The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Economy (Hour 2)

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

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

And good morning, it is 7 0 6.

Nice to have you back here up north on this Monday morning, August 11th.

2025.

I'm Pat Critello.

Selena Heller's off this week.

Brittany Merlot off as well.

It was really nice of Dr. Kristen Lierly to join us just now from Lima, Peru a little bit to join us for today's history lesson.

Coming up later this hour, we will talk to Tom Nelson, the Out of Gamey County Executive and former state legislator, has written a book drawing parallels between the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the American economy that helped create

a ship that was designed to be such a workhorse yet also designed with some corporate inspired shortcuts and taking the safety of the American workers for granted.

Again, quite the metaphor that he has drawn here, and we'll talk to Tom Nelson about that a little bit later on.

And then in our eight o'clock hour, State Representative Jody Emerson will be joining us to talk about the National Conference of State Legislators and the annual convention that she just attended and the difference between a group that is dedicated toward public service versus a group that is dedicated toward partisan politics.

In all the talk about the flooding in Milwaukee, and we will of course focus on that again and again But I'm afraid that what got lost in it was the new food the new food item at American Family Field We'll talk about that in a couple of minutes if you can't guess it already That's that's coming up But first off of course the the storm damage

that is still being cleaned up.

And again, a few folks that would normally join us here across the Civic Media Radio Network need a little extra time to deal with storm damage of their own.

So we hope that that is very short and as trouble free as possible.

Looking at the live

stream of updates from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

They just put up a note that WeEnergies in southeast Wisconsin still has about 5,000 people without power.

They do have a map online of the outages if you want to learn more.

And that the official amount of rain that fell in Milwaukee as measured at Mitchell International Airport was just about seven inches, 6.9.

But I have seen, and you all have seen on social media, some of the rain gauges for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and other private spotters showing that there were parts of the Milwaukee area that got 10, 11, 12, 13 inches of rain in that downpour, especially falling

after midnight on Saturday night into Sunday morning.

It led to the closure of the Wisconsin State Fair.

Well, first there was all the video from Saturday night when they evacuated the fairgrounds and people leaving and what started as ankle and then soon was knee deep water.

And then of course the last day of the fair was canceled yesterday.

Still plenty of cars that are flooded, whether in intersections or in parking lots, especially around West Alice.

And there between the Menominee River, the Milwaukee River, all of the creeks flowing into it, West Alice and Wauwatosa, it just looked borderline apocalyptic to see these usually

pretty tranquil river and creek beds just become raging torrents with all of the water that they had to deal with.

And then, of course, you had the deep tunnel system in Milwaukee that flooded over because even that system is not built to withstand a foot of rain falling in a very short amount of time.

And so there's going to be a lot of work to be done there.

There's going to be, as well, drop-off centers in Milwaukee.

There's two drop-off centers for trash and recycling.

typically closed on Monday.

They will be open today for flood victims.

Fees will be waived the rest of the week so that people can get flooded items out of their basement.

The one is at 3879 West Lincoln Avenue and the other is at 6660 North Industrial Road.

Enter that from Mill Road to learn more.

Parker weren't you just telling me?

Parker Olson produces us down in Madison Studio A2.

What were you dealing with storm-wise?

You had tree problems but did you have

something in the basement as well, or was it just the tree limb?

That was about a month or so ago.

Yeah, we had some, we got water into our basement, I believe is what started that all.

And we had our tree, which was massive in our backyard, had cracked a little bit.

And over time, water had been going in and it rotted out the middle of the tree.

So we were

uh, gonna get it trimmed just because it was starting to hang over the house.

And then they were like, yeah, we're not going to do this.

Cause if we do, it might, like the vibrations might cause it to fall on your house cause it's like rotted so far down.

So we had to take it down.

Thankfully

before

this happened.

And I have.

uh, told the story before we did a remodeling project five years ago.

