from Civic Media.
This is Up North News Radio.
Now, live from our late Minnesota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Breidlo.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back to Up North News Radio on a bashably Wisconsin brought to you by Courier Newsroom, carried by our friends on the Civic Media Radio Network at 7.06 on this Monday morning, March 3rd, 2025.
Nice to have you along.
Coming up at the bottom of this hour we're going to talk to our friend and author Laura Bird who the past couple of times has come on with various book recommendations.
We're going to change gears this time and talk about book clubs in part because you know recent events have made it even more necessary to create diversions now and then you know hobbies.
anything to get our mind off the news here and there.
So Laura Bird's going to join us and talk a bit about book clubs.
You could find one, you could start one, you can tailor it to make it as informative or as fun as you want.
And so Laura will talk to us about that.
Coming up a little bit later this hour, Dr. Kristen Lyrely is with us and is going to talk about a tour that she is taking for reproductive health rights starting tomorrow.
Greg Bach is here meteorologist Brittany Merleau is here as well on this Monday morning.
Brittany, good morning.
How are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
How are you guys?
Well, we're good now, but let the Inquisition begin.
So, Brittany.
I see thumbs down, I see head scratches, I see a little bit of disappointment.
There's a storm coming.
Yeah, actually, since Kristen just made a perfect shrugging emoji just now, putting her hands up going, oh, what emoji best exemplifies where this forecast is right now?
Is it the angry face?
Are we rolling our eyes?
Is it the one where the face is all blue and chattering teeth?
Where are we on this storm right now?
Or is it the poop emoji?
The way you said that.
The
poop emoji.
And you're like, whew whew.
Brittany
Milo for
the win.
That's a statement coming from Brittany.
Who loves weather as we all know.
I know.
But apparently it's going to be poopy for some folks out there because of this whole rain and then rain into snow thing.
So tell us where we're at with it so far on this Monday morning.
Yeah, so it's given me a headache.
That's for sure.
I've seen the storm coming for quite a while now and it has been all over the board and all over the place.
And here's what we're looking at right now is rain first, right?
We're getting pretty warm today.
We're going into the upper forties to low fifties across the state.
Some sunshine out there now, but the storm is on our back doorstep.
So we'll see those clouds increasing tonight.
We'll be cloudy by tomorrow and we're going to be looking at light rain chances possibly this evening and then a little bit through tomorrow morning.
Now the actual storm, the brunt of it starts to hit by tomorrow night.
What we're looking at first is some heavy heavy rain, where we're looking at around an inch of rainfall ramping up tomorrow evening into the overnight and then it gets really messy.
In the early morning hours on Wednesday, this thing flips over to some snowfall and it continues to put snow throughout the entire state.
So we are looking at a winter storm watch right now anywhere from La Crosse through Eau Claire just to the west of Wausau, all the way north into Ashland, Bayfield, Superior.
All of these areas are looking at a good four to eight inches of snowfall.
And this storm isn't going to be the nice, light, fluffy type of snow.
This is going to pack some heavy, wet, slushy snow that quickly accumulates.
And it's also going to be blizzard like out there with whiteout conditions expected because winds on Wednesday are going to be whipping at 40 to 50 miles per hour.
So this is going to be a beast of a storm.
It is really going to hit Northwest Wisconsin very hard and there is a pretty big cutoff line right now where the norm southeastern parts of the state.
really aren't looking at much.
Probably just a trace to an inch or two while the north part of the state really gets hit.
But again, this will be Wednesday morning and through our Wednesday afternoon, where a lot of that snowfall is going to cause problems.
OK.
Exactly where is that line?
I'm
not upset anymore.
OK.
Greg's like,
oh, I'm
good.
OK.
Not my problem.
Go ahead, Kristen.
I don't know.
Pat and I are wondering where that line is, where that cutoff is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So right now it looks, it's pretty much I'm on the line in Wausau where I can get anywhere from an inch to about six inches.
So it really goes south of La Crosse is where that line starts, cuts up through Wausau and then kind of continues right along the Bay of Green Bay.
So Green Bay is kind of in that cutoff line as well.
So where we could get anywhere from just a few.
to maybe a lot.
