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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Good morning and happy Friday.
Welcome to Labor Day weekend and our opportunity to revisit some conversations from the summer.
before we turn the calendar to September next week.
Also coming up shortly is today's free ticket Friday keyword to win Brewer's tickets to a game next Wednesday night.
So have that Civic Media app ready to text us the keyword just a few minutes away.
We're also going to hear from Tom Nelson about his new book about the Edmund Fitzgerald and how it really was a metaphor for an American economy that went from building things like ships to sinking corporate loyalty to American workers.
Also, we talk about how far we've come with technology.
I mean, at least we're not playing atracks anymore.
First, however,
An interview that was especially sad, but needs to be rerun for two reasons.
Today happens to be the day that Kareen Hendrickson told us she was going to be closing her home daycare center in Nouglaris.
And we run this clip about her decision because it reinforces the notion that the legislature and the governor may have agreed on a new state budget.
But what they worked out is nowhere near what is still needed to address the crisis of affordable childcare in our state.
Here's how she responded when we asked about how the lack of long-term support to Wisconsin childcare providers literally hits home for her.
What it means for all of us in a child care and the families that we care for and educate and their employers who have those parents employed is it's still going to be a disaster.
Cindy who's up in Green Bay is one of our weekend members and they're calling this program a bridge.
First off, it's a bridge to where to know where but she actually said it's a plank in a pond payment because it's not a bridge.
It's just one lonely board floating in uncertainty and that really hit because
It's not what Governor Evers is saying.
He keeps saying in these press releases that, you know, this is going to make childcare more affordable.
It's not.
We are raising our rates.
I sat down and did my math.
And in order for me not to take a $15,000 pay cut due to ages and the loss of 20% a month, I had to raise my rate $60 a week, which would be $350 for children under two and 320 for two and up.
And in Nouglares, it's not tenable.
I've lost three children so far due to rates.
Two of them were on subsidy.
And so last year I struggled to fill my three spots and it was September.
I was starting to think I might have to close and I couldn't do it again.
So I talked to my parents this last week, let them know that I'm not gonna be able to, I will not be able to morally try to stay open and try to.
fill three spots with parents that I'm like, yeah, if I'm still open, you can have a spot.
How do I do that to them?
How do I do that to their employers?
They think they have a spot, but they're not sure they're going to keep looking as they should.
And so I made the difficult decision that August 29th is my last day.
I was able to get the kids that I have here into another group center because at that time, that's when they have turnover and that's when they have openings.
So my four kids are probably going to stay together and they're going to be able to go there.
But I am now trying to figure out what I'm going to do.
One of my kids on Monday, she looked at me, she was green.
Why don't you get to be a teacher anymore?
And that just about broke my heart because that's what I do.
And then another parent asked me, they're like, oh, we're all going to the same place.
And then they're like, what are you going to do?
And I said, you know what?
I haven't figured that out yet.
So that's the way that all of us in this field work.
We think about the children and families, and then we think about ourselves.
And so now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do next.
My heart is breaking for you and for these kids and for these families, and it's not just you.
You're not the only provider who's looking at this and making a rather difficult decision.
And look, even if there's follow-up,
legislation because we talked about how the funding is really only there for one year.
But as you've mentioned before, that's a lack of security that you can no longer live with.
And who knows how many more are only going to be in business for one more year.
And that's the other thing is people, all the providers I'm talking to across the state, they're looking at raising the rates $10, $15 a week, maybe more now to try and keep the teachers they have or the family child care providers.
They're looking for second jobs so they can stay open.
That is not okay.
We work 50 hours with kids already.
And then we're supposed to go and work somewhere else so the parents can afford us.
This is not okay.
That's Kareen Hendrickson, whose child care center was scheduled to wrap up after today.
Next, let's listen back to our conversation with Tom Nelson, the Out of Gamy County executive and former legislator whose book about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald did way more than retell a sad story about a freighter lost in Lake Superior back in the mid-70s.
It got into the not really that mysterious cause and how it parallels other decisions in government and the economy that took down the postwar boom of the 50s and 60s.
Tom and I have known each other going back a long time so I had to give him a little grief about the book first The book is co-written with Gerald.
Is it pot air?
How do you say
put air?
