At the Lily Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Not surprisingly, none of the rally organizers seemed to be bothered by the symbolism of a large balloon representing Justice Prosser hanging in effigy with its neck tied to a lamppost."

Writes Meade, in the comments over at an Isthmus article about the women's rights groups that held a rally against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser (who has been accused of choking a fellow justice).

Is traveling a good use of your time?

I keep trying to leave Madison, Wisconsin, and wondering why it never quite happens these days. Today, I ran across "4 reasons traveling is a waste of time," a blog post that Penelope Trunk wrote a couple years ago. It resonated. Especially #3: "People who love their lives don't leave."

Imagine if you were excited to get out of bed every day because you had structured your life so that every day was full of what you have always dreamed of doing. And you were in love with your boyfriend, and your job, and your new handstand in yoga. You love it all—imagine that. Would you want to leave all that behind for two weeks? What would be the point? You'd have more fun at home than away from home. So instead of traveling somewhere, how about figuring out what you'd really love to be doing with your time, and do that? In your real, day-to-day life.

Someone in the comments groused: "You are describing 5% or less of the population."

Today, it was was 67° here, and I took a walk along the lake path...



.... and through a garden....

At the Wisconsin Women Café...

... you can be whoever you want to be.

(Enlarge to read the signs.)

At the Backward Café...

... don't back down.

Protesters at the Capitol rally against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

It was a constrained and organized media event, with the sign-holders arrayed on the steps around the "Forward!" statue and the speakers in front of them facing the media...



... including the shameless New Media Meade:



There were lots of handmade signs and preprinted signs, and for some reason quite a few men were holding signs that said "We are Wisconsin Women":



"You can put lipstick on him, but it's still Prosser," declares this woman who is "Waiting 4 Justice":



It strangely seems to suggest that the judges ought to be women, but I assume it means he's a pig — an allusion to the old "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" remark. The lipsticked face of Prosser has a speech bubble that reads "Bitch," a reference to an incident, leaked to the press, in which Prosser, provoked by something that wasn't leaked, called Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a "bitch." Does that make him a pig in the sense of "male chauvinist pig"?

This is my favorite sign, because I love the way "GOP" is inserted:



You can see the whole sign in this enlargement of the first photograph. It begins "Prosser is Unqualified!" and then lists 4 problems. Given the insertion mark, I take it she originally wrote "Follows a political agenda," which really does make a person unfit to be a judge. I can only guess at the thought processes of whoever worked on that sign. Adding "GOP" like that shot the righteous indignation to hell.

ADDED: Here's a news report on the rally:

Progressive groups, elected officials and protesters led a call for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser to step down pending the results of an investigation into his workplace behavior at a rally Tuesday afternoon. Held at noon on the Capitol steps facing State Street, it was organized by Lisa Subeck, City of Madison alder and executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin.

"The Wisconsin state Supreme Court should not be allowed to choke out justice for women," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, who represented the Women's Medical Fund at the rally. "Prosser is a supreme disgrace."

At the Garlic Café...

... go ahead and stink up the joint.

The artist who wanted to document that expression people get on their face when they interact with a computer.

The Secret Service got involved.

The photographs: here.

Are you disturbed by the way the human being looks when he is interfacing with the machine?

ADDED:

What is most troubling here?
	What machines are doing to us.
	How the government swooped in.
	That Apple personnel (apparently) gave him permission to invade the privacy of customers.
	That activity like this is portrayed as art.
pollcode.com free polls

AND: More here.

But what crimes did he actually commit? None of the immediately obvious arguments would appear to be viable when you consider the facts of the situation...

We went down to the Capitol Square today, not to see the Art Fair on the Square per se...

... because I'm not a fan of the art...



I mean... are these people completely sincere, completely insincere, or do they span all the possible gradations of sincerity and insincerity... and does it even matter? Those mesh female forms twisted slowly in the wind... to what end? Something like wind chimes? [ADDED: By "these people," I mean the vendors.]

Note the Capitol in the background behind the trees, suggesting my real purpose in coming down to the Square. I wanted to see how the art was interfacing with the politics. Would there be any protesters in amongst the art fair folks?

The hunger strike guy was there:



I love the outfit on the art fair lady who stopped to absorb his message. Was it art? Ah, what is art?

I had the idea that this was the best art at the fair:



I love it! So pop and so graphic and greasy. Have some:



Or walk right by:



Enough about the fair food. Back to the hunger strike guy. He was the only protester I noticed. Well, him and some man who'd painted "Recall Walker" on his black umbrella parasol.

"First garlic harvest!"

Says Meade, plunking these down on the counter:



(That's not the counter. I took them outside for good natural light.)

Here's some of the as-yet-unharvested garlic:



Although Meade has grown garlic commercially at other times, in other places, this garlic was planted only because Meade bought a whole lot of harvested garlic from some vendor at the Dane County Farmers' Market, and when he got it home, he discovered it hadn't been properly dried and considered it unfit for eating. So he planted the garlic bulbs, which are in the genus Allium, in a row behind the flowering alliums.

You saw Meade planting the smallest of the flowering alliums in this video last fall. (The day after Election Day. Included in the video is a shot of a political sign in the neighbors' yard for the lefty candidate who was more left than the lefty candidate who won.*) And here's a picture of what the 2 taller types of allium looked like flowering in May.

__________

*Brett Hulsey.

At the Seedling Cafe...

...there are 1,000s of little things to talk about.

Miller Park, Brewers v. Reds.

Meade got me to go to a ball game:





It was an interesting game, and ultimately the Brewers won 5-4 (the baseball score that sounds like a Supreme Court decision) — on a big home run from Rickie Weeks (rhymes with "WikiLeaks").

I hadn't been to a baseball game since the 1970s, when I went to some Mets games and a couple Tigers games with my ex-husband. He grew up in NY, hence the Mets, and we lived in Ann Arbor (technically Ypsilanti) the summer Mark Fidrych was a sensation, and that's why we went to see the Tigers.

Last night's game was chosen because Meade has been a Reds fan since he moved to Cincinnati in 1974. I couldn't really tell which team I was rooting for, so I mainly drifted back and forth, between Meade's team and the home team. I tried to examine the nature of my allegiance. Sometimes I felt like I had a tendency to favor whoever was winning (because they were doing well and therefore deserved to win) and sometimes it seemed that I had a tendency to support the underdog (because I felt sorry for them or because if they gained ground it would make the game more exciting). Sometimes I focused on individual players and would favor them based on a combination of factors — for example Nyjer Morgan, who sported the traditional knee-breeches-and-stockings outfit and also made a great catch. That link goes to an interview he did last June that's seems a bit viral. Wait... here's the catch. See? The catch... and the stockings.

Have you perfected your "photo face"?

You need one, you know. What do you think... teeth/no teeth? Kissy-face jaw-lunge? Are you supposed to do something with your tongue behind your teeth like Elizabeth Hurley does to look consistently beautiful?

Do you want to look predictably decent but always the same in all your photographs? Or would you prefer spontaneous moods for different occasions... and all the risks that come with letting your feelings determine the appearance of your face?

Macaque snaps.

Self-portraiture, discovered at the monkey level.

At the Spider Flower Café...

... weave your webs.

At the Sunset Café...

... you can express yourself until the last light dies.

Fireworks.

Did you take 4th of July festivities into your own hands?

At the Speckled Rose Café...

... enjoy your freedom to talk about whatever you like.

At the Succulent Café...

... there's plenty of juicy conversation.

At the Cool Shade Café...

... sit down and talk to us.