Was It Over When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor? (Hour 1)

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

Now, from our Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.

Well, hey there, Wisconsin.

Good morning.

It is 6.06 on this Monday morning, August 25th, 2025.

It's another beautiful morning to have you here up north live from Lake WSOTA.

from wherever you're listening across the civic media radio network, or watching us on social media, or on the app, or any of the other ways you can join us.

Thanks for starting your week right here.

I got a question for you.

As Donald Trump continues to attack mail-in voting, let's talk about how popular absentee voting is in Wisconsin.

A little quiz here, quick.

How many ballots were mailed in as part of the 2024 presidential election in our state?

I'll give you some choices.

Half a million.

One million, one and a half million.

I'll have the answer coming up for you in just a little bit.

On the program today, how can you tell if someone is considering a run for state office?

I mean, it's one thing to check their social media feed, but anyone can sound big at the bar and talk like a candidate when they're just talking through their keyboard.

You should check the odometer next.

We're going to talk to state representative Francesca Hong of Madison.

who has spent a lot of time outside of Madison.

We'll talk about her travels and her very public statements about where Wisconsin Democrats should be headed in the 2026 elections, including the race for governor.

We'll also talk about that with the president of the AFT Wisconsin Educators Union, John Shelton.

He too has been working on a letter that he co-authored along with state senator Chris Larson.

about the qualities that voters should look for in Wisconsin's next governor.

And in their mind, there had better be a better focus on not just supporting workers, but specifically union labor as well.

Also, Vice President J.D.

Vance gives the U.S.

another black eye, botching a basic historical fact as part of the Trump administration effort to help Ukraine or to help Russia, I should say, hold on to land that it seized from Ukraine.

We'll get to the category of how is this still a thing and talk about the fake electors court cases.

They are still going on.

There's been a new development in Wisconsin, not a big one, but it just reminds us to ask ourselves sometimes what good is a justice system if it can't quickly bring justice to the people trying to overthrow the government.

If the court system can't process it, it can't protect the next election.

We're going to talk to Jimmy Koska about the first week of high school football.

We'll talk to Brittany Merleau about high school football weather because it's a chilly one here in Chippewa Falls right now, 48 degrees up on the lake.

We'll visit with our friends, John and Gordy from our Madison Station and Jane Mattenair, whose show follows ours.

All of that and more is coming up right after we check in with Parker Olson, who is producing this high quality radio program from the comfort of Madison Studio A2.

Parker Olson, how are you?

I'm doing well, Pat.

I had a good weekend.

I'm ready for a good week.

I have my fingers crossed.

You have your fingers crossed?

Yeah, I have my fingers crossed.

You never know in today's day and age.

You never

know

if it's going to be a good week.

You just kind of have to keep your fingers crossed and hope.

Keep

your fingers

crossed.

Well, I'm glad you're doing something concrete on that front.

Oh, yeah.

Here.

Can I let me help with it?

Oh boy.

I have I don't know when I'm gonna see you next.

But I have I have a gift for you from the folks at WFHR in Wisconsin.

Oh,

a white shirt.

It'll

make me look even whiter on

this

camera.

I hold up a, a teach, a t-shirt, uh, about the Wisconsin Rapids rafters says catch all the games on WFHR 97.5 FM and 13 20 AM.

So they would like you to be a billboard for W H FHR and for the rafters.

Uh, they gave gave shirts for you and me while I was there last week.

Well, awesome.

I am happy to be a billboard for one of our civic media stations.

There you go.

Alicia offers the sound effect of raucous cheering on YouTube.

So yes, I believe that was for you.

I don't believe I don't believe it's for the weather.

This is it was gross yesterday.

It was just gross all day.

All day.

Yeah.

At one point, I right after the brewers game, you know, I thought, Well, I mean, it's not going to get any better out there.

And it always looked like it wanted to rain, but not quite.

So I'm like, Okay, now I'll go, I'll go mow the lawn.

Now I've been putting it off, putting it off.

So I go mow.