How much of this did he write because it's really good
I wrote the book and he helped with the editing, a little bit of editing, and then also consulting.
He had another book project, so he was limited in what he could do for this project, but he was absolutely indispensable.
He was the one who encouraged me to do this in the first place because I came to him with three ideas.
And the Fitzgerald book was actually number two or number three.
I wanted to do something different.
And he looked at this and he said, you know, Thomas,
This is history.
He's a professor emeritus of history at Lawrence University in Appleton.
He's very well published, knows this area very well.
And he explained, look, this is history.
History is taking a popular, maybe cultural event that occurred in the past and then helping it.
to explain a broader phenomenon, which is the heart of what this book's about.
Plus, as you find out, there's brand new material, exclusive interviews, people related to the Fitzgerald sinking that have come forward for the first time, shedding light on some mysteries of what really happened that night, fore and after.
Yeah, you knocked on doors and called on family members and other people who were tied to it, either attorneys and others to get these stories.
Before we get to the metaphor, let's get to the ship itself, which for the behemoth that it was, and it was this workhorse for years and years, but it was clear that with other things, corporations
took shortcuts without thinking
safety of the workers.
You got it right there.
You nailed it in one sentence.
And even though, and I think the reason why we haven't talked about these things is, you know, exactly for what you said.
It was this behemoth.
It was this workhorse.
It was one of the largest oarships on the lakes.
But that also explains why it was not seaworthy, why it should not have set sail from Superior that night.
The hull was
erect.
They had been tacked welding it for for several seasons.
It was known as a wet ship which meant that it took on a lot of ballast and it kept it in there and after seasons when they would dug when they would dig out the ballast hold that sometimes there was up to six
feet of dirt and sludge.
So this ship was in no condition.
The Coast Guard regulatory outfit, the American Shipbuilding Bureau, they knew it was in no shape.
to run despite the fact that they continue to certify it.
And as the attorneys found out and they brought to light through this deposition, they found one of the crew members, the only crew member who did not, a part of the Fitzgerald in 1975 season, but was not on the ship the night that it sank.
And he spilled the beans.
He put forward, he did so in a federal deposition in St.
Paul in December of 1978.
And so it has all been accounted for.
Based on my research, which I believe I did extensive research, that this has only appeared in one other publication.
And that was a starved Tribune story back in 1997.
And I think it goes a long way in explaining the truth of what really happened, why it sunk.
And so part of the purpose of this book was the metaphor, but also to bring some sense of justice to these families who were not done right by Ogilby Norton and still have not 50 years later.
No, and again, the amount of settlement they got varied, again, depending on their representation.
You talked with, I would say, legal legend.
Toby Markovich.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, he's just larger than life and the role that he played.
And then you even get into later the decision to retrieve the bell as a symbol, but also as a way to say, that's it, no more poking around, you know, the wreck leave leave this grave site undisturbed.
But let's take it to again, that that that metaphor for the post war economy.
Although I shouldn't say post war economy because
there was just so much growth post-war.
But I guess
the right way to say it is, I think a lot of it was taken for granted.
And
that that's when you started to see shortcuts.
That's when you started
to
see you really get into the notion of, you know, we used to build ships.
And then the thought was, well, we can just, you know, we can just pay to have ships made elsewhere.
And that was one of many indications of how our custodian ship of the American economy started to turn.
That's exactly right.
And we see that all over the place.
I think every small town, large town, not just here in Wisconsin, the Midwest, but across the country can relate with a bad boss and a bad company that did not invest properly.
in the company, allowed it to wither on the vine, succumbed at trade deals.
And here we are today, where we have a manufacturing base that is hollowed out compared to what it was in 1957, the year that Fitzgerald made its maiden voyage.
And, you know, I would like to say how far we've come and how much we've accomplished, but we have not.
And the key decades were the 1960s and the 1970s that saw precipitous decline in American manufacturing.
And the
Fitzgerald, as you put it in metaphor, helps explain what happened to the Fitzgerald, why it's sunk.
But I also think, and this is one of the reasons why the Fitzgerald is top of mind 50 years later is because a lot of us can relate to the crew members and the families.
Of course, the big difference is that they didn't come back from work though, but they had a bad boss.
They had a company that was not making proper investments and they paid the ultimate price.
