The First Amendment

4A

The Platteville Journal

MAY 11, 2016

ETC.

Drive, he said

f you can remember your childhood when you become a parent,

numerous parenthood moments
become replays of childhood moments from a different perspective.

That different perspective these days is

the front passenger seat. Thats because
our oldest can be seen driving around the
Tri-States, parent sitting shotgun, driving learners permit in back pocket.
Steve Prestegard
Im not surprised he wants to drive
plattevillejournaleditor@
everywhere, even five-minute trips. I
gmail.com
wanted to do the same thing, starting
from when I was about 5 years old. I always sat behind my father, almost always the driver, instead
of my mother in order to get the drivers seat perspective.
I learned to drive in the spring and summer of 1981, no
doubt terrorizing other drivers on the far East Side and
still-rural areas around Madison with, first, a 1973 AMC
Javelin not equipped with power brakes, then my mothers
(and eventually my) 1975 Chevrolet Caprice, and my fathers 1981 Chevy Malibu. One weekend I drove my grandparents all over Grant County and other parts of Southwest
Wisconsin in their own Malibu, and we all survived.
My first behind-the-wheel instructional experience was probably not what the instructor, the brother of a neighbor of ours,
would have planned. While I was driving a Chevrolet Citation
with no air conditioning and therefore no worthwhile defroster,
Madison got hit with 2 inches of rain. It was interesting, to
say the least, to drive when it was raining so hard that the new
driver couldnt see to the end of the front end. We drove past the
house of another new driver in our car, where sat a car he had
purchased, which the monsoon had turned into a swimming
pool with water up to the open windows. He was too stunned at
the sight to use appropriate teenage profanity.
My drivers license came after my second drivers test in
the fall of 1981. My first driving examiner, a grouchy old
guy, was reputed to fail all males at least the first time out.
Mothers Day weekend having just past, my mother would
require me to point out that she taught me how to parallel
park in the aforementioned Caprice, all 18 feet 1 inch of it.
My second examiner wasnt a guy, wasnt old, and wasnt
grouchy, so, while the Milwaukee Brewers were playing in
their first playoff series, I was able to drive my girlfriend home
after dates and drive to and from work in two words, transportation freedom. (In fact, I insisted on driving to the high
school for a football game the day I got my license, despite
grumbling from the passengers.) It was also errand freedom
for my parents who now could tell me to pick up my younger
brother from his swim team practice at the ridiculous hour of 9
a.m. (I have told new drivers siblings that once he gets his license they might want to be nicer to him lest they have to keep
walking or bicycling to wherever they are going.)
While clearly examiner Scrooge wasnt my favorite, maybe
he did his job in a way because no one from our high school
class died in a car crash until a few years after graduation.
(One of the remarkable things about my class, in an era where
high school yearbooks usually had a memorial page for someone who died far too soon, is that our senior yearbook had no
need everyone who was around for the first day of freshman
year in August 1979 was there for graduation in June 1983.)
This was, remember, in an era where cars had neither air bags
nor door beams nor antilock brakes, and seat belt use wasnt
mandatory. Cars of the era had, however, size and weight.
I now find myself watching my own driving closer, because parents are our childrens first teachers and teach
mostly by example. Object lessons can be found in, sadly,
stories in this newspaper of fatal crashes. And in the same
way the car you just bought shows up everywhere you go,
other drivers bad driving are also lessons in what not to do.
The aforementioned Caprice, seven years later, was the
car that delivered a new college graduate to Grant County
for his first full-time job. It was the kind of car you cannot
find today. It had just two doors, but it had a trunk enormous enough to carry several 40-pound bags of peat moss
and black dirt for my grandmother, and it was built as
sturdy as a pickup truck (as I found out when driving on
some area Roads In Name Only), while it got gas mileage
about as good as a truck of that day 16 highway mpg and
11 city mpg. Because of that and the ridiculous $30 to fill its
26-gallon gas tank, I passed on the Caprice a year later for a
smaller and newer car, which was bedeviled by different, yet
equally vexing, mechanical (particularly electrical) gremlins
of the aforementioned Malibu. The only things that car had
going for it that the Caprice did not was a manual transmission, along with tilt steering wheel and bucket seats.
Perhaps I can assign the new driver to drive me to car
shows this summer to view the car that, to prove that life
is still unfair, I dont own a Corvette. (Of course, if I buy
one, he will want to drive it too.)

The Platteville

journal
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Serving the Platteville Area Since 1899

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John Ingebritsen, Publisher

Editor
Steve Prestegard
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W ashington J o u rnal

Congressional candidate touts arrest

yron Buchholz, Democratic challenger to U.s.

Rep. Ron Kind (DLa
Crosse), was arrested April 16
as part of the Democracy Spring
protests, held to bring attention
to the legalized corruption of big
money in politics.

