I can’t understand all the buzz going around about Victoria’s Secret coming to Fond du Lac. With a gleam in their eye and excitement in their voices, women have already begun planning aloud all the wonderful shopping excursions awaiting them at the popular lingerie store.

I can only wince when I think back about shopping for unmentionables – especially with little boys in tow.

“We’re not going to the bra jungle again are we?” my sons whined in unison. “That’s so gross!”

And how could you blame them? With every shape, size and color imaginable (including leopard and tiger prints) hanging from every rack imaginable, it probably did resemble a fabric forest to their little minds.

Because I was the recipient of hand-me-downs from three older sisters over the years, I was a little amazed and overwhelmed by all the choices when I did finally get to the store: seamless, strapless, convertible, underwire, jogging and push-up bras only to name a few.

I’ve also noticed a change in marketing tactics over the years. Remember the Cross Your Heart bra that promised to lift and separate? Well, the goal of today’s push-up bra is to make mountains out of molehills by cramming them together for the sake of cleavage.

“Oh, if only we had the Wonderbra when we were in junior high,” sighed a childhood friend one day as she leafed through a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. “Then I wouldn’t have had to stuff my bra before square-dancing in gym class.”

Unlike today’s gel-laden bras, toilet tissue pilfered from the school bathroom stalls had its shortcomings. By the time my friend was through do-sa-doeing around the gymnasium floor with her sweaty-handed partner, the tissue in her training bra had promenaded off in different directions.

“I kept wondering why my partner had a hard time making eye contact,” she laughed. “I was so embarrassed that I hid in the bathroom stall and cried.”

Well, at least she had something to dry her tears with!

A new marketing campaign aimed at young girls has many mothers also shedding tears - of frustration. A big box department store has released a line of lingerie for little girls – including padded bras – sporting the images of Barbie and the Bratz dolls. What’s most disturbing is that the bras, which are very mature-looking, start at Size 6.

Most little girls that I know wearing Size 6 clothing are still in kindergarten and first grade. Many parents refuse to buy the underwear or the company’s claims that the idea behind padding the “bralettes” is for girls to be discreet as they develop.
In fact, outraged parents are inundating the store with demands to take the garments off the racks. The Australia Family Association has gone so far as to warn parents against sexualizing their children at such a young age.

Let’s face it folks, when they removed bras from manikins and started advertising with live models, bras became a more visible icon of female sex-appeal, like it or not. But to market adult-styled lingerie to little girls who still believe in the Tooth Fairy is a bit disconcerting.
And because I have never had the pleasure of having a daughter that is one shopping decision I will never have to make. It’s bad enough that I had to tolerate bra-hunting for myself under the scornful gaze of my sons and their never-ending, colorful narration.

“Look! That one’s got hearts all over it! Yuck!”

I can only hope that they have daughters and have to someday fight their way through the ‘bra jungle’ at home. Now that would be payback.

I knew he would be ours someday. What I didn’t know was how short our time together would be.

I first laid eyes on Bandit when I visited the Mark Navis farm in the town of Alto on June 2004 after the family’s large milking barn had been hit by a tornado. There in the midst of all the chaos and commotion of volunteers and news media was Bandit, nudging a ball with his nose to anyone game enough to play. I was so enchanted with this playful animal that I drove away thinking I would like to have a dog like that someday.

When I spied an ad in the paper a few months later for a border collie that could roll a ball I knew instinctively that it was him. But how could someone part with him? Apparently Bandit and his dog friends were ‘hired’ to round up Mark’s herd of Holstein cattle. But because of Bandit’s obsessive compulsive disorder (rolling and chasing a ball 24:7), he was ruining the work ethic of his four-legged co-workers and needed to find a new home.
I told the family I would be there. But the next day the Navis family called to say their young sons couldn’t part with Bandit. Still I had a feeling that it was only a matter of time and told them to call me if they changed their minds.

A few weeks later the phone rang and I set out to get our new dog. One problem; Bandit was totally opposed to riding in a vehicle. Donning heavy work gloves, Mark and I cajoled and coaxed him, blindfolded and muzzled him and finally got him into the travel crate. When I told Mark that Bandit was going to be an inside dog he just looked at me and laughed out loud.

Seconds after we arrived home, Bandit was on the living room floor in his new home rolling his ball to my 7-year-old son, Sam. It was love at first sight for both of them. Right away I knew that Bandit had a heart for children and was exactly what we were looking for.

