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Good morning, 806.
Welcome back.
Nice to have you up north on this Monday morning, December 8th.
2025, Parker Olson producing things down in Madison Studio A2, John and Gordy standing by in Madison Studio A1 at Civic Media Headquarters.
Coming up in our next half hour, Richard Trent, the National Executive Director for Main Street Alliance, a group of small businesses.
unhappy with the way that a lot of their employees are going to have to be paying a lot more for health insurance because of what congressional representatives like Derek van Orden have decided this year while in power in Washington.
So stick around for that interview.
And we'll wrap things up with our final visit with Jane Mattenair.
This is the final week for Mattenair on air with Jane and Greg starting at nine o'clock this morning before Jane's retirement.
It has been a melancholy kind of few days here with Chains Retirement coming up and my former co-anchor Judy Clark last Friday was her last day on air.
We had her retirement party over the weekend.
Again, just two wonderful, amazing broadcast legends who deserve all the good things that come their way.
And that brings us to John and Gordy, two broadcast legends who have been told they will never be allowed to retire and enjoy all the good things that should be coming their way.
Guys, good morning.
How are you?
Good
Pat.
yep.
It won't be long until, you know, you just, you're permanently wearing headsets and you're able to go about your day and you're just talking to the crowd while you're, you know, in the produce aisle at the grocery store or something
that, you know?
entertain us that way.
How was your weekend?
round.
We have we have had another instance.
I believe this is at least the third of people going through the ice with at least two fatalities.
Oh, no.
And so I mean, I bring that up just to again, remind folks, it's way too early for that.
Yeah, yeah, it's been cold outside, but it's got to be a lot colder for a lot longer before you even try that kind of stuff out there.
Because
I've been down there like Manona, and I'm sure Mendoza to an extent as well.
But I mean, people love fishing out there all winter.
But
You got to wait.
It just seems like a dumb idea to take a vehicle out on the ice.
yeah.
Yeah.
And these are people that we're not even at that point yet.
They're just walking out there and they're going right
through.
It's easy to misjudge the ice.
I mean, we still have a
of a local legend here about the time that we watched a like a road grader.
go through the ice.
They were
they were prepping part of the ice here on Lake Wissota for a snowmobile racing.
They're like getting the oval ready to go and they thought it was the ice was thick enough for a road grader and they were wrong.
That's that is a very expensive towing bill to get things
Big one.
Yes.
Yeah.
So come back or Sunday then.
I mean, I've talked
repeatedly about, you know, there's a little local watering hole that we go to and, you know, play games, you know, for small stakes, of course, on the game and munchies and everything.
Do you guys have a regular Packer Sunday routine, either one of you, or is it just kind of whatever your to-do list allows you to do?
Okay, so to what degree would you call yourselves multi-screen viewers?
Like, you know, you've got the game on, but there's something else that you want to see as well.
So I don't, you know, or maybe you're just going through social media and everything.
Do you do a lot of dual screen viewing with your TV time nowadays?
I
I
I've carried it too far when there's a debate, say a gubernatorial or a presidential debate.
And I will sit on the couch and watch it.
And there's a laptop open in front of me for taking notes and things.
But I'm also looking at my phone at social media and looking at the feedback of people about this candidate or that candidate.
And the first time you realize you're doing a three screen viewing of an event, you're like, maybe I need to unplug.
But at the moment, you're doing it right.
You're like, I am all coverage all the time.
I'm like Al Franken in the old Saturday Night Live bit with a little satellite
head.
that we have actually come to that point in our communication.
So is it possible to be too connected?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes, it most definitely
Yeah, I think
your your heartbeat, mind tracks, you know, breaths per minute, you know, while you're sleeping.
we discovered I had sleep apnea
to end up getting
I mean, so it can do all kinds of things, but I mean, you are, you've got info all the time and information overload is a very real thing, you know?
no.
Oh, hey.
Couldn't cancel
reminds me.
a story I want to ask you about and AI glasses are the perfect way to go about it.
So I saw this story as I was scrolling through social media and
I guess I don't want to give away the punchline, but I need to so I don't fool anybody else.
This is not a real new story, but I did not know this at the time.