But Northwest, you're definitely getting
hit.
All right.
Roger reminds us from Steven's point.
This is the last week of central standard time.
We go to daylight time coming up next weekend.
Robin Tigerton says, good morning.
It's partly cloudy, 28 degrees.
I had a great weekend.
Got my Facebook back after being hacked.
I had an Apple account hacked.
I changed all my passwords.
I was out taking pictures over the weekend.
I want to thank Kristen for sharing my pictures on her websites.
I was a caregiver.
for my mom and dad in their later years as they got to live in their farmhouse on this National Caregiver's Day.
Let's see, he also says that Monday is great because I get to listen to four of the very best on radio and social media.
So
thank you for that Robin.
Thanks Rob.
Also
notes, remember Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and that usually means a snowstorm.
Is that true?
It could be.
It's like the tournament
Blizzard.
It's just a
wonderful coincidence
that it happens to be in the middle of winter.
You can't say, oh, it's 4th of July.
That Blizzard comes.
No, there's
a
calendar reason for this.
Adam, we were talking about frozen pizzas in the last segment.
The Minor League Baseball team, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers have coined the frozen pizzas as their alternate team this year.
Really?
Oh,
that's so great.
That's Appleton.
So, all the more reason to get out and watch some of these ball games.
Oh, they're fun
too.
Oh, God, much like, you know, going to spring training last week is to get to these smaller stadiums, the Eau Claire Express, you know, here in Carson Park.
If you've never been, make it part of your road trip plans.
Just
not this week.
Driving might be a bit of a character builder.
Thank you, Brittany.
Appreciate
it very much.
Have a good one.
Up North News is having a live event coming up on Wednesday the 12th.
That's next week already.
On Wednesday the 12th at 530 at the Overture Center in Madison.
We will be having a panel discussion, three different panel discussions on topics that are impacted by the Wisconsin Supreme Court election on April 1st.
One great panel talking about how the court could impact reproductive health rights.
one about jobs and the economy, one about education, all kinds of great panelists, former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes is going to be part of it, State Senator Kelder Royce, State Representative Francesca Hong, our friends Melissa Baldoff and Joseph Pecky will be there.
I mean, practically everybody you could want to talk to or hear from about the State Supreme Court will be on that panel.
except Kristen Lyrely, who
is
otherwise committed, but Kristen found us another wonderful obstetrician gynecologist who is gonna be part of the panel as well because you, young lady, are busy yourself talking about reproductive health care rights this week with certain goings on that begin tomorrow.
We're taking a tour of the state and as I'm listening to Brittany talk about the weather, I'm thinking about my travel plans as I'm headed towards La Crosse and Eau Claire on Wednesday.
But before Wednesday...
Tomorrow, Tuesday, we're going to be in Milwaukee at 10 o'clock in the morning over by the VA having a conversation with lots of folks out there.
Our friend Chris Ford is going to be there.
Dr. Carolyn Chatterton.
Oh, and Chris Sennicki, representative Chris Sennicki, representative Margaret Arnie.
So we're going to have a great conversation about what reproductive freedom means and why it's important when we're thinking about the Supreme Court race and the outcome there.
And then the
Big event is going to be in Madison at two.
We're having a giant rally on the steps facing state street where Senator Heselbein is going to be there, Senator Roy's representative, Sue Beck, so many great voices, the women's marches on board, SEIU nurses, doctors, patients, all talking about why this means something.
Then we're going to march into the state Capitol up to the Supreme Court.
We've got a little bit of a special event planned.
there as well.
So folks from all over the state are joining us.
Reproductive freedom is absolutely on the ballot on April 1st and it is incredibly important that we get the word out and that we're having these conversations about why this is necessary.
And that's all Tuesday.
You
keep doing it on Wednesday.
Yeah, we're going to be in La Crosse Wednesday morning at 10 o'clair Wednesday afternoon at two and then back in Green Bay where we're doing another rally at the Brown County Courthouse that noon.
Representative Amad Rivera Wagner is going to be with us.
Dr. Anna Igler, my dear partner, Dr. Erin Sherman, who is a GI oncologist, interestingly, like she takes care of women who have cancer.
