Merry Christmas, 2013 - and Happy Holidays!

It's been awhile since posting here, and even longer to use it as a forum to share Christmas greetings with Facebook friends, but let's give it a try in 2013.

Merry Christmas and Season’s Greetings,

 

Christmas season kind of snuck up on us this year, and we’re tending to these things late in the days before the holiday.  We’ll plead busyness, even though the holiday doesn’t change dates on the calendar.  Both of us are generally well, but work takes up more of our time and energy.  More on that later...  So, before we digress into a quick review of our past year, may we wish you all a Merry Christmas!

                                       

As we end 2013, it was clear that our 15^th year of marriage gave us some very special memories and some nice reminders of our love for each other.  We realize it’s not fun getting older, and each of us has some nagging aches and pains.  It was time to say good bye to a loved uncle.  And it was time to deal with being crime victims for the first time.  We – and Sasha – are ready to move on to 2014.

 

This past year was when our Princess Sasha “grew up.”  She discovered there is an outside world, and the two of us have learned both to follow her on “Sasha walks,” and the pleasure of sitting outside with her, while she is in her giant cage on the front stoop or is investigating the bushes around the sidewalk.

 

Growing up, the Lindes spent a lot of time with Cheryl’s Aunt Eulah and Uncle Bob Kingsbury.  Cheryl has stayed close to Eulah through the years. Sadly this year, we all lost Bob, who passed away in June at age 85.  As we approach this first Christmas since, we recall the legacy Bob Kingsbury left, perhaps best seen through his three sons, their many grandchildren, and the great-grandchildren, too.

 

Shortly after Thanksgiving, we were victimized by someone who broke a side car window, and stole Wes’s rolling briefcase off the back seat.  It’s amazing how quickly everything important can be fixed or replaced; we found the window broken on a cold Friday night, and by Monday afternoon, the window was replaced, and by the Thursday after, the County provided Wes with a new rolling briefcase.

 

The Hennepin County training unit has been very busy – and has been short-handed for a few months;  Wes helps train new Human Service Representatives (workers who deal with public assistance cases), and there have been large, new groups all year long, especially this fall when four groups (about 90 people) all got started.  Word is that in both January and March, the County plans to hire up to 75-80 more, which will be like having eight groups being trained at the same time next spring.  Know anyone looking for entry-level work in the Twin Cities?  Cheryl knows about things being short-handed, too – with two of her co-workers having left recently, and the work piling up.  We both know this makes for stressful days and tired nights.

 

Still, Wes has kept involved in area politics, continuing to meet monthly with other Democrats in the Andover-Anoka-Ramsey area (SD 35).  In February, he’ll be coordinating the DFL precinct caucuses at Andover High School for our District 35B precincts in this area. 

 

Wes joined a neighborhood book club through Facebook this year, with the group reading “Gone Girl” (interesting), “Molokai” (good), “Still Alice” (probably the best of the six read), “The Man in My Basement” (Wes’s pick - unusual), “Little Bee” (quirky), and “A Spot of Bother” (subject of our widest difference of opinion).  The group – Wes is the token guy - had good discussions of the books and chatted about what was going on in our lives.  Wes (and Cheryl) hosted the group in July, which usually finds four or five of us meeting.  Thirteen years in, this remains a lovely neighborhood – festive lights this time of year, a neighbor who creates a wonderful Halloween experience each fall, folks who help each other with clearing driveways and mowing lawns, and people at all stages of life, from young families to empty nesters to those with kids involved in area sports or away at college.

 

Wes also continues his union activities, although he chose to resign from his AFSCME Council 5 position as of the end of this month.  Responsibilities to the increased work at the County made it difficult to give his proper time to his statewide AFSCME members.  And this April, Wes will be stepping down after eight years as a Vice President of Local 34.  He is going to continue putting out the Local’s monthly newsletter for the foreseeable future, but it’s time for some new blood at the Council and the Local.  In 2013, Wes participated in another contract negotiation, and the result was more successful than in recent years – members are getting raises, “pay steps” will be paid for the first time in four years, we’ll have a good health insurance plan, and a revised job classification he worked toward for the past two years is being put in place in January.