In the days to follow it was clear that this dog had his priorities in life: playing ball, children and fun. At the sound of children’s laughter, Bandit’s ears would perk up and he would be eager to join in the fray; nabbing a stray fly ball, catching a Frisbee or trying to break up a pass during a basketball game.

He also made the conversion from being a farm dog to a house dog in record time. By summer, my son was grooming him as his project for the Fond du Lac County Fair. While he easily won a blue ribbon, Bandit was more interested in trying to pry off one of the tennis balls jammed onto the tent stakes of the petting zoo tent just outside of the Recreation Building.

Bandit also delighted my son’s soccer teammates when he ran out onto the playing field during a tournament to intercept a nearby soccer ball. Although Bandit’s ball obsession was endearing, my son, at times, grew tired of finding chewed up baseballs and deflated soccer and basketballs lying around the yard. However, Sam could never hold a grudge against a pet who adored the ground he walked on or let him apply colorful tattoos on his doggie legs.

This animal radiated unbridled joy and could elicit a smile from even the most jaded person. So, that’s why it’s so hard to live without him. Bandit never saw the truck that hit him as he crossed the road searching for the source of laughter emanating from the neighbor’s yard.

Trying to console my heartbroken son, I reminded him that Bandit was a gift. He was spared from dying in the tornado and granted to us for three, short years. While his career as a cattle-herding farm dog never panned out, he was a wonderful pet that brought joy and laughter to our lives.

But as I walk across the yard and find yet another one of Bandit’s balls, I find myself still grappling with the loss. Once I get past the pain I know I will remember the lessons Bandit taught us while he was alive: Life is meant to be lived joyfully and there’s always time to play.

It’s funny how your perception of a holiday changes over the years. As a child, Thanksgiving Day was just a speed bump on the race to the big one - Christmas Day. Images of dowdy pilgrims passing around plates of dried up corn bread and cups of weak tea to Indians (probably trying hard not to laugh at their guests’ ridiculous hats) didn’t fill this kid with much anticipation for the holiday.

The itinerary for the day nearly put me in a coma: watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on our black and white TV and trying to avoid the turkey gizzards and raisins in grandma’s dressing. After the last piece of pumpkin pie was devoured, the men would spill into the living room, their eyes glazed over and trouser buttons unfastened (had to make room for the pie somehow), to sit and watch hours and hours of college football while the womenfolk, including us girls, would begin on the mountain of dishes used to prepare and serve the feast.

Adding insult to injury among the young, conscripted kitchen helpers was the fact that this holiday was void of any presents that would at least reward our dishpan hands.
As an adult I see Thanksgiving through different eyes. In fact, right up there next to Easter, this fall holiday is the one I anticipate the most.

Other than Martha Stewart and every culinary womens magazine hawking the perfect turkey, Thanksgiving itself falls under the retailer’s radar screen. You won’t find any ads in the newspaper touting sexy pilgrim lingerie, turkey-shaped chocolates or Mayflower decorations for the front yard. Instead, retailers use the day to fill newspapers with ads for the huge shopping bonanza that takes place on the day after..

No thanks To me, Thanksgiving is all about the fellowship without the frills. It’s a time to put busy schedules aside and commune with one another without all the holiday hype. As long as my cheesecake comes out of the oven without a sunken middle and my mother-in-law’s legendary dressing is on the table, all is right with the world.

I remember one Thanksgiving Day when one of my young sons asked me where all of the presents were. I laughed at his crestfallen face when he realized that he had mixed up his holidays. I then realized that the best presents were right here, each family member taking their place around the table.

As we spoke the blessing together I remembered Thanksgivings from the past, when my grandparents were still alive. But as a child I was focused on escaping from the table, leaving my dinner plate filled with squash and yams far behind. And as a result I missed the stories of the past shared across the table; tales and stories of my ancestors who were truly grateful to actually have food on the table during the Depression or when grandpa lost his business or the time when an aunt forgot to turn on the oven and had to serve roast beef instead of turkey.

Today I am reluctant to leave the table. Instead I linger, listening and partaking in the conversations around the table; soaking in the sights and sounds of family, trying to imprint the images in my memory for the future. Because as I have grown older, I realize how really blessed I am to have a family, to be able to put food on our table and to have a warm place to sleep at night.

Thanksgiving is a time to step back from our hurried lives and take stock of those blessings and traditions we hold dear. And as I gather in the kitchen with female family members with a dishtowel in my hand listening to sounds of a football game in the living room, I realize this task was never a chore, but really a chance to reconnect with loved ones.

