Village Spillage

I think all of us were outraged at the deaths of Jennifer Bukosky and her daughter at the hands of a drunk/drugged Mark Benson, when he crashed his Escalade into their vehicle, killing them, and leaving a bereaving son, husband, grandparents and friends behind.

Wisconsin has some of the weakest laws against drunk drivers in the country. 

The folks over at BadgerBlogger.com have started an on-line petition.  Simply stated:

We the undersigned, DEMAND that the Wisconsin Legislature make it law that any vehicle driven by repeat offenders driving after revocation, be confiscated by state or local officials. Driving after revocation is such common place that it is clearly not a punishment, so We The People, must take away the means for them to flaunt this law. We already confiscate the cars of drug dealers, we should also confiscate the cars of these repeat drunk and drugged drivers before another family is devastated.

I'm all for this.  It boggles my mind that we allow multiple DWIs before we take severe action, like confiscation or jail.  Driving drunk is equivalent to walking down a street, firing a gun in random directions.  The penalties should be the same.

So, I'm doing my part to publicize this.  So far, 27,701 Wisconsinites have signed, which is a tremendous number.  Please consider signing the petition.  It'll take you about 45 seconds.

CLICK HERE TO READ OR SIGN THE PETITION

Truth is, I have my doubts Wisconsin will be able to change their laws.  Too many legislators in Madison are owned by the Tavern League, which is a scandal in itself.  Maybe, just maybe, there's enough signatures to make some legislators think twice about bowing at the altar of their big donors.

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I was forwarded an email from a loyal reader with news from Eric Bahr, the manager of Sal's Pizza in Cedarburg. 

Sal's Pizza will not be opening a new restaurant on Silver Spring, nor anywhere else.

I've received a few updates .. Sal's was concerned about the usual things.  Downturn in the economy .. they've noticed less volume at their Cedarburg joint .. plus high rent demands = cold feet.

I'd say that Sal's Pizza in WFB is a victim of $4 gasoline.  More money spent on driving, less on eating out.  Plus fuel costs driving the cost of pizza ingredients, flour, cheese, tomatoes way up.

DAMN!  I really thought that was going to be a huge hit for Silver Spring.   Note to the landlord: What are there, 500 pizza places in a 25 mile radius?  One of them could be talked into expanding to a pizza-starved location.  Start calling.

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As I drove back from dinner tonight, I noticed Hollywood Video on Silver Spring (technically in Glendale) has closed.

I'm partially responsible for driving it out of business.

Two months ago, I subscribed to Netflix.  And I love it.

I think the primary reason I wanted to join was that .. I miss a lot of movies I want to see.  I hear reviews, see trailers, and have a desire to see many movies each year, but we just never get around to seeing a tenth of them, whether at the Fox Bay, or from renting them at the now defunct Hollywood Video.

The solution is Netflix's queue.  See a movie you want to eventually watch?  Put it in your queue.  Once it comes out on DVD, it'll show up in your mailbox like magic.

I started out on the $5/month plan, where you get two DVDs each month.  I figured I could easily find time to watch one movie every two weeks.  After I put 25 movies in my queue, I realized, crap, it's gonna take a year to see all those movies.

So I bumped my plan to the $14/month deal that gets you two DVDs at a time, with no monthly limit. My evil plan is to blow through the list in 2-3 months, then drop back down to the $5 plan.

How to pay for it?   Well, do you get HBO?  Do you actually watch it?  Turns out, we didn't.  Even with a dozen HBO channels, neither my wife nor I find movies we want to watch on HBO, except on rare occasion.  Do a household survey and count up the number of movies you actually watch on HBO.    If it's less than 5 or 6 .. cancel it.  Quit HBO, and pick up Netflix. 

Netflix is extraordinarily easy .. DVDs are shipped to you in one day, you watch 'em, and stick them in their postage-paid return envelope for your mailman to take.  They receive them in one day, and ship a new one to you immediately for the next day.  Pretty slick.   Netflix sends over 1 million DVDs in the mail every day.

So .. sorry, Hollywood Video.   Gosh, I sure hope Aurora Health Care doesn't find out, abandon their plans for the WFB clinic, and take that newly empty spot in prime Glendale, wink, wink.  

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Just read the May 20th WFB Plan Commission agenda.  There's one item of interest:

* Ryan and Marija Whitman (Gracious Events Corp), 342 E. Silver Spring Dr., (Full service restaurant and café, name TBD). 

342 E. Silver Spring used to be Murray's Wine & Spirits liquor store.

Gracious Events is a catering company .. here's their website.

I think we're all excited to hear more about the mystery "TBD" restaurant!

UPDATE:  I emailed the hopeful owners, and got this response back:

Welcome, TBD!
 

After seeing no story about Whitefish Bay's "Green Day in the Bay" in the NOW paper.. I contacted Julie Erickson, the event's coordinator for a report on this great happening.

Erickson reported:

• We had 45 teams, so roughly 500 people (kids included) 
• We cleaned 85% of the village (estimate) and were able to adopt out Cahill Park/Klode Beach and Big Bay Beach for the whole summer to be cleaned.  (Thanks to 18 different families.) 
• We gave out 250 re-usable grocery bags.
• Gave out 100 water bottles
• 150 saplings
• 75 extra recycle bins
• 50 Sierra club guide to the outdoors
• We also had some great exhibitors on natural lawn care, hybrid cars, and WE Energies on saving energy. 
• Despite the cooler weather/wind, we had a great turnout and look forward to doing it again next year. 

More pictures can be found here, compliments of Gordon Lang.

Great thanks go out to Julie, the Whitefish Bay Civic Foundation, and the hundreds of volunteers who gave up some time to clean our village.