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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake Wissota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back.
Happy Labor Day.
It's the 1st of September, and we are so glad to have you here from Lake Wissota as we bring back some of the information and conversation that made up our summer mornings here.
for moments away from our interview with Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez.
Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez has been the state's number two for the second term of Governor Tony Evers.
Recall Mandela Barnes was Lieutenant Governor in the first term then ran for US Senate.
Sara Rodriguez had a career in the legislature prior and a lot of experience in the area of health care.
And so we're going to get to know her coming up in just a bit.
Also ahead this hour, author Laura Bird on books that get us back to nature with a Wisconsin theme to them, by and large.
And she'll have recommendations and ways for you to get these books without necessarily having to go to the big dog online.
Give that billionaire some more of your money.
By the way, we are back live tomorrow to kick off the unofficial start to fall and the school year.
We're going to have Dan Schaefer from the Reconpopulation area.
We'll also have Cam Stevenson from Washington, DC with his below the Beltway newsletter update as Courier Newsroom's new Capitol Hill correspondent.
And while we're talking about Capitol Hill, here's a reminder that we're going to have Congressman Mark Pocan on the program coming up on Thursday of this week.
Let me look ahead now to a week from now.
We're going to bring back a movement Monday.
franchise we had for a while there and want to bring back for groups that are looking to defend democracy and actually make sure that we get a little bit more of it here in this day and age when people are trying to suppress our vote and basically try to intimidate us from voting.
We're going to talk to somebody from the Fair Maps Coalition.
They've been on a statewide tour.
Knowing full well that if we don't get a new policy on independent redistricting ahead of the 2030 census, those maps can be jerry-rigged by politicians once more.
So to get there, we're going to have to have some success in 2026 with people who are dedicated to political reform and at the same old political games.
So now the Lieutenant Governor, Sara Rodriguez, when she joined us in early August, it was on a day that Dr. Kristen Lyrely was also here.
And we led into the conversation about them meeting as they were both running for spots in the legislature a couple of years back.
So here again is Lieutenant Governor, Sara Rodriguez.
Kristen is a former candidate for state legislature.
She'd also run for Congress, but it was as a candidate for state legislature, I believe, when you met our, uh, our lieutenant governor, Sarah Rodriguez.
It's true.
We went to go turn our papers in and I ran into this wonderful woman.
She had a history of being a nurse, a public health worker.
She worked as an epidemiologist for the CDC and we just immediately clicked and now she happens to be running for governor.
And now she happens to be here as well.
Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez.
Good morning.
How are you?
Good morning.
I'm really good.
Can you vouch for any or all of what Dr. Lierly said?
No, it doesn't.
We've talked about that a lot that health care professionals by and large shunned to the public
spotlight shunned politics, but certainly in the past five years or so that has changed for various reasons.
And so I want to go back, you know, five years or so because I mean, you're familiar with the term overnight sensation.
You know, these are these are people who have been toiling like rock and roll bands.
They've been playing in bowling alleys and small clubs for years.
They finally get a hit record and people are like, they're an overnight sensation.
Well, Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez, welcome to the club.
You have been involved in Wisconsin politics for exactly seven days to hear some people tell it and are now an overnight sensation.
But you have actually been doing a few things over the past few years.
And I want you to talk about your path to becoming a candidate for governor.
So, you know, I have spent most of my career in health care, like Dr. Lierly said, I'm a nurse.
I am a public health professional.
I worked as a nurse in an emergency department.
I had been an executive within large health care systems, and I was an epidemic intelligence service officer with the Centers for Disease Control, which means I did outbreak investigations nationally, internationally, and
2019, 2020 when COVID hit, I saw that the Assembly and the Senate was doing nothing.
They didn't meet for eight months when people needed leadership and guidance.
So I ran for office for the Assembly.
And I live in Waukesha County.
So I flipped a district from red to blue within that, that Assembly district.
And I was in the Assembly for two years.
And then Mandela Barnes, he ran for Senate.
So the Lieutenant Governor seat became open.
