Actually it's not Dom Salvia, it's Matt Rothschild.
I am guest hosting for Dom who's on vacation today and I guest hosted yesterday as well.
It's always a pleasure to be able to
Be behind the mic here at Civic Media, and I want to encourage you, the listener, to call or text at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-75 Civic.
And now I'm delighted to have, as our next guest, an old friend, Dave Zirin.
He's the sports editor at The Nation magazine, a columnist for The Progressive.
I had invited him to join The Progressive way back in the day.
And he took me up on that invitation.
I was glad to note he hosts the edge of sports podcast and edge of sports with Dave's iron on the real news.
He's also the author of about a dozen books, including a couple on Muhammad Ali, one he co-wrote with John Carlos, the Olympic track star and dissenter.
He has a book out on Colin Kaepernick.
He's got a book called A People's History of Sports, modeled after Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
And you're still working on
your biography on how it's in is that right?
Hello, Matt.
Yes, I am.
I can't lie.
It's taken a detour because of certain world events you might have heard about over the last several months.
A little hard to concentrate on getting that draft in, but you know, there you go.
That's what happens.
I have a feeling Howard wouldn't want to be holed up not knowing what was going on in the world either.
No, Howard Zinn would be a fighter to the end as he was.
And you know, I wanted to get you on because of all the people I follow on Facebook, you've been the one who's impressed me the most with your understanding of what's at stake right now at this moment under Trump and your utter impatience in disgust with Democrats who don't get it and who aren't speaking up and your insistence on the need for public protests against Trump.
You were telling me right before we came on the air that you were just doing something that you wanted to report out.
So take it over.
Mike is yours.
Yeah, this is breaking news.
Absolutely.
People may have heard about the former NFL player, Chris Cluey, the punter, former punter who out in Huntington Beach in a video that went internationally vile.
He told off the very MAGA Huntington Beach City Council
and then proceeded to perform an act of civil disobedience.
He was carried out by police.
And that image of him calling out that city council of saying, the red hat is the new swastika.
It became something that actually inspired people all over the place.
Well, just got news that Chris Cluey, I might as well just read his blue sky post, just got fired being a freshman football coach.
If you want to know what MAGA does to
They don't care about what helps people because the school is certainly not going to find an ex-NFL player willing to coach there at that level.
They only care about trying to hurt people.
And I'm just telling you that there is no level of retribution too small and no act of resistance too narrow that they won't try to get you for because this is now a government built.
on the very prospects and the very principles of non-stop endless retribution.
So even the people who are too principled to actually join them, instead, what do you get instead?
You get people who are fired like all the hosts at MSNBC, you get people fired like Chris Cluey, or you get people who just remain silent because of a very understandable fear factor.
And I think getting over that fear
is so important right now, particularly for people with the privilege to be able to do it.
People, you know, without young children, people who aren't immigrants, people who don't have police records, people who are able to do it need to be able to make dissent as visible as possible right now.
The stakes are so high in that regard.
And I'm just glad to be on your show, Matthew, because I mean, you're a real one.
And I mean, you raise the flag of descent in times where the winds that are back and the winds at our face, although the hailstorms we're experiencing right now, I do wonder every day what even Howard Zinn would have to say with his boundless optimism about the current state of things.
Yeah, you know, you could smell a fascist.
A mile away, Howard's in good.
And, you know, and I smelled Trump about 10 years ago.
I thought when he came down that escalator, you know, blaming Mexicans that this was a fascist and people were telling me, well, he's not a fascist.
He doesn't have a right wing Goon squad.
Of course, he has a right wing Goon squad.
No.
with the proud boys and the old keepers and folks like that.
And then they were saying he doesn't have an ideology.
Well, he does have an ideology.
It's hyper nationalism.
It's racism.
It's sexism.
And he and it's a sadism.
And yeah, yeah,
I'll give you one more box for the folks who say, well, it's not really fascist or whatever.
One of the compelling arguments that he was not a fascist back in 2016 was, wait a minute, he wants to rule the state.
He's not trying to deconstruct the state and create something else in its place.
And I was like, okay, that's a reasonable argument.
I'll think about that.
But what's happening now?
The deconstruction of what they call the administrative state.
