Farewell 2015 Cubs and Thank You

So much has been written about the Cubs, but now with the World Series over and the time changed, all the hype fades till February when pitchers and catchers report to spring training.  The baseball news gets skinny in the regular press; confined to trades, acquisitions, and the business side of baseball.  I took down the Tribune full page player photos and the W towel from the shack. 

I’ll miss the games, the radio and TV broadcasts, the slow unfolding of division races in the standings, and the individual achievements of the players.  They’re out there somewhere, the Cub players, relaxing I hope.  It was quite a run for them in 2015.

Monday I watched the Kansas City Royals finish off the Mets in New York.  I appreciated the camera shots of the Met fans at the conclusion of the TV broadcast.  Grim, dejected, downcast, and mournful faces were rife in the home stands.  It’s awful to lose, especially after achieving so much.  I knew how they felt.

 

I was in Wrigley Field for the last game of the National League Championship Series.  I had barely taken my seat in the left field bleachers when the Mets went ahead in the top of the first inning.  They stayed there, stomping my young Cub team, making them look bad, exposing their weaknesses.  After the Mets had scored six I left for a half inning, roaming Wrigley’s refurbished back bleacher area and finding Hot Doug’s (I had the tasty Rick Reuschel sausage.). It wasn’t supposed to end like that.  It had been a story book season, the story was drawing to a close, and it was not a happy ending.  There would be no miracle finish.  Unlike the previous game I attended, the first of the Division Series at Wrigley, when they hit six home runs against the Cardinals, the Cubs lost soundly and decisively to the Mets.  I felt like that sad Paul Simon baseball song from “Crazy After All These Years.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILGsLlS7stw&index=5&list=PLLtQvkTqKXThUDFb3UaXygDC5s38fJeiJ

But wait.  They Cubs lost while playing for the championship of the National League.  It suddenly came to me.  This is a victory. 

I wrote about the 2014 Cub season last fall in a blog post called “You Are Where You Are.”  If you scroll down through the posts it’s still there.  I tried as best I could then to put a positive spin on what was a losing season.  They finished last in their division you know.  Here’s an excerpt from that piece written at the end of September.

Did Cub fans have high hopes for their 2014 team in spring training?  No.  We expected them to have a losing season.  It was called a rebuilding year from the start, which is a misnomer.  For the Cubs it was simply a building year.  They had nothing to rebuild from.  Rebuilding implies you once had a solid structure to restore.  The Cubs have been in shambles, as far as their won-loss record, since their last winning season in 2008.  They lost 101 games in 2012.  Winning seasons have been few and far between since 1908.  It’s a very sad history to own.  But such is the history of the Chicago Cubs.  They are where they are.

The Cubs finished in the cellar in 2014 with a record of 73 wins and 89 losses.  They were in last place of the National League’s Central Division for the fifth year in a row.  Thirty teams make up Major League Baseball in America, fifteen teams in both the American and National League.  The best team in baseball, Numero Uno during the regular season, were the Los Angeles Angels with a record of 98 wins and 64 losses.  The Cubs, looking purely at wins and losses now and not beer sales at home games, tied with the Philadelphia Phillies as 23^rd best team in baseball with a winning percentage of .451.  But then, everybody has to be somewhere.

Though few recognize it there is each year a king of the cellar dwellers, the team that happens to find themselves last in their division but with the best record of the worst losers.  It happens this year that the Cubs tied the Phillies as being “Best of the Worst.”  You won’t find this kind of analysis on ESPN folks.  It’s a shame to allow the title of “Best of the Worst” to end as a tie.  I personally believe it should be decided by a one game playoff.

Never, when I wrote that sentence about a “Best of the Worst” playoff last fall, did I envision the Cubs involved in a one game playoff to make the playoffs at the conclusion of the 2015 regular season.  But there they were.  I am still amazed.  Here’s what the Chicago Cubs accomplished in the regular season.

The Cubs won their last eight games, ending the season with a record of 97 wins and 65 losses, and finished third in their division.  Their record was third best in Major League Baseball, behind the Cardinals with 100 wins and the Pirates with 98.  Had they played in any other division in either league they would have finished first.  The division winning Mets won 90, the Royals 95, the Texas Rangers 88.  They did with a lineup that started as many as four rookies at times.

They won by scoring early and staying ahead.  They scored late and won by coming from behind.  They won close games with good pitching.  They won by hitting home runs.  They led the league in walks and strikeouts.  They made mistakes.  But they won.  They played small ball when they needed, executed double steals, rubbed their helmets when they got on base, laughed, dumped water on each other, rushed the field and mobbed the player with the walk off hit, and had so much fun.   It was raucous inside the clubhouse.  They danced after victories, accompanied by a smoke machine and a disco ball.   They ignored curses (what goat?) and dismal history.   They weren’t born when that stuff happened.  Some of their parents weren’t even born then.  They didn’t care.  And they drove the entrenched pessimism right out of the hearts of old and jaded Cub fans like me.  As the season went on and they grew braver and more confident I could feel the fear of collapse, misery, and my own personal baseball squalor leaving me.  It was wonderful.

 

Both the players and the fans fell in love with new manager Joe Maddon.  He played a new kind of baseball in Chicago, moved players in and out of the lineup, up and down the batting order, from one position to another.  He took charge and showed both the rookies and the veterans what it took to win.  And win they did, over and over.  Success was infectious.  You could see it grow.  The summer grew hot.  July came and they were still winning.  August was even better.  Then they had a simply magnificent September.  Joe made pre-game batting practice optional. And, miracle of miracles, the Cubs kept playing into October.  Wrigley Field was resplendent in October, the ivy just starting to yellow.  I know it was true because I was there.  Who would have thought?  Not me.

The Cubs didn’t win the World Series.  They fell short.  They were on fire at the end of the regular season, winning their last eight, winning their ninth against the Pirates to earn the right to play the Cardinals.  They lost their first game in St. Louis, only to win the next three.   Before they were swept by the Mets they went on a 12-1 tear.  But in the end it was the Mets who were hot, until they played the Royals.  It may be the team puts themselves in a position to win and gets hot at the finish.  The Cubs are very close to being that team.

    

As the young talented Kansas City Royal players celebrated in New York I imagined the Cubs in their place.  Kris Bryant and Anthony Rizzo putting on the victor’s tee shirts, Addison Russell and Jake Arrieta donning World Series Champs hats, Kyle Schwarber in catcher’s gear (get him out of left field for God sake) lifting Hector Rondon off the ground.  World Series champs.  I could actually imagine it.  A once unimaginable scene is now possible.  What a difference a year can make.  The Cubs are transformed as I am along with them.

That young Kansas City team, essentially the same line up this year as last, lost the series in 2014, leaving a runner ninety feet away on third base as the Giants took them down.  They paid their dues, learning the hard way what it takes to win it all.  The Royals built their team as the Cubs have, with patience, developing young talent.  It’s a winning strategy, and it’s the path the Cubs are on.  Unlike 2008, when the Cubs paid too much for players at the end of their career, essentially taking an unsustainable shot at post season glory, this team has legs.  We have these great young kids for years into the future.

      

Now I really mean it when I say “Wait until next year.”  The sarcasm is gone and the next year filled with promise.  The Cubs are in a different place, and I like where they are.  I can’t wait till spring 2016.  Go Cubs.  Thank you for giving us hope.  

Hallelujah! Robots Milk Cows!

Graniteville, Vt. (AP)- (Excerpt) Robots have taken up residence at some small and medium sized dairy farms across the country, providing reliable and more efficient labor and helping businesses remain viable.

All praise to technology and computer geeks.  I take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about you.  You’ve transformed the life of the dairy farmer, the most oppressed, confined, and tethered of all farmers in history bar none.  This is the best thing since sliced bread.  Who am I kidding, its way better than sliced bread.  It’s freedom.  Pure unadulterated freedom.  God bless you programmers locked in rooms unable to speak intelligibly because of the code running through your heads.  You wonderful geeks may not even know what you’ve done.

My family and their predecessors milked Jersey cows on a small farm between Danvers and Mackinaw for God knows how long, probably 100 years.  They delivered raw whole milk, coffee cream, and whipping cream to the people who lived in town until pasteurization requirements put such small dairies out of business.  They made their own butter and fed the skim milk to the cats.  In 1941 they invested in the future as they saw it and built a modern state of the art dairy barn and milk house that complied with looming health laws.  They closed the Danvers delivery operation and shipped Grade A milk to Prairie Farms Dairy until my Mom and Dad retired and sold the cows in 1979.  Let’s just take a stab at quantifying how much work that represents.

If the Sloanes or those before them began milking cows in 1879 (that’s possible) and the McClures took up that task after them not stopping until 1979, they milked cows for 36,500 days not screwing around with leap years and the like.  Dairy farmers milk cows twice a day rain or shine, sickness or health, weather so bad you can hardly get to the barn.  That’s 73,000 milkings.  Spouses and children die, wars break out, calamities occur, tornadoes threaten, ice storms force you to chip open the milk house door, but twice a day you quietly go to the dairy barn, open the door, feed the cows, and relieve them of their milk.  Their milk is both your food and your livelihood.  Selling milk is a steady year round source of revenue.  Your labor is rewarded, but oh my how it affects your life.  Morning and night, morning and night, milking cows with no end in sight.  Committing yourself to dairy farming is like a sentencing yourself to a lifetime of hard labor.  Until now, the dawning of a new age, when cows milk themselves with the aid of robots.

