Silver and Grace

Silver, it is a word that conjures up some different meanings.  It is both a color and a precious metal (#47 in the periodic table, with the symbol AG).  But, it also is used to refer to the elderly.  One web site denotes certain positive and negative words associated with the word silver.  Positive words, among those noted in that web site, are: illumination, wisdom, high-tech, and modern.  Some of the negative terms associated with the word silver in the same web site are: melancholy, lonely, lifeless, and deceptive.  A deceptive illumination is an apparent contradiction in terms.   The millennial generation likely thinks that silver-haired persons are not likely to be very high tech.  After all, we count on that generation to help us with our tech issues.  In relation to precious metals, silver is bought and sold daily on commodity exchanges, but plays second fiddle to gold.  Silver is also the color to represent a 25th wedding anniversary, perhaps appropriate since my mustache has turned silver from brown. On the other hand, grace is less well-defined and determinable.  It is more a state bestowed, or reached, than something you simply purchase.

Three roses, one for the two of us and one each for our two sons

While silver is used in manufacturing and other processes, it is also used a great deal in jewelry, it is mainly purchased in jewelry.  Jewelry is one method of self expression, and can be used as a sign of social status.  When a person declares their love for another, a piece of jewelry is often given to the lady, in our culture a diamond ring.  Diamonds, as the sales pitch goes, are a girl's best friend.  Diamonds and silver have demand driven in large part by culture.  It is cultural demand that drives jewelry.  Grace does not require silver, but it probably requires love.  Love does not need silver, nor does it need a diamond.  Love comes from your heart and just as importantly your soul.  Grace is bestowed by a loving and merciful God.    

A nasturtium amid the detritus of fall

As my spouse and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary today, the color silver will enter my mind, but only as the mark for such an event. My thoughts for part of the day will of course focus on our past twenty five years together, and what our future holds. Then my thinking will get to the real important stuff—like the upcoming Packer game against the Denver Broncos. Will the Packer offense get back on track against a tough Denver defense? Will their porous pass defense be ripped apart by an aging Peyton Manning? The thing is, my wife would not be surprised if my thinking moved to that direction.

Silver--better than jewelry?

We set a course for our lives only to see life has a way of altering our intended direction. This happened to me when I met a petite red-headed young women. When I asked her out, it was  really to get her friend, who I had met during the meeting of a local civic organization, off my back. A week or two after her friend gave me her number the friend called me wondering why I had not yet called the young lady.  I called the number because I figured it was only evening.  The course of my life changed after meeting that red head. Varied events have occurred that have affected our life as a married couple over the past 25 years. There have been illuminating moments and moments of wisdom. There have been times of melancholy and loneliness. There have been adjustments to the changing world. In a way our silver anniversary is somewhat tied to the descriptive words that web site laid out for the color silver. We have had ups and downs.  Although I hope are trajectory is mostly up. High points include the birth of our two sons.  You see and relish their accomplishments, more than you do your own. As parents you also feel their sorrows, more than you do your own. The past 25 years has seen losses, and just two examples: each of us lost our father, each lost a brother at an age too young. We have seen joys and challenges perhaps not uncommon to those faced by other couples, but there were others more unique to our set of circumstances. As I suggested in an earlier post, you know joy from experiencing sorrow.  Perhaps that is one nature of grace.  What is unique is the way our individual and collective nature has been formed by the joys and challenges that have been presented to us during the course of the past 25 years.  Marriage, like life, is a compilation of what Pope Francis terms that wonderfully complicated experience.

Canned tomato sauce

Life is complicated, We are separate individuals, each with our own DNA, each with our own views, each with our own idiosyncrasies, and each with our own mannerisms. There may be little things that annoy the other, but also little things that form pleasant memories. I am the recipient of her scowls, but also her cute little Mom-bear smile. Together we form the T-team. We make a good pair doing yard work, and freezing or canning produce. We make less of a good pair during Packer games. For some reason she does not think Mike McCarthy can hear me when I, in a firm voice, talk to the TV. She takes more than her share of the household duties. I appreciate her panoply of meals that she makes and realize that her Pinteresting benefits my taste buds at the same time it plays havoc on my waistline. When the boys were young she was the one to see them off to school. She was the one that had to put with the fire-drills. but, she was also there for some treasured moments.  It is some of the trying times that we look back with some laughter, and if not laughter than a sense of wisdom gained. Times of testing teach you more than times of bliss.