I decided to take that microphone and be able to talk even more broadly across the state about things that I care about, which are healthcare affordability and access, making sure that families are able to afford not just the basics, but actually thrive within Wisconsin.
And being able to be under Governor Evers and seeing the amazing thing he's done, he has set us up for success with these last two terms.
And I'm going to knock it out of the park.
as governor.
So that's why I'm running.
I want to make sure that families have what they need to thrive in Wisconsin.
And I'm just really excited to talk to everybody across all 72 counties.
I've done that every year as Lieutenant Governor visited all 72 counties.
I'm going to continue to do that.
Go out, listen, see what people want in their governor, see what people want in their state government.
Kristen, I want to bounce us over to you as well simply because of the theme of people who saw how the pandemic was being handled by a certain
subset of the political class trying to, you know, get rid of safeguards and put people, you know, at risk of dying.
And I feel quite strongly led to people dying.
There are still people that want to talk like they're angry about how government handled the pandemic.
I'm still equally angry about how people tried to blow past all these safeguards and thankfully it motivated other healthcare workers to run for office.
This is the reason that health care workers don't like to get involved in politics, right?
Because we believe in evidence and data and science.
And we know that there were things that we did well with COVID and things that we didn't do well.
We were building the plane as we were flying it and we were doing the best that we could.
But we always had the people of Wisconsin, our neighbors and our patients at the forefront.
That's who we were working for.
But what we saw was that
And let's say it, it was Republicans.
It was extremist Republicans who were politicizing this message, who were telling people who were making masks, political who were making medications, political who were pushing these cures that actually didn't work.
And it was literally killing people.
The number of stories that I've heard from emergency department physicians of people who showed up sick with COVID.
preventable COVID and said, I am ready for my vaccine now.
And it was too late.
And then they went on to die because they listened to a politician instead of a health care provider.
So I think that is one of the really important points about someone like Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez running in this position as the person she is with everything she brings in addition to, and I know that I'm like grandstanding right now, but I have to tell you this story.
I met this person last night.
We were doing a bike ride and we were in Appleton and he was telling me about the time that he was at an event in out of gamey county and he was talking to this wonderful woman and they were having this great conversation and all of a sudden she said, oh, I have to go and she walked up to the podium and started talking and he realized, oh, wow, I was just talking to the lieutenant governor.
I had no idea because she was such a real person.
She was so regular and he connected so beautifully with you.
And I think that is one thing about you that people really need to understand.
You are like us.
And that's what I think people want is they don't want a politician, right?
They want their neighbor, their friend.
I am a mom of two kids, 16 and 18.
I'm shocked that I have an 18-year-old and he's actually an adult.
I don't even know how that happened.
You know, these are the kind of things that way important on my mind as a mom, as somebody who's been working full time.
You know, I had to try to find childcare when my kids were smaller.
And it wasn't as hard as it is now.
I talk to families who actually, when they're thinking about getting pregnant, thinking about it, they start calling around to childcare places.
because they know it's so difficult to find.
That's just shameful in Wisconsin.
We should be able to have the services we need, and families should be able to do what they want, if go to work if they want to, and be able to have a safe place to put their kids.
It's the kind of thing that, again, child care should be a bipartisan thing, and yet somehow we've made it political.
And as a result of the current environment, and the one that's been in the state capital for a while here,
And now as in Washington DC, you, you have called the president of the United States a maniac.
You know what?
Truth is a defense and liable, but it does lead to this question of, you know, working, working with others, working with Republicans, working with independence.
What is your history on that?
And what is it that you want to do as governor?
It's a pretty red county.
And so I do not have the luxury of only speaking to Democrats at home, at work, any other time.
So when I was an executive within a healthcare system, I had to work with people who we didn't agree on things.
We had to move projects together.
When I was in the assembly, I had to be able to work across the aisle to try to be able to get things done.
That was more challenging than I thought it was going to be.
It was a surprise to me how difficult that was to work across the aisle.
But I am willing to work with anybody.
who wants to move Wisconsin forward.
But I don't think anybody can say that the man in the White House is a maniac.
