October 28, 2006  Now I'm Mad!
 
I know I promised to try to keep this site more upbeat, but the nature of DonKeyHoeTee is to go head to head with wrongdoings, and I have a doozy!
 
It's bad enough that political parties have invaded us with their biased and spin-stupid automated telephone calls. But I recently received an annual unsolicited phone call from the "Wisconsin Sheriffs & Deputy Sheriffs Association" looking for donations. I find it strange that a governmental body should ask for additional donations from the private sector. My property tax bill shows what amount goes to protection from law enforcement... our area is under the county sheriff's department who took two weeks to send a deputy to investigate a local burglary. Obviously I said an emphatic "NO" to the telephone solicitor (these peeps claim to represent the Sheriff's dept. but they're really just telephone solicitors who could sell ceramic figurines just as easily).
 
Imagine my surprise when I received an invoice for a donation I never agreed to. Some jerk telephone solicitor evidently decided that he contacted a viable phone number and address and figured to grab some extra bucks for getting a positive response even 'tho my response was totally negative.
 
The companies responsible for this travesty are Community Safety, LLC, Safety Awareness, Inc. and Safety Services, LLC. It is a shame and a diservice to the the citizens of Oneida County that the Sheriffs Department is affiliated with these entities.
 
Tuesday the 7th is election day. Hopefully a lotta things will change....for the best! Too bad we can't get rid of George W., yet!
 

 
Until later.....DKHT

October 27, 2006  Dog Days Part I
 
I grew up with a short-hair Newfoundland named Terry who was a wonderful hunting dog and water dog and belonged to my grandfather. The family called him "Uncle" Terry because he was born several weeks before me and watched over me in the early years when we lived with my grandparents near the end of WWII. Terry grew to be huge and you had to look out for his tail when he'd come up to give you a slobbering lick of greeting, 'cuz his enthusiastic and uncontrollable tail could whack you like a 2x4. But he was always gentle and tolerant with little kids. Back in those days hunting was an important way of putting meat on the table, and Terry was an eager participant. He'd hunt hard and long with my grandfather and my dad and return triumphant when a few rabbits and pheasants were in the game bag.
 
When I was seven we moved out to family property in the country, next to my very Czech/Bohemian great grandparents. Great Grandma Anna didn't speak any English (although she was fluent in Algonquin Indian, having grown up on a houseboat on the Illinois Fox River next to a Native American seasonal camp.). Great Granpa Joe spoke a little English, but with such an accent that I seldom understood him. My Great Grandfather had a mixed collie/something named Shep. Years later I learned that all my Great Grandfather's dogs had been named "Shep". This Shep would allow me to pet him, but he was my Great Granpa's companion and followed him everywhere.
 
Soon my Grandfather built a home on the other side of my Greatgrandparent's place and my old pal Terry and I were reunited. Terry loved being out in the country, but he'd always been an outside dog and the combination of winters, arthritis and age began to slow him down.
 
One day my dad brought home a black cocker spaniel. I never did know where Smokey came from, but he quickly found his place in our family. Smokey learned how to hunt from Terry, and as Terry's abilities began to fade, Smokey took over the "Point" position. Those dogs loved to hunt and worked well together.
 
Smokey's long hair would catch every tangle and burdock in our territory, which covered miles in every direction. It was usually my job to groom him...an experience enjoyed by neither one of us.
 
Smokey was the Don Juan of about a five mile territory. Many times Dad and I would get a call to come and get Smokey at somebody's house that had a female dog in heat (Smokey's reputation had resulted in most folks having our telephone number next to their doctor's number and the fire department number...in pre-911 days). Most of Smokey's girlfriends lived in summer homes down by the Fox River. We'd always find Smokey deep under these summer homes which were built on blocks or logs. I always had to get Smokey by crawling in the dirt under these homes. I'd always hear a menacing growl and maybe spot the reflection from his eyes. The closer I got the more menacing the growl got. I knew when to stop and let Smokey's sense of smell identify me. We had been pals for so long, he'd reluctantly come out of his hidey-hole, give my face a lick and wait until he was escorted back to our 1949 Ford sedan with a flashing blue light in the center of the grill (my dad was on the county sheriff's department and the local fire department, hence the flashing blue light.).. The gaggle of people who'd assembled to watch this endeavor would slap my dad on the back in congratulations. Meanwhile, a very dirty me and a considerably dejected Smokey would climb into the passenger side of the sedan or the older coupe. I knew my destiny was a very thorough bath before I could get my dinner, and Smokey would get a scolding that he didn't understand or give a damn about...new and sexy smells were on the winds.
 