But there's a huge angle there with regards to your reproductive freedom and freedom and being able to make, you know, your own health.
decisions.
So you're going to be hearing it from a lot of different perspectives, lots of unified voices coming together to have these conversations that frankly, we need to have in order to push back on this ugly interference by politicians in our own medical decision making.
So between everything that you're doing with your tour tomorrow and Wednesday, and then the Up North News event next week, Wednesday.
And by the way, for more information, head to our website, UpNorthNewsWI.com.
slash Supreme to learn more about our Supreme Court event.
But between all of these events, it just bears saying yet again that although there are a lot of ads, a lot of ads and a lot of coverage about this, turnout for a spring election is typically pretty low.
I mean, it's higher in Wisconsin than in a lot of other states.
We do have a lot of civic engagement, but there's still a lot of people that sit home and
There's so much about this, Kristen, that is less about, you know, people might be for Judge Crawford, they might be for Brad Schimmel.
It's not so much that they are persuadable one way or the other.
People pretty much know that you're either for reproductive health rights or they're not.
But do they stay home or do they show up and vote on April 1st?
I hear you saying, Pat, that it is important to cast your vote.
And in fact, your vote does matter.
So if you're feeling like I'm kind of tired, I don't know if I'm going to make it to the polls.
No, you must make it to the polls because it could be your vote that makes a difference here.
So please do make your plan to vote, whether it's early voting, whether it's an absentee ballot, whether it's going so that you can get your sticker and show it off on social media.
Your voice is your vote.
And frankly.
Once again in Wisconsin, it has never been more important.
Absolutely.
If you want more information about voting head to myvote.wi.gov to learn more there about what's on your ballot because there are other spring elections going on.
There are still so many school referendums on the ballot.
typical line here, I ought to trademark this thing is vote yes on the referendums, vote no on the legislators who got us into this mess over the past decade.
So my vote.wi.gov to learn more.
Let's check sports at 718 here.
The Bucks were winners over the weekend against Dallas.
They will meet again Wednesday in Milwaukee right after the Bucks have a game tomorrow night in Atlanta.
The Badger Men's basketball team fell at Michigan State on Sunday, 71-62.
The Badgers had won six of their last seven coming into the game.
There are two games left before the Big Ten tournament.
They play Wednesday night at Minnesota and on Saturday they are hosting Penn State and you can hear that game against the Gophers.
Wednesday coverage starts at seven across the Civic Media Radio Network and on the app.
The Badger women's hockey team advances in their conference tournament and the Badger men's hockey team play at Ohio State this weekend in the Big Ten tournament.
More after this, you're up north.
Oh, you can just see Greg running down the hall and leaping into Kristen Lyrely's arms, and Kristen holds up Greg.
And crushes a
wonderful doctor to
death.
I got you, baby.
Yeah.
It's adorable, you think so.
Oh, please.
Have you ever seen, you know, OBGYN does so much surgery and so much.
Those arms can hold you up.
Trust me.
They can do it.
OK.
Don't underestimate those surgeons, man.
They'll get you every time.
That's from Dirty Dancing.
What was that?
1988, right?
87?
I thought it was 87.
Yes, 87.
Boom.
Yeah.
I just remembered that, yeah, we had newly discovered that we were, I would say, we is always so awkward.
We were going to be having our first baby, Sherry's
the one that was actually
pregnant, you know, with Samantha's time.
And yeah, that was one of our first date nights afterwards.
We were just like,
Oh my God, we're going to have a baby.
This is so crazy.
You get grown up so fast.
And yeah, so we got, I always think about that because that was our date night right after we found out about that.
That's cute.
Yeah.
And then everything changed.
I was going to say nobody else has a dirty dancing
story.
Well, I remember I was nine when it came out when we watched, I should say I was nine years old, maybe even 10 years old.
We watched it on.
BHS family video night.
Uh, and being very, and much like the princess bride being very upset having to watch this dirty dancing movie that looked romantic and dancing and blah, blah, and then inside just secretly loving it.
See that was it an awkward part when you were younger is like you you know trash talks.
