Mocha died Friday overnight. He was 14, and we had him for more than 13 years.
We purchased him from a pet store that used to be in downtown Ripon. He was sort of a factory second in that he had white spots on his paws, which Siamese are not supposed to have. (Of course, we’re all factory seconds.)
Mocha liked to pick on our first cat, Fatcat, though I don’t recall him interacting with Nick, our second Welsh Springer Spaniel, who was much bigger than he was, but didn’t care much about Mocha. (Nick and Puzzle found Fatcat much more interesting, because she’d fight back when they would, for instance, stop her from running by placing a front paw on the center of her back, making her go splat, though her ability to retaliate without front claws was rather limited.)
The past couple of months with our new somewhat-Basenji, Max, have been interesting to watch. Leo and Mocha didn’t always get along, but it was as if they had a common enemy, though an enemy much larger than they are.
Among other characteristics, Siamese are very verbal. At any time of the day, regardless of whether or not you want to hear them be verbal. They will also make you pet them, perhaps by head-butting you. Mocha also would occasionally lick our ears, which was a strange sensation.
I am typing this on my laptop. If Mocha were still alive, any second now he would jump up on my lap and lie down, spiking me with his back claws and making it harder to type over him. He, of course, would not care. I would take a nap on the living room couch and be joined in minutes by Mocha, finding a spot on my chest, often sticking his butt and tail in my face. He would also wedge himself between me and the dining table.
Most nights, he would find his way upstairs, and sleep on a warm spot in the bed. That often would result in mysterious morning backaches for the people in the bed.
Mocha had an amazing ability to find people who really didn’t care for cats. He would find anyone allergic to cats who would walk into the house. My friend “Uncle” Frank didn’t like cats, but whenever he would sit down, Mocha would sit on his lap, uninvited.
The thing about losing pets is that you notice their absence. In the three years between dogs, someone would drop food on the floor, and we’d have to clean it up ourselves, since there was no dog to clean it up. (We have since rectified that situation.) I made fruit salad for our church’s annual meeting Saturday night. As I opened cans Mocha didn’t run out expecting to find tuna, meowing loudly.
For whatever reason, I have noticed a lot of people losing their pets on Facebook. They all grieve over their loss. That may make non-pet people why you’d get a pet knowing that between 10 and 20 years later that pet will die on you. That, however, is close to the reason. Those without children can come home to their pets, and even though cats are not as enthusiastic about your coming home as dogs, they still miss your absence. (Some wit wrote that dogs think you’re God, while cats think they’re God. Note, however, that cats cannot feed themselves indefinitely.) Pets’ lives are short, but our own lives are short.
Mocha joins Fatcat, who is bopping Puzzle and Nick on the side of their heads with her clawless paws, leaving them mystified as to whether that was supposed to hurt, on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.
A business owner who helped promote a Republican state senator says a nursing instructor with union ties wrote a letter threatening her company with financial harm.
In the letter, the signatory, Allison Nicol, says she has stopped advising prospective students to receive training through Quality Healthcare Options Inc.
Nichol, who works at the Mequon campus of Milwaukee Area Technical College, doesn’t agree with company owner Sally Sprenger backing state Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, the letter says.
Nicol signed the petition to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, and that signature appears to match the signature on the letter, which asks staff at the taxpayer-supported technical college to follow her lead, according to documents obtained by Wisconsin Reporter.
“For many years, my colleagues and I have recommended that our future nursing students obtain their CNA training or take refresher courses through Quality Healthcare Options,” said the Oct. 10 letter to the Wauwatosa-based business. “I will no longer recommend your company to our students, and I am in the process of notifying our entire faculty as well as our program leadership of the same.”
As legal expert Rick Esenberg sees it, the apparent tactics of intimidation could be considered a violation of Sprenger’s rights under the First Amendment.
“(Sprenger) cannot be discriminated against based upon her decision to express her political viewpoints,” said Esenberg, president and general counsel for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. “You can’t announce that you’re only going to award contracts to Democrats or you’re only going to award contracts to Republicans.”
Sprenger, who promoted Vukmir by allowing campaign signs at Quality Healthcare Options, has tried to file a complaint with the college since she got the letter. But she hasn’t gotten an official response.
Last week, Sprenger asked for a meeting with the MATC board of directors to review the threats.