And of course, about two minutes into it, a squall basically comes through, pelting you with with sprinkles, thankfully, only lasted a very short time.

So I didn't even stop mowing.

It just pushed right on through.

But it was just windy, cloudy.

There was a wind chill.

I was, I had to go

clean out the the pontoon because we've got family arriving this week and get all the cobwebs and everything out of it.

And it was cold down down there with the wind whistling off the lake like that.

Yeah, Alicia saying on YouTube.

Yeah, no, the weather is too cold for August.

It just is.

This is not.

I saw the the weather map over the weekend that this is one of those.

We always talk about it during the winter.

What are they called a polar express?

And this particular air mass came from that same area of Northern Canada.

So, I mean, it is a polar express by definition.

It's not 30 below, but I'm not happy about this.

Express?

Not vortex?

Or vortex, whatever it is.

If it's

polar express,

I would love to

know that there was a

Christmas train thing.

Yeah, that's the, I was, wait a minute.

I would know about.

A polar vortex.

All right, it's Monday morning.

It is, it is.

Hey, I told you, I'll just have some more coffee while you laugh at me.

Fingers crossed for a good

week

pass.

Fingers crossed.

Yep, we got we got we got all this going for us, which is nice.

Let's see.

So yeah, did did a lot of yard work, housework to get the house ready because we've got kids and grandkids coming, which is going to be really nice.

I also noticed

Let's get into the gardening portion of the show here.

We planted, or we had planted, these fingernails don't get too much dirt under them.

We had planted some plum trees.

And just, you know, two of them, you got to have two, you know, for these kinds of things.

And on this fifth year that we have them, we're getting some very nice plums showing up on there.

Yeah, which is starting to beg the question.

Can I can I eat those yet?

And I don't know because it's the first year we've actually had decent plums on there, you know, and they're not going to look all deep purple like at the grocery store, you know.

Yeah.

And I suppose trial and error is the only way, but I got a feeling by the time I decide to go actually try one, either the squirrels or the birds or somebody will shake them all off there and get them out of there.

But I'm not very familiar with plums, unfortunately.

So I'm not sure I can be allowed to help here.

No, but see that's one of the perks of having a radio show is you can just put it out there and somebody else can say, Hey, you know, because and the reason we chose that was as a as a kid, my aunt surely had a big old plum tree,

big

mature plum tree in the backyard.

And I mean, it's just one of those favorite childhood memories of my cousins and I climbing up into this tree and just eating the plums right off the branches.

It was so good.

They were so good.

I mean, it's one of those.

Yeah, maybe I'm romanticizing a childhood memory a bit, but you they only get sweeter with the years as you think back on something like that.

So, so I'm hoping, as they would say, fingers crossed fingers crossed.

Let's see if we can do that.

So we had the Brewer's Giant series over the weekend.

Brewer's Drop two of three.

But of course, the larger

focus yesterday was on the celebration of life for Bob Uker, which I knew I was going to watch it all and I did.

And it was nice to see Bob Costas and all kinds of folks remembering Mr. Baseball.

I don't have any any big highlights to share with you other than Robin Yance, you know, Uker joke, which was great.

It was when he says, you told me I'm not afraid of dying.

I just don't want to be there when it happens.

Uh, you know, classic Uker.

Yeah.

And I, I loved the, uh, the flyover from the, uh, the 128th refueling unit.

Uh, yeah, it was all kinds of great memories from players past and present that were there.

I'm sure you watched it.

Oh yeah.

We were watching that too.

Um, Robin yelled for me to that quote was what stood out to me.

Um, I loved his bit.

when he was pulling out the microphone from underneath

him and he had it upside down.

Yeah, I thought that was a great nod to you.

He said Euker taught him that one.

Exactly.

Never, never want to start, you know, too straight on something like this.

And it was all very nice.

It was a nice remembrance.

It was like I said before, it's a little weird to have it this late in the season.

But at least, at least they finally get to have a true public goodbye form.

Yeah, I think it was very nice.