And for the 25 years prior to that, if it rained anything more than four inches in a storm, uh, we'd get water in the basement.

And because of the way, uh, the ground was actually sloped toward the house in the back.

So for 25 years, we'd, we'd be going, honestly, who does this?

Who slopes the ground toward the house when they build a house?

But we didn't have any easy way to fix that.

And we finally did a big remodel project five years ago and took care of that.

And we haven't had any water in the basement knocked on wood ever since.

And it's great because.

And I know that folks are dealing with, I've seen, I've seen, you know, six inches of water in the basement in some people's videos and photos.

I've seen two feet of water.

I've seen nine feet of water in a basement in West Alice through social media posts.

And I mean, it's just heartbreaking.

It's just absolutely heartbreaking knowing what all has to be done down there.

You know, worse if it's finished, but even if it's not a finished basement, there's all kinds of possessions down there.

that are just getting so damaged and it's just so unfortunate.

Robin Tigerton says.

Many thoughts and prayers to the people who are dealing with the flooding in the Milwaukee area.

He says, good morning, it's cloudy and 69 degrees, eight-tenths of an inch in Tigerton and got his house cleaned over the weekend.

We got two inches Saturday here in Chippewa Falls, another inch on Sunday.

And let's see, he also talks about going on vacation in Minnesota in mid-August to visit cousins.

And he went to the Minnesota State Fair, Pioneer Power Days.

He went to the Mall of America.

back in the 1990s.

We were talking about that anniversary just now.

Talked about how the Kansas City Chiefs their training camp used to be at UW River Falls for many, many years.

So you could see Joe Montana and Marcus Allen and others who were playing there.

Rob notes that was I had two and a half inches of rain Saturday will pack up a county was hit with wind damage on Saturday.

I saw damage reports, you know, stretching from Vernon County in the Southwest to, you know, Door County in the Northeast.

So, I mean, it was just a busy weather weekend for so many folks this weekend.

Did they you had you had one Madison Mallers came to work at?

Yep, we had the final game of the year on Saturday night.

Thankfully, it was dry.

So despite kind of warnings everywhere about flash flooding and all that, we were dry, which was good

to get

that last game in.

Oh, that was the last game,

huh?

Yeah, that was the last game of the season.

And let me tell you, our manager knew it.

Why?

So we needed to win and we needed another team to lose.

And it was our second inning and the other team won.

And our manager, I guess, had a phone or something in the dugout.

And it said, you know what?

Forget this.

He got up.

He walked up to the Home Point umpire, screamed about balls and strikes for about a minute, got ejected, walked out of the stadium and went home.

Wow.

Okay.

Somebody had places to be.

It has been a long

season.

He said, enough of

this.

You know, there's there's that saying about, you know, just run all the way through the tape.

Others not so much.

So, okay.

Still.

It sounded like an enjoyable season for you.

Oh, yeah.

For the folks that went to Mallard's game.

So that's good.

It was a

lot of fun.

We had a couple of guys from the press box went out for drinks after it was a good time.

Good.

All right.

Very good.

Good entertainment.

Keep that in mind folks for next year to go see the Madison Mallards or the the nightmares softball team.

I was speaking in the history lesson in prior about the new Netflix show called Sunday Best and it's all about

Ed Sullivan and I found it a New York Times review by Lisa Kennedy titled Ed Sullivan's really big impact the Sasha Jenkins documentary about the variety show Trailblazer and his commitment to black performers in the civil rights era and she uh she writes about the opening credits showing Billy Preston and Ray Charles and

Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson, Barry Gordy, and they all, those last four gentlemen all speak at some point during the documentary.

And the New York Times article says, a music journalist turned filmmaker, Jenkins has the hip hop bona fides to guarantee that Sunday best would not be some white savior tale.

Instead, the film reveals his film reveals the authentic amity and steadfast values of an ally.

As a young sports writer, Ed Sullivan denounced NYU's football program for benching a black player when the University of Georgia came to town.