Kathleen Hohl, communications director for MATC, told Wisconsin Reporter on Thursday the college is looking into the letter and is working directly with the writer to provide more information to Sprenger. But Hohl said the school hasn’t launched a formal investigation. …
“If (the writer) organized a boycott — either she did it on her own or did it in concert with her fellow faculty members at MATC — she’s acting as an agent of the state, she’s acting as an agent of MATC and she’s engaging in viewpoint discrimination in administering a government program,” Esenberg told Wisconsin Reporter.
“Does (the writer) work elsewhere?” Sprenger asked Bonaparte in an Oct. 21 email. “Then what students does she ‘advise pre-admission’ to her nursing program? What colleagues and faculty of what school would she be notifying in her statement ‘our entire faculty as well as the leadership of the same?’”
On her LinkedIn page, Nicol, who did not return calls from Wisconsin Reporter seeking comment, lists MATC as her only employer.
Nicol has worked at MATC since January 2003 and was a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 212 MATC until at least 2012, according to IRS tax documents. Nicol’s name does not appear on Local 212’s tax forms for 2012-13, a year after Walker signed Act 10, his signature collective bargaining reforms that eliminated forced unionization of most public-sector employees.
Local 212 does not disclose the identity of its members, said Kevin Mulvenna, executive vice president of the union’s executive board.
It says she also had concerns with Vukmir’s “disturbing relationship” with the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization many consider as Public Enemy No. 1 to liberals and unions.
Vukmir, who easily won her re-election bid Tuesday, voted for Act 10, the driving force behind the 2011 and 2012 recall elections.
Timothy P. Carney must see something in the Wisconsin electoral scene that Wisconsinites don’t:
Republican Gov. Scott Walker is under investigation, and he is reviled by the largest political force in his state. But you’d never guess that by watching him amble through the stalls at a central Wisconsin dairy farm. …
You wouldn’t guess from his demeanor how hated he is. County prosecutors are still investigating him. And the government employee unions — which failed to block his legislation, failed to recall him, and failed to take back the state legislature — still have it in for him.
“Walker speaks with a forked tongue,” Fernando Stokes tells me. Stokes was a state prison guard for 32 years and is now retired. Waiting for his takeout order at Milwaukee’s Water Street Brewery, Stokes couldn’t even name Walker’s opponent. That she was running against Walker was enough for him.
Ron, a bartender at Buck Bradley’s in Milwaukee for more than 20 years, is backing Walker again. He understands the unions’ anger: “If someone yanked away your gravy train, would you be happy?” Ron asks with a laugh.
One state employee, a female parole officer, denied that the free health care and generous pension was a gravy train — state workers had taken lower pay in the past in exchange for those benefits. The benefits drew her into the state workforce when she was in her 40s. “I saw the health care was free, and I thought that was a pretty sweet deal,” the woman tells me at the Capital Tap Haus in Madison. “I had been in the private sector and I felt like half my paycheck was going to insurance.”
That’s exactly what grates on many Wisconsin voters, and it’s why Walker’s support has remained strong in a state that has backed Democrats for U.S. Senate and president in 15 of 16 races going back to 1988.
“They don’t like their safety blanket being taken away,” Chuck Hounsell says of the state employees. Hounsell drives a truck, delivering diesel to farms — including Ruedinger — in the Fond du Lac area. “It’s a safety blanket the rest of us don’t have. We’re out there slogging it out on our own.”
While the anger of the state employees’ union isn’t fading, Walker’s worries are. The two recent polls that have shown Burke leading the race come from the least reliable firms polling the state. We Ask America showed Burke leading 48 percent to 44 percent a month ago, but that was an automated poll, which significantly reduces its reliability. Burke also led 50 to 45 in a Gravis Marketing poll released Sept. 30. That poll hit 908 voters, but it didn’t screen for likely voters — it was a poll of registered voters. Polls of registered voters are less predictive, and they generally tilt toward Democrats.
Weed out the weaker polls, and here’s the picture: Mary Burke had a tiny lead, within the margin of error, in late August. Since the campaign season began in earnest, she has hovered around 45 percent. Walker, meanwhile, has steadily climbed, hitting the crucial 50 percent mark in the latest Marquette University poll of 585 likely voters conducted Sept. 25 through 28.
