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Good
morning and welcome back to Morning's Repair.
I'm going to cry low.
Pat's on vacation this week.
I'm co-hosting with Angela Lange.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
Angela Lange is the prize-winning op-ed writer and executive director of Block, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities.
We'll be hosting this show for the next hour and also Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
So it's quite fun for
Yeah.
Yeah, whether you like it or not.
We're all across the Civic Media Radio Network this morning and with you through Thursday morning as we try to discuss the urgent issues of the day and also talk some bird watching too, probably in a little poetry at the end of this hour.
I'm going to have a one bird call and one cool poem.
by Wendell Berry.
I couldn't find Wendell Berry reading this poem himself in his beautiful baritone, so you'll
have to
suffer through with my recitation, but it's a nice poem.
It's called The Yellow Throated Warbler.
Anyway, for this half hour, we're joined by Representative Christian Phelps, who is newly elected from the Eau Claire area and has been in the legislature now for four months.
Yeah, a little over four
years.
So Representative Feld, thanks for joining the show and tell us how the first four months have treated it.
Yeah, good to see both of you.
Good morning.
The first how they've treated me is irrelevant.
I think I knew what I was signing up for.
They've gone the way that you think they have.
The challenging parts are all the all the parts that we thought were going to be challenging.
They can be particularly heavy.
We didn't know at this time last year whether we were going to have a authoritarian-esque federal administration or not.
We do.
That makes things tougher and heavier.
To see the gerrymandering end and then see the way that the majority party in Madison is still behaving exactly the same way as they did before Is a little bit demoralizing to see that they still want to kind of steamroll their agenda even though it isn't popular and it isn't right And it isn't even popular among their own constituencies as I know as a representative of many rural communities in Western, Wisconsin
So those are the challenging things.
The best thing is that I do genuinely feel a groundswell of power building on the other side.
And I think that with all the newly elected folks, myself included, but not only me, we have a much better sort of geographic diverse cross section of people that are now being represented by community organizers and people that want to kind of invigorate that.
that energy, the progressive energy that's always kind of been in the foundation of Wisconsin and bring it into the capital.
And even if we have some short-term losses, I feel some long-term victories coming because of that.
You mentioned that Republicans in the legislature here in Madison are still championing things that are not even popular.
Do you want to mention what a couple of those are?
Yeah, I do.
I think the budget process we're going through right now is a perfect example of it.
In the past few budget cycles, they have had a two-thirds majority in the legislature.
That was manufactured, of course, through unfair maps.
But they don't have that kind of majority anymore.
It's much closer to 50-50 because the last election was in more competitive, fairer maps.
But they've been using the same tactics.
What they do is the governor introduces a budget bill.
the Joint Committee on Finance, which still has 12 Republicans and four Democrats on it, goes around the state and hears from people, what do you think of the governor's budget bill?
That's all a charade because they have said openly and have done in the last couple of cycles that they're just going to move it right back to base after those hearings and build whatever they want instead because they don't like anything that has
the Evers name on it.
So that's really disrespectful to democracy, to invite people to give public testimony on a budget bill that they have openly said isn't going to be the ones that they take to the full legislature.
And so to watch them last week do exactly that again, even though they have so many more colleagues from different parts of the state in both parties trying to say that like, you know, people wanted public investments, they wanted childcare investments, they wanted badger care expansion, and they wanted
to close the Green Bay Correctional Facility and no new incarceration sites, they just unilaterally removed 612 items, including the majority of the popular ones that the governor's budget had in them.
That's very disappointing.
I mean, disrespectful of democracy seems to be the agenda of the day by Republican legislators and by Donald Trump.
you couldn't get more disdainful of democracy than what we're seeing from the federal level.
And you said that's one of the difficulties you're facing that you didn't know you'd be facing a year ago when you started to run.
I mean, it would be a different kind of situation, head Kamala Harris won.
Not entirely in the state legislature because...
the Republicans and Robin Voss would still be running roughshod over everybody.
I mean, the amazing thing about being in the capital when Voss has been speaker and they've had this majority is just how disdainful they are of the minority party.
And, you know, I was adhering, testifying at hearings when I was at the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and I would just see them, you know, gavel down any of the Republican, any of the Democratic members of the...
of the panel who wanted to pursue a certain line of questioning.
It's just kind of amazing.
It was like being in high school where the bullies are controlling the hallways.
I mean, it was crazy.
