Flooding Discombobulation (Hour 3)

Live, across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.

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

Well, allegedly.

From the laptop computer on my desk here, and let's bring up Parker Olson, our producer in Madison A2.

Hello.

And say good morning to him.

Good morning.

How are you, Pat?

Discombobulated.

Oh gosh.

Shaper's not going to be here for two and a half hours.

Oh gosh.

That's not good.

No.

We're going to need him on the horn now.

Uh, no, he'll let's let the man sleep.

He's he's a young father.

He just got back from like London or something.

I guess.

Yes.

And he's going to tell us all about that because there hasn't been much in politics to talk about this week.

Although there was a candidate for governor potentially teasing us last night from an ice cream shop of all places.

So we'll get to that.

Okay.

Anyway, let me explain what's happening here, especially for folks watching on social media.

And it's a very easy explanation.

I fear.

I updated my software overnight on my desktop and somehow StreamYard, the program that we do this on, looked at my new version of Sequoia and said, no, I don't want to play with you.

So we quickly move things over to my laptop and.

It's working well except for the echo that I'm hearing, but you're not hearing it Parker, right?

No, I'm not hearing it.

So we're doing okay over the airwaves.

Okay.

So it's like a terrible version of tinnitus and voices in my head.

And they're my own for my half a second later.

You could stop talking to me and take off your headphones, I suppose.

I suppose I could.

Yeah.

And then you could just pop yourself up on screen if there's something you want to add.

Sure.

Let's see.

Before I let you go.

Did you watch the burgers last night?

Oh, you bet I did.

Good.

Because that was fun.

It was very fun.

We are getting very close to the point of George White hamburgers again, which I didn't think we would say twice in one year.

I don't know that we have to necessarily talk about the hamburgers yet because apparently that's some kind of a jinx,

you know, I said it on Todd's show yesterday and nothing went wrong.

So I don't know.

Jinxes are weird.

I mean, it's baseball, you know, so we'll see.

All right.

Well, let me get to the summary of it.

And so to do that, I'm gonna bring myself up full here.

I'm gonna turn my headphones for a second.

And I'll look for you to pop up in case you need me for anything.

Because for right now, I need to tell folks what's on the show from our, this angle of the laptop looks like it's a hostage situation here in Chippewa Falls, but trust me, it's not.

It's just

It's just bad software.

All right, so coming up on the program today, well, we're going to at some point get into the militarization of Washington DC, which shouldn't have to happen.

Cities have crime, and there are right and wrong ways to deal with it.

And unfortunately, we've got a convenient distraction now from the president of the United States, who's saying that crime is out of control.

It is not.

And so he's taking over the DC police force.

The DC police force is far from perfect, but that's not really what this is all about, especially when you consider that the biggest crime in Washington DC in our lifetimes was masterminded by the guy in the White House right now on January 6th, 2021.

So this is not exactly what

it appears to be.

But it is serious because it again shows that like Los Angeles, what's happening in DC could be coming to communities near you.

And if you're one of those folks in the rural areas going, oh, good, those big bad cities deserve it.

It's not going to be limited to big cities.

Don't teach yourself that way.

Don't kid yourself.

So we'll talk a bit about that.

Also, the fall session of the Wisconsin Legislature is supposed to feature

bills that lawmakers had hoped would make it into the state budget.

But now they have to pass on their own merits.

One of those bills would allow Wisconsin farmers to have paying campers without having to obtain a campground license.

We're going to talk to our friend Hans Brighton Moser.

He's a dairy farmer in Lincoln County.

Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association.

And talk about that bill that advocates hope is the opening of another

agricultural tourism revenue opportunity.

We'll also have a guest from the Friends of the Apostle Islands to talk about safe boating in that part of Lake Superior.

We mentioned that Dan's going to be in but he's going to be talking probably less about politics and more about what he's seen in his hometown of Milwaukee.

as they take stock of the terrible damage from the massive flash flooding over the weekend and rain is still in the forecast for them as well.

We'll check in with Chad Holmes from our civic media station in Wasaw about some of the stories that he's following up north and we will ride another wave as the brewers again reach a double digit winning streak.

So much to tell you about throughout the course of the next three hours here, even though we're kind of running on

a spare tire, if you were technologically speaking.

Let me tell you for a moment about something that is new for Up North News on social media.

Not only can you watch this program on Facebook and YouTube, both the civic media and the Up North News Facebook and YouTube pages.

But, you know, we've been on Twitter and Instagram and TikTok and all of that.

And now Up North News is on Blue Sky as well.

Now Twitter, unfortunately, hasn't died yet.

even though it deserves to.

Elon Musk has done all that he can to turn Twitter into a dumpster fire.

But because of its size and usage, there's still plenty of people on there who have to put up with everything from Nazis to soft porn to all the things that show up that you don't ask for and have just completely ruined the Twitter experience.

Blue Sky is one of those alternatives that have come along.

It hasn't risen nearly to the level of Twitter, but it does have more to share of people who use Twitter either just a little bit, just to maintain a presence there or not at all.

And so up north here, this has just opened up an account there, Civic Media.

And a lot of your favorite Civic Media folks also have accounts on Blue Sky.

So that's the one, by the way, in case you go, wait, isn't that the one somebody was supposed to send you an invitation to do?

Yeah, that was back when they were first getting started.

You don't need that anymore.

So if you haven't done it yet, go ahead and give Blue Sky a try and look for us on there and maybe be able to not have to feed your Twitter addiction quite so much.

All right, let's talk about the the Brewers because that was, again, another fun game to watch and winning streaks.

Well, they're just always fun.

The Brewers beat up on the Pirates 7-1.

The Brewers having

just one of the best years.

The Pirates definitely not.

Bryce Durang hit his first career leadoff home run and Jose Quintana had allowed just three hits over six innings, six very solid innings and number 22 hit number 22 as Christian Yelich hit his 22nd home run of the season.

Now last night was the first of 11 straight games

against teams in the National League Central Division.

You got three against Pittsburgh, three at Cincinnati later this week, and then five games at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

So 11 straight divisional games and one more scheduling streak of note.

The Brewers play this evening, 6.05 again, the pregame on several civic media stations, and then a day game tomorrow at American Family Field.

Then they'll have Thursday off.

And then like I mentioned, they had to Cincinnati, but the thing to note there, not only those three games against Cincinnati and five against Chicago at Wrigley, but starting Friday the Brewers will be playing 19 games over 18 days.

before they next get a day off.

Their next day off is September 2nd, the day after Labor Day.

We mentioned yesterday that Freddy Peralta was scheduled to pitch yesterday.

At the last minute, he was given one extra day of rest, which is why Jose Quintana was in.

Freddy Peralta is scheduled to pitch tonight against Pittsburgh's Paul Skeens, and again, 6-0-5 this evening for the pregame.

and then 1235 tomorrow afternoon for that day game on Civic Media Stations and Richland Center, Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha, Park Falls, and Hayward.

All right, let's see what else we were going to be following today.

Oh, yes, somebody was giving us perhaps a tease of a forthcoming announcement, and that would be State Senator Kelder Royes, who has not put out anything official yet.

But as I go back over to my desktop, you know, the one that was ruined by doing a software update.

Boy, things you have to learn the hard way.

But on there was a post from State Senator Kelder Royce.

I can say it's on her personal account.

So it's not like she made some kind of an official declaration.

But she did put up a note about being at a particular Madison ice cream parlor and having their flavor called this.

blank just got serious.