And I'm scrolling up and I see and it says crane collapses at stadium under construction in Nashville.
and you're looking at the video and sure enough here's this construction crane and it comes down and it hits the top edge of the stadium.
Now I thought it was a little funny that I didn't really see like sadly we all remember what happened in Milwaukee back in 2000.
We saw you know exactly what kind of damage there was but this is like the crane fell and like sat there against the edge of the stadium which should have been my first clue but it wasn't.
I thought oh no and I started looking around for other news coverage of it and I'm not finding anything and then you look at the very bottom of the original
post and it says, this video generated by AI.
like,
sons of like,
be doing that, putting up, putting up, you know, what was a legitimately fake news story.
And then mentioned at the very bottom that this was an AI thing, you know, and I mean, that's
I think of myself as a savvy, you know, news consumer, internet viewer.
And yet, you know, if, if I'm looking around trying to get a second source on this, how many other people don't, you know,
just run
So, John, you go ahead and get those glasses, but we got, I feel like we got to tape a little warning label on the inside of it.
Don't believe everything the first time, you know.
Well, you see, they
Yeah, okay.
I mean, they told you that you had a very bottom.
You didn't look for it.
And the problem is, even if they put it on screen, we don't see it sometimes.
And we do pursue and we look up the story and we try to get a second source.
And we don't get it.
And then we don't use
it.
There was an instance last week as I was watching TMZ about somebody who'd put up, again, a fake AI video of who's in prison?
Did he is in prison right now?
And it was him having just the best time and you saw the TMZ watermark.
on the video.
they had to make clear.
No, that's not, that's not our video.
So you can't even trust if it's if it's watermarked that that is a legitimate source of information.
I don't know what to believe anymore, guys.
I don't even know that I'm really talking to YouTube right now.
This
be Catherine down there just putting words in a keyboard and making it come out of your robotic mouths over there.
See, now I
Say, now I know it's not real because otherwise what you would have said next is no, Pat, but Catherine is extremely talented and is fully capable of doing these wonderful things, but you didn't say that.
So I know
Catherine typing things up back there.
What else gets covered on a day like this where the Packers win and everybody's in a good mood starting off the week?
I mean, this is the kind of game we love to see.
And they are really, truly in the game.
I mean, I have to say that I think the Bears played well.
I mean, they really hung in there till the end.
That interception in the end zone killed it, of course.
But boy, they were they were threatening.
question they were asking at before the pass was, you know, if that, that could have, when I first saw the ball going through the air, we all thought
thing.
Oh, yeah.
You know, they're going to get a touchdown.
then the, the, the question that they were already asking us, will they just kick the extra point and go to overtime?
Or will they go for two and try to win the game right right there, right?
And obviously we won't know the answer now, but my my guess was that they were going to try to go for two and just win the game right there.
day.
It was a cold day, but it wasn't like a snow globe situation.
Like there was
game in Buffalo yesterday where again, you know, you could you could barely see.
You could barely see.
And now they've of course they've got the the the graphics talk about things that aren't real that super impose the field markings on there so you
where the where the yard lines are.
Yeah,
Oh, Parker, I got to take you back to the fall.
log bowl then, that game
Soldier Field sometime in the 90s where
couldn't see anything unless it was right in front of the camera.
That was
an amazing game.
And ever since then, I'm always amazed at the way that the technology does the field markings.
Now, of course, they're measuring the strike zone and baseball and everything else that it allows you to do.
So on the one hand, I'm saying, hey, don't believe all the technology.
And on the other hand,
like, isn't this technology great?
We can do anything we want.
As
trust our robot overlords to not manipulate the sports for
That's right.
But you know, I questioned some of the calls by the officials.
Oh, yes.
You know, those catch, there was a catch, a definite catch.
And then they said it really touched the ground.
I completely disagree with that.
I did.
You know, they always do this to us.
They always give the advantage to the bears every time we play.
I don't know what the officials are getting paid.
Boy, oh boy, they're making a lot of money from the bear team.
I
know.
that's all.
