Good morning, Wisconsin. Good morning, world. It's a new day. Thanks for kicking it off
with us right here at 97 5 FM 13 20 AM WF HR locally grown radio. Have your host, James
behind the mic, being brought to you by also Melissa's with us. I'm here. Hello, Seth.
We're all here. The game's all here. James and the best listeners in radio. Thanks so
much for joining us, everybody. Appreciate you guys. Kick it off your week with us. We're
going to have some fun things lined up for you getting a little bit of entertainment news.
We're going to talk Muppets as well. We've also got some fun stuff about what confuses
people from other countries about what's on our TVs and movies and all of that. All of
these fun things for you in store, but it's a Monday and the 9 o'clock hour. You know what
that means. Hello and welcome to the kitchen's open on WF HR. Today we're going to talk about
the Kale yard. A yard a kale. Who does that? Aren't lawns bad enough? Kale is kind of gross.
I don't know. I believe she's referring to the Scottish K.A.I.L. Yard not K.A.L.E. as in
the vegetable. It's another term for a kitchen garden. It pains me to say it, but Seth is correct.
Today we're talking about the kitchen garden. Oh, never mind. That makes a lot more sense.
And it is the right time of year to be thinking about those kitchen's gardens.
Now you're on track, James. The kitchen garden has played a vital role in feeding households
for hundreds of years. We're going to focus mainly on the kitchen gardens here in America.
In Europe, they have a vast history of using gardens not only to feed their families,
but also for ornamentation and relaxation. It's actually a dream of mine to someday see the
gardens at Versailles and France, but I digress. Today we're going to talk about the evolution
of the kitchen garden here and mention how the gardens in Europe played an influential role
in their development. We'll lean heavily on an article from Garden Tech.com by
Jolene Henson, titled an American timeline, home gardening in the US. She begins in the 1700s
stating, without the luxury of corner stores and market produce, American colonists relied on
productive home gardens for survival. Small and closed door yard gardens located right
outside the front door were dedicated to essential edibles and culinary and medicinal herbs.
As settlers moved west in the early 1800s, practical no-nonsense gardens stayed close to the door,
making it easy to protect, maintain and harvest plants. Focused on assistance,
assistance, not beauty, kitchen gardens as they were called with fruit trees, veggies and herbs
prevailed. Flowers took a back seat to food and medical plants. By the mid 1800s,
home gardening became a leisure activity as villages grew and produce markets opened.
Edible gardens fell out of favor and ornamental gardens took center stage. US plant breeders
focused on new garden varieties and US researchers became known for their work on plant diseases
and pests. Pest fighting tools helped overcome challenges. Dried, crumbled chrysanthemum flowers heads,
known as pyrethrum, were imported for botanical protection against pests. More than 150 years later,
chrysanthemum extracts known as pyrethrends are the active ingredient in worry-free brand and
insecticides and midicides remain among the most powerful natural pesticides available.
The late 1800s saw the influences from Europe. Home gardens moved from just outside the
front door to side and backyards. Front door gardens were replaced by stylish, maintained grass known
as lawns. Victorians cut tapestries like carpet bed designs into the lawns and filled them with
exotic flowers. Professional garden designers came up, came on the scene and home gardens once
designed for public viewing began to include distinct private areas protected from the public.
In the early 1900s, interest in edible gardening dropped as manufacturing jobs drew
Americans to urban areas. Home gardens became more natural looking with softened lines and
landscapes that connected home landscapes. Trends setting American garden designers started
using native plants previously considered too weed-like instead of new nursery cultivated varieties.
During 1910 to 1930, new garden styles from England influenced US home gardens.
Large, billowing beds of perennials came into vogue, along with outdoor living rooms.
Lawns grew larger, framed by boundaries of mass shrubs and foundation plantings close to the
house grew in popularity. In the 1940s, World War II brought US home gardeners back to the
vegetable patch and urban community gardeners started during World War I took on new life.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged every American household to fight food shortages with a
home garden. By 1943, 20 million victory gardens supplied more than 40% of all American produce
grown that year. But interest in vegetable gardens and orchards weren't waned within the
with the war. Then the creation of Earth Day in 1970 renewed interest in growing produce at home.
Garden designers started mingling vegetables and fruits in with ornaments, ornamentals in
formal designs and edible landscaping started to take hold. Urban community gardens became
more widespread as did interest in organic gardening. By the 1990s, interest in small space gardening
soared as urban populations grew at the fastest rate in history. Containers, trellises, and
permanent planters built into hardscapes became the new home garden for Americans with small,
private, urban spaces. Enter the 2000s. Edible gardens came back to the fore front and the front
yard as Americans became more health conscious and the desire for fresh, local food grew. In 2009,
the White House planted its first vegetable garden since World War II. By 2013, one third of all
American households reported growing food. So did you guys have gardens growing them?
