Friday, 1/31

This should be a really, really good weekend. After all, I don't have to do ANYTHING, except watch the New England Patriots not be in the Super Bowl.

That's the sign of a good weekend, right?

After everything that's gone on the past few weekends this weekend will be a welcome change. No presentations, no ski race announcing, no appearances, no nothing. The highlight of my weekend, in fact, aside from watching the Stupor Bowl, may be doing a couple of loads of laundry. Oh, although if I do get ambitious I might walk down to the library for a couple of minutes and look through a couple of old city directories as part of one of the History Center programs I'm putting together for this summer.

But that's only if I feel ambitious.

It's gonna be a weird feeling, this not having anything to do for two days. I mean I had a day or two around the holidays off because they were, you know, holidays. But it's been been pretty much non-stop since. Hopefully, I won't have to remember to learn how to relax. Hopefully, buried deep inside my somewhat bizarre psyche I have the mental muscle memory to remember how to do it. If not, I'll just be wandering around our apartment all weekend, thinking I'm supposed to be doing something and driving Loraine insane in the process. And since I don't wanna get beat up by my dear wife, I'm hoping I'll remember how to relax.

So keep your fingers crossed about that!

I'd write more, but I need to get over to NMU and shoot the final episodes of “High School Bowl” for the year. Yup; for the first time since I've been hosting the show and perhaps for the first time in the 42 year history of the show there has not been ONE shooting day canceled because of the weather.

Not one!

Have a great weekend,

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 1/30

Okay. Even I don't think I could say that. In fact, I KNOW I couldn't say that.

Researchers at MIT apparently ran out of important things to study, because they've just made a discovery that will probably not win anyone there a Nobel prize. However, because it doesn't deal with string theory or quantum mathematics or the theory of the multi-verse, it's a discovery that many of us can appreciate.

That discovery? The world's hardest tongue twister.

No, seriously. They used all their math skills and all the algorithms they could come up with to decide what the hardest tongue twister would be for the average human to say. I think we've all had to deal with trying to say tongue twisters before. Heck, I know I've embarrassed myself on the air many times while trying them, my personal favorite being the simple “Colts Coach Caldwell” that I could never ever get right. However, no tongue twister I've ever tried tied my tongue in such knots as the one that the MIT researchers came up with.

Don't believe me? Try saying “Pad kid poured curd pulled cod” even once. I dare you.

(Go ahead and try. I'll be right here when you're done)

Give yourself as headache yet? Sprain your tongue? Let out a few choice words when you got done trying it? Well, don't worry. I'm guessing you're in good company, as I myself couldn't even get through it the first time without sounding like I was gargling with marbles. I have no idea how anyone could say it multiple times, and at any rate of speed. I mean, by breaking it down syllable by syllable I could get through it, but as soon as I tried to say it like a normal person (or at least as normal as I could get) I blew the proverbial gasket. It just doesn't work.

No way, no how.

So hats off to the researchers at MIT. Aside from discovering the secrets of the universe both big and small, they've also been able to figure out the worst tongue twister in human history. Now I'm hoping they'll take a hint from a classic episode of “Monty Python” and figure out a joke so funny it makes people die. Maybe they'd pick up the Nobel for THAT, you know?

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 1/29

It's been over a month. Have you finished eating all of your Christmas gifts yet?

I don't know if you're like me, but a big chunk of the gifts I'm given over the holidays, maybe even half, consists of food. Chocolate makes up a large majority of it, but you could count cookies, nuts, fruit, a whole collection of Southern food from my niece Courtney, living in South Carolina, and, well, more chocolate as part of the sum total. I don't mind; after all, people know how much Loraine and I like certain kinds of food, and that makes us easy people for whom to buy, I guess.

Of course, that means that after the holidaze both Loraine and I have a lot of food to eat. The chocolate's not a problem, especially the huge collection sent to us each and every year by daily blog readers Floyd & Betsy of Reese (thanks, other Mom & Dad!), but the other stuff—especially the perishable items like fruit or semi-perishable stuff like cookies—do need to get eaten before they go bad. And that usually means they they need to be gone by, say, now.

We're almost done with those items. Are you?

I mean, you may not have to worry about it. You may not have a lot of food given to you over the holidays, and you may not feel the pressure to get it all consumed by a certain date. Maybe that's just us. And maybe that's just karma biting us on the butt for spreading out 30,000 calories of cookies to friends and family before the holidays, and maybe karma doesn't feel the need to pay back you and yours.

Maybe.

One system that we have found that works is this—we sample each and every thing we're given. More often than not, we end up consuming the whole gift. But on occasion, especially if it's one of several of a certain kind we've been given, or if it's of a taste with which we may not be totally enthralled, we'll “donate” the rest of it to Loraine's office mates. Unlike me, she works with a big staff of people, a staff of people who don't mind sampling food brought in by coworkers. In that way, it's a win-win—they enjoy it, and we manage to get all the food consumed before it goes bad.

See? We've thought this through.

We appreciate all the food we're given each year, and enjoy sampling every single thing that's given to us. We're actually planning on using the Southern grab bag that Courtney gave us to make a big dinner sometime soon, and in one of the most amazing bits of serendipitous timing ever, it looks like the German chocolate Loraine's parents gave us will last us until around the end of April.

You know—right around the time we actually go back to Germany to replenish our supply.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com), who hopes that YOU'VE managed to eat your way through all of your yummy Christmas gifts!

Tuesday, 1/28

I did not grow up in South Marquette. But I was spawned by someone who did.

The Mining Journal had a very nice article  yesterday on the little extravaganza Jack & I did last Thursday, but it contained a factual error that has also popped up in several other TV stories and articles stretching all the way back to the original South Marquette walking tour I did last year--

I am not from South Marquette.