There was a game or two in the recent past where it looked like we might have gotten a couple of breaks.
like
think it all evens out, but
we'd have nothing to talk about if there weren't these perceived injustices.
that up.
did not.
the
one and two ranked teams in the country and still
meet for the national championship.
So yeah, we'll have a little something to follow and John and Gordy will do that weekdays across the Civic Media Network in the afternoon.
And of course, mornings in Madison on 92.7 WM DX.
Thank you guys very much.
All right,
All right, have a great start to the week.
We will be back still ahead.
Richard Trent will be joining us from Maine
Street Alliance sees the National Executive Director.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News, this is the Civic Media Radio
Network.
So I mentioned you could hear John and Gordy weekdays in the afternoon now across the network in mornings at the Civic Media Station in Madison and if you'd like to track where all the shows are what they're talking about who's been a guest and more
Sign up for Civic Media's daily newsletter filled with show highlights, links, and more.
CivicMediaToday.substack.com.
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So today the U.S.
Supreme Court is going to be hearing arguments in a case that could
undo the many independent agencies that oversee everything from consumer protection to worker protection to environmental protection and much more and determine if there will be mostly independent boards that can deal with these issues that are specialized and could really benefit from experts or if
political lackeys will be the ones who are running these all the time and that public service will completely be based on partisan whims.
And based on the current record of the conservative justices at the U.S.
Supreme Court, it's looking a lot like independent agencies may be on the way out.
Chief Justice John Roberts has been making that case for more than 40 years.
Back to his days as a young man working in the Reagan administration and in 2010 he wrote a Supreme Court decision all about independent agencies and boards and says they prevent a chief executive from being fully accountable for discharging his duties.
That certainly is one way to look at it.
Give a listen to this list.
These are, I don't dare read all of these, but all of these independent agencies
could be impacted if, in a case before the Supreme Court today, they ultimately rule that a president on a whim can fire all the members of the board, put his own political stooges on there, they can fire people at will rather than with cause, and greatly change the public service trajectory of these agencies.
And before I even read it, I mean, just keep in mind what we already learned
what happened on Friday when an entirely new panel that talked about recommendations for vaccines removed the recommendation for a vital hepatitis B vaccine for newborns and the incredible damage that could be done to baby's health moving forward as a result of it.
And that's just one board where again President Trump was able to fire everybody and put a bunch of quacks on there instead.
Now imagine that happening with the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
Just imagine a bunch of corporate stooges on that one.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Well, let's just load that one up with a bunch of hedge funds managers.
The Commission on Civil Rights.
Well, you can imagine the white supremacists that could be appointed to something like that.
If again, you've got a Congress that has abdicated any oversight when it comes to
vetting these nominees.
There's the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which brings me back to the really old Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Ackroyd, the bag of broken glass.
And what a great kid's toy that would be.
And we have a Consumer Product Safety Commission that theoretically could move in that direction with this Supreme Court case that's being heard today.
There's the Federal Labor Relations Authority, again, talking about workers' rights.
the Federal Maritime Commission, the Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Legal Services Corporation that helps provide legal aid to low-income Americans for civil cases.
There's the Merit Systems Protection Board that again helps protect federal workers from political interference.
There's the National Indian Gaming Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Transportation Safety Board.
How much better or worse would you feel getting out an airplane if it was not only Sean Duffy, a Secretary of Transportation, but that he and Donald Trump got to pick who was on the National Transportation Safety Board?
There's the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, the U.S.
Institute of Peace, which Donald Trump has now renamed the Donald Trump
Institute of Peace for a guy that is doing exactly what Vladimir Putin wants him to do when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
And of course, there's the US Postal Service Board of Governors.
As we learned in Trump's first term, putting Louis DeJoy in as Postmaster General, somebody whose entire business experience is about the private companies that would like the US Postal Service to go away.
and postal service took a big hit as a result of the actions in Trump's first term.
And that's not even counting the ones like the Federal Election Commission, National Credit Union Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the International Trade Commission.
These are all independent agencies that risk losing their independence.
In a case that's gonna be taken up by the US Supreme Court today, we may not learn
the ruling until June.
But I have a feeling the arguments that we're going to hear today will make clear that at least five maybe all six conservative justices will take steps to dismantle the independence of these agencies, which it is again, it's easy to just bring up the word bureaucrat.
