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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Basota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Well, hey there, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
It is 6.06 on this Wednesday morning, August 6th, 2025.
It's a beautiful morning to have you here up north, live from Lake Basota, from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Catching us by podcasts, social media, however you got here.
Appreciate your watching, even jumping into the comment section.
Tony, right out of the gate.
Pat, Pat, Pat.
I'm hoping that's a cheer and I'm not being chided for something here.
But thanks for starting your day right here.
I got a question for you.
I got a question for Parker Olson, who produces the shindig down in Madison Studio A2.
Here's my question for you.
Are you tired of talking about the Brewers yet?
No, no, no, no, no, no the correct answer is no five games in a row The current winning streak is five and I love being able to say it the current winning streak is five
I know it's it's it's very nice We'll get into their latest win over Atlanta coming up in just a bit How are things in Madison?
Are they are they a little hazy or foggy there like they they are here?
I think it's more haze than fog
I'm not really sure
I was you know what it is It is absolutely that time again.
Yeah at this morning where it's like, you know now again by now It's 6 0 8, you know, it's it's light out, but you know now but not 5 30 now still not very light at
I
and I
in the car isn't quite right,
Yeah, I was confused.
Well, it makes sense because that that whole Madison area, I mean, we we talk about the isthmus and the two lakes on either side.
If you were to restore it to its natural state, it would all be Swampland down there by and large and.
That's the way it was sold.
If anybody's never looked into the real story of how Madison came to be the capital of Wisconsin, that it was basically one big corrupt land deal, that the guy that owned most of the land on the Isthmus sold each of the legislators a bill of goods, promised them property and everything.
And yeah, eventually it all got cleared out.
Eventually it looks really nice now.
But yeah, it's an interesting story.
Yeah, you really want to read through that sometime.
But because of that, you know, it being in the lowlands there, you definitely get those patches of fog.
You know, one of my favorite plane rides was actually a short plane ride from Minneapolis to Chicago or vice versa, flying over Wisconsin.
And it was one of those very early morning flights.
And you know how when you're in a fog bank, I mean, you just feel like it goes on forever, right?
You're just enveloped by it.
If you ever get a chance to see fog from, from up high like that, I don't know where that flight is.
Let's, let's say it's 20,000 feet up, whatever it is.
And you just see the patches of fog.
Now the patch of, again, will be large enough for like an entire, say small city that might be in a river valley or something like that.
But then there's no fog for one.
Then there's another patch in some more low line areas.
And it is just that it's beautiful from up high.
But you can just see how the people in each one of those little foggy blobs are thinking, oh my god, it must be foggy everywhere.
Nope,
in short order, you know, yeah, and especially, especially something like fog where, you know, the lowline stuff, you know, really does depend on where you are at any given point in time here.
So yeah, it was a little foggy this morning, not as smoky.
We've got a south wind, a blowing right now.
Brittany Merleau's forecast for the state says that the wildfire smoke continues to clear as another system moves closer, dragging in the heat and humidity behind it.
Active weather will start up again, she says, as we head toward the weekend.
So for today, increasing cloudiness and a chance for drizzle highs today statewide in the low to mid 80s, the south wind at 10 to 15 miles an hour.
For tonight, mostly cloudy scattered showers are possible late.
a low tonight in the low to mid 60s and a southeast wind at five to 10 miles an hour.
Now the rain parker is going to be welcomed, I think by a lot of folks, you know, light rain, not the flash flooding kind.
I noticed yesterday in the farm field across from us, they've got one of those big, you know, irrigation sprinkler systems for for the fields.
And it was turned on for the first time.
this year, this season for us.
And it, you know, does what it does.
It's quite the little marvel there, how you can water, you know, an entire massive cornfield and get it all done.
And I want to make clear that I'm talking, what I'm about to say did not happen yesterday.
But if you ever passed by those big farm irrigation systems and they're kind of, they kind of overshot the runway.
And if you're driving past them,
And you happen to have a convertible or a motorcycle or something.
You get a free car wash.
You ever drive through one of those?
I
Brief.
Again, if your car's all closed up, it's kind of funny.
It's like, oh, he he the, you know, like, like any other neighbor who sprinkler is is again overshooting its mark.
But when it's a one of those big farm ones, that's a lot of water.
coming out at once.
And hopefully, these don't have to get used too often.