The article mentions that I grew up in South Marquette, which isn't true. I spent the first few years of my life out on the highway where Walmart now is, and then split the rest of my childhood between Norway Avenue, and Fairway Drive. The closest I came to being a resident of South Marquette might be the years I spent at Bothwell Middle School.

But I didn't grow up there.

I actually try to point that fact out when I'm talking about South Marquette. I guess I just don't do a good enough job. Either that, or when people hear me talking about the fact that my dad is from South Marquette they automatically think I am as well, or they're not just paying attention to the words “my dad”. Any one of those would be a good explanation; I'm guessing it's a combination of all of them.

It's kind of funny, too, because when I was young and my dad took me to visit some of his relatives who still lived in South Marquette I always thought it was an exotic place. There were new, interesting families and lots of hills and a softball field stuck smack dab right in the middle of it all. I was fascinated by the place, which is probably why I enjoy telling the stories so much.

Another thing that may lead to my interest in it is that the old Hogan family homestead was torn down before I was born. That means whatever tenuous link that I may have had with the neighborhood was never around for me to exploit. I don't even know what the house in which my dad grew up looked like. But I do know where it was (the top of Jackson Street hill), and I kind of use that as an anchor when talking about the people and the places of the surrounding streets.

So like I said, I'm not from South Marquette. I do, however, think it's kind of cool that people assume I'm from there. It must just (literally) be in my DNA.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 1/27

I think it may be a winter miracle.

I had my usual fun time announcing at the Noquemanon finish line Saturday, even if I was a little hoarse after reading off 1,300 names in a six hour span. Because the weather was just above the freezing mark I was able to even do a little bit of it while standing outside, which is a marked contrast to some years when it's been so cold that I've been huddled next to the space heater in the little motor home they stick me (and the timers) in.

And that's what something hit me.

Here were are, about to wrap up January, which for us in Marquette is by far the coldest month of the year, on average. There have been years when we've gone two weeks in a row without seeing temperatures above zero, and there are few years with a day when the temperatures are above zero. Yet this January has seen almost a dozen days with highs above freezing, and zero days when the temperature went below zero.

What I'm trying to say, people, is that we're having (for us) a really warm January.

It's kind of surprising, too, when you consider that we had cold, below zero snaps in both November and December. I had kind of resigned myself to yet another cold winter, yet here we stand, with four days left to go in the coldest month of the year, and we don't even have any ice in Marquette's Lower Harbor.  Don't believe me?

Sure, there's still snow and it's still gloomy.  When was the last time we could say that the harbor wasn't frozen over on a January 27^th?

I'm hoping that it's a sign we're due for a nice spring and a gorgeous summer this year, even though I know winter weather is absolutely no predictor of what will happen as the year wears on. Accuweather had put out a little thing last week mentioning that 80% of US cities were warmer than average last year, and when I put Marquette's zip code in it came as no surprise that we were one of the 20% that was colder than usual.

We're off to a good start to reversing that trend this year.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed the rest of the winter is mild, as well. As I get older I discover that while I really don't mind snow THAT much (it is, after all, better than, oh, a colonoscopy) the cold is something that I really wish would go away. And before you get on my case about living somewhere where it's cold 10 months out of the year, I know. I'm a walking oxymoron.

And you can take the “oxy” part of it off if you want.

So, if you would, keep your fingers crossed that January is just the start of a trend this year!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 1/24

Well, that was fun.

“North & South Marquette” seems to have been a resounding success, as a picture from last night may prove--

We did end up selling out the place, and the capacity crowd seemed entertained. And based on the comments we received from people afterwards, they may have even learned a little something.

Who knew?

As I joked at the beginning of the presentation, we probably had enough material for a six hour show, but figured that almost two hours of stuff was enough. Why could we have done a six hour show? Well, it goes back to something I was saying a couple of weeks ago. No one has ever done a big, in-depth project on these two parts of Marquette. Because rich and/or notable people didn't live there, no one's been curious. So all kinds of people have had all kinds of stories saved up over the years, just waiting for someone to ask them. And since Jack & I were those “someones”, that's how we ended up with all that material.

I just, personally, hope we did the neighborhoods justice.

I may have more to say on the whole evening later on, but for now it's on to the next few days of an action-packed week. Tomorrow, I get to spend six hours announcing people's names for Finish Line Jim's annual gig at the Noquemanon. Then next week, I get to (hopefully) put the earliest-ever wrap on a season of “High School Bowl” as we spend a couple of days shooting the quarterfinals, semi-finals, and the championship game for the year.

It's amazing how quickly you can get done when you don't have weather cancellations six weeks in a row, like we did last year.

On that note, I need to go put in a little time as Radio Jim before Finish Line Jim and TV Jim take over. And don't worry; even though History Jim's big show for January is over, he has a LOT more coming up, and coming up before he even wants to think about it.

Have a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 1/23

Well, today's the day.

If I haven't been (sarcasm alert) mentioning it much recently, today's the day all the work Jack & I have been putting in the past few months comes to light. Today's the day (or tonight's the night, more specifically) we do our “Jim Koski & Jack Deo Take On North vs South Marquette” show at Kaufman Auditorium. All the pictures are set, all the stories are ready to be told, and just a few seats remain to be sold.

I think we're good to go.

One of the things I've had to do is write a newspaper article dealing with a topic of the show, and since I have a couple of thousand (plus one or two more) little matters to take care of before tonight, I'm gonna take the easy way out and just repurpose it here. However, because I like you guys, I'm giving you a bonus picture not used in yesterday's Mining Journal.

It's the (very) least I could do.