And she says, once again, I say this blank just got serious.

And then she hashtags it 2026 hashtag governor.

And Senator Royce has mentioned in the past that she is leaning toward running for governor.

So again, continuing to tease it with something that again, ties into her announcement a few years back when she ran for governor was saying that this blank is getting serious.

So we'll see, we'll watch.

It's interesting though that, again, it's been more than two weeks since Governor Evers announced that he was not going to be running for a third term.

And yet here we are with really no change in the candidate field.

You had Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez announce the next day.

You had Milwaukee County Executive David Crawley saying that he was going to announce at some point

He's obviously a little busy right now with the state of emergency situation in Milwaukee County.

You have the two candidates on the Republican side and really nothing else has changed since then, which was most definitely not what I was predicting was going to be the case.

I thought we would see a big pack right away of people trying to get early momentum and they did not.

Now, that's not a bad thing.

necessarily.

I mean, you're all relieved.

You're not getting, you know, phone calls for donations.

You're not seeing digital ads already from some of the early candidates and things like that.

So they'll come when they come.

Joseph Pecky told us that once you're not first in, you can kind of set your own schedule.

And so we'll be looking for those announcements.

But in the meantime, if you're curious as to who, you know, we still think may be likely to announce that they're exploring a campaign for governor.

Well then head over to our website upnorthnewswi.com again upnorthnewswi.com and Over there you can find the article that I put up which lists very nearly 20 different people who have been reported to be considering or rumored to be potential candidates in the race and Some of them are very familiar names some not so much and they might surprise you well this way they won't sneak up on you

Tomorrow on the program, we're going to have former state representative Dana Wachs from Eau Claire.

We're going to talk to him about two different things.

First off, he'll be appearing in our regular homeroom segment.

And we're going to, again, talk about transparency on your property tax bills about the cost of voucher schools.

We told you last week how the folks in Green Bay are making that happen.

It's a partnership between the city council and the school board to

make sure that taxpayers in Green Bay know how much voucher schools are skimming off the top of money that should otherwise go to your public schools.

Well that should be happening statewide and it should have been happening a long time ago and State Representative Dana Wachs

had the bill that would have called for that years ago and Republicans would not bring it up.

They did not want you to know the actual cost about your school.

So he's going to talk about that and we're going to talk about that Bill Governor Evers vetoed last week about gig workers and what would be the right way to deal with these folks who are often misclassified as independent contractors or gig workers.

Dana has a lot of experience in that that he's willing to talk about.

All right, I'm going to go unplug my computer and plug it back in and see if that works and tell you that live from the heart of America's up north.

I want to thank you for making this the place to spend part of your Tuesday morning.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Parker, that is just some nice gentle music that is meant to feel like we're not in the midst of a technological crisis here.

I'm trying to soothe.

You know, yesterday in the Madison side, it was all hell broke loose.

And now today, up in the WSOTA studio.

Up

in the Lake WSOTA studio.

Yeah.

We're flying a little blind here.

It's all right.

It happens, you know,

for folks that missed it off the top.

I made the mistake of doing a software update.

I've done countless software updates and have never had this problem before.

But of course, this one time is when our program that normally carries this show has decided it's not compatible with the update.

So we quickly move things over to the laptop, which is why we don't have the little slides on screen.

I'm hearing an echo.

Parker thinks I might be going crazy.

I already thought that to be fair.

That's true.

Okay, I can deal with that.

If you want to reach the show.

Our email address is radio at UpNorthNewsWI.com or similarly, you can head over to the Civic Media app.

You can send us a comment by text.

You can also use the new voice note feature and send us a note that way as well.

All right, I'm gonna pop off my headphones for a second.

There we go, just so we get rid of that echo while I'm gonna tell you for a bit about what you can find over on our website, UpNorthNewsWI.com.

And you can sign up for a newsletter, of course, while you're there too.

But on the website, one of the the new feature articles, the seven places to visit in Wisconsin Dells that aren't water parks.

So many people think of it as the water park water slide capital of the world.

And Wisconsin Dells was built on things that were long predate the water parks.

There's all the natural beauty there of the Dells themselves and much more.

There are restaurants and spas and resorts that have very little to do with water parks.

And our writer there has listed seven of her favorite things that you can do in the Dells that are not water parks.

Also on our website, there's something called the traditions of college campuses.

And I mean, some of them you know about, but others will be brand new to you.

These are nine different traditions.

Now, number one on the list is the jump around.

Everybody gets what the jump around is.

It's a 1992 song that they've been doing since, I guess, roughly 2003, something like that.

There's 17 Days of Kindness at Lawrence University.

There's also something called Colleen the Dream at UW River Falls.

There is also the Kissing Rock at Carthage College.

There's the Statue of Liberty on Lake Mendota at UW-Madison and much more.

So head over to our website upnorthnewswi.com and learn more about these different college campus traditions.

And then one more that I wanted to tell you about.

And this is not one that I would normally seek out.

I got to throw my headphones back on and ask Parker about this.

This one's all about gravesites.

Parker, if I told you that one of the features is the 13 famous people buried in Wisconsin, would you go seek those out?

Probably not.

Not a huge fan of that.

But you know, there are people who love to do, you know, those cemetery tours and look for famous graves and things like that.

Yeah, I know as a, I think a weirdly popular thing, but a thing, yes.

That one that's really

That one that piques my interest.

No, yeah.

But there are people who would like to visit the graves of famous people.

And so everybody from Frank Lloyd Wright to let's see who else do we have here?

We got Les Paul, of course.

And well, Bob Uker recently, Joseph McCarthy, the former Senator Chris Farley.

And on it goes.

So again, for people who like that kind of thing.

There's an article for it.

We've got an article for everything over at Up North News.

It's a comprehensive

publication.

I do recall stumbling upon the most probably arguably the most famous grave in Chippewa Falls.

And that would be the grave of Jacob Leiningkugel of the Leiningkugel Brewing Company.

The Leiningkugel?

The Leiningkugel, yes.

And it's as well one of the other early explorers from this area.

whose name now escapes me is is there.

There's a large cemetery just next to the northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds.

So again, this is for some people really enjoy this.

And I'm, I'm not judging.

Whatever floats your boat.

Yeah, inclusive bunch here.

Yep.

On the up north to use social media accounts right now.

From Instacart.

It's another one of those list things.

Okay, here's the list.

Five most popular brands of potato chips.

Now, I'm not even going to give this one away because obviously, why would I tell you to go look our post on social media?

But every region of the country has its own favorite chips.

I know if you know anybody in the Mid-Atlantic who loves to talk about UTS potato chips.

No, I've never heard of that.

Oh, UTS is big there.

Cape Cod chips.

They're big in the New England area.

Those I've heard of.

Hawaii, of course, they love their cattle chips.

So what are the big popular chips here in Wisconsin?

Check out our social media site and you can learn more about that All right while I'm still doing some housekeeping here about things that are popular over at up north news We used to bring Sharita on Tuesdays to talk about some of our more popular posts But let me instead we have her come in now on Thursdays and have her talk instead about big events that you can do Throughout the course of the upcoming weekend.

So instead she sends me some of the notes and some of them of course are not a surprise.

There's our

feature on Facebook about astronaut Jim Lovell from Milwaukee passing away last weekend at the age of 97.

There's also a Facebook post, a new survey of the top 10 public and private high schools in Wisconsin.