Yes, yes, as a matter of fact, my parents had a vegetable garden that we did every year in the
backyard. It was decent size too. We grew quite a bit of stuff there and my mom also loved planting
flowers. We had several flower beds too. And of course, I was drafted to help with all that.
So yes, I had a good experience doing all that and I looked back with fondness. I really do.
I think it was really cool. Maybe at the time I was like, why am I doing this? But when I think
about it now, it's like, well, that was really cool. That was actually fun time with my parents.
So yeah, my mom had a huge garden when we were kids and we did a lot of the manual labor in
there as well as for children. But yeah, she grew a lot of our food and then would can or freeze
and process it in the fall to save. Imagine growing up in the city would have been a little bit
different for you, James. Oh, yeah, yeah, certainly. But I do remember before we moved out of there
that it was some of the early days of building on top of the high rise and putting like gardening
and plants and vegetables up there and everything and the excitement and the neighborhood about
that. That's neat, Tom. It's like container gardening. Yeah, yeah. That was pretty cool.
Melissa, those early days with your mom doing a lot of that stuff, did that kind of build and
grow this kind of like love for this world and this field for you? Well, gardening is a lot of work.
And if you don't have time to do it, it can definitely feel like a chore because if you don't
keep on top of the weeds, you can on top of you. So you don't have to do much. Oh, weeding.
I remember weeding so much. So now let's move into talking about what's planted in these gardens
and companion planting, which can actually help you with those weeds. Oh, I've got a great source
for this one. The Old Farmers Almanac Companion Planting Guide. You can find it at Almanac.com.
So first let's talk about what companion planting is. Is this where you get a bunch of your friends
together to help you plant your garden? Because I'll get on this right now. That's a great idea,
but you're wrong. Sad face. According to the Old Farmers Almanac, companion planting is the
practice of growing one plant to help another as part of a community. Fruit, vegetables and herbs
are are simply and noticeably more resilient and productive when each member supports the next.
Now the benefits can be one way such as when nectar rich flowers planted around fruiting crops
tomatoes, improve insect population or pollination or reciprocal, such as when the famous three
sisters of corn, poll beans and squash are grown together for their mutual benefit.
The article goes on to say by growing communities of plants that are known to support each other,
you can save a lot of time and potential heartache. This is nature's way of minimizing pest damage,
boosting soil fertility, reducing weed competition and ultimately increasing yields.
Productive gardens cultivated with companion planting in mind also tend to be better looking too.
Here's a few common examples. Tomato and basil are natural companions.
Basil repels certain insect pests such as thrips and also disorient moths which lay tomato hornworms.
It's unterrible. Never heard the term hornworms before. Garlic can be planted as a barrier
crop to repell at-apply at-feets. Aphids. Aphids, thank you. Like vampires, they can't stand it.
Nostration flowers grown close to kale, cabbage, broccoli and any brassica crops will lure hungry
caterpillars away from eating your crops. The article goes into great detail about the benefits
of companion planting. We'll briefly go over the seven benefits they list out. The first is
deterring pests. If you can do this with plants instead of using chemicals, it's much better for
your garden as a whole. Pesticides are a very blunt tool and can destroy beneficial bugs as well as
pests. From now on, benefits needs to be known as bennies. Bennies. Bennies. Another benefit or
bennie is attracting beneficial insects. Research shows that planting pollinator strips within the
garden encourages both pollinators and pest protectors. Predators. Number three is shade regulation.
Large plants provide shade for smaller plants needing sun protection. For example, corn shades
let us. How about natural supports? Tall plants like corn and sunflowers can support lower growing,
sprawling crops such as cucumbers and peas. You'll also have improved plant health. When one plant
absorbs certain substances from the soil, it may change the soil biochemistry in favor of nearby
plants. Wow. And it can improve soil fertility. Some crops like beans, peas and other legumes
help to make nitrogen more available in the soil. Similarly, plants with long tap roots like
burdock bring up nutrients from deep in the soil enriching the top soil to the benefit of shallow
rooted plants. And the seventh benefit is weed suppression. Planting sprawling crops like potatoes
with tall upright plants minimizes open areas where weeds typically take hold.
Hmm. What what what's really neat about this article is all the science. There's a lot of
misconceptions about companion planting on the internet. Much of it is based on folklore,
hearsay. The reference guide only highlights companion plant pairings backed by the scientific
evidence and tried and true practices. At the end of the article, they go over the most common
garden crops and their suitable companion plants. But if you want even more information,
you can head over to their online almanac garden planner and you can plan out your entire garden
right there. They offer a free seven day trial or you can get a subscription. But I didn't look
into it any further than that. So I don't know. Right, but that's I can plan out your garden
in seven days. You're good. I'm going to say that's amazing though. I had no idea there was a
resource like this out there. That's just so cool. Yeah. Makes me want to go out and plant something.