It is absolute chaos on the federal level right now.
And so we need to have a Democrat in the governor's seat so we can have steady, sober, clean leadership.
Well, especially given what we were just talking about in Texas where they came in and they're gerrymandering the maps again just because you know Donald Trump said jump and they said how high Tell us a little bit.
Let's go back before your time in the legislature and as a nurse, you know just some of your early history and You know meeting your husband and things like that
Yeah, so I was, I was in Oklahoma when I met my husband and I was an epidemic intelligence service officer with the CDC, but stationed at the state health department.
And my, the health commissioner's wife had run a salsa dancing group.
And they knew I danced salsa.
And so they introduced me to their group, and Baltzar was part of that salsa dancing group.
So we actually met salsa dancing of all things.
And we will be married now 20 years coming up this December.
So it was just so much fun to be able to share that with him.
Now we're getting a little older.
I actually announced my candidacy on my 50th birthday.
What a way to start your 50s, right?
But, you know, we keep joking.
We need a middle-aged dance club because we like to be in bed by 10, 30, 11.
And most of the dancing doesn't start until that time.
So, you know, I think that's a business idea for somebody.
I think they could.
I think they absolutely should.
So, so again, we're talking 20 years here.
And I tell you, we've got we've got
Only a minute left here, so I may come back to Personal matters in just a minute, but give me the 30 second 45 second version of your top priorities The moment you're sworn into office if elected as governor so
We know that they're trying to do the best that they can, but they feel like they can't make ends meet.
And so accessible, affordable healthcare is going to be top of my priority, specifically expanding Medicaid so we can bring $2 billion back to Wisconsin to be able to invest.
Housing costs are out of control.
It is insanity, the rents and the mortgages.
Young families are not able to afford what they need.
Childcare access and affordability is going to be top priority because again,
These are real issues that we need to solve.
And lastly, we need to restore bargaining rights for our unions in Wisconsin, because we know that it's going to raise all wages if we do that.
That's Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez visiting with us, a candidate for governor in 2026.
When
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Dr. Kristen Lairdly is here with me as we are talking to Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, a candidate for governor.
And I mentioned coming back to your personal life because as we we talked about a couple days back, it took virtually no time for the
the garb garbage, for lack of a better term, to come out about about your husband, a naturalized citizen.
I think I'm pretty safe and guessing you knew this was coming.
Yes, I did know it was coming, but it's still disappointing.
I mean, it's racist and vile and all of those things and it doesn't help anyone.
thrive in Wisconsin, right?
It is just throwing red meat to a base that has all of this anti-immigrant rhetoric now.
But now you see what the consequences are to that anti-immigrant rhetoric.
It's just really unfortunate.
And this is all they got, you know, they better be looking for more because I'm ready to run and I'm ready to fight back against these types of attacks.
Yeah, no doubt.
But the thing I mentioned was that, again, your response was, again, taking it back to what it means for the voter and that
these kinds of diversions, they feed a certain slice of you know, xenophobia or racism.
But that's really about it.
You also got a little heat for a gasp how one uses YouTube to put videos out and put them together and when you did.
But even though you've been asked 100 times, I'll have you set up and lay the record out for that in terms of how you prepared for a campaign that may or may not have been announced last
So
This is so silly.
I mean, there were two options here.
Either the governor was gonna announce that he wasn't going to run for a third term or he was gonna announce that he was going to run for a third term.
And guess what?
I was prepared for both.
So I prepared a video to announce my candidacy for lieutenant governor and I prepared a video to announce my candidacy for governor.
Don't you want someone who is prepared as your chief executive officer?
Don't you want someone who is organized and is ready to run?
right away.
There was no time to wait.
I wanted to make sure that I was out there and talking about things that were important to Wisconsin families, and that's what I did.
Yeah, and we, Kristen, as a former candidate as well, we are very familiar with the private setting on YouTube so that you're ready to go, if need be, and then you switch it over to public.
And Kristen, I mean, you've seen all of this, and as a former candidate, you can relate as well to what the Lieutenant Governor has seen and will see in the coming year.
