Michelle's Musings

I feel like I have been pretty much rolling with the changes of getting older. Of course, sometimes I lament about the lines that continue to deepen on my face, or maybe I express my discontent in my neck resembling a turkey snood. A gray hair here and there is not so bad and easy enough to remove. For the most part I have accepted, even embraced, those things, but this latest rite of passage into old age is most disturbing–bifocals.

I went to a two day fais do-do (pronounced fay doh-doh) last weekend. What is a fais do-do, you ask? It means party in Cajun, and I have to say, the Cajuns really know how to throw a fais do-do. 

The party was in honor of my husband’s class reunion, along with a couple of other years, which they had dubbed the “Mega Reunion.” The school he went to is called Midland High School and it serves several small communities deep in the Louisiana bayou. 

The party began on Friday night with a trip to the basketball Homecoming game. One of his schoolmates has a party bus and a small group of folks gathered to take the bus a short distance to the school. 

In my younger years I would work on a party bus as a bartender from time to time when my boss would rent a big tour bus to take on casino trips. It was luxurious and new with cushy seats, air conditioning and a fold down counter that we would use to make drinks.

The holiday season has always been one of my favorite times of year for three reasons–generosity, happiness and revelry. What’s not to like about two months of eating, drinking, family, presents and kindness. It starts with a feast on Thanksgiving and culminates with a giant party to say goodbye to the old, and hello to the new. It is the season of beginnings and endings.

I remember the first time I begged to stay up until midnight to watch the ball drop. I was nine at the time and convinced my grandma to let me invite my two best friends, Dawn and Bertha to come and celebrate the new year. 

It is the first New Year’s Eve party I would throw. I made sure that we were stocked up on snacks–cheese and crackers, popcorn, chocolate chip cookies that I made earlier in the day, and of course a can of red Hi-C that I poured into a decanter to serve in some tiny wine glasses I had found at a garage sale with my Aunt Shirley. 

Voter suppression can take on many forms.

Last week in a story about Max Prestigiacomo running for Madison City Council, voter suppression came up because of Wisconsin voter ID laws, which make it difficult for students to cast votes. That is because many students retain the ID or driver’s license in their hometown when they go to school out of state, and Wisconsin requires that you have a Wisconsin ID.

The district Max is running in is mostly students at UW-Madison. This has contributed to lower student voter turnout in the past. And one of the things that he said he would like to see is voting rights for anyone in the City of Madison over 18.

Just days after I wrote the story about Max, a judge in Port Washington also did his best to suppress voting. The circuit court judge, Paul Malloy ordered that more than 230,000 voters be removed from the state’s registered voter list, according a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

We would lie on the green, high-low, shag carpet and pore over the JC Penney Christmas Wish Book, my cousin, Angie, and I, not a care in the world, scheming what to ask for from Santa. I can still remember the prickly feel of the synthetic fibers on my elbows as we propped ourselves in front of the cozy, wood-burning stove. 

We had a system down, I, being older, came up with the plan to more efficiently express our need for items in the inch-and-a-half thick book. The smell of ink from its freshly printed pages emanating from the catalog. 

Recently I watched a video of a man in Tennessee, who tried to bring home the honor or largest pumpkin in his state. At 910 pounds, the gargantuan squash fell short of the title, topping 1,700 lbs. 

But when life hands you giant pumpkins, there is but one thing to do–make a pumpkin boat. So that’s what he did, and the clip shows him paddling down a waterway, a hole carved in the top, like some kind of fantastical kayak. 

Giant pumpkin growing is an actual thing, and if you have never seen this spectacle, I suggest you put it on your bucket list. I first became aware of competitions for the largest pumpkin back in 2003 when I began working at a paper called the Anamosa Journal-Eureka.

The town held an event called Pumpkinfest and the Ryan Norlin Pumpkin Weigh-off. Ryan was a boy who raised giant pumpkins with his uncle. He was killed in a tragic boating accident, and his family and town members began the weigh-off to honor his memory. 

I was very much looking forward to a long awaited trip to Memphis from with my longtime friend Wendy. She lives in New Orleans and we decided to meet in Memphis for a long weekend to see Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, who is on his farewell tour, aptly named “Roll Me Away.” 

I have been to Memphis several times, but it had been about 20 years since I had stayed downtown. Walking around downtown was a strange juxtaposition of desolation and gentrification. Main Street is a tourist hot spot with upscale restaurants and shops, and it goes right past Court Square, where many homeless people sleep at night. 

I have touched on homelessness in the past in this column, but what I have not revealed is the reason I am an advocate for helping the homeless (aside from just plain humanitarianism). I was once homeless and living in my car. 

I am a label reader. I cook mostly from scratch, but sometimes I want something prepackaged, particularly snack food. 

I started reading labels because I didn’t want preservatives, dyes and artificial flavors in my food. Then, I also wanted to avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and now, palm oil. 

The label reading began because I personally didn’t want to ingest processed and potentially harmful chemicals. The palm oil, however, is strictly about the environment and the destruction of habitat. Orangutans, which were declared the closest relative to humans about a decade ago, are the most hard hit by the harvest of palm oil. 

This is something that came to my attention a few years ago, and prompted me to stop buying most peanut butter, including those proclaiming to be “natural.” I also had to give up Girl Scout cookies much to my great dismay and sadness. No more Thin Mints for me. 

Protest is part of our fiber, our existence, as Americans. Our country was literally founded on protest, specifically a monarchy that imposed high taxes, exported resources, and ruled from afar. 

The Minutemen were adamant about overthrowing the oppressive British government. Most of us are well versed in some version of revolutionary history, even if it is just Paul Revere riding through the streets announcing that the “the British are Coming!” We know that they were successful in their coup against the throne. 

When the forefathers set about drafting the Bill of Rights, the very first Amendment was concerned free speech, including the right to peaceful protest. It reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

One thing I learned early on when coming to the Madison area is that there are a lot of pot smokers around here. I remember driving around last summer and smelling the sweet-scented smoke wafting from a window or yard every few blocks.

I also wrote a story early on at the Times-Tribuneabout medicinal and recreational bills introduced to the Wisconsin legislature last year. Most notably, I talked to Melissa Sergeant, who has introduced several bills with the intent of legalizing the widely used plant. It failed last year. Not one to give up, apparently, she introduced another recreational legalization bill in May of this year–the fourth she has presented.

The bill probably doesn’t have the legs to get off the ground as most Republican legislators have remained strictly opposed to the idea of full legalization, and only support heavily restricted medicinal use, also illegal in the state.