I keep thinking of Steve Bannon's words, that drug-addled idiot back in 2015, when he said that he saw himself as a modern-day Lenin.
because he had read Len's famed text, State and Revolution, because he said, then said it, you can't take over the existing state, you need to smash it.
Well, we're seeing a lot of smashing going on right now.
And let's talk about why they're doing it.
They're doing it because the government is one of only two institutions, the only other institution other than labor unions that really can stand up to corporate power.
And they don't want any institution to stand up
to corporate power.
They want to be free to exploit workers, contaminate the environment, put out dangerous consumer products, and make money hand over fist doing that.
And to the extent that they can get rid of any regulation, they're going to be able to do that more.
And they want the government to be a piggy bank for rich folks.
And that's what they're doing right now with this tax cut.
And so it's a grab, it's a grab, break and grab.
And it's also part of an ideology that we've heard articulated clearly from Ronald Reagan and then on that everything public is bad and everything private is good.
And I think the American public is waking up to the fact that, holy smokes, there are some public things we really like.
We really like Medicaid for our parents who are in nursing homes.
We really like our national parks and we don't want to have them be shut down.
We really like the fact that our
fathers who fought in wars or were in the service, get a VA health care.
So that's what it's coming down to this whole role.
Do we have a government that is gonna serve the people or is it just right there to serve the billionaires?
Because the billionaires are running the show right now.
I mean, the biggest billionaire in the world is right there in the cabinet meeting.
And that's the part that sort of gives the game away and makes it so naked because...
I almost don't even want to say Trump is running a fascist regime because he's not running it.
I mean, all you had to see was the cabinet meeting the other day and Musk really standing over everybody in an idiotic t-shirt and a hat.
uh talking to everybody like they were children condescending to them and if you see they're all looking at musk with like this strange smiling look at their face except for robert kennedy jr who's probably upset more people aren't dying so he had a sad look on his face uh and then you had donald trump though looking down to the side at his phone that's the photo that i got out of that all right grandpa's got his phone and elon musk is running the show
and everybody else is a scared toad.
And let's talk about those scared toads for a second.
We're talking about reality show hosts, world wrestling entertainment impresarios, drunk rapists running the defense departments.
I mean, people with collective intelligence that's just subterranean, the mediocre.
the white, the almost entirely male.
I mean, that's what this restoration is also really about.
It's a restoration against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which they have been going after for 60 plus years.
And one last thing is you mentioned Reaganism.
And I think that's so important that we understand that historical continuity of Reagan saying like the worst words you could ever hear are on the government and I'm here to help.
and everybody laughs and whatnot.
It's like, first of all, you want to say, okay, well, let's see how we do without FEMA then.
Let's see how we do without funding to fight these fires.
But Reagan's revolution was something that was still analog.
What they have today is a experience going back, I don't know how long you want to put it, 10 years, 15 years, of Silicon Valley venture capital, stripping companies
for parts.
And that's the mentality.
I mean, to put it in more crude form, remember in the movie Goodfellas where, you know, Henry Hill describes basically, you know, pulling every cent out of that bar he was co-owning.
And then when it's done, what do you do?
You set it on fire for the insurance, no fuss, no must.
That's how they're treating the United States of America right now.
It is to be strip-mind.
They're picking the meat off the bones, bane capital style.
and then they'll be on their way.
Yeah, it's been fun.
Who knows
who they are?
Spurriats, Western Europe.
I mean, it looks like Musk has his sights on Germany next.
Maybe it's Canada, although Trump actually seemed cowed today about a military takeover of Canada because Wayne Gretzky, apparently.
I chided him about it.
I mean, the ego is so intense.
I sometimes think that's the only thing that would actually get through to him.
Like if Herschel Walker said, gee, maybe some of these DIEI programs are good, that might actually move the needle.
Yeah, it's the combination of the narcissism and the fascism that is so frightening and also the hedge fund style robbery that's going on.
But you mentioned it's restoration against the civil rights area.
I also think it's restoration against the New Deal.
It's finally, you know, the Koch brothers dreamed to overturn the new deal and even for some others to overturn the progressive era.
And, you know, they probably want to get rid of the food and drug administration before they're done with all this.