I am also a planner, so I can appreciate that you are ready.
And we had this conversation months ago about, you know, if this happens, we're going to do this.
And if this happens, we're going to do that.
So I completely understand what you're saying and appreciate that.
But here's my question.
I feel like here in Wisconsin we are so nice and it is so hard for us to talk about spicy things like politics and we don't want to offend anybody especially where I live in the Green Bay area but we are living in a time where politics has really polarized us and we've got to call the party that is
causing all of this chaos and this discomfort, we've got to call them out for what they are doing.
How do you do that and still maintain those relationships and win them over in this state that we love so much but we recognize as challenging political territory?
It is not all Republicans, right?
It is Republican leadership that is doing this.
I live in a red community.
I talk to Republicans all the time.
Guess what?
We agree on way more than we disagree on.
So, I mean, I'm going to call out the individuals who are doing this, be very specific in what I'm talking about and their decisions, their votes, their bills that they're putting forward.
But in general, I'm not going to paint the entire Republican Party this way because I do know people who are so disappointed with their party right now, but they're struggling.
They're struggling to realize that the party has left them.
And so we need to be able to embrace those people into the Democratic Party and make sure that they're welcome here.
There's been questions as well about how your style will be different from Governor Tony Evers.
I think the fair question is how Tony Evers is different from basically everybody else.
He is a unique character that Wisconsin truly embraced for two terms.
But let's take it not so much from a comparison, but talk about your style.
What will we expect from you as a governor?
We have different experiences.
We have different backgrounds and, you know, Governor Evers is the nicest man.
the nicest man you will ever meet.
I swear the man has candy in his pocket to give the kids.
Like he is the sweetest man you're ever going to meet.
And that leadership style has worked really, really well for him.
I would say that my leadership style is a little bit more engaging, that I'm going to be out there a little bit more talking to people, talking to the legislators, because whatever happens in 2026,
I am confident we are going to flip the state Senate and the state assembly, but the margins are going to be tight.
So we're going to have to do negotiations.
We're going to have to do those types of conversations.
And I'm used to doing that as an executive in my in my prior life.
And I'm used to doing that, you know, within the political system.
So I think that's what I also bring to the table.
All right.
I've made clear before I'm not going to put any kind of public endorsement out there.
I want everybody to come and feel like they can talk to us here.
But I will repeat what I said before.
A masterclass in how to do an introductory video.
The walk and talk that says this is who I am.
This is what I want to do.
Congratulations on putting that together.
I mean, you've set a very high bar for any of the other field that comes in.
Lieutenant Governor Sarah Rodriguez, it was a pleasure.
Thank you so much for visiting with us today.
Coming up next on this Labor Day edition of Mornings with Pat Crite Low, we are going to be visited by Laura Bird.
She's going to have some books to recommend nature books from Wisconsin.
Stay tuned here to Civic Media Radio Network and Mornings with Pat Crite Low powered by Up North News.
We'll be right back after this.
It's time to talk once again with Laura Bird, author who is going to be telling us all from our Madison studio, by the way, about her latest book recommendations and with a particular theme this time around.
Laura, good morning.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, good to see you there in Madison.
Big old stack of books in front of you with with the theme on this World Nature Conservation Day about nature, getting back to nature and appreciating what we have, especially from the standpoint of Wisconsin and Midwest authors.
That's an interesting theme you came up with.
I would not have picked that for a genre, but clearly there are things that stick out with you about that.
So it's summertime here in Wisconsin.
We all know this.
It's
sticky and it's humid and hot.
But I'm sure that many of your listeners are getting outside to enjoy all that Wisconsin has to offer.
At least I hope your listeners are.
You know, the lakes, parks, hiking trails, there's so much to do.
So today I want to chat about books that celebrate and promote a connection to nature.
So not only are these stories fun and engaging, but I think that when we read about the earth, it increases our awareness of it and our reverence for it.
So these are important stories, I think.
So if you're a lover of the outdoors, these are for you.
And I'm going to cover some different genres here and different ages.