 
On other fronts...
 
My old friend Paul has pretty well summed up the recent mud-slinging political telephone traffic we've endured here in Nortern Wisconsin. I'm on the National DO-NOT-CALL registry, but that doesn't cover government agencies and non-profit organizations and political parties...and it should! After all, the DO-NOT-CALL registry was designed to keep annoying calls from agencies trying to sell stuff from using the phone lines YOU PAY FOR! So why did these other agencies become excluded... Did somebody guess POLITICS?
 

 
More later.....DKHT

October 25, 2006  More Musical Memories.....
 
Carmen is one of the few readers of this site and a fairly new email friend. She and her husband live in a tar paper share-croppers cabin, herding goats, two pigs and one old milk cow in the backwood hills of North Carolina (OK, the share-cropper thing is just a joke...they actually have a good business, nice home and a slightly strange neighbor dog named Harley and live in a town that has a totally unpronouncible name, particularly in mixed company).
 
Anyway, some of the topics we discuss wind up being fodder for my thoughts (following Carmen's thought process sometimes is like trying to make sense out of the flight path of a butterfly, but that's Carmen!). Recently we got on the subject of music.
 
My musical taste is eclectic. Going through my old vinyl LP's and tapes is akin to counting tree rings...the sequence of music illustrates the changes in my musical taste throughout the years. But, like a tree, my growing musical interests simply add to previous interests.
 
Out of all the types of music I have on tape, CD or vinyl, I have more folk music than anything else. When I entered high school folk music was coming into it's heyday. I saw Peter, Paul and Mary early in their career when they were playing a small club in Chicago's Old Town. We had coffee houses, hootenannies and school shows where local talent would perform. Not having particularly pleasing abilities in singing or playing an instrument (even the tambourine was a difficult instrument to master...I was "held back" twice in tambourine class) I used my natural geek talents to set up microphones and speakers and amplifier equipment for these gigs. Of course, most performances were acoustical (aka unplugged), but some of the kids were even more talentless than I was and could only lip-sync to popular recordings, which is where my skills were appreciated.
 
However, my folk music collection is somewhat more diverse than most...including Native American music, Cajun music, Peruvian flute music, Alpine yodeling tunes, Aboriginal music from Australia, lotsa Bluegrass, some old Hank Williams and Woodie Guthrie stuff and, if you accept this as folk....some old cowboy tunes from Gene Autry, the Sons of The Pioneers and others.
 
In the 60's I embraced the British Invasion and the counter music from the California beach scene and Detroit's Motown sound. In the mid-to-late 70's we had everything from Captain Beyond thru Boston, Abba, America, Fleetwood Mac, Moody Blues, Chicago, Frampton, Clapton, The Eagles and many more.
 
Then along came Disco. I began losing interest in modern music. When Heavy Metal arrived on the scene my modern music appreciation was crumbling. Rap killed it. If you want in-your-face, flaired fingers and grimaces, I prefer the Mauri challenge music and dance of New Zealand. The rest of these "gangsta" dudes are just pathetic rank amateurs.
 
So I've come full circle. The Big Band tunes my folks listened to when I was a kid have a place of honor in my music collection as does the Polka music that my Dad loved so much. I still have a decent collection of classical music that I enjoy. Folk music is an old friend and played frequently. I enjoy some Country Western, and music that takes me back to the days where the Fox Valley Fyling Circus went jeeping in the gravel pits or out in Colorado are very special. Some tunes bring back my childhood and fond memories of the days and nights we spent camping out and listening to Jimmy D's transistor radio. I listen to Karen Carpenter's sweet and sexy voice and feel as if she were singing to me, and I wish her life hadn't ended in tragedy and sorrow. Still, her songs (mostly written by brother Richard Carpenter) are songs of understanding and hope and always bring me back to an even keel. We've only just begun....
 
Thought of the day... If Rush Limbaugh were to be given an enima, there would be nothing left!
 
Until later.....DKHT

October 17, 2006  Rain and Steam
 
The snow that came so suddenly and hung around for nearly a week has melted, but it's left another week of rain in it's wake. Temperatures have been in the mid 40's (F°).
 
So the highlight of the past week has been in receiving a booklet I bid for on ebay. It's about shortline railroads in and around Wichita Falls, Texas back in the days of steam.
 