In the past if you milked cows you could of course go anywhere you wanted.  It’s still a free country.  You can go anywhere, after you milk the cows in the morning that is, and as long as you can get home by 4:30 to milk them again.

Want to look at that more closely?  You get up, often in the dark, put on your chore clothes and make your way to the kitchen.  Mom has made coffee.  You may have some, with conversation, or you may just sit there under the dim kitchen light and listen to AM radio; ads, jingles (still in my head), and bouncy announcers.  You go to the basement and put on your coveralls and boots, hat and gloves.  Outside you make your way to the barn.  In winter the cows are kept inside, two rows of twelve facing outside windows.  When you open the door an entire row of twelve cows facing you, twenty four big black eyes, look at your expectantly.  You are their keeper.  You know them each by name.  The first thing you do is feed them.

In summer when the cows are on night pasture the cows are outside the barn, waiting at the door.  You put scoops of feed in the manger in front of each cow’s place, knowing which stall each cow goes to, adjusting the amount of feed, more for the heavy milkers, less for the lightweights, only half for cows gone dry, a month or so away from delivering their next calf. You slide the barn door open a foot or so.  The cows look up at you expectantly; docile, patient, and hungry.  You slide the doors completely open and they file in, step across the gutter, put their necks through the steel stanchions, always the same stall, and begin to eat.  When they are all in you close the stanchions, locking them in, turn on the pump (an electric motor creating a vacuum line up and down the rows of cows), bring in the milkers, pails, and wash water and begin.

24 cows, 12 petcocks providing vacuum to three Surge milking machines, which are suspended under the cow’s udder on straps called surcingles over the cows back by their hip bones.  Eight changes at the most if all 24 cows are being milked, five minutes or so per change, forty minutes for the milking itself.  Chores, the generic word for our morning and evening tending to the cows, took longer.  Hour and fifteen minutes.  Less if you hurried.  Twice a day, every day, for what seemed like the rest of your life.  You could do it yourself if you had to, but it was best done with two.

 

The invention that was most revolutionary for dairy farmers, after electricity, was the milking machine.  Prior to that you sat beside every cow and milked them individually by hand.  I cannot imagine.   From time to time a cow with an injury or mastitis required one or more quarters be milked by hand and I would do it, unless Dad beat me to it.  Hand milking connects you with the cow in an almost meditative way.  It not only takes longer it allows you to do nothing else.  Two teats at a time, alternate squeezes until dry, repeat.  Milking machines introduced speed and freedom to the dairy barn.  While the machine manipulates the cow’s teats four at a time and extracts the milk, rubber sleeves automatically inflating and collapsing in stainless steel cups, you could carry milk to the milk house, wash the teats of the next cows to be milked, feed hay, any number of things.  Besides your mind going far away during hand milking your hands tire.

“Makes your grip strong,” my Dad would say.  Dad was a positive guy.

Positivity helped dairy farmers survive I think.

The dairy invention that revolutionized milking in my lifetime was the barn cleaner.  The Badger Company out of Wisconsin made them popular.  Investing in a barn cleaner relieved the dairy farmer from a very important but unpleasant task.  Shoveling shit.

To accommodate bigger herds dairy technology went to barns with milking parlors and lounging sheds sometime in the sixties and the cows shit in large areas that could be cleaned with tractors and loaders.  Our barn with stanchions became the cow’s winter home.  A good dairy cow eats alfalfa hay and ground feed voraciously, drinks a lot of water, stays skinny, and turns all her energy into milk production and producing calves.  Because of all that, dairy cows produce manure in prodigious amounts.  That manure, in a smaller confined stanchion barn, must be removed daily.  Add that to your winter chores. Here’s how that goes.

 

Empty two fifty foot concrete gutters full of cow manure by shoveling one scoop of shit at a time into a wheelbarrow.  When full, brimming, wheel the barrow up a ramp out a side door, across a wooden runway, dump it into the waiting manure spreader, bring it back on the same path, and prepare to refill.  Repeat twelve times.  On a cold and windy winter day when the manure was steaming my brother Darwin, just a kid, was emptying a loaded wheelbarrow into the spreader and a gust of wind blew him headfirst into the spreader.  He got out, but not before cow shit filled his ears and nose.  All kids, they say, need to learn how and when to keep their mouth shut.  My older brother learned the hard way.  Darwin was never fond of milking cows.

When the gutters were empty of manure we spread crushed limestone in the gutter, and when the spreader was full (every third day or so) hooked the tractor onto the manure spreader, affectionately called the terd hearse, and drove it to the assigned field where we engaged the chain drive which fed the manure to the back beaters and flung shit high in the air.  We drove over the field till empty, watching for wind and changing direction cautiously, then drove back and put the manure spreader back into position.  Elapsed time from the start of shoveling to the end?  That easily averaged an hour a day from October till April.  Sundays too.

A barn cleaner like the one Badger sold had a powerful electric motor at the end of an elevated steel chute that dragged a continuous heavy linked chain with paddles through the gutters, automatically pushing the cow manure up the chute where it emptied into the manure spreader.  Voila.  A load of cow shit ready to spread untouched by human hands.  All that was required of the dairy farmer was to throw a lever on an electrical box.  The first time we saw it work we had huge smiles on our faces. Technology.  We loved it.  Really, who cared how much it cost?

There was symmetry to the kind of farming we did on that small farm.  Dad rotated crops on all the tillable acres: soybeans, corn, oats, and alfalfa.  We had permanent pasture with timber and a creek on land that otherwise couldn’t be farmed.  We scooped forty scoops of oats and sixty scoops of ear corn in a little box wagon we hauled to town behind a tractor each week to the feed mill at the elevator.  They added soybean meal, salt, and molasses and ground it while we waited.  The seal on the molasses valve leaked and I always got a thick finger full of molasses off it.  We brought the wagon home full of feed and scooped it back into the feed room in the barn.  Scooped it twice-first as whole grain next as feed.

We made two thousand bales or so of alfalfa hay each year and threw small bales down from the mow to feed the cows twice each day they were not on pasture. In addition we made oat straw for bedding.  The grain and hay the cows ate and of course the pasture they grazed all came from the land around us.  We drank raw milk from the cows and ate the cows as well, butchering them ourselves when I was young and later at the slaughter house in town.  We stored the meat at the locker plant, a big communal freezer in Danvers, until we got our own deep freeze at the house. We fertilized our fields with manure from the cows which in turn helped grow the crops we fed the cows. The cows not only made us money but fed us too.  Same with the chickens.  Milk, eggs, meat, and the garden dominated our diet.  Mom canned vegetables; sweet corn, green beans, pickles, pickled beets, and on and on.  We were organic and didn’t know it.  My Dad, being a modern farmer, used commercial fertilizer and other chemicals as did neighboring farmers in the grain fields when they became available, but he never stopped rotating crops or spreading manure.  It’s hard to find that kind of farm now.  But I have a feeling, and a hope, that technology may make it possible for dairy to achieve small scale viability through new efficiencies like these robotic milkers.

Modern farmers are using them to save labor costs, something we never incurred on our farm, because the family did all the milking.  We were a farm family.  My brothers and I helped my Dad, but no one helped as much as my Mom.  She was in the barn with the rest of us, and cooked all the meals and did the dishes besides.  I don’t think farmers valued their labor then in terms of dollars.  Putting long hours in on the farm was simply what farmers did.  The temptation, perhaps economic necessity, of working in town for wages to supplement farm income probably killed off small dairy farms.  Consider the winter work schedule circa 1960 for our small scale dairy operation like ours in Danvers.

 

6:30-8:00 a.m.                Morning milking, feed the calves

8:00-9:00                        Breakfast

9:00-10:30                      Wash the milkers, clean the barn, spread manure

10:30-noon                     Other farm work

NOON                            Dinner (followed by my Dad’s big nap)

1:30-4:30 p.m.                Other farm tasks

4:30-6:00                        Evening milking, feed the calves

6:00-6:30                        Wash the milkers

6:30 p.m.                         Supper

6:30-bedtime                   Leisure

Take that day and repeat it for the entire number of days you own a herd of dairy cows.  That was your life as a dairy farmer.  You could squeeze in a day off the farm from time to time, but only between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and certainly not two days in a row, lest you fall behind.  In addition to the milking you had the grain farming; planting, harvesting, and cultivation, plus making hay, repairing equipment, caring for the pasture, cutting thistles, making fence, shelling corn, countless other tasks that farmers simply did. Take away the every day, twice a day task of milking however, and you might be able to take a job that actually paid you money directly for hours worked.  As tractors and implements improved and got larger, enabling farmers to plant and care for more grain acreage, selling dairy cows became easier not only because the milk check became smaller as a proportion of farm income, but because by doing so you could escape a grueling every day schedule of hard work.   You could begin to imagine such a thing as “vacation,” something we never experienced as a family.  I take that back.

