April 15, 2010, Vol. 1, No. 13
CONTENTS
(in scroll-down order)
THE BEARS OF WALDEN PUDDLE
by Dr. Ursula Whipple
Fighting through a bout of seasonal depression brought on by the coming of spring, Dr. Whipple lays the groundwork for her Bear Wrestling Camp for Rich Kids.
THE CENSUS MEETS THE SENSELESS
by the Walden Puddle Writers Uncooperative
For generations, by not participating in the Census, the people of Walden Puddle have stayed off the government's radar screen. Now they're on the government's radar screen ... in the worst possible way.
THE TALK OF WALDEN PUDDLE
reportage from the Agreeable Doughnut Cafe
What has Art Garfunkel got against the Walden Puddle Festival of the Reasonably Lively Arts anyway?
THE BEARS OF
WALDEN PUDDLE
Notes from the Field, Plus Expert Advice
by Dr. Ursula Whipple
Field Notes: April 8, 2010. April has arrived, and a new baseball season has begun. If you are a Chicago Cubs fan like me, you understand what T.S. Eliot meant by, "April is the cruelest month." I believe he was a Cubs fan, too.
I also believe the Cubs are why Ernest Hemingway left home ... he grew up outside Chicago ... and then just kept moving for the rest of his life. He wasn't seeking anything, as some have said. He was just trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and Wrigley Field.
I think that's why he became fascinated with bullfighting, too. For him, it was a much less one-sided sport than baseball.
One summer, driving back to Walden Puddle from school at Central Montana Normal, I stopped in Chicago for a Cubs game. As I walked into Wrigley Field, I immediately thought of Dante's Inferno, and the banner that Dante hung above the gates of hell: "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here." That's how I felt walking into Wrigley Field.
You didn't think I was a literary type, did you? You thought I was just another scholarly, egghead scientist, without any poetry in my soul, didn't you? You jerks.
You profilers.
You ... don't ... know ... me ... at ... all.
I admit, I am in a bad mood. I got my Census questionnaire in the mail. I tossed it in the compost heap immediately, of course, but it got me thinking: I really have no idea how many bears live on my property. How many TV sets they own per family. And so on.
Then I realized that counting them all would be very difficult and time-consuming. So I guess I will never know how many bears I've got out there. That's life.
Plans for my summer Bear Wrestling Camp for Rich Kids are proceeding on schedule. I have signed up two more counselors, Lennie and George, who used to wrestle ... Mixed Martial Arts style ... out in California. Fresno. Salinas. King City. Around there. Spur of the moment. Mostly in roadhouses and parking lots.
My bears are working hard to get ready for camp. Louie and Big Jack are out on the lawn right now, practicing Flying Drop Kicks. Clyde is delivering a painful noogie to the scalp of Lucky Pierre. In the Ladies' Division, Janie and Maybelle are swatting each other with handbags. All my bears are really into it. I think they cannot wait for the well-to-do children to start arriving for Bear Wrestling Camp, from places like Manhattan and Pacific Palisades.
Dr. Ursula Whipple is a freelance animal behaviorist and a contributing editor of Walden Puddle. Since 1990, she has lived in an abandoned cabin outside town, studying the local bear population and being studied by them in turn. Often referred to, by herself and her mother, as the "Jane Goodall of the North Woods," she shares her field notes with us twice monthly, because no scholarly journal will publish them.
THE CENSUS MEETS THE SENSELESS
(from The Walden Puddle Chronicles)
846 words
by the Walden Puddle Writers Uncooperative
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, no one lives in Walden Puddle. Ever since the first national census was taken in 1790, the village has been listed as a "ghost town." This is because every ten years, while the census is being taken, Walden Puddlers flee into the surrounding hills and hide, emerging only when the first snow falls around Labor Day.
Over the years, this has cost Walden Puddle millions of dollars in sorely needed federal aid. Walden Puddlers don't care. All they know is that they're afraid of the government, so whenever the government comes around, they run away.
On the night of March 31, 2010, however, the government paid a surprise visit to Walden Puddle ... in the form of three squadrons of B-1 bombers overflying the town at almost twice the speed of sound, causing sonic booms that rattled windows, dishes, and nerves.
"What the hell was that?" said Mayor Blinkie Duval to her husband, Festus.
