Can We At Least Agree on Clean Drinking Water? (Hour 2)

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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.

Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.

Hey, good morning.

It is 7 0 6.

It is nice to have you here up north on this Monday morning.

July 28th, 2025.

Nice to be back home here in beautiful Chippewa Falls.

Parker Olsen down in Madison in Studio A2 producing this fine broadcast.

Dr. Kristen Lierley joins us.

Up North News reporter Selena Heller is here and also back at her own home studio meteorologist Brittany Merlot back from camping at EAA Air Venture in Oshkosh.

Brittany, how was the rest of air venture and the camping and the heat and the humidity and the rain and all those other things?

You love so much.

You go back every year.

Yeah, I know, right?

You know, it was really, really tiring actually by the end of it with it all.

The storm, the first one on Wednesday knocked my tent down pretty much.

I'm sorry, it knocked your tent down?

It did.

It did.

So Wednesday, the windstorm got me.

Thursday the rain was so heavy.

A bunch of tents and areas were flooded throughout the campgrounds and thankfully mine stayed dry.

So it can't handle the wind but it can handle the heavy rain so I learned a lot.

And then me personally after so long in the heat and I was trying to stay hydrated as much as possible but it got to me by the end.

I left early.

I did not stay over the weekend like I thought I was going to.

So I did leave on Friday just to get to that AC.

Let me tell you.

That's a luxury.

It is and it's going to be nice for some people today as well as the heat hangs on for one more day.

Yep, another heat advisory through noon to seven o'clock tonight.

We're going to have temperatures in the mid eighties far north mid nineties far south.

And of course we are going to be feeling the heat index more like 100 degrees.

So another sweaty day today.

We are looking at that little light rain and cloud covered down far south off towards Milwaukee

and

Waukegan area that is going to be moving out of here as we go through the next hour, sunny across the state.

It is about 63 to 77 degrees throughout the air.

and we are looking at staying pretty dry for most of the day, but late, late tonight.

We've got another system that wants to work its way through the state.

Those storms start far northwest, probably around 10, 11 o'clock or so.

They'll push in essential areas of the state around 2 AM and then probably be around the Fox Valley and Lakeshore around four or five early in the morning tomorrow.

Now we are at a slight risk for damaging winds and hail with this system.

So 60, 70 mile per hour gusts, power outages are definitely possible and the highest chance for that would probably.

likely be Eau Claire lacrosse Richland center area.

It does start to fizzle out as it pushes in towards central, but Madison Wausau still could see some stronger storms with that and then it fizzles out definitely as it heads towards the lake shore tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow still mid 70s far north to mid 80s far south.

We really cool things down as we go into Wednesday and mid 70s much more comfortable across the state and some dry conditions too.

All right, from the text line from Jim and Brookfield, Brittany needs to be commended for dealing with the elements and camping at the EAA and for making the live broadcasts.

My old flight instructor stayed in a fully equipped motorhome and thought he had it rough.

He should have spoken with Brittany.

Tom and Jackson on the text line says glad to hear that Brittany is okay.

Thank you.

People are really concerned about you there.

Let's see, from Rob and Tigerton, good morning.

It is sunny and 70 degrees, had mowing job Saturday, then went to Clintonville, had to go to the A&W for lunch with a root beer float.

It was a diet root beer.

He watered flowers on Tigerton's Main Street.

This Saturday is my cousin Jerry's benefit.

He has thyroid cancer and has been in the hospital for the last three weeks.

I was helping my sisters getting the prices for the raffle.

Let's see.

When, where I live, when not working, I love going for a walk or a gatoride in the woods, watching nature yesterday.

I had deer at the front door of my house.

Brittany, I hope you had a wonderful time at EAA.

And did you ever ride on the Goodyear blimp?

And he concludes by saying, I've got mowing jobs in Wittenberg today.

No blimp ride, I don't believe.

No blimp ride for me.

It looked a little hot in there.

It did.

And now that I've seen it up close, I mean, I was like face to face with it.

It was on the ground and getting ready to, I assume, take off.