When I was eight we drove to Ft. Leonard Wood Kentucky to watch my brother graduate from Army basic training.  We were gone three days and two nights and stayed in motels for the first time ever.  That was the extent of travel with my parents as a kid.  In our absence our neighbor Henry milked the cows.

Modern dairy farmers in the United States have been using migrant labor to milk cows, and it has been in short supply.  In the Netherlands, where labor is more generously rewarded, more than half the dairies now use robotic milkers.  Jesse and Jennifer Lambert of Graniteville Vermont just took out a seven year $380,000 loan to install two robots and retrofit a barn at their organic dairy farm.  They were looking for a more consistent way to milk their cows, spend more time with their newborn son, and at the same time save money.  They are saving $60,000 a year in labor costs that would have gone to a full time and part time employee, and are producing 20% more milk.

 

“No one wants to milk cows,” Jennifer Lambert said.  “Especially on the weekend.”

She also thinks the robots lead to more relaxed cows.  When a cow wants to be milked, it simply steps up into a stall, grain is dumped in front of it, and an arm reaches under its body to wash the teats.  Next a laser scans the cow’s body, and the arm attaches a cup to each of the four teats, milking them individually.  In addition, the technology collects and stores data about each cow’s production, body temperature, weight, and number of visits to the milking system and sends all that data to the farmer’s computer.

Wow.  You could sit in the barn on a lawn chair and read your smart phone or kindle while all that was going on.  Or stay in the house and read about it later on your computer.

 

I worked on a dairy farm near Aberdeen, Scotland in the winter of 1975 that milked 260 cows aided by a computerized system.  As groups of twenty cows came in the milking parlor we entered each cow’s number, printed on large ear tags, into a computer.  That number generated a portion of feed that was consistent with where they were in their cycle, cutting back as their milk production waned, doing what Dad did with a feed scoop and the knowledge of each cow in the barn.  It was nothing more a feed and data system.  But I never imagined a machine could milk a cow.  Why not I wonder?  Now 40 years later it’s a reality.

It would be wonderful if the cost of robotic dairy technology came down.  With even less costly labor small farmers might once maintain dairy herds, and we could conceivably return to drinking milk from local farms, perhaps even delicious raw milk.  Like small batch craft beer and whiskey, small batch locally produced dairy products, not only organic milk but cheese and butter as well, could have a resurgence.  I’d be the first in line, as long as I didn’t have to milk the cows.  

Compromise is Not a Dirty Word

Good news drives out the bad easily when we let it.  There are so many things we wish would go away that we crave distraction.  And so the Cub’s post season play takes over our attention along with the Democratic Presidential Candidate debate and we in Illinois and Americans everywhere glide through the waning months of 2015 as if all were well.  Just six days ago there were not one but two more school shootings, and an outcry from the highest levels for increased gun control measures that swiftly faded.  In order to protect each other we have gladly taken our shoes off in airports for fifteen years because of a single and unsuccessful shoe bombing attempt, but yet we shrug off any suggestion of efforts to control gun violence no matter how many children are killed.  I digress.

Two weekends ago we got together with family on Sunday for a brunch in Bridgeport, a neighborhood in Chicago.  Folks were in from Florida we don’t often see so we used their visit as an occasion to eat and drink and talk.  Nice day.

I was interested in what we talked about, or I guess what we didn’t talk about.  Though most of us were from Illinois we didn’t talk about state politics.  The rise in Chicago property taxes was touched on briefly but nothing on the budget stalemate in Springfield.  If the school shooting in Oregon, gun control or the lack of it, was discussed I wasn’t in the room.

We did talk about Syrian refugees, mainly I think because a Bosnian couple, neighbors of our hosts, were there as guests.  There were refugees themselves once, and have a special feeling for people displaced by politics and violence.  That’s why it’s good for me to get out of the shack and talk to people. I get the benefit of different perspectives.

We talked about each other.  We talked a lot about the Cubs.  We talked about the food, family that weren’t there, when we saw each other last and when we’ll be together again.  Everyone has personal news, things going on in their lives, and we’re nosy enough to want to know all about it.  I’m not sure what we talked about, but we talked and talked and talked.  Hours of talking, three or four conversations at once, catching up, learning new things, hearing from ourselves the answers to questions about our own lives we so rarely put into words.  It was good.  You might go as far as to call it wonderful.  I not sure why we don’t do it more often.

But after I was home, and thought of what wasn’t said, I tried to answer this:  If we don’t talk about urgent and pressing problems to our closest family and friends, who do we talk to?  Our Face Book friends?  That’s not what I call a real conversation.

On the night of the lunar eclipse I had a rare conversation about state government with regular folks.  We were sitting around Weber grills talking about the recent departure of the head of the Illinois’ Department of Agriculture, a local farmer from Seneca.  He was summarily dismissed by Gov. Rauner for saying the wrong thing, which was most likely true.  I don’t know what it was, some say the reporting of attendance numbers at the fair, but the recently hired head of the state fair resigned in protest of his boss’s firing.  Shutting people up by essentially eliminating them is to me one of our new Governor’s least attractive qualities.  In any case, I mentioned that there was some controversy about going ahead full throttle with Illinois’ two state fairs, Springfield and DuQuoin, in the absence of a budget and one of my friend’s reacted by saying

“You can’t cancel the State Fair.  All those 4-H kids that work so hard all year?  Take the fair away from them?”

I appreciate my friend for a lot of things but especially for thinking of kids.  He and I are both involved with our local county fair.  I’m a volunteer judge and he works year round to organize the dog show portion of the 4-H fair.  We jokingly call him the superintendent of dogs.  He’s a retired (but still part time) educator and a smart guy.  That he thought of those 4-H kids right away is consistent with his values.  He’s a good guy.  I hope my answer didn’t offend him.

“We can’t cancel the State Fair but we can take away day care for thousands of Illinois preschool kids whose families are poor?  We take care of the 4-H kids but abandon low income families who used to qualify for day care help?”

Another friend chimed in, “If you cancelled the state fair there would be a big ruckus.  But take benefits away from poor people and you hear very little.  Either no one notices or no one cares.”

I refuse to believe no one cares about low income parents and their children although evidence of that being true abounds.  The conversation ended there.  We just looked at each other and moved on to other topics.  Really, what more can you say?  Even more difficult, what can you do?  We’re a long way from another election in Illinois.

Here’s how ere’s Hereit has gone down in Illinois.  90% of the activities Illinois funded last year continue, cobbled together without a budget by the two appropriation bills Rauner did approve, court orders, and consent decrees.  The remaining 10% is in “no budget limbo” meaning contracts were not issued, or spending for contracts issued is not authorized.  What’s not being paid?  The state supported activities that no one notices or no one cares about.  Or in other words, the things you can get away with politically.

Political leverage for a quick budget passage was severely compromised when state employees were paid on time and public schools payments issued.  With paychecks flowing and schools open, and various other state functions secured by court rulings, Illinois entered a protracted stalemate that allows my life and perhaps yours to be affected very little, while screwing the less fortunate.  There have been a few exceptions.

Rauner’s administration closed the Illinois State Museum (which I’ve been to) in Springfield and it’s four satellite locations along with the World Shooting and Recreation Center in Sparta operated by the Department of Natural Resources (which I didn’t know existed). In both cases he laid off the administrative staff, but continues to pay the unionized state employees working there pending a court decision and so saves little money.  It is estimated that the museum closing will amount to savings of maybe $400,000.  Chump change really when compared to this year’s deficit estimated at $5 Billion to $8 Billion dollars if we don’t raise taxes to their former level.  That’s billion with a B you know.  Each billion comes with 9 zeros. Want to see just one?  Unless you’re a hedge fund manager or a politician you aren’t used to seeing numbers this big.

 

$1,000,000,000

Last year’s appropriations were about $66 Billion in Illinois, so a $5-8 Billion shortfall is a big problem, without even counting unpaid bills and all the fooling around the politicians do with numbers.  It’s all rather symbolic, the cuts and the rhetoric around them.  It’s a play for publicity and a ploy to influence opinion rather than an attempt to actual govern.  As the days go by and we don’t collect more income tax (you know, that temporary increase both parties allowed to expire January 1) the deficit just gets deeper.  Both sides know we need those taxes.  Who will get the blame for raising them is the only question remaining.  We’re watching a slow shutdown of state government.

I did check the sticker on my license plate when Jesse White said he was no longer mailing out expiration notices.  I have missed buying a new sticker before even when he does mail me the stuff.  But really, my life goes on relatively unaffected by the state budget.  How about yours?  You do realize don’t you that others are not so lucky.  After all, I’m on social security and about to be covered by Medicare, both federal programs.  Those who depend on the State of Illinois are the ones who are screwed.  In particular those that depend on that big fund in Illinois called the general fund that accounts for about $36 B of the $66 B Illinois spends.

 

State governments make public policy for their own citizens.  While they pass through a lot of federal money, about half their budget in most states for restricted purposes, states also decide how to spend their own tax revenue (which comes from state income tax, sales tax, gambling, and more) to fund and carry out those policies and fund priorities they create.  States have different problems. They spend their own dollars on public education, health care including mental health, public safety, child welfare and day care, social services, support for commerce and industry, agriculture, infrastructure improvements, state parks, all kinds of things, where they see fit.  It’s not fluff, this general fund spending.  On the contrary the general fund supports basic services that help keep the people of the state whole and healthy.  That spending improves and enhances the lives of Illinois’ citizens.  It’s government, and when it’s done right its good government.  The plan which carries out that spending is the annual budget.  Within it you can see the state’s priorities.