So there's something for everyone.
And yes, they are all written by Wisconsinites with one exception.
There's a couple from Minneapolis.
So they'll all feel really familiar and relevant to listeners.
So I'm just really excited to dig in.
You want to start with the fiction
Yes, I love fiction.
So I've come today with two novels, and they're both by Andrew J. Graff.
And Andy is one of my favorite novelists from Wisconsin.
He grew up in the Northwoods and now he lives in Ohio where he teaches at Wittenberg University.
He's a huge outdoor person.
So he is the author of two novels, Raft of Stars and most recently, True North.
And you need to add these books to your list.
If you love rivers, water, rafting, I should say that I've only been rafting like once or twice and that did not stop me from loving these books.
So they, they both take place in the Northwoods and they're exhilarating with fleshed out characters and the plots are set almost exclusively outdoors in summertime.
So you
say they're adventure stories.
there anything else you can tell us that would get us into the plots?
yeah.
These who done it sir?
Well,
The Raft of Stars, his first one, is about two young boys who believe that they've accidentally killed someone.
And that sounds terrible, but it's a great story.
They flee to the river where they try to out raft the adults that are pursuing them.
And there are a lot of white knuckle moments in this book.
It's really great.
And then True North is about a family from the Chicago area that comes to the Northwoods because they've just purchased a rafting company.
which is failing, and their marriage is also failing.
So they have a lot of layers to work through in this book.
But Andrew J. Graff writes so beautifully about how humans and nature intersect.
And his stories, I guarantee, will make you want to be outside on the water.
I will say that from a marriage encounter standpoint my wife and I determined years ago that canoeing should not be part of it because there needs to be a level of communication and coordination that appears to be lacking when we get into a canoe.
For other people
It works for them.
Maybe I need to read some of these books to find out more.
There you go.
Take us into the nonfiction category.
Oh, this is such a great one.
Sea of Grass.
The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie by Dave Hague and Joseph.
Josephine Marcotti.
So this is the couple that's from Minneapolis.
They're veteran journalists and they celebrate in this book our relationship with the North American prairie, which I'm learning is known as an ecological marvel because there's so many creatures that live on it, bison elk, prairie dogs, bald eagles.
And I'm also learning that the grasslands are one of the richest ecosystems on earth.
I had no idea.
But the constant expansion of agriculture threatens what remains.
So these very
knowledgeable authors talk us through the opportunities and very difficult decisions facing agricultural and indigenous communities today.
All right.
Where are we going next?
I love the driftless shelter and storm at home in the driftless by Tamara Dean.
This is a collection of essays and if you don't know the driftless is an area
that kind of starts just west of Madison, and it's roughly 8,500 square miles.
And it was bypassed by the glaciers.
And in fact, author Tamara Dean calls it the place glaciers forgot.
So in these essays, she writes about this stunning area and the home that she makes with her partner, David.
She learns to garden, plant a prairie, monitor the water quality.
She gets outside and does a bunch of really neat things.
And she writes engagingly about geology, geography, critters.
plants.
And most of all, she invites us to step outside and be amazed by what we find.
Okay, really good book.
Good.
Let's see.
We're going to do stories of insects.
Where the grass still sings stories of insects and interconnection.
by Heather Swan, who actually lives here in Madison.
So sometimes I'm lucky enough to run into her.
This book is perfect for people who love art because she incorporates art, science, narrative and verse in this gorgeous book.
Like this is one of those books you want on your coffee table.
It would make a beautiful.
gift for people who love the outdoors and art.
She celebrates bugs and insects and she also celebrates the people who are on the front lines of the fight to save them.
So this book rekindles hope and wonder and again I think it would make a beautiful gift.
It's like a breath of fresh air.
Okay, so now we move to things that are how you listed them as practical and engaging guides.
to maximize your exposure to nature
I'm really excited to talk about it It's part memoir part guidebook.
It's called time beauty and grief a hike through Wisconsin's 50 state parks by Betsy Corbiner I hope I'm pronouncing her last name, right?