And I mean, like I said last week, it's just like, okay, it's just a big balloon with, you know, basically a little box underneath and hope that everything goes okay.

It was pretty funny.

I was in one of the briefings for the flight show and the air show, and they were like, if the blimp is in the way, let us know.

And it just felt like this big block out there for everybody else.

It was pretty funny.

If the blimp is in the way.

OK.

Because you can just go what, and just push it aside with a good little gust, right?

OK.

Brittany, thank you so much.

Glad you made it back.

All right.

And had fun.

Thank

you.

All right.

Remember, you can sign up for a daily newsletter up north news wi.com.

Click subscribe up in the top banner.

You'll get all kinds of Wisconsin feature stories and some of the news stories that Selena Heller works on.

And we'll hear about one of those stories in just a bit.

But first from Kristen, as always, there's the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show weekends.

Tell us about either last Saturdays or what you got planned for this coming Saturday.

This coming Saturday we're talking about food and how do we save extra food and make sure that we're repurposing it and getting it to people who need it because haven't you ever thought like you go to an event and you see all this?

extra food that's left over and you hate to throw it away.

So that's one of the things we're going to talk about.

But last weekend, we spoke with Dennis Peters.

He's the lead singer of the Glam Band.

If you're not familiar with the Glam Band, they are an 80s hair metal tribute band.

They are a blast.

They're at all the county fairs.

They're doing gigs all over Wisconsin in the summer.

And Dennis is suffering from stage four prostate cancer and like so many people in his situation.

He didn't have health insurance.

So we're doing a benefit in Green Bay on Thursday at the Riverside Ballroom.

It's for Dennis.

You get to hear Dennis's story on the Dr. Kristen Lyerle show.

You get to hear the folks who established on stage for cancer.

It's onstage, the number for cancer.org.

If you're interested in learning more and pitching in, it is a beautiful.

community tribute to Dennis and a way to help out somebody who has entertained and brought joy to so many people all across the state.

I'm glad to hear it.

I'm glad to hear about the benefit.

Don't get me wrong.

But if it sounds like I'm banging my head against the microphone as a metaphorical brick wall here,

it's

that we are just like the last segment, having this discussion about having to hold benefits for people.

because they didn't have proper health insurance coverage because they're threatened with bankruptcy, which again happens in no other developed country in the world.

Yes, I put a period after every one of those words because it is so unnecessary.

We've been talking about this for 30 plus years and we still have politicians blocking one of the most basic things that a free people could want and that would be not going bankrupt because of health care.

and needing to rely on the charity of others.

Sorry, there's my rant.

I hope the benefit is fun.

It's still not necessary that we have to have a country where we need them, but I hope the benefits fun.

Thanks.

I agree.

It's it's really demoralizing.

You know, you just you're healthy until you're not healthy.

I mean, this is a guy who it was a great baseball player.

He had tryouts with the pros.

He's active if you've ever seen them perform.

This is a guy who's all over the stage and just vibrant and

beautiful and wonderful and then boom.

And it happens to so many people.

Health issues like this are the number one reason that people file for bankruptcy.

And it's a lot of people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So again, I'm glad we're talking about the benefit and for people who, you know, want to help out.

That's that's a wonderful thing.

It just shouldn't be the thing.

The thing

we should be talking about right now is Selena Hellish t-shirt.

which is his pink.

It has a steak on it and it simply says meat raffle.

A big piece of meat, right

on my shirt.

Yes.

Where did you get that meat raffle shirt, Selena?

Downtown Eau Claire, Incorporated.

So this is an organization that I used to kind of run before when I worked in economic development at the city of Eau Claire.

And so now they're new fundraiser.

So my my charge was coming me up with new fundraisers.

My big one was a grand evening on the bridge where we had

like a dinner on the bridge and that still happens today with all the local businesses around that area.

They started this meat raffle.

So I went to their meat raffle to support downtown Eau Claire.

I won a roast.

pork tenderloins, pork sausage, all sorts of meat and a t-shirt that says meat raffle that Emory wants to wear on her first day of school.

I love that she's planning her first day of school.

My kids are like, no, it's too soon.

