at Cross Wisconsin on Civic Media.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back.
7 0 6 now.
Nice to have you here up north on a Wednesday morning.
It is October 29th.
Parker Olson producing things down in Madison Studio A2 and Ellie Bordeaux is standing by to tell us
What you can find in the newsletters at UpNorth News by signing up at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
But first let's pass along some temperatures across the area.
It is 37 here in the Chippewa Valley.
Tomahawk is the cold spot at 25 right now.
Hayward at 28 degrees.
The warm spot is in both Milwaukee and Racine where it's 48 right now.
Wausau is at 41 La Crosse at 41 as well.
Oshkosh you're at 43 degrees.
It's 39 in Wisconsin Rapids it's 43 in Richland Center.
Now again you can sign up for our newsletter by heading over to UpNorthNewsWI.com.
You can get the weekday edition that Ellie puts together and of course our Sunday morning one as well.
The Sunday morning newsletter
at the moment has a question of the week that is really close to being 50-50 and that is asking people their view on whether a new nuclear power plant should be built in Wisconsin in the QANY area where there had been a plant for many years and now there's talk of constructing a new nuclear power plant because it's carbon-free.
It's a carbon-free way to generate electricity and does not contribute to a changing climate.
or it has some real downsides to it.
What are your thoughts on it?
Again, to be the among the first to see and respond to the question of the week, get our Sunday morning newsletter over at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
All right, let's head over to visit with Ellie Bordeaux and find out what's happening in that weekday newsletter as well.
Ellie, good morning.
How are you?
I'm great.
How are you, Pat?
I'm good.
Although again, once I once I get done talking to you about
things in the newsletter I usually end up working up an appetite.
That's fair.
It was pizza a couple of weeks back.
Last week it was burger spots and the listeners and readers of the newsletter did not disappoint in their responses.
Yes, that is very true.
We got a ton of responses.
It's so fun to look through and hear about all the different burger places and everything.
This week we've got a bunch of different
things that our readers love, Rachel's Roadside Bar and Grill.
This one was interesting.
They had Christmas curds, a variation of cheese curds with an added sweet flavor.
And then they've got a Whitten burger, a half pound burger with sauteed mushrooms and onions, smoked in barbecue sauce and melted cheese curds.
That sounds delicious.
I
love the idea of the melted cheese curds on the burger.
Although I will
stipulate that I've seen some that look like it's like one giant cheese curd on a burger.
We all know that's not an actual cheese curd.
That's that's a big old mound of cheese.
And that's fine.
Just don't call things curds unless they are actual curds.
That's that's my only rule involved in this.
And yeah, I'd love to try one of those on a burger.
Right.
Yeah.
Don't mislabel it.
That's just a patty of cheese, you know, but another one is Lucy's number seven bar or bar.
This one is
unique.
Yes.
Yeah, they've got cheese curds and Wisconsin beers.
They specialize in smash burgers, and they have different monthly specials, like an apple cranberry chutney and maple bacon aioli.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
That prompted me the other day to look up the menu for the livery in Eau Claire, because they too, they they have, you know, a rather unique burger that they put some kind of a, it's not a pepper jam, but it's some kind of and then there's like a, you know, a bacon aioli thing or I don't even know what it's just I love when people dress them up.
It is possible to overdress your burger.
Don't get me wrong, you know.
That is true.
Yes.
No, I do agree with that.
You got to do it right.
It's kind of like the version of that for me is Chicago hot dogs.
The the Chicago hot dog.
By the time you look at it, they basically you've put the entire salad bar on a hot dog.
And you're not actually tasting hot dog anymore.
The
same would go
for a burger.
I've never gotten into say the whopper, for example.
Um, you know, to all beef or the, the big Mac to all beef, patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun,
some
commercial jingles never die.
Um, and again, that's a bit much, but boy, there's nothing like getting it just right.
You know,
right?
Totally.
And I do agree.
Sometimes simpler is better, you know, like sometimes you just got to stick to the basics and that's all you need.
But it is fun to try the fun and new things that these places offer.
