Litle Gems

Saving Private Ryan.
He’s not a private of anything, and he certainly doesn’t need saving. Ryan is the name of the neat guy who runs the White River Gun Range, or at least what is to become the White River Gun range (to be additionally titled Field and Freedom) if it gets final approval from the county. Ryan

Ryan stands in front of his prospective gun establishment, not looking at all like the kind and caring guy that he really is.

has the approval of the Town of Lyons, so far. Out in front of his place, hung on one wall, you will see an NRA flag with a blue stripe running up and down it. The stripe’s there to denote a deeper meaning, since with it the flag’s not a real American flag. The official U.S. flag of the United States of America has thirteen red and white stripes running horizontally to denote the original thirteen colonies. There is no blue stripe on the official flag. Supposedly, the blue stripe’s added to support police officers, or sometimes a red stripe is added to support firefighters. That affectation of the blue stripe is being added by social groups that want to make sure the Black Lives Matter movement does not allow black lives to matter at the expense of firefighter or police lives. As with the yard signs that read “We back the Badge,” these new kinds of symbols are intended to support old conservative values favoring a minority of the public over others.

Whether the decorative use of the blue stripe flag at a prospective gun range, located on the property just east of Lake Geneva on Highway 50, is supportive of those rather polarized and fringe elements of the public, or not, is a judgment only the public can make. That the blue stripe flag is hung on that wall at all, and the place is being set up to accommodate an indoor gun range, appears to be a message to one and all passing by on Highway 50. Outdoor shooting ranges are prohibited in Wisconsin, except for those privately run on land of more than five acres in size, and located at least two hundred feet from a public road. When people drive from Kenosha into Lake Geneva on Highway 50 in the future, they can look to the right, as they come into town, and see the wonderful signage put near the Grand Geneva to their right, or they may see the flag with the blue stripe and the gun range if they look off to the left. There used to be a billboard right near Ryan’s property that everyone saw on that side while driving by. “Christ Has Arisen,” was one of its messages, while “He gave his life for ransom,” was another. A gun range sends a different message, but then the gun range message may be more the fitting message of our time.

 

The potential of a Muck-Suck nightmare. “It’s coming from the feel that this ain’t exactly real, or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there…” Leonard Cohen’s words, but quite possibly applicable for the strangeness of this race, scheduled to take place on Sunday morning, May 28th at six a.m. The Muck-Suck (that being the early Indian name for Geneva Lake) is being run along the two-foot-wide easement granted to the City of Lake Geneva, Town of Linn, Fontana and Williams Bay, to allow people to fully circumnavigate the lake on their own two feet. The easement does not extend to the private property outside of that narrow path. What does that mean for liability, since the trail is filled with holes, roots, rocks and other obstacles?

To the organizers of this event, supposedly charitably founded, although that charity is nowhere to be found in their application, that means that all the participants must sign an airtight release for all liability to the Fast North Corporation putting the run on. Nowhere in that all encompassing release is there any provision for the liability incurred by either the four communities allowing this event, or the property owners who hold deed to the property on either side of the easement. Additionally, Fast North has based itself in Ontario, Canada, so that any court questions or actions must supposedly take place there.

Oh come on! Who at city hall or on the city council is going to accept this kind of one-way garbage? Either the reality of ownership, easement, liability and revenue sharing must be addressed, or the fiction approved to endorse and allow the race might just possibly cost the communities and the property owners around the lake a ton of money. “On thin ice” Skates, Lake Geneva alderperson, spearheaded the move to approve this race.

John Halverson, formerly of the Lake Geneva Regional News, in an unlikely, but now becoming classically standard move, was the sole alderperson voting against the race. John Halverson, man of the people? Goes down hard, but if that’s the man he is, he’s mighty needed to stand up against Lake Geneva leadership when it’s heading the wrong way.

Reek School Pancake Breakfast

Reek School Pancake Breakfast

The REEK School Pancake breakfast. You don’t know how much it means to the school to have the extra
cash it gets from this sale and how good the breakfast really is. Go there, and the people are terrific too….

 

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