How will things go tonight? Well, come back tomorrow for all the gory details. Unless, that is, we do such a horrid job that North & South team up for once to run us out of town. I, however, am hoping that's not gonna happen.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

The buildings which housed two of Marquette's earliest elementary schools, one located on the city's south side, the other on the north side, are still standing. The fact that they played a role in educating several generations of children from Marquette's working class families seems to have been forgotten.

Rapid population growth in the area south of the Whetstone Creek—what we now call “South Marquette”--prompted the construction of the city's first neighborhood school, the Hampton school, near the corner of Hampton and Division Streets, in 1876. Before then, students from South Marquette made their way by foot or by carriage to the city's main elementary school at the time, the downtown Washington Street school, (located where Old City Hall now sits).

Hampton School.  Picture courtesy Marquette Regional History Center

Much like the Washington Street School, the Hampton School was a two-story structure, with classrooms on both levels. Unlike the Washington Street School, which was constructed of wood and eventually burned to the ground in 1875, the Hampton School was constructed of brick and sandstone from the recently opened quarry a few blocks to its south.

When it opened in the 1876, the Hampton School, like the Washington Street School, housed just first through sixth grades. A separate Kindergarten class was not added to the facility until 1903.

A dedicated staff served the students, many of them children of recent immigrants from countries like Ireland and Sweden, throughout the years. In fact, one teacher, Mrs. Bain, always remembered the students she taught over the decades, and when they graduated from high school she would give each of them a 25 cent certificate from Donckers as a graduation gift.

1903 Fourth Grade class at Hampton School.  Picture from Marquette Regional History Center

The school was used until 1934, when an expansion at the Fisher School, located just on the other side of the Whetstone, was finished. The building then sat idle for a decade until it was sold to Menze Construction. The company still uses the remnants of the building today.

Several decades after construction of the Hampton School, the Marquette School board authorized construction of another school, this one on the city's north side, to serve the 60 or so children from the Powder Mill & Dead River Locations, along with recently opened areas along the (then) new Presque Isle Avenue.

Classes were first given in a house rented from a Mr. Asire for $10 a month, and what was first known as the North Marquette School was formally opened in 1893 at the corner of Fitch and Harlow Streets. The wooden one-story building was designed to hold 180 students, and as the area grew with the formation of nearby lumberyards and the Cliff Dow plant, the classrooms rapidly filled.

North Marquette School, circa 1940

“Swamp Tech”, as its students jokingly called it, was a bare bones, utilitarian building. It only had four rooms; the kindergarten class occupied one, while students in grades one through six shared the other three. And according to a school pamphlet, it only had “adequate sanitary toilet facilities” installed in the 1930s.

Nonetheless, the school, which was renamed the Lakeside School in the late 1950s, continued to serve students into the early 1960s, when it was closed following the expansion of Whitman Elementary and the opening of the current High School in 1964.

The building still stands today as the home of Marquette's St. Vincent de Paul Society.

Although both structures are still standing, their use as schools has been largely forgotten by the general public. Pictures of both, in fact, are hard to come by. However, for several generations of youth growing up on the periphery of the city, the schools provided them not only with an education , but also with a sense of “neighborhood”, of a school they could call their own.

******

The two schools, along with many other subjects, will be the topic of “Jim Koski & Jack Deo Take on North & South Marquette”, a fundraiser program for the Marquette Regional History Center at Kaufman Auditorium Thursday, January 23^rd, at 7pm. Tickets purchased in advance are $ 15, and $20 for balcony seats. They're $5 more each at the door the night of the show. For more information, call the History Center at (906) 226-3571 or visit www.marquettehistory.org.

Wednesday, 1/22

Say hello to my little friends!

Well, okay; they're not THAT little. But they are my new friends. Those of you who've been reading these forever know that one of the few ways I stay sane during winter is by cross-country skiing. Unfortunately, when I decided to go car-free a few years ago I gave up ready access to my favorite ski trails out at Blueberry Ridge, and skiing at the Fit Strip (just a few block walk away) can be hit & miss, depending upon everything from the depth of the snow to how many people have walked their dogs and left dog poop on the tracks.

Because of that, I've kind of kept an eye on a winter alternative, and decided to use a birthday gift from daily blog readers Chick & Darlene (hi, mom & dad!) to check out snowshoes. And I have to say this about that--

I'm glad I did.

I haven't been snowshoeing since I was a kid, so I really didn't know what to expect, but after taking them out Sunday morning after the big storm I was pleasantly surprised. I traipsed around the 10 inches of new powder at Lower Harbor Park for an hour and built up a nice sweat, and despite my fears I wasn't sore the next day. I think the physical motion of snowshoeing is similar to running, and since I do a lot of that my body didn't seem to mind. It also provided the zen-like feeling I get from skiing, especially with Lake Superior right off my shoulder

So I think it worked.

It's actually nice to have an alternative to cross-country skiing during the winter. That way, when the trail hasn't been groomed or a melt has rendered said trail a little unsafe, I now have an alternative. I think my body will like it. I certainly know my sanity will!

****

Speaking of people who've been reading this forever, I was shocked and saddened to hear that daily blog reader Cyndy of Au Train (Cyndy Brown, to those who knew her) passed away unexpectedly over the weekend. Cyndy seemed to be the first person who read these after I posted them, at least based on the notes I'd sometimes get from her, and was awfully nice in sharing lilac photos with me each and every spring. So to her family, especially her son Lee, you have my deepest sympathy and sorrow at your loss.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 1/21

I really should get off my butt and update it. If nothing else, it'll tell people Loraine's actually still alive.