There is an Instagram post that did especially well last week on how Bonnie Verz Justin Vernon has helped give downtown Eau Claire a makeover.

And then we talked about this one yesterday on Instagram.

Wisconsin shelters are overflowing with surrendered cats.

And so there are new incentives to try to get you to adopt one of these cats, have a new pet and help alleviate a glut of cats and kittens at your local shelters.

The Midwest Farm Report is next.

This is Up North News.

I'm Pat Critello, founding editor of Up North News, live from Lake Wissota here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Remember you can get our newsletter daily.

Every weekday morning here head over to UpGrowthNewsWI.com.

Click subscribe and the banner up on top of our homepage and also get yourself subscribed to our Sunday morning page that talks all about Wisconsin politics including our question of the week and this week it's all about politicians social media accounts.

You know thanks to people like Derek Van Orden.

tweeting pictures of a naked man in a ski mask and thinking that it's funny.

What should the role be of politicians personal social media accounts?

That's part of our question of the week in our Sunday morning newsletter.

In our daily newsletter today, among the articles in there is one entitled, I love Wisconsin Dells, but not for the reasons you think.

And that is because I think a lot, a lot of folks have forgotten over the years that

Now it's known as the water park capital of the world, but Wisconsin Dells has a just a ton of other attractions, a lot of things you can do without ever setting foot into a water park.

And so we have an article on our website by Christine Hansen, who lists seven of her favorite things to do in Wisconsin Dells that have nothing to do with a water park.

And so check that out on our website or find a link at our newsletter up north news w i dot com.

State Representative Jody Emerson is with us now from Eau Claire and recently returned from a convention trip to the National Conference of State Legislators that we'll get into.

Representative Emerson, how are you?

Good morning Pat, how you doing?

It's good to see you.

It looked like on social media you and Julian had a really nice break, a really nice getaway for a few days.

You know, it's we went out there for the conference and then took a couple extra days of vacation time on our own dime.

Don't get a tweet about me or anything like that.

But really enjoyed the time out there.

We'd never been to New England.

So I've eaten more lobster rolls than you can imagine.

And he went to a Red Sox game and all kinds of, you know, Boston classics,

Boston classics.

You got to do you got to do the lobster roll.

You got to do the socks game.

I know.

Well, Duncan Donuts, it's all there.

Strangely enough, I didn't get Duncan Donuts until I was in my connecting flight in O'Hare.

Oh my.

But you did.

You finally, you finally checked it all off the list.

I did.

I did.

The the National Conference of State legislators, NCSL group that I was part of way back when in in the day as well.

We're going to talk about the difference between a service oriented group like that versus some that are shall we say a little different like a group called Alec.

But before we get into that, let's get to NCSL itself.

You know, I refer to it as summer school for legislators.

Tell us about some of the things that benefit legislators who attend conferences like these.

Yeah.

So it was an event that had, I think, over 9,500 registrants at that.

So you've got legislators from all over the country, all the networking that happens at those events, finding out what our other states are doing, how they've maybe navigated the place that we're in now because they were at it two years ago with a certain topic or five years ago or something like that.

Legislating is a very strange job.

So it's just really nice to be around people who understand this job too, especially in the day and age that we're in, the opening piece for NCSL.

was about Melissa Hortman and her wife and Senator Hoffman and his wife and the horrific events that happened in Minnesota where there was the political assassination of state legislators and attempted assassinations.

And I think that really set the groundwork for talking about

you know, what it is that we do and in the climate that we do it.

So there were some really moving pieces there and talked about how we could tone down the rhetoric, which kind of goes into your piece about, you know, personal Twitter accounts and things like that.

But I think that was really good.

But the other piece that was really talked about a lot in the exhibit hall at the happy hours afterwards, all these things was everything that is going on in Texas right now and with the redistricting attempts.

So those were the two big pieces was what happened in Minnesota, what's trying to be happening in Texas.

Um, and then there's policy geeks like me that go to a breakout session on higher education and housing and, uh, things like that too.

So in that sense, it is summer school for, for state legislators.

We're, we're learning from different places.

Um, but there's a lot of networking and a lot of

camaraderie.

All right.

There was state representative Jodi Emerson talking to us about the national commerce of state legislators and, uh, Mr. Olson, it sounds like you're hearing me.

Okay.

Let's see if I can, I hear you though.

I hope you can hear me.

Oh, good.

Yes, I can feel.

Phew.

That was that was a relief.

So, uh, for folks that that was Jody Emerson from our eight thirty half hour yesterday.

And for folks who might have missed it, consider that a commercial.

Whoops.

And sorry about that, folks.

We just had a little bit of a technical difficulty there as Pat was rejoining.

We should get him back.

in just a moment here as we hang on.

He is talking about that interview that we had yesterday with Jodi Emerson as she was joining us and letting us know about what is going on with the convention that she was at over the previous week and we should be rejoining.

And protests as well because of these.

We should be rejoining Pat in just a moment here.

Sorry about that, folks.

It has been quite the morning for technical difficulties, but that's all right because, hey, you know what?

It's live.

That's just how it goes sometimes.

And here we go.

We should be bringing back Pat.

Right about now now that we think we're getting Parker back.

I think I think he's rejoined us.

I have rejoined you.

Yes So

it leads to this question.

Where did you go?

Um,

that is a fantastic question for whatever reason the computers kicked me out of that browser that we have stream yard on

Oh.

And now I can only use the one browser.

So we're going to figure this out as we have been for the last two shows.

I was going to say, so some of Monday's gremlins have carried over into Tuesday.

It would appear so, yes.

Oh, OK.

All right.

Well, I'll let you monkey around with the computers there while I bring everybody up to speed.

So now that our social media audience has joined us as well, so that you

You know exactly how the last 43 minutes have gone here where it started with ostensibly me doing a computer update on my desktop and then the

program that we run the show on didn't seem to be compatible, but then we are also getting some audio echo problems that turned out to be coming from Madison.

And then when we did get our browser problem figured out, suddenly the computers in the Madison studio decided to be, yeah, yeah, Alicia, Psy, technology can be so fussy.

That is exactly right.

So thank you for your patience.

Again, we're someday

Look back and laugh at this someday.

We're gonna look back at this and go wait a minute There were times you did computer updates and everything didn't just work.

Isn't that how it's supposed to work?

Yeah, it is these things are all supposed to talk to each other just fine, but

I often think about how easy relatively it was for me to be working in television and thinking about what the people in those early years were going through when they were, you know, flying the plane as they were building it.

And some days that's what it feels like in this tech age.

We are still five years removed from the pandemic.

Five years removed from all of us having to learn Zoom and now StreamYard and some of these other things.

And we've made tremendous strides.

There are more shows and podcasts than ever.

There are network TV shows that are done from people's homes now.

They don't have to go into a great big studio.

But there's still hiccups now and then.

And this was definitely one of them.

So again, we apologize, but I have a sense that you probably understand what it is that we have to deal with from time to time.

So for folks who are joining us a little bit later on and joining us on social media, let me tell you that we'll be talking to Dan Schaefer a little later this morning from the Reconbobulation area.

Not so much about politics this time as about the terrible flooding that's taking place in the Milwaukee area.

We'll talk to Chad Holmes from our

Civic Media Station in Warsaw as well and and then of course as you can expect I have a few thoughts on the announcement by President Trump that he's doing a essentially a military takeover of Washington DC.