I plan something. Have you ever done a garden as an adult, sir? No, no, I haven't got we've
Beth and I have a couple of times threatened to do it when we lived out North Dakota. We got as far
as like tilling up a patch of land. But then we just we just never got got into plant any seeds
or anything like that. We've talked about doing a pallet garden with pallets. That kind of thing
which keep it you know off the ground from the from the bunnies and the other the other things that
will eat it from the animals. I should say that we'll eat it and that sort of thing. So squirrels. Yeah,
that's kind of thing. But yeah. Yeah, I've tried a couple times myself, but typically I I usually
ended up just helping my mom with her garden because she always did a huge garden. Yeah. And when I
lived close enough to her, I would just go help her out. If you two if you guys had the time,
money, resources and all that, would you have what would you do more gardening? Would you have a
bigger garden or anything? I don't think I'd have a big one. I think a small one that you know,
or even just the container garden would be something that'd be cool to try. Yeah,
considering where we live and stuff to, I'm with Melissa on that one just because it would be easier
to maintain I think. Right? What about you James? I think it's one of those things. I'm very
intrigued and I love learning about it and I literally like getting my hands in the dirt and
doing a lot of that stuff. But I think I'd be better off living vicariously through somebody else.
Like, hey, point me in the direction and tell me what to do. And I'll get out there. Right.
And I love sitting back and watching it and everything. But I don't know if I was on my own
and my own place and time and money and all that. If I honestly, if I'd be able to do a whole lot of
all, Melissa, we got a weeder here to say, hey, my bubble's plants. No, not that one, James. Oh,
no, that's the that's the radishes. But we do have, you know, the community garden in Wisconsin
Rapids is an option for people if they don't have a plot. And I know that they do through the
McMillan, they have the teen gardening that has a plot down there. So you should check that out if
you want to want to get in on, you know, gardening, but not necessarily till up your own yard.
Right. And keep in mind, we have our master gardeners around too. They're always interested in
taking your questions. And if you have anything you want to know, if you're just starting out,
it doesn't matter. You can still reach out to the master gardeners. They love working with people.
And I love, love supporting this community. My dad has a degree in botany.
He's never used it, but he's got a degree in botany. I learned that. That's right. Let's start
passing his number around. Yeah. He eats more calls, right? Sure. And just with your botany
questions, make sure to throw in there a happy birthday. Yeah. He still knows a remarkable amount,
even though he's never used it. I'm pretty, it's pretty amazing. Larry, that's awesome.
Well, I think we better end the segment here. Thank you for joining us today for another edition
of the Kitchens Open. If you'd like to become a sponsor of the segment, please contact Pam at our
front desk. The number is 715-424-1300. She'll put you in touch with Ashley to work out the specifics
for this award winning show. That 715-424-1300. And with that, we'll close the kitchen.
All right. Another great one. That was a great one, especially for summer coming up.
Yeah. That was great. I love learning stuff from these two. There was so much stuff in there
that I have never heard before. I didn't know. That was awesome. Nicely done, Melissa. Well done.
Thank you. A huge shout out to the articles that I pulled from.
Be sure to reach out to our staff. Be a part of the team. Spots through that segment right there.
It's a reward winning segment, everybody. So make sure to do so. We appreciate you doing that.
We'll be in be listening next Monday for another episode of the Kitchens Open. We'll be back
more fun on the morning show here at WFHR.
Welcome back, everybody. Morning show here at WFHR,
locally grown radio. Melissa, Seth and James here with you. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody.
Let's go ahead and dive into a little bit of entertainment news. In a moment, we're going to
get into the things that confuse not Americans about what they see in American TV and movies.
We'll get into that in a moment. I don't do this very often, but I got to start off with some
attitude here. Oh, dude. I'm sorry, but somebody messed with one of my favorite people.
66-year-old Steve Bussemi is the latest victim of unprovoked attack in New York City.
Luckily, he is doing okay. He's doing all right. Steve was walking in Midtown, Manhattan on Wednesday
at around noon when he was sucker punched. What? His attacker has been identified from surveillance
footage, but hasn't been caught yet. Steve was treated at a local hospital for swelling in his face
and left eye. He's okay. Rick Moranis and another person have also been victims of these random
attacks in New York City. Everything points to this being literally very random. There's also been
a couple of instances lately where Alec Baldwin and some other people have been confronted
about the Israel and Palestine war. And so that has nothing to do with this as far as police
officers have been able to find. These are just random cowardly attacks. And they are cowardly.
First off, anybody who's sucker punched as somebody is a coward. Yeah. Period. I don't care
the circumstances. I don't care if it was my own father. I'm going to call him a coward to his face.
Anybody who does that and anybody who messes with Steve Bussemi has got to mess with me.
All right. You come find me and we'll figure this out. Yes. All right. But come after me,
go and after Steve Bussemi, you leave that man alone. Which by all accounts is like the most
mild mannered gentle person on the planet. Even despite his some of the people he's played,
he's just like one of the sweetest people alive. Yeah. An amazing villain. Like you kind of hate him
when he's playing one of those characters, but that's not really him. No, that is not him. Steve Bussemi
and you may never hear anybody else say this is one of the most versatile actors we'll ever see.
