Back in Mad Town

There has been a lengthy break in my entries up till now due to a short stint with the bad guys. But I am back and there have been some very interesting event in Madison Wisconsin this week, in todays Wisconsin State Journal, Judge Prosser was accused of strangling a fellow Supreme Court Judge in private chambers  you can read the articleBradley vs Prosser here.  I will be interested to here what the Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs has to say about this in his statement tomorrow.  I will try to make it to the capitol for that in the morning.  Right, now also there have been Walkers signing of his bill that virtually eliminates state workers collective bargaining rights.  Oh wow how then times are changin!  I have been traveling to the Northwestern continental United States of America recently.  I flew out to Portland for a couple weeks to see my Big Brother graduate with a masters degree, then I joined up with some of his mates for a trip to the Olympic National Park.  I felt that I gained a great deal of knowledge about that specific habitat type and coastal ecosystem.  We were able to harvest off the land and it was great to have a conservative mindset when it comes to conservation of resources and your individual impact that you as a person has on the resources every where your go and travel.  I wish that Walker would have been a little more aware of the ripple effect he will have on shaping future legislative sessions to promote corruption in big environmentally blind business deals.  I will try to keep myself to continue at this blog to help myself and normally others in a constant state of  awareness.

Do people normally spend their Sunday in bed?

Well I do not really care if it is completely normal or not but today seemed like a great day to veg out in my comfy bed and read a new book.  What book I was reading would make no difference to the reader of this blog, whether I am diving deep into some of Jim Harrison poetry or rereading Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac.  Its the concept of making the personal decision to be recluse and hide myself away from society for a afternoon that to some may challenge the normalcy of life.  At times I feel that social interaction for me come with a cyclic relationship that is mutually associated with periods of social withdraw.  I believe that both are normally significance in ones daily life and when both feelings are presence there is a need for a equal distribution that both  promotes cultural diversity and worthwhile thought for a person.  If I had spent the entire day in bed and I personally felt that I did not glean on bit of knowledge or discover something about myself that would allow me to change as a member of society, then I would have been ashamed to admit to all that I was so lazy and boring of a person to slump into my midday slumber, but that is not the case today.  Normally I would have a hard time admitting that a day spent in bed was anymore productive than a day spent around others in a cafe or library, but on this day I feel good about my choice to stay in and work on myself  instead of other irrelevant projects in my life.  What really does not matter is what my opinion is because it is most likely not the norm, and that is what this blog is really about.  Everything that is normal to one person may never cross the mind of another person on the other side of the globe, but ideas and concepts that are normal to most are relevant to the people having those thoughts.  When I watched Michael Moore speak this weekend at the Wisconsin state capitol steps I did not think that any of his ideas where normal by any means, but the guy next to me may have thought that everything that he was saying was so normal.  That is completely normal to me and that is why I am going to continue with this blog.

Welcome to Normaldy

How normal is thousands of people sleeping in the rotunda of a State capital?  If you would have brought the issue to me a few weeks ago I would have though that normally very few helpless soles would need the warmth of the solid marble floors.  I would say...not so normal!  But tonight on a very cold and cloudless night after a  Wisconsin winter dusting I would think that people would be in their beds, but to make the choice and the sacrifice the comfort of the warm bed.  Not for me, but I hope that the Missing 14 have a nice soft couch in there offices on the square tonight, because they should not be heading home for a while.

Not so normal blog

I am going to be using this blog for a organized space to spew my personal opinions about a variety of topics but I will attempt to keep them focused on current issues that are relevant to me and my daily life as a scientist, outdoorsmen and Madisonian soaking up the American Spirit as fast as it can flow through my blue veins.  So if you are interested in those topics and how they are all being effected by current events around them than by all means enjoy the post freely and don't hesitate to constructively comment on my ideals and bat shit crazy ideas that are plastered all over this page.  

My ideas may in some respects may seen very normal to the experienced blogger but since this is my first blog, I do not think that it is all that bad to start with what you know or what sparks my interests.  Normally I can be quite opinionated and a open criticizer of new ideas, but  for good reasons.  It is so normal for most people to contribute the critical view point to others when talking about new ideas and or news.  So that is what I will do most of the time, but on occasion I will be not so normal and take an idea and run with it in an attempt to make the situation or concepts better or worse.  Perhaps I will even attempt to magnify things that seem normal to me but very well be not so normal to others.  

Lets start with the train that just woke me up way to early this morning on its trip through the Isthmus of Madison Wisconsin today.  I here that train every day, and when I was unemployed this past winter I heard it multiple time a day.  Most of the time the train reminds me of about what time it is currently, but at other times it reminds me of my grand father that I barely met Melvin Norman who spent the majority of his working life either on a train or around trains, starting as a car connector in Pontiac Michigan in the early 1950's in the height of the auto industry boom, and later working his way up the food chain in perhaps a normal way to the Flint Yard Master.  Or it reminds me of another family member my closest cousin in age Nick Norman who is also working for the railroad as a civil engineer all over the southern United States.  The early morning train also seems normal to me in the manner that it is a daily reminder that Wisconsin's current leader Scott Walker brutally murdered the idea of a proposed high speed rail connector to Milwaukee, Chicago, the Twin Cities, and the rest of the Amtrak world with one swift decision before he was even officially governor.  My most pleasant memory of a train rolling through my life can be seen in this picture posted here that I took while on a float trip down the Big Hole River in south-central Montana a few years.

  as you can see this train loves America as much as I do, and it came rollin in at just the right time.  But photograph like this are normal, to me this makes being normal so much better.

Ecology of the State

On a lighter note I saw my first parasitized aphid today, it sure looked content, all fat and dead.  That ecological interaction between the the parasitic wasp that is host specific to the aphids in the greenhouse that I work at reminds me of the relationship that unions have with their affiliations.  Is that normal?  If not normal at least it is interesting and really pretty amazing that both parties really need each other, even in the minutest capacity.

What is the Norm?

I have been inspired by the thousands of people protesting down the street at state capitol of Wisconsin.  People from all walks and generations have come out to protest the anti-union legislative that is proposed by our current Governor Scott Walker.  Is that normal? Who is to say that getting a job connected directly with a state government is not something that should taken lightly and afford you the privileged future that is certainly attached to the safety of a position with the government. The way that I see it is that if your services and or talents are needed by a state body than you should be allowed the security of a organized body to help stand up for your rights as a citizen and also a employee.  But coming here to Wisconsin from another Midwestern state that wears the union blinders I can see how the state workers here are looking for more, not less.  Is that normal of a unionized system?  I personally have never been part of a union but then again I am not much of a joiner.  I would say that most most people that are active in a union of some sort have the joiner mentality, you know the type, they normally belong to the laundry list of clubs that and freely funnel there funds into non-profits that whitewash whatever hip idea or initiative and take your money to hire lobbyist and print  their glossy pamphlets on not so virgin paper.  I am a fishermen, yet I do not see the need to join BASS, or Trout Unlimited to ensure that I have a greater chance of catching a trout on my next fishing excursion.  But if joining one of those groups would provide me with the absolute assurance that I would never get skunked on the water then I might even consider making a monthly contribution.  The direct benefit is there and is tangible for the unionized state employees of Wisconsin and right now they are seeing the their sunny future quickly become a cloudy haze.  Unions are truly of the Midwestern spirit, it must be the winter weather that makes us demanding more for putting up with the shitty weather and sticking it out in the great lakes states.  I am interested to see what happens, will the state listen to its citizens in a collective voice or will it mute that voice swiftly and abruptly for the sake of the budget?