All right. Hi. Hi. What's your name? My name is Carol Weidel. Well, thank you for coming
back, Carol. I know we had a little bit of issues yesterday. So as you know with the
truth, we're trying to capture stories from the local community and you know, Madison
Wisconsin anywhere really in the area. So where are you from? Well, I was born and raised
in Philadelphia, but I have lived here in Madison for 49 years. Okay. So you're basically
a native at this point. I'm a, what do you call it? A naturalized citizen. Oh, there you
go. Naturalized medicine. Yeah. And what do you do here? Well, I'm retired. I was a public
employee for the state of Wisconsin. Okay. Perfect. And what are some of the things that you
really love about about the city and, you know, in general? Well, because, because it's
a capital and the university is here, we have a lot of cultural events that don't happen
in other places. And, and in my case, I live a block away from where we are. Oh, excellent.
So you're in the middle of it. I, I, this, I believe the, the shank atwood neighborhood
is the cultural center of gravity for the east side of Madison. Yeah. Well, there's
five festivals that kind of originate from this neighborhood, right? Yes. Yes. Which one's
your favorite of if you have to name a favorite? Well, I like the Orton Park festival. It's
a very intimate location. They have a lot of mature trees. And I think it might be three
days these, this year. But yeah, it's pretty good. Although, you know, they run from like
May through September. Right. Yeah. There's a, you know, the last one is Willie Street
Fair, which is also really fun, right? Yeah. Yeah. That is, that is iconic and really
captures Madison. Yeah. How do you think, you know, you've been here, you know, for a
while and you've seen the community grow and evolve, right? Like, why do you think makes
Madison special enough for these festivals to continue to grow year after year? Well,
the university helps a lot. Not everybody who's here is associated with the university,
but it attracts people and people have jobs here that connected to the university. And
they sometimes they come here to go to school and they never leave. Right. Right. Yeah.
No, that's kind of base case scenario. They experience the town and don't want to go
anywhere. Yeah. Right. And so what did you used to do for the, you said for the city,
right? Well, no, it was for the state of Wisconsin. I was, my job title was a research
analyst. So I, I gathered a lot of administrative data that the state has. And, and it's a amazing
what they got. Anyway, starting with vital records, birth, death, marriage, divorce, all
that stuff. You can do all sorts of analysis. You have to plan population growth. The schools
need to know how many babies are being born and how well how to anticipate, you know,
where the population grows will be. And that's something that the city is facing right
now because we've got a housing shortage. We know the population's going to grow, but
where the heck are we going to put them all? Yeah. Yeah. So that sounds like a really
interesting job. And you know, so how did you do the analysis, you know, in the era of
like what I would say big data, which we know we have these beaters that do it all super
fast. And how did it happen when you, when you were getting started? Well, when I, I
did it, we, we had data on real to real tapes. And you had to, and, and space was a very expensive.
And so you had to cram as much meaning into a single digit as you, as you could, like
you could put, you could store it, certainly 10 numbers, 0 through 9. But then you could
also cram in a bunch of characters that would also have meaning. Oh, okay. There was
a whole bunch of like codifying stuff. Yeah, right. You didn't know you didn't know. And
people don't realize, well, I think birth certificates, when you get a copy of your
birth certificate, it shows where you were born and who your parents were. And that's
about not very much. Right. But really, there's a whole lot of stuff that's confidential
that you don't even know about. Got it. Like what your birth weight was, what your
appgar score was, probably a term you don't even know. It's a, it's a, I can't remember
what it exactly stands up. But when the baby first emerges, right, they do a visual
evaluation. And so is the baby breathing? Are they the right color? Are they responding?
And that, that's reduced to a numeric score. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And then they, and
then they also, you have a sense of how many previous pregnancies did the mother have?
Whoa, wow. Previous pregnancies now living, previous pregnancies not living. Oh, wow.