Now, this was an interesting thing.

Ed Sullivan, you know, did a couple of interviews, but again, this was back in the early days of television.

He passed away in 1974.

And so what, what the filmmaker did was took all of his writings and

has, and they say this in the credits in the opening, an actor sounding like him, a sound like artist, reading his words.

And so it's kind of like him partially narrating it.

And then there's some clips like when you talk to David Frost in 1969, talking about growing up in Harlem.

And when he grew up in Harlem, he was born in 1901.

Harlem was filled with Jewish and Irish immigrants and he'd watch them be mistreated for being a minority.

And he said, my parents knew these things were wrong.

They weren't being broad minded.

They were just being sensible.

He said, quote, you can't do so and so because the South will not accept it.

That's what Harry Bellafonte said.

And Ed Sullivan instead would push the envelope as far as the envelope could be pushed.

And so having watched it last night, I just wanted to highly recommend that to folks as well.

Coming up on Wednesday, we're going to be talking to former state assembly representative Dana Wax.

Dana Wax was also a candidate for governor back in 2018 and he then served on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents before some of his old colleagues in the Wisconsin legislature fired him and another Democratic appointee for no reason.

I mean, to be jerks, to be partisan jerks, but he was serving there with honor and is now back at his law practice and that's all fine.

But the reason we're having him on on Wednesday is twofold.

There was a veto by Governor Evers last week of a bill that deals with the gig economy and delivery drivers.

And the bill was being advertised as a way for

gig workers and delivery drivers to get benefits, like health insurance.

And for those benefits to be portable, and it was sold as, this would be such a good thing for gig workers.

And the governor vetoed it because it had no input from labor, it had no input from the gig workers.

It was basically an industry written bill.

And he said, yeah, there does need to be benefits, but how about some input from the people who are actually doing the work?

And data walks is a lot of experience with employer misclassification cases where.

Employers don't want to pay benefits or pay out when there's been an accident or injury, saying that they are quote unquote independent contractors.

And so he's going to talk about that.

And also he was an early advocate.

He had the bill that would force property tax bills to be more honest about the true cost of voucher schools.

So that's right.

That's going to be Dana walks joining us on Wednesday during the 7am hour.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

We'll be back.

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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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Back now, it's just about 7.23 here across the Civic Media Radio Network on these mornings powered by UpNorth News.

I'm Pat Critello, Parker Olsen down in Madison Studio A2, where I'm sure that Parker, because he's a mere mortal, like the rest of us, thought that after the Mets scored in each of the first four innings and were up 5-0 against the Brewers, thought, well, you know, it was a good run, right?

Wendy Streak's going to come to an end, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That's not

what I thought.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Oh.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, you had, you had William Contreras who had homered the day before.

hit two, two home runs in the game and eventually come all the way back to tie it up at six and then in the bottom of the ninth Isaac Collins with the solo walk-off home run a seven six win to sweep the Mets just as they had swept Atlanta just as they had swept Washington for now a nine game losing streak they've had

an eight-game winning streak, an 11-game winning streak, and now a nine-game winning streak for the Brewers.

And now they take their talents back to American Family Field to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates pregame beginning at 6.05 on stations in Richland Center.

Oshkosh, we're seeing Kenosha, River Falls, and Hayward.

And now with no more Madison Mallards, Parker will be listening to the Brewers more often even.

That's true.

Bringing more of that Euker magic is what Brian Anderson said after the home run and Cassandra puts it up on YouTube as well Euker magic.

That's it

My seven-year-old son was screaming, mommy, they hit a home run.

See, the kids, the kids get it.

The kids are very excited about this.

Teach them

young.

I like

it.

I

know.

Let's see.

Carmela writes on Facebook, I'm on the north side of Milwaukee.

And yes, basement flooding up to the second step, knee high.

But driving through the storms was frightful.

After a family party in Eagle, it took us over two hours to get home.