Hopefully, we get back to some more balanced precipitation.
But I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I've just seen the latest crop progress reports.
And I mean, as you can imagine, things are growing like crazy here.
go ahead and
I took like four pieces growing this morning.
The trees, the landscaping, the grass, but I mean, the crops as well.
This has been an amazing growing season.
The balance between the rain that we got earlier and then, you know, the sunshine, the warm temperatures and everything, it is to this point, I hasten to say, looking like it's going to be a great season.
Now, again, you know, other things can happen, heat, hail, given all that.
But boy, things are looking beautiful out there.
I mean, pretty much all of the second crop of hay is in.
About half of the third crop of hay is getting done by a lot of farmers out there.
The corn is coming together nicely.
And I'm saying all these things that maybe you just heard in the last hour.
Maybe you're
at one of
the civic media stations that has the Midwest Farm Report from five to six a.m.
If not, stick around because the short version of the Midwest Farm Report is coming up in just under 20 minutes here.
But let's get back to the brewers.
Their win last night.
Over Atlanta, the final score was seven to two.
In winning, the team extended its current winning streak to five games.
They still have Major League Baseball's
best record.
They now lead the Chicago Cubs in the National League Central Division by three games.
And that, that feels nice.
When I, when I asked, are you tired of hearing about the Brewers yet?
Roger jumped right up on Facebook.
Here's his answer.
Nope.
I was listening to a replay to a Chicago radio sports show and those hosts were vicious to the Cubs.
Um, and he also adds listening to you.
Uh, he put in another comment quickly.
Roger says, I could eat watermelon forever.
Yeah.
So there you go, Parker.
You got, you got.
It's
Do you, do you put anything on your watermelon?
I do sprinkle a little salt on mine.
The lowly
Tony puts the lowly cubs, you mean?
Yes.
At the, well, come on, they're in second place.
And again, we still have plenty of baseball yet to go.
I wish I had to save the clip.
I have to go find it.
We're going to play it again sometime.
But the clip from when he mentioned a Chicago radio, a Chicago sports talk station.
The day the Brewers traded Savali to the White Sox and we got Andrew Vaughn.
They must have thought they pleased us.
Oh, they just thought that seals the deal.
They're winning the World Series.
Well, not the White Sox, but they did not like Andrew Vaughn.
It was clear they were not a fan.
They were happy to get Aaron Savalli.
They thought the Brewers were so getting the short end of the stick on this.
I have to find that clip at some point and play it.
Andrew Vaughn singled in two of those runs yesterday.
His current hitting streak is now at 11 games.
Of course.
Matching the longest of his career.
Freddie Peralta allowed only one run and four hits over five innings of work.
And then there's Isaac Collins, who we now have to introduce as National League Rookie of the Year candidate, Isaac Collins, drove in two more runs on two hits.
Uh-huh like and now maybe it could be as a Collins.
Yeah, Ms.
Rowski stays healthy and gets to play all the year.
Maybe it could be him I don't know There's so many good guys that are so young which has been a theme for the last I don't know four years now for the Brewers It's been like it's
rookie
It's been really great, especially when you consider that the roster looks a lot different now than the way that the season began.
That's okay.
Jose Quintana is going to start game three against Atlanta tonight.
Once again, pregame begins at 540 this evening on Civic Media Stations in Richland Center.
Osh gosh, we're seeing Kenosha, Hayward and Park Falls.
Then tomorrow is a travel day for the Brewers.
They come back home and they'll have a weekend series against the New York Mets.
That should be a very good one as well.
Go meet the Mets.
that was a good, a good part of it with rain throughout it all.
Yeah, they kept
he works harder than you'd want him to yes and It the fact that he still made it through five innings is a pretty good thing.
I mean, yeah again
Old man alert here.
I remember when picture complete games were like the expectation.
Yeah.
You were supposed to pitch nine innings.
Your arm hasn't fallen off.
You're fine, you know.
Well, they used to be more
Yeah.
Now look, a lot of people very happy that Freddie Peralta got through five innings.
I'm just saying my natural bias is if a starting pitcher does anything less than six innings, there's something wrong.
But now we refer to six innings as a quality start.
I
Let's tell you what else is coming up on the program today.
Look, we're going to talk about Ed Prane again, who was on the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board a couple years back, and then stayed well past his term.