And so-
Mr. The Parks as well, the hallmark of Teddy Roosevelt's time in office, National Parks, the government role in preserving nature, done, absolutely done as any sort of, as the government seeing themselves as any sort of steward.
of any sort of true natural life in this country, because hey, there might be oil in Yosemite, and that actually matters more.
And the Kennedy Center, which has seen its ticket sales drop by 50% since the mega takeover of idiots from Fox News directing the cultural direction of Trump's golden age in America.
Nobody's going there anymore already.
Show's being canceled left and right.
I mean, what, in a year it's going to be, what, a casino, maybe?
Could we?
You know, the Trump Center maybe?
Speaking with Dave Zirin of the nation, he's the sports editor.
They're tremendous activists too.
I remember the upside down flag that some of the parks people put at Yosemite.
We need to see more of that.
And we'll be back in just a minute to talk more with Dave Zirin on how to resist.
You're listening to the Dom Selvia Show on Matt Rothschild subbing in right here.
Matt Rothschild with you.
You're listening to the Dom Salvia Show on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Dom's on vacation today.
You can join the conversation here, 855-752-4842.
That's 855-755-CIVIC.
My guest this half hour is an old friend of mine named Dave Zyron.
And for those of you who are not familiar with him, it's Z-I-R-I-N.
Look him up on Google.
Z-I-R-I-N.
And he's got a lot of great books that he's published.
He's the political editor at The Nation Magazine.
He writes for The Progressive Magazine.
He's a tremendous analyst of politics, not just sports, and an activist to the core.
Dave, we were talking at break about people were saying, well, we never knew it would get this bad.
We couldn't have seen this coming.
How do you respond to that?
Well, honestly, I'm of two minds about it.
On the one hand, you know, they weren't just breadcrumbs.
They were massive loaves of bread as to what this administration was gonna be and what they were gonna do.
All of the threats of retribution, all of the threats of how brutal they were, I mean, to even just say, we're gonna deport 10 to 20 million people.
I mean, the amount of violence that is presaging to do something like that.
I mean, that was all out there for people to see and for people to judge, for people to notice, or for people to not notice.
That being said, the musk piece of this, musk in charge of the government, musk destroying the parks, musk being utterly unaccountable, musk acting in a way that's so blatantly unconstitutional.
That part, I feel like,
was not spelled out necessarily in the way that it could have been.
I mean, there were a couple of posters that had Musk and people like Tulsi Gabbard and Kennedy Jr.
That certainly is something that we should have seen and many did see a million miles away.
Just the monstrosity that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
just literally has led one of the most horrifying lives in the history of this country.
And I know that he bears that name, strikes.
so many people right to their heart, right to their core.
But to take it back to what I was saying, it's like people, on one hand, didn't see it coming, but I think the current formation of how it's operating, of Musk standing over the cabinet and talking about, yeah, we sort of fired the Ebola people, we're trying to deal with that, that is something that certainly was not put on the table, in my opinion, before the election.
And Trump daring any cabinet member to object to anything that Elon Musk had done, and then everybody laughs and claps like they're, you know, the most sycophantic people ever.
And they're cabinet members.
So it's just, it was embarrassing that whole performance
yesterday.
Yeah, honor is not a big thing.
A big trade among thieves we're finding out.
No, in this, I mean, he did one of these.
charades the last time he was in office where everyone complimented him but there was a defense department secretary who wanted to go along now everybody goes along and they go along because they've made their pact with the devil or they're part of the devil they're part of the devil movement so we only have about four minutes left here's the big question how do we save our democracy
how do we save our democracy i mean to me it's like how do you how do you resuscitate
something that's without a pulse at this point.
I think we need to rebuild something that's actually more democratic than what we had before.
Because if we don't raise people's aspirations about what this world could be, we're never going to get them to fight.
I don't think we're going to get people to fight for Joe Biden's America.
That is not going to inspire masses of people to fight back.
We need to raise people's aspirations as to what the world could be or we're never going to get out of the starting gate.
Yeah, just to run as the party of the status quo or the status quo ante, which is what Kamala Harris did, you know, she had a coalition from the Cheneys to Bernie Sanders and people just thought, well, that's that's the establishment and Trump was able to run as the anti-establishment.