Washington DC by the way a place that should have become a state long time ago and then would not have this concern

But thanks to people like Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, it could not get passed during the first couple of years of Joe Biden's term.

A whole lot of good ideas couldn't get passed because of those two alleged Democrats who are thankfully no longer on the scene.

But Washington DC instead remains a hostage of sorts to the federal government.

It would be one thing if it was just a workplace, then yes, a status as a federal district that Congress overseas would make sense.

But this is a living, breathing place with residents and the need for schools and police and for representation if there's going to be taxation.

And none of that's happened.

And now it stands to be just a

Another prop on behalf of those who would like to see our big cities micromanaged.

I mean, again, these are the people on the Republican side who love to talk about small government and government should stay out of the way until it's convenient enough to be the ultimate big government.

And that's to send troops into a city and take over its city government and micromanage affairs.

you know, the thing I talk about here in the Wisconsin legislature all the time, where again, the party of so-called small government lives to micromanage the things that local governments are doing.

And we can't go back and change that.

We can't go back and change the things that they were claiming back then.

So I bring this up, not as sour grapes, I bring this up as education.

That the next time around, when you hear about small government, think about troops in Washington, DC.

The next time you hear about, they're the party of fiscal conservatism.

Think about this new mega bill, this big bloated boondoggle of a budget bill and the additional four trillion dollars in debt just to pay for tax cuts for the very wealthy.

So there's there's not the local control.

There's not the small government.

There's not the fiscal conservatism and this latest episode simply

reaffirms it.

This is somebody who says crime is rampant in Washington DC, the president does, when the crime statistics are down.

Is it a perfect place?

Oh heavens no.

No big city is.

You need to know where to go where not to go.

In part because you have people who are undereducated and underemployed.

And when asked why that might be, I might point you to generations of austerity in our budgets, because it feels good rather than actually, you know,

taking care of all of our folks, making sure that we all have the proper education and training to get out there and work, or the rehabilitation programs, or the drug treatment programs, or the homeless programs.

Remember this all started this episode in Washington DC with Donald Trump saying the homeless problem was out of hand, so he was going to round them all up.

And then he said, well, it's crime that's out of hand, so we're going to militarize the city here.

Well, where are those homeless folks going to go?

He's simply going to engage in the same human trafficking that he and the governors of Texas and Florida have been involved with forever, where they simply push people off of their doorstep and make them somebody else's problem.

That's not how you solve problems.

That's not what we elect people to do.

But that's what Donald Trump's doing, because that's the only thing he knows how to do is to take a page out of the authoritarian's handbook.

So are things going to get better in DC?

Not with this stuff.

Not by a long shot.

Today's history lesson is next.

As we always do, mornings live from Lake Wissota on the Civic Media Radio Network.

No, we haven't made a mistake.

This is today's history lesson and it starts with Sir Mix-A-Lot and probably about all we can play of that song at this hour of the day on this particular network.

Yeah.

Sir Mix-A-Lot, born Anthony Ray in Seattle this day in 1963.

So happy 62nd birthday to Sir Mix-A-Lot.

I'm not sure who knighted him.

He's a sir.

He is a sir.

Yes.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's Tuesday, so let's make it two for Tuesday, a twin spin of Lionel Richie, all right?

First, on this day in 1978, he had this hit with the

Commodores.

So

at this point by 1978, the Commodores had been on the road for years.

They'd had a lot of good upbeat, you know, things on the charts.

But their first number one song was a ballad penned by Lionel Richie of the Commodores.

He then went on, of course, to have a very successful solo career.

And it was on this day in 1984 that he performed his latest hit song at the closing ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

I don't recall this of course at the time but apparently one of his backup dancers was a young actor named Cuba Gooding Jr.

who would go on to later fame.

Let's see on this day in 1851 a guy named Isaac Singer was granted a patent.

The patent was for his sewing machine and that became the start of the Singer sewing machines which I thought were ubiquitous but I

I'm going to hazard a guess that Parker has never been in a place where somebody has a sewing machine and still does some of their own sewing.

Um, no, like people that I know know, but I like, I have used a sewing machine before in school.

Yeah.

I'm like school.

We learned.

Okay.

Not well, but we learned.

Okay.

I just, I just wasn't sure to what, to what degree sewing machines are still a thing.

My, my mom, who, uh, sews like crazy.

as did my grandma, is now teaching her granddaughters, some of the granddaughters, and I think one of the great granddaughters, how to sew, which is pretty cool.

I think it's more important to know how to sew by hand than with a machine at this point.

Yeah, you're not going to be making a lot of your own clothes, at least not now.

I mean, eventually, in Trump's dystopia, we might have to grow all of our own food, so our own clothes, but that's for another day.

Let's see, on this day in World War I, of course, they didn't know it was World War I at the time, but the United Kingdom declared war on Austria-Hungary, which would become later known as the First World War.

On this day in 1991, Metallica released its fifth album, self-titled, but commonly known as the Black Album.

Now, funny, much like we said about Lionel Richie and the Commodores, you know, they kind of had to change their style to get even more famous.

The black album marked a change in the band's music from the thrash metal style of their four previous albums to something slower, heavier, more refined.

It went to number one in eight countries and sold 16 million copies.

On this day in 1981, the IBM personal computer was released.

In 1989, on this day, Richard Marks got his third consecutive number one

hit.

On this day in 1994, Major League ball players went on strike that would eventually force the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

On this day in 1997, a new group called the Backstreet Boys issued their self-titled debut album.

It did alright.

14 million copies later.

Everybody knew who the Backstreet Boys were until in sync came along and then we couldn't tell the difference between the two of

them.

Yeah, you know,

it happens.

I was I didn't

realize the Backstreet Boys were that young.

I would have thought they were really your 90s.

Really?

Yeah.

I don't know.

It's all before you were born anyway.

So it's just all, you know, it's all

BP before Parker, you know.

Speaking of boy bands, on this day in 2008, the Jonas Brothers album, a little bit longer featuring the hit single Burning Up, debuted at number one on the charts.

And on this day in 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, there was a Unite the right rally.

It would lead to the deaths of three people and injuries to at least 50 more.

It was the first clear sign that in that first year of Donald Trump's first term, that racists in America weren't going to silently celebrate his victory, but instead feel emboldened to come out from under their rocks, march in the streets, eventually invade the Capitol and even run for office and serve in Congress.

Great job, America.

Way to go.

Today is International Youth Day around the country.

It's also Middle Child Day.

Parker, where are you on the sibling order of things?

I am the second of two.

The second of two, so the younger child.

Some would

say that I put an end to my family line.

I could see

that

happening.

Yes.

This is middle child days.

So for those of you with with the three sibling thing, somebody in the middle has got a special day today.

This is also in a totally unrelated situation.

This is National Milkman Day.

And for see again Parker's never had to deal with you know the air of the milkman and saying you know Why doesn't my brother look like me and then they make some joke about the

milkman?

I love hearing old jokes new to young people.

This is great This is national Julian fries day if I said Julian fries, would you know what I was talking about?

I would have thought that you meant the one guy Julian Assange

I was thinking of

him.

No, not the spy.

No, the French fries.

These are the very skinny French fries.

Think of them as that.

They're just skinnier French fries.

They're called Julian's.

And this is World Elephant Day as well.

All right, coming up in the next hour, we're going to be talking to our friends Hans Brighton Moser and Sheila Everhart about the fall session of the Wisconsin legislature and a bill that they hope to see pass that would allow some farmers to diversify their revenue operations and legally start to

host campers.