Our Wedding! October 27, 1990

Those words describing silver are a metaphor for marriage. From our perseverance we gain strength. We are together. Each marriage is unique; it is formed by the two involved; it joins individual and shared experiences each had prior to and within the marriage. Our gold wedding bands, another cultural trait, symbolize the commitment of one to the other. We study history because our past informs our present and our future  Similarly, a marriage is informed the past and present of the two involved.  Marriage is more than love, it is also about service. It is about putting the needs of another before your own.  Every now and then you come across words in a book, or movie that speak to you. This was the case last Thursday as my wife and I watched the movie “The Painted Veil.” In the movie the mother superior from a French religious order tells a young woman who has been assisting at the orphanage and convent, and where her husband had tended to a cholera epidemic before he succumb to that disease, the following: “But when love and duty are one, then grace is in you.” For 25 years that red-headed lady and I have grown together.  I see the workings of grace in some of her actions and in her smile.  On our silver anniversary, love is important, service is important, but it is those grace-filled moments we find together that is the real strength and blessing.  And so our journey continues as we pass by our silver anniversary and head to the next.

Clean and Dirty

Imagine that you are sitting in Camp Randall stadium, home of the Wisconsin Badger football team, when all of a sudden a gray-colored, smelly water-type substance, with brown hunks floating around starts to be pumped into the stadium. You find yourself running up the stairs to get above the rising level. Somewhere above the halfway point, the pumping ends, and you look below. What you see is the consequence of human action in the wastewater stream. The Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) treats, on average, 40 million gallons of wastewater a day at its Nine Springs Treatment Plant. That amount would fill over one-half of Camp Randall Stadium. Forty million gallons seems like an awful lot of waste water, but this comparison also shows the massive size of Camp Randall. MMSD serves over 340,000 persons and its territory covers about 180 square miles. It runs from Morrisonville near the north boundary of Dane County with Columbia County, south to Verona. We all depend on water and much of the developed world depends on sewage treatment plants to treat wastewater. Clean water is crucial to ourselves, and our way of life. But, as everyone knows from grade school science, all the water on the earth is already here. It recycles itself through the miracle of nature.

MMSD Service Territory
Source:  MMSD

Where ever you are in Dane County, you receive your water from the ground. Groundwater moves slowly. One example illustrates this point. The municipal wells in Fitchburg, WI go deep into what is known as the Mount Simon formation. This thick limestone layer sits right below a shale layer known as the Eau Claire acquitard. Above the Eau Claire layer is the upper aquifer, mainly a sandstone formation. While the shale layer is thought to allow some water penetration, testing of a municipal well shows that the groundwater withdrawn is older than 1950. We know this because the water, at that sampling location anyway, lacks tritium which is a radioactive isotope that is found in the shallow groundwater layer. Tritium resulted due to nuclear testing of the 1950’s and shows that the shallow groundwater is recharged by post 1950 rainwater. One hopes that the Mount Simon has good recharge, but that post-1950 groundwater has yet to reach that municipal well.

Cross-section of Dane County geology
Source:  M Gotkowitz, WI Geologic & Natural History Survey

We tend to treat water as a never ending commodity. One would think that the drought in California and some other western states would end that conception. Even in the Midwest, with our abundant Great Lakes, we take water for granted. What we need to realize is that of all the water on the earth, only about 1% is thought to be available for human use. And of course, wastewater is the back-end of human use and consumption. It results as part of the natural biological process of the human body. Everybody poops, even the Queen of England.  In many societies early treatment of wastewater was, well, limited. Prior to indoor plumbing it was not uncommon to see waste dumped directly into the street. Disease would run rampant through populations. It was one of the first great challenges of the construction of a modern society—the handling of wastewater. Let’s take one example. In 1887 Madison, WI was home to 18 sanitary districts supporting a total population of about 12,000 persons. The districts collected wastewater and piped it—to the lakes! Concern over the use of the lakes as a sanitary settling pond and for recreation raised concerns and the first treatment plant was constructed, using a chemical process. This, process, however, would be abandoned in just a few years and a septic tank with trickling filters would be put in place at what was known as the Burke plant. This would be the first use of a trickling filter in the United States. Growth in the city of Madison would prompt the construction of the Nine Springs Treatment Plant, which opened in 1928. In 1930, MMSD was formed in order to best address wastewater treatment on more of a regional basis. We trust that our water is clean when we use it, but after it is used, it is dirty.

