Letters to the Editor

I would like to formally suggest that this town be named “Lakeside.” My reasoning: we are by a lake. The name is simple. It is dignified. It would look fine on a sign, on stationery, and on the back of a varsity jacket. It requires no explanation and no pronunciation guidance. I am the 1st Ward alderman and I will be processing my name suggestion through the appropriate civic contest mechanism, which I understand is a paper entry form available at the Tribune’s Main Street office.

I would also like to formally note that if the contest results in a name I cannot pronounce, I will be registering a minority opinion through the council process. This is a democracy. I have rights.

We write in collective support of Alderman Przybylski’s long-standing motion to install a traffic signal at the corner of Commerce Avenue and Mill Street. We are not being political. We are being pedestrian, in the literal sense: we walk through that intersection.

We have had three near-misses this week alone. The factory has now opened. The cars will only increase. We implore the council to act. We also implore the council to stop tabling this motion. It has been tabled enough. It is very well rested. We are not.

Signed: R. Zawacki, B. Holter, P. Wieczorek, J. and N. Marthaler (no relation to the coach), L. Dombrowicz, and one resident who asked to remain anonymous but who also nearly got hit.

I would like to thank Mayor Voss for taking the time on this morning of all mornings to read every name from September 11, 2001. My brother Dennis was in New York that day. He worked in Midtown and walked out over the bridge with a million other people, and he made it home. Not everyone did.

The fact that the mayor of our brand-new town knew that this morning needed to begin with remembrance rather than scissors says something very good about the kind of place this is going to be. We are lucky to be here. I know I say that a lot. I mean it every time.

I would like to clarify, for the public record, that the two sofas in my council office were not provided by Kowalczyk’s Furniture Barn. I want to be very clear about this. One sofa was provided by my wife. The other was left by the previous tenant of the office, whoever that was, and I have no knowledge of its origin beyond the fact that it was there when I arrived and that it is a perfectly comfortable sofa.

I have no professional connection to the furniture industry beyond being its enthusiastic customer, which is a connection that every person in this town shares.

Also: I am not Przybylski. We are different people. We have different last names. Different wards. Different hair. People keep mixing us up in conversation and I find it disrespectful to us both. I have asked that the Tribune take more care with this in future editions. I understand the editor has noted my request.

I visited the library Thursday morning and was told, firmly and politely, to lower my voice. I was not shouting. I was speaking at a level I consider conversational. Ms. Deschamps considers it elevated. We have agreed, politely, to disagree on the threshold.

I want to say, for the record, that the library is excellent. The collection is thoughtful. The cat is large and judges people correctly. I will be back.

I will also be quieter. She made a fair point.

I appreciate the Tribune’s town naming contest. It is a good idea. However, I would like to note that the name “The Internet” is already excellent and that naming the town something else will require all of us to update our stationery, our check designs, and, in my case, the sign on the bakery that I had painted last month and that says “Welcome to The Internet’s Best Bakery.” I did not check with the Tribune before having that sign painted. This is my own fault. I am noting it in this letter for sympathy purposes.

[Editor’s note: This letter was received Monday, September 8. Mrs. Rybicki passed away September 9. We are printing it as submitted, with her family’s permission. — R.B.]

To whoever is running this newspaper: I am ninety years old in January and I have lived in many places and I want to say that the cheese selection at the Piggly Wiggly on Commerce Avenue is very good. I did not expect this. I had been told the town was new and that the grocery might be limited in its offerings. It is not. The Colby Jack is appropriate. The smoked Gouda is better than I expected. I do not yet know the person at the cheese counter by name but I intend to learn it.

I am not very sure about “all the internet business” but the cheese is fine and I am willing to see how things go.

Sincerely, Agnes Marie Rybicki

I worked at the Lakeland Tool & Die plant from 1980 to 2002. I watched that plant close, along with everyone else who worked there, and I have been watching buildings like it close ever since. Twenty-two years of watching that happen, and then today I stood across the street from a new factory on a new morning in a new town, and I watched a ribbon fall, and something happened to me that I have been trying to describe all day.

What I will say in this letter, which I am writing to a newspaper that is also new and that I expect will do right by this place: I am glad to be here. I did not expect to feel this way about something new after so many years of watching good things end. I feel it anyway.

I am also writing a column for this newspaper, which I will say nothing more about here because Rod Black has given me a word limit and this letter is for the letters page, not the column.

My family and I moved here in July: myself, my wife Denise, and our three children (Ryan, 15; Emma, 11; and Sophie, 7). We are, by our best count, the family with the most children currently residing in this town. We are not sure if this distinction means anything. Sophie thinks it means something.

What I want to say is that this is a good place to have brought a family. The people we have met have been genuinely kind. The Piggly Wiggly has a good cereal aisle. The library already has a children’s corner that Sophie has decided is primarily hers, a claim that has not yet been challenged.

We are glad to be here. We hope the feeling is mutual. If it isn’t, Sophie will probably convince you eventually.

I attended Thursday morning’s practice at the Civic Center and I want to say that the Badgers look like a real hockey team. I say this as someone who has watched a lot of hockey and who is not generally given to enthusiasm. Coach Drewicz runs a tight practice. The players appear to understand what is expected of them. The center — Gallucci — is good in the specific way that you can see from the stands without knowing anything technical about hockey.

I am cautiously optimistic. I want it in the record that I said this before opening night. If the season goes well, I will have said it first. If it doesn’t, I’m glad I included the word “cautiously.”

The council tabled the town seal design contest at its inaugural session on Thursday, which I voted for, because we do not yet have an official town name and it is difficult to design a seal for a town with no name. I want to be clear that the tabling was procedural, not a rejection of the concept.

I would like to invite residents of the 2nd Ward to begin thinking about what imagery they would like to see on a town seal. Water is appropriate. The factory may be appropriate. A reference to September 11 and what it means to begin something on that date is worth considering. I have my own ideas. I will share them through the proper process.

The 2nd Ward is meeting on September 18 at the library. Come with opinions. We will have coffee. It will not be from a vending machine. The drip machine has been approved.

I have been made aware, through a reporter whose name I will not mention in this letter because it would give her the satisfaction, of certain references in this week’s Lifestyle section regarding the scent I wore to Thursday’s ceremony.

I would like to say only this: I was attending a public ceremony on the opening day of the town where I live and work. I wore appropriate attire. I used a scented product, as is my right as a citizen of a free country and a man who owns cologne. The quantity was not, in my professional judgment, excessive. The subject is closed.

I am focused on tonight’s game. Thank you.

I came to this job from a career in occupational therapy. In occupational therapy, you spend a lot of time figuring out what “better” means for a specific person, not for a category of person, but for this one person in front of you with this one set of needs and this one set of goals. The work is never finished, not really, because the person keeps changing and the definition of better keeps changing with them.

The model fitting work feels like that to me. The model never finishes learning the person, and the person never finishes having things they need. I find this excellent. I am very glad to be here.

A mayor should not write letters to newspapers in his own town. I am aware of this. This letter is an exception, offered on the specific occasion of a first edition.

What Rod Black and his staff have done in this newspaper is not decoration. It is infrastructure. A town without a newspaper is a town that cannot see itself. The Tribune gives this town a way to see itself — accurately, critically, with the kind of loving skepticism that good journalism requires. Rod Black’s column has already made me uncomfortable in three places. This is exactly correct.

I am grateful for this newspaper. I will not write to it again unless I need to correct a factual error or unless something in the Miss Bitty column requires a response.

It almost certainly will.

Respectfully, Mayor Gerald Voss