And then driving around my neighborhood close to Tosa, I ran across flooding on the west side of Menominee Parkway.

Yeah, I've seen that and totally get it.

And I'm very sad to hear about the basement flooding and hope that the cleanup will go well for you and smoothly.

I know that it won't be easy.

There was an anniversary over the weekend I wanted to mention quickly.

This weekend marked the three-year anniversary of the Chips and Science Act.

It's the three-year anniversary of one of the many, many signature achievements of the Biden administration, but of course don't get me started on how bad the Biden team was at informing voters about their accomplishments, but

We have reached the three-year anniversary of the Chips and Science Act.

And so it's a good opportunity to talk about the right way and the wrong way to get something done for American manufacturing.

Let's go back to the pandemic and all of the supply chain disruptions.

That included a shortage of microprocessors or computer chips.

For example, there were all these vehicles, tractors and other goods that were all but built.

But they were still sitting in inventory because they were missing the microprocessor.

They were missing the computer chip.

And it led to recognizing the need to stop relying so much on foreign suppliers and build up the US manufacturing chain and address some other high tech needs in the process.

And that's what led to the very bipartisan Ships and Science Act, which included investment tax credits for manufacturing.

And those factories are going up as we speak, along with investments in research and workforce training and space flight and quantum computing and material science and biotechnology.

It has spurred investments in AI and other data centers, including some that are going up in Wisconsin.

In fact, Wisconsin was named as a regional tech hub under the Chips and Science Act with a focus on growing the personalized medicine technology industry.

We're talking about tens of thousands of jobs being created by this bipartisan commitment to funding the jobs of the future.

And then someone let Donald Trump back into the White House where you are now seeing cuts in research.

You're seeing trade wars, and last week he was talking about a 100% tariff on computer chips not made in the U.S.

Now you might be thinking, doesn't that help with the chip making in the U.S.?

No.

The investments being made but factories don't appear overnight, you can threaten tariffs all day long, but it doesn't do anything in the short term other than raise prices.

Now, Trump did talk about exemptions from these tariffs for big companies like Apple, so long as they promise to bring more manufacturing back into the US, but a big manufacturer promising to build more stuff in the US, doesn't that sound rather Foxconny to you?

Meanwhile, smaller chip manufacturers that don't get exemptions, but create the chips for our washing machines and other products.

Well, they're simply going to pass along the cost to consumers.

So the Chips and Science Act was an investment that pays off over time.

We did that same research to get to the moon to win the space race.

When President Kennedy said, let us send the man to the moon and bring him back to earth safely before the decade is out and we did it, we didn't do it by firing up a rocket and shooting for the moon the next week.

It took time.

It took the whole Gemini program and the Apollo program that Milwaukee's own Jim Lovell was a part of as we discussed last hour with him passing away at the age of 97.

And there is that ability to tie in the Chips and Science Act with Jim Lovell's passing and remind us of the need to constantly reinvest in America and that these investments take time and you can't make things happen on a dime.

Somebody is putting the jerk in knee jerk reaction, and that's what these tariffs are.

Instead, we need the slow but steady investment in research, in job creation, and in building new markets.

And this isn't just a modern day thing.

This has happened in other parts of American history, most notably the post-war economy, when things like building ships were taken for granted to our detriment and to the detriment of the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Out of Gamey County, executive Tom Nelson has written a book about the Edmund Fitzgerald and its metaphor to the post-war economy, and we'll be talking to Tom Nelson after the Midwest Farm Report.

I'm Pat Critello.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

If you want to learn more about astronaut Jim Lovell, well, you should be getting our newsletter.

Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com.

Click Subscribe in the top banner.

And there's a small article about him and a link to our larger article on our website about Milwaukee's own.

And again, the tie-in back to American ingenuity and investment.

And that takes us over to our next segment here.

I lost some technology for a while over the weekend when Lightning Strike took out the cable and took out the internet.