Marquette’s poll has become the gold standard of Wisconsin polling, outperforming others in the 2010 and 2012 elections. Follow the trend of the Marquette poll and it points to a Walker win. In Marquette’s five polls of registered voters, Burke climbed from 45 percent to 49 percent in late August but she dropped in each of the last two polls and now she’s back down to 45 percent. Walker, meanwhile, has climbed steadily from 46 percent in mid-July to 50 percent in late September.
Here’s another trend to follow: Walker’s ballot box successes keep growing. Walker won the 2010 election by 5.8 points. In the 2012 recall, he won by 6.8 points. In the 2012 state legislative races, Walker’s party took back the state Senate and expanded its majority in the state House of Representatives.
Walker’s people downplay his big recall win, pointing out that many people who weren’t necessarily Walker fans voted for him in 2012 because they were put off by the impetuousness of a midterm recall effort.
But the trend lines point in one direction: Barring a serious misstep, Walker won’t merely win in November, he will win bigger than he has won before.
I’m still predicting Walker will win with 53 percent of the vote. That is a win, not a landslide, and it probably will make people question whether someone who doesn’t win landslides in his own state can credibly run for president.
Today in 1983, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” spent its 491st week on the charts, surpassing the previous record set by Johnny Mathis’ “Johnny’s Greatest Hits.” “Dark Side of the Moon” finally departed the charts in October 1988, after 741 weeks on the charts.
Media Matters has discovered a conspiracy in Milwaukee media!
Wisconsin-based radio host Charlie Sykes may want to be the next Glenn Beck.
But a new marketing project aimed at spreading his hard conservative talk brand beyond home station WTMJ of Milwaukee to web, video, social media and perhaps other media outlets owned by parent company Journal Communications is drawing concern in the state’s media community. Sykes’ burgeoning network of platforms resembles nothing other than a smaller-scale version of the former Fox News host’s sprawling web-based empire.
The story quotes from two Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters, one of whom, interestingly, has been a Sykes guest:
“That is a fair comparison,” says Don Walker, a 34-year veteran of Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which is also owned by Journal Communications. “Glenn took this huge, I think risk, getting off Fox, or he was pushed, and he left Fox to form this very, very different venture. I think there is some comparison to that Charlie is making a move in a direction that he senses that he can make a move nationally, that he can make a move in a national direction.” …
“I know that it frustrates some people,” Craig Gilbert, who works out of the Journal Sentinel Washington, D.C., bureau said about his newspaper’s staffers. Gilbert called Sykes “a guy who takes sides in all these political battles” and said the radio host’s show “certainly has an impact on the Republican party, all of the conservative talk, on Republican primaries. It’s a venue where if you are a Republican politician, you can speak to your base in a sympathetic environment.”
Walker agreed.
“I think there’s probably people out there who feel we’re this large cabal and that we’re force-feeding our particular views on all our products,” he said about Sykes’ impact, later adding, “he does this show, I think it is highly, highly partisan, there is no mistaking where he is coming from. I think a lot of people, including journalists, feel that most of the time he is there just to repeat Republican Party talking points.”
I am twice qualified to comment on this. (Not on Beck, since I don’t watch.) I am a former employee of Journal Communications, specifically the Journal Community Publishing Group subsidiary that published the late great Marketplace Magazine until March 2011. Journal Broadcast Group owns the radio and TV stations, including WTMJ radio and TV in Milwaukee. Journal Sentinel prints the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
I was also a guest on WTMJ-TV’s “Sunday Insight with Charlie Sykes” for a couple years, and I have pictures to prove it:
I assume I’m not on the guest rotation anymore since I haven’t been on in more than a year and I’m now farther to the west. (That happens in media circles.) Which is fine. I greatly enjoyed being on his show, and I remain amazed how many people watched me on Sykes’ show.
Media Matters’ “discovery” of Sykes is hilarious. He has been on WTMJ since 1992. Before and since that, he’s written books, including A Nation of Victims,Dumbing Down Our Kids, ProfScam,The Hollow Men, The End of Privacy, 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School, and A Nation of Moochers.
But it may be Sykes’ newest effort, the ambitious Conservative Politics Digital Project, which will extend his reach even further. The project, using the website RightWisconsin.com, seeks to take his outspoken conservative approach and expand it to many platforms, including podcasts, web columns, videos, and on-location events.