“You’re a jack of all trades and a master of nothing!” scolded our high school band director as we stumbled through a difficult passage imbedded in a medley of songs from the musical “Porgy and Bess”.

While his words stung at the time, as teenagers we figured we had plenty of time to become relatively proficient at something before retirement, so we chalked up his tirade as nothing more than a nicotine craving and moved on.

Well, here I am decades later and still wondering what I want to be when I grow up. I remember back in junior high school the show of hands as our teacher asked about our future career ambitions. Among those were kids who had already mapped out their college major while others -firmly entrenched in present – were sweating about passing 7th grade English. To them, the possibility of writing a dissertation on molecular biology one day seemed like science fiction.

It’s not that I lack direction. My problem is that I have so many directions that I’d like to explore on my career roadmap. However, my travel agent, Mr. Time & Money, has kept my itinerary relatively static. Looking back I see that my teacher’s prophecy came true – I really am a jack of all trades. There are so many things that I’m pretty good at that it makes it hard to choose just one thing and make it a career forever.

A friend of mine who used to work at a factory would often talk about the older women who worked on the light-duty assembly lines, tucking string cheese into small plastic pockets for eight hours straight, five days a week.

“If I’m still here 30 years from now doing that, take a gun and kill me – please!” she said half-jokingly.

There are plenty of people out there still collecting a paycheck from the same employer that hired them right out of high school or college. Many are still there because they have found their niche and can’t imagine doing anything else – hence the masters. And then there are those doing the same thing day after day because at that their age they believe they can’t do anything else.
“A trained monkey could do my job,” my friend lamented, “but the money’s good and I don’t have skills for anything else.”

But then a downturn in the economy comes along and you’re forced to go to Plan B whether you’re ready or not. That’s when being a jack of all trades can be a good thing. Experts predict that we’ll make 3 to 11 career changes over our lifetime. Thanks to technology changing today’s job market at the speed of light, we had better be flexible and adapt our job skills in order to stay on the payroll.

My grandmother who was born at the turn of the last century always wanted a career as a secretary. However, motherhood and becoming a widow before retirement age dictated her career plans. I’m sure she never dreamed of working in a bakery or washing dishes at the local café or sewing clown dolls for cash, but she was in survival mode and thanked her lucky stars that she could use her cache of talents for cash.

It helps to be a jack of all trades especially when job ‘burn out’ comes calling. As the stresses of a current job continue to mount, many of us find ourselves fantasizing about our dream jobs, taking all our of hidden talents and desires and morphing them into a single job that solves all our professional and creative yearnings. At those times we see ourselves landscaping the front lawn at the White House or giving Mrs. Fields a run for her money in the cookie business or knocking J.K. Rowling off the top of the Best Seller list.

But the truth of the matter is whether you’re a master or a jack of all trades, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. All it takes is patience, faith and a lot of persistence, or what my grandma would call -‘stick-to-it-ivity’.

“I wish I had an older sister that would do things with me.”

So went the rambling wistfulness of my youngest son for a nurturing sibling. The youngest of four boys, he clearly understands the bottom of the pecking order and, at times, the loneliness that goes with it.

“Yeah, but if you had an older sister she would probably torture you like your Aunt Pam used to do to your Uncle Bobby,” I told him, explaining about the time she dressed my youngest brother in a bikini and took pictures for posterity’s sake.

While raising four sons had its moments with the bickering and the occasional wrestling match over a bad call in a pickup game of baseball in the backyard, after the dust settled it was usually done and over and they resumed the inning.

However, the rules of engagement among sisters are vastly different: no holds barred verbal sparring, intricate scheming, and lengthy grudge-holding are among the weapons contained in the female arsenal.

Looking back I hate to admit all the terrible things we three sisters did to each other. Like the time I told my sister, Judy, that our rabbit had had babies. While she climbed inside the new rabbit hutch to have a closer look, I locked her in and then hid. I can still hear my dad yelling at her for being inside and the accompanying spanking she got.

Because I felt so bad afterward and afraid that she would punch me, I ate a piece of dog food as penance. Till this day I never knew why my dad didn’t question how she could have possibly locked herself inside.

Less than a year apart in age, Judy and I often teamed up against our oldest sister, Pam, making fun of her when she got her first training bra and tattling to dad that she was the one lighting candles at our home on Third Street (the two of us enjoyed watching that spanking while ensconced in the safety of the living room closet).

However, karma has a way of coming to call. The payback came a few years later when Pam ratted Judy out for lighting matches in the basement of our new home. While I wasn’t allowed to partake in the fire experimentation, I was guilty by association and shared the spanking – a trend that would continue.