What he and Scott Walker and legislative Republicans did back then to sabotage the Natural Resources Board.
That was not politics as usual.
It was conduct that should disqualify people from ever being entrusted by voters with elected or appointed offices again.
And we're going to have an update on a lawsuit over text messages that led some of Walker's appointees to stay in place after their terms had expired simply to obstruct appointments from Governor Tony Evers.
In our homeroom segment, we're going to talk to leaders in Green Bay about what they did and how you can follow their lead in your hometown and push for better taxpayer transparency when it comes to the true cost of voucher schools and your property tax bill.
It is also our climate check day with Melissa Baldoff.
We'll have a guest, Casey Hicks of Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
That's because Donald Trump's environmental protection agency, and I gotta put protection in quotation marks now, has rescinded a landmark policy acknowledgement that man-made pollution from fossil fuels is a danger to human health.
And we'll check in with James Kelly, Jimmy Koska, Earl Ingram, and of course, Melissa Kay, to see how Lelue the Pigeon is doing.
It's all coming to you from the heart of America's up north, live from Lake Wissota.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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.
Remember you can get our daily newsletter head over to upnorthnewswi.com.
We've got newsletters that come out on weekdays and of course my Sunday morning one as well about Wisconsin politics and let's see.
Henry the intern tells us about a northern Wisconsin bear rescued from a jar mishap.
You might have heard us talking about that recently with with Jimmy Koska.
I think James Kelly's going to mention it as well.
about a young black bear who had been roaming around Bayfield, Douglas and Sawyer counties with its head stuck in a plastic jar.
It is now safe and back in the wild.
We've got that story in our newsletter.
A story on how Justin Vernon of Boney Vare, the Eau Claire native, has gradually but radically helped transform downtown Eau Claire.
Downtown Eau Claire looks amazing in a way that I would not have necessarily
thought would happen if you'd have asked me 25 years ago.
And Justin Vernon and others to be sure have been part of an amazing rebuilding of downtown Eau Claire.
So we have that story in our newsletter.
And then if you missed our interview yesterday with the mayor of Superior Jim Payne, well, we're going to play part of it back coming up here in
less than 15 minutes.
But also in our newsletter is a story about it because you can also see an article on our website about how the city has found success building out its broadband network.
How was it able to do that?
Joe Biden and the American Rescue Plan.
And that's always been the problem is that
We talk about these shovel-ready jobs.
A lot of things aren't shovel-ready, but at least if you've got the plans and the works, you can make things happen faster than drawing things up from scratch.
And Superior was ready.
They just were in need of funding.
And when the American Rescue Plan came along, the work was able to get done.
You'll hear from Mayor Payne all about that coming up in just a bit.
In national news, I was looking to give you an update on what's happening in Texas.
where Republicans in the legislature are engaged in perhaps the most blatant corruption of the year, at least at the state level, in redrawing the maps mid-decade in order to add five Republican seats to Congress.
As I'm looking at the New York Times here, I mean, it is, there's a story about California Democrats looking to redraw their house map, but not much there at all about
the situation in Texas and calling out what is happening there.
Instead, we get this story about the president of the United States.
The headline is, up on the roof, Trump surveys the home he's making his own.
Katie Rogers is the reporter, and the story starts like this.
President Trump was on the roof.
As a confused group of reporters assembled below him on Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump strolled around on top of the White House, occasionally stopping to take questions, but only to tell his audience he was taking a little walk in service of his latest home improvement project, a large ballroom.
It's just another way to spend my money for the country, Mr. Trump shouted.
He was getting a bird's eye view of where the $200 million White House ballroom he has proposed building would go.
And on it goes, just making it sound like, you know, just another day in the Trump presidency.
Now, I know the late night comedians talked about this last night, but I'm going to mention it as well.
If Joe Biden were wandering up on the White House roof,
and muttering about building a, you know, a $200 million ballroom next to it.
What do you think the media coverage would be like about that?
Similarly, if Joe Biden or if Barack and Michelle Obama had paved over the Rose Garden, you think we'd be hearing more about it than we are right now because that's what's there right now in the Rose Garden is basically a concrete slab.
In both cases, the ballroom and the slab so that the president can have more parties.
There's real things to be done like attacking the corruption in Texas.
Listen to one of the Texas Democrats who left the state to hold off the gerrymandering proposal there.