Given his recent high-profile connections to some of the country’s conservative leaders — and the backing of a communications company that owns 48 television and radio stations in 12 states — observers say Sykes has the platform to push his far-right views nationally.
“He is a smart, ambitious guy and I would not be surprised to see him go beyond WTMJ,” said Jim Romenesko, who runs an influential media news website and worked with Sykes at Milwaukee Magazine in the 1980s. Asked if Sykes could reach that national level, Romenesko added, “I think so, he’s smart, he’s very quick and I think he has what it takes to really capture the audience’s attention. He knows how to play that talk radio game.”
I would argue that Sykes has already reached “that national level,” at least in conservative circles, for obvious reasons that far predate whatever Right Wisconsin will become. In the last two years, with Recallarama getting national attention, for Wisconsin conservative talk radio to get notice is about as surprising as the sun setting in the west. Sykes has drawn listeners and advertisers for 20 years, which (combined with the inability of liberal talk radio to do the same) just drives liberals nuts. (Liberals are of course free to not listen or not patronize Sykes’ advertisers, but that seems insufficient to them somehow.)
I’ve written before about what’s known in state political circles about the Sykes Effect, Sykes’ influence on state legislators within earshot. Sykes’ show is available online, but can’t really be heard on the radio west of Madison or north of the Fox Cities. Sykes may reflect Republican views, but Republicans don’t always reflect Sykes’ views. If Journal Communications were really serious about expanding Sykes’ presence, they’d be looking to syndicate him at least statewide. That hasn’t happened. (And that arguably would detract from his show since listeners outside Milwaukee are not necessarily interested in Milwaukee issues.) If Journal Communications were serious about expanding Sykes’ “cross-platform” presence, he’d be writing a Journal Sentinel column.
To say Sykes is a doctrinaire right-winger isn’t accurate; those who claim he is evidently don’t listen to his show. He touted Tom Barrett for Milwaukee mayor over then-mayor Marvin Pratt. A well-known Madison liberal talk show host has been a caller more than once to his show. Liberals get to be on the show because Sykes wants to debate them; evidently they don’t want to be on his show to have their views challenged live on the air.
The irony of Journal Sentinel reporters’ accusing Sykes of damaging their work is also hilarious. How many times does Sykes appear in the Journal Sentinel? Only in letters to the editor or opinion columns written by others. Sykes’ show is not shedding advertisers or listeners. The Journal Sentinel is another subject, given media reports about their layoffs and given the visual evidence of the size of their daily newspapers. Walker and Gilbert apparently ignore the repeated conservative complaints about the Journal Sentinel’s liberal bias. (And note that Media Mutters — a phrase stolen from James Taranto — Not all of those complaints are justified, but the Journal Sentinel put the column of Eugene Kane, no one’s idea of a conservative, on a news page, and has done that with other non-conservative columns as well. (Kane is no longer employed by the Journal Sentinel, but he’s still writing a column, which is now in the Sunday opinion section, where opinion columns belong.)
Consider as well the Journal Sentinel’s editorial bent, as demonstrated in its recent unsigned editorials:
Look back over the past several issues and find a remotely conservative opinion that reflects the view of the Journal Sentinel as an institution of influence. (The JS apparently liked the choice of Paul Ryan for vice president, which is a more parochial opinion than political view.) The Journal Sentinel has for years stated one set of guiding principles and the written editorials contrary to those principles, which is the result of editorials by committee.
To say that Journal Communications is pushing a right-wing agenda is no more accurate than basing a company’s motivations on the public statements of its most visible employees. (Do you think Anderson Cooper or Piers Morgan represent the official corporate views of CNN?) The bottom line of Journal Communications, a publicly traded company, is its bottom line. Sykes makes money for Journal Communications, which is why the Journal Broadcast Group employs him, and why they’re apparently looking to expand the Sykes brand — so Journal makes more money. (Profit is a foreign concept to many liberals and much of the media, which is why I had to point that out.)
Sykes nicely blends sarcasm and self-promotion on his own blog:
But considering the source, the article is actually rather mild even with the usual liberal/media talking points about talking points, etc. I am accused of being a “pot-stirrer” who takes sides. Um, yes. Guilty.
Of course, the comparison to Glenn Beck is both flattering and silly; but I encourage this sort of rampant speculation wherever possible. (BTW: A Nation of Moochers is my seventh, not sixth book. But I quibble.)