And so you're still seeing that.
It sounds like representative Phelps.
Yeah, unfortunately, I think that it'll be interesting to see if the April 1 election results change any of that in the long term.
I don't know.
I don't really have a ton of hope from what I've seen so far that it will in the immediate.
You know, I think part of them was was hoping that they could just rig the maps again.
And so this was going to be a bump in their road of having to pretend to work with us for one term and then they wouldn't have to moving forward.
But, you know, Wisconsin has repeatedly said that they want competitive districts and they don't want one party rule.
So, you know, eventually the the jig is going to be a they can't keep manufacturing one party rule in a state where people don't want it forever.
And so I think part of
my job right now is just to turn that energy into political pressure so that we can end that one party rule faster rather than having to wait too long.
I mean, one of the things that we've kind of talked about is that everyone kind of has a role to play right now.
And I think about, as an organizer, as media, everyone has a role.
But then also thinking about your role, right?
And how do you think of your role specifically in this moment, acknowledging the political landscape in that building that you have to deal with?
How do you think about that?
dealing with and resisting the Trump administration while also knowing that Robin Voss is basically going to do what he wants?
Yeah, great question because I think that the political landscape informs how I've seen my role.
All along, I knew that like, or the way that I saw it and the way I articulated it was that I decided to run to kind of be one of the lead organizers of my constituency.
And so, because I
have a community organizing background as well to say like, we need more of that.
We've seen too often that we movement build and then it all dies when you hit the Capitol because there's been one party rule that's against the agenda that you're moving toward.
And there frankly haven't been enough active allies that know how to assist you in that movement building and want to do so on our own side.
And so we need more people that want to take that like outside the Capitol energy into it.
and open the communication between electives and organizers.
So that's still my role.
I think then when it turns out that we're operating in the minority party and my colleagues in the majority are pretty much too scared to go against Robin Boss or Donald Trump at best and in other cases very much okay with their tactics.
Our role is to
is to identify our audience, which is the constituency of Wisconsin, and make sure that all the things that they've been able to get away with and are trying to still get away with that are not popular people know about them.
So like still organizing the community and bringing our values into the capital, but then also shouting into as many microphones as I can find.
The metaphor I've been using lately, feedback welcome, is that as a new person,
I'm bringing a flashlight into the dark nooks and crannies of the Capitol and being like, hey, why doesn't anything good ever get done around here?
We're wondering, the people out there are like, why does that building operate in a way that's so oppositional to what we actually want and need?
And then telling everybody, that's my job right now, to say, OK, Donald Trump asked for this, so they introduced a ridiculous bill to require ICE cooperation in jails in your county.
Like how silly is that?
Could please raise your hand if your number one state legislative priority was that or was requiring cursive in public schools?
Like give me a break and then telling everybody about it so that it turns into awareness which turns into political pressure.
That's how I see my role right now.
And that's a different role than most legislators play when they, you know, they want to introduce a bill, they want to get a bill passed, or they want to say to their constituents, here are 10 bills that I introduced, even though, you know, none of them comes to bear.
And so, you know, I like this idea of seeing yourself as an organizer within the building.
And introducing legislation is a big part of that.
I mean, I don't mean to say that that doesn't have anything to do with it.
We, right at the beginning of March, we had spent a month
I'm the lead author on a bill we're calling the frozen federal funds emergency act because I believe the state does have a responsibility to step in and provide resources and support at every every step that we can so when the president tried to illegally freeze all the all the approved funding to Wisconsin we said all right we should write a bill that would require us to at least dip into our rainy day fund and fill some of those gaps if that ever happens it doesn't legitimize you know he can't do that it's not even legal
But, you know, at best that bill could move forward.
Republicans could decide to give it a hearing and then we could have a stopgap in place written by myself and Representative Cruz and Senator Larson and a bunch of our colleagues.
At worst, it's highlighting for people and so building that awareness and pressure that the majority party does not wish for Wisconsin to have any protections or stopgaps if the president goes rope like that.
So introducing legislation is a big part of it too, not only because it sets a legislative agenda that does
match our values, but it also shines the spotlight and flashlight on the other side when they decide not to do any of those good things.
Yeah, I think spotlight might be better than flashlight.
You need a bigger light.
But I like that idea.
And certainly, yes, introducing bills to show you, show everyone in Wisconsin where you stand, where your democratic allies stand.
That is important, even if you're not going to get a hearing.