So it's always fun to see.
Yeah.
And not everything is for everybody.
There's some, you know, some of these burgers have like peanut butter on them and other weird stuff.
But hey, to each their own.
So do you do you have a new food category coming up at some point here?
Are you still letting the wheels spin on what to ask about next?
Yeah, so next week we're not talking about food necessarily next week.
Next week we want to hear, since Friday will be Halloween, we want to hear about the unique ways that people in Wisconsin spend their Halloween.
So whether that's trick-or-treating or going to a bar and they have different specials and things like that or a different festival, we want to hear how you spend your Halloween in Wisconsin.
what's the best way to do it.
So that's what we're looking for next week.
In the future, we're definitely going to be looking for more food places, I'm sure, because that's always a good one.
And it's kind of fun, you know, to get those.
But we're looking at Halloween this
week.
This week, you've got and you've got no shortage of decorations.
And I've said before, people are treating this very much like like Christmas now, the volume of decorations that people are putting up and that people are sending photos into you.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I it's so fun to see.
I love getting responses from all of our readers about different costumes they have the different decorations.
We had one earlier this week of I believe his name was Chris where
he carved like 10 plus pumpkins and they were incredible and so intricate.
And so that's really fun to see.
It definitely is like Christmas though.
I love Halloween decorations.
We used to when I was younger have a house that we that went all out for Halloween.
So we would go and drive past it all the time.
And so it's kind of fun to see looking through these photos of you could be that house that someone's taken a detour to go see, you know.
And there's the two categories.
There's the spooky, scary, and there's the.
And I of course, I'm very squarely in the in the campy one, you know, but others they go for as much, you know, blood as possible.
They go for the surprise factor or something jumps out or screams at you.
And, you know, that's fine to reach their own.
But others I just, you know, you just like to kind of go more on the campy.
Hey, we're just having fun with this something the kids could actually enjoy and not wet their pants and their costumes as they run away in horror, you know,
right?
Yeah, exactly.
We used to when I was younger and I would go trick or treating there was a house in my neighbor.
that had like the candy bowl had a hand in it and it would like come down and grab you like when you with your hand in and I would never go to that house because it was too scary.
So there it is fun to see again like the different ways people decorate for Halloween.
There are I feel like two ways to do it.
That's very true.
So
yeah.
How about costume wise?
Do you I've been asking people throughout the week here do you have a favorite one year one year the best costume you ever had was
Um, I would say my good friend and I, or I, no, I would, I think my best costume, I was Napoleon Dynamite one year.
I had a little, I had a wig and I had the vote for Pedro shirt and it was great.
Like the, like the boots too.
And did
you do the
little, did you do the dance?
I, well, I didn't do the dance at that point, but I actually did the dance at a different point when I was in high school for an assembly.
So I know the dance.
Did you, did you have somebody that played Uncle Rico and like, did he have a football and he said he could throw the football over the mountain or anything like
that?
Honestly, no, I did not.
But I'm sure I could have found someone to do that for me.
Napoleon Dynamite was one of those movies where, you know, my my girls were in their like early teens at the time.
And we all have movies like this where the first time you see a movie, you go, this is the dumbest thing ever.
And then by the time you're done watching it the second time.
And then the third you're like, this thing is really growing on me.
And totally, then you can't stop.
And you just look back and go,
How did I ever make it to this many times?
I've seen that movie at least a half a dozen times.
And
it just it just grows on you.
But the first time you can't imagine that you would ever watch it a second time, you know,
totally.
No, I completely agree.
I like to say I either like really, really good movies or really, really bad movies.
And that can fall into either category, depending on who you are, you know.
Yep.
Are you aware of anybody who's doing anything, particularly special costume wise this year yet amongst your friends and things?
I know I've got a couple of friends who every year, I mean, that's like
their focus, they go all out to find the costume of the year, you
know.
Yeah, no, I don't I can't think of anyone that has anything super like specific.
My parents one year were Homer and Marge Simpson.
My mom had a big blue wig.
That was really funny.