Um
This book really resonates with me because I have a goal of hiking all of Wisconsin State Parks and I'm about halfway there.
But in this book, Betsy turns 65 and she sets this goal of hiking all the parks and she does it.
And the book is in order of the parks as she hikes them.
So it's not organized by region or features, but throughout sort of her
you know, summaries of each hike she takes.
She brings in her experiences of human aging and she talks about relationships and she talks about loss.
And it's just really engaging and fun to read.
And now anytime I go hike a new park, I come home and I open it up and I see what Betsy has to say about it.
So great book.
Okay.
Let's see, we've got one more into this category.
Great Nature Wisconsin.
This is 100% guidebook here, okay?
So it's a Guide for Nature Immersion in Wisconsin by Randy Hoffman and Laura and Cody Stingley.
This book is phenomenal.
The research that went into this book is incredible.
The authors present 400 places to enjoy the outdoors in Wisconsin.
They talk about...
outdoor activities, they provide locational information for each, and then they've got like cool little icons and charts where they talk about paddling, fishing, swimming, mountain biking.
et cetera.
So this has become my new Bible for getting out in Wisconsin.
And I feel like everyone should have a copy in their house.
Great nature.
Great nature, Wisconsin.
Very good.
All right.
Finally, let's get to the area where you've written a book or two for kids and maybe something there that involves nature.
Yeah.
Okay.
How excited you get just thinking about talking about
I know.
I love it.
Well, especially when you're bringing kids.
I mean, there's so many books for nature for kids.
But these are written by Wisconsin authors.
including yours truly.
So I just have to...
toot my own horn here, crossing the pressure line by me, Laura Ann Bird.
This is my debut novel.
It came out a couple of years ago.
And it is perfect for middle graders who love the outdoors.
Middle graders are that eight to 12, eight to 13 year old group.
And it centers on a 13 year old girl who finds comfort and adventure in the Northwoods.
And it's the perfect book for kids who love fishing, swimming and animals.
There's a whole storyline about how my main character, Claire,
wants to catch a musky in honor of her late grandfather.
So if you know anyone who loves to musky fish, whether it's a kid or an adult, all ages, I think will really enjoy my book.
And it's a celebration of the Northwoods, which is my favorite place on earth.
So crossing the pressure line.
And
So this book is for
the littles, right?
Kids who love to sit in your lap and be read to.
It's called The Wild Island, an adventure at Isle Royal National Park by Tracy Philippi and illustrated by Susan Majeski.
And this is Tracy's debut novel.
She lives here in Madison.
And it's her love letter to the national park that's located closest to us in Wisconsin.
And of course, that's Isle Royal in Lake Superior.
And she makes me want to go to this park.
Now it's on my bucket list.
There are great illustrations in it.
It's really engaging and it gets kids excited to be outside in nature.
So again, again, The Wild Island by Tracy Philippi.
But let's get back to the one before that because that's what I've listed last year.
So we can spend a little bit more time on that and how people can go about getting it.
I highly suggest going to your local independent bookstore.
Above all, you know, I'm.
Always talking about that.
If you don't live close to a local bookstore, go to bookshop.org and you can order it there and they will send it to you and you can even earmark what bookstore you want to receive part of the, you know, the proceeds of the sale.
So it's a great way to shop local even if you don't actually have a local bookshop.
Also, you can find it at public libraries and if your public library doesn't have it, you can request it and they will get it for you.
And I, of course, it was not aware of this until you started appearing on the show.
And now I have an account at bookshop.org.
It benefits a small bookstore in Menominee that I've never been to.
But I know that at least some of what I'm doing, it's like shopping locally.
And it's a great way to be able to.
browse around and also take in some of these recommendations, which by the way, we will put in the show notes after the show.
So if you head to civicmedia.us and shows and you click on this hours link, you'll be able to see all of these titles and authors that you're recommending.
So along with, you know, these latest recommendations, Laura, are you, are you yourself getting back to nature?
You start talked about hiking in all the state parks.
Do you know where you're going next?
Well.