And that is the amazing thing that happens a lot.
A lot of bills will be introduced, good Democrats will introduce really important bills and they just won't even get a hearing even though the public wants a hearing on them.
And that was the thing that frustrated me so many times when I would go into that building.
It's got to be frustrating for you, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
I mean, I'm on the Assembly Committee on Education and, you know, one of the bills we introduced in January was healthy school meals for all, completely itemized, funded, paid for, public.
and private schools actually free meals for children, no stigma for children that come from low income background, making sure that every child is fed a healthy meal they can learn, they can grow.
But we don't get to decide which bills actually get a hearing.
So we did get cursive, we did get pronouns, we did get locker rooms, it's now May and we have not gotten a hearing on healthy school meals for all.
I don't think that that's a responsible use of that committee's taxpayer funded time.
And they have that in Minnesota, by the way.
They have healthy school meals for all in Minnesota.
They can have it in Minnesota.
Why can't we have it here in Wisconsin?
It's just ridiculous.
Representative Phelps.
No, you go, Angela.
No, we're running out
so we'll come back.
After the break, we'll start with Angela's question for Representative Christian Phelps.
I'm Matt Rothschild, co-hosting with Angela.
On mornings with Pat Crichtlow who's on vacation, you're listening to Civic Media Radio Network.
We'll be
right back.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
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started.
Right before the break, Angelo, you were going to ask a question of our guest breppers and of Christian Phelps, so take it away.
And I say all of this as like a free lunch kid, right?
One of those, it was like, you're quiet about it because there was stigma, all of that.
And then I think what was encouraging just in the last like year is to see how like Governor Tim Walz kind of talked about some of these things, right?
I'm very curious of what do Republicans give as reasons to not support some of these things?
Like, why are we intentionally not supporting food for children?
I'm just very curious.
They're logic.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, for one thing, the
Part of why their tactic is to not even give a hearing to these bills, like to take a half step back in a functioning sort of like democratic legislative process, bills that are relevant to the pressing needs would get a hearing.
Whether or not you're going in supporting the bill as written because part of the point of the hearing is to sort of
Zoom in on things that might be poorly written or not itemized enough and tweak it and then come to a yes or no The reason so but they don't do that like they wouldn't have to come in as supporters of healthy school meals for all in order to say this is deserving of a public hearing I think people are interested in this idea Part of the reason they don't give it a public hearing is because They don't really like having to articulate why they oppose this kind of stuff
And
so unless they're really forced to, I don't hear them ever give any reasons for that.
I know that Robin Voss is against all kinds of stuff that he deems welfare and that's like his favorite word.
He calls everything welfare and then he says that's a bad thing.
So the whole premise is kind of lost on me because I don't understand that at all.
What is the role of the state if not to take care of people?
I don't know, but I guess in his mind it's to make rich guys even richer or something.
But, you know, so I think that it's, you know, sometimes I'll get pushed back because it uses the word free.
Nothing's free, it's all paid for, right?
Yeah, I think it shouldn't be paid for by working class parents
who
could save $150 per child per month on groceries if this program were implemented.
I think that's the role of the state to take care of all children.
I don't think there should be a such thing as a child that goes without a meal or a child that struggles through poverty in Wisconsin when we can afford to do better.
So we can have those good faith disagreements and I will make that argument every time.
But the real answer to your question is
We don't really even ever get to have that argument because they prefer not to have to explain why they're against feeding children.
I mean, it is amazing.
And Representative Phillips, you mentioned Robin Voss talking about welfare all the time as though it's just derogatory.
It's right there in the preamble of the U.S.
Constitution to provide for the general welfare.
And giving kids food who need food certainly is providing for the general welfare.
I mean, my wife was up.
head start nurse for 10 years and you know she saw how important that was and then she was in the public schools and she'd have to bring in string cheese for the kids who weren't getting enough of food at home because they couldn't study they couldn't learn because their stomachs were empty because they were hungry and you know we should have
free school meals for all, just like they do in Minnesota.
It's just a basic right and to take the stigma away so that everyone can get it and you don't have to, you know, oh, you're in debt here for your food.
I mean, that is just a crazy barbaric concept.
Yeah, think about how gross it is that we have a term called school lunch debt.
pay off
And I'm like, that is great.
I love that.
And I think it's heartwarming to see when like, especially young people want to like do something.
But I also get very enraged because I'm like, you are a young person.