I'm like, oh, this is gonna be terrible And then you realize you like it, but you don't want to say anything about it And
the and the and the and the medical access portion of the story going right over my head.
Oh Yeah, yep
And it's a little bit of politics with, you know, again, reproductive care and things like that.
Now that I'm thinking back, that might have seeded my interest in OBGYN care.
Yep, I could see that.
There's my story.
You
know, being able to help women who are in need, shall we say, at that point.
And never putting a single baby in the corner.
Nobody does that Greg.
Nope.
Nobody does.
I do want to touch briefly on the latest attempt by legislative Republicans to again emulate their buddies Donald Trump and Elon Musk who have of course this alleged group called what Department of Government Efficiency which you know is nothing more than a wrecking crew going through and attacking our government but you know
Back in Madison now, we have the creation of the GOAT committee, which again is some kind of governmental operations and transparency or something like that.
They too want to identify the wasteful spending as they define what wasteful is.
And of course, they've only talked about one thing and that would be DEI.
So if we could all just agree not to refer to this as the goat committee or whatever, it's the Anti anti racism committee is what it is.
Yeah, any anything that's going after racism They're going after that and then you can connect the dots however you want to I'll just stick to calling it anti anti racism if that's what their definition of going after wasteful spending is right now
I just wish they could be serious and you know this is where the postpartum Medicaid extension bill has ended up interestingly so you would think that the assembly introduced this bill you would think that it would have gone to the health committee because it is a health issue but instead it's gone to the GOAT committee and it's gone to the GOAT committee because
that's chaired by Shaysortwell and it has people like Joy Gobin who don't support postpartum Medicaid extension.
They think that everybody can pay for their medical care, which they can't.
That's why Medicaid is a thing.
So it's gone there to die, but we're not going to let it die.
That's the plan that we activist moms and OBGYNs and women across the state are currently working on.
It's a shame to see politics at work like this.
It is because again, we have in both cases, Congress and the legislature, we have a budget process.
We have a process under which you can propose that something be spent, something be cut.
You can hear testimony.
You can take a vote.
That's how it's supposed to work.
And yet we allow these special committees or in the case of the federal government, you know, non-government employees to simply come in and claim to be firing and, you know, cutting spending when it's all completely outside of the process and therefore is eventually
going to be judged to be illegal.
And I think it's going to be tough to put all that toothpaste back in the tube.
The latest example of that are the layoffs.
They're going to be taking place at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, because, you know, we don't need people forecasting the weather.
We can pay people to do that for us in the private sector.
That would
Nothing could possibly go wrong with that model, right, Kristen?
The lack of precision with these cuts, I don't think anybody disagrees.
Like, there is waste that can be cut here.
Yes.
But you don't come in with a machete.
You do it in a surgical way.
And what we're already seeing is people are suffering.
They are losing their jobs.
They're losing their benefits.
They're not able to live their lives.
And until it hits home for you, it doesn't feel real.
But plenty of people are feeling it now.
It doesn't have to.
be this way.
So that's why in our Sunday, our new Sunday politics newsletter, our question of the week dealt with these cuts.
And, you know, what's your take on how they should go forward?
And we always give people, you know, an ABCD option and it was full speed ahead.
you know, let somebody else clean up the mess later.
B was to just simply pause for Trump and company to pause everything that they're doing and see how things shake out.
Option D, the very last one, of course, was to stop it and even backtrack and reinstate some of these folks.
But option C, I wanted to see what kind of, you know, pickup it would get, would be to pause it and to create a bipartisan citizens commission.
the model that I use and a lot of other people use is the old base closing commission, where it was this is a bipartisan group.
They're going to look at which military bases need to be closed because otherwise nobody wants to vote to close a military base.
Okay, that's that's politically toxic.
But this commission says, these are the ones that we don't need anymore.
And that Congress has to vote up or down on the whole list.
And
It worked.
You know, some duplicative spending was dealt with.
And maybe that's what we need.
Is that a cop out for Congress?
Yes, I admit it is.
But if they can't do the job, then let some concerned citizens do it.
Kristen, we all know people who'd probably do a better job than the bunch there now.
And we're seeing that they can't get it done.