People understand.
I mean, you listen to Bernie and you listen to Trump, both people are saying the system's rigged.
It's just that Bernie was given a completely different answer.
than the one Trump gives.
Trump gives, you know, I'm the only one who can solve your problems and I'm gonna go attack everybody you hate and you don't have to worry and Bernie's talking about, you know, socialism or at least New Deal Democrats.
And who other than Bernie are you listening to as an elected official?
Bernie or AOC, anybody else coming to mind who's speaking up in the way that needs to be heard?
Well, I gotta be honest, no.
because I want them to emerge.
I'm not one of those people who's like, boo, Democrats, 100%.
But I look at what they're saying right now, and even people who are amazing and loquacious and taking no crap, I'm thinking of somebody like Jasmine Crockett, there's no accountability for what the Democratic Party did not do that got us to this point.
That's what I'm waiting to.
AOC is giving us some of that and I appreciate it.
Sanders going to working class areas in the Midwest and speaking to overflow crowds.
So that I appreciate very much.
But until we have a mass of spokespeople who look at Hakeem Jeffries and say, no, you can't go on Stephen A. Smith's radio show.
This just happened yesterday and say, well, the far left hates me as much as the far
right.
So I
must be doing something right.
You know, that old saw.
Until we have people standing up to that mentality, I think it's just hot air, frankly.
And how are we not seeing the Democratic Party using social media to have these federal workers, fired federal workers on 24 hours a day, seven days a week?
It's so obvious to do something like that.
It actually raises the question, why aren't they doing it?
And why aren't they doing it?
Well, because they're a section of the party.
I think actually agrees with what's happening.
And they don't want to push back against that.
A huge section of the party openly, Hakeem Jeffries very openly, wants to make up with the tech bros.
They don't want to fight for campaign finance reform.
They want the billionaire money.
Hakeem Jeffries in the middle of this crisis went to Silicon Valley as he put it to mend defenses.
I mean, can you imagine the laugh that they had once he left the building?
Why do we need to mend fences with you?
We might not even have to have elections anymore.
They're
in the White House.
Yeah, just a strategy that's just repugnantly inane.
So those are two of the big reasons, I think.
And I also think another reason, too, Matt, is that you look... I saw this statistic the other day that the Democratic Congress' approval by Democratic voters is down 54 points.
Yeah, we need more leadership.
Unfortunately, we're out of time.
We're out of time.
Dave Siren, though, is a person you need to look up.
Z-I-R-I-N.
Check him out.
We'll be right back on the Dom Salvia Show.
Hey, welcome back to the Dom Salvia Show.
I'm Matt Rothschild, serving in for Dom today.
He's on vacation.
You're listening all across the Civic Media Radio Network, and Jess P.S.
in the booth has been super helpful to me today, just as she was yesterday.
So thank you, Jess.
Quite welcome.
And you can join the conversation here at 855-752-4842, 855-75 Civic.
I want to thank Dave Zierning, who is just on, who is just a tremendous writer.
and a tremendous voice, very important voice at this moment.
Again, you spell his name, Z-I-R-I-N, and I recommend that you look him up.
For this last half hour, we're gonna do a little bit of shifting, easing up on the politics so we can talk about another of my passions, and that's birds.
Anyone who's been listening to me on the Civic Media Radio Network or knows me at all, knows that I'm a crazy birdwatcher, and that's a redundancy, because we're all a little bit crazy.
I saw this article in the Journal Sentinel the other day about the oldest Golden Eagle in North America, which was found right here in Wisconsin.
So I wanted to find someone who could talk to me about that.
The group that found the Golden Eagle is called the Raptor Resource Project.
And I've got one of their staffers on the show right now to talk about this discovery.
His name is Jeff Warrell.
Jeff, thanks so much for joining the show.
Thanks for having
me on.
Tell me a little bit about the Raptor Research Project and the Driftless Golden Eagle Study, especially.
Sure.
The Raptor Resource Project is a non-profit and we specialize, of course, in Raptors.
We were founded about roughly 20 years ago.
and our executive director is followed by the name of John Howe, and we oversee several aspects of raptor work.