And this is not I'd refuse to believe that they would do this.

But it was very nice to have with the San Francisco Giants, William Damos being back in Milwaukee, because obviously being a former brewer, I'm sure he had a pretty close relationship with

it.

And I mean, look, I honestly wouldn't.

be surprised if that were part of it because, you know, Willie was a beloved player for many years here.

And Friday night's game was pretty amazing.

I mean, you could tell he was touched by the the rousing cheers for the game when they played his highlights on the scoreboard.

The rousing cheers as he stepped up to the plate, he had to step out of the box and acknowledge everybody a couple of times.

And then on the very first pitch, he cranks out a home run.

And I gotta tell you, there is something special, and I know people were doing this.

They're giving them a standing ovation and clapping.

and booing at the same time.

They're like, we love you.

We hate you.

We love you.

We hate you for doing that.

We love you.

And they did.

They love Willie, but he had a very good weekend for the Giants.

And Trevor McGill did not have a good weekend against the Giants, blowing

a

couple of saves.

Brewers were up 3-2 in the bottom of the ninth, two outs.

And McGill gave up a two run single and the final score ended up to be

four to three, although the Brewers still have a, you know, a good lead in the national league central division as we head into the, into the week here, a home stand with Arizona.

Yeah.

I believe it's at five right now, effectively four with the Cubs having the tiebreaker over the Brewers.

Um,

I believe the Brewers have lost five of the last eight.

I'm not mistaken.

So we're not, we're not going to worry about that.

I'm not going to call them alarm bells, but a bell is going off.

A bell?

Okay.

You know what I'm going to say about the Arizona series?

Fingers crossed because you know you say one dumb thing you just got to keep going back to that Well, so the Arizona Diamond back to come to town and you can hear the pregame starting at 6 0 5 this evening tomorrow and Wednesday 6 0 5 all three days on several civic media stations Then there's a day game Thursday That pregame will begin at 12 35 later in the week and then the brewers head off for a very short road trip to Toronto

and come back on Labor Day for a homestand against the Philadelphia Phillies.

That'll get going there.

The Green Bay Packers had their final preseason game on Saturday.

They beat Seattle 20-7.

Jordan Love practiced on a limited basis as he recovers from surgery on his left thumb, his non-throwing thumb.

I watched two maybe three plays of the game and

was reminded i don't like preseason football i have no interest in this what's no cheering interest whatsoever but they were there so uh the season opener by the way will be september 7th versus the uh detroit lions at lambo field a 325 game for the season opener on sunday september 7th uh the badgers opener is this thursday 8 8 p.m hosting miami of ohio so yeah we're getting college college football season

getting underway here as well.

All right, by the way, I mentioned earlier about absentee ballots and things like that.

Half a million were mailed in.

Another one million people used absentee ballots to vote early in person at their local clerk's office for a total of one and a half million absentee ballots used.

From the heart of America's Up North Live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend a part of your mornings.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

You're listening to Civic Media.

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

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

Welcome back at 623 a reminder that we've got a couple of different newsletters here at up North News, including our Sunday morning one about Wisconsin politics and politics in general, including our question of the week.

This one's kind of a slam dunk, but I just wanted to see what the response was like.

And the early response is overwhelming.

Should Wisconsin keep or get rid of mail in voting?

Which I know sounds like what but

That's the thing that the president of the United States is again trying to get rid of, vowing to get rid of mail-in voting.

So far, folks in Wisconsin like their mail-in ballots.

Last week's question of the week was, what should Donald Trump's next job be?

Because Sean Duffy said, oh, he wants to be transportation secretary.

Do you know that

not a single one of you sent that in.

So I agree.

I think Donald Trump wants to be transportation secretary.

Instead, I made a word cloud of it.

And I should have should have made it Parker to show up on screen here.

But imagine a word cloud with some of the most frequently offered job titles.

Now, there's, you know, there's a couple in here, like, caddy, and unemployed.

He's an egghead

of a golfer to be a caddy.

divot filler and septic engineer.

