Food for the soul

About a year ago I posted a picture here and speculated that the land captured in the image would some day be turned into a mcmansion habitat. Little did I know …

I happen to think that the scenery here is beautiful and worthy of life. Too bad I’m not running things. Really affluent communities value places like this. Really affluent developers do not.

Yesterday I retrieved 10 golf balls and picked up a great quantity of trash from the park. I found a spot where campers had dumped what looks like a week’s worth, and I mean to go back and get it, but I didn’t have any gloves with me. I found some Speedo goggles and a pair of girl’s pink flip-flops. Last week I gathered a lot of beach toys which the fearsome wind had uncovered the night before.

The company spy was keeping track of what I was up to. Today I engaged him in conversation. He is very friendly. Possibly he is just stopping by for a break, but I am pretty sure he is not.

Parkinson's Disease is a death sentence

Every once in a while I pay attention to what Rush and O’Reilly and their backup chorus in the so-called mainstream media team are up to. No good, as a rule. But this latest is beyond pathetic.

Parkinson’s Disease is a terminal illness. Here’s what happens when someone lives to the final stages: no ability to speak, eat, or even breathe. Nice, huh? One becomes totally dependant, and the nursing home bills can be $8000. a month – until the money runs out and you are removed to a Medicaid facility. The fakers.

Two close relatives had Parkinson’s Disease, an uncle on my mother’s side and my father. Before the final stages a person can look forward to falling a lot, tremoring so badly he or she cannot hold a spoon or a coffee cup, lots of icky side effects from the medications, back pain, leg pain, out-of-control emotional reactions, especially depression. Wow. What freeloading attention-seekers, Katie Couric. What over-the-top nonsense, Matt Lauer.

The Nazis ridiculed “defective” people, and then they killed them. I don’t know too much about Michael Fox. He was in a cute movie where he played a physician stuck in Podunk – can’t remember the name of it – and a TV show, but I am the wrong one to look to for TV facts. Was he supporting a Democrat or something?

If Katie Couric’s husband had had Parkinson’s instead of cancer, would she have stooped this low? Well, for $15 million, … All in good fun, I’m sure, Sweetheart. Ugh!

Wild secluded scene

that thing sticking up in the right foreground of the top picture is a stake marking some feature of the golf course I've written about, that golf course which, according to the official line, will cause minimal impact to the dunes. A golf course feature referred to as a 'green' has turf grass. Lots of it.

Hawkeyes

Iowa City is a most pleasant place. Really. Its intelligence shows everywhere. The University boasts the largest teaching hospital in the United States. There is wonderful original art in all of the State facilities, including the University properties.

Today we drove to a University park which hosts a raptor safe habitat for injured birds who cannot survive in the wild. They have, as well, a rehabilitation center for those that can make it on their own after some TLC.

Here is Spirit, a bald eagle, who has been there for 16 years. She was found in Minnesota. Her house is cozy, with a great view.

A Saw whet owl was a resident, too. Oh, God. The cutest thing I've ever seen. Several hawks, other owls, including a bard owl named Cyprus have separate cabins. Even blind birds live there.

All have benefactor people or institutions.

If one had to get stuck in the Midwest outside of Chicago or Minneapolis, this would be the place to live. Madison is great, too. Ann Arbor is a touch snooty, believe it or not. God love our great state university systems.

Two hours apart

Trekking around the bottom tip of Lake Michigan in opposition to the recreating hoards, I find myself smack dab in the middle of a beautiful, practically perfect slice of autumn. Like all kids from the hinterlands, I love the capital of the Midwest like my mother and have missed it so much some times it hurts. Nearly all the time I lived in Chicago in my former life, home was on Near North Side, close to Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. Small apartments with fantastic views of either the city or the lake.

These days my finances won’t permit proximity to the lake, and many other neighborhoods have been gentrified to accommodate all the suburban empty nesters who couldn’t wait to live back downtown. Four-legged roommates are an issue, particularly canines. We would like an elevator building with no steps for Fido due to his arthritis and my gimpy right arm. What a pair.

More questing today. Wish us luck!

Tee time

Well, well.

The attorney representing the golf course promoters and their government enablers claims that not "one grain" of sand will be moved to build their playground. Never one to believe everything I read, I climbed the dune - not easy - and Natty Bumppo-like, scoured the terrain for signs of corruption.

The ground underneath the Marram grass is, um, sand. Essentially they will take all the dunes, leaving the beach proper, except for four acres of unsightly asphalt covering the new parking lots and entrance road. Once they have permits in hand, they'll do pretty much as they please. With few resources for oversight of these so-called public private partnerships and little political will - though the popular will rejects this free-for-them - the developer is holding most of the cards.

They have established a youth golfing club called The First Tee. The golf industry knows that the game is losing in popularity, so in some respects it's a way to nurture future players. However, most of these First Tee Clubs are in less affluent areas where there might be some nice land a developer could chew up. It is mostly an artless con.