This is Texas legislator Ann Johnson asked by a CBS reporter about Republican claims that Democrats are abandoning their jobs.
Listen to her answer.
You know that Republicans in the state, Republicans out of the state, look at what you guys are doing and thinking you're running away from the fight.
You're running away from your jobs by not being in Austin today.
Yeah, no.
Abandoning your job is going to Cancun in the middle of a deadly freeze, right?
Abandoning your job is cutting health care when people need access.
Abandoning your job is cutting public education when we already have one of the worst education systems in the nation.
What we are doing is the fundamental protection by our founding fathers in the Texas Constitution when
Donald Trump called Georgia Republicans and said, I just need you to find me 11,000 votes.
They said, no, sir, that's a step too far.
But when he called Texas Republicans and said, I need you to steal me five seats, they said, just you know, I work for you.
Well, it doesn't work for us as Texas Democrats.
And it shouldn't.
Again, listen to that.
He called Georgia said, I want you to dig up.
Find me 11,000 votes.
I don't care how corrupt it is.
And the Georgia Republican said, no, we can't do that.
Texas, meanwhile, was like, sure, sure, boss, whatever it is that you want.
Because what the boss wants, this party is willing to give him.
And unfortunately, far too much of the national media is not holding Trump to account on this.
As the New York Times article continued to go on about, you know, the White House changes that Trump wants.
Katie Rogers did say.
This line a White House that is rapidly changing from the taxpayer funded people's house to one that resembles one of the Louis the sixth Louis the 14th properties in Trump's portfolio And I thought that was particularly telling because yeah, this is a guy that wants to put a gaudy gilded ballroom Attached to the White House to go with all of his other golden urns and baskets and coasters and all of it has his last name and
That's all fine, but I'm going to close with this, and it's a social media post by an account labeled Big Tucson Dad, and he writes this.
Listen, man, if you want to live in the Palace of Versailles, that's fine, but you can't act surprised when the people eventually start sharpening the guillotine.
We'll hear from Superior Mayor Jim Payne coming up next.
You're up north.
So we asked in our Sunday Morning Newsletter, Sunday mornings with Pat Crite, we'll sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com, should blue states match red states to offset gerrymandering?
You know what they're talking about in California right now is if Texas is gonna steal five states or five seats in Congress through corrupt cartography, should California do the same or not sink to that level?
Plenty of answers looking at
at the question from different perspectives coming into us.
And you can get our question of the week first every Sunday by heading to up north news wi.com and clicking subscribe in the top banner.
Tomorrow on the program, we will be talking to our friend Lou Ann Bird.
She will tell us all about that town hall the other day with Congressman Brian style, getting an earful.
And again, I would contend that while people want to give props to Congressman style for holding an in person town hall, he also tried to spew the same old
garbage, you know, talking points about, you know, these things aren't actually cuts, etc, etc.
You don't get points for holding the town hall if you're not going to be upfront about what it is that you did.
So we'll talk to Lou Ann Burt about that tomorrow.
Sherita Booker will talk about events coming up this weekend.
Chad Holmes will be along.
Joseph Pecky, Sean O'Malley will talk about your money and the markets and so much more all coming up.
By the way,
in terms of what's coming up this weekend.
We know the Wisconsin State Fair is still going on.
And Sharita tends to talk about some of the local festivities.
Let me tell you about county fairs because two of them start up today and run through Sunday.
There's the Clark County, Clark County Fair in Nielsville, the Lincoln County Fair in Merrill.
And then starting tomorrow, the Bayfield County Fair in Washburn, the Pierce County Fair in Ellsworth, the Rusk County Fair in Ladysmith and the Vilas County Fair in Eagle River.
And then, I mean, all kinds of local festivals.
There's Pure Water Days here in Chippewa Falls coming up this weekend, Irish Fest in La Crosse.
There's Burger Fest in Seymour.
There's the Muskie Jamboree in Boulder Junction.
And that's where we're going to transition here to hear from Superior Mayor Jim Payne.
Because when he was on the program yesterday, if you missed it during their eight o'clock hour, I mentioned Boulder Junction because we'd done a story about that community how a couple of years back, they
worked for a way to gather grants and other funding to help essentially entice a private internet service provider to come to the area.
They laid the fiber optic network.
