HOME + AWAY

Hey Kids,

I got back from the Madison Print and Resist Festival last weekend, so that means only one more show of the year -- MKE Zine Fest Nov. 9.  John P. loves tabling, but he's getting old and tired, and he's chomping at the bit to find out whether he still knows how to make comics, so he's looking forward to a nice, long winter of STAYING PUT AND DRAWING.

Good ol' Spit and a Half table

Print and Resist was so good that afterwards I had that kind of shaky, is this real? kind of pure joy that makes me feel inevitably like when's it all going to come crashing down-- but I'll take what I can get.

I love the Midwest, I love zines, I love weirdos, so I loved Print and Resist.  It was held in the Helen C. White Library at UW-- I mean literally in the library -- my table faced the New Magazine Releases ( I read a great Discover article about OCD during down times).  Picked up some nice books and zines, a cool anti-Walker poster, talked to a lot of swell people and got a workout dragging my 100+ pounds of books eight blocks from the closest parking I could find (apparently, overnight, the library had become besieged by construction).  My arms and shoulders still hurt!   And I can feel muscles in my thighs I didn't know I had! But I sold lots of Kool Komix to awesome people, so that's why I was born.

Visit Art Is Dead Productions 

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(Look for King-Cat 74 to go to press next week, if I can shake this depression...)

THE HOUSE I LIVE IN

Even the American flag is depressed.

On Tuesday, June 5th, Election Day in Wisconsin, I stood on the Portland Avenue bridge in Beloit, with the swallows, ducks, and one Great Blue Heron, and held up a sign imploring citizens to Vote for Tom Barrett, the Democratic opponent to Governor Scott Walker, who was up for recall.

Why did I do this?  Because I believe liars should be ashamed of themselves.  Because I believe women, gay people, and minorities should have the same rights as me.  Because I believe that voter-suppression is Unamerican.  Because I believe the environment should be protected.  Because I believe religious hypocrisy is repulsive.  And because I believe Greed is a poison, and we could all do with less poison in our lives.

So I did it because I wanted to speak up in some small way about what America means to me.  To me it means tolerance, and respect, and working together with all kinds of different people for a greater good.  I guess maybe that's naive in this day and age, but that's what I believe.

Most people who noticed me honked their horns in approval, or waved, or gave the thumb's up.  Some Walker supporters shouted at me, flipped me off, or gave me the thumb's down.  Many just silently shook their heads at me, or mouthed the words "No."  I tried to not take it personally.  I reminded myself that if people had the right to voice their approval, others had the right to disagree.

At one point in the run-up to the election, it occurred to me that, truth be said, it might really only do little lasting good if Barrett won.  After all, he would still have about 50% of the electorate who despised him simply because he was a Democrat.  And the state, and our country, would still be bitterly divided, with no real solution in sight.  Standing there that day I realized that it's not only necessary to stand up and fight back against the Republicans and their Corporate Overlords, but to reach out to my neighbors as well.  To try to bridge this destructive gap the GOP has so ably aggravated and exploited.  But how do you do that?

When I was canvassing for the Democrats I talked to one woman who basically said she'd worked twenty-five years at a hard job, paying $250 a month for insurance all that time, and saving for retirement, until her  401K was obliterated in the economic collapse.  She told me she took sweet delight in public sector union members losing their collective bargaining rights.  She wanted people who had better benefits, and a pension, to feel what it was like to suffer-- like she had suffered herself.

Divide and conquer.

How do you fight back against unlimited corporate greed?  Unlimited wealth that pays for lies and deception to ring in people's heads every time they turn around?  We're in a new world now, in America, and I just don't know where it's going to end up.  What do these people ultimately want from us?  A return to feudalism?  When will enough be enough for them?

I want to be hopeful for the American Experiment.  But I also know that all good things must come to an end.

APRIL WEED AND WILDFLOWER INVENTORY

This year in the Stateline Area we had our April in March and our March in April.  So maybe the flowers were confused.  I know I was.  Here's a brief, incomplete list of sightings, including a couple noted on a walk in Ohio, while on tour.  Carry on!

Wild Geranium  (Geranium maculatum)
Garlic Mustard  (Alliaria petiolata)
Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia sororia)
Yellow Rocket  (Barbarea vulgaris arcuata)
Marsh Marigold  (Caltha palustris)
Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum commutatum)
Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)
Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)
Trillium (Wake Robin) (Trillium recurvatum)
Shepherd's-purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)

Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata)

Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum)

False Rue Anenome (Enemion biternatum)

Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

Cutleaf Toothwort  (Dentaria laciniata)

Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense reflexum)

Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria)

White Trout Lily (Erythronium albidum)

Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)

Sighted at Beckman Mill and Big Hill Parks, Beloit, Wis.; and Highbanks Metro Park, Lewis Center, Ohio.

JULY WEED AND WILDFLOWER INVENTORY, Part Two

Beckman Mill Pond, Beloit, WI

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Ha, so you thought one overlong blogpost of flower pictures was too much?  GUESS AGAIN!

Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia corollata)

Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis)

Queen Anne's Lace, about to blossom

Question Mark butterfly drinking along the shore of the Rock River.

Wild Petunia (Ruellia humilis)

Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)

Unidentified spider on Leadplant (Amorpha canescens)

False Sunflower? (Heliopsis helianthoides)

Wild Garlic?

[Nope!  It's Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)]

Gray-headed Coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)

Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

Honeybee havin' a good time on a Sunflower (Helianthus annuus).

Whoa.  Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum)

Unknown Sage-like plant.

[Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis)]

I said I would learn my thistles, but I have yet to do it.

The rare white-flowered Chicory (Cichorium intybus).

The even rarer pink Chicory!

Colored Sands Prairie, Durand, IL

On a sand bluff, overlooking the Sugar River, Illinois.

Meadow Salsify (Tragopogon pratensis)

Flowering Spurge (Euphorbia corollata)

Unidentified species with spider.

Leadplant (Amorpha canescens)

Unidentified species.

[Cleland's Evening Primrose (Oenothera clelandii)]

Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata)

See above regarding thistles, but this one's a beauty, eh?

[Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa)]

Hoary Vervain (Verbena stricta)

Pale Indian Plantain (Arnoglossum atriplicifolium)

Turns out this is a very rare species!  And it was just standing there a few feet from the parking lot!

Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium)

White Wild Indigo (Baptista alba)

Baptista alba leaves.

Good night everybody...

"Sometimes I sits and thinks...  and sometimes I just sits."

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All photos by Stephanie Dorman, taken at Big Hill Park, Beloit, WI; Beckman Mill County Park, Beloit, WI; Macktown Forest Preserve, Rockton, IL; Colored Sands Forest Preserve, Durand, IL; Sugar River Alder Forest Preserve, Shirland, IL; or Harper's Prairie, Beloit, WI.