The

meat raffle t-shirt that you won at a meat raffle is anything more quintessential Wisconsin than that.

So the dinner on the bridge, the Grand Avenue Bridge, that's something you helped organize and it's still going on to this day.

Yes.

How great a feeling is that because I had I played the same role with literacy volunteers and their scrabble bee.

And this goes way, way back when I was helping out with literacy volunteers of the Chippewa Valley and going, we need a fundraiser.

We need a fundraiser.

And I was on this committee where we came up with and I suggested doing some kind of a Scrabble Bee or was more of a variation of it rather than say a Scrabble Tournament.

And boy, that first year we barely broke even.

And now when I see that it's still going on after all these years and how much money it's raising, it just feels so good to know that you created that kind of stuff.

Kristen I know you take part in like there's a talent show that you do in Northeast Wisconsin every year and probably other activities as well knowing you.

It's the same people who do the on-stage fork cancer.

benefit every year.

It's called Doctors in Recital.

Doctors and health care providers who are musically inclined put on a beautiful show at the Weidner Center in Green Bay and we raise money for a number of different local charities and every year it's bigger, it's better and we pull more people in and it's a

blast.

It's never easy coming up with a first event like I was doing some work for Hope Village here in Chippewa Falls and they've come up with this thing called a quarter auction and they've

since taking it and run with it.

And again, it's done really well.

I could not explain a quarter auction to you right now at gunpoint if you had to.

But other people grabbed the idea and went with it.

And that's a great thing.

And Selena, there's so many just in the Chippewa Valley alone that you have covered over the years that, again, there's always going to be a need for fundraisers.

back

to

my rant earlier.

That's just a particular kind of fundraiser.

But for all kinds of nonprofits and the good work they do, it's such a great way to fill the calendar with all these fun events.

Oh my gosh, there's so many events and I used to work on the weekend.

So every weekend, I think I went to every sort of run and race and every fundraising event and they're becoming more and more vital to all of these organizations.

And it's just you have to be creative in coming up with a lot of these things because things that haven't been done before.

So when you come up with something good, so this one I just came up with at a conference, you had to come up with some idea that you think would be good.

for your town and I had to draw this out and I didn't ever think it would come to fruition but lo and behold it did and it's still going strong all these years later so it's just so those unique things like Scrabblebee is so popular.

But this dinner on the bridge, you just sit out amongst this, you know, the fresh air

and

you have dinner.

And there's it's just a unique experience.

So great.

From Janet Oak Creek on the text line, Pat, you just took the words right out of my mouth about people having to have raffles and charity events to pay for their medical care.

I reminded every time I see a coffee can at a checkout counter or a message on the bulletin board that says someone needs money for their cancer or their chronic disease.

It's just wrong for our country with its wealth not

give universal health care, Medicare for all to every citizen health care is a right.

Thank you for your comments.

It needs to be heard every day.

And Jan, I do have that same visceral reaction every time I see a community bulletin board with another one of these flyers on there that it's just it shouldn't have to be but there are things about health care that Kristen and I talked about last hour that shouldn't have to be a thing but there's still a thing and Selena is going to carry that over into our next segment here in talking about abortion care total

productive care that saves lives.

And we'll hear Selena's report on that coming up.

First from the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota.

Thank you for making this the place to spend part of your Monday mornings, powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pac Wright Long.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

on a Monday morning, July 28th with Selina Heller from Up North News and Dr. Kristen Lierly as well on a week where the Wisconsin State Fair gets going on Thursday.

Kristen, did you say you were going to try to make a run down to it?

Yes, because of the food.

I love the food.

Always good.

Always good.

Jackson

County Fair is this weekend, too.

The Jackson County Fair is this weekend.

Is there going to be the Combine Demolition Derby?

Absolutely.

Highlights.

If you have not heard Celine talk about this before, go to UpNorthNewsWI.com and just search for the word Combine and I'm sure you'll come up with it.

The Combine Demolition Derby, which is just

It's as successful as it is hilarious.

The people that go out into fields and buy junked up combines and fix them up to run one more time.

Or

in some cases, they have run a lot of derbies

with them.