We're talking to Thomas Nelson, out of gaming county executive, former legislator, now author of RECT, the Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy.
You can get it through the Michigan State University Press MSU Press.org.
And part of the reason I could not put this book down was that it isn't, again, you draw the metaphor, but you do it with what I would consider.
How can I put it?
It's both exhaustive and concise, a political history of how we got to these points.
For example, you know, people think of Jimmy Carter, for example, as, you know, a typical Democratic president.
Well, not exactly.
And you get into the notion of, like Bill Clinton, the conservative Democratic presidents who were perhaps a little too eager to go along with, you know, what
what the corporate side of the economic equation wanted, the supply side, rather than the worker side.
And so when you're talking about Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, of course, that's post Fitzgerald, the other Fitzgerald thing in 1975.
And so
By bringing that up, the legacy of Fitzgerald goes well beyond 1975, and not just because in terms of the mystery and the controversy that it generated, how did it sink that night?
But it also goes a long way that the third act of this went into the Carter administration, where despite being a Democrat, there were the so-called neoliberal policies, where you were focusing on the corporate side, tax cuts for the rich, bad trade deals and so forth, and then going into the Reagan administration.
would put that on steroids into Bill Clinton.
And then after three administrations, Democrats and Republicans, we were by the turn of the century in 2000 left with a hollowed out manufacturing economy.
Thomas Nelson, I know that this was a labor of love.
It was wonderful work.
And I look forward to talking to you again real soon.
You bet.
And again, if you want to hear more, Kristen Lyrely spent her entire episode of the Dr. Kristen Lyrely show with Thomas talking about the book.
And again, you can get wrecked.
The Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the American economy through the Michigan State University Press directly.
So go to msupress.org to learn more.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
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.
The free Ticket Friday keyword for today is strike.
more about the drawing for Brewer's tickets to an upcoming game in a little bit.
First, which is the more classic summer meal?
BLTs or sweet corn.
Parker and I went over that right after I offered a mid-summer reminder about paying my property taxes with a check.
And that led Parker and me on a journey exploring how his generation pays their bills.
It's not by paper check.
That is, once we figured out what the heck generation Parker is even part of.
Maybe you should list it next to his Venmo profile or something.
I wrote out a paper check and I put it in a mailbox and I can just hear other people going, you did, what is this?
What
is this
thing, grandpa?
That's a
thing.
You have checks.
I still do have to, in fact, here, let me, let me go get the one here.
Oh boy.
So these are the ones that are, you know, they make carbons and
it used
to be that, you know, you'd write so many checks a month for all the bills and you'd go through a lot of check, go through a box of checks in no time.
The first one in this one is from November 16th, 2020.
That's how long this checkbook has been around.
Yeah.
changed.
Times do change.
Yes.
I'm sorry.
Jiggling the monitor over here.
I was just trying to look at the other one.
Does this say what I think it says?
Oh boy.
It does.
April 20th of 2017 on the other on the other bank account.
So, because why do we have two banks?
Because direct deposit in two different banks from our different employers.
Uh 2017.
That's taken to write the checks on that one.
I do pay a lot of things electronically.
I almost
Actually, no all of our bills now there was there was for the longest time there was one place I'm not gonna name where but it was one of the you know the local places where you would you know have a monthly bill And they'd be calling all the time and saying hey you're you're late with your bill and it'd be like when are you guys gonna get you know accept electronic payments every other bill I pay is on autopilot I don't have to think about it.
I'd look at it.
It's fine It gets paid you guys still want the whole horse and buggy thing and they finally changed.
Thank goodness.
also know that with the electronic payments, you know, comes an extra fee.
And I'm looking at the one from Chippewa County here.
And, you know, additional fees apply 2.39% for credit cards, minimum fee of $2.95, a flat fee of $1.50 for an e-check.
And again, I look, I can pay $2.95.
But every so often you're like, you know what, for this one, I'll write the paper check.
And I do.
Do you even have a paper checkbook?
Nope.
I don't have checks.
Not at all.
There's not ever an occasion where you need to write a bigger check or something.
Everything is just either Ven mode or Apple pay or
What will you do if it needs paper checks?
something.
You have a local bank account, right?
Or, well, no, I think that, is it a local bank or is it one of like the national banks like Capital One
it's
So.