This year, when I was out helping my family with trick or treat, we saw someone dressed as a barrel man from the Brewers.
Oh, it was really great.
That was pretty cool.
Um, yeah, I would say those are like my top ones.
Okay, all right, we'll be looking forward to that.
And again, y'all can feel free to send us your own photos of costumes or decorations or other ideas that you'd like to share with people that they can, you know, use between now and Friday.
And you can either put that in the comment sections here on YouTube and Facebook, or you can always email us as well.
The email address for the radio show is radio at up north news w i dot com.
And then I can
forward those over to Ali as well as she puts together future editions of the newsletter.
Now we've also had a focus this week on breast cancer awareness in the newsletter.
Yeah, that's right.
So October is breast cancer awareness.
And while there have been a lot of things happening leading up to this point, there's still a lot of ways that you can support survivors or people that have been diagnosed with breast cancer.
And so we put together a story about different ways that you can help and different fundraisers that are going on and different events that are going on.
So we've got some in Oshkosh, some in Milwaukee, we've got one in Plymouth, we've got one in Hartford.
So
in the newsletter we've always got a different story kind of looking at those kinds of things and there are other ways where you can support your your long you know and um but yeah so it's really great to see.
Okay, check those out.
And then finally, of course, with the government shutdown, and it appears that supplemental nutrition assistance funding or SNAP funding will be running out.
And that is going to put some severe, excuse me, severe pressure on families and food banks and more, where people are looking for whatever resources they can find to carry us forward as the shutdown rolls on.
Yeah, that's right.
And this is going to affect about 700,000 Wisconsinites.
And so it's really important to
understand what's happening and also understand how you can help and how those in need can receive help.
So again, we put together a different list of ways or places where help is available where you can receive food assistance.
Local food pantries are really great.
They're in very high demand right now because of this.
So if you're able, like volunteering your time, donating money, money is able to stretch really far with local food banks because they're able to buy in bulk.
Or if you're able to donate food, non-perishables, just make sure you
do some research on where you're donating, what they need, what would be best to donate, because it's some places accept produce, some places don't.
You want to be sure that you're donating what is really helpful.
Yeah, don't just grab, you know, the things in your cupboard that are, you know, past their expiration date and try to actually think of this as doing some good for a family that is in need and look at what those needs are.
Because again, we don't have, we just talked yesterday, a story that ProPublica did earlier this month about all this emergency food that was going to be going to food pantries.
the Trump administration just went and canceled it all last over the summer and we're just finding out all about that.
So food pantries are are really struggling and really appreciate the donations and you can learn much more about it in our newsletter articles.
Sign up for that newsletter over at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Ellie Bordeaux, thank you so much as always.
Happy Halloween to you.
Yes, same to you.
Have a good one.
All right, thank you.
Still ahead, we're going to have our homeroom segment with State Representative Angelina Cruz, going to be talking about what she's seen on the Assembly Education Committee and what she is saying about some of the politics being played by recent controversy at the DPI when it comes to unprofessional conduct done by teachers.
From the heart of America's Up North Live from Lake Visota, thanks for making this place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Krightlow, powered by Up North News here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
It is a Wednesday morning.
It's October 29th and we would love to have your input at 855-755-CIVIC 855-752-4842.
Call the number or text it or use the Civic Media app to call or text or send us a voice note and find out what's on your mind today.
Let's do a story up north here from the 7th Congressional District where there is a new Republican candidate in the race.
to succeed Tom Tiffany who is leaving the 7th congressional district seat to run for governor.
Ashland attorney Paul Waskren is getting into the race.
A lot of these details coming from Lawrence Andrea at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Paul Waskren was previously a licensed stock and bond broker
and eventually became a corporate attorney working for a number of law firms.
And he said he was kick starting his campaign with $1 million of a personal investment into his campaign.
Full disclosure, when I ran for the seventh congressional district seat in 2012, I did not put $1 million of personal money into it.
I did not have $1 million of personal money to put into it, but the corporate attorney
is able to do that.
And he's also able to give you a quote like this.