I've been a steam locomotive nut since I was a small kid. We lived on a lot that backed up to the local Chicago and Northwestern tracks. Diesel-electrics were mainly doing all the work back then, but my pal and I used to sneak over to the remaining coal silos and climb the coal buckets while dodging pigeon poop. I swear that all the pigeons in Northern Illinois lived in those two coal silos. Later, when my family moved out to the country, the pigeons followed me and took up residence in my new friend's barn where we played.
 
My family had tons of pictures and postcards of the old steam locos that hauled gravel from the local pit into Chicago. One of my ancesters was Station Master at Cary Station and was presented a book in 1894 by one of the C&NW engineers. It was " Locomotive Engine Driving " printed in England in the early 1860's. I've inherited that book and treasure it dearly.
 
The C&NW trains began to haul freight and even passengers. Many people had summer homes along the Fox River in Cary and Fox River Grove. Trouble was, the trains didn't stop in Fox River Grove, but did pass through on the way to Cary. Part of my family owned the local livery and provided buckboard and carriage service in the days before they moved to automobiles. Anyway, livery staff would be waiting for the passenger trains to arrive to shuttle people and their freight to their destinations, including taking folks back to Fox River Grove. Some frugal individuals would avoid extra freight charges by throwing parcel and packages out the train windows as it passed through FRG. There were usually friends or neighbors waiting to watch over these goods until the owners could show up. Unfortunately some goods were not packed well enough tro survive these "air drops" intact. You can only imagine what hundreds of yards of track embankment looked like strewn with everything from flour to underwear.
 
I just love railroad nostalgia!
 

 
Until later.....DKHT

October 11, 2006  It's Snowing in the Northwoods and Musical Memories

 
This morning began with a light rain shower which ultimately turned into snow....the first of this season.The air temperature was 38° F at ground level this morning, but now it has dropped to 28° F so the snow is sticking. These early snows are typical to this area and seldom last. But they are a way for old Mom Nature to remind us just who's in control.
 
My first inclination was to post an extention to my previous rant... like how doctors have a "practice" and charge inflated rates to cover lawsuits for malpractice when they make mistakes. Or how lawyers also have a "practice" but if they lose a case, the only one hurting is their client. For the past 37 years I have been an electrical/process control engineer and have been responsible for designing and implementing, inspecting and testing systems for communities that effect the health and welfare of 100's of thousands of people. I never had a "practice" nor could I or my fellow engineers afford to make a mistake, because that wasn't part of our professional world. The result of making a mistake is unthinkable.
 
But last night I was downstairs messing around and I got on my old Dell 325 DOS (circa 1991) machine which still runs AutoCad r12 and has customized (by me) programs that interface with the digitizer tablet. It still has the old plans for my cabin up here that I drew up back in the early 90's, although a hard drive check showed an increasing decay in useable HD space.
 
That put me into a melancholy mood, so I gazed around the rest of the hardly-used rec room and spied a stack of old vinyl 33-1/3 LP's in the corner. These vintage records were partly my dad's and partly mine.
 
My dad was a talented accordian musician and played for local dance halls. So I grew up with tons of exposure to the Big Band music and polkas and waltzes. And our family TV sessions always included Lawrence Welk (thankfully the Mickey Mouse Club was over by the time Dad got home).
 
Since I have a good quality turntable and preamp/mixer connected to the computer (for transferring my rock 'n roll, jazz, bluegrass, classical and folk LP's to CD's), I figured I'd take a few of these albums upstairs and try to capture some old musical memories. Because of my hearing loss I have to play back these musical treasures with a special headphone setup, but I record them as close as possible to the original.
 
Anyway, hearing those old tunes again reminded me of all the Saturdays that Dad would be found in his rec room, first listening to polka shows on the radio and then he'd crank up the old record player and listen to these LP's.
 
Evidently the nut doesn't fall far from the tree because once I got on this ride down memory lane I ultmately meandered through some of my favorite tunes from the doors, the Moody Blues, Steppanwolf, the Animals, America and many more. With the onset of satellite TV I had forgotten how enjoyable just listening to favorite music can be.
 

 
Until later.....DKHT

October 9, 2006  Medical Alert!!
 
Seems that I recently developed some painful side-effects from a fairly new medication I've been prescribed. As could be expected, these effects began late on a Friday night and steadily grew worse on Saturday and Sunday...a typical weekend when my doctor/specialist office is closed. I did get to call on Monday and the very competent medical team told me this was most likley a side effect from this new medication, and they came up with a plan for changing meds (I appreciate their efforts since my doctor was unavailable and this had to be handled by an extremely competent staff).
 
