New Kid's View
Family lured Jerrianne and her husband to South Milwaukee in 2002 from Southern California where she worked as, first, a journalist, then, as a court information officer. She now stays busy with media-relations consulting, playing with her three grandchildren (part of the lure), writing, discovering her new environs, and hoping her garden will produce before the first fall frost.
An Answer to the Whooo
South Milwaukeean and Friends of Grant Park board member Betsy Abert sent me an email the other day. Referring to my post of January 3 about hearing the call of some kind of bird at night and wondering what it was, Betsy wrote:
It likely was an owl that you heard, and specifically, a Great Horned Owl (GHOW). In the northern realms of our middle west kingdom here, the GHOWs are the first birds to breed and nest in the annual cycle of things. So, you may have heard an individual searching out another individual for purposes related to home-making and reproduction. They generally begin this process around the start of winter/Christmas, and are sitting on nest by early January.
Them Garlic Mustard Pickers!
What a great group! In exchange for the Rotary Club of Mitchell Field having the most excellent Garlic Mustard Pickers play (if you've ever heard them, you know what I'm talking about) at its annual fundraising auction in October, them Garlic Mustard Pickers turned around and donated $250 to Rotary International's PolioPlus project -- an all-out effort to eradicate polio from the face of the Earth.
What good will $250 do against such a mammoth problem, you might ask? It's called one step at a time. $250 here, $250 there and pretty soon you've got eradication in all but four countries in the world. Yes, that is only FOUR -- as in 4 -- countries left that have not been eradicated of polio. The four left to go are Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria. So the Garlic Mustard Pickers' very generous donation is going to do a LOT of good. Way to go, Garlic Mustard Pickers! Way to go Rotary International!
Moving Forward
Trees, parks, mass transit, local produce were among concerns on the minds of about 25 progressive-minded activists who got together this afternoon for their first post-2008 campaign meeting. In addition to the aforementioned topics, the group discussed a name. Tentatvely, it's South Shore Community Group. Also decided was the next meeting date, time and place: Sunday, March 22, 1 p.m., Oak Creek Library, 8620 South Howell Avenue, Oak Creek. For more information, about the group, its mission and goals, and the next meeting, contact Kathleen Slamka, alexis@miliserv.net.
Friends of Grant Park Reminder
Friends of Grant Park friend Betsy Abert would love to see a big crowd at the group's meeting next Thursday, March 5 at the Grant Park Golf Course Clubhouse. The meeting's scheduled to begin at 6:45 p.m.
As part of the Friends of Grant Park "Local Ecology" series, Betsy says, one of the country's top ecologists, Noel Cutright, Ph.D., will speak and show a power-point presentation on "Bird Migration: Following the Flyways - Facts, Fiction & the Future".