Illinois has not had a budget for over 100 days.  Who’s getting screwed because of that?  The people who depend on the activities the general fund supports which have not this year been granted a political pass.  That’s who.  Here’s a partial list:

·       Low income parents seeking day care

·       The mentally ill

·       Homeless and troubled youth

·       Drug addicts and alcoholics

·       The developmentally disabled

·       Seniors and handicapped persons benefitting from personal assistants

     

There are basic services needed and provided to vulnerable Illinois citizens that cannot be categorized as medical, fit under the rubric of health, and paid for by your health insurance policy, Medicare or Medicaid.  How and why did those services develop?  They developed because Illinois saw a need for them and appropriated money to fill those needs.  Do you see a pattern in that list?  Would you characterize any of those groups as connected, politically active, and vocal?  Many, perhaps most, of those Illinoisans are served by local not for profit agencies in your community whose mission is to help them.  They previously had grants and contracts, many held for thirty plus years, paid from general revenue funds that allowed them to carry on those activities.  Some of those organizations, especially those in rural areas without access to community foundations or significant corporate support, operate with budgets that are 90% or more state funded.  Last year’s payments, chronically late, have stopped dribbling in.  If your local agency is still open it has either spent from reserve funds or borrowed money to fund those activities since July 1.

 

In some cases besides not paying the agencies, the Rauner administration went out of its way to change eligibility requirements.  The low income families who last year could earn dollars up to a ceiling and still receive subsidized day care saw that ceiling drop by two thirds.  It is estimated that 90% of Illinois’ low income parents who received help paying for day care last year no longer qualify.  It was in legislative hearings about the effects of these emergency rule changes that Linda Satterfield of DHS was forced out of state government for telling the truth, suffering a fate similar to the Secretary of Agriculture.  Asked her opinion of what effect those changes would have she said “devastating.”  And that is pretty much the last word we’ve heard from Rauner’s people on that topic.

Illinois expanded its support for low income working families for a reason.  In 1995 Bill Clinton and Congress passed, with bi-partisan support, welfare reform which put a time limit on payments to low income mothers.  It worked.  Welfare rolls plummeted.  It worked in no small part because states like Illinois kept some of the savings they achieved through reduced welfare payments and invested them in sensible services like subsidized day care for working parents.  What do you suppose four months of a reversal of that policy has done to those families, some of them single parent families working minimum wage jobs?  Devastating is probably a fair word wouldn’t you say?

 

Few if any of these devastating measures have been reversed in the legislature.  Republicans have taken to voting present as a block, not wishing to vote no and appear unkind, which forces Democrats to take all the action, something they find impossible to do.  Politics won’t solve this I’m afraid.  Good government could.

 

Why have Illinois politicians put vulnerable Illinois citizens in this position?  Collective bargaining and term limits?  Future political control?  To advance one party at the expense of the other?  Really?  I think that’s shameful.  They should go into session next week and immediately do what is needed to take care of people who desperately need their government to act responsibly.  After they do, they can talk all they want.  I would tell them this if they would listen; talk till you’re blue in the face, beat each other up in the media, take polls, send out fliers, campaign all year, try to buy votes.  Go ahead.  Who cares?  We’ll decide your future when next we vote in any case.  But do none of that till you’ve passed a budget.  Not another word until you do your job.

   

Word has it Rauner and Madigan have not met since May.  Is that possible?  Surely they or their people are meeting behind closed doors and not telling us.  If they are I hope they are talking about things that really matter, like pension reform and an enlightened tax policy.  We deserve a very public discourse, so we can be better informed and thus smarter about whom we vote for next time.  But as for how to move forward, I suggest compromise.  Surely they remember compromise, that concept in which you get some of what you want but not everything.  You work to accomplish goals over time rather than insist it all happen immediately. Compromise does however requires listening, a certain amount of trust, and some faith.  All of those qualities appear to be in short supply in Springfield.

 

Compromise is not a dirty word.  It is a useful, even critical, strategy to employ when the plan you propose has components which are plainly non-starters.  Wholesale change to collective bargaining in Illinois is going nowhere, as are universal term limits, but I have an idea for a compromise that might work for the latter. Term limits for publicly elected officials have been talked about for many years and few governments embrace them.  But here’s one that could work.  Limit the number of years a single legislator can hold a leadership position-Speaker of the House, President of the Senate, Majority Whip, etc. which are determined by votes of their peers.  Limiting those terms would guarantee new people and new personalities regularly come into leadership.  It may sound small but that is a change that could shake up Springfield in a quiet but positive way.

I didn’t vote for Rauner but I didn’t think it was awful that Illinois changed governors. I like change. And while I didn’t agree with his approach to government and worried about his lack of experience in government, I thought Rauner was smart.  Turns out he’s just as pig headed as the rest.  Except for overdue and needed changes to Illinois’ criminal justice system, which enjoyed bi partisan support, his administration in its first year has accomplished little.  To the contrary, it is doing a lot of damage.  I guess it shows you don’t have to be a career politician to be unbending and inflexible.

What we need in Springfield and throughout Illinois are politicians of whatever background or experience who keep the best interests of the people they serve foremost in their mind.  I think neither Rauner nor our current legislative leaders are doing that.  I think both sides have another agenda.  I think we’re in big trouble in Illinois, and no one is leading us out of it.

We need a good week in Illinois government very soon. 

Writing Early in the Monring

There’s moonlight on the shack porch right now so bright.  I followed bits of it, circles, irregular shapes, of such bright light it lit up my shoes when I stepped in them through the yard from the house.  I thought it must be the streetlight but no, it was the moon high overhead shining through the trees.  That same eclipsing moon we saw fading away Sunday night is now high and bright at 6:00 a.m. Friday, just a sliver gone on one side, four days past full, not full again till nearly Halloween.

I’m in a race now, I’ve made a list, of things that must be done before winter comes.  For appearance sake I started with the hedges in the front yard.  I have a privet hedge between our house and the north neighbor that is my job to cut twice a year at least.  Trash trees grow, and stick out the top, faster than the hedge.  They are rooted between the hedge canes, nearly indistinguishable from the plant favored and nurtured, not to be cut down. It’s the same knot of wood at the base each year, long clipped from my near thirty years of living here, clipped again this year, the offender drug from the hedge and put in a pile.

Same with the lilacs.  I have a maple trying to grow that I thwart every year, and another nameless damn plant with rough ugly leaves that grows amazingly fast.  Some people pull these offenders out by the roots with chains and tractors I suppose, others paint them with poison hoping not to kill the desired plants around them.  I just cut them.  They grow back.  It’s a yearly thing.

And trim.  The lilacs if left alone would have grown all over my neighbor Bill’s windows by now.  As it was they were fast encroaching on his siding and out of control.  I took not only the new hand shears but the lopping shears with the big handles (Dull and bent, I need new ones) and the cheap saw I got at a yard sale.   Hacking away, feeling the muscles of my hands and shoulders tire as I made huge piles of branches.  I went on from the lilacs to the trees at the edge of the yard.  Seedlings from the redbuds take root and intrude.  The willow grows over the day lilies.  The choke cherry wants to extend its branches onto the shack roof.  I deny them.  I cut low branches, take out saplings, and this year eliminated an entire old bush half rotted at the root.  I’m a destroyer separating the yard from the chaos of the ravine.

When I enter the ravine I switch tactics.  It’s not my job to order that space.  While some neighbors clear the slope I’ve let mine go wild.  In the ravine I only remove traces of mankind and pull dead branches hung up on live ones, throwing them on the ground where they can rot proper.  It is life and death in there.  Trees sprout but, unable to move, are doomed for lack of light and die stunted and forlorn.  They can only hope the trees above them die while they’re still alive and give them chance to grow.  And they do, they die and rot in place and crash down. The ravine, a steep slope leading to a skinny creek, is littered with the trunks and branches of dead trees.  Too steep to haul them up for firewood I let them lay, let it all go.  There’s poison oak that grows in there, and wild grapevine but little else.  Shade, merely the absence of light, prevents the growth of grass or weeds.

 

I find a spent and rusted fuse on the ravine slope.  We have only circuit breakers.  It must have been there for thirty years.  I pick up five aluminum beer cans, two Styrofoam cups, a sheet of plastic nearly covered in loose soil and half rotted wood, and a wolverine snuff can.  I look for traces of the dead animal that caused the stink weeks ago but find nothing.  I wrap the trash in the plastic and carry it out.  Though just outside my shack window, there is no need to venture into the ravine again till spring.  Its best left alone.

This morning my hands hurt.  I have little scrapes and pokes from the wood I’ve been handling, and they’re a little stiff like the rest of me.  Today I have to trim a little more then burn what I’ve cut down.  Maybe at the end of the day we’ll roast hot dogs over the fire pit.
 