Okay.
Tony on YouTube, you absolutely still need checks, Parker.
Nah.
Ah.
At some point and you don't want to have to.
Do that, you know.
No, not in a pinch.
Okay, dad.
All right, see, there's our little public service here.
Once again, taking care of, I don't know, what, what generation are you again?
Are you, you're not alpha.
What's.
I don't even
Seriously?
I've never assume your X or not Z. Sorry Yeah, Z.
that would make sense, right?
All right.
Well, here, for example, now it says here boomers 1945 to 1963.
Yeah.
I was born in 1964.
And so it was, you know, very early Gen X. That went from 64 to 1979.
It says that Gen Y, that would be the millennials are 1980 to 1995.
And then Gen Z is 1996 to 2010.
And then I think they're called Gen Alpha, Generation Alpha, whatever, Alpha, is from 2011 onwards.
So yeah, that puts you squarely in the Gen Z category.
Now we need the hoot, you know, talking about my generation to play here for us to, you know, actually, we don't know.
We don't know what generation we're on, so we can't really talk about it.
I wanted to ask as well before we left here, I was looking at tonight's dinner plan and being very happy about last night's dinner plan because we had BLTs.
And apart from grilling, I mean, grilling is the quintessential, you know, summer
Yeah.
But
Our BLT is like the best light summer dinner to have.
I mean, we don't typically make, I don't think we make them in the winter at all.
And they're just, they're nice and crisp and meaty.
If you get, you know, just the right lettuce and tomato.
Although there is the other one that's coming up, sweet corn.
Sweet.
Oh sweet
Oh, see, I don't know if it's if it's ready here yet.
There's a place just north of Chippewa Falls here called Klingers Klingers Farm and you Klingers you can get it like minutes after it's been picked.
Oh, that's cool.
And then take it home.
And oh my gosh, it's just so good.
Oh, look, I've got myself all psyched up for this weekend's dinner plan.
I am ready to go.
Ormiter, that today's free ticket Friday keyword is strike.
S-T-R-I-K-E, strike.
Use the Civic Media app and text that in to complete, to compete in our statewide contest.
Those tickets are for Wednesday, September 3rd.
It's a 640 first pitch against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Let's take some time right now in our homeroom segment to talk a bit about declining enrollment state aid and school referendums and regular listeners understand how this carousel works and so rather than listening to me blather on about it we wanted to bring in an expert a business manager from one of the school districts where declining enrollment is an issue and explain how the current state funding system
either helps or hurts school districts that are hit with declining enrollment, which again is happening for a couple of different reasons.
It's not just demographics.
It's not just, you know, a generational drop in birth rates.
It's also the growth of the voucher program, peeling away kids whose parents are sending them to private, usually religious schools and now getting taxpayer-funded assistance subsidies to do so.
It only makes the declining enrollment problem worse for districts like Chippewa Falls where Chattrop Bridge is the business manager and joins us this
morning.
Chad, good morning.
How are you?
I'm great, Pat.
Good morning to you, and thanks for having me today.
Well, we appreciate it.
We really respect the job that you do, and we know what a challenge that it is.
So let's just start overall with the matter of declining enrollment.
I mean, there are only so many school districts that actually are growing population.
We don't have that baby boom going on anymore.
So we know that declining enrollment is kind of a regular way of life in so many of our Wisconsin
school
districts.
But do we have a system in place right now so that business managers like you can look at these numbers and say, well, enrollment's declining, but not in a way that's going to cause us to have to make some dire financial choices?
Yes, it is definitely a problem statewide, not just for Chippewa Falls.
I should point out, I think we were an anomaly.
over the past 20 or 30 years, while many school districts, you know, certainly in Northern Wisconsin and even in the Chippewa Valley were declining enrollment, we were on a growth pattern.
So it was a little unique here in Chippewa Falls.
We kind of stood out as a place that was growing.
And I think, you know, primarily it's the demographic shift that probably has caught us the most.
I think we were going to start to experience a decline
at the start of the pandemic.
That was kind of the first indicator for us that, you know, our lower birth rates entering our kindergarten grades were starting to get smaller.
But I do think that the pandemic probably exacerbated that problem just a little bit.