I just was so flabbergasted the first time you wrote your first story about this.

I'm like, are you punking me?

Is this really a thing?

No, no, it really is a thing

here.

Interrupt Combine Chat to just tell you that a hunk, a hunk, fat, all this donut ice cream sandwich is being featured this year at the Wisconsin State Fair.

Kristen's still back on the State Fair

for you over

here.

We're going

to rewind.

So folks, if you haven't made your weekend plans yet, you've got two things to do.

You've got to go to the Jackson County Fair.

When's the Combine demo derby?

Sunday

Sunday Sunday Sunday, okay, and so do your Wisconsin State Fair on Friday or Saturday and then Where's the Jackson County Fairgrounds?

Black River Falls.

Black River Falls.

There you

go.

Easy peasy.

All right, so make make those trips this weekend.

All right, in sports, the Brewers took one out of the three game series with Miami, still remain tied for the top of the National League Central Division with the Chicago Cubs after winning over Miami three to two by Blake Perkins, singling home the winning run in the bottom of the ninth.

Jackson Churio now has a 20 game hitting streak going on and the Brewers now get set

to take on the Cubs tonight, tomorrow night, and Wednesday afternoon at American Family Field.

Coverage begins at 6.05 this evening on several civic media stations all across Wisconsin.

All right, let's give a listen first to a report that Selena did for Up North News on abortion care.

Do you want to set up the piece really briefly, Selena?

Sure.

Megan is from La Crosse County.

She is 41.

She loves volunteering and has rescue dogs and all sorts of things.

And now a legislative Democrat you'll hear from Senator Kelderoy's of Madison in this piece.

They're behind a bill to protect Wisconsinites like Megan whose access to reproductive health care saved her life.

So here is Megan.

I am alive today because abortion saved my life.

This is Megan.

She lives in western Wisconsin and likes to go fishing and hunting.

She enjoys gardening and she loves her rescue dogs.

about 10 years ago, she and her then-husband wanted to have kids.

She became pregnant, but soon after, she started having intense abdominal pains.

You know, my doctors saw the fetus in the uterus.

They're like, you're fine.

It's probably just a cyst or whatever over in that ovary.

But

Megan wasn't fine, and she found out why a few months later while at an ultrasound appointment.

As I'm in my going back to the exam room, I have another spell.

So I had probably four different spells of where I actually was going into.

shock.

I was rupturing and internally bleeding and going into shock.

Megan was rushed into emergency surgery where doctors found a rare and dangerous heterotopic pregnancy, which means there was one embryo in the uterus and the other outside of it.

Megan's doctors had to remove the pregnancies and it's for scary situations like Megan's that state senators like Kelder Roy's have introduced the abortion rights restoration act.

Number one, it puts into state statute.

that you and I all have a right to bodily autonomy.

Number two, it repeals that horrible 1849 law that bans virtually all abortion.

And number three, it repeals a lot of the Walker era restrictions that made abortion so difficult.

people to get.

This is just healthcare.

This is a procedure that saves people's lives.

And the only person that should be able to make that decision is the person going through it with their provider.

I didn't have the time to wait for somebody to decide that I was dying enough.

All right, so there is Selena's report from a little earlier today.

And Kristen, you might be hearing that for the first time, but wanted to get your reaction to one of

how many cases you hear just like Selena's report?

Hey, I'd like to start just by saying Megan is an incredibly courageous woman to share her story.

And also to invite our listeners to consider, have you ever heard of a heterotopic pregnancy?

Because it happens.

One pregnancy in the uterus, one pregnancy

outside of the uterus where it can't survive, these are the types of situations that people are unaware of that we need to treat in order to save people's lives.

And when there are abortion bans in place, it prevents us from taking care of our patients.

Selina, this is not the first person you've talked to, again, for whom abortion care was medically necessary, not like some kind of a...

convenient choice, some kind of a luxury or whatever it is that politicians like to say.

No, absolutely not.

I've talked to a lot over the course of the last few years.

And for Megan, she saw a post on our Facebook page and she commented on it.

And that's how I found Megan.