And now that company is able to provide internet service that Boulder Junction wouldn't have otherwise.
I started by asking Mayor Payne the difference between what Boulder Junction was doing versus what they did in Superior with a
a network that is owned by the city itself.
Here's what he said.
Well, we're certainly not the first to recognize the need for high-speed reliable and affordable access to the internet, but we're the first city in Wisconsin, the first community of any kind, to create a publicly owned
Open access broadband network.
There is no other network of our kind in Wisconsin And it's a unique public private partnership where we own the actual network the physical network And we sell internet access to private internet service providers who in turn sell it to customers so they compete
freely on our network the same way multiple delivery services UPS FedEx U.S.
Postal Service compete on the roads that the city builds.
So it combines public infrastructure with private competition.
And that I'm glad to hear that explanation because when I first heard about it it made me wonder about a law that the Republican led legislature passed several years ago that essentially was a ban on
municipal networks, especially Wi-Fi networks, again, not wanting, you know, the public sector to compete with the private sector.
A lot of people were upset by that saying, hey, look, in some of these smaller communities, the private sector isn't coming up here anytime soon.
They're only going to want to serve the big cities.
So why block local units of government that want to provide this kind of service?
It sounds like you have found the right path through of you're not the internet provider.
but you have made it easier for the private sectors to come up here and extend service that they otherwise wouldn't do on their own.
Does that sound about
right?
Almost.
The biggest difference is people don't have to come here to provide the internet.
People are already here that can provide the internet.
So because all we require people to do is be an ISP, they don't have to own this gigantic physical network, a multi-million dollar investment.
That allows small businesses to go into business selling the internet to customers.
So one of our first ISPs came from Duluth, Minnesota right next door and is now headquartered in Superior.
It's a really small
They only serve this community on our network.
So what we did is rather than have a giant monopoly, which was what almost every city in the country has, selling us internet at whatever price they want, our monopoly spectrum, they actually raised the price of the internet.
during the pandemic.
That was a kind of, we just saw that as unconscionable.
How can you exploit people that way?
So what we did is we combined what I thought is the best of the political philosophies on the left and the right.
We believe in private sector competition to lower prices and increase innovation, but the public should own infrastructure.
We shouldn't allow the private sector to control infrastructure that is vital to modern life.
And so that's what we did.
We just combined the two and we're two weeks in and it's already a hit.
And is it a network that is accessible to everybody in the superior area now, or is it starting in one area and building out?
We started in a pilot area, one neighborhood.
It's actually my neighborhood.
I'm talking to you on it right now.
So it was meant to show skeptics that this could actually work.
One of the early successes, though, is our construction costs actually came in so far under budget that we're building out much faster than we had originally planned.
So we will be lighting up the next neighborhood already this fall.
And how is it that the city was able to afford to do its part of this public-private partnership?
Joe Biden, really.
The ARPA dollars that came to every community in the country.
What a lot of people forget is that
the ARPA dollars, which have been used for so many different things across the country, were primarily meant for utility infrastructure.
And the first utility described in that law is access to broadband.
And so we just took them at their word and we used it to build a network.
And so the first $5 million plus of this network was covered by that bill.
So President Biden had this American recovery plan and had a mission for it.
And you took that literally and seriously and made it work.
It sounds like perhaps the most textbook case of ARPA funds doing what they were intended to do at the
time.
Exactly.
In fact, we've been trying to build this network.
since before the pandemic.
But the pandemic proved every single argument we made correct.
When we had to send people home from work, send children home from school, and they did not have access to the internet, that meant they didn't go to school, Pat.
That's what it meant.
And people are still trying to pretend like that didn't happen.
We lost a generation of kids that should have been educated and weren't because they didn't have access to this vital public infrastructure.
The Biden administration gave us money to solve that problem, make sure that never happened again, and that's what we spent it on.
That's incredible.
And you said another neighbor is coming.
How long do you think it might take for most if not all of the city to be served?
That's a political question.
You asked me.
I'd like to get it done in the next two years.
But, you know, we have to prove that it's a success.
I think we're already doing that.
Like I said,
We need to get to a 10% take rate.
10% of the area should be customers by the end of the year.
I think we're going to cross that in the next month.
And if we can show real success by the fall of next year, I think we'll have justified moving quite a bit faster than our original forecast of five to seven years.