So that's, that's all, that's all really there. What's the mother's highest grade level
of education? It just, it's really, and people can do all sorts of interesting things
with that. Right. And people, and the state will give it away or sell it. Yeah. But they'll
remove all the identifying things. Got it. Right. Exactly. So it's like, yeah. I mean,
so that was kind of interesting. Yeah. That sounds interesting. I, you know, I do
marketing. So I, you know, I mean that world where we're like dissecting data and trying
to understand an audience of demography. Right. And then later I got to work with Medicare
data, which is most 95% of the people over age 65. And so you see every time they, you
know, you have a claim for every time they go to the doctor. And so I was doing information
preparing, packaging a nice data set for some researcher. Okay. So say you went in for
colon resection. Well, if you're re-hospitalized within a month, that is not a good outcome. Yeah.
And that, and I think the, the Medicare only pays now for one. So if you, if you were discharged
too soon, that's on the hospital. Wow. Yeah. So that, at least it changes in policy and
stuff. So it's really interesting. Yeah. That sounds great. And do you do anything with
data nowadays or just retired? Not really. I, I, where I live in, the community I live in,
I, I, I have a rain gauge that I closely monitor. And we are at least 10 inches above normal
rainfall for this time of year. Yeah. It was like the opposite of last year, right? From
whatever, Leninia is sort of bringing all the water that we didn't get last year. And
now we have like mosquitoes. Right. It's all coming in at once. Yeah. So yeah, I, I listened
to one of your radio stations this morning. I took the brochure. Yeah. Yeah. And the one
that's in the Madison area, the WMDX, 92.7 FM. Yes. Yes. The FM station was, I could pick
up easier. Yeah. The AM is kind of weak. Yeah. So, but that's okay. So I, and I know there's
some talk on that. So now that I know that. Yeah. Yeah. I might listen to it. Yeah. Our
talk shows are on both AM and FM. Yeah. And if you're in the city, the FM is a stronger
signal. And then the AM because of the buildings, it's better if you're outside. When you drive
in the, you know, periphery of the, of, you know, around Dane County, the AM is stronger.
So, yeah. Funny how radio works, the physics of radio. Yeah. Well, and I love radio because
when the internet goes down, we'll still have radio. Exactly. That's, you know, it's never
really gone away. I think it's just like, you know, our attention has been fragmented
essentially. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, is there any other stories you would like to share?
I don't know. You were here yesterday and, you know, we missed some of that. So we'll
like to capture that as well. Okay. Well, I was giving my general view of the layout
of Madison. The fact that I think Dodie was the guy who decided to put the capital on
this isthmus, which we can't undo. Right. It's like, when you look at the map of, I mean,
it's like, it's like two separate parts of the world. Yeah. And, uh, and it's been,
been described as the, the townies on the east side. Okay. And the gownies on the west
side. What does the county start? That's the university types. So you got the university
and everything associated with that. And then on this side of town, which was mostly
industrial, manufacturing. Right. I mean, heck, we still have an ice cream factory down
around the corner. Yeah. So there's a lot of differences. And I think, I think because
Matt, this side of town has so many venues, you know, we've got the Barrymore Theater
here. Right. A lot of new music performance space. It's really great. I, I love it. I
don't saloon as well. It's down. It's on the other side of the river. Oh, is it? Is it?
Okay. It's on the other side of the river, but it's, it's a good, it's a good location. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's nice. Well, that's, you know, I'm a relatively muted Madison. And
that was one of the things that just, just this, like, open festival free bands and just,
like, come and hang out and enjoy the community as it really specials, really special, please.
Yeah. That's why people don't leave. Yeah. Well, I, I moved here to my, my first husband
wanted to go to graduate school here. So that's why we came. And then when we split up,
I stayed. Yeah. Nice to see you later. Yeah. Bye. Yeah. Well, excellent. Great. Thank
you again for coming back. And, and yeah, you, we're looking forward, you feel free to call
also with, you know, all the, all the shows have a call line. So if you feel inspired to call
in any, any of the topics that contribute, and I know that the hosts really appreciate
hearing from listeners. Okay. All right. Well, great. We'll have a great day.
Thank you. You too. Enjoy the festival. You too. Thank you.