And it's easy to bring up the word regulation.
You have to
work a little harder to replace bureaucrats with the word experts and replace regulations with the word protections.
Now, I'm not saying there can't be over-regulation.
I'm not saying that there can't be some bureaucrats who are bad at their job or not really compassionate to the people who are filling out applications and asking for help.
But now try getting rid of all that entirely.
Try going to the other extreme side of that equation.
Tell me how that isn't so much worse than what we've got right now.
Coming up next, Richard Trent, the executive director of Main Street Alliance, a group of small business owners who do not necessarily align with big business when it comes to what Congress and the president should be doing in the nation's capital.
We'll find out about their latest public awareness campaign.
Coming up next, I'm Pat Krightlump.
You're up north.
Remember to get yourself signed up for the up North news newsletters plural head over to up north news wi.com click subscribe in the top banner Be part of our weekday newsletters that Ellie Bordeaux puts together There's an addition today that has more suggestions for great community gift giving over the holidays And of course there's my Sunday morning newsletter as well with more of a bent on Wisconsin politics and a question of the week this week that asks about wedding barns and whether these small world businesses
should be getting a fairer shake from the legislature when it comes to alcohol sales.
So again, sign up for those newsletters at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
We're going to bring back in Richard Trent here from Main Street Alliance and he's the executive director of Main Street Action and Main Street Action PAC and all about a campaign that is helping to bring attention to something that
We can't change it now.
You know, the big bloated boondoggle has already passed into law with all of the impacts that are going to come from it.
There's going to be a vote in the Senate this week on those enhanced premium tax credits.
But as Congressman Mark Pocan told us last week, probably nothing much will come of it.
But just because there's nothing that might change now doesn't mean we should stop talking about it and holding
account, holding to account, the people who put us in that position.
And Richard Trent joins us now to talk more about that.
Richard, good morning.
Thanks for being here.
How are you?
It's going well.
Thank you very much for being here.
You announced recently the launch of a multi-state congressional accountability campaign to inform voters about the harmful impacts of that mega bill that President Trump and Republicans pushed through.
And there will be some targeted congressional districts, including the third congressional district in Western and Central Wisconsin.
Tell us a bit more about Main Street
action and the decision to have this kind of a public awareness campaign get launched?
I mean, the big push, big idea behind this accountability push is that so many leaders, elected officials will use Main Street folks and folks back home and constituents and small business owners as these props to talk about how they really have a vested interest in seeing their communities do well.
And then they go back to Congress and they pass something like the big ugly bill, which is a massive tax cut for the wealthiest people in this country and a massive gutting of the care infrastructure that actually keeps a lot of our local economies thriving.
This accountability campaign is designed to make sure that those elected leaders can't just come back home comfortably, walk into their coffee shop, walk into their neighborhood bar.
and not hear from people about it.
They've gone on too long under the cover of, oh, no, we're pro-business, pro-main street, while actively passing policies that destroy local business, that destroy the viability for a lot of our local entrepreneurs, and we won't have it.
So that's what Main Street Action is taking on.
Wisconsin 3 is kind of a focal point because Derek Van Orden is kind of an exemplar of this
Talking pro Main Street and out of one side of his mouth while actively passing policies that destroy Main Street out of the other And so we want to make sure that he hears from his constituents that you can't keep doing this and expect it to go unnoticed
it is
odd that a congressman like Derek Van Orden, who hasn't held a genuine town hall, would go before a group, as he did recently, a group of young Republicans having their 1848 gala in economy walk.
And his quote to them was, I'd take a punch in the face for you.
I will fight tirelessly for your freedoms.
So Derek Van Orden says he'll take a punch in the face for you, but he won't hold a town hall for you, it seems.
Not only will he not hold a town hall, he'll also actively make it harder for working families to access affordable health care.
I mean, this is maybe one of the most despicable aspects of kind of the recent legislative cycle.
But you've got $4 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
And then you've got a massive
destruction of the care infrastructure that a lot of folks rely on.
