Monday, 3/9

And now, we’re left with the garbage.

With probably 90% of the snow in the city of Marquette melting over the past week, what was just recently a white wonderland is now a big brown blob of sand and junk and all kinds of crap, both figurative and literal (thank you, the small minority of Marquette dog owners who don’t think the city’s pooper scooper law applies to them). Loraine and I went for a stroll Sunday and were astounded by the amount of bottles, cans, empty fast food wrappers, and other different examples of the refuse of winter, all laying in decaying heaps on city sidewalks and in city streets.

As I wrote about last week, March may be the one month of the year when Marquette isn’t, well, beautiful. Aside from being filled with leftover brown dirt, it's also filled with the leftover remainders of people who think that, just because they can’t see where it lands, it’s okay to toss whatever garbage they have in their cars or in their hands on the nearest sidewalk. And it’s also filled with the leftover remainders of pets, innocent animals whose owners think it’s okay to leave big piles of bacterial-filled waste on a sidewalk where hundreds of people must dodge said piles when the snow melts for the season.

Sigh.

Thankfully, as I mentioned last week, we live in a community where the clean-up doesn’t take too long. But until then, we’re stuck with an uglier than usual city. Uglier than usual because of the natural result of winter ending (the sand everywhere, and the broken branches everywhere), and uglier than usual because, well, some people are just slobs.

The sad thing is, of course, that it doesn’t have to be that way. People COULD pick up after themselves during winter, and then when March rolls around, clean-up would be quicker, it wouldn’t cost the city so much, and Marquette could start looking like Marquette again, instead of someone’s personal garbage heap.

Sad to say, though, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. After all, I know what people are like these days.

And let's just say my faith in humanity is not what it once was...

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 3/6

Wow. I can't believe we're done for the year.

I'll have to keep this kinda short, because I'm off to NMU in a bit to tape the final episodes of “High School Bowl” of the season. We're doing two shows today, the semi-finals and the finals, as well as interviews and material for the "Season in Review" show, and it puts the wraps on another fun year, a year that seems like it just started yesterday.

But now, it's over.

I don't know if it seems like it's been a short season because it all went so smoothly, or because it's been a blast doing it, but I'm kind of stunned at how quickly it went. Maybe it's the fact that I've been doing it for a bit now; maybe it's because this year, more than any other, the young people on the show have been doing things like putting my face on their pants. I have no idea. I just know it's been a blast this season, and I'm very sorry to see it come to an end. Some familiar teams have made the semis, while there are a couple of surprises in there, as well. I can't wait to see how it turns out later today. You'll have to wait until the middle of April to see it for yourself, but trust me when I say this—there are some amazing moments still to come this season.

The season that, like I said, wraps up shooting in just a few minutes.

With that, I'm off to make sure my tie is straight. Have yourself a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 3/5

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm wrong about a lot of stuff. But I know I'm not wrong about this.

Marquette is usually one of the most beautiful places on the planet. During the summer there's green everywhere you look. During fall that green changes to a palette of polychromatic majesty. And even a snowfall during winter can have an ethereal beauty of its own.

At least the first few snowfalls of the year have that ethereal beauty. After that, all bets are off.

However, there's one segment of the year during which Marquette is not at its best. In fact, you could even make the claim that during that particular segment, Marquette is downright ugly. That period of time?

March.

Don't believe me?

That's a picture I took yesterday, as the sun & 45 degree temperatures reduced our six foot snowbanks into five foot snowbanks. And it, I think, proves my point. All winter long city crews dump sand everywhere, just to make sure that vehicles can make it up the wicked hills of Marquette. That sand is covered up by snowfall, so we really don't notice it when it's around. However, when the snow starts to melt, the sand doesn't, meaning the city turns, for several weeks, into a pile of giant brown mush.

And you know what? There's no way a city can look good when it resembles a pile of giant brown mush.

Thankfully, that particular phase doesn't last too long. Soon (hopefully), the snow will entirely disappear, city crews can work their cleaning magic, and in a month or so green grass and the first flowers will make an appearance, propelling the city toward awesome beauty for which it is known.

But that's still a little bit away. For the next few weeks, we'll just have to deal with the fact that Marquette is still in need of its yearly makeover.

And hopefully, after the winter we've had, that makeover comes sooner rather than later.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 3/4

Who knew a sign of its legacy would still be around, and still sitting in my bedroom, all these years later?

I've been reading a book about the history, development, and sales of candy in the U.S., and one of the things discussed in the book was Wacky Packages. Admittedly, Wacky Packages weren't a candy, but since they stuck sticks of bubble gum in the package, I guess that allowed it to qualify for inclusion in the book. For those of you who don't know Wacky Packs, a thousand or so years ago they were stickers satirizing products of the day (for instance, Crest Toothpaste was turned into Crust Toothpaste), something that appealed to those of us who were nine years old back then (as opposed to those of us who occasionally act like nine year olds now).

Anyway, I had quite the collection of the stickers, so reading through the section of the book about Wacky Packages made me chuckle. I was reading in our bedroom, while Loraine was somewhere else in our apartment. I left the bedroom to show her the page, and in doing so walked past one of the dressers we use. I've had this particular dresser since I was a kid, and on the side of the dresser I passed while leaving the room there are several areas where the stain had been peeled off a long time ago. It wasn't until I walked passed the dresser carrying that book on candy that I realized WHY the stain was peeled off.