Yeah. Period. Like he can do it all. He can lead a show. He can be the best supporting man.
He can do this. This drama. Do comedy. Do it all proven it time and time again.
Incredible. Incredible actor. And not only that, he's done it without being your typical Hollywood
handsome. It's not a real person. It's part of the reason I look up to him so much that I have my
whole career. I was told that you had to look a certain way to be able to make a career. He looks
a certain way. He's made a very good career. He is. I bring this up too. I'm loosely joking
about this stuff, how I feel about him and all that and everything. But the attacks on our seniors
in these things, this affects us all. Yes. I would like to think that there are certain things
that bring us all together. And whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, I don't think anybody is
kosher with the idea of our seniors being under attack and in some way, not at all.
Violence is not okay. We need more and more things that bring us together. This is something
where we can shame some of society for. This is one of those things where we can be like,
hey, this ain't right. Don't be doing this. And hopefully see an end to some of these cowardly
attacks. Who does this? Like a 60-year-old person. Seriously. I need a palate cleanser in the middle
of our entertainment segment. Wow. And I can't think of a much better one than this amazing
podcast I came across called What The Muppet. It seems awesome. I see that let's see here. We're
Bree and James, two muppet heads who really dive into the imagination world of muppets.
All right. That sounds pretty cool. Sounds pretty interesting. And it looks like their newest
episode is called You Have A List. That's a great name. I love that. That is a great name.
If you are looking for a palate cleanser, looking for some fun, join us for What The Muppet.
We have a new episode that drops every Monday. You can get it wherever you get your pods.
Or if you'd like to take in the video, I encourage you to look at the YouTube video,
go into YouTube, type in your search bar, what the muppet, and subscribe to the page,
keep up the date and all that, and have some fun with us, everybody.
I have a question for one of the co-hosts of What The Muppet. I'll see if I can get it.
Okay. Sorry to get a hold of. No. So here's my question. Are you ever going to do, and maybe this
would be like a Patreon special episode or something, would you ever do muppet adjacent stuff?
The thing that popped into my mind was Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles.
Yes. Nice one. Which you almost would probably have to do on a special one because of it.
It's quite adult and it's content, but something like that, you know, like muppet parodies or
something like that. I think that would be, I think that would be a really cool episode.
So this all started with certainly the muppet show and the muppet movie and all those things.
But when we talk to real puppeteers and people that went to school for this and everything,
one of the things that her and I have been talking about behind the scenes a lot is,
what about the dark crystal? What about, you know, other movies and other TV shows and
incorporated puppets, you know, labyrinth, mystery science theater? Yeah, that's right.
Puppets there too. They show up in more areas than I ever would have imagined until doing this.
And yeah, that's something we've been thinking about. We've been making this joke about,
we're getting closer and closer to wrapping up our first season.
Forty-six years ago, the longest first season ever.
And what do we do next? And honestly, so I'll let you guys in on something here.
This is one of the things about me where I sometimes hold my tongue when I shouldn't or I speak
when I shouldn't. And that's me owning that. Oftentimes I will think for others or feel for others
when I don't need to, when they can do that perfectly fine on their own. They're a grown human being.
Let them think and feel for themselves. I do this with Brea from time to time. And I thought,
okay, once this wraps up, we're done. And you know, she's done having to deal with her dad a
couple of times a month and all that and everything. She wants to do a second season.
Okay. And I jacked about that. So we're definitely doing that. Okay.
And what we're going to do is kind of have some fun with this where we take movies and everything.
Okay, here's the Godfather. And then we're going to recast it with Muppets.
This is something that we've been enjoying doing. We've actually been doing this on the podcast
already. There's been at least seven or eight episodes where we get on a rambling tangent and go
down a rabbit hole on some of these things. Good stuff. On TikTok, it's been kind of there is
an artist that made the idea of doing the Princess Pride with Muppets and do a thing. Okay.
That's something to dive into and stuff. And I know that there's a lot of good material there.
So yeah, yeah, we've been talking about it. We've been talking about it. And I've talked too much
about this. Another look behind the curtain, everybody. Because I love my daughter so much and I
love supporting local artists. I wanted to promote this show when we started doing it. But I promised
myself a minute. I would only talk about this for a minute. And I've already beaten that. So I
apologize. I helped to extend it. So it wasn't just you, man. Was it just you? Is there anything
lamer, though, though? Hey guys, let me tell you about my new band. No, no, no, no. I actually,
I just kind of required. Yes, I disagree, man. I think Melissa's right on this one. I think you
need to promote it. I'm really bad at selling things. If you haven't been able to tell you too.
Nobody in human history has been able to tell better than Melissa itself. Just just dive right in,
man. Both feet. Just get just get right in there. Let's dive into this one. When not Americans
watch American TV, this is a fun topic. I want to be able to take our time with this, though. So
we're right up against our news break. Why don't we go ahead? We'll take care of our news and form
our audience with our state and local news and sports that the Melissa and our team do such a great
job with. And when we come back, we can spread our legs, have some fun with this one, really dive in.