Past experience has taught me to avoid the local hospitals and clinics as much as possible and most certainly on weekends. The emergency staffs of both the clinic and hospital are really highly and well trained people, and have treated me in my past times of need. But when it comes to specialty medical requirements and medicines, I fear that they will call in one of the rotating specialists whose lack of medical knowledge is only matched by their lack of ability to speak English. However, the specialists arrogance and inability to understand human compasion is unmatched.
 
Most of the truly qualified specialists have a full patient quota but do not do emergency work. Additionally, since so many clinics and hospitals in the area are part of much larger conglomerates, we are considered a rural training ground for these newly hired foreign doctors. Most are just plain out of their elemen and knowledge level. I know the clinics and hospitals will argue, but what would you expect?
 
I had a doctor assigned to me a while back who was from a foreign country. He was supposed to be a specialist in diseases and conditions of senior citizens, a region of life I was just entering into. He seemed to only know how to check my prostate and anything else was referred to another specialist. Except when I saw him regarding a condition called "Sudden Hearing Loss Syndrome" (I didn't know that it was called SHLS until later). I had instantaneously lost all hearing in my right ear. The clinic ER sent me to one of those nurses who fill-in on occasions when doctors are not available. She had no clue and suggested I wait until my doctor returned from a seminar.
 
I waited and got an appointment several days later. My Doc said he thought it was an infection but didn't know any antibiotic that would be effective so he told me to wait six weeks to see if things cleared up.
 
Six weeks later I went in and got a hearing analysis done. At the end of the analysis I met with a retired doc who was filling in in the audiology department, and he told me that my loss was permanent but if I had come in the first week or two they had a procedure that had an 80% success rate of nearly if not full recovery.
 
The foreign doctor quietly disappeared shortly thereafter, but I fear he was just moved on to another location. I was fitted for the top-of-the-line hearing aid several times but it never worked properly since it didn't help my tinnitus without over-amplifying regular sounds and conversations. And that hearing problem caused trouble at my work and with my social life.
 
On other fronts...
 
A couple of flights of ducks came into the lake today on their way south. Most of the leaves are down, especially on the trees with open exposure. A few trees back in the woods still are brilliant in color. Partridge are moving around the area (these are not very bright birds since they fly into the sides of passing autos or step in the path of other vehicles. But they taste good when properly prepared and not too mangled.)
 
Until later.....DKHT
 

October 01, 2006  More Autumn Pictures
 
Yesterday was rainy and cool and the forecast for tomorrow calls for rain again. But today it's a balmy 65° F and sunny with a light breeze off the lake.
 
I got a nice email from Carmen regarding the autumn pics I posted on the now-archived September blog. I've temporarily tired of ranting on moron neighbors to the east, and since the weather has been so nice today, I figured I'd post a few more pics of autumn in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

 
Until later.....DKHT

 
Yesterday was Beef-A-Rama in neighboring Minocqua It used to be called Colorama, but another town claimed prior rights to that name, so the local combined chambers of commerce decided to have the local merchants cook beef roasts on charcoal grills along the main street. The roasts would later be judged and winners declared. The roasts would then be sliced for sandwiches and sold at a modest price to cover costs. The whole affair was dubbed Beef-A-Rama and became the last hurrah marking the end to another tourist season.
 
Back in the early years I used to attend Beef-A-Rama, but I always got rained on, usually in 40° temps, had to stand in a long line for a cold sandwich that always came from one of the toughest roasts. Then I'd head back to my truck and go home. I've since learned to avoid most of the hype and just stay home.
 
Besides, I sure miss the old Italian beef sandwiches I used to get in my old home town. These were to die for. Every two weeks dad would get his paycheck and cashed it in the local pub (called the Pub). After a couple of beers with friends and fellow volunteer firefighters, he'd head home with a bag of Italian beef sandwiches, each with a huge amount of thin-sliced beef on a bun of french bread soaked with aus jus and garnished with pepperocini, all wrapped in aluminum foil (or tin-foil, as we called it then). It was a feast that was even better than chicken with green gravy and dumplings (don't ask! It's a Bohemian thing).
 
Oh yeah, since this is mainly a picture page, I have one last pic for you. This is a place I've been so often, I know enough to always pick up a spare!

 
Until later.....DKHT