As we grew and our hormones began to rage, my dad began spending more and more time down in the basement, hiding from the PMS fallout of three teenage daughters. Much to my father’s relief we graduated from high school and left home to find our way in the world.

Sitting around a table or a campfire nowadays we can laugh at the silly things we fought over (who cares now if Pam said Judy and I couldn’t like Donny Osmond because he was hers), the embarrassment we caused each other (no, Raymond the bed-wetter was not my boyfriend!) and the betrayal (was it me that really told mom and dad you two were smoking the bathroom?)

Although we’ve had our small differences as adults, we have truly become close friends, holding one another other up during the hard times and celebrating the joys and victories in each other’s lives. After all, it’s wise to remain on the good side of people who know all your childhood secrets and more.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.”
Not a quote you would expect to be uttered by Monty Python funnyman Eric Idle, but then no one is immune to the sting of verbal abuse. Let’s face it – words wound no matter how young or old we are.

Each of us – if we are honest – can recall a time when someone’s careless or angry words cut us to the core. One such memory transports me back to Eighth grade during a group exercise in Spanish class. A fellow classmate trying to be witty in front of his friends lambasts me with a barrage of cruel insults and put-downs. Hiding the hurt behind a nonchalant smile, I manage to make it through class and out the door without crying.

Although this particular classmate is dead and gone, his words still live on in my mind.
Many of us hoard these mental tapes in our heads, and in our vulnerable moments, take them out and replay those cutting words over and over again, giving them power to hurt us all over again.

The spoken word is a mighty tool. Within those combinations of vowels and consonants, we have the power to string together words that build people up or tear them down. In the Book of James in the New Testament, old James devotes an entire chapter to controlling the tongue. While the tongue is a small thing, he recognized the enormous damage it could wield, spewing out thoughtless chatter and vulgarities.

“Hey, Mephibosheth, you smell like a dirty camel!”

While it’s true that words can’t break our bones, cruel words can break a child’s spirit. Name-calling seems to be an accepted part of our culture: from the sitcoms and cartoons our kids watch on TV, to the insensitive banter they hurl back and forth at each other on the playground. Some kids may think calling each other names is no ‘big deal’ but after children have been called ‘stupid’ or ‘ugly’ enough times they begin to accept it as truth.

The confidence and self-esteem of kids targeted by callous classmates takes a direct hit. A friend of mine told me she actually dreaded going to school and would try to make her self as invisible as possible as to not draw any attention from the other kids.

By the time she got out of high school her self-esteem was dangerously low. To make matters worse, she married a man who constantly belittled her and drove her to the point of actually considering suicide.

It’s bad enough being called a ‘loser’ by your classmates, but when the verbal abuse is dished out by a trusted adult, those labels tend to stick tight.

Flashback to fourth grade math class: standing in front of the class, my clammy hands clutching a stick of chalk, my mind goes blank as I try to work the long division problem scrawled across the blackboard. In a huff my teacher – dubbed the “Ice Queen” by kids for her frosty personality – storms to the front of the room and grabs the chalk from my hands.

“Any baby can do this,” she said, punctuating her words by drawing several lines of chalk down my nose.

As I have grown older I have learned to turn down the volume of those mental tapes. I have also learned to fight back (nicely, of course) when I am verbally attacked – thanks to motherhood.

This transformation took place while working with a cantankerous co-worker at a part-time job many years ago. This man had nothing good to say about anyone and had no trouble sharing it with them, including me.

“I’m a mom, and I don’t have to take this from anyone!” I thought to myself.
After a particularly vitriolic tirade one day, I looked at him, asked if he was finished and handed him a bar a soap.

“This is from your mom,” I said, “she said to clean up your act.”

God forgive me, I am jealous of my cat!
Is it a sin to covet the life of your cat? If so, I am probably going to hell.

It's so hard Monday mornings to look at her sitting smugly on the foot of my bed, watching me as a fumble towards my closet looking for something that isn't wrinkled and matches.

As a journalist and a mom, my life is filled with deadlines: get child up and vertical, make sure he brushes teeth and has clothes on right-side out, feed him and the pets, shove child gently into car - making sure all of his homework is done and signed and then head off to school and work without getting a speeding ticket.

From there it's a matter of hitting deadlines at a frantic pace. And if breaking news rears its ugly head, kiss that timetable goodbye and plan on burning the midnight oil. (No wonder reporters keep both aspirin and antacids in their desk drawers).