We'll do that when we come back on the morning show here at WFHR, locally grown radio.
Welcome back, everybody. Morning show here at WFHR.
Melissa, Seth and James here with you. Hope you're having a great day out there. Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to our house. Let's get into a fun one here, everybody.
This is going to be interesting, I think, as we kind of stretch our entertainment segment a little
bit longer here when not Americans watch American movies and TV shows and not everything translate.
People have questions. BuzzFeed put together a list of things non-Americans don't understand when
they see them in our media. And this is going to be kind of fun. No, this isn't no chronological order.
So I'm just going to go right from the here to the top here. And at number nine, sending Christmas
card family photos. Oh, there are literally 10 of them on my fridge at any given moment.
Guilty. That's that's apparently not a thing. Real well, I guess that's it's apparently they're
greeting card companies aren't as powerful as they are here in the United States. Yeah.
I think this one's pretty obvious. All the guns. Oh god, yes. Yeah. It's an abundance.
Yeah. It's it's not I this is the thing that a lot of people get bent out of shape about. You
bring up guns and you got 50% of people to freak out, 50% of people to freak out. Yeah.
Just what they're freaking out about. That's the difference. What they're talking about is the
abundance of them. Yes. How many of them? I don't believe that anybody is talking saying, you know,
get rid of guns or something like that or you can have guns and action movies and everything.
It's the abundance of it. So many guns. Like a lot of things that we do, it's it's them it's not
just that we do them. It's the abundance of that thing. Right. Yeah. That's the word access.
Thank you, Melissa. The way we try to stop natural disasters as one person as one person tweeted,
it amuses me when Americans in movies try to stop a natural disaster ending the world because
they're Americans and they just have to try. It's kind of go ahead, Melissa. No, that's the reason.
I just they're Americans. I have to try. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of fun. Like I mean,
immediately thinking of every natural disaster we've ever seen and it's always involves
an American trying to fix things. Yeah. Exactly. So true. I got to stop it. I never really
thought about that. That's hilarious. The way we compare the length of things to football fields.
Yeah. Yeah. We do that a lot. I just it's true. We do that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That's true.
And that's like there's no I mean, first of all, we're using yards, which no one else uses.
And then we're we're using a game that like not many people around the world understand at all.
So yeah, it's bigger than a bread box, but smaller than a football field.
So good. So good, Melissa. Oh, you're so right. That's a perfect example. I don't like our segment.
Yeah. Yeah. Nice. And much like football, it can cause concussions, everybody. You need to
you need to see your doctor head protection. Yeah. You need head protection when you're listening
to our show. The way kids play trees and other in a man and man objects in school plays.
And another thing I've seen, unless the tree was a character who had actual lines.
So my question, is that does that actually happen? I don't remember actually being like my kids
playing a like an inanimate object in a play. I don't remember that. Yeah. It does happen.
Did they still okay? Yeah, I've seen it more in like bigger schools. Like when you got a lot of
kids and you want to get everybody on stage. So okay, well, we'll make a couple kids trees. Okay.
On that kind of thing. I know it's a big joke in movies. You see constantly TV shows, like every
hallmark movie has ever shown has that in it. That that's an interesting one. I see that one
bugs me a little bit though, because theaters been a, you know, it's bigger than America. It's been
around longer than America. And I have a hard time believing that nobody ever played in the
inanimate. But I wonder too, you know, we, this is just expanding this a little bit. They don't
really have a lot of kids shows or plays for kids in other, especially in Europe. At least they
didn't use to. Maybe they do now. Yeah. They didn't always do that. Right. Well, entertainment was
an originally for children. True. Very true. Yes. They didn't have like amusement parks and things
like that. All the entertainment centered around adults. Mm-hmm. If you want to go back as far
as like the 17, 1800s. But really until the 1900s that they started, oh, okay, kids, kids need
entertainment. Hey, we can make money off of entertaining kids. And that's the, there you go. That's
the actual selling point right there. Wait, we can make money off this. All right. So you're telling me
that these toys I want these kids to buy, I can just do little 30 second things in between another show
the kids are already going to be what? Oh, yes. Yes. And marketing and make the whole show about it.
These top four are pretty good. The fake baby school assignments. I can't speak for the whole
country, but I've never known anyone who had to take an egg or a bag of flour or a baby doll home
and then try to treat it like it was a real living thing. Oh, they've gone even farther now,
though. They have like actual pregnancy bellies that you have to wear. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
There've been like, there's the animal thing too. You know, you have like a class gerbil or something
like that. I think my kid did that when we were still in North Dakota. I don't remember
I'm doing it here, but I think they did something similar to that. I don't know if it's working or
not. If it's keeping kids celibate or anything, but it would work on me. I had to work on me.