And she was very kind of she wanted to tell her story and she never had.

And so Kristen, this kind of goes along with your storytellers.

Like she thought about it.

She wanted to get her story out and she was like, and you reached out to me and I got to tell my story.

And so now she's a little more wanting to kind of get her story out there and tell how important it is.

And I never heard of heterotopic pregnancies.

I had to look it up and I was like, oh my goodness, I didn't know idea.

Well, and think about it, one in four women in this country have an abortion.

So there are a lot of stories floating around out there, but we don't hear those stories because they're emotionally charged.

They're hard to tell.

They're societally not acceptable to tell.

So a lot of people keep those secrets even from the people that they are closest to.

So to be able to come out and tell a story like this is, like I said, it is incredibly courageous.

As Tony writes on YouTube, dying enough

is a

phrase that shouldn't exist, especially to determine whether you get medical care or not.

Selena Heller, thank you so much for your report.

Have a good start to the day.

Dr. Lylee, have a great start to the week.

We'll talk to you on Friday.

Sounds good.

I'll give a full report from training camp.

Oh, that's right.

Go enjoy.

All right.

Coming up after the Midwest Farm Report, we'll hear from Senator Tammy Baldwin about funds to make sure that we can test for clean drinking water across rural Wisconsin.

That's next on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Nice to have you back on this Monday morning.

It is July 28th 735 right now all across the Civic Media Radio Network.

Let's turn our attention now to Senator Tammy Baldwin.

We spoke to her late last week right after Governor Tony Evers had made his announcement that he would not be running for a third term.

And that was not the point of the original interview.

It was for this segment right here talking about a new bill that she has introduced along with the main Republican Susan Collins about keeping rural drinking water safe.

Wisconsin as you know continues to identify new sources of contaminated water and soil from industrial chemicals like PFAS and other sources.

But the thing about the smaller communities is they lack the resources to conduct adequate testing to identify contaminated water and engage in, you know, the mitigation that's necessary to remove the contaminant.

And again, make sure that unlike, say, the folks on French Island near the cross, you're not still trucking in bottled water.

for years and years.

And so I started by asking Senator Tammy Baldwin about the bill that she had just introduced with Senator Collins to do just that, help rural communities ensure that they have clean drinking water.

Yeah, so certainly you can't be from Wisconsin and not be about water.

We're on two great lakes.

We have the mighty Mississippi defining most of our west coast and we have so many inland rivers and lakes and this incredible groundwater, but we've also

have our water challenges.

And I'm not going to go into all of them because this is a fairly focused bill.

But we have to do our part to make sure that our drinking water is safe and clean.

And when you have a municipal water utility, you can do that with filtration, et cetera.

But a lot of Wisconsinites rely on private wells for their water.

And the testing to make sure that that water is contaminant free, that that water is clean and safe is really expensive.

And it means that a lot of people don't do it on a regular basis.

And and then if you do find that there are contaminants, you know, it's also expensive to add mitigation steps and filtration.

So the healthy H2O water is

focused on communities that are rural where there's a lot of folks who are reliant on private wells to get grants to do that testing.

And if there are issues found, whether that's PFAS or other issues with the water, there's a follow on grant to be able to help make filtration at the source more affordable.

And, you know, oftentimes rural residents are left behind in our discussions about clean water and safe drinking water.

effort squarely focused on on our rural residents.

And especially when you consider that as you note in your release, the state has 714 communities with populations under 10,000.

This program would apply to them now in.

more normal times.

I would say that that sounds like a bipartisan slam dunk, but given the width and the breadth of cuts that rural lawmakers and other folks on the Republican side of the aisle are willing to embrace, can we even try to speculate about the success of a package like this in this current Congress?

Well, I have to say that, first of all, the fact that this legislation starts out as bipartisan legislation, that it is brought forward by two senior members of the Appropriations Committee, and that all of

Almost all of my colleagues in the Senate, Democrat or Republican, have rural areas of their states that they represent.

So I think that there's a dynamic here that would say that we can move this forward, especially in the Senate.

because we all have, I think we all share an interest of having safe drinking water for our constituents and most of us have large rural areas in our states.

