Jim’s Blog: Goodbye Again, and Again, and Again

Here’s something that’s not a news flash: we have lost a lot of famous people in 2016.
It seems like there have been more losses in 2016 than ever before, although a scientist crunched some numbers and concluded that 2016 may not be so unusual. What’s different about this year is the power of social media. Years ago, we’d hear about celebrity deaths on the radio or TV or read about them in the paper the day after they happened. Now, our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds blow up in real time when a prominent celebrity passes on. Stars like George Michael, one of the half-dozen most significant musical icons of the 80s and 90s, and Carrie Fisher, who starred in one of the most famous movie series ever, would get a great deal of notice regardless. The attention that came to Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, may have been greater because of the weird circumstance of her dying just one day after her daughter.
This morning (Thursday the 29th as I write this), less than 24 hours after Reynolds’ death, I notice the social media backlash starting: “Why are people so sad about Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds and not the cops and firemen and soldiers who have died this year?,” or “You never met these people, why do you care?” If that’s your opinion, you’re entitled to it. But I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone how to feel about the death of another, personal acquaintance or not. I never met Keith Emerson or Merle Haggard or the jazz musician Bobby Hutcherson, but I felt a sense of loss when they died, because their work (music in the case of all three) meant something in my life. I felt a twinge when Barney Miller actors Abe Vigoda and Ron Glass died because I love that show. If To Kill a Mockingbird changed your life, it was OK to feel a little sad when Harper Lee died earlier this year. And so on.
One thing we know: we’ll have the chance to debate celebrity passings and social media in 2017, because people don’t live forever. I am pleased to report, however, that as of this morning, Betty White, Bob Newhart, Chuck Berry, Morgan Freeman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Dame Maggie Smith, and many other people we like are alive and well.
Oh man, what if I jinxed ’em?

by Jim Bartlett

Weather Games

The weather forecast for the Packers/Bears game on Sunday says that the high temperature might be one below. That would  make it one of the coldest Packer games in history, up there with the famous Ice Bowl in 1967, when the game-time temperature in Green Bay was 13 below, or the game in 1993 that was the second-coldest ever at the time, and also the day Leroy Butler invented the Lambeau Leap.
I will be happy to watch the Packer game Sunday from the relative warmth of my couch. I am not afraid to sit out in the weather, though. Usually, at least one Badger football game every year is played on a day when the temperature doesn’t get out of the 20s, and I remember sitting in the old Milwaukee County Stadium sometime back in the 80s watching the Packers when it was something like 20 degrees. (The good thing about it was if you bought a beer, it wasn’t going to get warm before you finished it.)
The worst weather game I can remember sitting through was a Badger football game  in 2003. It started raining on Friday afternoon and it rained straight down for what seemed like three days, and may have been. On Saturday, we sat in the stadium wearing rain gear and staying halfway comfortable—even though it didn’t take long before water was dripping off the bill of my hat. Sometime in the fourth quarter, I noticed that my rain poncho had a hood on it, and I decided to put it up for a little extra protection—not realizing that it had filled up with water, which I dumped over my head and into my clothes when I raised the hood. I was now soaked both outside and in.
I don’t think we stayed very long at the game after that.
 

by Jim Bartlett

Happy Merry Holiday Greetings of the Christmas Season

There's been a major brouhaha the last few years over the phrase "Happy Holidays." Some people consider the phrase fightin' words, claiming people should say "Merry Christmas." On the other hand, you may have seen the meme that notes how the world's seven major religions celebrate 29 different holidays between November 1st and January 15th, so it only makes sense to wish people "Happy Holidays," especially if you don't know which one(s) they celebrate. And at the very least, there's Christmas and New Year's, which is two holidays, so "Happy Holidays" is mathematically accurate.
Another phrase you sometimes see this time of year is "Season's Greetings." I say "see" because practically nobody is going to spot a friend at the mall and say, "Hey, Fred, season's greetings!" It's more commonly found in print.
Fifty years ago, during the 1966 holiday season, CBS-TV put the phrase into an animated holiday greeting by R. O. Blechman, whose work, including many magazine covers and ads, has been honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The 60-second film was broadcast during the holiday season for many years thereafter. If you are old enough, you will probably remember seeing it. If you aren't, watch it here. It's quiet and lovely and well worth a minute of your time.