It helped or encouraged people to pursue other educational options, you know, be it virtual, be at home school.
A lot of school age kids went to work during that time.
the warning virtually was something that what we found out wasn't the best for the majority of our population.
So if, you know, I think there's a lot of reasons for declining enrollment.
Certainly the first you mentioned the demographic shift, part of it's not scientific and people just don't have as many kids as they used to.
And when I say that a lot of people nod their head.
Yep.
A lot of people we know either don't have kids or have one kid or
having three kids was a fairly normal sized family a good number of years ago, but you just don't see families that large anymore.
Secondly, I think we have an affordable housing problem in our community.
And when I say that, I don't mean low income housing.
I mean just the affordability of living, whether it be rental property or purchasing a home, the medium home price is higher than
two income earners with good jobs can't afford.
That's not going to encourage families to come to our community.
Another piece that we often wonder about is jobs.
We're a big employer for the size of the city of Chippewa Falls.
There are a lot of jobs in our community, but are they jobs that cause people to move here?
We believe that a good portion of our jobs here are commuter jobs, meaning
people who live in the periphery of Chippew Falls drive here to come to work.
And then also, much like many communities, there's a shortage of daycare spaces available.
We're pretty blessed in Chippew Falls to have very high quality daycares.
There just aren't enough of them.
And if we have commuters coming to Chippew Falls for employment, perhaps bringing their kids to daycare just makes that lack of daycare space.
all the much worse.
And like you mentioned, there are other educational options, which is probably a good thing for parents and students to have choices in education.
But ultimately, those factors all contribute to kind of the statewide decline in enrollment.
And we're actually gonna see a demographic shift in our total population.
And Chippewa Falls, the largest portion of our population is an older generation.
which at some point in time, you know, will turn over.
I hate to say it that way, but as when that occurs, you know, we're curious about what's going to happen with real estate and homes and, you know, what kind of, what's going to turn into those properties?
Are they going to become rentals?
Are they going to become family homes?
Are they going to turn into something else?
Yeah, these are all valid questions when you talk about commuter employment.
Another one of them is virtual.
We've seen some small communities essentially reinvent themselves by saying
Hey, we're the place where you can live and we've put in broadband internet so that you can continue to, you know, work from up north in your office in Chicago, you know, or New York or wherever the case may be.
Chippewa Falls has also seen, of course, like other communities, you know, jobs come and go, whether it's, you know, Cray super computers or Mason shoe back in the day.
You know, just a.
a big shift in technology versus manufacturing and high tech manufacturing.
I spoke earlier this hour about Beaver Dam and how its fortunes are being turned around by a data center that's going in and that might be the linchpin for new enrollment.
But again, every school district is facing its challenges with declining enrollment at some point in time for all the reasons that you outlined.
And so,
Here's where we get into the notion of how does state aid?
help or hurt in that situation.
So the two examples I always use are classrooms and school buses.
You might go from a classroom of 25 kids to 22 kids.
You might have a school bus that goes from carrying 40 kids to 35 kids.
You still got to turn on the lights.
You still got to put gas in the bus because it's going to take pretty much the same route.
Just skip a few houses.
And yet with declining enrollment,
How is it that you lose state aid?
Is it a one for one thing or is there a way that that can be augmented without having to go to the property taxpayer?
I'll touch on that a number of shift gears for just a second.
So state aid is really a factor of the expenses the district makes per property value per student.
So if we have a high student population and a high property value, that kind of works out pretty well economically.
But if we have a
a low student population and a high property value.
And you think about some of our more northern region school districts, at least that's the best example here.
We have locally, you know, they have a very low student population, but a very high property value.
The state aid formula doesn't really benefit them at all, but it really comes back to the revenue limit.
Revenue limits were put in place for Wisconsin schools back in 1994.
And it was really kind of a three pronged approach to
ultimately controlling property taxes at the time.
And they called it the three-legged stool.
It was based on the premise of a revenue limit, a qualified economic offer, and two-thirds funding of education at the state level.
Well, a qualified economic offer went away with Act 10 in around 2011, 2012, and then the two-thirds funding commitment for state aid has also gone away.
So the only prong that's left is revenue limits.
And ultimately, for a lot of schools that were not in declining enrollment, the revenue limit just hadn't kept pace with inflation.
