Tuesday, 4/10

It's been almost 25 years. I wonder how much longer it'll take before people stop referring to K.I. Sawyer as “The Base”?

It's funny, but three times in the past few weeks I've had people on the air tell me they're either at “The Base” or at “KI Sawyer Air Force Base” when I've asked them from where they're calling. And that's not unusual. In fact, it probably happens every week or two. Oh sure; many people who call say they're either from “Sawyer” or “K.I. Sawyer”, but almost a quarter century after the base closed, some people still refer to by its old name.

Curious.

I can see why there are some people, especially old-timers, who still call it that. After all, if you've grew up saying “K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base” it's probably ingrained in your brain that way. But at least one of the people who called it “The Base” last week was younger. In fact, they were probably just a kid when “The Base” closed and K.I. Sawyer became just “K.I. Sawyer”, minus “Air Force Base”, so I'm pretty sure they didn't grow up calling it “K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base”. Yet, 25 years after the fact, they're still referring to it that way.

Like I said...curious.

Of course, it's not just K.I. Sawyer that falls into this category. Just a couple of days ago I heard someone talking about “the new school” in Harvey. The school they're talking about is, of course, Cherry Creek School, a building that opened almost 30 years ago. But because it was built AFTER Silver Creek, which is actually no longer a school, it's still referred to as the “new” school.

Now, if we could only get individuals to start doing that to people, and not just buildings or communities. That way, people who know my parents might start referring to me as the “new” Koski. And trust me—that's something about which, at my age, I would not complain!

8-)

Anyway, if you happen to find yourself innocently referring to K.I. Sawyer by using any phrase which includes the word “Base” in it, you're in good company. And, the way it's going, you'll probably be in that good company for another 25 or so years!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 4/9

At least it was a sign of spring. And these days, I’ll take what I can get.

Once again, I wasn't gonna talk about the weather, but those of you who are in the U.P. know that we’ve had, well, quite the weather week. We’ve had snow. We’ve had cold. We’ve had ice pellets. We’ve had wind. We’ve had just about an entire year’s worth of winter weather compressed into one six (so far) day period. And I feel confident in saying that most of us are starting to get sick of it, and are looking for a sign--any sign--that spring may soon be returning.

Well, I think I had one of those signs while cleaning Loraine's windshield after running Saturday morning. And while it may not have been the most traditional sign that spring is inexorably on the way, I’m cool with that. You see, as I wiping Loraine's windshield clean I noticed something on it. It wasn’t on the windshield earlier (at least I don't think), so I knew it had just happened, and I knew it was a sign spring may be lurking about, no matter what the forecast has to say--

There was a big splattering of bird poop on Loraine's windshield.

Now normally one might look at a big splattering of bird poop on a windshield as an inconvenience, because we know we have to clean it off. We may also look at a big splattering of bird poop as a personal affront, especially when said splattering happens to appear, say, right after we’ve finished washing our car. But this particular big splattering of bird poop may have been the most welcome big splattering of bird poop in recorded history, if only because it means that there are actually birds around to leave the big splattering of poop. And since birds only start to return to the U.P. when spring is (supposedly) here...

Well, let them splatter the car as much as they want.

I know that in a couple of weeks or a couple of months I won’t feel the same way about seeing a big splattering of bird poop on Loraine's windshield, but for now I look upon it as a sign. A very good sign, in fact, that despite the snow and cold and wind and ice of the past few weeks there is hope. There’s hope that Spring, with its warmer temperatures and green grass and lilac blooms, will show up, no matter what it looks like outside now. And how do I know that?

I saw the big splattering of bird poop on my windshield. That’s how I know.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 4/6

I seem to write this post every April. Only this year, I think we really need it.

Spring seems to not want to, well, spring this year. For the third or fourth year in a row we had a (fairly, for us) mild January and February, only to be followed by a brutal March & (so far) April. And if you look at an extended forecast it doesn't appear as if it'll let up any time soon. However, I have hope that one day soon—before the end of the month—we'll be treated to spring or even summer-like temperatures.

Science says so.

I have a secret to share. I know a dork who, for some reason, has been keeping track of April temperatures for 17 years now. I have no idea why, but this dork noticed that the final day of April 2001 was hot, and ever since has been keeping track of temperatures during the month. I'm not sure why; I think maybe   I   the dork I know needs something better to do with his time. But it's because of this dork's habit that I feel quite confident that we'll see at least one day of 70 degrees before the end of the month.

It's a statistical probability.

Now, the dork's list contains high temperatures for the city of Marquette for each April this project has encompassed. And for almost every single year since 2001 (except for the very cold years of 2004 and 2014), we've had at least one day during the month that the temp hit (or drastically exceeded 80). Don't believe me?

April 30^th, 2001--84 degrees

April 16^th, 2002--84 degrees

April 14^th, 2003--83 degrees

April 18^th, 2005--83 degrees

April 19^th, 2006--75 degrees

April 22^nd, 2007--86 degrees (!)