And this is the actual quote from Paul Washgren, Republican candidate for Congress up north in the 7th District.
Quote, I'm running for Congress because we need more successful businessmen like Donald Trump and Ron Johnson to shake up the status quo and revitalize our communities.
And I would now like to offer a heartfelt apology for anybody who snorted or blew coffee out their nose upon hearing that, but I'm going to read it again anyway.
I'm running for Congress because we need more successful businessmen like Donald Trump and Ron Johnson.
One of them married into the family business, one of them inherited the family business and built absolutely nothing on their own.
But have been rather successful at playing you and me and everybody else for the sucker and getting us to pay for their tax breaks that help fund their expansion.
And that is apparently what somebody would like to do from the congressional seat up north.
Former Democratic State Representative Fred Clark recently announced his candidacy for the 7th District right here on our radio show.
There are other Democrats and Republicans that have gotten in are looking to get into the race.
So it looks like there will be primaries both for Democratic and Republican voters in the 7th Congressional District, much like there will be in the 3rd Congressional District.
and for governor and for other races.
So again, do keep in mind that there will be an important primary next August, August 11th, to determine who is actually on the ballot in November of next year.
Your vote is going to count for so much next August, whether you are Republican or Democrat.
Speaking of the third congressional district primary, a big news there this morning.
The press release just coming out from Rebecca Cook, who is announcing that Senator Tammy Baldwin has endorsed her for Congress in the third congressional district and a video shared on social media.
According to Cook's campaign, Baldwin lays out why Rebecca Cook would be the best candidate to defeat incumbent Derek Van Orden.
Baldwin said, as I travel around Western Wisconsin last year, campaigning for my own reelection, I got to know Rebecca and see her up close on the campaign trail.
I know Rebecca will fight for the people of Western Wisconsin if we elector the Congress.
Over the past 10 months, we've seen what Republican control of Washington has meant for Wisconsin families, rising costs, fewer healthcare options as providers are forced to close, needless trade wars that have hurt Wisconsin farmers, and the constant threats to our democracy.
However, we have a real opportunity next year to provide some checks and balances to fight back against these attacks, and it starts with electing Rebecca Cook to Congress.
The announcement from Cook's campaign says there is new polling that shows that she would be leading Derek Van Orden 44 to 42% in a head-to-head matchup that leaves another 13% still undecided.
Rebecca Cook has also been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Alyssa Slotkin, 15 other members of Congress, State Senator Brad Paff, and then a lengthy list of unions and other groups that has put together a campaign for somebody who came close to unsealing Derek Van Orden last time.
But again, there will be a primary in that race as Eau Claire City Council.
President Emily Berge has put herself in the race as well with, again, some folks believing that Rebecca Cook came as close as she could get and that they would like to try a different nominee.
Now, again, as more support coalesces around Rebecca Cook.
that might make the question moot.
There is also still time for other candidates to get into the race.
Again, we won't know who's on the ballot until June 1st of next year when nominating petitions have to be turned in.
But for now, Becca Cook racking up a big endorsement today by announcing that Senator Tammy Baldwin is behind her campaign.
Let's check a little sports here at 728 right now.
The Milwaukee Bucks were winners last night over the New York Knicks 121 to 111.
Yannis Antutukupo had 37 points.
The Bucks were down 12 points at halftime, but managed to come back and win.
Milwaukee's Ryan Rollins added a career high 25 points.
Kevin Porter Jr.
missed his third straight game with a sprained left ankle.
It appeared to be a bad sprain.
And Coach Doc Rivers says it'll be a little while yet before
Kevin Porter Jr.
is ready to come back.
The Bucks will be hosting Golden State tomorrow.
There will be sports across the Civic Media Radio Network to tell you about as well, starting this evening with the Wisconsin Badger Men's Basketball team.
They have one more tune-up game.
It'll be against UW-Platteville at the Cole Center.
Coverage begins at 6.30 on some of the stations of the Civic Media Radio Network.
Head over to civicmedia.us to learn more.