by Jim Bartlett

Thanksgiving By Request

On Thanksgiving Day 1981, I was a little baby disc jockey at KDTH in Dubuque, Iowa. My show was nearly over when a listener called to ask why I hadn’t played any Thanksgiving songs yet that morning. It was not a playful query. The tone of her voice indicated that her gorge had been rising with every non-Thanksgiving song I played. So maybe it wasn’t the most tactful thing I could have said when I replied, “Ma’am, if you can think of one, I’d be happy to play it.”
In the years since, I've developed a list, in case she calls back, and here are a few of them.
Although I'm not a church person anymore, I still know my way around the Methodist Hymnal. For Thanksgiving, one could choose “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” or “For the Beauty of the Earth” or “We Gather Together” or even the Doxology. (I am guessing this is what my caller was asking for, unless maybe she wanted “Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House We Go,” in which case she shoulda said so.)
There's "Thanksgiving" by George Winston, the opening track on his landmark album December. It's an instrumental that can paint numerous pictures depending on the frame of mind you’re in: a quiet country road with harvest bounty in the adjoining fields, the last mile of a long and wearying journey home, or the quiet contemplation of how fortunate you are to have what you have. "Celebrate Me Home" by Kenny Loggins does the same kind of thing, although in an entirely different way.
You're likely to hear both George Winston and Kenny Loggins on the Magic 98 Thanksgiving Special this year. You probably won't hear "Thank You (Falletin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)" by Sly and the Family Stone–but why not? Part of reaching our fullest potential as human beings involves being true to our true selves, whatever they are. Should we not be grateful to someone who permits us to achieve that potential?
OK, that's a joke, but only a little one. Hope you and yours have a happy Thanksgiving this year.

by Jim Bartlett

The Morning After

A few years ago, I went into the archives and looked at some of the morning-after Election Day editions of the Wisconsin State Journal. Here’s some of what I found:
On Wednesday, November 8, 1972, the State Journal punned, “Nixon Makes It, Perfectly Clear: McG Yields in Landslide for President.” Inside, the sports page headlined the selection of Johnny Bench of the Cincinnati Reds as National League MVP for the second time in three years. The sports section was crowded with ads for tire stores as winter approached. You could get yourself a set of snow tires for as little as $18 each.
On Wednesday, November 3, 1976, the headline was “Carter close victor: Democrat takes Wisconsin.” On other critical questions of the day, Madison voters approved an advisory referendum legalizing marijuana by about 300 votes out of 77,000 cast, although a referendum on decriminalization passed by nearly 21,000.
On Wednesday, November 5, 1980, the State Journal‘s headline was simply “Reagan landslide.” A story down the page was headlined “Kasten heads toward upset.” The night before, I had been on the air at my college radio station, playing tunes between the election reports. Long after everything else was decided, we stayed on the air waiting for a resolution of the U. S. Senate race between Republican challenger Robert Kasten and Democrat Gaylord Nelson. Seems to me it was 3AM or better before we gave up and went home. We awoke the next morning (afternoon, more likely–who needed to go to class, anyhow?) to find that Kasten had defeated the three-term incumbent.
What will the headline be on Wednesday, November 9, 2016? It’s hard to imagine. 

by Jim Bartlett

40 Years of Boz

I have been fairly fortunate in that there's not much left on my rock concert bucket list. A full Bruce Springsteen show is about the last of it—having seen him during John Kerry's Madison presidential campaign rally in 2004, only a few feet from the stage, was merely an appetizer. I'd still like to see Fleetwood Mac, but only if Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie are part of the group, and in recent years. they have not always been.
Boz Scaggs was atop the list for a long time. He played an unusual gig in Madison in 2006, appearing on a bill with Ben Sidran, Leo Sidran, and Jorge Drexler in a show that was half-music, half-conversation. I saw him with Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald as part of the Dukes of September in 2012. But a full Boz show remained a bucket-list item until the summer of 2015, when he played Potawatomi Bingo and Casino in Milwaukee. Just this week, Boz played Potawatomi again—and I was there again.
I have been a Boz Scaggs fan for 40 years now. This week in 1976, his first big hit, "Lowdown," was riding high on the singles chart, from the album Silk Degrees, an album no self-respecting fan of 70s music should be without. In September 1976, Boz performed "Lowdown" on Saturday Night Live, and it was pretty great. You can see the performance here.