I had to take, we did a sack of flour when I was really okay. So it is a thing. We have actual
like bellies that you have to wear that kind of simulate being pregnant. And you have a baby.
It's that's automated that cries and, you know, wow, they can be programmed, you know,
to simulate different baby experiences. My senior at Lincoln, we took a I took a parenting class
and I'm 90% sure we had one of those, one of those babies that they're there. I don't think we
had the egg or anything like that. I think we had actually one of those like baby dolls.
How we never say goodbye when we hang up the phone. This is really just an artistic choice.
It eliminates needless words in real life like we say goodbye unless you're mad. That kind of
thing. But apparently this is something that we do that not a lot of other countries do. Really?
Most countries when they're getting done with a conversation, they make sure that it's like a
period at the end. Goodbye. Goodbye. See you. Yeah. Interest hot later again. I find it weird when
people don't do it. Honestly, I always say goodbye at the end of a phone call. This is how
European have you Melissa? I'm just kidding. I say weekend. I've only had one person literally
get mad at me for this. But I've had a lot of people like call me out on this one. I hate the
word. I don't like saying goodbye. I don't like saying it. I say later. You know, later,
that's that's what I've always said. Right. I don't care if it's a president or my mom.
Let's do a salutation. Yeah. That's true. Or one actually James used a lot. I don't know if he
under if he knows this, but talk soon. Oh, I do. That's one that you use as like a like an ending
thing. Yeah. Goodbye to me is so definitive. And I know how silly that says. I'm an adult. I
should know better. Right. It does in my brain. It's just one of those things where it's easier.
It feels better for me to say later or talk to. Yeah. It's it's well and there's so many ways you
can do it too. You know, like, you know, state chill. Or if you want to be lame, you know, like,
so lame. It was the words as much as you sang it. I got it. Yeah.
Speaking of words, the use of the word like one person asked if it's just a reality TV thing. No,
no, no, it's not. No, it's not. It's like that is one. That is definitely one easy filler word.
It is. I mean, you could just as easily do um or, you know, other sounds. I guess like is just
another way to to fill that in. Well, your brain is trying to catch up with or or get past
to get the word out. What are those words that I want to get out? We get like like we run into
this in radio a lot where every once in a while there's a constituent or a consultant that comes in
and tries to tell you know, this is what you're doing wrong and your ratings will be a thousand
times better if you do this. And nine times out of ten, it doesn't help anything. Not really. The
consultant gets paid and we should be doing. And when I will never forget back in my old days,
they had a consultant come in and they said, okay, when you're doing your voice tracking,
when you're on the air, never say um, never. Guess what happened to every single DJ, not just in
our station, but every station under that umbrella, it took hours to do your voice tracking,
took days to do things on the air. And when people were on the air and they did catch themselves
saying, um, it threw off their whole entire conversation. Oh dear. You're so focused on it.
Yeah. It consumes your brain. Talk. That's what you do. Yeah. Talk. Be understandable. Right.
You know, this is not rocket science. And we've learned as we've learned here, it's specifically
a W F H R real talk goes a long way. It does. People want to hear people sound like the actual
human beings real people. But we do use the word like way too much. We do. It's kind of like
and then number one on the list are obsession with Halloween. Yes. No where else in the world
is it like now this is not talking about like day of the dead in Mexico, which is a complete
different. It's more just Halloween October 31st, the way we celebrate it. Yeah. Yeah.
Which is who start decorating before summer's done for Halloween. Well, and I don't know if it's
because of the commerce that's now associated with with with Halloween here. And maybe that's part
of it too. You know, we got to commercialize everything in the United States. So like another
holiday where we can sell stuff. You know, here we go. There's decorations and candy and costumes.
There you go. Woo. You know, so much revolving around money. Keeps come back to that.
The only holiday where the candy companies have made it. So you do not want to give out apples.
Think about that. Right. Right. No, no, no apples are dangerous. You want our pre-packaged candy.
No, that is safe for you to eat. And they got to come up with a new terminology for fun size.
Ain't nobody ever had fun with one of those fun size fun. You know, it's not fun. It's not fun.
It's frustrating. Some of that frustration size. That's one of these main frustrations in new
frustration size. Wait, you know, this will fit on the package. It's all labeled. It's too small
for the for the holiday. It goes around. It goes around. I gotta turn it twice to read it. I get
frustrated. Okay. Frustrating stickers. Okay. Hey, just frustrated. Just reading this. Yeah.
We will be back for more fun on the morning show here at WFHR locally grown radio.
Welcome back, everybody. Morning show at WFHR.
I'm coming home, baby. I'm coming home now right away. I'm coming home, baby. I'm sorry. Now I
ever went away. Every night and day I go. Little velvet fog to play us in. I get up. So we've got
three now that we can use as ending songs. Like going into a final segment. There we go. We're
adding that one. We'll get up to five. So you can do one every day. We'll get five here.
I like that. Welcome to the show. We're going to take it to the top of the hour, wrap up the show.