And then on Thursday, there's Badger Men's Hockey to be played.
WFHR in Wisconsin Rapids carries the Badger Men's Hockey Games and coverage will begin at 7.30 tomorrow.
Head over to wfhr.com for more about that and all the other sports programs that you can find there.
All right, coming up, we're going to talk to State Representative Angelina Cruz in our homeroom segment to discuss education in the state, accusations of teacher misconduct, and how some politicians have been treating this controversy.
I'm Pat Crightlow from Up North News and you're listening to the Civic Media Radio Network.
Welcome back it's time for our homeroom segment here where we talk about public education in Wisconsin and the ongoing need to strengthen it and oftentimes defend it as well and this time around we're talking to a member of the assembly education committee state representative Angelina Cruz from the Racine area joins us now representative Cruz good morning how are you?
Good morning, Pat.
I'm doing well.
How are
you?
Very good.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
We've got a few different things to cover here.
We will be getting into voucher school transparency, for example, in just a bit here.
But there's also something to be said for one of the more recent controversies and the way that it's being handled with accusations of teacher misconduct in our classrooms and how it's being handled by the Department of Public Instruction.
And on social media, you had some very strong words to say for people who.
are maybe right to be concerned about the case, but the way that they're handling it sure seems to be more political than need be.
Do you feel like I'm describing that well?
I think you're describing it perfectly.
I am very frustrated with the way in which the topic was handled.
I sit on the GOAT committee, which is the Government Operations Accountability and Transparency Committee.
And we held a hearing last Thursday in response to a CapTimes investigation that found more than 200 Wisconsin teachers accused of sexual misconduct, kept their licenses.
And so I do want to underscore the seriousness of the issue as a veteran public school teacher.
I prepared for the hearing.
I came ready to ask some questions to help both law enforcement.
It was my understanding that law enforcement and the Department of Public Instruction representatives were going to appear to testify on the topic.
So I prepared with questions about how best we in the legislature could help support their work in more effectively addressing this issue.
And that unfortunately is not what seemed to be the goal of my Republican colleagues in that hearing.
They simply wanted to, well, I mean, the way that you put it is we got three hours of partisan grandstanding, no solutions, no commitments, just noise.
One Republican member even waved around an inappropriate picture talking about curriculum.
You described it as tone deaf, essentially, some of the conduct that you witnessed in this committee
hearing.
Absolutely with tone deaf.
It was about three hours of, as you stated or quoted from my post, political grandstanding.
I had to wait nearly two hours before the chair of the committee recognized me to ask my questions, at which point I used that opportunity to sort of try to help.
circle things back to the conversation, rein in what I thought I had heard from both law enforcement and the Department of Public Instruction testimony in terms of what we could do to help.
And they clearly identified we need clear statutory language around this issue.
We need proper staffing and training for people that work in the public school system from DPI all the way down to the school districts.
We need better technology to upgrade DPI systems in order to track these cases and to report these cases.
And we need consistent licensure standards for public school teachers are required to be licensed to teach in the classroom, private school teachers are not.
So we have a whole universe of
of teachers in the state of Wisconsin who are not licensed teachers and they serve in the private school voucher sector.
And so rather than sort of drill down on what I had heard were proposed solutions, we just, it was what I would describe as sort of bad performance art from my Republican colleagues.
it certainly did seem that way and again unnecessarily so when you could be looking at potential solutions but you've already outlined some of the areas where you could seek to create an environment where these kinds of things can't happen in the future but
I noticed that a few of those things you mentioned would require a commitment of resources, and that is not something that your Republican colleagues are rushing to provide to our public schools.
That's correct.
And I think that's part of what they are trying.
to do.
I mean, look, I can't speak to their personal intentions, right?
But it seems to me we have the opportunity to sit down with people who are engaged in the work day to day, who are coming to us asking for help.
We have an opportunity to create this forum in which we're listening to what they think we can do as legislators to help them more effectively do their work.
And rather than hearing those solutions, they
consistently pivot away from the fact that this Republican controlled legislature has consistently underfunded or starved out public schools for the better part of over two decades.