Farm laborer was on there.

But a lot of them, the biggest one, the word in the middle of the word cloud inmate.

There's also incarcerated.

There's, let's see, prison laundry worker.

There's felon.

There's fugitive chief rock breaker.

was one of my favorites.

There was a Trump supporter who sent in Vice President should be his next job.

So that's there.

Working in Antarctica.

Let's see retired.

Not qualified

to

work in Antarctica.

And a host of prison cribs.

So just a few of the things that were in our word cloud from our question of the week.

This one a lot easier.

What should we do with mail in voting?

The vice president was not

much, much more useful, it seems to folks lately.

And I'm not going to dwell on it long.

JD Vance was asked by Kristen Welker over the weekend about, you know, what to do about Ukraine, Russia and Ukraine and is anything, is anything going to happen?

Vance is saying, well, it's got to be a negotiated settlement.

And the clip

I'm gonna tell you what he said and then I'm gonna tell you the the clip it movie clip it reminded me of His answer was if you go back to World War two if you go back to World War one if you go back to every major conflict in human history They all end with some kind of negotiation and it had the entire world going What it was World War two ended by negotiating I I fear that the president of the United States is

is no smarter than John Belushi's character in Animal House.

Over?

Did you say over?

Nothing is over until we decided this!

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Hell no!

German?

Brigadies rolling.

That's it.

That's our vice president right there, boys and girls.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

There was a development in the fake-electors case.

Yeah, the fake electors case is still a thing in Wisconsin and in several other states here Now if you need the refresher because it's been so long But even before Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden he was planning to steal it he was putting Plans in motion to sow seeds of doubt to tarnish the legitimacy of the results

and even to go so far as to get the results changed, telling people in Georgia he wanted them to find more votes, and he had a couple of attorneys with Wisconsin ties create slates of fake electors to submit paperwork saying that Donald Trump had actually won their states, including Wisconsin.

It took forever, but we are finally seeing some motion on this.

We are finally seeing the court cases move along, except that, again, like Trump himself in his criminal cases, these defendants have learned how to game the system, how to drag things out.

And so the latest in the Wisconsin case was a motion to dismiss the charges.

Filed by Kenneth Chesbro at Wisconsin Rapids Native and Jim Trupas, a former Dane County judge who was acting as Trump's campaign attorney, they have previously acknowledged their roles in helping to create, organize, and execute a plan to offer up, quote unquote, alternative electors.

It took until 14 months ago, but in Wisconsin, there were finally

some felony charges filed, felony forgery charges against Chesbro and Trupas and Mike Roman, Trump's director of election day operations back in 2020.

And a Dane County judge on Friday rejected the motion by the three defendants to have the charges dismissed, which means now the court case just gets back to wherever it was in its long regular process.

which leads me to simply ask this question.

How is this still a thing?

Look, I understand our courts are overloaded.

I do.

But people, this is about priorities.

This was a plot to overthrow an election to basically take down the United States government, the thing that allows our court system to operate in the first place.

And so with these delays, it's easy to understand why so many Americans think the system is irretrievably broken.

Even to the point where some of them say we should reelect someone who is working so blatantly to tear it apart.

That, of course, is a terrible option.

But it was made a more viable option by four years of prosecutorial dithering and by coddling every effort by the Trump cartel to run out the clock on the charges.

Everyone in the justice system who contributed to this delay should be embarrassed because justice delayed is justice denied, in this case, to an entire country and to its election security.

Hey, thanks for spending some time up here as part of your mornings powered by Up North News.

We'll have today's history lesson after the Midwest Farm Report.

I'm Pat Rightman.

That

harmonizing was not Kristen Lyrely and Selena Heller, though I would not doubt that they could.

That they could do it.

This, of course, was Lauren Hill releasing her solo album, The Miseducation of Lauren Hill This Day in 1998.

It became the first hip-hop album to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Welcome to today's history lesson.

Yes, as it edits new and expanded time.