After I make it across the finish line for the day it’s a race to pick up the kids, get supper on the table, do homework, and fulfill the rest of life’s obligations before falling into bed exhausted.
My cat's daily agenda is a little more sedentary: cajole the nearst human to fill up her food dish, visit the litter box then find pool of sunshine to bask in, oblivious of the crazy woman running around trying to find a lost shoe.

Sounds like the life of ultimate relaxation. With all her most basic needs met, she hasn’t a care in the world.

We humans, on the other hand, missed the memo on how to relax. From the moment our feet touch the floor we’re already organzing the minutes and hours in the day that has yet to unfold. With one eye on the clock and our ears tuned into the sensational headlines on the morning news, our stress levels begin to creep upward and we haven’t even made it out the door.

How do we as a society learn to relax when we’ve been brainwashed into believing that we need to be dialed in and connected to the world and all its woes at the touch of a button 24:7? How did we manage to survive before this age of instant information?

I often wonder what my great, great-grandfather would have thought our of insatiable need for stimulation. Being herded through the Port of New York at Ellis Island in the mid-1800s, it would be months before word of his arrival in America would find its way back to Germany. Staying connected meant a letter at Christmastime not a cellular advertising gimmick.

I used to know how to relax before I was infected with the sickness of multi-tasking. Armed with only a notebook and pen, I ventured off to find my favorite tree on a fenceline somewhere out in the back forty. Away from the TV, telephone, my siblings and the undone supper dishes, I sat alone writing, the passing of time marked only by the movement of the sun across the sky.

Granted I have more responsibilities now than when I was a girl, my need for relaxation, however, is just as great. However, as a woman, I have this problem with feeling like I have to be all things to all people at all times. The key is finding the balance somwhere between the slothful existence of my cat and being Super Woman. Now if I can just give myself permission (without the guilt) I may curl up in the hammock for a nap in the sunshine.

If the shoe fits, I must be in Oz.

For those of us women who are not blessed with dainty feet like Cinderella, shopping for shoes can be as torturous as having a root canal: you don’t have a lot of choices in the matter and the end result is usually painful.

Unlike my 15-year-old niece who is drawn to the shoe section like a moth to a flame, shoes have never really held much attraction for me. Even as a kid, my loathing for loafers or any other footwear was apparent. While my sister pondered over one pair of shoes after the other, I would grab the first pair off the shelf and be ready to flee - fashion be damned.

This aversion, however, didn’t stop me from making some laughable choices as an adolescent. In the quest for added inches, every young lady has done unspeakable things to their soles in the name of fashion. Remember platform high heels, wooden-soled clogs or earth shoes?

In a moment of temporary insanity I borrowed a friend’s pair of 3-inch wedge shoes only to look like I had raided Herman Munster’s closet. What was I thinking back then? And those heels we wore to prom? Looking back, only Tina Turner could have danced the night away in those elevated instruments of torture.

But then feamles have sacrificed comfort for style dating all the way back to ancient China where women’s feet were bound to achieve the appearance of daintiness and femininity. Today, stilettos and pointy-toe shoes are the modern day equivalent of foot binding. Some women are even considering surgery to alter the shape of their foot to fit into these foolish fashions.

Browsing through Jimmy Choo’s web site featuring swanky footwear coveted by the stars, I was flabbergasted to see pairs of 3-inch high heels selling for over $700. And these were business casual shoes. Talk about pain at a price.

Because I usually don’t have a large variety of footwear to choose from, I tend to pick functionality over high fashion, which comes in handy for my line of work. I couldn’t imagine myself with my notebook in hand, traipsing through a neighborhood that had been devastated by a tornado wearing pointed-toe heels straight from the shoe collection of the wicked witch of the west.

But that’s what broadcast journalists are wearing. These TV Barbie’s are dressed to the nines in their designer clothes and high-priced footwear. But I bet we print journalists could outrun them any day in our sensible shoes.

The Internet has opened a door of opportunity for us wide-footed women looking for comfort and a smidge of style via on-line shoe web sites. It’s so much easier browsing through hundreds of pairs of shoes in the comfort of your home than stalking from one end of the Mall to the other like one of King Arthur’s knights searching for the Holy Grail. And you know how that search turned out.

Much to my surprise, shoe shopping is deemed a social and psychological event among women. My niece and her friends think nothing of spending an hour or more trying on shoes together. And if your husband buys a power tool, bringing home three new pairs of shoes will even the score.