You know, I don't have any trips planned anytime soon.
I was just at one of the Ice Age trail segments yesterday, the one down by Payolai.
I've hiked there many times before and it's a really beautiful place.
My favorite place to get out is Governor Dodge State Park and Blue Mountain State Park.
You know, from Madison, they're only about a half hour drive, 45 minute drive.
So I get out there regularly.
I, my goal is to hit all the trails at each of those parks.
See the Ice Age trail is like a bucket list thing
it's, it's just right out here.
Although it's big.
It's very expansive.
You have to be tough to walk the whole thing, but I want to find out where some of the most.
I want to start high,
those most picturesque segments and really get a feel for them and walk some of that and get out of the house.
But if you can't get out of the house or if you can only get as far as the hammock, now you've got some book recommendations
from
Laura and Bird to help you feel like you're getting back to nature.
Laura, so good to see you as always.
Thank you for coming in this morning.
Hey gang, guess what's coming back later this week?
If I tell you it's happening on Friday then you'll probably guess correctly that it's free ticket Friday.
Now the crew will be on the road this coming weekend but the following weekend there are home games against the Cardinals and you could be the lucky one getting those four great club level seats at American Family Field.
that we give out on Fridays throughout the summer.
Now, to win them, you just have to be listening to all of Civic Media's Friday lineup.
There are different keywords throughout the day, so there are multiple choices, multiple chances, I should say, to be in the statewide drawing for these tickets.
Now, to find out which game, therefore, and what keyword to text us through the Civic Media app, well, you're just going to have to listen on FreeTicket Friday.
We still have a few of those left in the regular season, and then we'll be talking about post-season baseball before we know it.
All right, when we come back, one of our visits with Jane McNair.
Her show is coming up next, but when we talked to her last month, she was not having a good day in the category of getting back to nature.
I wonder what advice Laura Byrd would have given her.
We're back 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.
I heard Greg Bach earlier, first couple hours of the show while Parker was off and now Dom has been filling in for the past hour, but Greg didn't go away.
He's just prepping for Matt and Air on Air along with Jane Matt and Air coming up next year on the Civic Media Radio Network and Jane is here now.
Jane, good morning.
How are you?
Good
morning, Pat.
Good morning, Dom.
I am great.
Oh,
you're
Monday and beautiful day in Wisconsin.
That's what we tell ourselves.
We're doing great.
It's Monday.
We're fine.
Exactly.
Yeah, this isn't good.
Even if it isn't entirely because I don't know if folks are still familiar with the Winnie the Pooh story about, you know, having so much honey and then getting stuck in the hole trying to get out of his place.
And then everybody has to push or pull poo bear to get unstuck.
You got a baby bird with a problem like that.
Okay, here's my, this is driving me crazy.
So we have a light on the side of our garage door.
Sure.
Years ago, a robin built a nest on top of the light.
which I thought was great until they hatched and then they started dive bombing me every time I came out of the garage door.
I started coming out of the garage with an umbrella because they were just going until the babies left.
So I put a little birdhouse up there that the Robbins couldn't fit in and I thought, ha, I've foiled you.
Well, now I have a bunch of sparrows that use that.
This is my dilemma, Pat.
All right.
The birdhouse is shaped like an A, okay?
And the hole is in the front.
And there's two little sides that are open.
I have a baby bird who stuck his head out the side, not the front hole, and now he's stuck.
instead of using the front door.
No, I'm gonna try this thing out the side and now it's stuck like poo bear with a honey
pot.
Yes.
And now he's stuck up the side of the garage.
This kept me awake until one o'clock last night.
So now when I get home, I'm gonna try I'm gonna get a ladder and climb up there and try and pull the birdhouse out without breaking the little furry bugger's neck.
And then, I don't know, I'm gonna have to try and saw the top off so we can get out.
I don't know what I'm gonna do with
this thing.
I feel like we need a crossover episode here if we could get Selena Heller back here with her cat whiskers.
We could maybe have, you know, solve.
Two problems at once.
You know, whiskers can have breakfast.
Aren't there agencies that do this?