And that I think is really the crux of the conversation and what we need to address in the state legislature.
We have a constitutional obligation to fully fund public schools and we are not doing that.
No, it's a lot easier to simply take that problem and use it as a club to, you know, bash public schools and to say, well, they're hopelessly broken and maybe that's why more tax dollars need to go to a voucher school system.
But as you've said once, but we're gonna say it again, these private schools are not any more accountable, not any more transparent.
In fact, you could argue less so.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's not even an argument.
It's just stating facts, right?
If we line up public schools in all the things that we are, all the ways in which we are to responsibly report to our taxpayers, property taxpayers, and the people of Wisconsin, the open transparency, the licensure standards for teachers,
the ways in which we are responsible stewards of tax dollars and juxtapose that with the voucher system in which it's a completely unaccountable, not transparent system.
It's essentially a shell game in terms of we're paying for two school systems as property taxpayers and one is transparent and one is not.
That's right.
We're talking to State Representative Angelina Cruz of Racine who's on the Assembly Education Committee.
Tony puts up on YouTube I like this conversation constructive and focused on how to fix DPI not just complaining about State Superintendent Jill Underly.
Well Tony I don't mean to disappoint you but I will state again for the record that I have said Dr. Underly should have either she really should have had
a good back and forth with the reporter or reporters investigating this and or talk to a legislative committee.
I personally think that if she had shown up to the legislative committee what you thought was a circus last week I think would have been even more so knowing the reckless behavior that some of these lawmakers you know take part in.
I would have much rather seen her be up front with the cap times, and there's still her ability to do that.
I think we should in the future.
So I don't want to leave the topic without, you know, saying that about Dr. Underly.
I don't know how you thought she could have or should have handled herself.
But again, we can talk about, you know, how she did things all day long, but we've got to eventually fix the system and make things safe for the kids.
Absolutely.
You know, I don't...
I agree.
She should have been at the hearing, absolutely.
I do think that there's still an opportunity for her to step forward and sort of clear the air on some of the issues that have been surfaced and to engage with the legislature in terms of how to...
mindfully address these issues moving forward.
But I do also want to point out the fact that all of these committees are controlled by, again, my Republican colleagues.
And so I don't think many people know that when our committee meetings are scheduled, it is on a very short timeline.
And so I don't know the particulars of trying to schedule this.
committee meeting and coordinating that with Dr. Underly and the DPI.
What I can speak to is my personal experience as somebody who sits on these committees.
I don't know when these committee hearings are happening until usually, typically, days before they happen.
So I have two committee meetings scheduled to happen tomorrow, Thursday, October 30th that I
We're not confirmed with my office until yesterday or the day before.
So we're working on a really short timeline, and this is just sort of another game they play in terms of, from my perspective, avoiding actually addressing issues, very serious issues that need to be addressed.
Oh, without a doubt.
And I will simply say, as a former legislator, having watched when things worked under a better system, that this is recklessly unprofessional, the way that they schedule meetings on short notice, and the way that they make members of the minority party wait, sometimes, like you said, two hours before speaking.
That simply never happened before this bunch took over.
And it is absolutely, without shame, the way that they run these kinds of operations.
I would not be surprised in the least if they intentionally scheduled this date knowing already that Dr. Underly was going to be out of town.
I can't prove that.
I'm saying their past behavior indicates I would not be surprised if that was the case.
But this is again a committee that could be looking into so many other things, not the least of which is one that we've touched on, the unaccountability in the voucher program, which is, you know, hurtling at high speed toward costing taxpayers a billion dollars a year.
And now we're looking at the potential of those enrollment caps coming off the voucher school program.
And if you can't cap enrollment, Representative Cruz, how bad could it get for taxpayers?
You know, my concern as a longtime education advocate for just by way of background for people that don't know, I'm a public school teacher.
I started teaching in 2003.
I am the president of my local teachers union.
I was elected in 2015.
And so I have a degree in educational policy.
This is a topic that I have unique expertise in.