April 24^th, 2008--72 degrees

April 17^th, 2009--72 degrees

April 16^th, 2010--76 degrees

April 14, 2012--75 degrees

April 12^th, 2015—73 degrees

April 17^th, 2016—80 degrees

April 8^th, 2017—70 degrees.

And those were temperatures in the city of Marquette, not temps away from Lake Superior, where it may have even been warmer. So the dork's list proves two things—one, that the weather were living through right now will not last forever, and two, that someone has to be a special kind of strange to collect the data to put that list together.

I'll let him know the next time I see him.

So keep your fingers crossed. Despite what it's like outside right now, odds are that we're gonna get real warm, real soon. Science and probability say so. And as you can probably guess, for some of us it won't come a day too soon.

Stick those warm thoughts in the back of your mind. This weekend, you may need them!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 4/5

I think I've inherited a lot from my mom. I'm pretty sure the ability to draw isn't one of them.

First of all, happy birthday to one of the two people without whom I wouldn't have been possible. She's down in Florida right now with Chicky-poo soaking up the sun & the warmth, while the rest of us are still up here suffering through the snow and the cold. So, when you think about it, maybe there are two things I didn't inherit from her—the ability to draw, and common sense.

We'll have to debate and discuss that further one day in the future.,

The reason I bring this up on her birthday is that I just updated her website. I don't know if you're aware of this, but I put together a website for my mom so she could show off her talents as a watercolorist. She came to this hobby after beginning to spend winters in Florida; she took a class, and found out she could paint. And trust me—she can really paint. Don't believe me?

Yes, that last one is of me and a cow in Germany. It was a surprise Christmas present after we all went over there three years ago, and it's currently hanging in the Jim & Loraine Apartment Gallery, along with several other of her originals.

We call it “A Dork and a Cow”. I think you know which one is which.

Those are just a few of her works; you can check out the rest of them, should you wish, at www.darlenekoski.com. Lest you think I'm biased about her talent (and while I am, it's for a good reason) go ahead and see for yourself just how good she is!

Have a happy birthday, mom. Can't wait to see what you bring back home with you this year!!

Love,

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 4/4

Fifty years ago today, huh?

One of the very first things I remember in my life was an April evening at my parents' house on Norway Avenue in Marquette. I don't know why it sticks out so vividly in my memory, but it does. I was in the kitchen, and I think my mom was there. My dad came running up the stairs from the basement, where he was watching TV, and shouted out a line that's stayed with me ever since--

“Martin Luther King has been shot”.

Now, at the time, I didn't know why my dad came running up the stairs with the news. I had no idea who Martin Luther King was; after all, he wasn't an astronaut or a cast member on “Star Trek”, the only non-relatives I was aware of in the world.. But I remember feeling like he must've been someone important for my dad to come running up the stairs like that.

In the years to follow I would come to realize just how important he was.

If you've been reading these at all the past however many years I've been writing them, you know of my admiration for the man who was assassinated fifty years ago today. I've read his works, studied his philosophies in college, gone on pilgrimages to the important places in his journey, and tried to live my life according to the example he set. Like Dr. King himself, I haven't been perfect with that last one, but I do try.

I wonder how different things would've been in the past half century if he hadn't been killed on that early April evening. Near the end of his life he was finding it harder and harder to convince people, both black and white, of the reasons behind the movement he was trying to lead. Would he have been able to break through whatever wall he was hitting, and advance the fight for civil rights and against both income inequality and the Vietnam War, the two issues that were taking up most of his energy? Or would he have found a society growing resistant to the chance for which he advocating?

I don't have the answer to that. I've often thought that had he lived, he either would've retreated to back to the parish life that gave him his start, or he would've gone on to even greater heights. I'm probably not in a great deal of company here, but I've often thought that he was the greatest President the United States never had. If he had lived, maybe he would've been able to fight through the institutional barriers that were in his place, and change the country in ways that we're still debating about today. After all, one of my favorite King quotes (used by him by actually originating with someone else) is “The moral arc of the universe is long, but in the end it bends toward justice”. If he had lived, maybe he would've seen the arc bend in his lifetime.

It's just sad we'll never know.

Churches across the country will be ringing their bells just after 6 tonight, fifty years to the minute after he was assassinated. If you hear those bells ringing, think about how in that moment one man's life—and perhaps the destiny of a country—was forever changed.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 4/3

Apparently I am now a dinosaur.

I don't know if you've stumbled across a story once again making the rounds about how a particular rule of writing is rapidly changing, but it's made me realize that I'm on one side of the fence on this subject, and it's probably, in the long run, the wrong side. Because of the way in which texting has insinuated itself into American society, there's now a way that writing experts can separate “old” people from “young” people, and that's by this--

If, while typing, you leave two spaces after ending a sentence, you're “old”. If you leave one (or none), you're “young”. If you leave two spaces after ending a sentence, you learned how to write in the 20^th century. If you leave one (or none), you learned how to write in the age of 160-character text messages or 280-character Tweets; i.e. this century. Now go back to the lines I just wrote, and count how many spaces I left after finishing a sentence.

