A Passing Thought

Just a passing thought.
Yesterday, Tuesday, morning I was out chasing the full moon. "Crusing" sixth street on the near south side in the morning at 5:30 in the morning got me to think what these streets must shave been like twenty or thirty years ago. On Sunday I meet a lady who was part of the last 150 production workers from the Rockwell plant. At one time their were eight thousand that worked in the building. A great majority would have come to work by buss carrying a lunch bucket.

That is the point of this thought. I saw a man hurry to a bus stop carrying a plastic bag which I persume was carrying his lunch. In a non dscript plastic bag. I am old enough to have caught the end of seeing thousands of men going to work every morning in the giant industrial plants.

The lunch buckets, dented, scratched, filled with decals or custom painted. They were individualized. It was YOUR lunch box. Can you image calling the plastic bag your plastic bag. When you opened the lunch box you may have found a picture of his wife and family. If he was not married you might find a picture of his best girl or a cut out from the playboy magazine. Or you might have found a picture of the New GTO or Mustang he had his eye on. Not going to find that in your plastic bag today.

Think of all the conversations were started when one guy turned his lunch box around to show someone else a picture of his family. Now I guess it is the iPhone.

That is it the iPhone is the new lunch box.

Budget Cut Time

OK we know it is coming. No more crying about it. Let us think about what we are going to cut. We can no longer nibble at the edges.

When it comes to the county maybe to keep bus service for the people who need it the most we will have to shut down the freeway flyer.

Maybe Milwaukee county should stop patrolling the freeway's and have the state take over with the State Highway Patrol. We could get by with a lot fewer Sheriff Department employees.

Just a starting point.

Friends

I know it has months since I last posted a thought. I have stayed away because I realized that I write no better than I express myself in person. But this past Sunday night / Monday morning (third shift) set me to write about it.

It involved a small comment made by one of my co-workers. A comment that I never thought I would hear from him. A comment that greatly disappointed, and saddened and also woke me back up.

I have worked with this person for over 5 years maybe going on to ten. A long time. I like (for me that is I get along) with this person but I would not consider him a "friend." We more that likely would never have gone out for a cup of coffee or a beer after work.

The comment saddened me not so much because he made it but what I think it says about our "American" society in general. I will tell you what he said and why I think it is not an unusually thought in a moment.

I was telling him of a problem that I had encountered in dealing with a truck they past Friday. It was they way it had been loaded at our distribution center.

Out of the blue this person says to me "do they have a lot of blacks working at the D.C. They way the trucks are loaded you would think so." At that point I am guessing that he saw the look on my face and them said that "maybe I should not have said that. Maybe they just have a lot of people that do not care working their."

Now I wish I could say that I was totally discussed with what he said and I challenged him on it. I did not challenge him other than the look. So now I must say that I have as much outrage for myself as I do for his saying what he said.

When I view what so many of the tea baggers have been saying and the signs and the pictures they display I do believe what he said and thought is not that unusual.

I am outraged towards my self for not saying anything. I am outrage at myself for staying quiet for the past twenty years. I am sad that I know believe that their are a large number of people in this country that have these same notions.

Anyway, I had to say this. Not that I think it will make a difference. I know that this person will not ever read it because he has "no time" for computers or for the internet. But here is what I do believe. We have not come that far from JIM CROW.

gordon

texting

So we have some Wisconsin State Legislators who this week introduced a bill that will ban YOUNG driver from texting while driving. This despite the fact that their already a bill working its way through the State Senate that would ban ALL drivers from texting.

The second on banning all makes a lot more sense. But it will only make sense if it written in a broad enough language that regulators can work with it in real life. Can not be written in such a way that says has words like cell phones ect ect. They need to be general enough so that whatever someone wants to call them they are the same thing, No e mailing no texting and whatevering. You need to be driving not writing or calling. Reading email or texts. If you have to have that kind of constant contact then you need to be rich enough to hire a driver or work out of your office or pull off the road.

I am enough of a libertarian that if you want to kill yourself go ahead and do it but do not drive in such a way that will kill me or others with your poor judgment.

Life After

I am having way to much time to think. Maybe the word is to fantasize. Do I really want to go back to work at SAM's Club when this leg is done or do I want to.

1) Do a photo seres on 27th St. from north to south.

2) A series od photos about Hwy 41 again from north to south.

3) Purchasing a tent and spend several months in Texas photographing the Leather Neck Turtle. The only sea turtle that breeds in the daylight.

4) Drive to Alaska in the "early" spring, mid April and staying for two to three months. The great wildflowers of spring, all the new calfs and new born brown and black bears. The Eagles. Staying in State campgrounds.

5) Spend two long weeks in March photographing the migration of the Cranes and following them to a nesting spot on Wisconsin.

6) In my spare time going to art fairs and selling my photos as well as making three small books one on 27th St. one on Hwy. 41 and finally a third on the people of Milwaukee

just some wild thoughts

A Street North to South

Well now that I lived through the replacement of my left knee I have been considering a photo project. I am thinking of photographing 27th st from the Ozaukee County line to the Racine County line. No more than a dozen pictures to tell the whole story. Their may be the problem. I already have two photos that need to be in it. The first of course is Leon's . What defines Franklin better than Menards Walmart or some other strip store. "One the Border" of course.

Maybe 27th st. could be defined by it's fast food restaurants. That is sort of a sad thought. Guess I will just have to wait until I can drive again and start to look

This would just be the start for a larger project and that is Hwy. 41 from upper Michigan to the end of the road in Ill. Maybe I could do a general study and one that would focus restaurants.

They Are All Gone Now

Good By Senator Kennedy.

I will admit that when I herd the news this morning I was at work and I am not ashamed that when I told a friend about it I cried.

My interest in politics started when in 8th grade I stayed up all night watching the 1962 results. I remember sitting in the rocking chair, in out "TV room." I could not tell my mother and father that I was pulling for Kennedy as the were Nixon people.

I remember the day he was shot. Finding out in typing class and then being mad as hell that I had to go to the high school basketball game and play in the band. That is right the Random Lake school's played a game that night.

I remember going to bed that night in June thinking that Bobby was going to be the next President of the United States. It was going to be all right. He would end the was and would solve all our "civil rights." It was good. I woke up the next day and nothing was good.

Senator Ted Kennedy made things better by telling all of us not to give up the dream and to honor both John and Bobby by fighting for that dream.

I stayed in politics for several years fighting for that dream. Today, like many days I fell like I have let down John, Bobby, Martin and now Ted by not staying and fighting. I am not talking about working for a politician but working for a politician that was out fighting for a cause.

You know that many politicians run away from the word Liberal. Not Senator Ted Kennedy. He wore that like a BADGE OF HONOR.

So as sad as I am now I think we all need to take a deep breath and look to the future. The dream is not dead. It lives. Without Senator Ted Kennedy it may takes us a little longer and we may have to work a little harder. But we can get their.

Farewell Senator.