Shopping for shoes has become a competitive sport for some footwear fashionistas. Just like men looking forward to opening day of deer season, these shoe addicts vigilantly watch the sales flyers for the unveiling of the season’s new line of shoes. With a gleam in their eye, they jump into the car on ‘opening day’ eager to begin the hunt for a new pair of shoes.

As I watch my well-heeled friends show off their latest fashionable footwear conquest, the 26 bones and 35 joints in my feet silently thank me for my down-to-earth collection of footwear in my closet where you won’t find a single pair of ruby or glass slippers. But my feet and I are okay with that.

Roadside memorial

Throughout the afternoon and late into the night, a steady stream of vehicles traveled down our road, drawn to the accident site that had claimed the lives of three Fond du Lac teens Monday morning.

Whether they were drawn out of curiosity or the desire to pay homage, the reason for the pilgrimage was the same - the need for confirmation. As word of the triple fatality filtered through the halls of Fond du Lac High School and the community, the news was met with disbelief.

And as cars crawled by the scene, the splintered tree and makeshift memorial of flowers and pictures bearing the faces of the young victims served as painful testimonials that the worst had, indeed, happened along this rural byway.

The day before emergency workers and camera crews clogged the roadway, I had taken my young grandson for a walk. As we headed down towards the railroad tracks, we stopped by the grove of box elder trees lining the farm field near the road. High in the branches, sparrows flitted among the greenery, calling excitedly to one another.
This morning the tree is lying on its side, its branches silent and its trunk splintered from the impact of a car traveling too fast.

As the sun rose Monday morning, the spring day seemed so full of promise. No one should have to die on such a beautiful day, I told my son who had witnessed with a heavy heart, emergency workers tending to the victims at the scene.

As a mother with children of my own, my heart broke for the families whose worst nightmare had come true. Young lives, so full of promise had been cut short in an instant. And so they continue to come, to pay their last respects and to say goodbye to their friends and fellow classmates who should be sitting in class today, eagerly looking forward to the end of the school year and the lazy days of summer and beyond.

That’s a Duck with a lot of pluck!

I’ve been surfing the Internet this morning looking for a little news of the weird and this caught my attention. On a little farm near London, the owner was sexing a newly hatched group of ducklings when she turned one over and much to her surprise she counted four legs. According to Associated Press reports, had the duckling been born out in the wild, the mutation would have made it difficult for the duckling to survive. However, owner Nicky Janaway said “Stumpy” seems to be doing fine. In fact, the extra appendages seem to act like ‘stabilizers’ as the little ball of fluff runs around the farmyard. But just wait till he hits the water, those extra legs will prove valuable when racing against his siblings!

In other news, a Wyoming woman said folks should stop complaining about the goat in her minivan. With the seats removed down, there’s plenty of room for the animal. Despite protests from some residents, animal control officer Ray Buhr for the city of Sheridan said Weidt isn't violating any laws or treating the animal cruelly.
"The van is kept clean," Buhr said. "We've checked several times. There's really nothing in ordinances or state statutes that says she can't do that. The goat is entirely happy in there."
Shirley Weidt said it's "nobody's business" if she keeps her goat in a van. The goat is in the van so it won't escape, she said.
But according to an Associated Press story, Weidt’s neighbor, Beverly Saxton, said keeping the goat in the minivan is cruel.
I wonder if the van is operational or its stationary. Can you imagine being Weidt’s children, and having to share the van with a goat on the way to and from school. That would be totally embarrassing not to mention smelly! No kidding!

Drunken man parks horse in bank foyer

This news of the weird story made me smile today. According to the Associated Press, an early morning customer discovered a man sleeping in the heated foyer of a bank in the east German village of Wiesenburg early this week. Standing next to the snoozing man was his horse, Sammy, who the man had apparently taken in with him the night before.

The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had had "a few beers" with a friend in Wiesenburg, southwest of Berlin, and decided to hit the hay in the bank on his way home. Confronted with the lack of a hitching-post, he brought the 6-year-old horse in with him. The startled customer contacted police around 4 a.m. who entered the lobby and asked the man (and horse) to leave.

No charges were filed, but there might be some cleanup needed: Apparently Sammy made his own after-hours deposit on the carpet.

Duck Pond on the Virginia Tech campus in Springtime

In pictures the grass was Kelly green and spring flowers were in bloom. Historic buildings were bathed in the spring sunshine. What seemed horribly incongruent in all this were the images of police carrying out bloodied students from Norris Hall at Virginia Tech University Monday morning. Thirty-two are dead after a lone gunman entered a dorm and several classrooms, shooting over 50 people.