I read this morning in The Writer’s Almanac that crazy Wallace Stevens poem “The Emperor of Ice Cream” and a bit of his life story along with Graham Greene’s.  It is said that Graham Greene realized as a young writer that if he wrote but 500 words a day he would write more books than even the most prolific writers.   And so he did, every day, write 500 words and was so strict with himself he sometimes stopped in mid sentence.

The word sentence above was 831 and I’m just getting warmed up.  I wrote a 2,710 word blog post since Monday that I’ll save for next week, worked on finishing a short story, and outlined a possible novel this week all on top of lots of texts and FB posts and other miscellaneous scribbling.  I don’t have as much time as Graham Greene did when he was young. And then again, Graham’s stuff is polished and elegant.  It doesn’t look like I’ll be polished and elegant.  You can’t have everything.

Good luck to you in your preparations for winter.  Me?  I have things to write.  On top of that there is a hedge to trim, a shed to shingle, branches to burn, wood to split, jerk and chili paste to make and miles to go before I sleep.  That 'miles to go' line belongs to Robert Frost.  Then there's this:

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.  

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

That is the first stanza of Wallace Steven's famous poem.  Look up the second and last stanza which is even better, more crazy than the first.  Aren't you glad the bunch of them; Wallace, Graham, and Robert, gave us this stuff?

P.S.-While you're at it, look up the meaning of concupiscent.  Who knew?

Golf among the Idle

I think playing more golf when one quits working and getting better is a common fantasy.  More play can only improve your game right?  I know that was my fantasy.  I kept a golf ball and tees on my desk and thought of smacking it long and hard, especially during bad phone calls.  You know; complaints, descriptions of risky situations, predictions of calamity, calls about budget cuts, bureaucratic threat both veiled and actual, lost grants, and the like.  I would listen to the speaker phone and respond appropriately, alone in my office, saying what I needed to say while staring at the golf ball, imagining it disappearing down the middle of the fairway.  More golf, less stress, was my goal.

It didn’t happen.  After I retired, aside from golf outings to raise money, I found few chances to play.  I played in a weekly league for a short while until it felt like an obligation and I quit.  I also slowly realized (this may not come as a shock at all to my women readers) that guys suck when it comes to organizing things, especially when such organization requires planning and communication.  None of my friends who golf contacted me about playing.
    

My wife was baffled and alarmed at my lack of golf.  She believes golf is good for me.

“Why aren’t you golfing?  You’ve got time.”

“Nobody talks about golfing.”

“Uh huh.  And do you talk to anyone about golfing?”

“No.”

“What makes you think your friends that golf are any different than you?  Nobody makes any plans.  Maybe you should try to organize something.”

Few meetings and little organization has been my mantra since I walked out of YSB for the last time.  Slowly that has eroded.  I have meetings.  I volunteer.  I have a calendar again.  But I was damned if I was going to organize anything.  It felt too much like work.

As a result I didn’t golf.  The clubs just sat there in the garage, getting older like their owner.  I pondered golf off and on all last winter.  I brought a golf ball to the shack.  Come spring I tentatively decided to do something proactive.  First I tested the waters with a few friends.

“Would you be interested in regular golf?”

“You mean like a league?”

“No, no, no.  Not a league.  Just an e mail.  No obligation.  Play or don’t play, nobody cares.  I’m thinking every Monday afternoon, different course, move around.”

“You talking serious golf?  Good golfers?”

“Hell no.  Duffers like us.  There’ll be rules against serious play.  Should I send you the e mail?  I’m thinking of e mailing eight guys, hoping to get four, no RSVP required.”

“Sure.”  After all, the people I was talking to were only committed to getting an e mail.  Guys live their entire lives being wary of commitment I think.

That phase went fairly positively.  I was close to getting eight guys.  There was one guy I know but don’t talk to often.  However, I serve on a local not for profit board of directors with his wife.

“Does (your husband) golf?”

“Yeah, sometimes, not often.”

“Think he’d like to be part of a loose, no obligation, once a week golf opportunity?”

“Yeah I do.”

“Give me his e mail address and I’ll include him.”

I thought that one over.  Before I included him blindly I sent him an e mail explaining the concept and asking if he wanted to be on the list.  He said OK.  I don’t like it when my wife volunteers me for something I know nothing about, so I decided to extend him the same courtesy.

I asked a guy at church.  I ran into a guy at an anniversary celebration.  So it went.  My criteria for choosing candidates was to be sure they were not serious about the game.  Sometimes I had to make reference checks with collaterals.
 

“You ever golf with Frank?” (Not his real name.)

“Yeah. Couple times.”

“How is he as a golfer?”

“Not that good. Bad actually.”

“Like us?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.  That’s just what I’m looking for.”
 

I assembled the group of eight and come the end of April I sent them this group e mail:

Gentlemen,

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while.  My idea is we set up a regular day and standing time to golf every week for a group of eight guys.  The theory is you never get everybody, so you send to eight in order to get a foursome.  No obligation to attend or RSVP.  If more than four show up they play too.  I’ll make two tee times just in case.

No betting or wagering, no throwing clubs, no buying beers if you get the high score, no bitching.  Just your standard low key golf for duffers.  Keeping score is optional.  Sign up for nine or eighteen as you wish or have time for.  Ride a cart or walk.  Each week we’ll go from course to course wherever we please as we choose.  Have a beer or food after golf or go home.  No requirements.  No banquet at the end of the season.  No bullshit of any kind.  I propose we start Monday May 4 at Pine Hills at 1:45 p.m..

Here’s the eight guys.  We can add or subtract as we go along if we need to, but you have to start somewhere.

As I listed the eight guys I flashed to an instance of failed organization at the nursing home in 1977. I had just gotten back from traveling in South America and needed a job quickly.  I took one as a nurse’s aide, the only male nurse’s aide at that time, and perhaps in the history of that now torn down very smelly old nursing home.  The head nurse immediately assigned me to work the men’s wing on the top floor.  They grouped all the guys together to keep them away from the women.  They were a motley lot, the guys in that nursing home in 1977.

Some were very old, victims of strokes, significantly physically compromised, assigned to wheel chairs, victims of dementia or otherwise obviously hard to care.  Yet others walked fine, were fairly young, and aside from appearing vacant and slightly off, looked and seemed OK to me.   The other nurse’s aides hadn’t a clue or a care as to why they were there.  Actually I must admit that despite fairly regularly complaining they seemed OK with their lot.  But the confinement, the boredom, the mind numbing sameness of their everyday life hanging out with nothing to do blew me away.  I’d been talking with the fellas and a lot of them knew how to play euchre.  I thought I could get two tables going, winners move. Couple of games at least.  Seven guys and me.  So I went to the activity director and asked if I could organize an afternoon card game for some of the higher functioning guys.  Give them something to do and look forward to for Christ’s sake.

“Of course,” she smiled. “I’ll give you anything you need.  Good luck with that.”

Having been given the go ahead I went first to talk with Tom.  Tom was the sharpest tool in the shed.

“Tom I’m going to have two tables of euchre going Monday, Wednesday, Friday in the lounge at the end of the floor.  You want to play?”

“You playing?”

“Yeah, I’m playing.”

“OK.  I could play.”

I went to Stan next.  Stan agreed right away, but added a caveat.

“Who else is playing?”

“Well so far you, Tom, and me.”

“Is that right?  Yeah, well I’ll play but not with Tom.  Me and Tom, we don’t get along.”

“That’s OK.  We’re going to have two tables.  You can play at the other table.”

And so it went. Buzz was immediately created and I had old guys coming up to me offering to play, but only if certain people were excluded from the game.  It got complicated.  Long story short, I ended up with three players and me, only after begging Tom and Stan to try playing at the same table JUST THIS ONCE with me and one other guy.  The game was not ten minutes old before Stan called Tom a downright terrible name and threw his cards in his face.  The third guy quietly stole away, I separated Tom and Stan, and that was the end of my card game organizing at the nursing home.

I’m happy to report no such problems organizing the golf group.  Congeniality rules.  For one thing we’re a lot younger and healthier than those guys in the nursing home in 1977 and have successfully avoided institutionalization.  I expect that to be the case until we all collectively check out.  I hope I’m right.

Ottawa is a small town.  The guys who golf on Monday afternoon knew each other, or knew of each other, or had at least heard about each other, so gaining a sense of camaraderie was fairly easy.  Creating an expectation that golf could be played with little competition was harder.

The first Monday however was iffy.  It rained like hell in the morning and participation was seriously affected.  I was the only one who showed up.

Undaunted, I reported to the group the next day in an e mail that play went on though there was a great deal of casual water on the course.  I attached a group photo of our first outing, a selfie of me on a Pine Hills  tee, and announced the location of next Monday’s outing.

 

The next Monday it promised to rain again.  Rain was heavily predicted but I went anyway as did one other member.  It was rumored that another of our group was actually in the parking lot at one point, saw dark clouds rolling in, and went home.  Amazingly the two of us were able to play through only occasional light showers and thunder, no lightning that we could see, and finish eighteen.  We again included a selfie, this time of two people, and the e mail report to the group demonstrated persistence if nothing else.  By the third week we hit our stride.  The sun came out.  The guys figured someone would always be there to play golf no matter what.  Numbers have been fairly good since, despite a horribly rainy June.
 