They can't work together on behalf of the American people, so we need a better way.
Kristen, have a great week.
Thanks so much for visiting with us.
So good to spend the morning with you, friends.
All right.
Laura Bird is coming up next.
We're talking about book clubs.
After this, you're up north.
It is 735
on this Monday morning, March 3rd, and it's always fun every couple of weeks or so to shift gears and welcome in author Laura Ann Bird to talk to us more about what we can find in a book or in the case of this week, a book club.
Laura, good morning.
How
How are you?
Very good.
Nice to see you again.
back.
As you and you know, as people get set for this winter storm that's coming in tomorrow night into Wednesday, needless to say a few folks, probably on Tuesday night, maybe Wednesday, they're going to want to hunker down with the book.
We have provided so many recommendations over your past couple of appearances that we're now moving into the next step.
in everybody's new burgeoning, reading addiction.
And that would be the book club.
And you seem to be as enthusiastic as anybody I've ever met about book clubs, whether it's finding one or starting one.
It makes me wonder we've been talking about this forever, but I'm not gonna say book clubs like got their start or something
saying they really came into the the cultural consciousness over the past few years, haven't they?
Yeah, I especially think since the pandemic, I think they've been such a great way for people to get together, you know, whether in person or virtually, which I'm going to talk a little bit about.
But yes, I love book groups because they get you reading books that you might not read otherwise on your own.
And they provide a wonderful opportunity to sort of unpack a book and discuss a book with other people.
And 100% of the time when I leave a book group, I have a greater understanding, a greater appreciation of whatever I've just read than before I went into book group.
So it's a great thing to be a part of and it gives you reading more.
It also is the kind of thing that can come in all shapes and sizes.
co-founded something called the Great Midwest Book Group, which I'm guessing is more than, you know, a half a dozen people, you know, gathered around a coffee table someplace.
So I wanted to just talk really nuts and bolts here.
And then I'll get a little more spicy as we go along.
But if you want to be in a book group, there are really two ways to do it.
There's online and there's in person.
And like I was saying, I think online since the pandemic has really taken off in popularity.
And I co-founded the Great Midwest Book Group with a friend of mine in Indiana, like you just alluded to.
And we meet quarterly.
We meet on Zoom.
We send out the Zoom link.
We always feature Midwestern authors and books.
And in fact, we're meeting on April 8th at 7 p.m.
Central.
Track us down on Facebook or Instagram at Great Midwest Book Group.
I will send you the link so that you can join us.
No pressure.
You don't have to finish the book.
You don't even have to read the book.
But we are reading The Snowbirds by Christina Clancy, a great Wisconsin writer.
And she will actually be joining us for the discussion.
So it's a great way to talk with her, ask questions.
It's really fun.
And we're open to anyone.
So that's my shameless plug.
No,
that's fine.
That's wonderful.
So you want
talk a bit more about either finding an existing book group
even thinking of starting one on your own?
So the first resource I give people is bookclubs.com.
This is a great resource.
You can go online and search for an existing book group, whether it's virtual or whether it's in person in your neck of the woods.
There are great discussion questions at this website.
And if you're kind of in charge of a book group, it's a great way to track details for your own book club.
Like you can have all your members in there.
You can message them.
You can track what you've read, everybody's ratings of it.
It's really a great tool.
So I highly suggest that.
One thing I want to talk about too really quick are some fun trends around book groups kind of thinking out of the box here.
This one is riveting.
So there is this new thing and it's gaining popularity and it's called a silent book club.
And you can check out details at silentbook.club.
There are 17 chapters in Wisconsin alone.
and this number doubled during 2024.
I know that there's one in Madison, which is where I live.
I haven't been yet, but I want to check it out because what you do is you go to either a coffee shop or distillery or bar with a bunch of other people.
You're all reading different books.
You just show up with whatever book you're reading.
You say hi, and then everybody sits for an hour in compenetable silence.
And then when the hour's up,
Then people close their books and you have great discussions about what you're reading.
And so you walk away from these with like great recommendations.
It's sort of like a show and tell of what everyone's reading.
So check out the Facebook page for silentbook.club is where you find it.
Also check out your local indie shop because there are indie shops that host silent book clubs.