Why are you giving your lemonade stand proceeds to pay off your friends' debt?
It's wild.
It's gross.
But I
think
That's how I feel, too.
Yeah, exactly.
Representative Phillips Legislative Reference Bureau just took out on Friday some funding for free meals, right?
That was among one of the cuts that they took out of the governor's budget.
And so the same process you've been talking about is just in play right now before our very eyes.
Yeah, well, I mean, I know for a fact, because we counted that the most popular thing that people asked for in those public hearings on the budget was increased funding for public schools.
And specifically, they wanted to see the governor's proposal to increase special ed funding implemented.
And other people talked about things like the school meal funding that the governor had put into his budget.
And so for them to remove it is not only morally wrong and fiscally irresponsible, the part of the reason they've amassed this enormous surplus, we've got a pile of billions of dollars sitting around us because they've refused to fund these kinds of programs in the past.
but it also is not popular and not respectful to democracy.
I mean, I sat at the entire hearing in Wausau, Central Wisconsin, plenty of people from rural Central Wisconsin at that hearing.
I'm not talking about a red or blue kind of like divisive issue out in the actual community.
The actual Wisconsin community is in favor of increasing funding for public schools.
It's just elected Republicans that seem to think that they can get away with doing the opposite.
And they won't be able to get away with it if we have fair maps still.
You know, it's just amazing that, you know, special in every family knows someone in their family or close to their family who needs special ed and that we are going to continue to not provide the necessary funding for special ed is just unbelievable, really.
Yeah, that's my professional background.
And, you know, one point that I want to kind of leave people with is we pay for this stuff one way or the other.
There's no world where we don't pay for it.
We can pay for not funding health care in human lives, we can pay by passing more referendums and raising our property taxes, or we can do the responsible thing, in my opinion, which is fund public schools according to students' needs.
Yeah, we got to do that.
Representative Christian Phillips, thanks for being our guest here on the...
mornings with Pat Crichtlow show and we'll be right back.
Talk about bird watching.
Good to see both of you.
Back to the Pat Tritlow Show.
Mornings with Pat Tritlow here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Matt Rothschild, guest hosting for Pat while he's on vacation, along with my co-host, Angela Lang, who's the executive director of Block, Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, and a prize-winning op-ed writer.
Just got her award on Friday in Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Press Club party event.
So hey, Angela, how are you?
So we've got a guest in studio.
I think Angelo might be off too.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And we'll be back tomorrow and Wednesday and Thursday.
So I encourage listeners to tune in.
while we go over the politics of the day and also talk some bird watching a little poetry at the end of this half hour, which is another passion of mine.
Sometimes my passions get in way of my passions.
My obsessions get in way of my obsessions.
Hobbies get in the way of my hobbies, but that's a nice way to roll.
And one of my hobbies is birdwatching.
I have one of the preeminent birdwatchers in Madison here in the studio with me for the next few minutes.
His name is Chuck Henriksen.
Chuck taught anatomy at the vet school here at the UW Madison for 20 years.
And then he's become a bird guide.
I call him a bird ambassador because he turned so many people on to birdwatching here in Madison.
Chuck Henriksen, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about birds.
Well, I wanted
to give you a
holler.
We've met in the field sometimes.
And the amazing thing is you give bird tours at the UW Arboretum.
How long have you been doing that?
We started in 2015.
Somebody had just moved here and wanted to
learn more about birds.
So I said, let's start birding on Tuesdays.
We chose Tuesday because not much was going on Tuesdays.
So you do it every Tuesday rain or shine?
Every Tuesday.
Well, once in a while we'll cancel.
If it's just pouring rain and I'll send out a cancellation notes, but yeah, rain or shine year round.
Even in the winter.
Even in the winter.
Yep.
And how many people show up for these walks?
Um, it varies.
I invite all the people I send bird reports to, which today is 880 people.
Yep.
And I'm one of those.
Right.
And I invite them all to come, but luckily only, um, right now we're up to 40 and I'm not the only one leading walks.
I have several other people that, um, lead walks as well with me.
So we divide into smaller groups and take off and go around.
You know, when I was being recruited to come to Madison 43 years ago to be a junior editor at the Progressive Magazine, what made the sale was one of the other editors drove me through the arboretum.
And I've been a bird watcher since I was three years old.
And then, you know, I was 23 at the time and I was living in Washington, D.C.
