PLATTEVILLE, April 8 — I once wrote here or somewhere that I would crawl on my hands and knees to vote.

I did not crawl on my hands or knees (I still have both of those), but it was a crawl to get from my house to the Municipal Building to cast an absentee ballot last week and keep my 42-year streak of voting in elections intact. It didn’t occur to me to request an absentee ballot until my walk in usual Wisconsin “spring” weather — gray, blustery and damp — to get to the pre-election polling place.

This latest medical experience of mine has revealed still more realities of less than optimum mobility — about, for instance, the effects of someone with a walker (I assume walking on crutches would have similar effects) vs. wind beyond a breeze in his face, and the effects of non-flat terrain, including such obstacles as parking lots needing repair, the trench between lanes of Chestnut Street (and becoming a human traffic obstacle), the bumps at street crosswalks, uneven sidewalk plates, wood chips, fallen twigs, etc. Perhaps you never thought about City Park being on a hill, or at least the northwestern corner of City Park being higher in altitude than the east side of City Park. If you, say, had to walk through City Park, go in the handicap-accessible entrance, go up the elevator to get to the Council Chambers, go back down and then exit, then look up at said northwestern corner, with the wind in your face … let’s just say you’ll be gassed by the time you get home, and strangely enough more so than when you took a similar walk to shoot the latest anti-Trump protest and a Grant County Humane Society fundraiser six days earlier.

And inside the Municipal Building … If you wondered why there are only two candidates for two Platteville Common Council positions, perhaps the story on the East Main Street project on page 6A this week will illuminate things for you. The estimated cost of the project has nearly doubled due to a similar experience to buying a house without a home inspection or a vehicle without having a mechanic look at it first and then discovering a cascading list of things gone or going wrong. One might ask candidates for federal office this fall why those federal grants every municipality or school district wants come with enough strings to double the cost of a project, leaving a set of unpalatable choices — borrow more money, cut planned spending on infrastructure projects, pay for the whole project yourself, or abandon the project and hope the culvert doesn’t collapse.

“Nonprofit” misnomer: The abrupt announcement by the national Ruby’s Pantry organization that it was shutting down caught, among others, its host organizations by surprise and in confusion given the timing of the announcement. Ruby’s Pantry is a “nonprofit,” which is an inaccurate term because no organization, whether it pays income taxes or not (which is really what a “nonprofit” is, as opposed to an income tax-paying business), can afford to spend more money than it takes in for very long.

The obvious short-term culprit is the recent jump in energy prices, which we should have learned just before the Great Depression (if not earlier this decade) affects the cost of everything transported by tractor–trailer. Another less obvious culprit could be increasing efficiency of food processors that has the side effect of reducing the amount of surplus food available for food pantries. Notice as well that regardless of national media reports about the state of the economy that the demand for what food pantries provide never seems to decrease.

Foul: At the risk of igniting another Letters disagreement, I am not a fan of the veto of our current governor that allows the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association to avoid the state Open Meetings Law and Open Records Law. The governor should explain how an organization that sponsors regular-season and postseason athletic events in buildings paid for by our property and income taxes, with coaches, officials and game staff also paid by our property and income taxes, nonetheless doesn’t use public funds and therefore should not be subject to the same open-government requirements as school districts. If you run into a candidate for governor, ask him or her how he or she feels about the WIAA as a “private” and “voluntary” organization that actually is neither.

A weather oxymoron: Platteville has had three record highs in the past few weeks — 64 Feb. 16, 69 March 9 and 82 March 30. We also have already had two waves of severe weather since the start of March. But does this seem like a warm spring to you? Ask someone freezing outside at a high school spring sports game or event. To borrow Mark Twain’s observation about San Francisco summers, the coldest winter you will spend will be a Wisconsin “spring.”