But I do want to remind you, everybody. We got great programming all day long here at Civic Media.
Stick around from Matt Nair on the air. Jane does an amazing job with the show. One of the best
voices that you're going to hear on radio. And be sure to check out the Maggie Dawn show,
everybody. Maggie's doing some really great work on that show. And it's such a personable fun show.
I really love listening to what she does on that show. And we can all three of us can attest.
She is exactly the same in real life. That is who she is, which is really cool. It's amazing. Yeah.
I didn't get a chance to really tell her this, but I cannot tell you how much Maggie reminds me of
one of my aunts. Like all my aunts combined. She's fantastic. We appreciate all the work she's
doing over there. Be sure to join us for Maggie's show a little bit later today around, too.
We got other good things to get to, but it's time for this one, everybody. It's a morning show
staple. The Social Security Administration relates this annual list of the most popular baby names in
the US. All right. And the top two again this year are Olivia and Liam. Wow. Liam. That's
so fascinating to me. Olivia has been the top fashion. Yeah. Olivia has been the top girls name
five years running. And Liam has topped the boys list for seven straight years. She's
both top 10 lists are pretty much the same, but one new boys name did crack the top 10.
Mato M-A-T-E-O jumped from 11th to 6th and Benjamin fell from 9th to 11th. Oh, wow.
And the 10 most popular baby names for boys are Liam, Noah, Oliver, James, Elijah,
Mato, Theodore, Henry, Lucas, and William. Okay. And the top 10 for girls, Olivia, Emma, Charlotte,
Amelia, Sophia, Mia, Isabella, Eva, Evelyn, and Luna. Wow. They also looked at the trendiest
baby names, meaning the ones that saw the biggest jump over the last year. The top five for boys are
is a zeal chosen with a Z. Eden, Cassian, and Kyron. Ooh. A lot of ones there. Yeah, interesting.
The top five for girls are Kalea, a let's zeal, an Emoryan, Adaharia, and Azari. Wow. That's a
mouthful. Okay. And as a side note, I'm quitting teaching. I'm not going to be able to be able to
do names like a name that you're going to be all, man. There's a great key and appeal sketch,
because usually what we were I remember what we ran into in the inner city when you'd have a
a white or suburban man coming to the area and I understand some of the names and reading them
off at the top. It is the opposite of that where it's it's a Keegan, Michael Key, a black man going
in inner city teacher going into the what's it a Ron? Who's a a Ron?
A Ron. What is it? It's just Aaron search. It's just Aaron. No, a Ron. No mess with me. Say a
Ron. It's fantastic. I don't know. So that's another interesting thing to me about this list. You
know, I think that the average names we can talk about those, but it's these new names that are
coming out and being created and getting out there and more and more families are doing this,
where they just they want to give their child an original name. Yep. I think that's kind of cool.
Is it original though if it's some of the top growing names? Now whether it is original or not,
I think it's a whole different conversation. That's exactly. To them, I think it is and I think
that whether it is trying to try and start a new tradition or just get away from tradition,
I think that's kind of interesting where we're going there. Melissa has a strong point
what she's bringing up though. If these actually hit the mark or not, right? That's that's a whole
thing. And then also realizing that if you're you're spelling it with some odd letters in there,
you are relegating your child to a lifetime of correcting people and how to spell their name.
Right. And that's that was one of the things that when Beth and I named our oldest Ron,
we knew that we didn't want to spell. We had to spell it a certain way. Otherwise people would
get it. So Beth's main name is R-O-H-N, Ron. But we didn't want to spell it like that because
everyone would call him Ron. So we're like, well, let's let's spell it like the river, R-H-O-N-E.
Okay. There's still issues with it, but you know, less I think that there would be.
That's interesting. Yeah. And I see this as not a trend, but the new way. I think this is
pretty much what we're doing going forward. And to keep in mind, most of them are actually a lot of
the like the most popular ones are old school. Like they're going back way back. Liam, Olivia,
Oliver. When Mildred comes back, then I'll be like, whoa. And Beatrice? And Beatrice, yeah.
I'm telling you, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing and eventually I'll be cool.
Everything comes back around. So you just keep doing your thing. James back goes away.
Your name is always in the top. It is. James is already around. We're back to stuffing thing.
Okay. Wow. Full circle. It's so good. I love when that happens.
People expect to live in closed places in the cities, you know, New York, Houston,
Los Angeles, Chicago, places like that. But you know, there's a housing crisis when people in
Michigan are living inside grocery stores. Yeah. The family fare supermarket in Midland, Michigan
had some contractors out recently to work on a building. When they came across a strange extension
cord, they followed it and discovered a hidden dwelling. It turned out that a 34-year-old woman
was living there. It wasn't a lightened, uh, lightened sign out front. It was on the roof. The
building was part of a strip mall and the sign was on the front of a peaked roof toss. It's hollow
with a three foot by four foot access door in the back. It's unclear how big this, uh, the space was,
but she had it decked out with the flooring and a mini desk and, uh, pantry of food,
a curry, uh, and she had a house plan. Okay. She'd been living there for a year. When the police
went up to investigate, the woman came right to the door and said, don't worry, I'm leaving.