Didn't have a lot of opportunities to go bird watching.
And I knew then that this would really get me back in touch with this favorite
lifelong
hobby of mine.
And so I used to go bird watching at picnic point in
the
Arboretum and then it skunk cabbage bridge down at the UW Arboretum, which is an incredible place.
Why does the Arboretum
bring in so many interesting birds to see?
I think we have a great amount of different kinds of habitats and they are a crew that takes care of that.
That's a great job.
They burn, get rid of certain things and plant lots of good plants for our birds and just...
It's a great place compared to a lot of other places.
We have several different kinds of habitats that really attract the birds.
It's an incredible treasure.
I mean, it's a public treasure, too.
That's the nice thing.
You know, it's like other public parks in Wisconsin or state parks.
I think of why a loosing state park, for instance, which is an amazing place to see birds.
This is an incredible time these two weeks here in May, Chuck Henriksen for bird watchers, because the songbird migration is coming through.
How's it been so far this spring?
Songbirds, but more importantly right now, it's warblers coming through.
And there's about 30 different species that come in, and we find...
A lot of them really, we try to find a lot of them, but there are only about four species that stay in the arboretum and Dane County for that matter to nest and produce young and that sort of thing.
So we have to work hard and quickly because those warblers go through quickly, but there's some of the most beautiful birds you can imagine.
Yeah, I'm crazy about warblers, but it's some birds, some folks who are just getting into bird watching have it.
have trouble with these little beautiful birds because they jump around so fast, they're hard to find, they're sometimes hard to identify a few of them.
So how do you introduce beginning birdwatchers to the warbler beauty?
Okay, I teach birding 101 for the, let's see, it's called the
Bird Alliance.
Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance.
Used to be the Audubon Society.
Audubon Society.
I'm still stumbling over that.
I think it was a good
idea to change that name though.
There's no reason Audubon had to hog it.
Yeah, that's
true.
Plus his past was really problematic.
So it's four sessions.
The first one we started out with easy birds like
ones you have in your backyard, and that's our thing, and progress to a little bit more difficult birds.
And the last lecture is all about warblers, and that's really tough, really hard.
And we do both the anatomy of the bird itself, what it looks like, and also its song.
So learning the songs and learning the mnemonics that go along with those songs is really tricky and hard for them.
But I'd say it just takes time, and it takes
um doing it over and over and over until it stays in your head.
You know you mentioned the bird songs and a lot of people now are hooked on this device that they get from Cornell University which is called the Merlin which is nap you put on your phone and you put that the phone up to the woods and whatever is singing the woods gets identified on your phone.
Exactly.
What is your do you think that's a good thing?
Oh, yeah.
In fact, when I go birding, I turn on the sound aspect of Merlin.
Merlin has four different choices, actually.
The sound is one of them, and that's the one that most people use.
I turn it on, and that tells me what's out there, what's singing.
And I have to see it or hear it myself to really put it in my checklist that I send to Cornell.
I think it's a great
app.
It is introducing a lot of people to the beauty of birds.
What originally captivated you?
I know for me it was seeing ring neck pheasants in my folks backyard in the northern suburbs of Chicago when I was three years old that hooked me.
What was the bird that hooked you?
I think it was a pilliated woodpecker.
And I grew up around Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota.
And we had pilliated woodpeckers coming to the feeders.
quite often, and that's an impressive bird.
Everybody likes Billy.
Yeah,
that's the Woody Woodpecker bird with the big red crest atop and
it's the size
of a
crow.
In northern Wisconsin, it's really common and much more tame than it seems to be here in southern Wisconsin.
Why is that?
I don't know.
Is that not true?
I think you're right, actually, that they have more of them up there.
It has a better habitat maybe for them, but we have them down here.
We don't see them as often, maybe once a week or something like that.
Yeah, I saw one just at the entrance of Picnic Point one
day, and I've
seen them in the woods, in the main arboretum as well.
I see them in the town of Don, where I live, I see them...
once every six months or so, but they're pretty skittish, so.
They're not coming to my sewer treat either.
Maybe I got the wrong kind of sewer, but
you
know, I've got every other kind of woodpecker there, except I don't have a red-headed woodpecker.
Red-headed woodpeckers are coming through right now, too, aren't they?
Right.
They've just arrived and are arriving, actually.
There's probably one place that has them all year round, just west of here.
But in the arboretum, in Grady Track, especially evidently, the crew told me that they're all year round.