Buchholz is a strong advocate of real

campaign finance reform and wanted
to join the thousands of people demanding not only the overturning of
Citizens United, but also the passing
of the Fair Elections Act, creating public financing for Senate candidates and
the Voter Empowerment Act, making

voter registration easier, as well as an

update to the Voting Rights Act, which
would restore provisions of the law
struck down by the Supreme Court in
2013.
Before I was arrested on April 16th
along with 200 people for refusing to
leave the capitol steps during the Democracy Spring uprising the crowd
chanted, Whose House? Our House,
said Buchholz in a news release announcing his arrest. It turns out we
were wrong for the time being. Presently the House is owned by a few corporations and wealthy people and it
will stay that way until our present
system is brought under control. As a

candidate, frequently the first question

I am asked is, How much money do
you have. That explains much about
the makeup of our present Congress.
It is not about positions on major issues, it is all about the money and that
is wrong.
Buchholz is running for the Democratic nomination in the Third Conressional District. Kind has held the seat
since 1997.
Buchholzs arrest video can
be seen at www.youtube.com/
watch?v=aOXgUAUz_js.

LETTERS
The Platteville Journal, P.O. Box 266, Platteville, WI 53818-0266 plattevillejournaleditor@gmail.com

In support of LLO
In 2015, every tax dollar spent on
tourism returned $7 to our state economy. But in Lafayette County, visitor
spending shrank in 2015, according to
Sen. Howard Markleins May newsletter, while Iowa Countys increased $1
million. Both Yellowstone Lake and the
Yellowstone River were added to the
impaired or polluted waterway list by
the Department of Natural Resources,
as was the Pecatonica River and several local streams.
Lafayette County is one of the prettiest counties in Wisconsin, but we must
protect, improve, and promote natural resources for recreational activities
like fishing, boating, biking, hiking,
swimming, and ATV-ing, all of which
bring revenue to bars, restaurants, hotels, grocers and gift shops; and which
attract families and entrepreneurs to
live here (combined with fast Internet,
of course).
Lafayette County should remain agricultural, but protect our landscape
and local farms from takeover by industrial models from California, Nebraska and Iowa where so much
prime farmland has been covered by
concrete and so much water polluted
by manure that their ag-corporations
are now flooding Wisconsin. In Kewaunee County, where more than 30
percent of private wells are undrinkable because of manure from such operations, shrinking housing values and
reduced quality of life have families
and businesses moving away. Lakes
are polluted; tourism is fading.
At the Lafayette County Board
meeting Tuesday, supervisors will vote
on a Livestock Licensing Ordinance to

require new or expanding large livestock operations those with more

than 750 animal units to register,
pay a fee of $750, observe minimum
setbacks from roads and neighboring
properties, and report plans at public
hearings. This would help balance the
interests of large farms which have
the potential to be very large polluters of water, land and air with the
interests of smaller farms and businesses, as well as residents and visitors.
Kriss Marion
Circle M Market Farm and Bed and
Breakfast, Blanchardville
Lafayette County Board Supervisor District 8

In opposition to mine

Dr. Crispin Pierce, associate professor of Environmental Health at UW

Eau Claire, has led studies on the potential risks of tiny particles (PM2.5)
of airborne silica dust to those living
in the vicinity of frac sand mining operations. His peer reviewed work published in the November Journal of
Environmental Health included four
sampling sites near frac sand mining
operations.
The study states, Fine particulates have been identified by the U.S.
EPA as a cause of cardiovascular and
lung disease including lung cancer.
While crystalline silica is known to be
a health risk to workers in industry,
there have been few independent studies of the health effects to citizens living near frac sand mining operations.
Researchers took data from six nominal 24-hour ambient air samples in
a wide variety of weather conditions.
Five of six samples had PM2.5 levels

higher than corresponding Iowa Department of Natural Resources or Minnesota Pollution Control Agency regional background levels.
The study concluded health departments and elected officials face unanswered questions about potential
health risks and proposes the establishment of longer-term PM2.5 particulate monitoring to protect public
health.
Pattison Sand of Clayton County,
Iowa, wants a zoning change now to
support a proposed 764-acre underground mine expansion for use in 10 to
20 years. How can officials predict future community needs? How will venting of the mine affect the quality of
life and health of neighbors? What are
the other issues around this expansion
proposal? It would be prudent for officials to refuse the zoning change for
the present.
Edie Ehlert
President, Crawford Stewardship Project,
Gays Mills

The Platteville Journal will print

most letters to the editor, regardless of
the opinion presented. The Journal reserves the right to edit material that is
libelous or otherwise offensive to community standards and to shorten letters The Journal determines are excessively long. All letters must be signed
and the signature must appear on the
printed letter, along with a contact
number or email for verification. Some
submitted letters may not be published
due to space constraints. Thank you
letters will not be printed. All letters
and columns represent the views of the
writers and not necessarily the views of
The Platteville Journal.

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