We, as an example, monitor all the peregrine falcons on the Mississippi River from old, roughly,
kind of up towards the cities down towards Iowa.
Every spring, we banned roughly 80 to 90 chicks.
We take blood samples from those birds for analysis, both DNA and immunology and virology analysis, the whole kitten caboodle, if you will.
Well, they've made it the peregrine falcons.
Excuse me.
They've made a tremendous comeback.
They were almost going extinct in the seventies from DDT, right?
Absolutely.
In fact, that was our start.
Our founder, a fellow by the name of Bob Anderson, was a crazy falconer who took it upon himself to start a project of releasing peregrines along the Mississippi Valley Corridor.
And he was extremely successful.
And we taught other people how to do it.
and we continued doing it ourselves and we did it up and down the Mississippi River and we assisted people in other parts of North America on their efforts and we put cameras on the Peregrine Ness which started kind of hand-in-hand with the cameras that we put on Eagle Ness.
So another big arm of the Raptor Resource Project is education.
We have high
definition 4k cameras on an eagle nest right now broadcasting live 24-7 you will see chicks pipping and hatching because our cameras can come in that close and we have several of them on the nest so we've got many different angles to choose from and we have taken some of the most
incredible footage of bald eagles, wild bald eagles, hatching chicks and caring for them.
I think I've seen some of that video, Jeff, at Wild Birds Unlimited in Middleton.
I go in to buy my bird seed and they've got live bird cams going on, sometimes that those bald eagle cameras working.
So it is quite a sight to see.
And we've got peregrine falcons right here, you know,
three blocks from where I'm sitting here in downtown Madison at the Madison Gas and Electric facility.
There's a peregrine falcon nest every year there.
But let's go to the golden eagles.
Tell me about this driftless golden eagle study, because you know, a lot of people in Wisconsin, we see bald eagles, but most people don't know that there are golden eagles in Wisconsin in the winter.
So talk to me about that.
Sure.
So there are two separate groups of
Golden Eagles in North America, Eastern and Western, and they are, as many species are, divided by the Mississippi River.
Our group of goldens goes all the way up to the Arctic, 2,500 miles straight north of where I'm sitting, above Hudson's Bay, to breed.
And in the fall, they take two different migration paths.
One goes down along the East Coast,
the Appalachian Mountains.
One comes down here to the Driflus area.
So we're pretty special.
We have our own distinct population of Golden Eagles that winter here in Wisconsin in the Driflus in the winter.
What kind of numbers are we talking about?
How many Golden Eagles are in Wisconsin or across the river in Iowa?
Well, yes, that would include southeastern Minnesota, Northwestern Iowa, the entire driftless zone.
It's hard to put an exact number on it, but I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 birds total in all of the driftless.
The issue is with most people, even intermediate level birders, is that they
Goldens and juvenile bald eagles look very very similar.
They're big dark birds, right?
So lots of times you're looking at a golden eagle and someone says oh no, that's an immature bald and That's happened to me many times and it's kind of funny because I'm the co-league researcher on a multi-year golden eagle study and I've been doing this work
for oh geez how long has it been been about 13 years in total since I started my insanity of chasing golden eagles every winter
and people are correcting you or they are assuming you're wrong when you're actually right
yes they're assuming i'm wrong when i'm actually right and it's kind of cute because you know it gives me an opportunity to then you know let them know and explain
what a golden eagle is and be able to hopefully, even in that conversation, see the difference live.
You know, look at and point things out in the golden eagle.
And what are the easy ways to identify and know the difference between the two when you see them up in the sky and you're looking up and all you see is their underside.
Well, the easiest way, and this is right across the board,
A golden eagle, whether they're a first-year bird or an old 33-year-old bird, their armpit, what you would consider their armpit area is black.
It's very dark.
There'll be no white in there.
But on an immature bald, they'll be white inside their armpit, right up close to it, in it, in and around it.
Different levels of white on immature bald, but it is...
you know, there's going to be white in there and that's a boom, a jet definite giveaway.