I didn't realize that.
I don't go to the Grady Track very often.
But in the main arb itself, they're just coming.
And a lot of times they're confused with the misnamed red bellied woodpecker, which really doesn't have a red belly, but it's got a red half of a hood that is.
reddish metallic red,
but
that's a beautiful bird too.
It is, and some people call that a redheaded bird.
Which is understandable.
Which is understandable, but back in the day when they were naming birds, they were killing them and they had them in their hand.
And the red belly is very obvious when you turn the bird over and look at the belly and around the attachment of the feet, actually.
So it was an okay name in those days.
but it's not very good.
That
happens.
I mean, for a lay person, though, it's almost impossible to see that red belly.
And
it just
looks, it's a weird name.
So while they're renaming birds right now, maybe there's a rename for that one.
Do you have a favorite bird that you're looking for this spring, a favorite warbler or a scarlet tanger or something that really turns you on?
I used to really like the...
It's a really orange-throated one, and... Black bernie and warbler?
That's the black bernie one.
I
had one off my porch yesterday,
so you can eat your heart out.
I'm too jealous.
Yeah, that's a great bird, but now I, you know, I like a lot of different birds.
I don't know if I have a real special one anymore.
Yeah, I mean, I love this garlic tannager.
Oh, it's gorgeous.
I
have only seen two of them this spring, and also very fleetingly, so I want to get a better look of...
at them and I do love the warblers.
The warbler migration has been great this spring.
It's been slow and steady.
I mean, there's some springs
when
it's cold and there's a north wind for 10 days and then there's a big southerly wind and then they all come and they're gone in a day
or two
days, it seems like.
But this has been kind of slow and steady and a lot of fun for a lot of us crazy bird watchers and we're all crazy in our own way.
Right.
One thing to do is to go to
Cornell Lab, Warren Ethology, eBird, and Google birdcast.
And birdcast follows the bird migration.
And if it's bright yellow over Wisconsin, I usually look at it about 10 o'clock.
And then if it's bright yellow, the next morning there should be a fallout of warblers.
migratory birds for that
matter.
Yeah, this is like weather forecasting for
birdwatchers.
Yes, it is.
And they can identify birds with the equipment they have nowadays.
So that's exciting.
And just for those of you who are listening or into birds or just trying to get used to them, the next few mornings should be really good.
I mean, the wind is coming from the south.
A lot of birds are going to be flying through just in the next couple of days.
So grab your binoculars and go out.
If you don't have binoculars, get a cheap pair.
You know, binoculars can run anywhere from
$75 to $2,000.
You don't need to spend, and who could?
$2,000 on a pair of binoculars.
Just get any $100 pair of binoculars.
That's my advice.
I don't know what yours is, Chuck.
My advice would be, again, go to eBird, and they rate various, go to Cornell Everone Anthology, and they rate various binoculars.
Yeah, but don't spend a fortune.
No, you don't have to, right?
No, any pair will...
any decent pair.
You
can
get a decent pair at $100.
There's no reason to go overboard on it, and then you'll get introduced to this amazing little hobby that has sustained me for 63 years so far,
and counting Chuck.
I want to thank you so much for being our guest today, Chuck Henriksen, and we'll be right back on Mornings with Pat Cridlow.
I'm Matt Rothschild, and I'm here with Angela Lange.
For one last segment, I'm going to play a bird song, and I have a bird poem to read, too.
We'll be right back.
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Welcome back to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow.
This is our last segment.
I'm Matt Rothschild.
I've been co-hosting today with
Angela Lang, and we'll be co-hosting again tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday, so I hope you'll stay with us, and I hope you'll contact us, 855-752-4842.
We did get a text from Tony Zimmerman, who said he's had multiple pillated woodpeckers in his backyard.
They're huge.
They're just an astonishing kind of...
primeval, primitive looking, great bird, and they can do great destruction to trees.
In fact, sometimes you can find the Piliated Woodpecker because you see the shavings of the tree on the ground and you look up and there's this massive hole that
the Piliated
Woodpecker's been pounding on.
So, Angela, I just wondered, curiosity, whether you're into birds at all?
these little like bird pamphlets and whatnot.
So I'm trying to learn a little more.
And that's why I always love like hearing you all like talk about birds.
Cause I'm like, yeah, it's not just the random ones you always see in your house or in your backyard and the ones you see on the street normally.