And it seemed like the perfect time to finish a book that I had started.

And that book is written by Tom Nelson, the out of gaming county executive, former legislator.

It's titled, uh, wrecked the Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy.

And you can get more at MSU press.org.

We'll talk about that now with Tom Nelson, who joins us.

Tom, how are you?

It's great to be on.

This is wonderful.

It's good to see

you, man.

How you been?

It's good.

I can't believe it's just like old times, you know, we're going, you know, it was about 20 years ago.

I met Pac right low.

I was a fan back at W. E. A. U. Running for the state Senate, pulling off a big upset.

And we've been best buds ever since.

And now look at you.

Look at this.

You have a great radio program.

Wonderful.

Look at you writing a book.

And I did promise when I had Kristen Lyrely on earlier that I would do two things.

First, I would make sure to tell people to go look up the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show because she spent her entire show with Tom talking about the book.

But then I also wanted to, I told her, I would ask you, the book is co-written with Gerald, is it pot air?

How do you say

it?

Pot air.

Pot air.

How much of this did he write?

Because it's really good.

Yeah, thank you.

I wrote the book and he helped with the editing, a little bit of editing, and then also consulting.

He had another book project, so he was limited in what he could do for this project, but he was absolutely indispensable.

He was the one who encouraged me to do this in the first place because I came to him with three ideas.

And the Fitzgerald book was actually number two or number three.

I wanted to do something different.

And he looked at this and he said, you know, Thomas,

This is history.

He's a professor emeritus of history at Lawrence University in Appleton.

He's very well published, knows this area very well.

And he explained, look, you know, this is history.

History is taking a popular, maybe cultural event that occurred in the past and then helping it.

to explain a broader phenomenon, which is the heart of what this book's about.

And if you've read it all, which thank you, congratulations.

You're the first interviewer yet who says, I actually read the whole book, so kudos to you.

Thank you.

And makes the connection between those two.

Plus, as you find out, there's brand new material, exclusive interviews, people related to the Fitzgerald sinking that have come forward for the first time, shedding light on some mysteries of what really happened that night for and

after.

Yeah, you knocked on doors and called on family members and other people who were tied to it, either attorneys and others to get these stories.

Before we get to the metaphor, let's get to the ship itself, which for the behemoth that it was, and it was this workhorse for years and years, but it was clear that with other things, corporations sometimes

took

shortcuts without thinking about the safety of the workers.

Exactly you got it right there you nailed in one sentence and even though and i think the reason why we haven't talked about these things is you know exactly for what you said it was this behemoth it was this workhorse was one of the largest or ships.

On the lakes but that also explains why it was not seaworthy why it should not have said sailed from superior that night the hall was.

a wreck.

They had been tacked welding it for for several seasons.

It was known as a wet ship, which meant that it took on a lot of ballast and it kept it in there.

And after seasons when they would dug

when they would dig out the ballast hold, that sometimes there was up to six feet of dirt and sludge.

So this ship was in no condition.

The Coast Guard regulatory outfit, the American Shipbuilding Bureau, they knew it was in no shape.

to run despite the fact that they continue to certify it.

And as the attorneys found out and they brought to light through this deposition, they found one of the crew members, the only crew member who did not a part of the Fitzgerald in 1975 season, but was not on the ship the night that.

it sank and he spilled the beans.

He put forward, he did so in a federal deposition in St.

Paul in December of 1978 and so it has all been accounted for and based on my research, which I believe I did,

sense of research, that this has only appeared in one other publication.

And that was a Star Tribune story back in 1997.

And I think it goes a long way in explaining the truth of what really happened, why it sunk.

And so part of the purpose of this book was the metaphor, but also to bring some sense of justice to these families who were not done right by Ogilby Norton and still have not 50 years later.

No.

And again, the amount of settlement they got varied, again, depending like their representation.

You talked with, I would say, legal legend, Toby Markovich.

Exactly.

Author and superior.