And also just looking at their silhouette, the Golden Eagle has a very refined head and beak, very small in comparison to the big honkin' beak that a bald eagle has and their big old head and that long beak that they have, even up high in the sky, you can see that big Jimmy Durrani.
be sticking out, you know, and that those two things are the quickest to look at and notice and be able to see the difference.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right, though, that a lot of people confuse the two and my brother.
who lives out in the state of Washington keeps telling me there's two bald eagles and a golden eagle in the tree and I'm thinking to myself I don't think it's likely to be a golden eagle but I've gotten over correcting people at this point.
Tell me about this old golden eagle that was that you guys trapped in and looked at its banding in Wisconsin.
Right, so as part of our project, we target adult mating pairs or what we're really going for in our trapping efforts.
And we had spotted a pair in a valley working and living.
the adults when they come down as a pair tend not to drift very far.
They hunt in roughly a two-square-mile area.
Yeah, they'll go take a little day journey maybe 20 miles away, but they come right back, roost in the same spot, things like that.
But we're targeting a pair.
We got this male.
I'll be darned.
He's got a band on him.
Well, of course, we can run that band and get the information on when it was banded.
And we found it was banded 33 years ago.
So after January 1, their age clips one year doesn't really matter, you know, when they were born in May or June or April, the year on them clips.
So when he was, they looked at the year and figured it was 32.
but it's actually after January 1st, so he's officially 33 years old.
And how'd you trap it?
So we have specialized bonettes.
So think of a large circle with hinges, spring hinges in the center, and very thin aluminum poles that you're able to pull back and activate those springs.
And there's a nylon net attached to those
Long aluminum rods and it's a nine-foot diameter very large net.
We put a bait in the center of that net
and was the bait
Oh live turkeys.
Oh, wow.
So we use eastern wild turkeys We it's been and that's the difficult thing to talk about to the public that we use live turkeys but these fellas and gals are
I can't even begin to express how smart they are and how easily spooked they are and what they will eat and what they won't eat.
They won't eat anything dead that's frozen.
Sorry, we're not gonna touch it.
We could trap, we could have 50 traps out and be there all day long and we'd be lucky if in the entire season we got one.
Cause it's not unheard of.
but it isn't really natural for them.
You see the difference between a golden eagle and a bald eagle is not only the way they look, but the way they live.
Bald eagles eat a lot of carrion, a lot of dead stuff.
Fish eaters.
Fish and carrion is their basic diet.
Golden eagles, on the other hand, they like dinner warm and kicking.
They
are a
high level predator.
The animals down here that they hunt range from gray squirrels, fox squirrels, rabbits, turkeys, and deer.
The number one thing that it seems like they lean towards the most are turkeys, wild turkeys.
And they've worked incredibly well as bait.
Believe it or not, we have turkeys that have helped us catch four golden eagles and are still alive.
Because
as
soon as they come in, the net is controlled by a remote control device.
And we have live streaming webcams on the net.
So we can't be anywhere around.
If they see our cars and they smell a rat, they won't come in.
So we have to drive a distance away.
I mean, they know who we are.
It's uncanny.
They see something different.
There's a car there.
Nope.
uh-uh not coming in so we drive a distance away we're looking through the cameras as soon as that eagle comes in these camera or these remotes have a distance carry distance about roughly four miles three to four miles so we can flip that net and watch it on the camera as soon as the the net goes over the eagle he has no interest in the turkey his interest is getting
out
Jeff, we're running out of time.
I just this eagle was found in you trapped it in Buffalo County, Wisconsin,
correct?
Buffalo County, Wisconsin, he was banded in Pennsylvania 33 years ago.
And our guess is he was on that Eastern migration route.
We're
going to have to leave it at that because we're out of time, Jeff.
I'm sorry, I wish we could talk the whole day, but thanks for being my guest.
Jeff Warrell of the Raptor Research Project will be right back with the Dom Salvia Show.
Thank you.
Hey man, Rothschild back with you again on the Dom Salvia show.
Number to call here 855-752-4842.
That's 855-75 Civic because we're on the Civic Media Radio Network.
And we were geeking out there with Jeff Warrell of the Raptor Resource Project in his driftless golden eagle study that he's a part of.
And just as we were saying goodbye to him off air, he said that these golden eagles
that are in Wisconsin in the winter will be heading north almost any day now.