Nine Springs Treatment Plant Construction, late 1920's
Source:  MMSD

People tend to dump whole sorts of objects down the sanitary sewer, and they cause problems. Some of these objects cause problems with the districts 18 pumps stations where they clog the pumps. On average, every week sees a pump needing be lifted out for cleaning and removal of objects that affect the pump. Most pump stations have at least two pumps, and some more than four. First, there is no such thing as flushable wipes. Just because toilet paper can be handled at a treatment plant does not mean baby wipes or other paper objects can be handled in that same manner. Second, floss also gets trapped and causes problems. A shelf in the operations room is full of quaint objects that made there way to the treatment plant—mainly toys. Yes, those objects have been properly cleaned. But, sewage treatment is challenged by other modern day occurrences.

Madison water use
Source:  M Gotkowitz

Our modern way of life affects our water quality. For example, salt use in softeners and as deicing agents have led to high levels of salt, primarily in the streams and lakes. Politicians like to put solutions on to point-source pollution control agencies, like a sewage treatment plant, because it is easier and you are not dealing with a host of private individuals. Chlorides in water is just one example. MMSD receives flow not only from homes, but also through inflow and infiltration. Storm water can make its way into the system and with it, particularly in springs rains so do chlorides. MMSD may treat about 40 mgd on a typical day, but it large rain events it has to be capable of handling over twice that amount. Phosphorus is also an issue. While most phosphorus is a result of agricultural practices (P has been banned in detergents for quite some time), treatment plants have to remove ever increasing amounts in an attempt to make up for poor agricultural practices. The easy methods have already been accomplished to remove about 95% of P, but a coming requirement to remove another 3 to 3.5% will place high costs on the rate payers, particularly if a treatment option has to be chosen. There are also other aspects. Anti-microbial clothing, for example, releases mall specks of sliver when laundered. There is also the use of pharmaceuticals which, when passed through the body, still contain hormones and other parts of drugs that end up in our waterways. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and just because it goes down the drain does not mean there are not consequences involved in having to handle the mess.

MMSD Treatment Plant
Source:  MMSD

Today, the Nine Springs Treatment Plant at MMSD is one of the most advanced in the world. It would cost over one billion dollars to replace. Its leadership and staff are required to look out at least fifty years in an era where most thinking is based on a few months. The treatment plant is one of a handful of plants in the nation to take most of its phosphorous and turn it into pellets for use in agricultural fertilizers. It was the first in the nation to use UV rays to disinfect the effluent. It is looking at partnerships with farmers to reduce more phosphorus, not unlike past work with dentists to separate mercury from the wastewater at the clinic. It is also looking to partner with high chloride users to reduce chloride loading. It realizes that not all solutions can be brick and mortar, but rather individual action can make a difference. Even today it still continues to study new ways of advancing treatment plant technology, often in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin.

MMSD connection to Gulf of Mexico
Source:  MMSD

As you brush your teeth, wash the dishes, or even sit in Camp Randall, think of the other end of the pipes, and the amount of water used, and how perhaps our individual actions can make a difference. Of course, your visit to Camp Randall may never be the same. Through its work with dentists, and its upcoming work with rural landowners, MMSD knows that individual choices can make a difference. It is up to the individual to take action to conserve our water and other valued resources. Progress has been made in regard to water conservation, but it is more than water conservation, it is having a calibrated water softener, it is being judicious with your use of chlorides on your driveway or sidewalk in the winter. As the MMSD executive director has noted, it takes 40 days for water to go from a tap in Dane County to the Gulf of Mexico. Our individual implications have global consequences.  Clean water is vital to our health, let's just try to keep as much as we can clean.

