Some Answers

 

I have some answers for questions recently posed here on Famous Hat the Blog. First of all, Williamson Street is named after some guy Hugh Williamson who signed the Constitution. I didn't even know that was a thing; I've heard of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, but not the signers of the Constitution. Willy Street is one of the original streets in town, and Travalon thought it was named after Ivan "Ivy" Williamson, who was a Badger football coach in the 50's, and then the athletic director until 1969, so I figured it must have had a name before that and then they renamed it after him. It took a lot of research, but I finally found that the street was always called Williamson, after this Hugh Williamson. I had never heard of him before this.

The second answer I have is about the brown cormorants. They are not another species; they are just immature cormorants. There were three of them hanging out on what used to be One Tree Island, so maybe they are nest mates. Or maybe young cormorants hang out in groups, since a lot of other birds do. When I told a guy at the Crane Foundation about how the whooping crane at Theresa Marsh was hanging out with a bunch of sandhill cranes, he said cranes that are too young to breed tend to hang out in groups like that. He said they aren't old enough to breed until they are five. I'm amazed there are any cranes, if that is the case, since they have such high mortality rates in their first year of life, but there just seem to be more and more of them in our neighborhood. I keep waiting for the day we see an actual whooping crane or two strolling along in our 'hood. That would be something to see! The guy at the Crane Foundation said there are only about eighty wild whooping cranes in our state, so it's kind of amazing that we have seen so many.

I am tired of people saying "The Board says..." when it's not what I say. Maybe the problem is that I am on too many boards, but just yesterday the president of the Union sent an email to the members saying the Board would like to see everyone at a pro-abortion rally at the Capitol Square on Saturday. You would think before signing on to something that is so controversial, he would have asked us all if we were okay with our names being put on it. Then today we had our annual condo association meeting, and Monday evening the board met, and we agreed owners could bring motions that owners could vote on, but 67% of owners would have to vote for it to pass. Of course tonight the person we figured was going to bring something up did, and I thought we were going to vote on it, but the president said, "The board discussed this, and we're not going to have a vote on it." Say what?? That's her rule, not "the Board's." I didn't agree to that. I mean, it sounds kind of dictatorish and stuff. I guess I just hate having other people put words in my mouth. I need the room to put my own foot in there.

Famous Hat