I know for a fact that Arcadia books in spring green and Blue House books in Kenosha
both host chapters of the silent book group right there on site.
And it's a win-win for all.
It gets people out in the community, you know, the bookshops make sales.
It's a great way to meet people.
And it's nice for introverts because you can kind of just sit there and read quietly.
I think that's pretty
cool.
There is just no shortage of ways that this can specialize, whether, like
said, it's by trends or, you know, the places that you go and things like that.
You could even do, you know, like
Field trips come to mind.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up I live like I said in Madison and one of the bookshops here in Madison is Leopold's books bar cafe and they have an adorable book nook and I know that there are other shops with similar sort of setups and You can rent this space or reserve this space for a pretty nominal fee if not free depending on what your bar tab is there But it's a great way great way to get out and you know, take your book club on the road
To that end, when I was doing some research for this segment, there is a book group in Chicago called Read and Run, Pat, and they read the book ahead of time.
And then they meet and jog while discussing the book.
So I'm not sure that that would appeal to me so much.
I do like to run, but probably not while discussing books.
No, no.
But so can I ask a bit about, I don't know, maybe etiquette is the right word or something if it is or not?
I mean, it
would seem to me that there are some book clubs that are shall we say more serious or hardcore than others.
Others are very loose.
Like maybe maybe not everybody has read the book.
So it could be possible that a book club you might discover isn't the right fit for you either.
They are very rigid in their reading requirements.
It's almost like homework or they're they're too loose.
They're too social rather than focusing on the book.
So I mean
You don't have to feel like you're tied down.
Well, that is a great point.
And I've been in a lot of different book clubs with varying degrees of no judgment.
Like if you just want to sit.
Did I?
Okay, there we go.
Sorry, if you want to sit with some friends and drink wine and not really discuss the book, that's totally fine.
I think it's just finding like-minded people and making sure you're all on the same page and that you're all coming at it with the same expectation because that can be really the death knell for a book club.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Well, especially in this
you know politically charged environment
mean for some folks book club is just kind of the name they give to more of a discussion club that gets into current events and news and other people this really is meant to be their escape and so
Again, you don't want to necessarily put shackles on anybody or on any club, but it probably is a good idea to kind of set whatever the ground rules are going to be for maybe discussion topics or what would you call it?
Your mission statement or your philosophy of
club is just to know what you are.
Absolutely.
Let's see.
You mentioned a few other resources as well here that people can go to.
We talked about the Silent Book Club.
There's a subscription service out of New York, I guess.
Open Book Club NYC.
Is that what
Yes.
I found out about this.
It's a real life book club.
They meet in person in New York City.
but they have a dedicated substack following.
So you can find them at openbookclubnyc.substack.com.
And what they do is they just started a snail mail club, which I think is really interesting.
So for $15 a month, they will send you their book of the month and then everyone's reading it, you know, wherever they live across the country, and you can join into the discussion on their substack.
So I.
Think that that's a pretty cool thing.
It's very low stakes.
And again, it's great if you're an introvert, you know, you can just kind of pop in when you want to.
It's not face to face necessarily.
Well, and that is, by the way, it raises the question of book availability, because sometimes people have had a tough time.
They think they're going to get it at their local library, but maybe two or three people are already on the list to get it.
And so I guess this is where we'd put in our usual pitch about easy ways to get books through bookshop.org.
I love bookshop.org.
I feel like I'm a walking advertisement for them.
I swear I don't get any money.
from bookshop.org.
But what you can do is when you go online, you can use their store finder and locate an independent bookstore that you want to support.
And then a part of your sale goes to that bookstore.
So it's a really great resource.
And the cool thing is now they just started carrying eBooks, which is like huge news.
Yeah.
That's that's a great thing.
Well that gets us
all into the into the eat there's ebooks and there's audio books and everybody thinks that well an ebook means you have to have a Kindle and an Amazon description subscription that ain't necessarily so
So I should just say, I am not an e-reader.
I always have the hard copy of a book.
I prefer that.
If you do have a Kindle, you could consider ditching it because Kindle only lets you read content purchased on Amazon.