I mean, I don't think it's a surprise that some of the weakest and most sluggish economies in this country are also the most sick and under healthcare, sorry, with the worst access to healthcare.
unbelievably high cancer rates constantly at the bottom of the list for America's economies.
That's not a coincidence.
If people are too sick to show up to work, if families are actively having to choose between collecting a paycheck and taking care of loved ones, then you're not going to have a thriving economy.
And so this is what we want folks like Derek Van Orden to hear and to know that his constituents understand kind of the double talk that's happening.
We are visiting with Richard Trent.
He's the executive director.
MainStreetAlliance.org is the website.
Main Street Action, Main Street Action Pack is the group that is having this congressional accountability campaign.
Let us though, Richard, go back to basics for just a moment.
I try to do this every time we've got somebody from Main Street Alliance on because there is this oversimplification that
all business must be Republican, conservative, they're against the affordable care, things like that.
And I always want to make sure that we point out the difference between these great big businesses that can offer their employees health insurance plans versus what small business owners want to be able to see for their own employees to have a level playing field when they don't have the means to offer their own health insurance plan.
So there's definitely not a one size fits all when it comes to businesses and policy.
One of the things that we do at Main Street Alliance and Main Street Action Fund is pointing out how the patchwork care economy, the fact that some folks that work for massive corporations get health care while the vast majority don't, is the thing that is actively contributing towards more corporate consolidation, more corporate concentration, and destroying competition at the local level.
Right now,
about 75% of working Wisconsinites do not have access to, for instance, another key care policy, paid leave.
If you woke up tomorrow, God forbid, and a partner was sick or diagnosed with something, paid leave makes it so that you don't have to choose between giving that partner or that loved one adequate care and continuing to collect a paycheck for your job and just keeping the family going.
That so many large corporations have enough of a large s to offer their employees paid leave or offer their employees consistent health care means that they have a competitive moat surrounding them.
And it makes it harder for other businesses that can offer health care that can't have a state backed paid leave policy competing.
And so this means that 75% of Wisconsinites without paid leave, that's three out of four Wisconsinites that are struggling right now in the event that something tragic happens to their family.
We have to uplift the voices of small business owners that are real visionaries for their communities.
So often small business owners, and this goes back to your larger question around.
big small businesses versus little small businesses and true small businesses.
So often small business owners get this rep as being like, they only care about what's going on with their business.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
My job of talking to small business owners, it's helped me realize that.
First and foremost, small business owners, a lot of them start their enterprises because they're being responsive to community need.
Because they heard folks in their community say, hey, you know what this town could use?
XYZ.
And then they actually started, right?
These are community servants.
And so they also have been visionaries for their community, helping us see the policies.
that can actually make our community stronger long before the elected officials even have the courage to fight for these policies.
And that's what we're trying to do with things like with this accountability campaign around health care, with paid leave, which we believe is going to be introduced in Wisconsin House in the next couple of days here.
We have to move from this is just how it has to be sort of, you know, Main Street talk to.
we can have nice things.
And it's always been the small business owners at the local level that have been invoking that message.
Yeah.
And again, for a party of Republicans that likes to talk about being in favor of their hometown businesses, instances like this would be their chance to show that.
We're talking to Richard Trent from Main Street Alliance and Main Street Action about a visibility campaign that not only is
targeting the third congressional district of Wisconsin, but also a district in a couple of districts in Iowa, a district in Virginia.
In every case, making sure that some 30,000 people or more in each district understand through, you know, billboards, digital ads, direct voter texting that health insurance rates are about to go up in a huge way.
And that
it didn't have to happen and I guess Richard that is the thing that still is most frustrating is that this didn't have to happen because this isn't saving anybody any money.
All of these cuts and all of these premium hikes are all in service of tax cuts for the very wealthy and that again that's great if you're in the upper crust here but if you're a main street business right now this whole thing just has to feel so unnecessary.
And the budgeting and the tax policy of this country, it's important because it's where this country's values actually show up.
And what we saw pass back in July with a big, big ugly bill and sort of subsequent pieces of legislation that have sort of the looming expiration of these affordable Care Act subsidies, you've got the Amazons of the world.
the largest corporations in this country, functionally paying a tax rate of zero, while working families continue to pay 20, 30% of their income.
