I believe it was Harold Taft who said it best. Ol' Harold was an old school weather broadcaster from Texas. He was a native of Oklahoma. The weather in those parts can bring even a tough man to his knees. He had been in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He had went to the University of Chicago to actually "study" meteorology. When I listened to him he was the weatherman in Dallas, Texas on KXAS television news. Toward the end of his career, I heard him interviewed on another station. He was asked why he never smiled much in 40 years of broadcasting weather. He said simply, "Within the listening range of my station, some poor farmer, builder, homeowner, business person, or someone is being ruined by the weather. It just does not seem appropriate to joke about the weather."
I don't know why I remember that one comment among millions I have listened to over the decades of listening to radio as I work and travel. None-the-less, it has always stuck with me. This winter hands us a tough December. For three weekends in a row we have struggled with the storms - ice, snow, blizzards, rain, wind, cold. Each night Southern Wisconsin's weather people giggle at us as they miss-predict the weather. They tell stupid jokes and quip about useless anecdotes to the weather. This past week we heard ad nauseam about the pending dusting to come this past weekend. Down where I work, just after midnight on Sunday morning as we all struggled to get the Sunday edition of the newspaper out to the readers, I swept the five inches of "dusting" off the back of my delivery truck in the biting wind.
I look forward with bated breath to the next "dusting" which is pending in the next day or so. You well-paid weather people are the only characters I know - minus politicians - that can perennially get things wrong and return to work the next day with same said stupid grin still planted righteously on your pie holes. Would it be too much to ask that if you are a weather person and you continually forecast the weather wrong, you at least wipe the stupid grin off your face - you know who you are?! Perhaps peeping out the window once in a while would not hurt either.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Sergeant Andrew L. Bossert, 24, of Fountain City, Wisconsin who was killed when a car bomb detonated near his work area in Ramadi, Iraq, on March 7, 2005. He was in Company C, 44th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Bossert's unit had spent over two years in South Korea before being sent to Iraq. Bossert arrived in Iraq with his engineer battalion in August, 2004. One of the unit's jobs was to search for buried explosives at night. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described Andrew as a tall, muscular man that had played basketball for Fountain City. He also liked riding motorcycles. He had spent a semester at the University of Wisconsin-Stout after graduating from Fountain City High School. The Journal Sentinel went on to say Andrew's family said he had hopes of studying architecture after serving in the Army. Bossert's wife is from Russia and they met in South Korea and had been married for two years. Sergeant Bossert is the 36th service member from Wisconsin to die in Iraq since spring, 2003.
3,894 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
464 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
28,661 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1,821 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
82 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
6 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
124 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
14 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
