Nitpicky spelling things

It’s Bay View. Not “Bayview.”

It’s Riverwest. Not “River West.”

*sigh*

Palin-Beck 2012?

To borrow a page from Kinky Friedman, why the hell not?

Dan Cody’s brother wrote a book. A book about explosions.

And that is probably the most inaccurate five word description of the book that one could come up with.

It’s not that Dan’s brother Jonathon wrote about about explosions, or even blowing stuff up. It’s that he does that. And he does it for the U.S. Army.

I had no idea that Dan had a brother, or that his brother was in the Army. Or for that matter that he has a brother than blows stuff up. And that sounds amazingly cool until you think about the context that he does it in. It’s not for a TV show or the movies. He blows up bombs that were placed to kill people.

But back to blowing stuff up. “Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown” is available for purchase on Amazon.com. And I marvel at the picture on the cover:

That’s him. Blowing up a bomb that was made to kill people.

Wow.

Check it out.

Drinking Liberally 7PM tonight, Wed. 19 Nov @ Sugar Maple

* Drinking Liberally: Milwaukee
* Sugar Maple, 441 E. Lincoln Ave.

* 7:00PM, Wednesday Nov. 18

O friends of lefty and near-lefty persuasion,

The political season approaches! Our mayor, the Honorable Tom Barrett, has announced his plans to run for governor! With Bay View’s aldermanic representative the only declared candidate for the Dems, and with the county executive running in the Republican column, Milwaukee is on the ballot in 2010!

Of course it’s still 2009, which means there’s just nine rounds of Drinking Liberally left before the election! (I’m taking August off. Gotta relax at some point!) That means we’ve got a lot of candidates to meet, positions to argue and discuss, and most importantly, a lot of beer to be enjoyed!

Our dear host bar Sugar Maple has sixty (60!) American brews on tap. They look forward to having us on the third Wednesday of each month (‘cept August) when we mingle at 7:00 for the time-honored tradition of Drinking Liberally.

What candidates shall we meet in the coming months? Todd Kolosso has already surprised us. Whether you’re a running for judge, mayor, Congress, or even the ice cream truck, you’re always welcome at Drinking Liberally.

See you there!

Jason and the Milwaukee DL crew

A not-very-deep thought

When did Liz Cheney appear from nowhere to serve as her father’s spokesperson?

Detroit, not Rome, is burning

Nothing like it when you consider that an arsonist has set eleven abandoned properties ablaze in the past month. Or that there were “6,486 arson fires in 2008 investigated by the Arson Squad,” according to the Detroit News.

This line rings a bell for me:

“[Detroit] fire and city officials [are] worried as Halloween nears, because in the mid-’80s hundreds of homes burned on Devil’s Night, the night before the holiday.”

I remember hearing about that when my family lived in the area in the early 1980s. Must have been 1983, as we left in summer of  ‘84. I listened to the story as any wide-eyed third grader would, puzzled as to why people would burn empty houses, and a touch afraid that they would come and burn our house. I think I asked my parents about it, and I imagine that they told me that such a thing wouldn’t happen to our house. Those sorts of things didn’t happen where we lived. Later, I realized that this, and seeing the open fields that were empty lots on the other side of the Detroit city line, were my introduction to the urban-suburban divide.

A few years later, I remember looking out the window from my parents’  station wagon as we passed down I-43, en route perhaps to the airport or a brief stop in downtown Milwaukee. I noticed the rows of neat little houses over the freeway, and wondered who lived there. I noticed the Milwaukee Inner City Arts Council building, and wondering what it was. (Still do!) (Hmm, I appear to be Facebook friends with that group’s Executive Director. Hi, Denise!)

During a brief chat with a friend about Milwaukee’s mayors this weekend, the residency requirement was mentioned as something that has helped save Milwaukee from the near-total destruction that Detroit and so many upper Midwestern rust belt cities have faced since the start of deindustrialization in the 1960s and 70s. That said, there are parts of Milwaukee’s north side that are barren where there were houses that were either burned or razed, and the poverty is very deep. And god knows it’s affecting the city. I saw Mayor Barrett when he spoke at the memorial service for Jasmine Owens, the four-year-old girl who was killed in a drive-by shooting back in 2007. It’s gone on since then. And it will go on for the foreseeable future.

That doesn’t mean that nothing can be done about it.

As a an adult, I chose to move to Milwaukee. As in, the City of. When things like Jasmine Owens getting killed happen, it affects me. I don’t have the insulation of the imaginary boundaries of the city line to protect me. That lack of insulation was one reason I moved here from Madison. While that means it can be painful at times, it’s also far richer and more satisfying than any of the other four states, four cities, or three suburbs that I’ve previously lived in.

And I’m not leaving.

A late night shooting in downtown Bay View

A man was shot late last night in downtown Bay View when he tried to intervene in what may have been a domestic dispute. I heard today that he ran outside in his boxer shorts to help a woman who was screaming for help. The same person also told me first that the man had died, but then old me that he was okay.

I have no information other than what appeared in this article on the Bay View Compass website. The Compass deserves credit for breaking the story. I have yet to see a word from any other media sources.

This shooting does not indicate that the neighborhood is going south. Events like this make Bay View come together and support those who were injured and demand that justice be performed.

More as soon as I know it.

Update: It seems that the victim is alive. We are getting conflicting reports as to the cause of the event. So nothing new beyond that he’s still alive.

Barrett for Wisconsin web site

The web site for Tom Barrett’s gubernatorial race is up. It’s got just enough content for the moment.

Find it over at barrett4wisconsin.com.

Barrett is running for governor

Not that we didn’t expect this. I just hope his hand holds up!

Early Wisc. Gov. prediction

Barrett vs. Neumann in the general, assuming Barrett announces his intention to enter on Sunday.

And I’d say Barrett will win it. Sure, he’s from Milwaukee, but this seems to be a tick in his favor. He’s shown he can hold the line on spending while also working to renovate and improve the city. His experience with the federal government will come in handy, too. That may be tempered by Neumann’s own time in Congress, but Barrett has shown that he can use it to the advantage of the city, if not the state.

So far, my record has been pretty good on predicting the winning vice presidential candidates in major elections. (Yay?) I knew Al Gore would be Clinton’s veep, and that Cheney would select himself for Bush II, and they’d get in through some questionable means. I also figured Doyle would win in Wisconsin, that Kerry wouldn’t make it in ‘04, and that Obama would carry through over Clinton and McCain. (Having lived in New Mexico, I carried a small hope for Bill Richardson, though I knew his chances were poor.) So we’ll see how this goes. It’s for governor, and not vice president. But we’ll see.

I think Barrett has done a fine job in Milwaukee, and I’m wondering who will step up to take his place should he win in 2010.

Prospective mayoral candidates, you are always welcome at Drinking Liberally. Speaking of, what are you doing next Wednesday night?