 

We got away this year to three destinations.  We visited Milwaukee for the first time, flying there in February, to watch nephew Ben Linde compete in a multi-state gymnastics meet against other seven/eight/nine-year olds.  Ben did great, and we enjoyed a beautiful spring-like weekend, supping at a Wisconsin Friday night fish fry, touring the Harley-Davidson Museum and Miller Brewery, taking in a concert at the Milwaukee Symphony, and joining the gymnasts at ‘Safe House’, a spy-themed restaurant on the river.  This summer, we returned to the Iron Range, after visiting Ely, MN for the first time.  We went far below the surface at the state’s Soudan Underground Mine, which we highly recommend a visit to next year!  We also stopped at the Judy Garland Museum along Highway 169, in her hometown of Grand Rapids. 

 

Our big 4^th of July trip this year was to the East Coast, focusing on the 150^th Anniversary of Gettysburg.  We toured the Gettysburg battlefield and spent two days watching re-enactors relive the important moments of this three-day turning point of the Civil War. We based ourselves in Baltimore, where yes, Wes ‘dragged’ Cheryl to an Orioles’ baseball game at Camden Yards – a win over Texas. 

 

Not only did we drive to Gettysburg from our Baltimore hotel, but we spent two days in Washington DC, seeing the Fourth of July fireworks and joining the crowd of nearly a million on the Mall.  We walked the perimeter of the White House, stood in a longgggg line to visit the National Archives (anyone agree with Wes that the Archives staff are way too ‘militaristic’ in how they usher visitors past the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?), visited the National Art Gallery and Smithsonian History Museum, enjoyed the International Spy Museum, and took a nighttime tour of the City – seeing the U.S. Capitol, and visiting the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument. 

 

We also drove to Annapolis and Dover, visiting the capitols of Maryland and Delaware, and trying some great Maryland crab cake at Chicky & Ruth’s Delly, a block from the capitol in Annapolis.  We took in a different capitol at Harrisburg, PA, which was part of a visit to the President James Buchanan House at Lancaster, a drive through Amish country, and a fun evening in Hershey, at Hershey Chocolate World and a most unusually laid-out movie theater (where we saw the very appropriate “White House Down” the night before the “4^th”).

 

We finished our “Star Spangled trip” with a day in Philadelphia, where we walked Ben Franklin’s streets, paid our respects to the Liberty Bell (it is impressive, even if you feel rushed seeing it), took a trolley trip around the city, and visited Independence Hall on the day (July 8^th) that re-enactors re-created the first reading of the Declaration of Independence, a mere 237 years ago!  This was a “Wes-type” trip to celebrate our 15^th Anniversary, and it was memorable, so we’ll need to keep finding interesting places to celebrate our nation’s birthday – maybe Seattle this next year!

 

Our best wishes for the coming year!

Wes and Cheryl Volkenant 

 

-   visit us on Facebook, if you haven’t yet, or e-mail at cwvolkenant@msn.com

On Election Day 2012

I encourage Andover residents to vote for the following:

For President - Barack Obama & Joe Biden
For US Senate - Amy Klobuchar
For 6th District Congress - Jim Graves

For SD 35 - Peter Perovich
For SD 31 - Mike Starr

For House 35B - Sam Scott
For House 31B - Louise Woodberry


For Anoka County Commissioner, District 1 - anybody but Matt Look on general principle, but Alison Lister is a genuinely good choice
District 2 - two terrible choices - Andy Westerberg is the lesser of two evils
District 5 - Carol LeDoux is superior to Scott Bromley, an opportunist who hasn't even voted in recent years
District 7 - Dan Earhart continues to be a holdout against the takeover of the County Board by Tea Party-like reactionaries.  Much better choice than Scott Schulte.