And that includes Selena Heller and Dr. Kristen Larley on Monday mornings.

We are so lucky that you guys wanted to get up a little bit earlier.

Thank you.

We love history.

That's it

And you and you of course Pat, but history.

It's the history that does

it

all.

Yeah, that's great Let's see We've got a little extra time so we don't have to rush so much between songs here Which is good because we we now need to set aside the history lesson for a new segment we call Kristen Lyrely living her best life

So that would include some packers on Saturdays, some brewers on Sunday.

You were camping prior to that.

So it's been a good past few days for you, I trust.

Yeah, it's been fantastic.

But you know, there's so much good stuff happening.

How do you not go to the Packer game when it's so beautiful?

I know it's just a preseason game, but just to be out there talking to people, tailgating, I met these two fellas from New York.

Lifetime Packer fans, one of them was, one of them was a Giants fan, but had been fans since the Lombardi era, and this was their first trip to Lambo.

So we got to chat and I gave him some suggestions about what to do in C in town and it was just so neat.

And then I talked with some other

folks from Illinois.

Like it is a beautiful day.

It was a great game and you know life is good.

We are really lucky.

Yeah.

And then of course you've got the the Euker tribute to which Cassandra puts on YouTube.

OMG.

I was balling by the end of it.

They did such a good job honoring you.

And you were at that one as well.

I was also balling.

There's no crying in baseball, but yesterday there was a lot of crying at the new county stadium.

That's okay.

Totally understandable.

Um, and, and so that ends, um, Kristen Lyrely living her best life for the weekend.

That's the Selena hell.

You got anything to compete with that?

No, this weekend, this past weekend was kind of my down weekend where we didn't run all over the place.

Like our camping was the week before.

So it was just a kind of a catch up.

Yeah, no, that's what we had here as well.

So let's see, let's get a couple more history notes in here.

On this day in 1970, a still relatively unknown 23 year old Elton John played his first live show in the US at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.

The show got rave reviews giving him a huge career boost here in the States.

Let's see the number one song this week in 1962 was by little Eva.

Little Eva was Eva Boyd.

She passed away back in 2003.

But at the time, she was the 19-year-old babysitter for Carol King and Sherry Goffin's daughter.

And they said, hey, we wrote a song for you.

Would you sing this for us?

The locomotion.

And it went to number one in 1962.

I have babysat a lot when I was younger.

What

does that tell you, Pat?

None of

them turned

me into

seen stars.

I don't know.

You guys baby sat One of the world's luckiest babysitters had the number one song this week in 1962 Let's see.

Happy birthday to Gene Simmons from kiss.

He is 76 years old today

Does he make you think how long is my own tongue?

I always want to measure my own tongue when I

think of

women's

That's

a good point

I don't know.

Stick it out.

Let's

see.

What do you got?

That's

not that long.

Yeah, we all just have kind of the, yeah.

Can you touch your nose?

I can't.

No,

no, no.

Can you roll your tongue?

That's a thing too.

I can't roll my tongue.

I can do like the hot dog.

Rolling.

Or do other tricks like I have a friend who can do the cherry stem thing, tie a

cherry stem.

Oh, I knew that.

What?

Yeah, I raised the money at a fundraiser for United Cerebral Palsy before because they said, okay, you do that.

And I did.

And I raised, I don't know, like $100 they gave.

I'd like to just summarize what happened here.

Selena

Heller

raised $100 for United Cerebral Palsy by tying a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue.

I'm glad you said it that way.

All right.

Here's the birthdays continue now.

Good luck re-correcting this.

You got no place else to go.

Happy birthday to Elvis Costello, who is 71 years old

today.

I have to admit, I don't know a lot of Elvis Costello tunes.

I love that song because that's me.

I love the pop stuff, you know, and that one was a big favorite of mine.

And there's a couple of others that I like, but I'm sure there's there's any Elvis Costello super fans in the group here.

No.

Okay.

Happy birthday to him.

How about Judas Priest?

Where's Greg Bach when you need him?