He had a big part.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, he's just larger than life and the role that he played.

And then you even get into later the decision to retrieve the bell as a symbol, but also as a way to say, that's it, no more poking around the wreck, leave this grave.

site undisturbed but let's take it to again that that that metaphor for the post-war economy although I shouldn't say post-war economy because there was just so much growth post-war but

I

guess the right way to say it is

I think a lot of it was taken for granted.

And that that's when you started to see shortcuts.

That's when you started to see you really get into the notion of, you know, we used to build ships.

And then the thought was, well, we can just, you know, we can just pay to have ships made elsewhere.

And that was one of many indications of how our custodian ship of the American economy started to turn.

Exactly.

That's exactly right.

And we see that all over the place.

I think every small town, large town, not just here in Wisconsin, the Midwest, but across the country can relate with a bad boss and a bad company that did not invest.

properly in the company, allowed it to wither on the vine, succumbed at trade deals.

And here we are today, where we have a manufacturing base that is hollowed out compared to what it was in 1957, the year that the Fitzgerald made its maiden voyage.

And I would like to say how far we've come and how much we've accomplished, but we have not.

And the key decades were the 1960s and the 1970s.

That's all precipitous decline in American manufacturing.

And the Fitzgerald, as you put it in metaphor, helps explain what happened to the Fitzgerald, why it sunk.

But I also think, and this is one of the reasons why the Fitzgerald is top of mind 50 years later, is because a lot of us can relate to the crew members and the families.

Of course, the big difference is that they didn't come back from work though, but they had a bad boss, okay?

They had a company that was not making proper investments and they paid the ultimate price.

We're talking to Thomas Nelson, out of gaming county executive, former legislator, now author of Wrecked, the Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy.

You can get it through the Michigan State University Press MSU Press.org.

And part of the reason I could not put this book down was that it isn't, again, you draw the metaphor, but you do it with what I would consider.

How can I put it?

It's both exhaustive and concise a political history of how we got to these points for example You know people think of Jimmy Carter for example as you know a typical Democratic president well not exactly and you get into the notion of like Bill Clinton the conservative Democratic presidents who were perhaps a little too eager to go along with you know what

what the corporate side of the economic equation wanted, the supply side, rather than the worker side?

That's exactly right.

And so when you're talking about Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, of course, that's post Fitzgerald, the other Fitzgerald thing in 1975.

And so

By bringing that up, the legacy of Fitzgerald goes well beyond 1975, and not just because in terms of the mystery and the controversy that it generated, how did it sink that night?

But it also goes a long way that the third act of this went into the Carter administration, where despite being a Democrat, there were the so-called neoliberal policies, where you were focusing on the corporate side, tax cuts for the rich, bad trade deals and so forth, and then going into the Reagan administration.

would put that on steroids into Bill Clinton.

And then after three administrations, Democrats and Republicans, we were by the turn of the century in 2000 left with a hollowed out manufacturing economy.

And then you get into the false choice of job growth versus environmental protection.

And part of it, part of the center of this for anybody who is either from Northern Wisconsin, from the Iron Range area, but all the way down to the Twin Cities where the reserve mining trial

was,

I mean, that was daily coverage of this huge taconite plant that was dumping.

I mean in how I forget how big you said the the eventual spread of taconite tailings were polluting Lake Superior and that that you know for the longest time was well that's just the cost of business.

Exactly and Judge Biles Lord who's a federal judge and I read through this again yesterday because I did a book talk up in Superior and what he talked about is exactly that

You know, we should not have this false choice that this company should not use the word use was hostage Hold workers and this economy hostage that you can have it both ways that you can have a good environment that you can have good jobs Just as the late great Gaylord Nelson said that the economy is a holy is a holy owned subsidiary

of the environment.

That's the relationship between the two.

Judge Miles-Lore understood that during that court case and that's a big reason why Chapter 3, which is called the lake they call Kichigumi, and that's important because that is where the ship sank and it is the second largest lake in the world.