But sometimes he says they linger around Ashland County and Bayfield County for a month or two even.
So keep your eye out for Golden Eagles in Wisconsin and next winter.
A good place to see them are at Devil's Lake and then down to Muscaday and then over to Buffalo County, which is just north.
of La Crosse if you don't know your counties here in Wisconsin.
I had to look it up my own self.
So quite an interesting story that was at the Journal Sentinel earlier this week on this 33 year old golden eagle that was trapped by the Raptor research group turned out to be the oldest golden eagle ever trapped in North America.
So that's where we are now.
Now, Dom has this thing.
I think Jess, you introduced it, right?
I did.
tell us something good at the end of every show because sometimes we cover some heavy stuff and we did cover some heavy stuff today first talking with Earl about the passing of Joel McNally and then talking with Joseph Pecky about organizing and then talking with Dave Zyron about fascism and Trump.
I can't get heavier than that.
But then we had this nice conversation on
birds, and we got a text from Sherry from Horocon, who's a birder, and she's on the Horocon March and saying that Canadian geese are back there.
Sometimes the Canadian geese never leave.
But yeah, the birds are coming back.
As I said yesterday, the santo cranes are coming back.
I saw some yesterday.
I do have one good thing to report, a good political thing, and that is the Common Council of Depeer, Wisconsin,
last week or the week before, passed a resolution saying that they were on board with overturning Citizens United, that horrible U.S.
Supreme Court decision that says outside groups can spend unlimited amounts of money in these campaigns, like Elon Musk is doing right here in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
You know, Wisconsin has now 179 communities after the Depeer Common Council came through.
179 communities that have come on board saying we need to overturn Citizens United Wow, we need to solve this problem of money and politics and Wisconsin is second only Jess second only to Massachusetts and the number of Communities and governing bodies that have come on board for this.
So that's my good news.
What news do you have?
really was even looking out the window here.
It really
gray and, I don't know, I was feeling real gray inside as well.
But today the sky was just stunning.
And I made sure to take a little bit of time, go for a little walk around the block and enjoy that instead of just sitting at my desk and, you know, getting lost in all of the everything.
Yeah, it's important, I think, to enjoy the outdoors, enjoy nature.
And for me, enjoying poetry too.
So I always try to bring a poem to the Dom Salvia show when I'm invited on.
And we have a poem here by Rita Dove, who's Pulitzer Prize winning poet.
This is a very short one.
I think it's a lovely poem.
It's very topical politically too.
So let's take a listen.
Beside the golden door.
Surely there must be something beautiful to smile upon.
the umbered blue edge of sky as it fades into evening, the brisk green heave of the sea.
When I look up, surely there will be a cloud or a lone star dangling.
Truth is, the truth has gone walking, left her perch for the doves and ravens to ravage, hightailed it to the hills, to the quiet beyond rivers and trees.
No matter what ragged carnival may be thronging the streets, what bleak homestead or plantation of sorrows howling its dominion, truth would say these are arrogant times.
Believers slaughter their doubters, while the greedy oil their lips with excuses, and the righteous turn merciless, the merciful mad.
Wow, let's read it of reading her poem beside the golden door.
It's from a book called playlist for the apocalypse, which is a book of times.
I highly recommend.
Yeah, what a poem ragged carnival.
That's a good description of the Trump era, the Trump cabinet, the Trump administration, arrogant times, no doubt.
And in arrogant times like this, we need to find our solace, solace among people who share our beliefs.
People who can lift our spirits when times are rough and times are rough right now our loved ones our friends and also the beauty that is Literature the beauty that is nature.
These are the things that keep me going just day in and day out 40 years we're getting to our 40th anniversary
so at some point I'm gonna do a show on old marriages that work
I told her waitress I've been married 40 years.
She said what the secret I said getting over the petty stuff except I didn't say stuff anyway So anyway, that's my little last drop of advice.
I want to thank you Jess I want to thank all our callers and all our Textors and the terrific guests we had on Earl Ingram Joseph Becky Dave's iron Jeff Warrell And I want to thank Tom for giving me the opportunity to speak with you all I want to thank sage wild civic media.
That's a great honor and privilege
and stay tuned.