Like all true gentleman golfers we praise good shots and ignore bad ones.  All right, some shots are so horribly awful that we can’t help but bust out laughing but by and large we are amazingly uncritical of one another.  I report only group results.  The formula goes like this:

Number of pars (birdies count for two, have not yet had an eagle) divided by number of golfers x holes in the round.  So five guys collectively score the equivalent of 12 pars.  Divide that by the number of holes played (12 divided by 5 x 18 or 90) and you get 13%.  The Monday golf group has scored between something dismally low like under 10% (no doubt terrible conditions) to over 20% pars on our best day.  We don’t know individually who scored the lowest, the highest, who improved the most, made the most putts, had the longest drives, nothing.  We just know how we’re doing as a group of guys that enjoy playing golf together. And we do, very much, enjoy playing golf together.

Did we get better?  I think so.  One of us began the year hitting nothing bigger than a three wood off the tee and by the end of July acquired a big ass driver that he now hits well.  Some of us have figured out how to chip closer to the pin.  Some not.  I’m pretty sure all of us putt a little better than we did in May, with notable lapses, but I have no proof of that.  Monday afternoon golf as we play it is not what you would call data driven.

We’ve gotten better in the sense of remembering things the other guy say and think about things that matter.  As the summer went on we made better conversation.  We got over talking about just baseball, the news, and current events around town.  Slowly we began to talk about ourselves.  We got to know each other better.

I for one look forward to Mondays.  We are likely in slightly better shape due to our efforts, although we drive our carts very near the ball and probably closer to the greens than the grounds keeper would like. We don’t play a strenuous game. I know that I progressively napped for shorter periods of time immediately after getting home as the season wore on.  I feel energized by Mondays out there.  I might go so far as to say I felt loose, as long as I load up with enough ibuprofen.

Golf courses are big and green and expansive.  Even the worst course in the area is very pretty. It can be quiet out there, serene even, while at the same time hilarious.  Erratic and unorthodox golf swings create shots that defy physics. Golf balls take weird bounces.  Men on Monday afternoon have been known to laugh at themselves, their shots, their swings and each other.  Golf without pressure is damn fun.

One of our members, a big swinger who steps in the bucket like a pull hitter, tees his ball extremely high.  He carries those tees that look like pencils and has a driver with a head approximately the size of a campus refrigerator.  On one notable swing in mid season he inexplicably drove his tee a good ten feet while his ball simply feel to the ground where the tee had once been.  It was amazing.  A seemingly physical impossibility.  But he did it.  We gave him high fives all around.

We find the local golf courses underutilized on Monday afternoon and appreciative of our business.  I’m not sure all the courses we play this summer will survive, given the apparent decline of golfing.  Some say golf never recovered from the recession.  We saw few young golfers out there on Monday afternoons, but then with any luck most of them are working.  The lack of play on our local courses was OK with us. We were out there hacking away with little or no pressure from other golfers and enjoying ourselves.  Knock on wood, so far we have hit no one, amazingly, given some of the shots we’ve executed.  Maybe we’re blessed.

Golf with guys who enjoy not just the game but each other is a blessing in itself.  Fall brings dead leaves to the game and an increased risk of lost balls.  We’ll play till the weather shuts us down and season one will be over.  If we can keep a good group of guys like this together I’d like to play regular weekly summer golf for many years to come.  Many, many years.  

Something Stinks

Something stinks in the ravine outside the shack.  It’s the smell of something dead, which is one of those distinctive bad smells instantly recognized, like skunk.  I smell it when I open the windows and the wind is right.  I don’t want to look for the source.  Besides, I’ve learned if you can stand it that dead smell fades fairly quickly, depending of course on the size of the carcass.
 

I don’t want to think it’s the ground hog.  We have a ground hog that lives in the ravine and at least a couple of times each summer comes up into the yard to eat white clover.  The ground hog is amazingly unruffled by our presence.  He leaves, finally, if you venture to within ten feet of him but seems almost oblivious to the dangers humans represent.  He’s a trusting groundhog.  I like to think he’s still alive down there.

It’s not the fox.  I saw a fox in July, a beauty, up by the oak tree that supports one end of the hammock.  The fox was smelling around and exploring, untroubled by the nearness of our house.  I think since our dog Ally died the yard may be less threatening, although the ground hog has been plopping his fat fur belly on the lawn each summer for years, long before Ally died.  I know it’s not the fox because the day after I got back from Ontario the fox was back, hanging out by the compost pile, but this time with a smaller young fox in tow, presumably her kit.  I love seeing those bright and alert foxes and knowing they live nearby.

I’d hate to think it was a deer causing that stink, although we’ve seen coyotes in the neighborhood and a deer could easily have fallen prey to a coyote.  Actually I wouldn’t mind if a coyote was reeking.  In contrast to foxes they’re fairly mangy looking, always reminding me of hyenas.  One early foggy morning last week I stooped over at the end of the driveway to pick up the Tribune and rose to find myself looking straight into the eyes of a doe standing in the side yard by my garden.  Her two fawns, not a lot smaller then her, were munching on my Brussels sprouts.  That explains the plants’ lack of height.  My garden was pretty much of a bust this year.  I’m going to have to fence it.
 

In any case the doe looked at me cautiously, stepping but slowly away. Boy she had big eyes.  To her fawns she made a huffing sound with her nose and when they joined their mother the three loped across Caton Road and through the neighbor’s yard.  It’s been a nice couple of weeks in the neighborhood, aside from that stink.  And already, as I type this with the window open, the smell is fading.

September is a transitional month.  School gets underway.  Things change.  Locally our homeless organization opens its shelters, both in Peru and Ottawa, in September.  They close in the warmth of May and reopen before cold weather.  I wish they could be open all year because the need for shelter knows no season but they cannot yet afford to do so.  I volunteered for the first time since spring closing and the place was pretty full.

A family of six was there; Mom, Dad and their four kids.  They had come from Rockford, first to Peru, and then to Ottawa which expanded to include family units.  I’m so glad.  Because of planning and taking a chance on expansion the shelter was able to afford private space in the same room to this family with kids ranging from elementary school to junior high.  I rolled in at 7:00 a.m. intent on making breakfast.  Our church serves a free lunch on the second Sunday of each month and that coincides with our church’s staffing of the shelter.  We start at the shelter at 4:30 Sunday afternoon and provide volunteers through 9:00 Monday morning.

Our church baked 100 potatoes and fed our community guests a Sunday noon lunch of salad and a baked potato bar complete with butter, sour cream, green onions, cheese and chili.  And of course desserts.  We do desserts really well.  We had potatoes left over and took them along with the fixings to the shelter that evening.  They fed some of the potatoes as a side dish for the evening meal but there were plenty left to fry that morning.  Chopped up baked potatoes and onions fry up quickly and nicely to go along with eggs.  As a bonus, the shelter had thick ham slices unused and donated from someone’s banquet.  I scraped off the pineapple and fake maraschino cherries and steamed them hot while I fried potatoes and scrambled eggs.

The Rockford kids were hungry and excited at the prospect of ham and eggs.  Because it was easier I walked out to the dining area to see who was ready for breakfast, asking if they wanted the whole plate, and sort of taking orders.  The Rockford kids were close in age, two boys and two girls.  The youngest boy wanted to skip the eggs opting for ham and potatoes “with cheese on ‘em.”  He took the ordering thing seriously.  The rest of the family were in for whatever, the whole deal.  When I brought the young boy’s plate he looked up at me with a long face.

“These don’t have any cheese.”

“Oh that’s right you’re the cheese guy.  Just a minute.”

I went back into the kitchen, sprinkled a portion of shredded cheese from the bag we’d brought from church, added bacon crumbles for good measure, and microwaved his plate so they melted on the spuds.  When I slid them in front of him again I informed him

“You know I’m not going to be here tomorrow morning.  I wouldn’t expect the same service.”

His Dad laughed.  “You don’t expect this kind of breakfast at a homeless shelter anyway.”

“Today’s breakfast just kind of fell into place,” I explained.

All the potatoes, most of the ham, and eighteen eggs later I was taking a break and having my own breakfast with the Tribune in the dining area. It was a scramble, pardon the pun, cooking, plating, and serving individual breakfasts to sixteen people but I got it done.  After that I dispensed some meds, passed out towels, and then there was a lull.  I would wash the dishes later.  People were doing their chores, taking showers, making their beds and getting ready for the day.

The boy who had eaten my cheese potatoes came out of the bathroom with wet hair and walked up to me.

“Let’s do the handshake.”

“What handshake?”

“My handshake.  I’ll show you.”

He raised his hand.  We did high fives, then low fives, then bumped fists, all which I followed.  But immediately after the fist bump he put his hands in the air, fingers spread, and shook them hard, along with jumping from one foot to another.

“You gotta do the hand and foot thing,” he said seriously.

“Give me another chance.”

We high and low fives, bumped knuckles, and I shook my hands over my head.

“You didn’t do your feet.”

“I’m sitting down.”

“You gotta do your feet or it doesn’t count.”

On my next try along with all the other moves I lifted my feet off the floor, wiggled them one after the other, and put them down.
 

“Now you got it.”  He smiled and sat down next to me, asking questions about what was in the paper.