So if you find a different e-reader, there are a lot of different ways then that you can purchase titles.
Gloss and Fable are two of them.
fable.co and glosglosd.com.
So this just allows you to kind of break out of that Amazon bubble.
Well, that was you anticipated.
My next question
Wow.
Well, so that was going to be my next point was and you mentioned it already that you are not particularly an e book reader.
Not that you're dissuading anybody, but that that is your preferences that have that book right in your hand.
And I think we might be having a connection
that's okay.
I'll repeat the question and it was all about preference of an e-reader versus having that book right in your hand because I know from having just done a beach vacation.
the book that I wanted to continue reading, it's a big, thick, hard cover.
So I did go with a smaller book to bring along just because of the beach conditions.
But that's just all the more reason to have multiple books that I'm working on because there might be one that's good to carry along and there might be one that's just easier to read on your phone.
Yeah, that sounds great.
And so again, to folks that might have missed it at the start of things where we talked about all the different book groups that are out there.
But yes, starting your own, the resources are there.
And you can you can really tailor it to whatever works best for you and your friends.
And I mean, how do you get to work?
Do you necessarily urge everybody to put their book club on social media to try to
get a whole bunch of strangers in there and grow the group or just keep it keep it close.
No, no, I'm in a book group that's with women in my neighborhood and we switch houses each month and whosoever hosting picks the book and provides snacks and wine that we don't need social media for that.
That's just a really intimate thing with friends and neighbors.
the Great Midwest Book Group that I do online, that's, that's different.
I mean, that's a way of really bringing in a lot of people to celebrate Midwestern authors.
There's just, there's so much out there.
again, the, the website that she mentioned that you could check out is bookclubs.com to learn all about it.
Laura and Bird, this was great.
We all need a break.
We need a break from social media.
We need a break from the news headlines for a little bit before we come back in and be informed about the world all over again.
But we need the escape that books provide.
and we're so thankful that you keep coming in and telling us more.
no, no.
We're fine.
That's modern technology.
Another thing we need to escape with a book now and then.
Thank you, Laura.
Exactly.
Have a
Thanks, Pat.
You bet, have a wonderful day.
And when we come back, we'll talk about what's coming up on Matt and Air on Air, which follows on weekday mornings here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
And we will wrap things up with Mr. Bach as well right after this live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio
Network.
A reading.
Terrible Jane Mattner impression.
But Greg Bach is here and he works with Jane all the time.
I do and can tell us more about Matt Nair on air.
Absolutely.
Ten to noon across the
Civic Media radio network.
Absolutely.
Today it's going to be actually a very busy week.
But today we've got Corey Hartman, our very own Civic Media Corey Hartman.
He is not only one of the great engineers here at Civic Media, but he's also a meteorologist.
He can be talking to us about probably about the storm coming this week, but also the
basically the firings that they want to do at NOAA and the National Weather Service and how that will affect all of us once we don't have accurate weather reporting and basically moving towards what they've wanted to do for a long time, which is privatizing the weather.
Again, this whole notion that the private
market, you know, is the answer to everything is such a gross misinterpretation of what Adam Smith wrote originally about capitalism and the marketplace and that capitalism doesn't work without effective government oversight.
But we just have this talking point like, Oh, no, no, private market will take take care of it all.
Yeah.
No, that doesn't work that way.
It doesn't work that way at all.
Coming back to what Laura was talking about there on the book clubs, I've I've only
been a part of one or two like ad hoc book clubs, you know, it was like just for like this one book that, you know, one or two people really wanted people to read.
And so I was a part of it.
But I, I literally don't know where people get the time.
I mean, I love my vacations
because I
can finally put myself into a book.
And then I hear about people that read, you know, a dozen books or more a year.
And I just go, oh, and I know what the answer is.
Maybe not so much doom scrolling on my phone.
Maybe there's some time there for
that.
Well, I think also we talked about this last week.
We asked the question to the audience, do you read?
And one of the things we discussed and came to the realization that reading is a skill.
And when you start learning how to read from a young age, it's about one, just learning how to read the basic, the, the, the act of reading, but then learning how to read while taking in information, finding out what you like to read.