Playing Peoria

Playing Peoria is a phase often used, perhaps now in the past, about taking the temperature on a product or idea.  I guess Peoria is (was) considered to be a microcosm of the nation's middle class.  On this date, in 1854, playing Peoria meant something completely different than the colloquialism of  today (or recent past).  One hundred and sixty-one years ago Abraham Lincoln made a speech denouncing slavery and the Kansas-Nebraska Act which had been approved by congress about five months earlier.  As one writer has noted, Lincoln was an "obscure lawyer and congressional hopeful."  However, Lincoln actually won election to the Illinois House of Representatives on Nov. 7, 1854.  Three days later he would declare his candidacy for the US Senate seat from Illinois.  He would lose the senate election to Lyman Trumbell, but his Peoria speech would enunciate his principle of opposition to slavery.   This speech would be the foundation for of later speeches, including some of those in the Lincoln Douglas debates of 1858.

Stephen Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in which he argued for popular sovereignty.  That is, he wished to allow the settlers for each territory to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery.  The act would overturn the Missouri Compromise which had previously set forth a latitude as the dividing line between free and slave-holding states.  He also commented on a little recognized issue that much of the Northwest Territories were, at one time, under the control of a slave holding state, that being Virginia.  However, he would note, at the time of creation the Northwest territories were legislated as being free.  In this ground-breaking speech Lincoln would presage the the several years of violence that would follow the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Lincoln said: "And in this aspect, it could not but produce agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature---opposition to it, is [in?] his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow."   The violence resulting from the Kansas-Nebraska act was sufficiently gruesome and ugly for historians to tag the line from a newspaper to forever memorialize and etch this inhumanity--Bleeding Kansas. But yet, this speech did more than simply set forth Lincoln's opposition to slavery.  It also set forth the basic principles upon which he would rely throughout his career.  In this same Peoria speech Lincoln, going back to the Declaration of Independence, would say:

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle---the sheet anchor of American republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."

This quote is a longer version of what he had to say in what is now likely regarded as his most famous speech--"The Gettysburg Address." In that famous speech he said: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  Lincoln would depend upon a document claiming that all men were created equal that was written by a Virginian who himself was a slave holder.  Lincoln would alter, overtime, his views to a certain degree.  For example, even though against slavery, at one time he supported the creation of a separate colony, or transport of the African-American population of the time to a resettlement area.  It is often difficult for us in the twenty-first century to recognize the era in history of which events occurred and the different view of the world in play at that time.  

What we need to recognize is that events today, in our enlightened world, challenge the ideals of of the era in which we live.  Just two days ago, for example, it was reported that a major sex-trafficking raid across the nation rescued 149 children.  Interesting is that Wisconsin had the third highest number of children rescued, which was nine.  As bad as that is, keep in mind that 57  adults in Wisconsin were rescued.  Eleven traffickers were arrested.  There is also the horror of what the Islamic State and other religious fundamentalists are doing through out the Mid-East. Maybe we should not be so smug in our views of prior generations.

As I complete this blog post, I think back two years and four months.  It was on June 16, 2013 when I made my first "blog" post, recounting, on the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg the importance of a regiment from Minnesota played during that crucial battle.   That post was actually accomplished as a Facebook status.  My musings on Facebook turned into a regular event, so son suggested that using a blog format would be better than Facebook, so, in November 2013, I began the formal blog. The events of Peoria and Gettysburg were nine years and a bloody civil war apart.  The blood of Bleeding Kansas would be mild compared to the blood of the Civil War.  The Civil War would become one of the defining events of the nation.  Yet, the events leading to war were formed well before, and would affect the nation long after.  Lincoln's speech in Peoria is seemingly lost to history on an American public more interested in a tweet than our collective history. While this speech set forth and would form the foundation of Lincoln's views on slavery,  it is well down the line in speeches recognized as important.  We recognize the Gettysburg Address; we recognize his House Divided speech; Some may even recall his Cooper Union speech.  Yet, in plain Peoria Lincoln would give the speech that was critical in setting forth his basic principles and would provide the basis for much of what he would say later in life.  To this we owe a debt of gratitude, and a need to acknowledge the importance of Lincoln's playing in Peoria.  While his Peoria speech is, comparatively, lost to history, what really matters is the ideals expressed on that fall day.  It is to Lincoln's continued expression of those ideals, perhaps, to which the most gratitude is owed.    

