I had my first wildflower sighting of the season today, just before Easter. It's good old Caltha palustris, better known as the Marsh Marigold.

As their name implies, these plants thrive in wet places. These ones were nestled against rocks and logs at the trickling beginnings of a stream on the family farm. Every year I am amazed to find these flowers blossoming almost as soon as the last snow melts, flowering while the trees are still bare, and shedding their petals for the season before the other plants have gotten two inches from the ground. I think I can understand their impatience. As it is I'm bogged down with books and papers for school, but I wish I could join these marigolds in rising out of the muck and catching some early sunshine. Alas—I'll just have to wait for May, like all the ordinary flowers.

March is the most hideous month of the year in Wisconsin. When the snow melts, it reveals Winter's dirty secrets. Everything that Winter had killed, frozen, and buried now reappears; it thaws and rots in the first warmth of spring like a corpse unearthed and set before the sun. The grass on every hillside turns a dull and sickly yellow, the branches reach out as bare as bones, and every footstep is mired in mud. It is all for the sake of a coming ressurection, and soon the fields and forests will live again in splendor. It just takes time. Spring will not be hurried in making its miracles. Meanwhile, even March conceals a trace of beauty for those curious enough to look. As evidence...

I. Snow shrinks before a blue sky near the forest's edge, where grass will soon be greening:

II. Last year's apples still hang in their leafless branches, shriveled and rotting. These might not put Snow White to sleep, but they would probably give her a stomachache:

III. Sunlight pierces the woods, undaunted by as-yet leafless tree-limbs, and maple trunks stand like the pillars of an ancient ruin:

IV. Moss grows at the foot of an old stump while melting snow glimmers in the sunlight:

V. Boulders stand by while a stream of meltwater sweeps beneath sheets of thawing ice:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am taking a Creative Writing course at school this semester. We've just finished the half of the class dedicated to poetry, and I thought I would take the occasion to share one of the my poems. Thanks to my classmates for their helpful suggestions and encouragement. With no further ado:

Poem to a Kleenex

At last you slipped into your white dress
and rose to join us, ready, smiling
when I picked you up and pulled you in
until finally we came so close
you felt my breath against your chin.

You'd waited forever for this, watching
companions get plucked up by young suitors,
one, two, another over your head.
Was the bottom of the pile so bad
in the meantime, when you were cushioned
by friends? I don't know what tissues
get up to when left to their own devices,
but I bet you had fun in that box
when no one was looking. Maybe you miss those days
now, but I know you dreamed for better
things. Then I came along (as if I was your dream!),
and maybe for a moment we felt like forever—

but there was barely time to blink before
I tossed you to the trash can,
soggy and spent, crumpled and crushed.
I know my sorry doesn't mean much
when you're at the bottom of the bin,
covered in gum wrappers and banana peels.
Your new neighbors will never know whose nose
needed you, and when the trash collector
comes, he won't care whose tears
you dried.

Political leaders have been debating for months over how to deal with the banking-induced financial crisis currently seizing the world, but controversy over banking is nothing new. Wisconsin's history demonstrates this vividly. In 1846, as Wisconsin was preparing for statehood, a political convention met in Madison to author the state constitution. The draft this convention created never took effect—citizens overwhelmingly rejected it in an 1847 referendum, and statehood was delayed until a second constitution was approved the next year. The first proposal, voters thought, was simply too radical. Two of its radical provisions dealt with debt and banking.

Banking provisions in the rejected 1846 Wisconsin Constitution. (Digitized by the Wisconsin Historical Society)

One section of the rejected constitution, the Homestead Provision, was designed to protect family homes from being seized to cover debt. An even more radical proposal, Article 10, actually banned any bank from doing business within Wisconsin's borders.

The Homestead Provision, actually based on provisions in the earlier Texas Constitution, would have exempted the family home and forty acres, to a maximum value of one thousand dollars (then a substantial sum), from being seized to repay contractual debts. The second constitution replaced this with a more vague statement exempting only "a reasonable amount of property" from seizure. Currently, Wisconsin law provides an exemption for property worth up to $40,000, but it does not apply to mortgages or debts incurred to purchase or improve the home.

The idea to forbid banking in Wisconsin was proposed by Edward G. Ryan, a Democrat elected to the constitutional convention from Racine. The convention approved his proposal by a 79-27 vote, and the article they passed read like this:

Article X: On Banks and Banking

Section I: There shall be no bank of issue within this state.

Section II: The legislature shall not have power to authorize or incorporate, by any general or special law, any bank or other institution having any banking power or privilege, or to confer upon any corporation, institution, person or persons any banking power or privilege.

Section III: It shall not be lawful for any corporation, institution, person or persons within this state, under any pretense or authority, to make or issue any paper money, note, bill, certificate, or other evidence of debt whatever intended to circulate as money.

Section IV: It shall not be lawful for any corporation within this state under any pretense or authority, to exercise the business of receiving deposits of money, making discounts, or buying or selling bills of exchange, or to do any other banking business whatever.

Section V: No branch or agency of any bank or banking institution of the United States, or of any State or Territory within or without the United States shall be established or maintained within this state.

Section VI: It shall not be lawful to circulate within this state, after the year one thousand eight hundred and forty seven, any paper money, note, bill, certificate or other evidence of debt whatever intended to circulate as money, issued without this state, of any denomination less than ten dollars, or after the year one thousand eight hundred and forty nine, of any denomination less than twenty dollars.

Section VII: The legislature shall, at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, and from time to time thereafter as may be necessary, enact adequate penalties for the punishment of all violations and evasions of the provisions of this article.¹

Wisconsin's politicians were willing to ban banking because they had lived through decades of bank-related economic turmoil. In 1816, the U.S. Congress had delegated management of federal finance to a private corporation, the Second Bank of the United States, but in 1819 and 1834, the bank's policies were blamed for causing recessions. The congressional charter for the bank expired in 1836, but in its stead, unregulated "wildcat banks" began offering easy loans and printing money, as was legal at the time. Eager for profit, the banks expanded rapidly, making too much money available far too quickly. The resulting inflation triggered a depression that lasted from 1837 to 1843, unparalleled in severity until the Great Depression. When Wisconsin's founding politicians met to write the constitution in 1846, these events were still fresh in mind.

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Time to Get Reading...

My long winter break has come to an end, and school has begun again. I fear this means I won't be making regular posts here for a while. Altogether, my professors have assigned more than two-dozen textbooks this semester. It's a good thing that I like to read.

Despite the excessive classwork, I hope to continue writing here occasionally over the next several weeks. There are plenty of leftover topics buzzing about in my head from last month that haven't been written up, and if I don't have time to pursue things unrelated to school, I may try to adapt a few of my class projects this semester into posts here—provided that I can make them reasonably interesting. At the very least, you're bound to see a few samples of what I do in my new creative writing course. All updates, however, will be rather few and far between.

If you haven't already, you might want to subscribe to the Acceity RSS feed with your favorite aggregator (Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo!, or whatever) so that you are sure to get updates soon after they're made. That way, you won't have to check this site day after weary day wondering when the next post will come. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll be back with something new to think about before too long.