And all this is happening in the backdrop of legislators making the wager of, well, we can pay for these massive, again, $4 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations and Americans by slashing Medicaid.
by slashing snap and food stamps, by allowing these affordable Care Act subsidies to expire so that in some places in Wisconsin, people's premiums are going to double and triple.
That's not hyperbole.
I think that's what we want to make clear in this accountability campaign.
Some of the numbers around the healthcare premium skyrocketing sound so ridiculous that people often think I'm joking or speaking in hyperbole when I'm talking about it.
I am literally saying that in Derek Van Orden's district, you're going to see working families, especially older couples that are still working.
Their premiums are about to go up 75% on average.
These are not exaggerated claims.
It's what's going to happen unless we speak up.
And it's just, I find that me and the small business owners, the 30,000 small business owners in our network, the 2,500 plus small business owners that are in Wisconsin,
we have to find the strength and the poise just to make it through some of these conversations with elected officials because of how infuriating it actually is.
And if you allowed yourself to just succumb to the anger and the fury, then it would be really, really bad.
And so I'm amazed every single time.
Chef Dan Jacobs of Milwaukee,
you know, diagnosed with Kennedy's disease, which often gets mistaken for ALS, debilitating neuromuscular disease.
Folks like Dandan, who have made Milwaukee and the surrounding area unbelievably vibrant and dynamic places, are we really going to tell folks like him that, oh, no, well, we've made the decision to trade off healthcare for you for the tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in the country?
No way.
And so that's what he's here in DC talking about.
And again, keeping that visibility up because just resigning yourself to that kind of fate isn't going to fix anything.
So to learn more, you can head over to MainStreetAlliance.org.
There's so many other issues that we didn't have time for this time.
Everything on health care, paid leave, housing and more, issues of fairness, issues of freedom, like tariff policy, access to capital.
So head to MainStreetAlliance.org to learn more.
Richard Trent, thank you so much.
Appreciate your time today.
All right.
You have a great day there.
When we come back, we will visit with Jane McNair one more time on these mornings powered by UpNorth News.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
civicmedia.us.
for
one
last visit with Jane Matinair.
Such a great song.
It is.
This is a limited time offer, folks, to hear Matinair on air.
Weekday mornings, 9 to 11, well, at least five more times.
Five
more
offer goes away as Jane Matinair joins us now.
You had such a smile on your face when you first came on, like, this is it, this is it.
You've worked for decades to get to this point.
to call your own shots and
it's kind of feels so good.
It really does.
I had a good friend text me over the weekend and just said, hey, you know, your last week's coming up, how are you feeling?
Well, you know, what's it like?
And I said, obviously, there's lots of mixed emotions.
I'm going to miss everyone so much.
I'm going to miss Greg and Calvin and just the.
discussions that we have and all the laughs that we have.
And I don't know if you've noticed this, but that's kind of through line through my life as laughter.
me alive and keeps me relatively sane.
But so I'm really going to miss that, but I am not going to miss the drive down here.
It takes me about an hour and 15 in the morning because I take this long, circuitous route because I'm afraid of everyone else on the freeway because they're insane.
So.
Um, yeah.
And I told her, I said, you know, there's a little, it's, it's, it's strange not having what's going to be on my schedule.
You know, I've been so highly scheduled and we live by the clock so much.
That's what we do.
It's the nature of our job.
But I said, you know what?
I'm satisfied.
I am satisfied.
And
I don't know that you can ask for anything more than that.
Exactly.
And I've pointed out the parallels multiple times here that my former co-anchor Judy Clark Friday was her last day before retirement.
We had her party on Saturday.
This is the first weekday that she's woken up in 40 years and not had a radio or TV job to go to.
And she couldn't have been happier.
about that because this business you know a lot of times you don't get to set the terms
when you're going to do something else and so you know it is real it is a real testimony to to Judy and to you that you know after years and years of patience and service you get to you know you get to dictate the time when you don't have to make that drive anymore.
Well, and I am so grateful to Civic Media for giving me this opportunity and allowing me to do it in the way that I want to do it.
That doesn't happen.
You know that as well as I do, Ped.