I must confess that I took special delight in this comment:
“(Sykes) is like a flea that spreads the bubonic plague”
My work here won’t be done until I infect the whole nation. (And drive every liberal nuts, which increasingly seems like a doable goal.)
The last line sums up everything. Sykes is attacked because he’s effective, and many liberals who tout their views publicly hate to have their worldview questioned. Sykes touted Scott Walker over Mark Neumann as the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nominee. Note who won. Sykes touted Ron Johnson over phony maverick U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold. Note who won.
The answer to speech you find objectionable is always the same — either reply with speech of your own, or don’t read or don’t listen.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice President of the United States (as observed by National Review):
Vice President Joe Biden has made a long career out of saying crude and stupid things, and now he has outdone himself by affecting a southern accent and telling a substantially black audience in Virginia (he seemed to think he was in North Carolina) that if Romney has his way “he gonna put y’all back in chains.”
The Obama campaign already has established its reputation as a lowlife operation, trafficking in risibly and plainly untrue statements — Mitt Romney killed my wife! — but the latest from Biden is so grotesque and morally illiterate that it deserves a special mention. It bears noting, first, that Mr. Biden spent his Senate years comfortable in the company of a Democratic lion who had borne the title “Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan” and who used the term “white n****r” on national television, and, second, that Mr. Biden represented a highly segregated state. His party has undermined the economic and educational interests of African-Americans at every turn, among other ways by fighting the D.C. scholarship program that benefits the children served by Washington’s failed public schools.
This is the sort of thing that we’re accustomed to hearing from Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan. To hear it from the vice president of the United States is something else altogether. Romney was right to hit back hard at the Obama campaign in the wake of these outrageous remarks, but, given the administration’s lack of a policy success story to tell, such outrages are likely to come thick and deep, and Romney will have to rise above them.
Mitt Romney has an impeccable record on civil-rights issues, having learned at the knee of his father, a Republican who campaigned on civil rights in the 1960s. To suggest as Biden did that Romney’s program has something — anything — in common with slave-trading is vile even by the standards of Democratic campaign rhetoric. That no Democrat of note has spoken up against it is a testament to the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the party and the political movement it represents. …
An honorable president would dismiss Biden. Barack Obama probably will buy him a beer.
If Biden were a Republican, and Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, Biden would have been impeached by today. The fact that this embarrassment will continue as vice president after Nov. 6 tells you everything you need to know about Obama and the Democratic Party.
Biden is number two in the federal government. The Democratic Party’s traditional symbol is a jackass. Biden matches the perfect metaphor and the perfect symbol.
Anyone who votes for Biden’s boss Nov. 6 fully deserves what will happen next.
IB Wisconsin’s David Blaska has advice that, like mine, is unlikely to be heeded by the Democratic Party:
I have been looking for signs that adherents of the Democratic party have learned the lessons of the great Wisconsin Recall debacle, which failed to remove the governor from office but instead catapulted Scott Walker to national acclaim.
I have sifted the rubble of the June 5 election and its aftermath for evidence that our liberal/progressive adversaries have picked up a clue, bought a vowel, taken the hint. So far, the pickings have been leaner than a vegan bicycle racer at a Texas barbecue.
B+ Dave Cieslewicz. So often, simple is best. (K.I.S.S., anyone?)
“We lost because they like the other guy better,” the former Madison mayor writes. “The public isn’t buying what Democrats have to offer and it’s time we stopped whining about it and complaining about how stupid our customers are.” True, that. …
You’re right that people in un-Madison (which is to say, the rest of Wisconsin) don’t chant much outside the occasional monastery. But you sell language too short, for a would-be blogger. Language is a means of conveying ideas. Substitute the word “ideas” and you’ve got it: “In politics ideas matter, and the ideas of the Left don’t resonate … .”
Advocating a total ban on handguns, as you did a couple of months ago, fer instance, ain’t going to cut it. You either trust The People to make good decisions or, like New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, you infantilize them in the nanny state. People are either causative agents or helpless victims, dependent on government sustenance, like Barack Obama’s “Julia.” …
D — Marty Beil/Mary Bell. (Can you prove they’re not one and the same person?) Announce that “The Kathleen” Falk is Big Labor’s candidate without consulting their members. Throw $5 million of their dues at her doomed candidacy, drive to Milwaukee to diss the eventual Democrat(ic) nominee. Whoever said Big Labor is top down, tone deaf and out of touch?