As you may know, I've been (massive understatement here) a little busy recently, which means that I haven't been able to get to all of those little projects that I've been meaning to. One of those projects, a project I wrote about in here almost (gulp) a year ago, is an update of the “107 Things To Love About Marquette County” list that resides on another part of this website. It's been four years since I last updated it, and in that time several people listed on it have passed away and several businesses I mentioned have shut their doors.

So it DOES need to get updated. And, apparently, a rather major typo needs to get corrected as well.

Now, the list has been up there for almost four years. According to the counter, thousands of people have looked at it. And I myself poured over it with a fine-toothed comb before putting it up. Therefore, it was kind of a surprise when I received a call from a listener yesterday who said she had just read it, and was a little confused by something.

When she told me what that something was, I almost did a spit take with the tea I was drinking.

One of the “107 Things” I mentioned was the Range Bank parking deck across the street from where I work. I love taking pictures from there, and I have a soft spot in my heart for the place anyway, seeing as how Loraine works there. In fact, I even mentioned that in the blog with, sadly, the major typo I mentioned earlier.

The line is supposed to read “Besides, it's where my dear wife works”. Unfortunately, that's not what it actually says. Despite the fact that I thought I proofread it a hundred times, and despite the fact that thousands of people have read it in the past four years, the line actually says this--

“Besides, that's where my dead wife works”.

Just for the record, Loraine is NOT dead. She's not dead now, and she wasn't dead when I wrote it in 2016. Loraine's still working at the building, and is very, VERY much alive.

Unlike, apparently, my brain.

I know how I missed the typo, too. I think I've written in here before about how we are becoming overly dependent upon things like spell-check. If we're writing something and it's not underlined in red, we assume it's correct and we zoom past it. I'm almost positive that's how I missed it. I typed “dead” instead of “dear”, and since I spelled “dead' right my spell-check had no idea I was an idiot and let it slide. I then didn't notice it myself, nor did any of the thousands of people's who've read it over the past few years.

Either that, or they thought I forgotten to tell them about something big.

This all brings to the fore a couple of things—one (and this bears repeating), Loraine is NOT dead. Two, I'm an idiot. And three, I REALLY need to update that list.

(jim@wmqt.com), who's put it on top of the list to deal with after I'm done with the Kaufman show Thursday!

Monday, 1/20

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Those of you who have been reading this for a long time know of my deep admiration for the man in whose honor we have a holiday today. And while most people know the Classics Illustrated version of his story--the March on Washington, the “I Have a Dream” speech, and his assassination--I have the feeling that not enough people know about how he led one of the most profound changes in this country’s history, and how the words he spoke throughout that long & contentious change still resonate today.

And that’s a bad thing.

Now, I’m not gonna go off on a rant on how everyone should go out and spend the day studying about his life; after all, you all have your own life to worry about. But every year I like to share a quote of his that may not be quite as famous as “I Have a Dream”. And when looking through some material about him over the weekend, I found one that made me laugh, and not necessarily in a good way.

Here it is--

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

It comes, if I’m not mistaken, from his book “Strength to Love”. If you didn’t know that was written 55 years ago, you’d think he was talking about politics and of the partisan divide of American electorate today. Or that he was talking about one of the endless ways many Americans just seem to want to float through life without challenging themselves.

Now, I know I’m out of the ordinary. God, do I know I’m out of the ordinary. But it seems to me that going through life trying to take the path of least resistance--the “easy” way out--is nothing more than cheating yourself and cheating the people around you. After all, we all have a finite amount of time on this planet. Shouldn’t we make sure that the time we do have is put to good use? Shouldn’t we continue to learn and give ourselves new experiences?

Sadly, most people don’t put their limited time on this planet to good use. Did you know that 35% of Americans, once they graduate from high school, never read a book again? I mean, really? How can you hope to learn--how can you hope to challenge yourself, to better yourself--if you don’t read? Another great American philosopher (I’ll tell you who in a second) once said “TV has all the answers”. And sadly, I think too many people believe that. Too many people sit and watch and blindly follow the marching orders of their favorite partisan news channel or their favorite reality TV star and never stop to think or to question for themselves. There’s more to life than what you watch or what you’re told by TV, although I don’t think the philosopher who said that “TV has all the answers” would agree.

Especially because that philosopher is Homer Simpson.

So in honor of Dr. King, think for yourself today. Challenge yourself today. Prove that our universal quest doesn’t lie in easy answers, but that it lies in people willing to search for the hard truths.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 1/17

My life is really weird today.

I know; I say that all the time. And it's often true. But every time I think things are back to normal, they're not. To whit--

In a few minutes, I have to go shoot one of the quarterfinal episodes of “High School Bowl”. Then I have to go look at a few potential pictures for next week's “North/South” show. Then I have to meet with a local singer who's recorded a new song. Then I have to go over some stuff for next Saturday's Noquemanon. Then I have to try to squeeze in all my radio stuff, including everything I need to do for the weekend, all the while waiting to be interviewed by TV-6 for a story on the 100^th anniversary of Prohibition.

So, you know, it's a typical Friday.

It wouldn't surprise me if I got an extra phone call or two, as well. I've been speaking with a lot of people who grew up in North or South Marquette for the show next week, and it seems like every time I talk to someone they tell a friend or three, who then call me with more stories, and pretty soon the whole thing has expanded exponentially. I'm not complaining at all; in fact, I love hearing the stories.

It's just that I may have to call a few of the people back Saturday or Sunday, if they don't mind.

I'm not complaining. Really, I'm not. I love each and every thing I'm doing today, and I wish I had a LOT more time to devote to each and every one of those things. But despite my asking for it every year, Santa Claus has yet to give me that mythical 25^th hour in a day, so I can only do what I can do with the time I have.