For Andover Mayor - Mike Gamache (unoppopsed)
For Andover Council Special 2-Year Seat - Val Holthus (a narrow call over Tony Howard, but I pledged support to Val before she decided which seat she was runniung for)
For Andover Council - two 4-Year Seats - I generally don't support Sheri Bukkila politically and I personally wish Mike Knight had decided to retire this time, but the only knowledge I have of third candidate David Forsberg is his replies in the Anoka Union (the city newsletter isn't out yet)... in good conscience I can't recommend Forsberg based on those responses, but I'm glad he's running - we need contested races, as we had in 2010.

For Supreme Court Justices - re-elect the incumbents even though two are extremists appointed by Gov. Pawlenty - but they are of judicial quality and character which Tnglestad and Griffith are most certainly not, and Barkley may have consideration as a politiucian - but certainly not as a Justice.

Vote NO on both Constitutional Amendments!

I'm Supporting Peter Perovich for SD35

I've sent the following Letter to the Editor to ABC Newspapers, hopefully to be published on Friday, October 26, 2012...

I am voting for Peter Perovich in Senate District 35 this year because I find him a much better fit for this district and this state.  Peter and his family have long-time roots here in the Anoka and Ramsey communities, he grew up around the educational challenges facing Anoka-Hennepin school district, and as an adult has focused his attention on the modern challenges of balancing our environmental concerns, our love for our lakes, rivers and streams, and the interests of the hunting and fishing communities throughout the state.  I see Peter Perovich as an “Abeler Democrat,” to coin a phrase; Peter would not be tied to party dogma, he would be open to collaboration with the Senate Republicans to legislate solutions to the gridlock that we face in St. Paul, and he would be willing to take hard votes based on his own fine principles, not just those of his party and his supporters. 

Many of us union members in Anoka, Andover, Ramsey and northern Coon Rapids have endorsed Peter Perovich because of the positions his opponent, Branden Petersen, has taken against our collective bargaining rights in supporting a Right to Work amendment, against government and government workers, and especially against teachers – in particular against the great people we have teaching and providing classroom support in our very own schools.  We hear Branden Petersen railing against “bad teachers” and insisting on better performance evaluation processes.  Which teacher made Branden sit in the corner when he was a young boy?  He sure has it out for these hard-working professionals – and he is not a trained and educated teaching professional himself. 

I don’t understand Republicans like Petersen who want to get elected to serve in our government, but whose real purpose is to tear away at the government itself, and the public employees who make our state and communities efficient and successful in these trying times – people like our teachers, our police, our child support officers, our parole and correctional officers, our snow plow drivers, our forest rangers and fish and wildlife protectors, and the office clerical staff that hold together the nuts and bolts of every school and office building around the state.

I don’t understand Republicans like Petersen who voted to change the homestead credit in 2011.  You might be lucky, and your property taxes didn’t go up.  Anoka County and many of our communities are holding down their property tax collections, but not all communities can do so.  Throughout Minnesota, that Republican change shifted more of the property tax burden to homeowners and away from commercial properties.  Homeowners in many communities have seen the same or higher taxes despite lower home valuations.  Peter Perovich and a DFL legislature will work to restore the market value homestead credit.

I don’t understand Republicans like Petersen who voted in 2011 and again in 2012 against raising revenue, but to make the budget balance, shifted educational funding down the line, further hurting our schools and educational system.  Peter Perovich believes in investing in our schools now, and not using any fancy budgeting gimmicks to balance our state budget on the backs of our schools. Perovich is committed to reversing the short-sightedness of Branden Petersen and his Republican colleagues, and will work to legislate paying back our schools the monies they are owed.

I’ve watched both local debates between Peter Perovich and Branden Petersen, sponsored by the area mayors and the League of Women Voters.  Branden Petersen is ambitious.  He’s a young man in a hurry, and Petersen is carrying a set of principles for our future that scare me.  He called Minnesota a “sovereign state” in the Anoka debate.  Minnesota isn’t sovereign, but Republicans like Petersen have introduced legislation to make us sovereign – to enable us to reject federal legislation they don’t like, as they want to stymie as best they can, such programs as Obamacare, Medicaid, and laws protecting women’s reproductive rights.  Help stop this ambitious young man’s political career here and now, and elect Peter Perovich to the Minnesota Senate for District 35 on November 6^th.