by Jim Bartlett

Sheep on a Plane

As you read this, I am on a business trip for one of my other jobs, a trip that requires me to fly. I don't particularly like to fly, but it has nothing to do with going 500 miles an hour while sealed in a tube six miles above the ground. It's the hurry-up-and-wait aspect of the whole thing. 
The best way to be a happy airplane passenger is to consider yourself in a state of helplessness. Once you walk into the airport, there’s not a thing you can do about anything that really matters. You’re a sheep, and you’re waiting for somebody to herd you from one pen to another. So when the airline announces that your flight has been delayed, or that you have to walk to the opposite end of the airport for a gate change, you don’t concern yourself about it any more than a sheep would concern itself with being herded into a different pen. Better to take it that way then to blow a gasket at the gate agent, because gate agents are, in the end, as helpless as the passengers. If they could get you on the airplane any faster they certainly would, if only to get you and your sorry sheep’s face out of their sight. To think that they have some sort of evil agenda—that they got out of bed that morning for the express purpose of messing with you personally, as some passengers seem to suspect—just isn't right.
I am still capable of being impressed by the idea that I’m six miles in the air, and I still find looking out the window more entertaining than almost anything I could bring along to read. Flying over the Midwest and seeing those neatly surveyed squares below always reminds me of Thomas Jefferson, whose idea such a systematic survey was, and who would no doubt enjoy being six miles in the air to see it.

by Jim Bartlett

More Wisconsin Place Names

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about Robert E. Gard's book The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names, originally published in 1968 but now available in a new edition. Here are some more origin stories about the places where we live and work.
William McFarland was a railroad man who mapped out the village in 1854. For a few years in the early 20th century, the town was known as MacFarland until it changed back to McFarland in 1924.
Mt. Horeb was originally a crossroads known in Norwegian as Staangji. The name Mt. Horeb was chosen from the Bible by the town's first postmaster, George Wright, in 1861. The first post office was in his house, which was not uncommon in the days when Wisconsin was being settled.
Cross Plains was named by its first postmaster, Berry Haney, for his hometown in Tennessee.
Sometime around 1840, William Wells named Cottage Grove for a stand of burr oak trees that surrounded his house, a house that also served as the village tavern and post office.
Black Earth started off as a settlement called Farmersville but changed its name to Ray for a few months in 1858. When it was incorporated as a village the same year, its first president changed the name to Black Earth.
Windsor was named by its early settlers for the town of Windsor, Vermont.
The site on which Marshall stands was originally known as Bird's Ruins, after a lumberyard built by a man named Bird burned down in the early 1840s. It was later known as Hanchettville and then Howard City, but when the land on which the settlement stood was sold to a man named Marshall, the town got the name it has today.
Jefferson County was organized by a group of men who had come from Jefferson County, New York. Another group petitioned the federal government to put the county seat on land they owned. When their petition was granted, they named the town Jefferson.
Henry Janes petitioned the federal government to establish a post office near where he ran a ferry across the Rock River. He wanted to call the town Black Hawk, but was told there was already a post office called Black Hawk elsewhere. The feds named the place Janesville instead.
Beloit was first known as Turtle Creek and New Albany. A group of settlers came from New Hampshire in 1837, and one of the members wanted a more attractive name. He argued that it should resemble Detroit, and suggested Beloit.
If I've left out your town, go to the public library and get The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names, or better yet, go buy it.