Superior Mayor Jim Payne with a great update from way up north.
Jim, thank you so much.
Good to talk to you again, Mr. Mayor.
Have a wonderful day.
Always fun.
Thanks, Pat.
And if you want to learn more about the story, if you want to look back at some of the things that he had to say, head over to our website, upnorthnewswi.com.
It's the first story on our website right now all about what they're doing in Superior and what President Biden's American Rescue Plan did for the country.
And we'll just talk more about that again another time because you don't need to hear that rant again.
The difference between
Joe Biden's investments and Donald Trump's cuts.
Let me make one quick correction on the brewers.
The brewers lead over the Cubs in the division as four games.
I was reading some old associated press copy that said the brewers entered the game with a three game lead, but the Cubs then lost to the Reds.
And so it is now a four game lead from Jane and Madison on the text line.
Kudos to Superior.
Their public infrastructure philosophy should be a model for all communities.
Thank you for the message.
Yes, couldn't agree more.
Let's shift gears and talk about a story that I first noticed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel written by Ariela Lopez, the headline, environmental law firm celebrates a win in public records dispute involving DNR's Fred Preen.
He was, you'll recall, the member of the State Natural Resources Board whose term had expired, but he refused to step down.
He seemed to have discovered this loophole that said, well, if the state Senate hasn't confirmed your replacement, you just stay on.
But what if the state Senate doesn't have any intention of confirming the replacement?
What if, say, Devin Lemahue is the Senate Republican leader and the Democrat is now Tony Evers, the governor is a Democrat?
What if the Republican State Senate makes it a habit not to confirm appointees?
How would Fred Preen know that?
Well, it turns out that there were text messages between him and Scott Walker and lobbyists and Devon Lemahue and others and those text messages came up as part of a court case with Midwest environmental advocates that had made a request as part of the discovery phase of a court case and eventually
pre-released the text messages and the emails.
They showed that there was this for lack of a better term and I don't think there is a better term conspiracy on this to obstruct a sitting governor from being able to make the appointments that he or she has the right to make.
They
won the election, in this case Tony Evers, and has the power to confirm.
Power to a point, the Senate in abusing its power to confirm, and there's still something like 100 or more Governor Evers appointments who still haven't been confirmed, it's taking advantage of a loophole of the system, it's perverting the advising consent process.
Well, in the meantime, Midwest Environmental Advocates, as part of the lawsuit, also wanted damages, essentially, to have the legal bills paid.
The initial court said no, but now that has changed and appeals court has ruled that the group can seek relief in a lawsuit that was originally filed in October of 2021 against preen, the DNR, the Natural Resources Board, and so the attorneys for that environmental group.
say that, you know, there's a reason they pursued this.
It's not just to have their legal bills paid, that their attorney Rob Lee said in a news release, the ability to recover attorney's fees is vital for journalists and for other groups and individuals who are forced to take legal action to secure their rights under the public records law.
And it gets us to this notion of things that we take for granted.
I mean, the biggest of which is democracy.
Don't get me wrong.
Too many people are definitely taking democracy for granted in this country.
But the same goes for public records.
And the same goes for paying the bill if you're obstructing public access to those records.
That is real damage and had MEA not been allowed
to look for legal relief in court the way that they are able to now, it simply would have emboldened more politicians later on to stall to run out the clock on appointments, on public records requests, on doing the things that voters expect them to do.
So this is a very positive development that
we hope is one more step in returning norms to a process where voters can again trust the people who are both elected and appointed to serve them in state government.
Today's history lesson is next as we always do.
Mornings powered by Up North News here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
civicmedia.us.
This, of course, would be the contours from 1962, but we're mentioning it at the top of today's history lesson, because it peaked on the charts again on this day in 1988, because it was on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, of course.
Today's history lesson on a Wednesday is always includes Melissa Kay.
Yes, she's here from WFHR, WIRI in Wisconsin Rapids, and Lelu, I assume the pigeon is somewhere just off camera.
Oh,
yep.
Good morning.
They're hanging over there.
Good morning.
Okay.
Melissa also put up a social media reel of Lelou getting their nails trimmed and basically just being the whole process.
I mean, you looked, it reminded me a lot of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, and just the way that you would approach and then catch it.
And you're saying all the right sweet things to it.
Like, don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt you.
That's my worst Australian accent ever.