So I'm always really interested in hearing these conversations.
So.
Well, I've got Chuck Hendricks and I asked him to stay on just to give people
Uh, an idea as to how they can sign up for your newsletter or, uh, get on your walk.
How, how would they sign on to that newsletter?
The newsletter, they can, uh, email me like a lot of people do at C K. Henrickson, no D, no C in that name at gmail.com.
Okay.
Henrickson at gmail.com.
Right.
and then give me your first name, last name, and email address.
That's what I require.
And his newsletter is great, and he got this one response from someone which I think is perfect in its description of what his email provides.
because it comes with descriptions of the birds he's seen and pictures, really great pictures.
So here's the quote.
Chuck's attitude of delight and astonishment comes through vividly in his written reports with their lively descriptions, great sense of humor, subtle and teasing mysteries he sets up to surprise and delight the reader with the antics and curiosities of bird behavior.
That's a keeper, Chuck.
Thanks so much.
One additional comment is, please don't make it a whisk edgy.
email address because with the people that, because I send out so many, they think it's spam.
So they'll bounce it.
So
email.
Give your email once more.
Email is CKHenrickson, H-E-N-R-I-K-S-O-N at gmail.com.
Beautiful.
And now I do want to give people just a taste of what a Baltimore Oriole sounds like because they're all over the state right now, a favorite bird of mine.
There it is.
The Baltimore Oriole.
And I want to now just kind of wrap up with a poem by Wendell Berry, is one of my favorite poems.
This is a bird poem.
This is called The Yellow Throated Warbler.
It's about beauty.
The Yellow Throated Warbler, the highest remotest voice of this place, sings in the tops of the tallest sick mowers.
But one day he came twice to the railing on my porch, where I sat at work above the river.
He was too close to see with binoculars.
Only the naked eye could take him in.
A bird more beautiful than every picture of himself, more beautiful than himself, killed and preserved by the most skilled taxidermist, more beautiful than any human mind, so small and inexact, could hope ever to remember.
My mind became beautiful by the sight of him.
He had the beauty only of himself alive in the only moment of his life.
He had upon him like a light the whole.
beauty of the living world that never dies.
That's the thing about bird watching.
It brings us beauty.
And I'm not one of those people.
I know there are who, who are just into counting as many birds as they've ever seen in their lifetime and just cross them off.
It's kind of bird acquisition or bird tallying.
I was that way when I was in my twenties, but at this point I'm just into bird appreciation, bird beauty appreciation.
And I think that is the most rewarding part.
I mean, I guess the chase,
the competition is something, but I don't know about you Chuck, for me it's about the appreciation.
Yes, well I appreciate too, but Cornell keeps track of all, once you start submitting, they keep track of all of that for you.
So, life lists, county lists, that sort of thing, they tell you when you haven't seen something, there's a thing you can
They can nudge you.
Yes, they can nudge you to find these.
And speaking of Baltimore Orioles, we call the song of the Baltimore Oriole, the sound of a robin has voice lessons.
And the sound of the scarlet tannager, it sounds like a robin that has a sore throat because it's kind of girdly.
Another place to go also at Cornell, but here's a website.
for you.
It's just all about birds.org.
Real easy to remember.
All about birds.org.
And you can find the sounds there.
You can find the identifications, the ranges.
It's all great.
That's the joy of birdwatching.
And Cornell is the best ornithology department in the country.
That's why we keep mentioning it.
I want to thank everyone who's been part of the show today.
I want to thank Greg Bach.
who was producing the first two hours.
He'll be on with Jane Mattenair on Mattenair on Air in just a couple minutes.
It's a great show.
So please stay tuned to the Civic Media Radio Network.
I want to thank Sam Davison, who's been producing this last hour and helps me with my podcast.
He's great.
I want to thank our guests, Ruth Conniff, Representative Christian Phelps, and Chuck Henriksen right here.
And of course, Angela Lang, who's just so delightful to co-host with all the time.
And I do want to thank our callers and textures.
You guys make the show and we'll be back again tomorrow.
Wednesday and Thursday with more politics, more birds, and more poetry.
Because it can't just be all politics.
We need to enjoy the beauty in our lives.
Birds bring it, poetry brings it, music brings it, art brings it.
And that's how we're gonna get through all this.
Angela's been a pleasure as always.
I look forward to being with you again tomorrow morning.
And with you, the listener, we'll see you tomorrow.
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