Because I think the problem is sometimes people are like, well, I have to read Moby Dick.
Why?
Because everyone else has read Moby Dick.
Like, well, what if you don't like it?
And what if you don't understand it?
You don't have to.
If you want to read a sports biography, read a sports biography.
Oh, gosh, yes.
I mean, again, the books that I'm really into lately are oral histories.
So they're just nuggets of dialogue with people talking about this or that.
I mean, there's no one right answer.
The wrong answer is not to be a reader at all.
Yeah,
agreed.
That wouldn't be any good.
You also have a little something called this shouldn't be a thing.
This shouldn't be a thing.
We do it every single day on the show Monday through Friday at 1150.
The last segment of the show where we look at one crazy weird thing that we're just like, yeah, this shouldn't be a thing last Friday.
It was zombie spiders and zombie spiders.
It's going to be it's fun.
We do it every single.
And what's great is that, you know, like all shows on civic media, you go to civicmedia.us, you can click shows and you can get
up North News Radio.
If Pat's on a vacation or seeing some baseball in Arizona, Civic Media Mornings, whatever it is, but you can also now listen to this shouldn't be a thing as a like mini podcast, three to five minute episode podcast every day.
Oh, very nice.
Yeah.
From Mardathon Facebook, I again vote to have Laura Ann Bird sub for Pat when he needs a break.
She is so lively and joyful in her presentations.
In fact, I'd like to see her have her own show on
the
Civic Media stations.
I hope Luke was listening.
I mean, artists know right where to go invoking the handsome and capable Luke Mathers on this.
I mean, who does want to hear a book club, maybe an hour long book club show on the weekends just talking about.
One or two or three?
I don't know.
It's a
book.
Well, look, I should not be promoting another radio station, but I'll just say there is another network of stations where they have a show where they just read a book for like, I think it's 30 minutes.
It might be 60.
I don't recall.
And it's been many, many years since I used to listen to it.
But it got me started on several different books that I would hear it read.
But then I'd go purchase them later.
And we just,
we
need
more of that so badly because otherwise we're turning we're you know we just turn into idiocracy which again folks no longer just a movie
It's a documentary.
It's a way to
see.
Let's see.
Coming up on the Maggie Dawn show today, Professor Lowell Barrington from Marquette University will have historical perspective on what happened in the Oval Office Friday between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky.
There's also Greta Bedikowicz from the Center for American Progress.
on the dangers of the SAVE Act and then Katrina Tweedel from reaction from Wisconsin Ukrainians about what happened there all on the Maggie Dawn show.
I understand that there's also David Crawley going to be appearing there on Tuesday.
There's
Donald Trump on Tuesday is giving his version of a state of the union address.
It's not a real state of the union address because they don't have those on years when new presidents get inaugurated, but they still let him talk to Congress anyway.
So that's tomorrow night.
So that'll be, that'll be interesting.
Let's, let's do a thing.
How, how do you feel before the speech versus how do you feel after the speech?
Cause he's going to be a ray of sunshine for 45 to 70 minutes.
And again, much like the, the Oval Office meeting, I have to decide, will I actually watch it or not?
Yeah.
I have not actually, and I said so on social media last Friday.
I'm like, okay, I heard this thing happened.
I've read about it.
I don't know if I'm going to watch the full video.
And I still haven't watched the full video.
I have.
I've seen a couple of snippets of it, but I knew it would just be a waste of my time and emotional investment, I think.
I think you should watch it, but also just know what you're about to get into just so you have the full context.
And so that'll be happening with Trump's speech on Tuesday.
Todd Alba will be anchoring coverage for that.
Thank you, Todd.
Thank you.
Thank you for your
service.
to be willing to anchor President Trump's speech on Tuesday.
Tomorrow, we've got another bird, not Laura Bird, but Lou Ann Bird will be joining us and talking about the cuts at the VA hospitals in Milwaukee and across the country and their real impact.
Greg's back in two hours for Matt and Aaron Eyre.
See you then, buddy.
Bye.
And thanks to Laura Bird and Kristen Lyrely for being with us this morning.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
Enjoy your Monday.
See you tomorrow morning.
Up North.