That's coming up across the Civic Media Radio Network.

Live from Lake Wissota, I'm Pat Crichtlow.

Cross Wisconsin on Civic Media.

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

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

Good morning.

It is 7 0 6.

It is nice to have you here up north on this Tuesday morning, August 12.

2025.

Parker Olson is producing this shindig down in Madison Studio A2.

Brittany Merlot is off today.

So I can tell you that the Milwaukee area, which really did not need more rain, just got a bunch more of it.

A system that is now moving offshore by and large has just moved.

The heaviest stuff has just moved past Sheboygan.

Still some light to moderate showers that are stretching from the Milwaukee area up to Oshkosh.

Again, moving toward Manitowoc at this point.

And then there's still a back

full of light rain that has yet to reach the Madison area.

So essentially the southeastern third of Wisconsin is getting precipitation right now and we obviously are hoping for the best for those folks down in Milwaukee.

from the terrible flash flooding there.

We'll be talking to Dan Schaefer in a little while from the recombobulation area, but with him being a Milwaukee resident and just back from vacation, I might add, we're going to be asking his thoughts and impressions on what he's seen over in his part of the Milwaukee metro area.

It was around 14 inches of rain.

that fell in places in just a matter of hours leading to record high floods.

So far no fatalities reported, still lots of road closures, some roads that were washed out.

Let's see, Governor Tony Evers declared a state of emergency.

and that authorized some resources to be used.

And of course, Milwaukee's Milwaukee County executive, David Crawley, had declared a state of emergency.

There had been some whining on social media saying, well, why isn't Waukesha County getting anything we had flooding to?

And, you know, the response quickly came.

It was because the Waukesha County executive had not promptly issued a state of emergency declaration that has since happened.

And hopefully the, again, the usual Milwaukee bashing political

Snowball throwing comes to an end.

The National Weather Service said, you know, all the rivers in Milwaukee area hit record high levels, whether you're talking about the Kinekinek, the Milwaukee, the Menominee, the Root, all going, in some cases, four feet over flood level.

Firefighters responded to more than 600 calls for water rescues, gas leaks, flooded basements, electrical outages, and more.

and I've heard everything from it's a once in a 500 year event to a once in a thousand year event in any case it is still part of the basically the slow motion disaster movie that we're living one of those you know climate change disaster movies where in the movies it all happens rather quickly suddenly another ice age is upon us

but it works a lot slower than that with an increasing number of storms like this.

And this is what we're living with in this day and age.

From Tigerton, Rob says, good morning from Tigerton.

It's cloudy and 67 degrees, got a few sprinkles.

Yesterday I had mowing jobs in Wittenberg, then got a migraine headache from the wildfire smoke and had a 10 hour sleep.

Uh, then said he's got mowing jobs in Tigerton today, weather permitting.

Uh, let's see.

He, we talked about middle child.

This is national middle child day.

And he says he's the second oldest among his siblings.

It's also national milkman day.

We don't, don't have milk delivery the way that we used to.

Um, Rob says the milkman would come and pick up the milk on our dairy farmer every other day.

Okay.

Not that kind of milkman, but yeah, that's technically a milkman too that empties the bulk tank and brings it all in.

Let's see, Rob says the, the Brewers are playing like 1982, the last time the Brewers won the pennant and went to the World Series.

Well, we hope so, but we're also hoping with better results.

Uh, that would be nice anyway.

And as far as the, the milkman and what they say about the milkman, if you're, if you're middle sibling, you know, it looks a little different, Alicia notes.

Well, now we talk about it being the UPS or the FedEx guy.

to which I don't know.

I don't know if UPS and FedEx guys, if they want that kind of a reputation.

Alicia says after we were playing the Backstreet Boys, I remember other teenage girls in the late 90s going crazy for in sync in the Backstreet Boys and Tony lets us know that the radio audience missed out, the social media audience got to watch Parker sinking, lip syncing along to the Backstreet Boys and really getting into it.

Oh yeah.

I can't say that I noticed.

I was reading my notes at the time, but are you?

You missed out.

How do you plead to the lip syncing of the Backstreet Boys?

Guilty, which is weird, because I did not think that would be on the docket for today.

But hey, why not?

Sure.

Lip syncing to the Backstreet Boys?

Yeah.

I wasn't sure I was ever going to do that to be honest with you.

But here we are.

You never know what's going to come of that history lesson.

That's the thing.

That's true.

You might get a pigeon wearing

pants.

You never know.

Oh, no, that's tomorrow.

That's tomorrow.

Melissa Kay will join us and we'll find out the latest on how Lee Lu is doing.

And I saw a social media video that she put up about, you know, doing some cage cleaning.

I would not recommend.

Oh, is that so?

You know, that's, that's the kind of pet maintenance that, you know, I don't need to be, I don't need to read along with it.

Keeps me from getting a pet.

Yep.

Let's see, from the the text line while we're taking care of those are some of the comments on social media.

How about the text line?

You can do that through the Civic Media app.

Luke Mathers, middle child here, representing a national day of my people, my people, of his people.

Let's see.

We talked earlier about Wisconsin Dells and getting to appreciate things besides the water parks.

On the text line from Jim and Brookfield, good morning Pat, as a geologist, I know the Wisconsin Dells are a natural wonder.

I've hiked many times in the area, photographing the unique rock formations and canyons.

There's a lot of natural wonder to see via hike or a boat ride or a duck ride.

You ever been on one of the ducks?

Not that I remember.

I feel

like

I have, but I can't

remember.

I feel like you'd remember being on the Ducks.

That's what I would think, yeah.

Because one moment you're in a car or in a bus, and they're driving right into a body of water, and then you're floating.

It's an experience.

Uh, yeah, very interesting experience.

Uh, let's see.

I also, there were a couple of notes from yesterday and I want to apologize for not getting to them.

We were talking with Tom Nelson, who wrote a book about the Edmund Fitzgerald and its, its use as a metaphor for the American economy and the post post war, uh, industrial age in America.

And Mike from Milwaukee.

heard that and had to mention that Billy Strings recently covered the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Pfizer forum last Friday and the place went nuts.

Which I like that because I like knowing that people still recognize the song and recognize the tragedy that

befell those 29 crew members back then.

Jim wrote yesterday that our sun pump is continuously running.

Our front ditch is now a deep stream but we are very fortunate.

The basement stayed dry.

The power stayed on.

Multiple surrounding low areas are flooded and there will be

several homes in the area that are cleaning out their basements.

And other folks shared with us their photos or video clips.

They texted them to us using the Civic Media app to show us just how bad things were.

And I mean, I do appreciate it.

If there's, if there's one place I wish I could live, and I tell Sherry about this all the time, whenever we cross over what you would call, you know, either a creek or a small river.

let's say.

And I always think it would be cool to live alongside one of those, one that you could, you know, you could walk across it, you know, something that was, shall we use the cliche, a babbling brook, if you will.

Sure, I will.

Would

would be a nice place to live, you'd think.

But then, whether episodes like this happen, and you realize something that we call it comes with a price tag, you know.

But I get the attraction.

People love living along the water.

We live along the Chippewa River here, but we're up on a very high bank.

We really would have to be at a disaster movie level of flooding for it to get up here.

You

never know.

I was just looking to see what Tony, Tony puts up New Zealand.

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, I do.

I would love to go to New Zealand.

Oh, go visit Hobbiton, the Shire.