And on top of that, there is just a laundry list here, dozens of water quality associations and other groups that would back this as well.

So it is certainly something that we can continue to follow and look at the measure of success it will have.

what it will do for the health of water in our rural communities.

So finally, we are heading into or pretty much into the August recess for Congress right now.

So this was one of the announcements that you wanted to make before Congress takes a break.

Congress overall seems to be consumed with a rather

tawdry matter and then the distractions that come with it.

You have everybody from Senator Ron Johnson to Congressman Derek Van Orden wanting to talk about the 2016 Russia investigation and former President Obama or basically anything else.

It is the recess going to provide some kind of a cooling off period or do you feel that when we

When Congress comes back, there will be Republicans still facing a rather skeptical public about the way that they have handled things over these past few weeks and months.

Yeah, so I mean the last few weeks and months have made it clear that Republicans are for billionaires over families and Democrats are for families over billionaires You know the their the budget reconciliation measure that was passed a few weeks back was all about cutting healthcare and and nutrition assistance from those who are most vulnerable

why in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires and profitable corporations, I've never seen a clearer example of whose side you're on.

And even the tawdry affair that we're talking about, the optics of President Trump protecting a billionaire pedophile, it's just sort of...

beyond words in my mind.

But look over the August recess it's going to be really important to me to travel the state and bring home the points about

the jeopardy that healthcare and people's healthcare is under because of that massive budget reconciliation bill.

We have several hospitals in rural areas of the state that may be at risk of closing.

Certainly that will be true of skilled nursing facilities because of Medicaid cuts that will be implemented.

People are going to lose their

private health insurance that they get through the Affordable Care Act because of the end of premium subsidies that help people afford the health insurance.

And we need to highlight the damage because that's the only way we're going to ever successfully fight back is by continuing to talk about the effects and reminding people that Trump and Republicans

are are fighting for the billionaires and we're fighting for people to have health care and to be able to afford their health care their medications their groceries their energy bills their housing that's what we're about

I know that I'm not going out on a limb saying that this might be one of the busiest recesses that Congress has had for a while, but I also know that you and others try to take some time to at least get a little bit of downtime.

I hope you get a chance to do that.

Before you did, thanks for spending a few moments with us to talk to us about all the news of the day.

Thank you again, Senator Tammy Baldwin.

Thank you.

Again, that was Senator Tammy Baldwin.

We initially got her reaction to Governor Evers not running and then to her new package on again, what should be a bipartisan matter is making sure that rural communities can test for contaminated drinking water.

Who's against that?

No idea.

Tell you about a couple of newsletters that we put out here.

There's our weekday one that you can sign up for at UpNorthNewsWI.com.

And in today's newsletter, a judge has ruled in Dane County that the father of the teen who opened fire at a Madison school last December, the father will stand trial for allowing her access to the guns used in the deadly attack.

Also in today's newsletter, food drives are being organized to call attention to the cuts in SNAP nutrition benefits to lower income families.

And in our weekend newsletter, Sunday mornings with Pat Crightlow, sign up for it at UpNorthNewsWI.com, we also have our question of the week and it goes like this, crypto.

What do you think of it?

Is it the future?

Is it a maybe?

but you need to learn a little bit more about it or is it a scam?

You just don't like it or you need to know more first.

Can we protect consumers and businesses and frankly the economy?

with the right amount of regulations around cryptocurrency?

Or does it only work if it's a wild west mentality and exposes people to scams?

We talked about this late last week with two legislators working on a bill about these kinds of guidelines around crypto.

But we want to know what do you think of cryptocurrency right now?

And I think a lot of us, not all of us, but I think a lot of us have that one person in their lives who is an unabashed crypto pusher.

You know, they can't talk about it enough and how it is totally the way that all money is going, that it's all going to be digital in this fashion.

Are they right?

Are they, you know, on the cutting edge here?

Or again, are they just a little caught up, too much caught up in the moment?

to understand the dangers of crypto.

I will say for the initial 24 hours now that this question has been out, the answer is overwhelmingly coming from people who believe it's a scam or they're skeptical of it.