All we can glean from eyewitness accounts, make that terrified eyewitnesses, is that a young Asian man in his 20s entered the classrooms and without a word began firing off shot after shot, killing the sons and daughters, husbands and wives of families all over the United States. And for what? Payback? A relationship that went sour? Mental illness? Will we ever know?

All I know is that violence seems to be an epidemic in this world. Everyone has a reason to lash out and harm others. Power. Money. Hate. Anger. And the list goes on. The solution? As simplistic as it seems, the Golden Rule seems to offer the most sense. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. This rings true for the sane among us, but for folks like David Koresh, Adolph Hitler, Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iranian president) or Joseph Stalin, their twisted reality is painted with a different brush stroke.

My son, who is a senior at UW Madison is understandably depressed about the news from Blacksburg, Virginia. Virginia Tech has over 100 buildings on its 2,600-acre campus where 25,000 students are educated each year. Nestled along the shores of Lake Mendota, UW Madison is sprawled out over 933 acres and has over 220 buildings that are filled each day by the 41,466 students enrolled in its programs. That’s a lot of students on the 159-year-old campus at any given time. And for a madman with a gun, that’s a lot of vulnerable people.

So I can understand why he’s not up about his upcoming birthday this week. Take a look at these dates: April 19, 1995; April 20, 1999; and April 19, 1993. These are the dates of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine High School massacre and the end of the Davidian Branch cult stand-off in Waco, Texas, that claimed the lives of 4 police officers and 90 men, women and children inside the compound. I assured him that his birth was a red-letter day that week in the history of the world. I hope he believes me like he used to when he was little. When I told him that most people were inherently good, not evil. Now I’m not so sure.

Freak Chickens Lay Eggs Loaded with Drugs

But hey, it's not a bad thing. Read on.....Genetically modified hens can produce drugs in the whites of their eggs, scientists reported today. The technology "signifies an important advance in the use of farm animals for pharmaceutical production," the scientists said in a statement.

Traditional methods for producing therapeutic proteins such as antibodies used to treat cancer and arthritis are expensive. Farm animals could produce them faster and cheaper, the thinking goes, according to the Health SciTech web site.

Researchers led by Helen Sang of the Roslin BioCentre in Edinburgh, Scotland created transgenic hens by inserting the genes for desired pharmaceutical proteins into the hen’s gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up 54 percent of egg whites.

All the egg whites from these hens contained miR24, an antibody with potential for treating malignant melanoma. The whites also packed human interferon b-1a, an antiviral drug.

"With the demand for therapeutic protein drugs increasing, the efficient generation of transgenic hens that produce functional protein drugs at high levels in egg whites marks an important step in the development of this technology," according to a statement released by the Proceedings of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, which published the research in its online edition.

Too bad scientists can't figure out how to protect the chickens (as well as us humans) from Avian Flu.

Welcome Spring???

I am so mad at Mother Nature that I could scream. Just when my tender tulips and crocuses were peaking up out of the ground, the mercury in the thermometer heads south! Yes, I know, I live in WIsconsin and this is the type of thing I should be used to by now. But it's hard to reconcile yourself to the fact when the purple blossoms of your crocus are frozen like a grape popsicle and the leaves of your prized tulips are lying limp on their sides.

NEvertheless, my ever optimistic husband the farmer tells me to have faith, that the sun will shine and the plants will pop back up. (This is the guy who mutters at the weather man for too much of this or too little of that for his crops). We'll see what Mother Natures dishes out tomorrow.

Raccoons I Have Loathed

Like Elly May Clampett, I like critters, otherwise I wouldn't have allowed my sons to bring salamanders, hamsters, hermit crabs, rabbits, dogs, cats, lambs, fish, iguanas, hedge hogs, snakes, and butterflies into the house. However, it's the uninvited critters that I have a problem with. Up until a few years ago, I thought of raccoons as cute, curious creatures that ran along streams and slept in hollow trees.

And in some cases, the little bandits also make interesting pets. One spring a windstorm knocked down a large cottonwood tree in the front yard of the farm and my mother-in-law became the surrogate mother of two raccoons, Roly and Poly. They even sat on her lap and drank from baby bottles. Another raccoon turned up in her care years later when it fell through a trap door in the barn. Rascal also became a fixture in the farmhouse. Now remember, these creatures were guests. Not like the female raccoon who invited herself into our home about five years ago.