When some AFSCME members attempt a coup, Marty responds, with typical grace, “I’m sure there’s some Monday morning quarterbacking going on. There’s a whole bunch of people who all of sudden become political experts.”
Compared to your sorry performance, Marty Bell, so are the baggers at that DeForest grocery.
D — Little Man Tate. Chairman of the State Party. Openly hopes that the governor of Wisconsin is sent to prison. Statesmen need not apply! I’ll believe the party of my youth is on the mend when it fires spokes mouth Graeme Zielinski, lifetime winner of PolitiFact’s PantsOnFire Award. A little civility, Democrats, wouldn’t hurt. Go to that DeForest supermarket and watch how no one is cutting ahead in line and everyone pays their own way. (Send Mike the bill!) …
F — John Nichols. Need I say more? Well, O.K., if you insist.
Encouraged the Siege of the Capitol, ignored its inevitable excesses (Pink Dress Guy, Segway Boy, the Walker Stalkers), campaigned for the recall more fervently than Tom Barrett, cried racism in a crowded theater, and wrongly predicted “the only people who buy the argument that Walker is a safe bet to win are national pundits who have not been near Wisconsin.” Are we forgetting the Marquette Law School poll and its director, UW-Madison prof. Charles Franklin? Or does it not fit your narrative? Now holds that the stupid electorate was fooled by Citizens United. Price check in aisle 3, John!
F-minus — Matt Rothschild. Openly eschews the ballot box in favor of mob rule. Teamsters should shut down the Interstate highway system, “Every union in the state could have caught the blue flu.” (The link, here.) Yeah, that would work. Not!
Even Dale Schultz would call out the National Guard.
Wobblies like Comrade John and Matt Rothschild are weighing down the Democrat(ic) party. Wisconsin, indeed, America, does not want to look like Greece. We want to live within our means. We do not resent success, we aspire to it. The private sector is not doing “just fine.” Hiring more government workers and giving them better compensation than sustainable in the private sector is voodoo economics. People are not stupid, they can sift and winnow their way through the political advertising just fine.
We’ll take the Tea Party, you can have Mr. Ed, Jesse Jackson and Hippie Bongstocking. (MacIver has the full video interview. “It’s so difficult being an anarchist in America,” she laments. Try being a taxpayer, Ms. Bongstocking. Hilarious!)
St. Clement Catholic Church, Lancaster, Oct. 24, 1992. Taken before the wedding, which we highly recommend.
What does that headline mean? It means that today (more precisely, around 2:30 p.m.), Jannan and I have been married 19 years.
Nineteen years isn’t one of those anniversaries with a specified gift attached, like silver for 25 or gold for 50. But given the divorce rate, and considering that people we know who have been longer than that are now divorced, this seems like an accomplishment.
I repeat the story of how we met because it strikes me as one of the more unusual ways to meet people — by interviewing them as part of your job. Back in my rural journalism days, I was assigned to interview an area woman back briefly after a year in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. The interview produced the best lead paragraph I have written before or since: “One day, Jannan Roesch was on the bus, when two men in front of her got into a machete fight.” You read that, and I guarantee you you will read the rest.
She then returned to Guatemala for her last year, and I returned to my pastime of the previous several months — complaining about the lack of social life for myself because of the lack of people like myself in Lancaster — mid-20s, college-educated and unattached.
A year and a few months later, I found out from the newspaper publisher (whose stepdaughter was best friends with Jannan) that she was coming back the next Monday. I called her mother (who remembered me from the first interview) and we arranged an interview at 10 on Tuesday, 10 hours after she got off the airplane at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
That was a similarly good interview, which ended with her saying that she was going to Washington in the fall to take advantage of her one year’s preferential hiring status with the federal government, which she got for doing the two-year Peace Corps hitch. Which I pointed out to my boss when she asked upon my return to the office if I had asked her out. That would have been not merely unprofessional (though I doubt unprecedented), but, I assumed, pointless.