That is not necessarily a representative sample of the population, but those are the people who are motivated to answer a question like this.

But I'm quite certain if I dive back into the inbox I'm gonna find some people going now you just need to learn more you just need to pay attention and here's why it's safe or here's why it can be properly protected and I'm willing to keep an open mind on that but I want to know what your thoughts are right now Let's see.

I've got Tony here on YouTube saying I've dabbled in crypto, but I'm not I'm not all in on it

So again, maybe you're among the people who are in that way of thinking.

So let us know.

You can sign up for the newsletter, UpNorthNewsWI.com.

Looking ahead to the lineup here on Civic Media.

Of course, we've got Matt Nair on air coming up after this program, airing from 9 to 11 this morning, Todd Alba from 2 to 4.

And then Maggie Dawn.

From four to six today, Matt Rothschild will be on right off the top at four o'clock, discussing Wisconsin politics.

And right after five o'clock, Lori Richards, the CEO of Miller Communications, will be talking to Maggie Dawn.

Again, that's from four until six.

Lori Richards at five, Matt Rothschild at four.

And speaking of Matt, he does have a podcast that you'll find over at the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.

It's called Wisconsin Forward, and it is a weekly dive into a topic that surrounds a current political problem in the state, a little background on how we got to where we are today.

what some folks are working on now for a possible path forward.

It's a uniquely Wisconsin take on the big issues that might be preventing progress and the people who have the ideas to move us forward.

You can subscribe and download to Wisconsin Forward on Spotify, Apple, or the Civic Media website.

the same place ever so coincidentally where you can subscribe to this program as well as a podcast.

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No Parker, it's not that one either.

Parker's playing bumper music roulette here because I told him that one particular bumper tune became like an earworm for me overnight, just on a loop, could not get it out of my head.

And I'm sure it's going to trigger me whenever it comes up.

But it wasn't that one either.

Still haven't heard it yet today.

Jimmy Koska is here, Civic Media Sports Director to tell us about some of the things that he's working on, following.

And he tells me there was no 5 AM football practice today.

Jimmy, you're sloughing off or what?

I wanted to talk about the earworm for a second.

I used to produce on the Badger Sports Network.

If an Abba song came up in rotation, you would hear about it from Matt LePay for probably the next half an hour.

Abba was bad from the bumper rotation from Badger

Sport.

See, the things that you learn behind the scenes, you don't expect to learn.

You didn't put Matt LePay and, you know, songs from Abba in that.

I didn't.

Yeah, yes.

If it ever came up, you would get, you would definitely as a producer, you would hear about

it.

Because he didn't like them?

or he was a big

fan of him and Mike Lucas.

It would just it would just end up turning into like off the air.

Just like, what are you doing back?

Oh.

Not fans.

No.

But anyway, yeah, we're totally slacking as football coaches in Wisconsin

this

week.

This is the mandated week where you can't have coaching contact for football.

Other sports have theirs that starts at the end of the month.

Basically for the first week before you start practice in any fall sport, there's no coaching contact in the summer.

So for high school coaches in football, there is a very healthy thread of where those coaches are on vacation.

this week for myself.

I am staying right here at basketball.

I'm too boring to go on vacation.

But it is a nice week to kind of catch your breath, reset, and then get ready for some teams, what could be a four month long season.

So this is kind of that chance to catch your breath ahead of all of that.

Well, sure.

And for the kids as well, that their families, they know that there is a finite week there that they will not miss any practice if they take a break.

And so hopefully they're all having a good time as well before they have to go get their schools.

supplies and get set for another school year.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think, uh, I think really having these built in weeks, because the other week is the week of July 4th.

You have these built in weeks where you can focus on things that aren't sports.

Um, I think youth sports burnout is a real, real big deal, especially for the kids that are specializing in things.

Um, that you just need, you need to have time built in.

Rest is.

just as important as trading really, because I mean, how do you recover from all the work you're doing and develop as a kid?

You need to have rest periods.

So I personally, I'm fine with it.