by Jim Bartlett

How Our Towns Got Their Names

In 1968, author and historian Robert Gard published The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names, the result of several years of research. He went back to old records and old-timers to find the reasons why places in Wisconsin, large and small, famous and forgotten, have the names they do. The book has been reissued with a new foreword by historian Jerry Apps, and it's very entertaining, even though it's just an alphabetical list of place names and (mostly) short explanations of their origins. Here are a few from our area.
Madison, of course, is named for president James Madison.
Middleton is named for the town of Middleton, Vermont. The name was chosen by the town's first postmaster, Harry Barnes–and it could just as easily have been named "Barnesville" or something like that, because places were often named for their postmasters, or their first settlers, or their wives, or their daughters.
Monona is of Native American origin, and it's widely agreed the word means "beautiful," which is better than some of the possible meanings in the Ho-Chunk language: "lost" and "stolen."
Stoughton is named for Luke Stoughton, who laid out the original plan for the village. He bought the land in 1847 from Daniel Webster. Gard doesn't say it's the same Webster who was the famous 19th century orator, but it certainly could have been.
Sun Prairie was founded by Charles Bird, who had been part of a group of workmen traveling from Milwaukee to Madison build the first Capitol building in 1837. After riding in rain for nine days, the sun came out when they reached a prairie east of Madison. Two years later, when Bird returned to the place to build his home, he named it Sun Prairie.
Fitchburg was named by Ebenezer Brigham, the first permanent settler in Dane County, after the town of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, which was near Brigham's birthplace.
Oregon was named after the state of the same name, although it was originally called Rome Corners.
DeForest got its name from Isaac DeForest, who made a fortune farming wheat in the area before the Civil War.
Verona was settled by people from New York state who gave it this name, although it was first known as the Corners, thanks to its location at the intersection of major routes from Galena to Green Bay and Mineral Point to Milwaukee.
There are two stories about how Waunakee got its name. One is that it's named for a friendly Native American who lived near the village mill. The other is very complicated, and involves what looks to me like railroad officials demanding a bribe to locate a depot in the new village. When citizens refused to pay, they were told that they couldn't have their proposed name for the village, which was Lester. Instead, two prominent local businessmen chose Waunakee, a Native American word that is said to mean any number of things: "you win," "sharp shooter," "he lies", "he lives in peace," "he forgets something," or "he digs a hole." Given that the word can mean so many things, it's hard to believe there's only one Waunakee in the world.
If you enjoy the kind of book you can open anywhere and enjoy five minutes at a time, The Romance of Wisconsin Place Names is one for your list. I'll tell about some more local places next time.

by Jim Bartlett

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

A while back a friend tagged me on Facebook to participate in one of those name-your-favorite-things memes. This one was mostly musical, and here are some of my answers.
Favorite Beatles song: “In My Life”Favorite Rolling Stones song: “Brown Sugar”Favorite Doors song: “Riders on the Storm”Favorite Bob Dylan song: either “Hurricane” or “Positively Fourth Street”Favorite Prince song: “Musicology”Favorite Madonna song: “Borderline”Favorite Michael Jackson song: “I’ll Be There” (cheating; it's a Jackson Five song; sue me)Favorite Queen song: “You’re My Best Friend”Favorite song from a cartoon: “O Tannenbaum” (from A Charlie Brown Christmas)Favorite Bruce Springsteen song: too many to listFavorite song that most of your friends haven’t heard: “This Is Love” by Mary Chapin CarpenterFavorite Police song: “Wrapped Around Your Finger”Favorite Eurythmics song: “Would I Lie to You”Favorite Beach Boys song: either “Sloop John B” or “Sail on Sailor”Favorite Cyndi Lauper song: “All Through the Night”Favorite song from a movie: “Wise Up” by Aimee Mann (from Magnolia)Favorite Duran Duran song: “Union of the Snake”Favorite song from an 80s one-hit wonder: “Tragedy” by John HunterFavorite song from a video game: In my day, we were happy when there were bells on the pinball machine.Favorite Genesis song: either “Follow You Follow Me” or “Throwing it All Away”Favorite INXS song: “What You Need”Favorite John Lennon song: “Stand by Me”Favorite Pink Floyd song: “Comfortably Numb”Favorite dance song: It doesn’t matter; I can dance to anything provided I've had enough to drink.Favorite U2 song: “Pride (In the Name of Love)”Favorite disco song: “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel” by TavaresFavorite power ballad: “More Than a Feeling” by BostonFavorite Who song: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”Favorite Elton John song: “Rocket Man”Favorite song, period: “(They Just Can’t Stop It) Games People Play” by the Spinners
How do mine compare to yours?
 

by Jim Bartlett