign it in English 101, set a deadline for next Monday and most of the joy flies out of the book. Reading for pure pleasure and being told what to read are not a good mix.

So for summer reading, I am definitely telling you NOT to read A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty by Joshilyn Jackson, Raylan by Elmore Leonard or Sophie and the Rising Sun by Augusta Trobaugh.