Come on.

That'd be really cool.

Oh,

was this a Lord of the Rings movie filming situation?

It is, yes.

Did you

know that?

They filmed all the

stuff?

I think so, and I think some of Game of Thrones may be filmed there as well.

I mean, I totally get the attraction.

It's still one of my favorite trips.

I mean, I haven't been there.

It's been 25 years since I've been to New Zealand.

And anytime somebody brings it up, I say all the time, go, just go.

Even if you don't make it to Australia, although I'm sure you will, because why wouldn't you combine the two?

But New Zealand is the underappreciated one.

It is gorgeous.

It is right size.

It has just about every feature possible from fjords to prairies to volcanic areas.

You name it.

It's just a fantastic place to be.

I would highly recommend making a trip out there if you can.

Coming up a little later this hour, we're going to be talking to Hans Brighton Moser and to Sheila Everhart.

We will be talking about legislation being proposed that would allow farms if they choose to to have some overnight campers and Without the the need to have a campground license as a way to diversify their their business practices their revenue stream And so we'll talk to them about what are the current barriers?

Who is proposing this?

How exactly would that work?

That's all coming up

And then at 752, we'll be talking to Jeff Renneke from Friends of the Apostle Islands in our way up north segment.

He's going to talk about safe boating and a system that's in place up there in Lake Superior to help people navigate in the area and to a boat more safely.

So again, that's just the sour alone and then Dan Schaefer and Chad Holmes coming along in our eight o'clock hour.

Tomorrow we're going to be talking to State Representative Dana Wachs and if you just heard on some of the local newscasts, you might have heard that Governor Evers vetoed a bill.

That was all about, you know, so-called gig workers, let's say delivery drivers for some of these food companies.

And the bill was billed as a way to get benefits to those gig workers, health insurance and things like that.

And there were some people unhappy when they heard that the governor vetoed it.

And again, that's not the full story.

The full story is why the governor vetoed it.

It was a very industry friendly bill.

And there is a real problem in this country with intentional misclassification of workers in order to avoid paying benefits in order to avoid paying full time wages to avoid responsibility in the case of an accident or an injury on the job.

Dana Wachs is a trial attorney, a former state legislator, and he's going to talk to us tomorrow about what it is that we really need to do.

in the legislature and in Congress to do better by our workers.

I mean, I couldn't help but note in the news story that DoorDash alone spent a million dollars lobbying on this bill in the Wisconsin legislature.

I mean, as a legislator, I've met with lobbyists.

They don't carry around envelopes of cash.

This is money they get paid to go visit legislators to work up, you know, briefing books or whatever the case may be.

When I just think of where that million dollars could have gone if instead of using it to lobby on a bill if it had actually gone to the delivery drivers in higher pay or benefits or things like that I Would be remiss if I didn't hit the brewers right away before we took a break here because of course You've got the brewers now on a 10 count them 10 game winning streak the second double-digit winning streak

Not a lot of teams get to do that.

Brewers beat the Pirates 7-1.

Bryce Terrang hit his first career leadoff home run.

Jose Quintana allowed three hits over six innings and Christian Yelich hit his 22nd home run of the season.

Freddie Peralta will now pitch tonight.

They gave him an extra day's rest taking on Paul Skeens and the pregame will start at 6-05.

And again, at the risk of overselling it, Paul Skeens, Freddie Peralta.

That could be a fun one to watch.

That could be fun.

You know, we love the home runs, but, you know, a good pitchers dual, nothing to shake a stick at.

Local update is next for some of you from the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota.

Thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

It is 722 and we are joined now by Dan Hagen from WJFW TV News Watch 12 in Rhinelander.

Dan, how are you this morning?

I'm doing very well, Pat.

How are you doing?

Good.

You're in your big comfy Blues Clues chair there with your handy dandy notebook ready to solve another mystery for us.

You know, I'm very consistent except for when I, you know, show up to the show on time.

Sometimes I can be a little inconsistent on that one.

No, you're here and that's what counts.

We're very happy about that.

So there's so many times when we talk about the weather up your way, you know, recall a few months back when, you know, you had the hodag dome collapsing and all the other bad things that happened.

And so now we're watching everything that's unfolding down in Milwaukee.

And the fact of the matter is there

it actually was not a kind and gentle weather weekend anywhere.

You know, there was damage in Vernon County and Door County and other places as well.

It's just that we didn't get, you know, a once in a 500 year rain event.

But still, how is it like out by you?

Well, here's the thing.

I was actually down in the Milwaukee area.

I went to the Bristol Renaissance Fair.

Have you

heard of this?

Yes, yes.

Yeah, we've talked about it.

Um, yeah, so a couple of my friends and I went down there.

So we were camping in Richard bong state natural area, uh, which is, uh, in near Kenosha and we had a, you know, a rain, you know, seems like a normal storm that night.

Not realizing that, you know, just in Milwaukee, uh, I don't know, 50, 100 miles away that, um, it was the crazy flooding videos that we've all seen.

So, uh,

Yeah,

it is.

And of course, now we're in an age where, you know, you can see everything in real time.

And so you can look at an app and go, Oh, it's really raining harder over there.

Whereas, I mean, imagine how it was not that terribly long ago, where it's like, you didn't realize the weather was that bad until like a day or two later, maybe it would be in a newspaper, you know, or something like that.

But we got to see right away, just how very bad it was.

Are you a Renaissance fair devotee?

Um, I know this the first time I've been to one and I was dressed up like a wizard at the beach So I had a wizard hat.

I put a mop on my face for beard and Then I wore a Hawaiian shirt and shorts.

So it was about 90 degrees.

So it kind of worked out

Where did where did this idea come from?

I think someone told me about it.

There's a there was a show called Merlin where Merlin is dressed up once as a Hawaiian shirted Vacationing man, so that's where it came from But I would recommend people go to it.

There was like jousting competitions, which were really fun There was a booth where you had tomatoes and you tried to throw it at a heckler who made very Kind of off-color jokes at your expense while you were throwing it.

Oh boy

So

you imagine that as when you're anchoring the news, if people could just like, you know, respond in real time to what they think.

Oh, that would, yeah, I would be too afraid of that.

My ego,

I would be, I would so be doing the news from behind plexiglass.

Yeah.

You know, give it your best shot.

So when.

I was going to say, instead of the closest we get now, I didn't have this back in my early days of anchoring.

But now you can finish the newscast and you can get on social media.

And you can right away see all of the keyboard tomatoes that are being thrown at you going, oh, I can't believe you wore that tie.

I can't believe you got that story wrong or whatever the case may be.

Yeah, that happens for sure.

You know, early in my career, I'd be interested to hear your perspective, Pat, but early in my career, I would respond to the haters, you know, go right back at them.

But now I'm just like, it's not even it's not worth the effort.

What do you think?

Oh, no, no, not not worth it at all.

And I yeah, I think I did, you know, once or twice in the early days and then just realize that that's that's not worth your time.

You know, some people just they just want to say what they think.

And look, I feel the same way when I'm delivering a lot of news or commentaries, like, you know, this is this is not a conversation.

There's room.

There's time for conversation.

But this is me delivering a message to you.

And sometimes people just want to deliver a message to you and you go, All right, noted.

So I could make you happier this time along.

Yeah.

Did you have to like ever cut tape in the news industry?

I only had to cut tape at the college level learning about it because there were probably still a handful of radio stations left that were hand splicing audio tape with a razor blade and with splicing tape in order to edit, you know, a sound bite together.