And for us, during the time of the pandemic, there was a lot of federal money that was thrown at education.
And the intent of that money was to bolster education.
Well, here in Wisconsin, there weren't revenue limit increases.
And the message was loud and clear, use your federal dollars to plug your budget hole.
We were all saying, hey, okay, well, that can work.
We understand that, but we have to have a way to backfill that federal revenue when it goes away.
And in the last biennial budget, I think our state did as good as they can.
They did increase the revenue limit, but it was only about half of what was lost from the exit of federal funding.
We were saying that in this 25-27 biennial budget, our state is going to have to double down because school districts were still short of revenue.
They didn't get inflationary increases during that time.
And it was at a time when we've seen some of the highest inflation rates in the past decade.
So that kind of has compounded over time.
And if you recall, Governor Evers used his veto pen
to give school districts a $325 per pupil increase for at the time it was 400 years.
Well, there's 398 years remaining in that.
So we are going to get a $325 per pupil increase.
That's great, but it doesn't backfill any of that revenue.
And when we talk about this $325 per pupil, it's a good increase.
It's less than 3%.
So it sounds like a lot of money, but it's really not.
It's really just, you know,
plus or minus inflation here or there.
And I always say before Act 10, when revenue limits were indexed to inflation, we were seeing consumer price index in the revenue limit at $271 per pupil.
So 271, 13 years ago versus 325 today, really doesn't make up a gap anywhere.
So in the revenue limit, that's made up of two factors.
It's state aid and property taxes.
So if
There's an increase in the revenue limit.
It should technically be split between state aid and property tax.
The legislature did not put any money into the state aid formula.
So when we look at this year's revenue limit, it's going to increase taxation at a time where state aid is not going to go up.
So it's going to create a local burden here.
And really for any school district in the state of Wisconsin, there will be some aid distribution based on
Each individual school district statistics, but for us we're very close to average so we would expect it to be fairly neutral So when we we went to Chippewa Falls school district went to an operational referendum in 2024 and we did that for three years We had some declining enrollment issues some exit of federal funding issues that were creating a deficit for us
We wanted to we did a three-year operational referendum two and a half million dollars a year for three years because we wanted to get through this biennial budget process to determine if Revenue revenue was backfilled there would lessen the need for an operational referendum, but if it was not sufficient
we would have to go back to an additional operational referendum at some point in
time.
And I definitely see that that's in the carts for many school districts when you put zero new dollars into it.
It's a great explanation of the situation.
Chad Trowbridge, the business manager for the Chippewa Falls Area Unified School District, thank you very much for the background on it, Chad.
I know what a challenging time this is, but thanks for taking a little time to offer up some explanation and background for our listeners.
Thanks
for having
me, Pat.
I appreciate it.
You bet.
Have a great day.
That was such a great conversation and how funding our schools works.
Coming up next on this free ticket Friday is Todd Alba, a reminder that our keyword for those tickets to that 640 game on September 3rd against the Phillies is strike.
That's our keyword, S-T-R-I-K-E, strike.
Text that in using the Civic Media app to enter in our statewide contest.
Shows throughout the day, I will have keywords here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Make sure that you stick with us so that you have as many chances as possible to win those free tickets.
Alright, stick with us, Todd Alba, and his awesomeness is going to be joining us right after this.
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.
In our final clip this hour, we visit with Todd Alba and sound like a couple of old guys commiserating about technology.
when Parker reminds us that it doesn't matter what the technology, there is still ample room for error in this day and age.
We are joined now by one Todd Alba, who again has, yeah, that's you.
That's you, buddy.
How are you?
I can't hear a thing you're saying there.
So you, you, you work on plugging that in.
Mr. Alba, come in, please.
Todd Alba, do you read me over?
Bombay to Rancoon.
Are you there?
Come in.
This
is London.
All right.
How are you?
I don't know what happened.
I don't know.
This is why I just digital give me a grease pencil and a razor blade and cut the tape.
I mean, that's the type of radio that I haunted you.
You know, the digital stuff.
I don't know what's going on.
Do you know, did we, did we, we talked about this in the little host retreat about cutting tape and there are very, very, very few of us left who actually to edit
things for radio on reel to reels and you would have to mark it with a grease pen and then use a razor blade and then use some splicing tape to put things together and now granted
I only used, you know, used it.