And part of me feels a little bad that I may have to put one of two of those calls off for a day. I don't know the how or the why of it, but it seems that the older people who grew up in North or South Marquette are glad they're finally being able to tell their stories. Like I mentioned earlier this week in the post about the North Marquette School, a lot of the history of the two neighborhoods was never documented well, because no one “important” lived there. The stories were never told. And now that I'm collecting them, it seems like the dam of decades of historical neglect has burst, and they're flowing everywhere.

That's why I feel bad about not having time to talk to everyone as soon as they call. I just wish the real world—you know, responsibility—didn't get in the way.

Oh well; what are you going to do, right?

With that, I'm off to my first TV appearance of the day. Because, you know, having more than one TV appearance in a day isn't weird at all, is it?

8-)

Have a great weekend,

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 1/16

I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet.

Earlier this week the New York Times put out their “52 Places to Visit in 2020” list, places that a traveler should explore that they may not have before thought of visiting. It was a nice, diverse list of places around the planet, places mostly chosen for their historical sites and/or their dedication to climate change. Therefore, I'm not totally surprised that one of my favorites places in Germany made the list.

But like I said, I don't know how I feel about Leipzig making the list. Especially just a few months before we go back.

I mean, don't get me wrong—I think more people need to know about the city, and the beauty and history it contains. It's an amazing place, and I'm really looking forward to doing a little more exploring of it in a couple of months (oh, and seeing the soccer match that's the primary purpose for the trip, too). But it's one of those things that's both good and bad, something to which we here in Marquette can attest. As soon as you get featured in an article like this (especially a spotlight article in one of the world's biggest newspapers) people descend upon you.

Sometimes, they descend upon you a lot.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a place (like Marquette) that has a huge tourism industry. Leipzig's a city like that; in the past couple of years, people have been discovering the charm and beauty of the city, leading it to be referred to by some as “Hypezig”. That may account for the reaction in the city when the story was announced. On some of the Leipzig city and tourism Facebook pages the second reaction after “like” or “love” was the angry face. I can understand that for a couple of reasons, the first being I know what it's like when American tourists run roughshod over a foreign place (like the ones Loraine and I saw in France one year complaining (quite loudly) about how the locals eat a lot of cheese). Americans...how I can say this...can be a little, well, uncouth at times.

Let's just leave it at that.

The other reason I can agree with those angry faces? It's a purely personal reason. Not a lot of people know about Leipzig, and it was kind of a little secret that Loraine and I had, a place that was unfamiliar to most and a place that we could show off. Now our secret will be spilled. I realize that happens with secrets, and that can actually be a good thing.

But it won't be something unique to us.

Not that that matters. We're still going in just over three months, and no amount of newspaper hype will take away a view like this--

Oh, and the soccer match, too.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 1/15

Unless you have an eagle eye, you wouldn't have noticed it. But Phil was on a national TV show.

Phil, of course, is the late Marquette legend Phil Niemisto, who passed away almost two years ago. (And, as a side note, I really can't believe it's been two years. But that has nothing to do with this story, so...) The TV show is “Joe Pera Talks With You” on Adult Swim. The show is set in Marquette, and one of the cool things about it is that every episode that's not shot here has a shout-out to Marquette in one way or another. Sometimes, you have to look hard to find them, but they're there.

I've had five or six episodes of the new season on my DVR, and I finally got around to watching the one from last month where Joe spends the 10 minutes of the show waiting for his grandmother at the hair salon so they can go to a fish fry. Yes, that's the actual plot of the show. Don't knock it until you watch it.

Anyway, the little shout-out to Marquette came early in the episode, when you could see a copy of a Mining Journal in the salon--

It's there in lower right hand corner. And I actually knew which edition of the Mining Journal it was, if only because of the color blue, which you can (hopefully) see in this zoomed in image--

That color, which has someone dressed in the color we jokingly refer to as “Phil Blue”, was taken the day they unveiled his statue in the downtown Pocket Park. This day, in fact, captured in almost the exact same picture by me--

That's why I'm thinking the newspaper may have been placed there on purpose. They shot the episode last year, in the summer of 2019. The statue unveiling (and the newspaper article commemorating it) were from October of 2017. It may have been totally coincidental, but why would you have a Marquette newspaper (from 18 months prior) lying around to use on a TV production shot in another state?

You probably wouldn't, unless you wanted to use it, right?

I mean, I have no idea if that's what happened, or if it was just the most random of coincidences. Either way, I'm just glad Phil was able to make it onto the national stage, if only for the most fleeting of seconds and if only even just a few people noticed it.

He deserved it.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 1/14

You wouldn't think it wouldn't be that hard to find more than one picture of the place. But apparently it is.

We're now at T minus nine days before the big “North Marquette/South Marquette” show at Kaufman, and I have to laugh at something. When we started putting this all together, Jack & I were a little worried that we wouldn't have enough pictures to fill out the show. When we started we had, I think, 35 or so pictures, and because we're talking about areas of the city that weren't photographed a lot, we were a little concerned.

Well, we're now up to over 200, so I think we're safe.

However, there is one particular place that has stymied our attempts to find suitable pictures, and that would be the old North Marquette school. Specifically, this place--

This is the only known picture of the place, and this was scanned from an old brochure the Marquette school system put out in the late 40s when they were trying to raise a millage. Other than that one picture, there's no photographic proof the place existed. Jack doesn't have a picture of it, the History Center doesn't have a picture of it; heck, even the Marquette Area Public Schools doesn't have a picture of it.

It was a school for almost 70 years. You'd think SOMEONE would've taken more than one photograph of it.