"Artillery fire from Copious Falls?" he ventured.
"Must have been," said Blinkie. "We need artillery of our own now. I'll talk to Little Jeffrey Mayfield. He knows arms dealers."
At 7:45 the next morning, 8-year-old Jeffrey Mayfield, the evil Town Genius of Walden Puddle, was sitting in Mayor Duval's office.
"I can get you all the artillery pieces you want, Mayor," he told her, "but my information is that ... for once ... Copious Falls had nothing to do with it."
"No?" said Mayor Blinkie Duval. "Then who did?"
"I can't name my sources," said Jeffrey, "but what we heard last night were sonic booms from B-1 bombers. They were conducting a dry run. I have it on good authority that within a few months, the Air Force plans to start using Walden Puddle as a bombing range."
"Whubba?"
"You ask, when exactly? The actual bombing will start on the Fourth of July."
"Whubba?"
"You ask, what should you do? Call the President. He's the Commander in Chief. Here." Jeffrey scribbled a phone number on scrap of paper. "It's his cellphone. Just don't ever call him during American Idol."
To her amazement, that evening, Mayor Blinkie Duval of Walden Puddle was speaking on the phone to the President of the United States.
"And how is Jeffrey?" asked the President.
"Oh, he's fine, Mr. President," said Mayor Blinkie Duval.
"He's an evil little boy, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is. But he knows how to get things done."
"That's for sure. You didn't hear this from me, Mayor, but Jeffrey runs the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernanke is only an adult figurehead."
"I can believe it."
"We all owe a lot to Jeffrey. Money, that is. Anyhow, how can I help a friend of my little friend?"
"Mr. President. The Air Force is going to use Walden Puddle as a bombing range. Can you stop them?"
"I'll have somebody look into it," said the President. "Give me all your phone numbers."
The next morning, Mayor Blinkie Duval received a phone call from Air Force General Jack D. Ripper IV, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
After a few pleasantries, Mayor Duval came to the point. "General, why in the world did the Air Force decide to use our town as a bombing range?"
"Because the Census Bureau lists Walden Puddle as a ghost town."
"A ghost town? Why?"
"Because according to the Census people, nobody lives there."
"Well, naturally," said Mayor Duval. "When there's a census, we hide in the hills."
"In most cases," said General Ripper, "places listed as ghost towns are protected as historic sites ..."
Mayor Duval breathed a sigh of relief.
"... but not Walden Puddle. Any history that happened there is embarrassing."
"Not all of it," said Mayor Duval defensively.
"For a long time, you were spared, because the Navy had you earmarked as a possible movie location ... for training films about nasty diseases you can get on shore leave ..."
"Ah. Gonorrhea."
"Exactly. But now they do all their safe-sex education on YouTube, so the Navy has no interest in you, and the Air Force has finally been cleared to ..."
"Bomb us?"
"Not with live ordnance," said General Ripper. "Just dummy bombs, with paint balls to mark impact and angle. Then we computer-model the damage."
Mayor Duval breathed a sigh of relief.
"However, each of those dummy bombs weighs 800 pounds."
"Whubba ... whubba ... whubba ... whubba ... whubba ..."
"I understand what you're saying, Mayor," said General Ripper, "but the solution is simple."
"Whubba?"
"The bombing won't start until the Fourth of July. When the Census happens this spring, tell everyone to stay home and cooperate. Then the government will know that people actually live in Walden Puddle."
"Ahhh! ... Whubba!"
"We would call off the bombing, and as a bonus ..."
"Bonuswhubba?"
"Walden Puddle would get federal aid. You folks could have streetlights, and paved roads, and no amoeba in the town pool."
"Ahhh. No amoeba."
"A little chlorine does the trick every time," said General Ripper. "Is there any other way I can help you, Mayor?"
"No. Thank you, General."
"My pleasure, ma'am. Any friend of Little Jeffrey Mayfield's ..."
The next morning, Little Jeffrey Mayfield was sitting in Mayor Blinkie Duval's office again.
"Easy," said Jeffrey. "Just tell them that if they cooperate with the government, God will destroy Copious Falls."
"He will?" said Mayor Blinkie Duval excitedly.