In so many instances, we don't get these choices.
And so for Civic Media to give me this gift is huge.
I'm really, really grateful.
From Jim and Brookfield on the text line.
Hello, Jane.
This is Jim and Brookfield currently in Malaga, Spain, wishing you a long and happy retirement.
I'm listening when I
but we'll probably miss your last day and want to wish you all the best.
Thank you so much, Jim.
That is so lovely.
Jim knows one of my sisters.
Oh, yeah.
And Jim and I met a couple of weeks back as he was passing through the area.
Just
a
wonderful person.
Yes, we realized we had shared history in trash.
He he'd worked in like environmental engineering work and that involved a lot of landfills and as a young reporter I basically had the landfill beat
Oh lucky man
as these county landfills, you know either closed or went private or had leaks or whatever the case may
be Wow,
oh, you see you never know when you're when your career first starts and you know my journalism professor saying oh mr. Crichtlow Yes, you must cover the county board solid waste committee because
The trash is where the money is.
Trash is where the money is.
And I could not have seen at this point that, you know, 40 years later, it would lead to this point.
But, you know, you never know how the road twists and turns along the way.
And how things are going to come full circle in some ways as well.
You never know.
You never know these little connections you make.
And I think now Judy, for example, had so many co-anchors.
I'm very proud to have been one of them.
But in a small market TV station, there's a lot of people.
people that come and go, you have been partnered up with so many folks over the years at different stations as well.
Sometimes I wonder if you had to had to write them all down someplace.
I actually did because when I was at the mix for almost 24 years and I had nine different partners.
So some of them lasted three months.
Some of them lasted three years.
Some bodies have never been found.
I don't know.
know what happened to them.
They should be fine.
I hope they're fine.
Yeah.
So I actually had to write down all nine of them to try and get them in the right order because.
Not all of them lasted for all that long and it wasn't my fault.
Trust me, they never asked me my opinion about...
We're thinking about getting rid of this guy.
What do you think?
No, that wasn't how it worked.
No, no.
And people do.
They think behind the scenes is just, you know, complete diva stuff.
Yeah.
You
know?
No.
And it's, trust me, it doesn't work that way.
I've tried.
But it
doesn't always.
I tried to get rid of people.
I tried to, but you know,
you just, and the other thing about this is talking about co-anchors and partners on shows and things, you cannot invent chemistry.
It's either there or it's not.
I'm sorry, that's just 100% true.
Without a doubt.
And unfortunately, in some of my iterations in the past.
Management has thought you can just put any two people together because all you do is talk.
How hard can that be?
No, chemistry, like you said, Pat, it's a, it's a magical thing.
It is a magical thing when you get it with somebody like, like Greg and I have, like I had with Kristen and like I had with, with a number of partners over the years.
So too, that was a, that was a big gift.
I've worked with fabulous, fabulous people.
And sometimes you just, you don't know.
I'm not saying that you always know right away.
Sometimes there's this initial period.
And you go, oh, I just don't know about this.
And then
I would not have guessed that we would click.
And yet here we are doing this thing.
So it's great.
It's just, again, a wonderful thing.
You're gonna hear this all week long.
Mine is gonna be the least modeling about it because I don't feel like I'm that far behind you.
I could not be happier for you.
And I know that anytime you can get a real sense of mission accomplished after
decades of work.
That is a pretty cool thing, Jane, and congratulations to you on that.
Thank you so very much, Pat.
It has been a joy and a delight getting to know you and spending time with you and Parker as well, and you're not getting rid of me just yet.
Oh, no, no, no.
Don't think I'm just gonna slip away into the night and you're never gonna hear from me again.
Yeah, we've got things to plan.
You can try.
You can try.
Yes, you'll appear in your front door any minute now.
I'll be in Lake Wissota sooner than you realize.
Let's get fingers crossed.
Thank you, Jane.
Thank you so much.
Take care, guys.
Yep.
Take care.
And thanks to all of you for being with us today as well.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News, part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Have a great day.
Matt and Aaron are coming up next.
Final week.
Enjoy.
I'll see you back here bright and early tomorrow morning, 6 a.m.
Up North.
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