So I did get

in education how to do it.

But by the time I got to my first radio job, that was no longer necessary.

And then we were at the TV station, we were among the first to get what's called non linear editing, meaning editing on a computer.

And that I mean, editing video tape, the old way involved, you know, a couple of big machines.

punching buttons, looking up time code.

And, you know, when it worked, it worked, but it was very clunky.

Boy, the first time I did that on the computer, oh, I'd seen the future kids.

I was glad to still be alive to see that day and age.

Yeah, I can't imagine cutting tape like I could get back to the news station.

Ten minutes the show and you know put something together,

but

yeah, it would take an hour or something

Oh, yeah, I mean now things happen so quickly and it it is wonderful Although as we learned earlier in the show when computers crash You suddenly realize that you can have all the talent in the world But you are at the mercy of somebody's software that did or did not update properly so

You know, we noticed that about cars.

To me, my late dad tried to change jobs and become a car handyman.

And there was nothing he couldn't fix on a car.

But he ultimately couldn't do it because he was right then at the era where cars were becoming more and more computerized.

And that goes beyond what you got in a toolbox.

Yeah, it seems like those are the computer systems are what's failing the cars nowadays not

the

actual, you know engines and

yeah Yeah, you need a degree and again, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

I'm just saying it was it was a switch in technology Well, we we didn't get much into Rhinelander news, but I'll tell you where to find it go to wjfw.com and See what Dan Hagen and his team are doing at news watch 12 and we'll we'll be a little bit more cognizant of local news headlines for you next week Dan if that's okay

Yeah, sounds good.

All right.

Good.

Well, hey, enjoy the week.

We'll talk to you again soon.

Sounds good.

Have a good week.

All right.

When we come back, we'll talk to Sheila Everhart and Hans Bright and Moser.

That's here on these mornings, powered by Up North News on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Critelaw.

If you haven't done it yet sign up for our newsletters over at UpNorthNewsWI.com click subscribe up in the top banner we have our Sunday morning newsletter focused on Wisconsin politics including our question of the week and this week we're asking should politicians delete their social media accounts

Now, it's clear that Congressman Derek Van Orden's personal social media account is an embarrassment to the entire district.

But does that mean he should delete it or does that simply give constituents a look into who he is as a person and not just somebody that puts out press releases and sound bites?

What are your thoughts?

Should they maybe focus on their job?

instead of posting on Twitter.

Again, you get to see that question first on Sunday mornings by signing up for our newsletter, UpNorthNewsWI.com.

Sheila Everhard is standing by from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association, and we're going to talk about a bill that would permit camping to take place on farms.

As always, we're also joined by Lincoln County dairy farmer Hans Brighton Moser, and I got a question or two about fields to ask him about first.

Hans, good morning.

How are you?

Good morning, Pat.

How well are you?

I'm doing all right, although I was so, I'm not a superstitious person, but I was very hesitant to bring up just how good the crops were looking, how tall the corn is, how beautiful everything's looking, because I know from the field across the way here, I have lived through, you know, the kind of summer where everything is looking

perfect and then in August either a drought hits or a hail storm hits and I'm heartbroken to hear that along with all the other severe weather around the state that there's been a significant hail damage that's been done to people's crops as well.

Yeah, yeah, no it is a trick and and thank goodness There's there's such a thing as hail insurance in our area right in our immediate area.

It wasn't too bad We had some corn and beans that did get hit by hail, but it was very small.

This was about three weeks ago But in that same storm Sort of to the south and east of me on the other side of wasa they got clobbered and so there's you know like a couple thousand acres where the corn and beans were absolutely destroyed

I mean like nothing left of them and the silage bags that people had were also damaged to the extent that you know feed had to be restored or something had to be done with those bags to try and repair them so that the feed that was stored in them didn't you know didn't perish as well.

So really tough for those folks who didn't

choose to get the hail insurance and and it's tough regardless if you're a cashcropper or if you're using that

that crop to to feed your animals because if you are then obviously you need to go out in the marketplace and and you know be buying semi loads of hay or or or corn silage that's still standing miles away from from other producers and so forth so it's it is it speaks to that that your earlier comment about you know these events that are supposed to happen once every 500 years and now happen once per summer and I think local governments really have to pay attention to to that to that change because it's

going to impact infrastructure and so forth.

But that's all another conversation.

Oh, yeah.

And it gets into this whole notion of, again, diversifying revenue that we'll talk with in Sheila in just a second.

I will mention, though, that in terms of crop conditions here, third cutting of alpha alpha hay is 72

72% complete across the state.

Potatoes are already 20% harvested.

Now just want to ask you about this one, Hans.

Corn silking reached 90%.

Corn in the dough stage reached 36%.

5% of the corn crop was dented.

So we've got silking the dough stage like bread dough and dented.

Can you tell the city kid the difference between those?

Well, that's just sort of the progression of the corn plan.

itself right as that corn cob develops it starts as that silking it pretty soon it gets a cob and that and as that cob matures it's considered in the dough stage and once it's dented that's when the kernels are starting to dry down and the kernels start to dent as the result so that's the dent corn so up in our area we're away quite a ways away from dented corn but it's it the corn looks quite a bit better it's it's improved quite a bit so

yeah yeah corn condition was rated 81

1% good to excellent, which is unchanged from last week.

And again, we just hope that that continues.

But as we know, there is that ongoing focus to diversify farm operations.

And that includes sometimes things have to be changed in terms of state law, which is why we welcome in our friend Sheila Everhart from the Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association.

Sheila, good morning.

How are you?

Good morning, Pat.

Hi, Hans.

Thanks for having me.

Oh,

as always.

Yeah,

it's always nice to see you here.

So we mentioned that in the fall session, bills come up that maybe they were going to be in the state budget bill.

Maybe they weren't.

But regardless, it's, you know, the budget's behind us and we move on to other matters.

And so I wanted you to explain the legislation being proposed that would make sure that farmers could diversify a certain part of their business and not require a campground license.

Can you tell us more about that?

Yes, currently being circulated at the Capitol is LRB 2907 LRB 2907 here.

Let me jump in and translate there.

LRB is the Legislative Reference Bureau.

They draft these bills.

That's the bill number draft.

So it doesn't have a bill yet.

It's not Assembly Bill 100 or Senate Bill 100.

It's the draft of a bill by the Legislative Reference Bureau.

So LRB and then the draft number.

Now tell us what the bill that what the draft

So

this would allow Wisconsin farmers to have paying campers on farms without the obligation or without the requirement to obtain a campground license.

I explained this before.

Prior to 2017, the law said that if you had

zero to three sites on your property, you did not need a campground license.

This would allow farms to allow people to

put a tent up in a pasture and experience stargazing, stay overnight in the pasture and have rustic camping or bring in a self-contained trailer and park that on the farm when they're overnight for farmstays, pick up the eggs in the morning, have a farm breakfast.

This law was changed in 2017.

It was out of fear, I believe, that

The whole...

using social media, electronic platforms for reservations was being popular.

And it was changed that all sites need a campground license.

And we feel that the farmer needs that additional revenue streams, other states across the United States are doing this, allowing zero to three sites without a campground.

license, it's that additional revenue stream.

The target market here is not the person who's going to be going to a campground that wants the pool, the hall, the activities being on top of their neighbor.

