Monthly Archives: April 2009

In the neighborhood…

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The Story Hill Neighborhood Association’s quarterly meeting will be held at 7 p.m. tomorrow (that’s Wednesday, for the calendar deficient) at the Wisconsin Humane Society, 4500 W. Wisconsin Ave.

Topic 1, and it ought to be a good one, is the sidewalk replacement program that is costing everyone south of W. Bluemound Rd. a small bundle (that we can pay installments). Yes, we will have really nice sidewalks and assessments to go with them while neighborhood streets will remain in a generally deplorable condition to form an eye-pleasing counterpoint. Rumor has it that the potholes will be designated as wading and swimming areas for the neighborhood block party this year.

I digress. Also on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting: State Rep. David Cullen (D-Milwaukee) and State Sen. Jim Sullivan (D-Wauwatosa) will stop by to discuss all things related to Wisconsin. Come and ask questions!

Just crazy

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Milwaukee won’t get consideration as a distressed area for federal transportation stimulus money because Milwaukee County suburbs are rich, according to the JS.

To consider Milwaukee and River Hills together when weighing need is just ludicrous. Oh, wait. That’s right. The State Department of Transportation wanted to give more consideration to River Hills.

Just crazy.

Books! Or, life behind the best-seller curve

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Two books are recommended in honor horror of the swine flu outbreak that is killing people in Mexico. The flu has a great and lethal history in the United States and around the world. The last huge influenza pandemic was in 1918, ennabled by WWI troop movements and the shroud of secrecy President Woodrow Wilson’s government threw over everything to preserve morale and morality.

A new pandemic is inevitable — viruses can mutate faster than we can defeat them.

The first book offered for your consideration is The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry.

I can’t get rid of some of visuals this book planted in my brain — a man getting off a street car because passengers kept collapsing, bodies in piles because there was no place else to put them. This book does have a problem that afflicts so many non-fiction books in the computer age — there is too much middle in the middle. It’s too late to submit this to an editor, so some page skipping is acceptable.

The second book is a novel — Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day.

This book is not about the flu, though the flu plays a prominent role. It’s about 1918 Boston, mostly. It’s a sprawling family epic written about a sprawling time in a major American city. There is love and hate, war and peace, labor strife and race relations, and a cop family trying to survive it all. This is a great book — a page-turner from beginning to end.