Rob Halperg turns 74 years old today.

And I just remember how

He was floored at the prospect of doing a duet with Dolly Parton not that long ago, or doing something for her rock and roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

And he just thought that she was the greatest and she appreciated him.

That's the Judas Priest Dolly Parton crossover.

Nobody knew we needed and there it

is.

Dolly Parton has done so many crossovers with so many different people.

I know.

She's like,

she's the goat.

She is without a doubt.

Billy Ray Cyrus is 64 years old today and because I love my job and I love my listeners, I'm not playing that song for you.

So Billy Ray

Cyrus.

That's fine.

I agree.

And with Staky Breaky Heart or 64, do not start singing it.

No.

I don't

even know what

it is.

What?

I don't think not not by a name.

I don't know what song you're talking

about

Sorry guys, I didn't know who sang that okay, uh Jodi Masina is 55 years old today

Now

I didn't I didn't put down the name of who who did the the version

a couple years back that was a song all about this song, which was Jody Messina's 1996 debut heads Carolina Tales, California.

And then the, you know, then she surprised everybody coming out on stage at the country music awards and singing it.

But I just, I was, I was in a real 90s.

country phase, part of it working at the big radio station in Eau Claire, which was a country station.

And this was, you know, this was on repeat.

This song was on all the time along with a lot of other good tunes from that era.

So when did you interview her?

Oh gosh, when she came to Country Jam here in Eau Claire, and she was the nicest, most pleasant person I remember.

And then she was like, oh, can I get a picture with you?

And it was the cutest, like, what?

So she had her person, you know, we were backstage and took a picture.

And I thought, oh, that's really neat.

That's fun.

Oh, that's

great.

Thank you, Cassandra Coleswindel, did the.

the other song about the song, which was a very cool song and a very cool moment as well.

The larger question, Selina, is what country stars have you not interviewed because you spent many years backstage at Country Jam for

that.

I did.

I had the Country Jam beat.

But the funniest was Carrot Top.

The comedian came to Country

Jam.

What's that?

That was when you did not enjoy that interview, did you?

That's correct.

Yes, I've talked about that before.

That

was

inappropriate.

Yes,

exactly.

If you take care top out, because if we're talking about country music artists, you got to.

Are you able to say that there is some singer who also did not give a great interview?

Shall we say?

Or were they all just sweet, wonderful, humble singers?

I think I don't uh well low-cash before they were known as the low-cash cowboys so back then it was low-cash cowboys who would they were just in the area where were they over the weekend so uh oh they're here uh just in Chippewa low-cash because we kind of we kind of gave them a start here in Eau Claire we had them back year after year here at Country Jam so they were kind of off the wall not inappropriate but kind of wild okay

At no point yet has Dr. Lylee jumped in and said, oh yeah, I interviewed them too.

You rub elbows with any country music stars?

Nope.

Okay, all right.

Actor Blair Underwood is 61 years old today.

Rachel Ray is 57 today and actress Blake Lively is 38 years old today.

On this day in 1975, Bruce Springsteen released his third album.

and it was pretty much his big breakthrough.

You'll hear this and understand why.

Yeah, this of course would be born to run and a few people, well actually a lot of people around New Jersey knew all about Bruce Springsteen at the time.

Everybody knew about Bruce Springsteen after this album came out in 1975.

Except for some of us who...

It took the Born in the USA album to come out, but we eventually caught him.

We knew he was there, but we really got into him after Born in the USA.

Yes, that's it.

So that was 1975.

In 1976, on this day, Boston released their self-titled debut album, mostly recorded in Tom Scholes' basement studio, and yet it became one of the best-selling debut albums of all time.

And I saw a TikTok clip over the weekend.

This very elderly man comes around the corner in a walker.

He's got long, long gray hair, receding hairline.

He's heading to the recliner.

And you hear somebody out, his wife, or somebody saying, say hello to the TikTok people.

Hello, TikTok people.

And all the comments, of course, they recognize that it's Tom Scholes, who's a lot older now.