Actually, I can't say I'm that surprised. I had mentioned yesterday that one of the things I did Sunday while being serenaded by a barking dog was writing a newspaper article for the show. The article, specifically, focuses on the original schools of the neighborhood—the Hampton School, and the North Marquette school. One of the things both the article and the show we're putting on discusses was how both of these neighborhoods were looked down upon by the “important people”. After all, both North & South Marquette were home to Marquette's immigrant, working class families. There weren't fancy buildings or rich people around, so not a lot of respect was accorded them by city leaders.

Or, apparently, by city photographers.

Thankfully, the people who went to those two schools have shared a lot of great stories with me about going to them, and we'll pass those along next Thursday. It's just a shame that we don't have more than one picture of the North Marquette school to go along with those stories.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 1/13

It kept going for almost 16 hours.

I spent most of yesterday (Sunday) in our living room. Among the various things I did? A little working out, reading a (an actual) newspaper, writing yet another article for said newspaper, coming up with a few questions for “High School Bowl”, putting the finishing touches on next week's big Kaufman program, and, as the evening wore on, watching a little TV with Loraine.

So it was a pretty good, if busy, day.

The one thing that accompanied me throughout the day was the dog across the street. I don't know if I've written about this before, but the people who live across the street from us have a dog that does nothing but bark. I'm not kidding. It barks at people walking by, it REALLY barks when there's another dog present, and it fills the time between barking at people walking by and people walking by with other dogs by, well, barking some more.

In case you didn't get the idea, it barks all the time.

I don't know if the people who own the dog realize how much the dog barks, but I kinda get the idea they do. After all, the dog would probably be kept inside if it was quiet, right? Instead, it's put outside where the entire neighborhood gets to enjoy its non-stop symphony. And lest you think it's just Jim, who doesn't like dogs, complaining about the barking, rest assured it's not. Four times in the past year the police have been called by people other than me in the neighborhood about the noise the dogs make. If you don't believe me, check the police log.

Yet the dog's owners keep putting it out.

I woke up yesterday around 8 am, and one of the first things I heard was the dog barking. Throughout the day, as I did this and did that, one of the things I heard was the dog barking. When Loraine came in to the living room to see if I was still alive, the first thing she said was, and I quote, “The stupid dog's barking again”. And when I decided to turn the TV off last night around 10, what did I hear?

Yup. The dog barking. Fourteen hours after I first heard it, it was still going. Just like it's done every day for the past several years. There may have been times yesterday when it was quiet, but if so, I didn't really notice them, as they were far outnumbered by the times it was barking. You'd think I'd get used to it, that it would become part of the background noise of my neighborhood, like the firetrucks and drunk college students, but nope. It stands out and it doesn't seem to go away.

I know I complain in here enough about dogs, and I don't want to to it again. Like I always say, 95% off dog owners are good people, responsible to both their pets and the humans who live around them But it's the other 5 percent, like the people who live across the street, that give all dog owners a bad name. If your dog barks so much that you have to stick it outside all day every day so you don't hear it, maybe you shouldn't have a dog. If your dog barks so much that neighbors have to call the police about the noise, yet you do nothing about it, maybe you shouldn't have a dog.

Maybe if you lived in the country, with no one around you, then it wouldn't matter if you had a dog that did nothing but bark 14 hours a day. But when you live in a city neighborhood, in fact one of the most densely packed neighborhoods in a city, you might want to think twice about having a dog that does nothing but bark 14 hours a day. You'd think four visits from the police in a year might alert you to that fact, but in this case...well, not so much.

That's how I spent my Sunday. It was a good day, even with the soundtrack.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 1/10

I'm not trying to use this as an excuse, but I have (in no particular order) a sick morning person, a TV show to shoot, and a History Center TV thing to do, so I'm gonna take the cheap, easy way out and repurpose an article I wrote for the Mining Journal this week.

However, it has bonus pictures—a shot or two that didn't appear in the print edition. So maybe it's really NOT the cheap, easy way out.

You're welcome.

8-)

Have a great weekend,

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

An historic Marquette sandstone building met its end by fire fifty five years ago this past Sunday, a few days after the new year of 1965. A crowd estimated by one observer at almost 1,000 people gathered to watch the structure burn.

Some even brought a picnic lunch.

The First Baptist Church, which called the southwest corner of Front & Ridge home for over 100 years, was at its beginning a small wooden building. John Burt donated the land for that first church, which was dedicated on July 13^th, 1863.

Because of its (at the time) remote location on the very northern edge of Marquette, the building survived the fire of 1868, although the church offices, which were located on Washington Street, did not.

First Baptist Church is the one on the right.  Photo State of Michigan Historical Archives

As the city grew so did membership in the church and construction was started on a much bigger sandstone building in 1884. When it was finished, it held 700 people, and had as its centerpiece a Hook & Hastings steam powered organ, one of the first in the state of Michigan. The organ was donated by Burt and W.S. Westlake.

The organ was the heart of the church, even if wasn't always the most reliable piece of equipment. In a Mining Journal article on the history of the congregation members fondly recalled that they would be in the midst of singing a hymn and the organ would suddenly quit working, either because the steam that powered the organ ran out or the water pressure on top of Front Street hill fell to too low of a level.

Despite all that, the organ was still the pride & joy of church members.

Photo courtesy Marquette Regional History Center

The church served its congregation for 80 years, although by the 1950s the building was starting to show its age. The organ no longer functioned properly, while heating the structure during the winter was problematic, as well. In fact, as officials later discovered, the fire that destroyed the building started due to an overheated smoke pipe leading from the church's coal-burning furnace.