I know there are probably some coaches that wish they could practice every day of the summer, but Evan this weekend where you can, you know, hydrate, you know, get yourself, you're mentally ready for what's coming up.

That's that's the thing.

And you know, the other thing too, for everybody listening, I mean, hey, high school football, we kick off the season three weeks from Friday.

right?

That's the first game.

Like, it's it's go time right now for a lot of teams.

So.

Wow.

Okay.

As far as what you did over the weekend, though, of course, you didn't escape sports altogether.

And you and you and Parker were spending some time with the Madison Nightmares softball team.

That's right.

For us, it was kind of a neat thing.

Our youth baseball and softball programs, every year, go out to either a Mallards game or a Nightmares game.

The Nightmares have only been around a couple of years, but one of the players for the Nightmares is actually from Boscobel.

She plays at Mississippi State, and that's Greta Grassel, who, you know, very, very decorated player in high school, but just finished up her first year at Mississippi State in the SEC.

So there are quite a few people cheering for her in the doubleheader.

on Saturday with the fireworks afterwards.

I tell you, having the Northwoods League, not just for baseball, but now for softball in Wisconsin, that is for sports fans, a tremendous value in entertainment.

It is really, it's like having our own.

a total minor league system all across the state.

And virtually every college sized town in the state, you have minor league baseball entertainment everywhere, which is tremendous.

I know here at our network at Civic Media, we actually have broadcast rights to one of those teams in Wisconsin Rapids.

So if you live anywhere close to a city in Wisconsin, there's some pretty good baseball happening or softball happening right in your backyard.

Yeah, the now the Northwoods League, I remember when it first started for baseball, it was described as, you know, collegiate level baseball with wooden bats, which differentiated itself from from other baseball leagues.

In terms of the Northwoods League for softball, is that also a wooden bat league for softball or softball always metal bats?

Yeah, softball softball is metal bats, but it's still very high level looking at just the rosters and seeing the people coming up the batters.

You've got every top program represented teams.

You just watch the

College World Series in softball.

You see all these same athletes all over the place.

But yeah, having baseball and softball at this very high level with a lot of them ending up professionally, playing professionally, it's such a neat experience for people to have this kind of access to really future stars in baseball and softball.

I'm looking at the Northwoods League standings here and it shows the uh it shows five teams the Wausau Ignite uh with a record of 12 and 27 at the bottom then the Lacrosse Steam then the Mankato Habineros the Minot Honeybees and then your first place Madison Nightmares with a record of 31 wins and only six losses and so Parker for as much as you have to work those games uh at least you've got you know more

more wins than losses to cover.

They're very good.

And it's actually like insane how much better they are this year compared to last year.

They've got so much more pop and they're so much more consistent.

It's been really fun to watch them this year.

I think they've got a new head coach that's out of Oklahoma.

So they're again, one of those softball powerhouses in college.

Yeah, and Tony writing on YouTube love the Northwoods League need a team in Ashland.

And I don't doubt that it's only going to continue to grow, Jimmy.

Yeah, softball is already adding teams.

Baseball has expanded quite a ways.

Crossing a couple of time zones.

There's a lot of teams all the way from the Dakotas, all the way to Indiana and Michigan.

Obviously, a lot of teams right here in Wisconsin, but there are a lot of baseball teams.

But softball is also expanding.

That sport continues to grow.

It is, again, for sports fans, it's a lot of entertainment value for your buck, just like high school sports.

It doesn't cost a whole lot.

You can go have a fantastic time at any of these things.

Where else can you get a beer?

ziplined into you.

But wonderful.

Okay, I have to go learn more about that now during the news break.

Jimmy Koska, thank you so much for the little update.

We'll see you on Wednesday.

Yeah, talk to you Wednesday.

All right.

Appreciate it.

Coming up in our eight o'clock hour, we will be talking to author Laura Bird.

Before that, John and Gordy from our Civic Media Station in Madison and Jane Mattener, of course, will be previewing the shows that she'll be having this week, plus an updated forecast from meteorologist Brittany Merleau.

Remember, you can follow my team all day at UpNorthNewsWI.com and right here, mornings on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Kratlow.

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