Isn't there someone I can
call?
Yeah, but I don't know if they'll do it for a baby bird who, you know, made a poor choice after eating too many worms and couldn't figure out which door to use.
But I feel like I'm responsible and I can't leave them up there because...
He's either going to strangle the death or he's going to die of starvation or something.
So this, yes, this is what kept me awake most of last night was was Darwin the baby bird.
If he makes it, that's what I'll call him.
His name will be Darwin.
Yes.
All right.
So that sounds like that that
was the highlight of your weekend, huh?
Pretty much
that was
my I am I the only one who worries about stuff like this?
This this literally kept me awake until one o'clock in the morning.
I, you know,
Worrying maybe but I mean we've all had our little dilemmas but mine happened with some flying squirrels where we were taking down a tree you know a mature tree but it had aged it you know it was it had many holes that many critters were using it had become a condo basically
sure
and it was getting to the point where it had to come down so we had a local tree company come in because they do some other trimming because we have a lot of trees on the lot
And so they were gonna bring down this old practically hollow tree and I get a knock on the door and it's one of the workers saying there is still a family of flying squirrels inside one
these.
Do you still want us to do this?
And my answer was, uh, yeah, they don't pay rent.
They're being evicted.
It's time.
So, but they took such great care instead of just chopping the tree down, they, they rigged it up because they had a bucket or whatever bucket truck.
And so they tied a strap around up at the top and then wrapped that strap around another nearby tree.
So that basically once they cut it at the bottom, they could very gently with that strap
So as it's coming down.
keep in mind, I did not even know we had flying squirrels until
it and out pops at least one of these flying squirrels, you know, and they open it up and you got the wingspan on there and they're, they're pretty small.
They're only like, you know, five inches, maybe something like that.
And then down the bank, you know, toward the, toward the lake, he goes and, you know, makes this, you know, it was very impressive.
I'm like, okay, we, we have flying squirrels.
Who knew?
And so we thought, well,
They said, what do you want us to do with the tree when it came down?
And I was like, well, we'll just send it down the bank and just start luck.
It's probably still a critter condo.
It's just likely.
It's just horizontal instead of vertical.
Now I'm going to admit I didn't lose sleep about this, but I did get a good story out of it knowing that we now have flying squirrels, you know?
Well,
he's staring at me every time I go out to the garage.
It's like.
Help me.
Help me.
It's singling you out.
It
is.
It's like
you.
Hey, landlord, I got a problem here.
I got complaints about this place.
The side door, it's stuck.
All right, now, like the radio legend Paul Harvey, I suppose you'd like to have the rest of the story, which is not tragic, but it's also kind of anticlimactic.
Jane said the next day, she saw the little guy with its head stuck again and its eyes closed, so she feared the worst.
So she worked up her courage, got out the ladder, climbed the ladder, pulled the birdhouse off the perch, unlatched a part of the roof, and that Jocelyn must have just been enough to dislodge him because he and a little sibling were just sitting there looking up at her like, what do you want?
Well, she said that's what their looks were saying.
I'm pretty sure it was more a look of relief and gratitude or, hey, what took you so long to get out the ladder, huh?
Anyway, we are about out of time here.
So let me tell you that Dan Schaefer from the Reconbobulation area will be joining us tomorrow.
He is Civic Media's political editor, and he will have the latest Wisconsin political news.
And we'll have a new weekly feature from the nation's capital, Courier Newsroom's Cam Stevenson, starting his new duties on Capitol Hill to accompany his daily newsletter below the Beltway.
And you can sign up for that over at Up North News.
I'm sorry, no sign up for that our parent site courier newsroom courier newsroom.com if you want our newsletter That's where you go to up north news wi.com and if you're not a subscriber yet get a move on here
All right, Brewers and Phillies, pregame starts at 2.35 this afternoon across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Hope you enjoy your Labor Day.
I'm Pat Critello, founding editor of Up North News, the Wisconsin Home for Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Enjoy the day.
We'll see you back here live at 6 a.m.
tomorrow morning here up north.
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