This raccoon would sneak into our old farmhouse through a variety of ways. If the kids left the basement door open, this critter would come up the stairs and help herself to the dog's food. One night I was awakened by the sounds of something fooling around with my water glass on the night stand beside my bed. Sitting up suddenly in bed, I saw a shadowy creature run across the bedroom floor and scurry off towards the attic door. The raccoon had gained entry into my bedroom through a broken cupola window. What nerve!

This same raccoon had taken up residence in the attic of our neighbor's garage where she had a litter of four little raccoons. For some reason, my house became her grocery store. We tried everything to catch her or prevent her from getting in: a humane cage with marshmallows and even fish to attract her (no go); locking the doors (she slipped in through the gaps between the gutters and attic of our 140-year-old home. One day while making lunch I heard an odd sound up above me head; the raccoon had gotten into the false ceiling in the kitchen and was scrambling around over my head. Taking a broom, I pounded on the tiled ceiling in attempt to scare her out. I think I achieved my objective of scaring her as a thin stream of urine began trickling through the ceiling! Needless-to-say, I was livid (and wet)!

After the neighbor had successfully rousted the raccoon's brood out of his garage, the strong-minded animal snuck across the street and ensconced herself in the garage of another neighbor. This residential-loving animal was making enemies left and right in our little rural neighborhood. In fact, we had an all points bulletin out on this animal: if you see her on the road, speed up and aim true.

And again, I do love animals, but there should be a line drawn between then and our living accommodations. I am not willing to share my home with a foraging and urinating raccoon. Anyway, the problem was taken care of by the end of the summer when someone speeding down our road happened to strike the raccoon as she was making her way back to the neighbor's garage - probably after robbing the dog dish again!

Just Passing Through? Hmmmmmmmm.

Just the other morning as I was watching TV, trying to catch all the NCAA scores from last night's game, I happened to catch a glance out my window of a motley bunch strolling across my front lawn. There walking in a straight line, was a flock of turkeys - a dozen in all - taking their sweet time skirting around the swing set and trampoline.

While I'm almost positive this is the same bunch that inhabits the Ledge nearby and makes an occasional appearance or two on the railroad tracks, I have to wonder if they have connections to the other gang of turkeys that live in the Ledge near Breakneck Road south of Oakfield.

I've never had problems with the local turkeys, except that they enjoy the corn out of our fields at our expense. At least they've never dropped an A-Bomb on my windshield while taking flight like the dumb Oakfield birds do. However, this local group seemed to be casing our yard, casting furtive glances towards my car and the house.

I wonder about this since I happened to scare the daylights out of one of the Oakfield turkeys on Breakneck Road last week. As I was entering the hairpin turn at the top of the Ledge, I was just as surprised as the turkey to meet this feathered critter on the roadway. This errant bird had three options: take a right and fly into the stone-face of the Niagara Escarpment, outrun the car or take its chances in flying into the trees on the left. So what did the bird do? While looking over its shoulder at me and my car, the crazy bird kept RUNNING down the road.

I'm not a monster that I would try to run down a wild animal (although I admit wondering if my horn would scare the tar out of him). I stepped on the brakes and wondered how long this little race would go on. Eventually he gathered up enough speed and flew through the trees.

So now I'm wondering if the word among the turkey clans has spread and I am on the Turkey Terrorist suspect list. Just the other day my son wondered aloud about the large amount of bird doo-doo on my car. "Wow, that must have been a huge bird to have made this mess!" he exclaimed. Yeah, maybe even a turkey out to make a hit.

But Wait....there's hope!


Remember how I lamented that my illusion of healthful eating at the local Chinese eatery was dashed with the statistics contained in the newly released report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest? Well, Victor Huang of Fremont, Calif., responded online to the Associated Press story. The brouhaha that Chinese food was akin to eating fat-filled American food was overblown and misleading, Huang said. And this is what he had to say.

“Hey, no one in their right mind is going to have a whole dish of General Tso’s chicken or have nothing else to eat with it. To coin Clinton, it is the steamed rice, STUPID! – which is salt-free and fatless. You are supposed to do it the Chinese way: take the dish with lots of steamed rice. Without it, the dish will seem saltier and fattier.

If you redo your arithmetic, that is a balanced meal. The report has to be balanced and intelligent. I have seen a billion more healthy and fit Chinese than the advocacy report seemed to stupidly suggest.

Now that common sense has weighed in, those folks who spoon up as much rice as the other items on the Chinese buffet, you are seemingly in no danger. However, you folks who pick the meat out of the dishes leaving behind the broccoli, bamboo shoots and 50-cent sized mushrooms for the rest of us, you need to apply a little balance. Or don't blame us if your socks won't fit over your swollen ankles!