He's 50 years older than he was back then.

but was waving, was saying hello to all the TikTok people.

And he should for having an album that big.

This week in 1979, the Nax Mai Sharona hit number one for the first of six weeks.

Happy birthday to the National Park Service created this day in 1916.

So this is National Park Service Founders Day.

And this is also National Banana Split Day, which leads to this question.

Does anybody have a banana split anymore?

where you split the banana lengthwise and put it on either side of some ice cream and fudge, or do you just slice up your banana like a normal person and have it over your ice cream?

Selina's nodding

though.

I've seen them being served at the just the like the county fairs and things late just this summer, so people order them still.

We don't do them at home.

No, I don't think anybody does.

Kristen, what's your your ice cream go to when you're going to DQ or Culver's or something?

I'm just kind of a flavor of the day kind of gal, but you know the problem with the banana split is you have to cut the banana with your spoon and that can be kind of challenging.

You could have a banana accident.

A banana accident?

With those plastic spoons, you know, those are like shanks, I tell ya.

You could break your spoon.

You might launch your banana out of the very shallow banana boat and get chocolate all over your white pants.

Things can happen.

Dangerous

territory.

Yeah, I just don't think that anybody does that.

I think they just, like I said, slice it up at this point.

But I could be wrong.

Maybe somebody loves to make banana splits at home.

I don't like fruit and ice cream at all together.

Oh,

hey, now you know

what?

That's fair.

It

is.

It's a hot take.

Absolutely.

A little bit later on, Selena Halis is going to talk to us about weekend events that included Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders coming to Wisconsin to endorse Rebecca Cook, one of three Democrats running in the Third Congressional District, and also other stories that she's been covering for Up North News as well.

We'll also be talking to meteorologist Brittany Merleau, and we'll also talk to UW Green Bay Professor and AFT Wisconsin.

President John Shelton about the 2026 governor's race.

I'm Pat Cratlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.

Welcome back.

It's a Monday morning.

It's August 25th, 2025.

And let's see, it's right now in Chippewa Falls, 48 degrees in La Crosse.

It's 50 right now, Oshkosh 49.

And in front of the Black Cat Coffee House in Ashland, it is 47.

Pick Ashland because I figured that might be where.

Tony gets his cup of coffee.

Well, let's find out where his favorite breakfast place is in Madison.

Selena Heller here with us, Dr. Kristen Lyrely as well on this Monday morning.

And it's, it's for some folks, it's back to school week.

I've still never quite processed that because I grew up at a time when the first day of school was always the day after Labor Day, which

On the one hand, does make sense.

You're bookending your school year.

You start the day after Labor Day, you wrap it up Memorial Day.

Summer is that period between those two holidays.

Obviously, a lot of people, you know, fudge it one way or the other.

And it's still a little weird for me to start school and then go, Okay, now everybody have a three day weekend.

And usually it's a four day weekend because people are taking off on Friday, right?

So I don't know.

So Selina, what are they doing?

Oh, Claire.

start after Labor Day.

So we have like a welcome or a meet the teacher day, the day after Labor Day, and then school starts a full day, the next day.

And I did a story a couple of years ago about, you know, how Wisconsin does that and they want, you know, the economy a last big punch before the ending of the summer.

So that's kind of the sentiment.

People get out and spend money quick.

We live here.

So we forget that people vacation here.

This is a tourist destination.

So we still need people to be working in tourism Driven areas on Labor Day weekend.

So I totally get that but we start the day before two days before Labor Day in Depeer.

Yeah, green bay

Okay, let's see Alicia says her oldest just starting classes at Fox Valley Tech today Tony on YouTube says that Washburn starts next week.

So

And I've got, you know, kids, grandkids coming out this week, which means that, yes, the one, the six year old is starting first grade today.

Today is first day of first grade.

We talked to him yesterday.

And he said, what do you think, buddy?

He's like, I'm excited.

But I'm a little bit nervous.

Oh, it's okay, bud.

You're gonna make make friends.