This is not just your typical lake and it's a big part of Legend of Fitzgerald because it's also in the first stanza of Gordon Lightfoot's song, the lake they call Kichigumi.

And in fact, Gordon Fitzgerald, you're right, even went so far as to change one of the lyrics later in life to make clear that, you know, when he has that lyric, the main hatchway caved in.

Well, that may not have been the full story afterwards, or after all.

And so I, you know, I really wanted to tip my cap to the late Gordon Fitzgerald or the late

Gordon

Lightfoot for telling that story.

In just a couple of minutes, we have left here.

Where do you want to take this looking forward?

If there was a message to go to

public officials and to voters.

If there is a lesson to glean from this moving forward in the American economy, what would you tell folks?

I would say how many more times we have to go through this?

How many more Fitzgeralds do we have to start?

This was 50 years ago and you still see this example where you have bad bosses and you have bad companies that are not doing the right thing.

They're either polluting our natural resources.

They're not making proper investments.

so that they have continue to have good pain, family supporting jobs in these communities.

And I think if you were to do two things, if you would recognize how we need to take care of our environment, take care of our workers, and then to know that we can have greatness again, that we can have a strong.

that can be the lifeblood in manufacturing while d environment and doing right be the central lesson and t that justice has yet to be s families that we need t

And so that never again we have to

go to

church bell 29 times Thomas Nelson I know that this was a labor of love I you talk about the personal stake your connection to all of this And I hope that once all of this is all done you find something else to write about because it was it was wonderful work And I look forward to talking to you again real soon.

Thomas

wonderful.

Thanks for having me on appreciate it

You bet.

And again, if you want to hear more, Kristen Lyrely spent her entire episode of the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show with Thomas talking about the book.

And again, you can get wrecked.

The Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy through the Michigan State University Press directly.

So go to msupress.org to learn more.

A local update is coming up next.

For some of you, for others, more news and notes here from Lake Basota, live on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Reitlo.

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.

7.52 now on this Monday.

Pack right low in Chippewa Falls.

Parker Olson producing down in Madison Studio A2 and then tomorrow on the program.

We will have Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation area just back from a vacation out in London.

He'll talk, tell us more about that.

We'll have Hans Brighton Moser and Sheila Everhart on as well.

Chad Holmes should join us from Wausau and then in our way up north segment, Jeff Renneke will be joining us to talk about safe boating.

especially up there on Lake Superior, as we just discussed.

You don't have to be the Edmund Fitzgerald to know about the importance of safe boating going on up there.

As I was talking to Tom and saying, you know, you really ought to write something else here too.

Tony, of course, jumps right up on YouTube and jumps right down my throat and says, has Tom ever written a book about saving manufacturing, maybe a paper mill?

Okay, Tony, you got me.

And Tom was too humble to bring it up, but this was not Tom's first book.

He also wrote the book.

One day stronger how one union local saved a mill and changed an industry and what it means for American manufacturing and All all about his work as an elected official to save a paper mill that had been shut down by one of the big banks and it had been sold to a scrap dealer and Tom lays out the story of that as well It's just one more of many examples Parker where I get to again wine

I hear people say, oh, you should write, you should write a book, write a book.

No, just because I can yap off of you funny or sarcastic comments here or there does not make me a budding book author.

I've tried, I've tried to, but that is, I don't know, maybe in retirement, maybe.

What would

you write though, Pat?

We're talking memoirs or?

it would be, it would be, no, it would be a fictitious one and it would be kind of, you know, based on, based on true stories of a life in radio and TV and politics.

And so I, I mean, I have written up a little something with, you know, a character who, you know,

bounces between these fields.

And then, of course, I tie in my experience living, you know, on an island, especially, uh, international center for finance, shall we say, and some of the nefarious business that goes on there.

And I'd really like to finish it someday, but I just, Tony says, how about writing a book?