I mean, I can count on one hand.
It was very rare because then other things were invented, you know, cart machines and things that were eventually digitized.
But it's one of those lost arts.
And I'm not going to be sad about it because you know what?
Not everybody has to be a barrel maker either.
At some point, you move on to new occupations, you know?
You change all
the
times.
But we'll always need people who can take the events of the day and put it in perspective radio hosts like Todd Alba.
You are
indispensable.
I'm not sure about that, but thank you very much as are you.
But no, there's something the tactical part of that era of radio.
And I'm not sorry that I was a part of it.
But I'm not necessarily sorry that that part's passed either.
Because, you know, yeah, it is easier when you get to digital.
But yeah, there was something cool about having the real real for those that don't remember it was, it was just a thin piece of tape on two plastic reels, I guess, occasionally metal wheels.
And then you have to go back and forth to cue it up, so to speak.
Look at Parker's
face on
this.
It's like, we may as well be cavemen describing
hieroglyphics.
didn't
plat the education You know what?
Yeah, it's worked out well for you so far and that's fine I was listening to I don't remember if it was John and Gordy or maybe it was you somebody talking about these old You know like who had eight track players in their car?
And
I raised my
hand because I had a 1973 Plymouth Fury and somebody had installed an eight track deck underneath the dash.
So you could play eight tracks.
So I had one of them, but there's fewer of them all the time, but I'm old enough to remember.
Do you remember Columbia house?
where you
get like the records,
the record club, where you'd get like 10 cassettes.
Oh,
right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Yeah.
Then it got to the point where you could check a box.
Do you want those 10 albums on cassette?
Or do you want them on CD?
I'm old enough to remember when real to real was one of the options.
No,
from Columbia House, you could get an album sent to you on a big old, you know, real.
Do you have any of those yet?
Oh, no, I never got one.
I'm just saying I remember when it was an option.
Yeah, I mean, they probably worth money now.
They might.
I do have about a half a dozen, 12 inch reels from my early radio days.
Love to hear those.
I would love to get those out.
I would love to hear them, too.
Is there is there even a reel to reel at Civic Media?
I know RCL has it.
Rachel Chudderwood.
Of course, RCL.
It's a
legacy.
I
mean,
it's
got a big trolla
in there for
the love of God.
It's
If you dig those out, here's the deal, Parker.
Keep us on us.
If Pat digs out his real, real radio days, I'll dig out my three-quarter inch tape on my talk show from Union Platteville from 1993.
Oh
boy.
Well look, if you can find a machine that plays your three quarter inch tape, I also have plenty of three quarter inch tape for my early TV days.
There's so much more than just that 1982 tornado warning that
is
on YouTube right now with my big 80s hair.
There's all kinds of embarrassing clips from both of us that we can play if we embrace, once again, the aging technology.
that is currently in technology's waste bin.
You know?
I didn't think you could.
I thought, well, you don't have anything old.
You don't have anything that embarrassing.
Sure enough, he did.
He was
the best
of the challenge.
All right.
Todd will have much more substantive conversations on his program coming up from two to four today on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thank you, buddy.
Good to see you.
Appreciate it.
Take
care.
All right.
Yep, you bet.
Ah, yes, that was in late July when we had that conversation.
Got me wondering, do I still owe Columbia House any money?
No, no, they went bankrupt in 2015.
Columbia House got its start in 1955.
It basically owned music purchasing in the 60s, 70s and 80s, records at first, then that whole 12 CDs for a penny.
Remember that?
You only had to buy like three more albums at full price over the next three years, but of course you were hooked.
except for the people that kind of cheated and did multiple 12 for a penny things.
But you'd get these sheets that look like postage stamps, but they had album covers on them.
So you'd pick the album you wanted, rip the little stamp off, lick it, stick it on the postcard, and send that gooey mess back and wait for the music.
Wait for the music.
What a concept, right?
I mean, now it's all online and instant downloads.
But have we saved any money really?
You know how much we're all paying for Apple Music or Amazon or Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, and you forget you're still paying a monthly fee for the music or the cloud storage.
12 CDs for a penny suddenly sounds like a real good deal right now.
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