It's how I feel every Monday morning.

I'm very excited.

but I was just a little bit nervous, you know?

So

we've got... Is it us, Pat?

Do we make you nervous?

No, you guys... Is it all of this feminine energy on Monday morning?

No, you guys are the antidote.

You guys make my Mondays.

I'm so thankful that you guys come in.

So it's a big week for us.

We've got the both daughters coming in, all the grandkids, including the oldest one.

Today's his 19th birthday.

Yay!

Again, every year on Mason's birthday, I have to process that.

I've been a grandpa for 19

years.

19 years.

And Salita remembers when he was born.

I remember when he was

born.

Yeah, that was the year I was running for legislature.

It

was just a crazy year now.

He was walking in the parades.

Yep, pushing the stroller with him in there.

And yeah, now here he

is.

Bring your own baby to kiss.

That was smart.

Very smart.

Exactly.

And now here he

is

to join the Air Force.

He just graduated high school.

So this is just really exciting.

And Kristen, you have you have an exciting week coming up as well.

And I see why last week was so great with the camping and the Packers and the Brewers because, you know, you get, you're not going to do quite so much of that this week.

I had to squeeze it all in last week because I'm having my knee replaced on Wednesday, which is crazy.

It'll be the fifth surgery on that stupid knee.

So hopefully this is the last one.

Is this an

accident?

What started all of this?

Oh, I had a stupid traumatic skiing accident and I stupidly broke my stupid leg and it's been stupidly messed up ever since then.

So hopefully this will fix it.

Stupid knee.

It's frustrating.

I'm active.

I ride my bike a hundred miles on a regular basis in the summer.

I do yoga and like I try to keep myself healthy, but you know, sometimes you just, health gets out of your control and you just have to go with it.

So that's what we're doing on Wednesday.

So I am in no way, shape or form passing judgment or being critical.

I'm asking this, I'm asking this to a doctor.

the balance between, you know, they say, you know, motion is lotion and all that stuff.

But is there also this notion of, well, maybe 100 miles of biking and all that yoga has kind of accelerated this, this need for it?

Well, the thing that accelerated the need for it is my inability to acknowledge that I should not have been skiing.

We're still coming back to skiing.

It all comes back to the one stupid day that you skied.

Stupid.

No, I skied a lot.

The problem is I'm very bendy.

My joints move too much.

So when I fall, my joints don't help me.

So I've actually injured myself numerous times skiing.

This time was really bad.

So I should have read the warning signs in the previous

serious injuries that I had, but I did not.

So that was not a smart move on my part.

And now I'm paying the price.

Okay.

Uh, Robin Tigerton says, Tigerton schools start the day after Labor Day.

Marion schools start today.

So yeah, I suppose every, every one of them is, is different.

Um, I don't want to give away everything here before Brittany gets here, but Rob did say at a busy weekend at the Tigerton lumberjack days and filled up on corn at the corn roast.

This was a big weekend for, for corn roast.

Loyal had their

corn roast.

Who else had their big one?

Was it Sun Prairie or some other place just had theirs?

And we finally figured out the right way to go about doing this.

We would get sweet corn every year.

And of course, now it's just me and Sherry.

So we don't just get four or five, maybe six years of corn and just eat them.

And that was it.

And this time we actually got extras and after it was cut it off the cob.

to warm up later.

And if anybody's wondering if that's worth it, or does it just taste like regular old corn?

No, it tastes it.

I don't know why we didn't do that before.

I really don't.

It was, it's amazing.

So go get out there and support your local farmer, buy that sweet corn in bulk, people.

Emory's has so many teeth missing, I have to cut it off.

Do you want me to cut it off?

Yes, because it's too hard.

That makes perfect sense.

Coming up in our next hour, we're going to be talking to John Shelton.

He's a UW Green Bay professor and president of AFT Wisconsin talking about the qualities Wisconsin should look for in its next governor.

Two more hours to go as we get rolling on one of these mornings powered by Up North News.

I'm

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