We're looking at that environmentally conscious camper who wants the

broad outdoors, the fresh air, the very little noise pollution or actual noise.

So there seems to be this concern, like you were saying, that there's some kind of competition with campgrounds or with hotels.

And we've gotten into this as well with agricultural event venues, so-called wedding barns and things like that.

Where again, you're looking for changes in state law that are more farmer friendly as they look to have

diversified businesses, right?

Yes, this last legislative session there was Act 73 was created.

Now currently and previously under current law, you do not need a license or permit to legally consume alcohol at a private party.

private event so it was private party invitation only events you do not need any licensure or permitting for consuming alcohol so the couples would rent space on a farm

and this has been happening for years and we have 41 years of documentation where agricultural event venues or wedding barns have used this business model.

So what happened with x73 is they redefa-

redefined venues like the agricultural event venue, the wedding barn as a public place.

So they said under the law, they are no longer considered private property.

And we have a real problem with this because farms are private property.

Your homes are private property, places are private property.

So now it says that if you have

a wedding barn or agricultural event venue that's considered a public place under the law and you have to obtain a liquor license to allow consumption on their premises during events or they can no longer use that business model.

But they did something where they said they could allow the agricultural event venues to apply for a no sale event permit, but they really strangled the farmer in that they said you could only serve.

beer and wine could be consumed and you could have one per month or six per year and that's against the farm's economic liberty the opportunity to earn a living because that cut most of our seasonal temporary farm

private events down by 75%.

Sure.

And

Hans, let me ask you to jump in here and say that look, this this represents something that is probably as old as farming itself is the other jobs that farmers can do.

I mean, whether it was, you know,

working on machinery, having something to do with horses, you know, food processing, whatever the case may be, you know, farms have eternally looked for what we now refer to as side hustles, but are, you know, the today's lexicon is business diversification.

Yeah, and just, I mean, just the freedom to drink beer outside standing up, I think is what's being on here.

So, no, I mean, I feel like they're

these are those opportunities that for diversification on smaller farms.

And certainly we'd like to see that we have the opportunity to do just that.

And I think to your comment, Pat, there is a cultural component to it as well.

I mean, anybody who's lived out in the country for a long time has those memories of going to these types of places where when it was somebody's,

private wedding on their on their home or on their farm I should say and and and so there is a cultural component to it and and you know the other thing that I'm always concerned about is these old bank barns and we need to

they need to maintain their relevance so that people will maintain the structure.

And it's kind of heartbreaking to see those go away.

So this is another opportunity to keep those structures alive.

Yeah.

And Sheila, I've got less than a minute here.

So real quick, what is it that you would like people to do?

Is it simply call their legislator and tell them broadly to support these efforts to allow for camping and wedding barns?

Exactly.

For example, for the agricultural event venue, we want working farms to be exempt from X73.

We have sports stadiums, we have yards, we have campsites, we have all different kinds of exemptions.

We want working farms to be exempt from X73.

We'd also like everyone to call their legislators and tell them to support L-

our B2907.

We call it the farmstead component and the support agricultural event venues and wedding barns.

And the time is now.

We need everything done this week.

We need to get this legislation through before

October.

Sheila Everhart, thank you so much.

We'll talk to you again in a couple of weeks.

You as well, Hans.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

All right.

Some of you have a local update next.

Others will talk to Jeff Renneke from the Friends of the Apostle Islands about boating safety on Lake Superior.

I'm Pat Crichtlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Remember, you can always subscribe to this radio program as a podcast as well.

That way, even if you listen live every morning, you can listen back to something that I hear that right or I want to hear that guest again.

Head over to Spotify and follow us that way or Apple wherever you get your podcast.

It would also enable you to listen back to Tom Nelson talking with us yesterday.

and with Kristen Lierly on her show last weekend about his new book, Wrecked, the Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy.

If you heard the interview and you're interested in getting the book, head over to the Michigan State University Press.

They're the publishers, msupress.org for more about the Edmund Fitzgerald as a metaphor for

the late 20th century economy and some terrible decisions made at the corporate and governmental levels.

Lake Superior boating is also part of the topic we're going to discuss with Jeff Renneke though on an admittedly smaller scale than the Edmund Fitzgerald but still there are plenty of boating that happens and Jeff as a part of the Friends of the Apostle Islands is going to tell us about a partnership aimed at keeping boating safe including these boys as part of the WaveWatch program.

Jeff Renneke, how are you?

I'm doing well, Pat.

Thank you.

I'd rather be out boating, but I'm

glad to be

here talking about

it.

Exactly.

If it helps other people to boat safely, then that's just fine.

So the WaveWatch Boys are a joint project between UW Madison, the Friends of the Apostle Islands, and the National Park Service.

And so tell us about these five different data boys deployed in strategic places around the island.

What is it that they do and how do we benefit from them?

Well, first maybe a little background.

I always chuckle when I see that Minnesota license plate boast about 10,000 lakes because Wisconsin actually has 15,074.

And we border the two of the Great Lakes.

And so we have some of the greatest boating in the world.

But with that, of course, come some dangers.

In 2023, Wisconsin unfortunately set a record with 28 boating fatalities.

We average about 19.

And so the WaveWatch buoy project is a way to show folks that safe boating is informed of boating.

And with the buoys, we can help people make better decisions as you were talking about a moment ago.

And so you do that in these boys that tell you about the things that they measure.

Sure.

So there's five boys out there in strategic places that are important to boaters in the Apostle Islands.

Every 30 minutes they send back information on wave height.

wave frequency, which is the time period between the crests of the waves, the wave direction, and water temperature.

And then it's refreshed every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the entire boating season.

So it's not a forecast.

It's even more important.

It's real time information right for where the boaters are going, right at their fingertips.

So this is information at your fingertips.

Is there like any kind of a charge to access this information?

I don't think boating safety should have a price, and so use of our WaveWatch program is free.

People can just go to our website at friendsofdeposal islands.org and ask us to send them a QR code.

What I do as a boater myself is part of my preparation process in my boat is before I slip the lines, I take my phone, I scan the QR code, and I check conditions to where I'm going.

The use of it is free.

Now, of course, there is a cost in the process.

And so we appreciate donations to try to keep this project going.

And those donations as well can be made at our website.

But safety should be for all of us and it should be free.

Yes, because as noted, it's a roughly $17,000 a year contract with UW Madison.

So sponsorships are greatly appreciated.

Are there also ramifications when it comes to, you know, measuring our changing climate with these boys?

Yeah, very much so.

Lake Superior is the largest lake in the world by surface area, as many people know.

And so it's very, very fragile to the changes in climate because it has such an incredibly large surface area.

And also, like all lakes, of course, it goes through what they call upwelling or flipping.

And so the recording of temperatures, surface temperatures, can be very important.

We had an event last year

with the buoy out by Myers Beach which is near the sea caves where the temperature literally dropped something on the order of

25 or 30 degrees in a matter of a very short period of time when the lake flipped.

Now that information is not only important to boaters because of course cold water can be a very dangerous situation if you're not prepared.

But it's also important to climate change researchers to understand how our lake is reacting to the changes in water temperature and the extreme conditions that climate change can bring about.

And then finally, how's been the reaction to it, to having this kind of a rather sophisticated safety program out there on the water?

Oh, people love it.

They call it, if for some reason we've had 98.7% connectivity on the buoys, which is incredible because if I was floating around in Lake Superior from Memorial Day to Labor Day, I wouldn't have 97.

8% connectivity.