Yup. I AM apparently a dinosaur.

I knew this day would come. I knew that, at a certain point in my life, I'd be faced with something that told me time was moving on and leaving me behind. I had no idea what that “something” would be. I figured it would be something like having my leg break while trying to stand up or wondering who the heck Cardi B. is and just exactly what E.D.M stands for. But nope; I'm fine as far as stuff like that goes.

I'm a dinosaur because of the way I type.

And when you think about it, it's funny. I never took a typing class. I never learned how to type “correctly”, a fact that drives my properly-educated-in-typing wife mad. I just learned how to type by doing. I started with one finger, added another, and have sailed through life slowly adding fingers to my typing repertoire. Over the years, my right thumb became quite adept at hitting the space bar twice when finishing a sentence.

Now, as I find out, that skill is becoming about as relevant as getting up off the couch, walking over to TV, and using a dial to change the channel.

You DO remember what a TV dial is, right?

One of the reasons “the kids” only use one space after a sentence is that when you send a text you only have 160 characters to use, and a space counts as a character. So when it comes to texting, I can understand why you would only want to leave one space after a sentence. But when you're typing a note or a letter or an e-mail or (even) a blog, you're not constrained by the amount of spaces you leave after a sentence. Heck, if you wanted to, you could even leave THIS many spaces after a sentence. . . . . . . . Of course, your paragraph structure would all weird if you did it that way, but unlike a text message, there's nothing to stop you from doing it.

I guess I just find it funny that one particular form of writing is making all other kinds of writing conform to its particular quirks. I”m not surprised; after all, I've studied the English language enough to know that it's a very elastic, living type of creature. It's constantly evolving (much, I'm sure, to the detriment of William Shakespeare and those who've study him the past 400 years). But to change just because of a 160-character limit imposed by technology, and then to claim that anyone who doesn't use the change is out of date?

Well...I guess I now know how those Tyrannosaurus Rexs felt, just before the meteor hit 65 million years ago and sent them all into oblivion.

(jim@wmqt.com), typing dinosaur.

Monday, 4/2

How was your Easter? Mine was fine; I even got to spend part of the day thinking about drunks.

Don't worry; nothing untoward happened. I took advantage of the crap Mother Nature dumped on us Saturday and went skiing on the Fit Strip Sunday morning. I wasn't the only person thinking that way; before I got there (and I got there early) someone had, from the looks of it, strapped on their skis in a back yard on Magnetic Street, cut through the woods, and skied a lap around the strip. So I didn't even have to break a trail. Then I headed back to our place where Loraine and I hosted my niece Mallory and her boyfriend for brunch, where a grand time was had by all.

It wasn't until after they were long gone that I started thinking about drunks.

Now, there is a reason for it. As you may recall, I'm hosting the History Center's “100 Questions” trivia contest a week from Wednesday, and I received a note from the person putting it together asking a simple question—seeing as how I seem to be the “expert” on the seedy side of Marquette, could I come up with a few (specifically, six) questions about bars and other forms of nightlife?

Of course I can. Does a cow moo? Does a fish swim? Does a bar-goer occasionally wake up and wonder where their underwear has gone?

So I sat in our (quiet) living room for a moment, and pondered some of the stories I've been told over the years. Within 2 minutes I had the six questions jotted down, and in another two minutes had an extra ten, just in case. It was after I convinced myself to finally stop writing down all these questions flowing out of me that I was struck by a funny thought—

For someone who never went to any bars up here, I sure do know a lot about them.

As you may know, the same goes with hookers and bootleggers and killers. I've never been involved with any of them (at least as far as I know), yet I can sprout off story after story about them. But because I know what questions to ask and of whom to ask them, I've collected all these great tales about Marquette nightlife over the years. I can tell you which bar was the easiest for 60s teenagers to get served in, and I can tell you which bar would occasionally have a motorcyclist ride through. I can tell you which bar used to have bowling bars flying through it, and which 70s bar had the greatest amount of nudity in it during any given night. I never saw any of this for myself—in some instances, the stories occurred before I was born—but because I have a curious nature and a VERY warped sense of the absurd, I wanted to find out.

And so I did.

Therefore, I was able to come up with the questions for the trivia contest in that span of just a few minutes. I will share those questions with you guys next week—Thursday, the 11^th, the day AFTER the trivia contest, to be specific—and see if you know any of the answers. If you were around Marquette during a certain era, or if you've attended certain History Center programs I've done over the years, you might be able to say “I know”. If not, maybe you'll learn something. Maybe it'll be something you never thought you'd know, or would even want to know, but maybe you'll learn something.

A something gleaned from me spending a few moments on Easter Sunday thinking about drunks.

(jim@wmqt.com)