And so my concern is that we will in fact, as a state legislature, blow a complete hole into our state budget should the caps come off of vouchers.
We put $0 just to be clear this biennium into general aid for public schools.
So for the next two years, $0 go into public schools in general aid.
Meanwhile, we have voucher schools receiving
to the tune of $1.8 billion just in this biennium for the voucher program.
And as you said, the CAPS are scheduled to come off in 2026.
So the state legislature seems, the Republican legislature seems to have a deep commitment to investing in this completely unaccountable system while they're starving out our public school system.
And so it's just a huge disservice.
not just to the children of Wisconsin, but also to the property taxpayers of Wisconsin, to our local communities.
And that's what it makes it just that much more egregious that they may be playing politics with a very genuine controversy simply to advance a political agenda.
State Representative Angelina Cruz from Racine is on the Education Committee, as well as the GOAT Committee that we'll talk about again down the road.
Representative Cruz, thank you very much for your time and for your service.
Have a great day.
Thank you, you too, Pat.
Thanks for having
me.
Thank you, Pat.
Coming up in our next hour, we will be talking to Earl Ingram from the What's Going On podcast and find out what he's talking about that you can get from CivicMedia.us to sign up for the podcast there.
And Melissa Baldoff will have our climate check as well, talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa barreling through Jamaica and crossing over into Cuba.
And yet the parent agency of the National Weather Service is relying on volunteers for observations and data collection.
I'm Pat Critello.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Hey, welcome back.
It is 752 right now.
It is 34 degrees in the Chippewa Valley, 39 in La Crosse.
Emery's at 37.
It's 41 in Oshkosh and 41 in Boscobel, where Jimmy Kuska joins us.
Before that, I know you can't see it, but Parker, Dave from New Berlin, sent in a photo by text with the caption, good morning, Patrick, how's my hair today?
You want to rate his hairstyle for this morning?
I'd give it a solid eight.
In other words, maybe you wanted to part it a little bit differently, but I like that we're being asked to see how people look before they head up for the day here.
I will say Dave has a better beard than I do.
I wish that I could grow an actual beard.
You're trying so hard to grow that beard to be shaggy.
I'm
trying so hard to have facial hair and it won't happen.
Ah, well, you know, they still, there's costume stores.
We can take care of it one way or another.
Jimmy, do you, do you go out for Halloween or do you dress up to hand out candy or anything like that?
You know, I'm 40 years old.
I, this is my beard.
Um, out of the stream, you can't hear it or see it on the radio.
Obviously this is like three weeks for me.
This is all I can do Parker.
So, you know, so I guess I have you be
there, but yeah, I got nothing, man.
Um,
it's okay.
No shame in that, you know,
But
my Halloween plans are getting ready.
My son turned seven today.
So my Halloween plans center around celebrating his birthday, which always makes it an easy thing because, you
know,
there's always lots of candy and treats visible this time of year.
So it makes the theme very easy most years.
Oh, I know I had one daughter's birthday on Monday, another daughter has a birthday tomorrow.
So yes, the Halloween candy is always great.
You know, they never go without sweets.
on their birthday week, no doubt there.
Jimmy Koska, Civic Media's sports director.
And I have not even mentioned the World Series from last night.
It's starting to fade into memory here, but it is exciting.
It's a 2-2 series now.
Yeah, now we're back to a best of three.
It's going to go back to Toronto.
And I think what the Blue Jays have shown in the series is nothing unlike, it's like what they've done all year.
They led Major League Baseball in...
coming from behind in victories this year with 49.
So they've had a series and a game last night where they had to once again, after being scored upon first, we're able to come from behind, rally, make another win and get this thing back to Toronto.
It's been a fun series so far.
I don't know if you guys were up for the 18 inning marathon the other night.
I'm going to say no, no.
You
were.
You were.
Okay.
I guess I get sucked into.
like really there's like two categories of things, really odd sporting events.
So like an 18 in baseball game is right up my alley.
And whatever my wife is watching that is usually some kind of romcom and I'll just sit there and watch it.
