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?