But small towns contain opportunities to keep running into people — the grocery store, the Monday night community band concert on the courthouse lawn, and, yes, the murder trial. (A colleague of her brother-in-law was the victim.) At some point the day the verdict was reached, I must have mentioned to her that a baseball playoff game was being held later that day, and she came to the game. (A come-from-behind 20–3 Lancaster win over Platteville.) I mentioned to her that the next playoff game was three days later, and she came to that, too. (Gale–Ettrick–Trempealeau 8, Lancaster 7 in 12 innings, the story about which won me a Wisconsin Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest first-place award.)
I then mustered up what little courage I had to ask her on a date, the next night — dinner at Mario’s Restaurant in Dubuque and the movie “Pretty Woman.” Fun night, but again, nothing was going to come to it because she was going to D.C. in a couple of months.
She started coming to my games with the Grant County Herald Independent softball team, which made up for poor hitting with poor pitching and defense. One particular night, she saw me hit my one and only triple (a highly unlikely event) in my four-year slow-pitch career. And suddenly, if there was a social gossip column in the Herald Independent, we would have been in the same sentence.
She never went to D.C., or at least not to get a job. I assume it was because after two years of traveling, she was tired of being far away from her family. (Which, I must point out, has now been feeding me for more than 20 years.) She claims it’s because I didn’t unbutton my shirts to my navel and spoke English. I assume that she might be the only person on the planet who could stand being with me this long. (I’m not the easiest person to live with, I must confess.)
Our wedding was pretty large, and definitely musical, with my chiropractor singing and a brass quintet (with her high school band director) performing. I think everyone who went to the wedding had a good time, although I’m pretty sure some people who went to the reception didn’t remember much about the reception. (Two words: Open bar.) Unfortunately, the restaurant where we had our rehearsal dinner and the banquet hall where we had our reception are now closed. Also unfortunately, the wedding videos are filling with people who are no longer with us — my grandparents, her grandmother, her father and her oldest sister and brother-in-law.
We had two celebrants, the Catholic church priest and our friend the Methodist-trained minister/radio DJ. (And now high school football coach and nondenominational pastor.) Something the latter said in the homily has stuck in my mind: When you hear that marriage is a 50/50 proposition, that’s wrong; it should be a 100/100 proposition.
I think one’s marriage’s success has a lot to do with one’s parents’ marriage and its success or lack thereof. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary Jan. 7. My in-laws were married 58 years before my father-in-law died in 2004.
Our 19 years includes several jobs, three houses, two dogs and one cat now passed on to Rainbow Bridge, and, most importantly, our three children. We don’t have the same tastes (I didn’t watch the chick flicks she used to watch Sunday mornings in our pre-children days) or opinions, but we have, I’d say, similar opinions about things. She’s indulged my interest in sports announcing, even though that means my being at games on nights and weekends, since that’s when the games are. (Added bonus: She can keep score in football and basketball.)
I hope she doesn’t think she’s missed out on doing bigger and better things because she’s been with me, even though she probably has. Since the day before this blog began, I get an F in being a family provider. You don’t want to know the list of things around the house that I haven’t gotten to in the past nearly seven months. Even when things are going well, my list of personality traits includes adult vocabulary during unfavorable portions of Packer and Badger games, bad temper, expressing opinions without being asked, impatience, procrastination, stubbornness and yelling … and, of course, being a journalist. Had she known all of this in the summer of 1990, and had my persuasive powers not been what they apparently were on one occasion in my life, I hope I would have had the grace to not be a bitter, lonely middle-aged man, but I doubt it.
Jannan, on the other hand, is (not in any particular order) smart, bilingual, a great mother, and a fine cook (in keeping with her farm background). She puts others before herself, and she’s put up with me for 21 years.
The best thing about being married is its intimacy in ways far beyond those about which you really need to get your mind out of the gutter. Early in relationships, you have someone with whom to do things. But as your relationship lengthens and deepens, there is more to share. Any time we’re at a wedding or otherwise in church and hear our wedding’s first reading, which includes Song of Solomon 2:9 (look it up yourself), there will be two people in the church quietly, yet hysterically, laughing. We enjoy finding typographical errors in publications. I hear her say things I would say, which means she’s been around me a really long time. (Either that, or I repeat myself repeatedly.) Being married also means you have to think about someone besides yourself, which is good for the self-centered.
I look at this way: This morning, the love of my life was next to me in our bed. Tonight, the love of my life will be next to me in our bed. In a world where divorce seems more common than marriage, perhaps I should say in public: I love my wife.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