Images from Google Images

Beets Me

This past Sunday I decided to make a beet chocolate cake.  My spouse had come across the recipe, but never had the opportunity to bake this particular cake.  We had beets available from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share. With my spouse's assistance we cooked and then pureed three beets to get at least the one and one-half cups required for the recipe.  While our CSA provided us with red beets, I did grow a few golden beets in our garden.  My garden beets were rather small, about the size of a golf ball, and were considerably smaller than the red beets provided by the CSA.

Beet Chocolate Cake, made Oct. 4 (photo by author)

Some people, like one of my older siblings, likes to eat beets.  But me?  Not so much. They are good for you as they contain a great deal of fiber and vitamin C.  To the weight conscious, they are also fat free and low in calories.  So, you can get your fiber with few calories and no fat.  What a way to keep the plumbing in your body in good shape.  Beet tops can also be eaten,and they too contain good amounts of fiber and C, but also contain vitamin A.  Table beets also contain more sugar than any other vegetable, and that includes sweet corn and carrots.  Growing up my parents would eat beets; in particular I recall my Dad eating them.  Back then they were mostly boiled, or perhaps steamed.  You can, however, eat them raw or cooked.  Today you see beet top greens with their red stems turning up in pre-made salad mixes.  Of course, pre-made or pre-mixed salads are an invention of the late 20th century. Another convenience for the modern consumer too busy to take time to make a salad.  Since you can eat the beet raw, you could consider shredding some on your salad with the beet tops, arugula, lettuce, spinach and what ever other greens one chooses to eat.

One interesting fact, that I read on a California agricultural web site is that nationwide only about 10,000 acres of beets are grown in the United States.  In California, beets are mainly grown for their greens--used in those pre-made salads.  Beet greens last more than a week, which is necessary for the pre-made salads.  But, here is the kicker, that article also stated that about half of all table beets are grown in one state, which is Wisconsin.  I never would have guessed that Wisconsin would produce so much of this one crop.  Beets, both table and sugar, do well in our climate.  Sugar beets are, obviously, related to table beets, but get large, like a foot long and can weigh up to five pounds. Perhaps it is more than climate that made Wisconsin a grower of beets, but also ethnic heritage.

Sugar Beets

A common crop grown in Bohemia and the Czech Republic in the 19th century were beets.  They were not grown simply to be eaten, but for the production of sugar. Wisconsin's climate and geography reminded Czech immigrants to the United States of their native land and so Wisconsin became home to a good number of Czech immigrants.  It was not that long ago that transportation was not only time consuming, but was also expensive. The most cost effective method of transportation for many goods is by ship, and inland countries like Bohemia would probably find it more cost effective to grow beets and produce their own sugar.  The first factory to produce sugar from beets was established in 1801 in a region sometimes regarded as part of Bohemia--Lower Silesia. Beets are thought to have been part of "push" factor for Bohemian immigrants to the United States.  Small farms were being gobbled by larger operations to grow beets for sugar. Like much of the this part of Europe, this area was subjected to various rulers over time--including Poland, Germany and Hapsburg Austria.

Former Sugar Factory as seen today

An old, once elegant building in Madison behind Olbrich Gardens was first used to produce sugar from beets. Today we know the building as the old Garver Feed Mill, but it was first owned and operated by the US Sugar Company.  Sugar--a dentist full employment act.  Today, sugar beets produce about one-third of the world's supply of sugar.  This makes sense, as most every culture uses sugar, and not all are sufficiently fortunate to import sugar made from sugar cane.

Beet to Sugar Factory in Madison, was known as the "Sugar Castle"

Table beets generally are a deep red, and in fact this natural color is sometimes used to make lemonade pink, and is even used to add a fuller red color to tomato sauces. I should probably become a bigger fan of beets. But for now, I will continue to enjoy my beet cake.  I found that I can make the cake even better by slathering one of my favorite foods on top of a piece of that cake--peanut butter,  Now, I ask, what other writer would tie in beets, Bohemian immigration, a historic building in Madison, WI and a cake in one blog post?

Unless otherwise noted, all images from Google images