How to captain your own boat?

Well, yeah, I got that going for me, which is nice.

Captain Kraitwell.

the folks who find the time to write while they're still working.

Of course, I'm also, how people find time to exercise while they're still working.

I don't know how these people do it, I mean.

Yeah,

I

was thinking about that this morning.

I was listening to a d3football.com podcast and the host was saying how he's got to work out more.

And I was like, how?

When?

I'm up

at

four and I don't want

to.

I can't.

Right.

Yeah.

I will say when, when the show was originally an eight AM show was eight to 11, you know, three years ago, and that actually worked out great.

You could get up early enough and do a, you know, a light workout and still be able to do an eight AM radio show.

There's no way to do that.

You know, before a six AM show, I am not working out at three 30 in the morning or something like that.

That's so to which of course people go, well, duh, just exercise on the other side.

Well, you see, there's this to-do list.

Yeah.

And it's not so much a list as it is a club.

And it has beaten me over the head every morning at 901 for years now.

And

my goal in life is to escape the club long enough to actually do some self-care, you know.

And yet...

I find time to do things like, well, I'm on the CPAP machine, you know, and you got to do some cleaning and maintenance of that every day and other things.

So yeah, you can do it.

Alicia says, same, I'm exhausted at the end of the day.

I swear, we don't have enough hours in the day to do everything and work out.

And yet, Alicia, and yet those times when I do, and I do, you know, I've had phases where, you know, consistently worked out and I feel great.

Yeah.

And I feel great.

And I'm always like,

Why don't I always do this?

Don't ever fall off this wagon again.

You can do it.

You can fit in the work and the self care.

And then something comes up.

You know, you get sick or you go on a vacation or a holiday or whatever and you can't get back up on the horse.

No, it's

so hard.

I used to do 100 pushups every night.

And I have no, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I cannot, I just cannot push myself to do it anymore.

I will simply say, here's your voice from the future.

It's the if you don't, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Yeah.

And it's not so much a hundred push ups, but things like, and this is this is just classic, you know, older age man.

There's one thing you never have to do as a middle age adult.

You never have to like balance.

You never have to like stand on one foot for a while.

And then the day comes where you're like doing.

Physical therapy or something or you want to do yoga and they do the thing where you just stand on the one foot and you keep falling and you go My god, what is happening here?

It's like because you don't have to do it.

You just you take it for granted But now trying to do that one tree pose or whatever it's called in yoga.

It's like No, can't do it anymore.

So don't you maybe not a hundred but a few

I'd say a

few.

A few would be good for you.

Alicia says, hey, I'll admit, I've started a stepper while watching TV.

The cracking from my knees and my feet is insane.

Yes.

Yeah.

I have any elliptical downstairs, but, you know, and I used it for a couple of years and then, you know, my knee is shot.

I can't

do

that.

I've

got a shoulder thing, so I can't do one push-up anymore.

But I know there's still things I can do.

You have to actually want to and start a different routine instead.

My needs are messed up because I played tennis for so long and probably didn't do as much recovery after playing tennis as I should have.

So I

was helping a friend move this weekend.

My traps are a little sore, but we were sitting on their floor eating lunch.

And I'm trying to sit cross-legged, and I'm like, I can't.

My knees hurt

too much.

I can't do it.

That's another thing when you realize you can't sit cross-legged on a floor anymore.

Like, what is happening here?

It's like, well, here's what's not happening.

You didn't move enough.

So all this whining for the past seven minutes is all about getting the rest of you to move.

Don't be like Parker and me, sit at our butts doing a radio show.

You can do better.

Well, by nature, you're doing better because we're doing a radio show and you're doing something productive with your time.

But you're including a radio show that you're listening to.

And we thank you for that.

And we'll continue another hour of it with State Representative Jody Emerson talking about the National Conference of State Legislators and the conference that she just attended in Boston.

I'm Pat Quitelow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

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