I don't know why it's, I've got moth to a light bulb with these things.
So those are the two categories of things that I will just somehow find myself sucked into and give up so much time
watching.
There aren't a lot of people aren't as many people joining you as last time around viewership for the first two games of the World Series between the Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays dropped 14% from last year's matchup.
But that was the Dodgers and the Yankees.
So needless to say, however, the audiences in Canada and Japan set records.
between Shohei Otani and other Japanese players and Toronto being in there but at this point US viewership about 14 and a half million viewers compared to 12 and a half million viewers last year and of course You know if you really want to see the records see when the Cubs broke their 108 year title drought back in 2016 by winning then Cubs fans will watch any they'll watch paint dry if it's if it's in the hope of getting another World Series
Dang.
It's either the exchange rates or the fact that it's major markets.
I'm not sure what to go with there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So we've got high school football.
It's level two right this week.
Yep.
For 11 player, it's a level two.
For eight player, it's to the quarter finals this week.
So we've moved right along there.
It's the state cross country meet this week in Wisconsin Rapids next week.
In the week after, we get into volleyball and soccer.
So we are wrapping up fall sports across Wisconsin.
Practices begin for winter sports here in a couple of weeks as we get into November.
So we are moving right along in terms of sports seasons, both in high school and in college.
College, especially here in Wisconsin with the WIAC and D3.
We are at the exhibition stage right now with basketball, including Wisconsin hosting UW-Platteville tonight in the Guarding Against Cancer game.
That game is in Madison tonight.
at the brothers, Greg guard and Jeff guard coaching.
It's one another.
I'm sure it makes for interesting conversations at the Thanksgiving table every year, but that is a pretty solid matchup.
I met my kids birthday party tonight.
So I won't be at the game as I usually go to UW-Platteville games even they're on the road and it's somewhere drivable, but tonight got a.
I got a higher
priority today.
You can catch it on the radio.
It's going to be on three different civic media stations.
Coverage begins at 6.30.
You like that?
See, I got that in there.
Yeah, and you can
add a fourth civic media station because now we have WMI and Ironwood.
So we now have four civic media stations that are Badger's Hoops Aviliate.
So
that's.
That's outstanding.
I will, I will, I will make that fix.
And then of course that's, that's tonight and then tomorrow you've got Badger Men's hockey.
They're taking on the Minnesota Gophers coverage begins at seven 30 tomorrow on WFHR in Wisconsin Rapids, which covers all of the Badger Men's hockey games.
Yep.
And Ironwood will be the same kind of station as FHR.
But now that they're on board, I know this happened like the last week, but it is really cool that we've got five new stations up in the UP at Civic Media.
And one of them is in all sports Badgers affiliate.
So we're pretty excited.
Civic Media is just a juggernaut.
Look at this, the expansion that's going on here.
We've also got the Packers playing Carolina Sunday.
That is a 10 a.m.
start time for the pregame.
Noon would be the kickoff on that.
And you're saying, wait, Pat, you forgot Badger football.
No, mercifully.
No game.
You can't lose
this week.
Can't lose.
Nope.
Nope.
I
got a feeling.
There's always a way.
Oh, I don't know.
Well,
there won't be any news coming out of Madison this week or next week.
They're well into the bi-week at this point.
And all signs just seem to be no matter what the Badgers are doing at this point.
A
lot
of other programs have been firing their head coaches.
And that
makes the
competition to hire a new coach is going to be incredible because with so many
major high D1, whatever you want to call them, conference teams that are looking for coaches now.
If the badges were to make a move, they would be in a long line of schools looking for their next head coach.
Yes, they would.
So maybe we just try to fix what we got here.
I don't know.
And of course, the Bucks beat the Knicks last night, 121 to 111, Yanis with 37 points, and they will next host Golden State tomorrow.
Jimmy Koska, thank you so much for all that and more.
Have a great day.
You too.
All right.
Coming up next, we're going to be talking
to Earl Ingram and finding out what's going on the what's going on podcast with Earl right after the news.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News and this is the Civic Media Radio Network.