Turns out all the Rockford kids have developed their own personal handshake.  When my new friend’s sister came by, a little older I’d say and also freshly showered, he told her.

“This guy knows my handshake.”

“Show me.”  We did it and her mouth fell open.
 

She looked at me.  “Well then you have to learn mine.”  Hers I found out was a back of the hand slap, a front of the hand slap, a curl of your fingers and hold, and a pull forward.
 

“Now he knows mine too, but I bet you don’t know his name.”

“How do you know his name?” her brother challenged.

Earlier that morning when he was in the shower I had gotten his sister a towel.  She waited for me to come out of the backroom at the doorway to the kitchen.  Next to that doorway is a bulletin board with a picture of each resident and their name.  When I handed her a towel she pointed to the pictures and said

“Those are wrong.”

“Which?” I said, looking at the pictures.

“Mine and my sister.  You’ve got her name on my picture and my name on hers.  I’m not Sheri, I’m Natalie.”  She sounded offended.

“Well, let’s fix it.  We can’t have that.”

I took the thumbtacks out of photos, printed from the computer snap shot size, showing the smiling confident faces of two separate little girls.
 

“So this picture should say Natalie?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Can’t you tell?”  I looked at her.  She flashed a big smile.  Her eyes are blue.

“Yeah of course.”  I turned back to the photo, scratched through the name Sheri, and wrote Natalie.

“And this one is Sheri right?”  I did the reverse and pinned them back up on the board.  Natalie seemed relieved.

“So now you know my name, what’s yours?”

“I’m Dave.”

“OK.  Thanks Dave.” With that she spun on her heel and made her way towards the showers.

A little before eight thirty the Rockford family gathered by the door waiting for the Mom, who was meeting with staff.  I stood next to the Dad.

“So you came from Rockford?”

“Yeah.  Well Machesney Park, then Rockford, now here.”

“Why did you leave?”

“It’s a long story but there are a lot of bad characters in Rockford. We felt like we had to get out of there.”  The Dad was thin.  He looked old but I knew he wasn’t.

“I know what you mean.  Was last night your first in a shelter?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing today?”
 

“Registering the kids for school.  We’re going to try to stay.  This seems like a good place.”

“It is a good place.”
   

As we talked his wife came from the back with a piece of paper in her hand.  She was plump but spunky looking.

“You were right,” she told her husband.  “They’re in three different schools.  One in Jefferson, two in Central, one in Shepherd.”

“Told ya.”

“Good thing is Central and Shepherd are right next to each other.”
 

I did individual handshakes with the other two kids.  They were ready to venture out.  They looked so clean and hopeful, those kids.  If they were scared or daunted by the next step it didn’t show.  My wife and I, and both our kids, started and ended our public school educations in one system.  Both of us lived in one house from infancy till leaving for college.  I never had to do what they were about to do, walk in as the new kids, let alone listing their residence as the homeless shelter.  Refugees of another sort, I thought.  Making a fresh start.  God I hope no one makes fun of them, I thought to myself.  I hope they transition from the shelter to a safe home.

I came back from a fishing trip and found Illinois still does not have a budget.  Most recently Governor Rauner failed to restore funding for homeless youth just as he has refused to relent on drastic cuts to day care assistance for low income parents.  Both legislative chambers had to override his veto in order to restore funds for treating heroin addicts for Christ’s sake.
    

Illinois is going backwards in its support of marginal families like the one I cooked breakfast for on Monday.  Is anything in Illinois more important than supporting that family and others like them?  If so, can you tell me what that might be?

Something stinks in Illinois all right and it’s not coming from the ravine by my shack.  It’s coming from Springfield.  That stink is not going away.  

Marvin Lake

We left the water of Red Lake Ontario at 6:00 a.m. in a yellow 1956 high winged  de Havilland Otter equipped with pontoons. 

“Is the engine from 1956?”  In 1956 I was five.  Now I'm 64.

“No.”  He yelled over the noise of the single engine.  “It was replaced in 2010 with a new 750 horsepower Pratt & Whitney turbo.  Plenty of horsepower.  Lots of hours left.  Runs like a top.  Not to worry.”

Not that I was worried.  But by their standards we were overweight.  Before we boarded the plane dock hands put all our food and gear on a flat scale.  We exceeded the allowable pounds by over 250.  Mostly that meant we would pay the outfitter extra.  They also put us on the scale, six of us, and we weighed actually less than I imagined, just shy of half a ton.  A quick calculation done silently in my head told me I exceeded the average considerably.

“Don’t worry about the plane,” the pilot repeated.

Six of us were traveling with too much stuff to Marvin Lake.  Six men; five between the ages of 63 and 70, with the youngest, father of three young kids, hovering somewhere around forty.  Six men with twelve knees; ten God given and two artificial.  That God given number of knees promises to wane if the same six men return next year.  Included in our gear were medications and devices, medical supplies, hearing aid batteries and the like, all designed to keep us functioning for the week.  Leaving civilization does not miraculously make one healthy and whole.  I think we all privately hoped for the best.

Our final destination, Marvin Lake, is an outpost fishing camp 45 minutes north and west of Red Lake.  It is one of eleven outpost camps leased and maintained by Chimo Lodge, which operates its main resort on Roderick Lake.  The facilities at Roderick Lake, with flush toilets and wi-fi, are luxurious in comparison to the outposts.  There are no roads to any of these lakes.  Unless you want to strike out across the watery wilderness with a compass, a map, and a canoe you enter and exit via the plane.

All the controls in the old Otter are manual.  Our 32 year old pilot, Ian Partridge, worked the controls, seriously and silently, without looking.  He pumped a lever on the right side of his seat.  He fiddled with a dial in the ceiling above his head.  He turned a small steel wheel next to the lever a few revolutions, then back a little.  All the time he did this he scanned the sky.  After taxiing slowly across the water for a while he reached behind him and pulled a steel cable with a loop from a low peg to a higher peg, hooking it there by feel.  Then he gunned the engine and raced over the surface of the lake.  It seemed a long time before the pontoons left the water.  We cleared the trees, with many feet to spare, and were safely in the air.  Take offs and landings are what really matter. As take offs go, this one was pretty smooth.  On these short trips the Otter flies low under the clouds navigating by visual reference.  From there on it is all view.  Ian, like us, kept his eye not only the sky but on the lakes and land below.  Fortunately, he knew where he was going.

At 2500 feet it’s hard to determine if there is more land than water down there or the opposite.  At times the land seems only to infringe, to poke at the edges of big jagged lakes.  Other times the land, really mostly rock, is separated only by long snaking ribbons of water.  If you look at a map of Ontario North of Red Lake there are thousands of lakes and rivers. Too many to name.  Thank God nothing so valuable has yet been discovered up there which tempts humans to build roads and cities further north.  As it is the Canadian wilderness is home to bears and beavers, loons and bald eagles, moose and caribou, walleye and northern pike, and your occasional wide eyed fisherman or hunter.  Humans are seriously outnumbered, almost inconsequential, not only extraneous but also seasonal.  After November and until May few if any of us venture there. The creatures need only wait and we go away.  The air and the water are clean.  The land is wild and undisturbed.  It belongs to them not us.

The plane descended, the pontoons skimmed the surface of Marvin Lake, and quickly we were unloading our stuff onto the dock.  After doing so we helped the outgoing group of men put their gear into the plane.  Fishing had been good they said, though they reported annoyingly catching northern while fishing for walleye.  They recommended the portage to West Lake, and suggested we keep the motor running while fishing the outflow there.  Ian handed us a dirty yellow box containing a satellite phone to be used only in emergencies and then the plane was in the sky and we were alone.  The six of us would see and speak only to each other for seven days.  I touched the I Phone in my shirt pocket.  For the next week it would be merely a camera and a flashlight.

We were fishing within an hour, pushing three 14 foot aluminum boats off a good dock, 8 horsepower motors powering us across the lake in three directions, two to a boat, in search of spots.  The collective hum of the motors faded as we separated. We were armed with maps marked in blue pen by others who claimed to know where the fish would be, and depth finders, but also with the knowledge that during the week we would need to find our own spots to fish.  Fish like to be near things; rock piles, drop offs, weeds, anything that offers shelter and perhaps food beneath the water.  In the fishing world that is called “structure.” The other factor is water temperature, which correlates to depth.  We expected the walleye in the cumulative warmth of late August to be 14-20 feet deep, where the water was cooler.  It felt good to be back there, out on open water, awaiting our first fish.

The bottom of Marvin Lake is remarkably smooth and even.  Finding the small neighborhoods where the walleye hung out proved difficult.  We were able to catch supper that first afternoon of fishing, but little more.  All week we would keep only as many fish as we could eat and release the rest.  There is something refreshing about bringing fish into the boat, seeing them for a brief time, and watching them swim away vigorous and healthy.  Walleye are a beautiful species of fish.  But you know, the trip is not all about the fish.