"No. He won't. But if you tell people around here something awful will happen to Copious Falls, they'll do anything you ask."
"I see," said Mayor Duval. She frowned. "Jeffrey. Are you sure God won't destroy Copious Falls?"
"Yes, I'm sure," said Jeffrey. "Now. To recap. What happens when people in Walden Puddle start getting their census questionnaires in the mail this year? Will they fill them out? Will they send them back?"
A look of consternation etched itself upon the face of Mayor Blinkie Duval. "Get their census questionnaires in the mail?" she said. "What are you talking about?"
"Mayor," said Jeffrey, "the government stopped ringing doorbells 50 years ago. You fill out a questionnaire and send it back. I have no idea why ... every 10 years ... everyone in Walden Puddle still runs away and hides in the hills."
"Young man," said Mayor Blinkie Duval archly, "perhaps as you get older, you'll learn to appreciate the value of tradition."
THE TALK OF
WALDEN PUDDLE
For the 40th consecutive year, Art Garfunkel has refused to play the Walden Puddle Festival of the Reasonably Lively Arts.
"I don't think Mr. Garfunkel understands what the Festival is all about," said Arthur Mouton, the Festival's director, over coffee at the Agreeable Doughnut.
Since it began in 1947 ... in compliance with the will of Mr. Arthur D'Artagnan, whose generous $250 bequest remains the core of the Festival's endowment ... the Festival has only invited performers and notables whose first or last name is Arthur, or some variation thereof.
"That's why we call it the Walden Puddle Festival of the Reasonably Lively Arts," said Mr. Mouton.
Over the years, besides the many letters sent to Mr. Garfunkel, invitations have been extended to ... among others ... Arthur Godfrey, Art Linkletter, General Douglas MacArthur, Art Carney, Arthur Murray, Artie Shaw, Bea Arthur, Arthur Kennedy, Arturo Toscanini, Arthur Miller, Arthur Rubinstein, Arthur C. Clarke, Arte Johnson, Art Ditmars, the Beaux Arts Trio, Artie Donovan, Art Metrano, Artie Lange; Ms. Artemis DePuy, an exotic dancer from Milwaukee; the Port Arthur, Texas, high school marching band; the Artichoke Growers Council of America; Mrs. Nora McEwen of Huddersfield, England, a great grandniece of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; and Tony Randall, whose birth name was Arthur Leonard Rosenberg.
All have declined.
Entertainment at this year's Festival of the Reasonably Lively Arts will once again be provided by local people whose first or last name has Arthur or Art in it.
"We didn't have much choice, did we?" said Mr. Mouton.
The Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, based on the legend of King Arthur, will once again be the Festival's featured attraction. It will be performed by members of the Drama Circle at First Unitarian Meeting House, all of whom have filed sworn affidavits that at least one person in their family is named Arthur.
As always, the stage sets for the musical will be done in Art Nouveau.
"I can't understand why outsiders don't get it," said Mr. Mouton. "We explain it very carefully in the invitation letter. It's the Walden ... Puddle ... Festival ... of the ... Reasonably ... Lively ... Arts!"
NEXT POST: April 30, 2010
Special Arbor Day Issue
FEATURING: "I Need a Hug." For 347 years, the Old Dumbarton Maple has straddled the hostile border between Walden Puddle and Copious Falls. Ah, the stories that great tree could tell ... if only someone would listen.
THE BEAR FACTS: Ms. Priscilla Whipple ... flashing back to Haight-Ashbury and her days on the bus with Ken Kesey ... trips out to her daughter Ursula's for some nostalgic tree-hugging.
BONUS ITEM: The great Japanese Bonsai master, Mr. Hiroshi Takahara, was on a very successful lecture tour of North America ... until he came to Walden Puddle.
Editor's Note: You're on Page 3 of Walden Puddle, the most current. For Page 1, which contains Posts 1 through 5, click http://onwaldenpuddle.blogspot.com/. For Page 2, and posts 6 through 10, click http://onwaldenpuddle2.blogspot.com/. If you're new to Walden Puddle, we hope you'll pay a visit to both.
All printed matter in this issue of Walden Puddle copyright © 2010 Walden Puddle Gift Shop. All rights reserved. All photographs reproduced with permission. Original artwork courtesy of Aytsan.
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