But, you know,
There was no story, nice.
I like the crocodile hunter.
You were there to take care of it.
And that was a beautiful thing.
It was a nice reel that you put
together.
Thank
you.
Things going well so far?
Yeah.
Yeah, I actually put up a second reel about them exploring their pigeon playpen.
Yes, because I built a little little area here for them to come out and be out.
And yeah, now they're mad at me for touching them
or they're
mad for being on social media.
I'm not sure.
I don't know if it's a social media because after all, Lulu's first appearance was was one week ago on this very radio show when Lulu started flapping around to the music.
So.
We'll see how that goes.
All right, let's get back to today's history lesson.
Chubby Checker performed this hit of his for the first time this day in 1960.
song, of course, would go to number one and start a huge dance craze this day in 1960 when he did it for the first time on Dick Clark's Saturday Night Beechnut Show.
This week in 1981, Stevie Nicks released her first solo album, Bella Donna, apart from her work with Fleetwood Mac.
that work with Lelou by talking about the white wing dove?
Anything?
I
always thought she said one wing, though.
I thought too, and I thought no.
I think we joked about that on this show.
I think we did.
Many times, a bird flying in circles with one wing.
Nothing from Leeloo.
All right.
Bella Donna, big first solo album for Stevie Nicks.
It had Stop Dragging My Heart Around, Leather and Lace, and more.
Happy birthday to Jerry Hallwell.
You know her best as Ginger Spice.
She is 53 today.
Let's also wish a happy birthday to singer-songwriter Pat McDonald.
He was the co-founder of the group Timbuk3 and born in Green Bay this day in 1951.
He formed the duo with his then-wife Barbara K. McDonald in Madison in 1984, and of course that was part of their
Big hit, the future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
It won them the 1987 Grammy for Best New Artist.
In 2005, he co-founded Steelbridge Songfest, an annual not-for-profit benefit concert and songwriting festival that's held in his hometown of Sturgeon Bay.
And 10 years ago today, Broadway was rocked by a new hip-hop-infused musical based on the life of one of our founding fathers.
And Leslie Odom Jr., who played Aaron Burr in Hamilton, is 44 years old today.
Melissa, getting back to what's happening, there's got to be more going on in Wisconsin Rapids, but besides the adventures of Lelu, what are you guys working on up there?
We're gearing up for our 85th anniversary with a parking lot party.
We're pulling out all the stops.
We got food trucks.
We got dessert trucks.
We got games for the kids.
We might even have some axe throwing and some VR inside going on.
But the big thing that we're doing is we're gathering recipes because we're going to, from listeners, we're going to recreate our...
cookbook.
We've done this over the years, I guess, and with our 85th anniversary coming up in November, we're collecting the recipes now to put them in our cookbook.
And we're
having a staff dessert cookoff that people get to come and try our desserts and vote on the winner.
I love it.
I love it.
And again, this is not a big thing anymore, but boy, radio and at some TV stations, I'm sure, but back in the day, when you put together that annual cookbook, I mean, it
was a big
deal.
in
the community.
People want to know what is Edna making there around the corner?
They finally
got to see what was in her, you know, hash
brown cat's
roll.
Yeah, yeah, there was some apple pie in the hash brown cat, whatever was in there.
They had to make it work.
Now, savory sweet.
Yep.
Exactly.
See, you get it.
85 years of service to the community.
That is just amazing that we're getting to that point now with radio stations.
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
And a lot of our listeners have been listening like since they were kids.
That's
I remember mom listening to over the back fence.
I'm sitting drinking coffee and Oh, sure.
Yeah.
And it's nice to be to again be bringing back more of that local community radio where, you know, civic media has really been a leader in that in communities all over Wisconsin.
And so nice that you're doing that, Melissa.
The other fun thing, the kids can come in and be a radio announcer.
Oh, love it.
That's awesome.
Do they get like a little Panasonic tape recorder like I used to talk into all the time?
No, they get a
USB wristband with
their recording on
it.
All right.
It's also today's National Rupert Float Day.
This is Jamaica's Independence Day, and this is Clutter Awareness Day.
So Melissa, be aware of the clutter around Lelue today.
I'm aware.
We're very, very aware.
Thank you.
Have a wonderful day and a great party.
You too.
All right.
More coming up here on these mornings.
I'm Pat Critello.
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