It was hotter than normal, even that far north.  The wool socks, flannel shirt, thick sweater, and long underwear never made it out of my Duluth pack.  Nearly every day was tee shirt weather.  The cabin was three small rooms with cots (no sheets), a bathroom and a kitchen.  Propane refrigerators made the kitchen warm.  The deck had a picnic table but mosquitoes invaded after sunset.  When we weren’t on our cots we were together.  Occasionally someone would go to their room to read or nap but for the most part it was communal living; fishing in pairs, cooking, doing dishing, sitting around a table, talking as a group.  There was lots of talking.  Mature men talk about the past more than the future.  One memory invokes another.  Jokes are remembered.  Laughter is abundant.

A string of 25 annual treks to Canada surround this trip and create nostalgia.  A long and unknown list of men has participated.  There was a notebook which recorded such things but its whereabouts is now unknown.  Some of the men who fished on these trips have died and others are now unable to travel.  Some have drifted away.  Many were remembered, their words quoted, their deeds, no doubt exaggerated over the years, recalled.  Their stories were told around the kitchen table.  In addition to glee sadness sometimes crossed the faces of trip veterans.  I have been part of the group only this year and last.  I listened and watched with interest.

As the week went on we became more accustomed to the dead stillness that surrounded us.  We learned to distinguish between the occasional jet and a prop plane.  We learned that the sound of the solar powered water pump near the lake was not a faraway outboard motor.  We waited for the eerie sound of loons across the lake, often at night, quivery and lonely.  There were ducks, mergansers we thought, quacking softly above us.  Occasionally we heard a crow, or was it a raven?  Water lapped on stones.  Wind sifted through pine needles in a low whoosh.  More and more often we found times when there was no sound at all.  We settled into the stillness.

Stillness makes for good thinking.  Of course men think things they don’t say.  I thought of my kids and my wife, and our bigger family.  I thought of people I know and see and people I once knew and miss.  I thought of my long gone parents and what they experienced as they aged.  I wondered about the future.  The first few nights I slept restlessly, waking and not going back to sleep.  Our week in Canada included a full moon, the cabin brightly lit through curtain less windows.  Flashlights weren’t needed in the middle of the night.  After a few nights I fell into deep sleeps filled with crazy dreams.  The quiet up there is calming. 

One hot afternoon my fishing partner for the day, at the front of the boat, pointed excitedly toward shore.  We were exploring a shallow bay on the west side of the main lake.  A bear walked out of the water some fifty yards away, ambled onto shore, and hearing the boat motor (we think) turned to look at us.  He rose up on hind legs and sniffed.  I killed the motor and we sat still.   The bear, shiny and fat, gazed at us looking at him for maybe a minute before slowly, unimpressed and bored it seemed, returning to all fours and walking slowly into the woods. 

Beaver dams were abundant on all the lakes.  Returning to the cabin after a day’s fishing we saw a wide V of small waves on still water.  At the top of the V was the head of a beaver pushing a green stick with leaves and swimming towards his log covered lodge on a narrow inlet.

Each evening after we filleted our fish we put their remains and the day’s kitchen scraps in a white plastic bucket.  Across from the dock was a small island fronted by a shelf of flat rock.  We would make the short trip with fish guts and scraps in one of the boats and dump the bucket on that rock.  Before we were twenty yards away, headed back to camp, the bald eagles were landing in the trees, chasing off the gulls which competed for the food.  Mature white headed eagles along with their dark headed immature offspring were part of the crowd.  An eagle’s nest, prominent at the top of a tall pine on the north side of the lake, became one point of a rough triangle we used to mark a good fishing spot.  Bald eagles were our everyday companions.

Why do men go on these trips year after year?  I think it’s the beauty of wilderness, of which stillness is such a big part.  But the fishing helps.

On the third day my fishing partner and I decided to make the portage to West Lake in the afternoon after lunch.  The morning was hot and the fish weren’t biting.  Few fish had been brought in by any of the boats.  We were looking to change our luck.  We left our boat tied up at the portage point on Marvin knowing there was another, with gas, waiting for us at the other side on West Lake. 

The portage path between those two lakes is long and somewhat difficult.  The terrain is uneven.  A few boards and logs are placed in marshy areas but muck can still pull you down.  There are logs to step over and rocks to negotiate all while carrying tackle, rods and gear.  The going was slow.  At the end of the path we loaded our gear into an old patched boat and made our way into West Lake.

Using the map we motored to the inlet, where something of a river or the narrow throat of another lake flows swiftly into West Lake. The air was cooler there and the water moved quickly.  We caught a few walleye that were small and a big northern but it was a long time between bites.  We motored slowly back up the lake, using the depth finder to scout likely spots, but by the end of the day we had had little success.  No keepers.  We were trying to find the outflow at the opposite end of the lake but it eluded us.  We’d almost given up when we heard the sound of rushing water.

The outflow on West Lake is a cross between a waterfall and long steep rapids.  Big chunks of rock litter the passage from West Lake to its neighboring lake, unnamed on our map.  The guys on the dock that first day were right.  It’s a treacherous spot.  We made our way above the rocks and sized up our prospects.  My partner was driving the boat.  He put us in a likely spot, turned the boat sideways, and we got ready to fish. 

Walleye fishing is built around simple jigs, fish hooks embedded in a round lead head with an eyelet.  The heads are different weights and colors.  On the hook we thread a brightly colored rubber tail, mostly whites and yellows that week.  We tip the end of the hook with half of a plain night crawler, proven best for late summer walleye fishing.   We tie the jig directly to 8 pound test line with no leader.  The line is threaded through the guides of a slender graphite rod that is flexible and sensitive to movement.  Walleye bite lightly.  You need to feel when they tug the line even a little.

The jig sinks, it is on the bottom when your line goes slack, and then we pull it up a few cranks.  Let it sit.  Be patient.  After some time raise it up, cock your wrist, jig it.  Create some movement down there in the water, some flash, then let it settle again.  Repeat.  It’s simple fishing.  The only hard part is feeling the bites and knowing when to set the hook.  If you set it too early, jerk up too hard too soon, you can pull the bait out of the fish’s mouth.

We threw our jigs in the water at the same time.  They sank.  As my jig neared the bottom I had a strong bite.  I pulled quickly and had a fish on the line.  It’s customary for the second fisherman to reel in his line, grab the net, and prepare to land his partner’s fish when he has a fish on.  As my partner began to do that he had a similar bite and an equal result.  We both had fish on.  It was a double.

“Do you need the net?” he asked.

“I think maybe.”  I had my rod tip up but it was way bent.  I was reeling and the fish felt heavy.

“Do you?”

“I can’t tell.  I’ll try to keep it on and help you.” My partner is a good fisherman.

He raised his rod high with his left hand, grabbed the net in the right, and waited as I brought the walleye to the surface and laid it in the water, pulling it headfirst towards him and the waiting net.  It was big.  I put my rod down, took the net from him and brought the fish into the boat.  He found his fish still on the line and began to reel it in as I got my fish off the jig and fumbled for the stringer. 

“Do you need the net?”

“I think I’m OK.”

With that he hoisted his fish, only a little smaller, into the boat.  It flopped on the bottom.

“Let me get him on the stringer for you.”

“That’s good cause look where we are.”

In the excitement of the double catch the bow of our boat had been pulled toward the outflow.  Water flowed fast and loud on each side of a large rock not four feet away that marked the beginning of the rapids.  He threw the motor in reverse, revved the engine, and pulled us back to the safety of calmer water above the rapids.

“We gotta watch that.”   The guy is a master of understatement.  If we had gone through the rapids we might have gotten out, but not with the boat that was certain. 

I put the second fish on the stringer, tied it to the gunwale, and lowered them both into the water. 

“Let’s get some more.”

We dropped our jigs again.  My partner got the first strike this time and I was able to pull in my line and net his fish.  As he was getting it out of the net I dropped my jig and had another fish in seconds.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

That’s the way it went.  At one point, as my partner was backing the boat away from the rapids for the third time, we decided to forget about putting the fish on the stringer and just leave them in the bottom of the boat.  Finally as the sun neared the horizon and fish collected at our feet, we stopped. 

“We have enough for tonight’s dinner and more,” my partner said.  “And we have to carry them back across that portage.  Let’s leave the rest of them in the lake.” 

That’s what we did.  The fish never stopped biting.  We stopped fishing.  The sun was setting when we reached our boat at the other end of the portage.  Our friends, worried at our late return, assumed one of two things when we were so late; we ran out of gas or were otherwise in trouble, or we had gotten ourselves into a serious bunch of fish.  Hearing our motor across the lake, relieved, they realized it was the latter.  When we docked at the cabin and killed the motor the sun was gone.  I’d never caught that many fish that fast in my life.  It was a good day.

After a big fish dinner I put on bug spray and went out to the picnic table on the deck with two perhaps three fingers of Bushmills whiskey and a cigar.  I knew the moon would rise about where the sun had come up that morning.  It was very dark.  When I puffed on the cigar the end glowed red in front of my face.  It was so quiet.

You never know about the future.  You expect to come back next year but something else may be in store for you.  Life changes in unexpected ways.  After a while the sky brightened in the east and the moon glowed through the pines on the opposite shore.  When it rose above the trees a narrow white path of moonlight appeared.  It stretched clear across the water, lighting the small ripples in its path.  White light on the lake danced and sparkled all the way to the shore in front of the cabin where I sat.  The silence was broken by the far away cry of a loon.  I closed my eyes.