Police aren't sure how the woman was able to get up to the roof so often and she wouldn't tell
them. She had a, she had a job, but not at the supermarket and even a car. But there's no word
why she was there, but it was rent-free. It was a rent-free spot that she wasn't bothering anybody.
The store isn't pressing charges or anything. Well, that's good because that would be kind of a
mean. Yeah. Well, yeah. Curious what they would do with that, but yeah. The PR nightmare. Yeah.
Yeah. Right. Exactly. She does have to leave, but they say they're going to help her transition
to a new arrangement. The police offered her housing assistance, but she declined. Okay.
So first some good stories of the day. I think the way the police officers reacted to this,
handled this, the way our law, our judicial system is handling this. We never get to say this.
Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Right on. That's awesome. Congratulations. That's really cool. The way
the grocery store, yes, PR would be bad from this. Even with that, still the way they're handling it,
I think it's going to be cool. Yep. The day right part of the story is not this lady. No.
It is the housing crisis we are in. It is. It is. It is. The lack of housing. The lack of
affordable housing. Yep. You got it. Two of the key sentences in that statement and that
article, everybody, which you can find at armidlin.com or USA Today is the fact that this is somebody
who had a job has a job and has a car vehicle. Yep. She has these things. Terri and I are
United Way. We've talked about this much with the Al's report. The idea that you have in your
head of a poor person or a homeless person, that's not what it used to be. It's changed. Now,
go ahead and look outside right now. And if you see somebody walking down the street,
statistically, chances are they're in the same group as the rest of us. Yep. Study after study
has shown, too, without that shelter, without having that, you cannot have a secure life. You
cannot get into the ways to make society as a whole better. You need that place to live
in order to do just about anything else. You need it. Yeah. Yeah. And the struggle is,
is that a lot of when you want to rent a place, you have to make triple the rent. Yeah.
To be able to qualify to rent said safe place to live. Exactly. And do you know what rent is
right now? And the average in Wisconsin rapids area is close to if not over a thousand dollars
a month. Yeah. That's just rent an apartment. Right. We're not even talking a whole house here.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's something there. It's not sustainable. It is not sustainable.
It's just going to say something has got to change as we can't. It's not going to last that's
the way. That's right. We need a palette lens. Let's get into some good stories of the day.
I want to remind everybody about some of our area school concerts going on, district and
string festival happening tonight at the LHS Field House. All orchestras from six to 12th grade
will be there at six thirty go and take in a great show. That's going to be a lot of fun.
Keep in mind later this week Rams have their choir concert for grades six seven eight.
That'll be Wednesday May 15th at five thirty over at the Rams Auditorium. That's going to be a fun
one as well. Yeah. Our friends over at Assumption, the combined Assumption High and High
and Middle School spring band concert is tomorrow at six thirty at the Assumption High School gym
nasium. Be sure to check that out everyone. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then coming up later this week on
Friday, the and it knew Kusa High School and Alexander Middle School have their choir's pop
concerts going on at six o'clock at their high school Auditorium. All right. All great shows.
Be sure to check out every single one of them. Support our kids. Yeah. Set you at some stuff.
I did. I do. I do have some stuff. Hey, stuff. Here it is. Stuff. I just found it. Stuff.
More stuff. Stuff the desk as a collaborative community initiative led by the United Way to ensure
every student has the supplies they need to learn. All families with financial need are eligible
to receive free school supplies to participate sign up. You can start not starting now, everyone.
You can start signing up now. You have until August 1st. So there's a long, long way to go. But
remember, it's first come first serve to sign up for the time that you can pick it up. So you make
sure you do it early. So you can get in there. Go to their website, you WSWAC.org. You can click on
the stuff the desk banner or you can call 211 Monday through Friday between eight and five and they
can sign you up that way. The pick updates are August 16th and 17th at East junior high school at
311 Lincoln Street in Wisconsin. Rapids go sign up two day. Yes. They will have you can walk in.
I believe on this on the second day, but they can't guarantee. No guarantee of supplies. That's
right. If you register sign up and as soon as you can, it's always better to do it sooner rather than
later. Be sure to stick around everybody all week long. We're going to be having updates about
different events going on our area. We've got some VFW things we want to touch on as well.
And be sure to join us to a litter today from three to four for playmakers. Nobody made a highlight
from the sidelines getting the game call up on our sports show from three to four today. We're going
to be talking some rafters a little bit later and looking forward to that on the three or four
lock as we get you ready for the season. Plenty going on there. Great show you too. Thank you so
much. It was fun. Yeah. Thank you James. Be good to each other. We'll talk to you soon and later
right here at this is locally grown radio WFHR 1320 AM W24 ADE Wisconsin Rapids and always streaming
on the Civic Media app.