At 2:53 on the afternoon of January 5^th, 1965 the Marquette Fire Department received a call from the Northland Hotel next door that the church was on fire. Several trucks showed up just minutes later, but by then the fire quickly spread. The Marquette city fire department didn't have enough manpower to battle the blaze, so additional units were called in from the Marquette Branch Prison and KI Sawyer Air Force Base. In the end, over 40 firefighters were on scene.

Photo Marquette Regional History Center

As word spread of the fire, a large crowd of area residents gathered to watch the blaze and the firefighting efforts. One Marquette fire department official estimated that “hundreds” of residents watched from the steps of the Peter White Public Library or from the safety of West Ridge Street Another estimate, from the Marquette City Police, has the crowd of onlookers at 1,000. The Alpha Phi Omega fraternity from NMU was even brought in to keep the crowd of onlookers under control.

And despite the fact that it was early January, that didn't stop the onlookers from making a day out of it. Several people who were there that day in person recall stopping by downtown restaurants before making their way to the blaze, so they would have sandwiches and coffee for sustenance while watching the action.

Close to 6 pm that evening the fire was eventually brought under control, mostly because what could burn had, although firefighters were on the scene until 830 that evening. Thankfully, the wind was blowing from the south that day. If it had been blowing from the north, there was a real danger that the flames would have jumped over to the Northland Hotel.

Loss of the structure and its contents, including the organ, was estimated at $400,000 (over 3.2 million dollars in today's money). The church's insurance only covered 20% of the loss.

The structure sat on the corner, in its half-razed state, for over a year. What was left of the building, mostly the sandstone walls, was razed on June 7^th, 1966. Don Britton Construction, which performed the demolition, then sold some of the sandstone from the old church. The rest was tossed in the landfill.

Members of the church had by then embarked on a campaign to raise funds for a new facility, which was eventually opened in 1967 on the corner of Fair and Eighth Streets in Marquette, right across from NMU. That building is still in use today.

The land on which the church once sat is now one of the parking lots for the Landmark Inn.

Thursday, 1/9

I can actually watch the Super Bowl again this year, should I so wish.

If you've been reading these for a long time (and on a side note, thanks, if that's the case), you know of my loathing of a certain NFL and a certain quarterback for said NFL team. Tom Brady & the New England Patriots have caused a lot of heartache for this Colts fan over the years, and whenever the team made it to the Super Bowl (which has been way too often, like the past two years) I've had to forego the game and the commercials and the hype, lest I be driven insane by the fact that the stupid team was about to win another championship.

But this year? I'm in the clear.

When I woke up this past Sunday morning and saw that the Patriots had been defeated—at home, no less—by Tennessee, I had to smile & show the score to Loraine, who knows only too well the angst the team has caused me. In fact, it was she who suggested a couple of years ago that we not watch the game and watch “Star Wars” movies instead, which turned out to be a great idea even though the Patriots lost that particular game.

At least I didn't have to spend four hours wondering if they WOULD win it.

Now I don't have to worry about even that. This year, should I choose, I could watch the game and cheer for Baltimore or San Francisco or Kansas City or whichever team seems to be the most interesting or the most fun. About the only team I couldn't bring myself to cheer for, should they make it, would be the Packers, if only because my dad raised my as a Lions fans and booing the Packers comes along with the territory.

Or, should I so desire, I could just not watch the game at all, DVR'ing it like I did the past few years. Until you don't actually watch it live, until you see the game with the ability to scan through the boring parts, do you realize just how many boring parts there are in a Super Bowl. There are moments in a regular NFL game that are slow & unnecessary; there must be at least twice that number in a Super Bowl. In fact, if I were to guess (and this is even with viewing the commercials) you could watch the four hour game in an hour and a half or two hours, tops. That's how many replays, stoppages, and boring parts there are to the game.

I don't know what I'm gonna do yet this year; I still have two and a half weeks and six teams waiting to be eliminated before I decide. But either way, I know that I'll be happy with the end result.

Because the New England Patriots won't be anywhere in sight.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 1/8

I think we've lost our ability to be amazed. And that's a sad thing.

With all the controversy going on in the world today, everything from the contentious high school sports team name change here in Marquette to the specter of war in Iran, there's a news story out there that has received absolutely no attention at all. Admittedly, it might be a news story that wouldn't receive much (if any) attention outside of a small circle of people, even if there wasn't all this hate and rancor and division swirling around, but it's a news story that could have major implications for humans and our place in the world.

For the first time, one of NASA's planet hunting missions has found an Earth-sized planet  in the Goldilocks zone of another star system. A rock just as insignificant as the one on which we live has been discovered. And if our insignificant rock sprouted intelligent life (well, humans, so sometimes you might have to wonder about that whole "intelligent" part), who's to say that this recently discovered insignificant rock couldn't do the same?

This is a big deal for a couple of reasons. First of all, almost all exo-planets, especially those that orbit in their system's Goldilocks zone (the area where it's not too hot nor too cold for things that life needs, like liquid water, to exist) have not been Earth-sized. Most have been gas giants; some have been Neptune-sized or even what's called a “Super-Earth”, a planet about twice the size of ours. Technology just wasn't good enough to find smaller planets like ours.

But technology gets better. Scientists get better at interpreting data. And now, you have the discovery of TO1 700d. That, in and of itself, isn't that big of a story. But if we live on a planet that supports life, and now we've found another planet of the same size, in the same orbital area, of another star, odds are that there are a LOT of planets just like our in a lot of planetary systems just like ours. And if life sprouted on our little insignificant rock, odds are that it can—or already has—somewhere else.

I realize no one cares. I realize that everyone's caught up in whatever controversy du jour their preferred form of media or their preferred political party has cooked up. But this is a big deal. Even if nothing ever comes of it—and, in this case, probably nothing will ever come of it, because that's what the odds say—this discovery has pulled back the covers on the possibility that one day, perhaps sooner rather than later, we'll discover that humans are not unique in the universe. We may discover that the biology and chemistry that led to us exists on other worlds. Heck, we may even discover that we're just bickering little kids in an intergalactic neighborhood of adults.