The stain on the dresser was peeled off because of the fact that when I was a kid, I once had a bunch of Wacky Packages stickers stuck onto it, stickers that were at one time removed, causing the areas where the stain had been peeled off.

It's funny, because I hadn't looked at the side of the dresser for decades. And I have no idea why I looked at it at the moment I was also carrying the book with the section on Wacky Packages. I just know that I, for some reason, looked at the dresser at that exact second and made the connection. It's funny, too, because if you look close enough you can see the stain that's peeled off is actually peeled off in the shape of stickers. I suppose if I had pictures of each and every Wacky Package sticker from my youth I could tell you which sticker on the dresser was planted where, but that would probably be bordering on the obsessive.

Just a little.

It's weird how parts of our youth keep popping up as we get older & older (and older). Sometimes all it takes is a book—and an old dresser—to remind us of that.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 3/3

I, personally, think the description is apt.

My TV piece last night dealt with what Marquette residents went through last week; namely, the ultimately unsuccessful search for missing NMU student Trenton Massey, and how the community pitched in in an attempt to find him. At the end of the piece I talked about the old Mr Rogers quote on “looking for the helpers”, saying that maybe the one good thing to take away from this whole tragedy is that the residents of Marquette ARE, indeed, the helpers.

I'm often wrong about things, but this is one time I know I'm not.

I guess i would hope that residents of EVERY community could find it in themselves to be called “helpers”, but something I saw after getting home from TV last night reminded me that might be one of things about which I might be wrong.

A Facebook friend of mine had expressed sympathy for a group of marginalized people, and shared the reaction someone from his hometown (another community in Upper Michigan) had stuck on the post. I'm not going to quote it exactly, because it was not nice, but in essence it said “the people of Marquette are corrupting you”. Now, I know that we live in an extremely polarized world these days, and that for some individuals empathy for others and hate of “the other” has been weaponized. The comment left on the post is proof positive of that. But to say that the people of Marquette, one of the kindest groups of people you'll ever meet, a group that turned out en masse to help find someone who was missing, are a “corrupting influence” on someone?

Really?????

Like I said, I know we live in a polarized world these days, and that the very things that make the residents of Marquette “helpers” are looked down upon by a certain segment of society. But you know what? I'll take love over hate, inclusion over division, and helpers over takers, any single day of the week. I would do that even if I wasn't one of the “corrupted residents” of Marquette. Why?

Because that's what being a good human being IS.

Here's the TV piece from last night--

(jim@wmqt.com), corrupted resident of Marquette.

Monday, 3/2

Going to the grocery store really does get weirder & weirder.

I wrote last week about how I saw both an “old” person and someone who wanted to compliment my TV work at the store last week. Well, as always happened, when Loraine and I went shopping this weekend I had people come up to me, one of whom asked a question that proves that, perhaps, my reputation precedes me.

That question?

“Are you ready for the beach yet”?

Now, as those of you who read this regularly know, I kinda like the beach. I spend a good deal of my summer (at least a good deal of a warm summer) just walking up & down beaches, basking in the warmth of the sun and the zen-like sound of the waves crashing on shore. Those of you who read this on a regular basis also know that my dream job would be “beach bum”, only I've yet to figure out a way to get someone to pay me to do it. That's why I was surprised when the question was asked and it turns out the person doing the asking doesn't read these.

Apparently, I've been doing what I do long enough that everyone in Marquette knows everything about me.

8-)

I guess, in a way, the question made sense, especially because on Friday—the day before the grocery store encounter—the sun was out and the temperatures were, for one of the only times this calendar year, actually above normal. You could even if you felt, joke that on Friday we DID have “perfect beach weather” outside. And while the sunshine DID add a beach-like glow to the day, the fact that it was glaring off of seven-foot snowbanks kind of took away the whole allure of going to the beach, at least then.

So I guess I'm now known not just as the geek on the radio who walks everywhere; or the geek on TV, or the geek who leads big crowds around downtown Marquette while babbling about history. To one person, at least, I'm also known as “the geek who wants to go to the beach”. I guess, though, there are worse reputations to be had, right?

(jim@wmqt.com), who wonders who I'll speak with the NEXT time I'm at the grocery store.

Friday, 2/27

It has been a long week here in Marquette, what with snow storms, school cancellations, the unsuccessful search for a missing NMU student, and the collapse of the roof of the Westwood Mall (and that's just as of this morning), that I figured I'd just leave you with two things, the first of which is this--.

Is WNMU-TV REALLY sure they want to use my ugly mug as an incentive to get people to tune into an entire night of programming? I know that if I saw that picture I'd run screaming to the hills, but maybe that's just me.

Oh—and have I ever mentioned my life is weird? That's just another example.

8-)

As I alluded to a few paragraphs ago, one of the things that's consumed Marquette the past few days was the search for NMU student Trenton Massey, a search that's now been called off. Yesterday I had Marquette City Police Chief Ryan Grim come in and walk us through what went on, as well as the incredible community response to the whole affair.

If you have a little over 6 minutes and an interest in what he had to say, check it out--

On that note, keep your fingers crossed that we actually have a peaceful weekend here in the UP. After what's been going on the past few days, I think we deserve it.

(jim@wmqt.com)