It's just too bad that there are other things that grab our attention these days.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 1/7

For a first attempt, I think it turned out pretty well.

I've written in here before about Kaiserschmarnn, a German dessert to which Loraine and I have a slight addiction. It's basically a dish of torn-up pancakes, topped with some kind of fruit and powdered sugar. Last year I bought a package of pre-made Kaiserschmarnn mix and put it together; unfortunately, it didn't live up to our hopes and expectations, and we spent the next few months crushed by the disappointment.

Well, okay, maybe not the next few months, but we were bummed the rest of the afternoon.

Thankfully, there are a bunch of Kaiserschmarnn recipes and videos online, so a couple of days ago I took up the challenge. Immediately I noticed there were two somewhat important things about the recipes that the pre-made mix didn't include—one was whipping eggs whites into a froth to help the batter have a little heft, and the other was the fact that you need to put butter in the pan to help it cook. How much butter, you ask? Well, I answer, four tablespoons.

Yup. You cook this whole dish in half a stick of butter.

I whipped the eggs whites into said froth, put the rest of the ingredients in, melted the half of stick of butter in a pan, and poured the batter in. The idea behind the dish is that you begin like you're cooking one giant pancake. Then, when you're ready to flip it, you cut it in quarters, so it looks like this--

(Excuse the poor picture quality--I was using my phone instead of a real camera, and, you know...)

Anyway, as the other side is cooking, you keep tearing or cutting it up until it's done. It's not supposed to look pretty, and that's fine with us. Because it was done and sprinkled with the powdered sugar, it looked like this--

That's pretty much how we remembered it, and after we put a little cinnamon applesauce on it, it tasted exactly like we remembered.

Trust me on this—we won't be bummed for the next few months.

Now that I've successfully made it we're starting to think of other things that might top it, aside from the traditional apple topping. I'm thinking a blueberry compote might be good, as might a dark cherry and/or peach topping (peaches being one of Loraine's favorite fruits). I'm not quite sure which might work best, but I'm willing to make as many as I need to to be able to find out.

It's the least I can do for our taste buds.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 1/6

I don't know what I'd do without the calendar on my wall.

Friday at work I performed one of my annual tasks, which was replacing the big giant calendar on my office wall. Why a big, giant calendar, you ask? Well, I answer. what with there being the three Jims I often joke about (Radio Jim, History Jim, and TV Jim) I find myself doing a lot of different, unrelated things, often at different, unrelated times. I might have to go from a TV shooting to work to a tour, all in the course of a few hours, and what with me not being the most, well, organized person in the world, I have come to rely on the calendar to tell me where I have to be and when I have to be there.

I realize I'm decidedly old school in my approach to this; most people will just shove all the info into their phone and be done with it. But the big calendar on my wall covers all twelve months of the year at a glance. And since many of the things I have to do (or things for which I get “volunteered”) are weeks or months away, it's nice to have the whole year laid out at a glance without having to swipe from screen to screen, so if any conflicts pop up they're noted right away.

Did I ever think my life would get to the point where I'd come to depend upon looking at a calendar to see what I have coming up? Certainly not. And in my naivete I thought that once I started saying “no” to a few things Center that I'd have more time to do nothing at all. But you know that saying about nature abhorring a vacuum? Well, it's apparently true. I have no idea how it's true, but it is true. I now find myself busier than I've ever been, and trust me—those of you who've been reading this for a long time know I was kind of busy to start with.

I'm not complaining, mind you, I just find it...interesting. Very, very interesting.

For instance, my calendar tells me that for this week I have a haircut, several meetings for the upcoming Kaufman history show, that I need to write a newspaper article for that very same show, some Noquemanon stuff, the fact that I have to get up early (ugh) to show the Lake Superior Community Partnership Leadership Academy how a radio station works Thursday, and—oh--a TV show Friday, and you can see why I kind of rely upon it.

(And just as an aside, who schedules a week like that right after the holidaze? I mean, what kind of sane person does that?)

However, there are two nice things I wrote on the calendar Friday. “Leipzig” in late April, and “France” in early September. It almost makes everything else I wrote on it—starting with a haircut tonight—worth it.

Really, it does.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 1/3

Well. Who knew snow could be so pretty, if you look at it the right way?

The sun was actually out for a bit Wednesday, and when running that morning Loraine noticed all the snow & ice we'd accumulated the past few days had been sticking on trees and making things look, as she put it, “like a actual winter wonderland”. So before the sun melted it all I grabbed one of my cameras and we took advantage of having New Year's Day off of work by walking around and taking a few shots.

Yup. I actually took pictures of winter scenes. Maybe the new decade really IS changing me!

Anyway, what did we see? Well, how about the street scene by our house that Loraine first noticed--

There were also a couple of street signs that were unable to make it through the storm unscathed--

A mini snowman (right smack dab in the middle of the Williams Park tennis courts) that wasn't too worse for wear--

Sidewalks that still hadn't recovered from the onslaught--

Frozen trees that were finally being thawed by the sun.

A boat that, I'm guessing, won't hit the water for a while--

And the top of an old building that's seen 129 winters like this--

I'm glad Loraine noticed how interesting it looked, because by the time we returned home the sun had melted most of the snow & ice from the trees, and things just started to look drab again. But for a short while, even though I usually don't like it, I do have to admit that Marquette really did look like a winter wonderland.

Just don't tell anyone I said that.

8-)

Have a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com), eagerly awaiting summer.