Friday, 6/29

So what's it gonna be?

The weather forecasts for this weekend have been all over the place, veering from perfect Jim weather (hot & humid) to horrid Jim weather (cool & rainy). Highs have been estimated from anywhere between 60 and 90, and we may seem some sun. Or thunder & lightning. Or, the way things are going, a snowstorm followed by a plague of locusts.

What's it gonna be?

I was actually looking forward to the next couple of days. Unlike most native Yoopers, I love it when it's hot & humid. It was nice yesterday, so I took a half day. And as I was standing at the end of the Lower Harbor breakwater, staring out at the sailboats cruising around the lake, I actually said something out loud. No one was there to hear it, but it escaped my lips nonetheless.

I looked at the sun sparkling off the lake, the crystal clear blue sky, and the sun basking down upon it all, and uttered “This is why I slog through the winter. For days like this”.

And it's true. I know I complain about the weather a lot, and it seems many other people know I complain about the weather a lot. Every so often I'll get someone asking me why I continue to live here despite my loathing of cold, snow, fog, and rain. My answer is simple. It's two words, those words being “July” and “August”. You could also throw in “late June” and “Early September”, but in reality it's as simple as “July” and “August”. That's why I slog through the cold & snow & wind chills below zero & the not seeing the sun for three months at a time.

For days like yesterday.

Like I said, I have no idea what the weather's gonna be like this weekend. It seems like every forecaster I know and/or follow has a different opinion. I don't envy them one bit; the more I've learned about the science of it, the more I've come to realize that there are days (or weekends) where no matter what they say it's gonna be wrong. Mother Nature does what she wants; sometimes, you can guess what that it, and sometimes, you can't.

So we'll see what comes up this weekend. If it's a nice “Jim” forecast, I'll be out enjoying it. If it isn't...well, I can always think back to what I saw standing at the end of the breakwater yesterday. Hopefully, that'll get me through to the next nice day.

On that note, have yourself a great weekend wherever you are, and however your weather turns out!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 6/28

Say “hey” to my tour group, everyone!

I had a blast with them yesterday. They're the staff from a German engineering company here on a retreat. The group was a mix of Germans and Americans, with a couple of Brazilians mixed in. We had a great time wandering around Marquette for a couple of hours and poking our noses in here and there. And even the fact that Germany lost its World Cup game (and was eliminated from the tourney) didn't seem to have too much of an effect on the gang.

Even among those who were wearing German national soccer team shirts.

Because they were engineers maybe I shouldn't have been too surprised by this, but the thing that seemed to fascinate the group the most was the Lower Harbor ore dock. Hundreds of pictures were taken, dozens of questions asked, and several members of the group actually wondered if they could get on it (one even willing to risk arrest to do it). As a group, they really liked the ore dock, even gazing back upon it lovingly from locales such as the Courthouse steps.

It's funny, in a way. Because we see the structure on a daily basis we really don't pay too much attention to it. It's just part of the background, something we see driving to work or while on a bike ride or run through the harbor. I think we sometimes forget that we are one of the few places in the world that has a dock like that. We're lucky in that regard, in that something we take for granted is something that inspires awe and wonder and even an urge to break the law in people who've never before seen it.

That's one of the reasons I love giving tours, especially to people who've never been to Marquette before. I get to show this place off. I get to show off wonders like the ore dock and the lake and the courthouse, and it's almost like I get to see them again for the very first time, thanks to the wonder and the awe that the people in the tour group experience. I may see these places every day, but it's always nice to be reminded of what special things they are.

Because they really are.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Wednesday, 6/27

Because I have to go get ready for my big post-World Cup tour with the German group later today, I have to get to work early, which means I'm gonna take the lazy way out and leave you something from three years ago. But since I was looking three years into the future when I wrote it, we'll see just how good my psychic powers are.

(Spoiler alert—not perfect. But not too far off, either)

Back tomorrow with the story of how the tour goes!

(jim@wmqt.com)

****

(as originally posted April 16^th, 2015)

I wonder what downtown Marquette will look like in three years.

Sunday when it was sunny and in the 70s Loraine and I were out doing what we do when a day is sunny and in the 70s. We were out walking. And part of our walk took us from Marquette's lake shore up the bike path that heads west from downtown, past 7^th Street and the old roundhouse property. That's when it hit me—because of those two locations, the lake shore and the round house property—downtown Marquette is gonna look quite different by this time in 2018.

Why? Well, those are the two points where some rather large buildings are being constructed. Right on the lake shore, right at the entrance to Founder's Landing, is where the new One Marquette Place project is being built, a 5-story commercial & residential complex sitting right on the shore of Lake Superior. And at the other end of downtown, on the old round house property, is where U.P. Health Systems is building the new hospital, which, according to which rumor you believe, will either be four, seven or 13 stories in height.

It won't matter if you're standing on the lake shore or driving in on the bypass...in a few years, downtown Marquette's gonna look a lot different.

Of course, those are only two of the big projects. There have been a other, smaller projects being tackled, the Delft among them, and then there are the projects that will spin off. I mean, once One Marquette Place and the hospital are open, that's gonna bring a LOT of people into downtown Marquette who normally aren't in downtown Marquette. And those people might need places to shop and to play and, perhaps, even to live. I mean, there is a quite a healthy selection of things to do here already, but is it enough to handle the coming crowds?

I'm kind of curious about that myself.

It's funny. If I remember correctly, thirty years ago downtown Marquette was dying. Most of the shops had moved west out to Marquette Township, and the downtown area was filled with empty storefronts and confusing one-way streets. But then something great happened. The people of Marquette discovered, slowly but surely, that their downtown really wasn't so bad after all. When you get rid of all the old industrial sites, clean up the lake front, make the whole area accessible to pedestrians and vehicles alike, and then realize the history that you have in things like sandstone buildings...

Well, all of a sudden downtown Marquette began a renaissance. A renaissance that should hit yet another peak in, oh, two or three years.

I think we're very lucky in what we have. We're lucky we have a downtown that's thriving. I also think that we're very lucky in that we have a community full of people who care about their downtown, who want to see it grown and thrive and still retain the charm of its past. That's why I'll be curious to see how things change over the next three years.

Because from one end of downtown Marquette to the other, you'll see the changes take place before your very eyes.

Tuesday, 6/26

I have no idea how these things happen. But at least they make my life interesting.

I'm leading a downtown tour tomorrow. Now, those of you who've been reading these forever may be muttering to yourself “Jim, you lead downtown tours all the time”. And that's true. I did the Great Fire tour two weeks ago, and I have the “Docks of Iron Bay” tour two weeks from tomorrow (hint, hint). But tomorrow's tour is unique, if only because I'll be showing off downtown Marquette to a bunch of mechanical and software engineers from Germany.

See? That doesn't happen all the time.

I'm not quite sure how this all happened. I received a call from someone organizing a corporate retreat/seminar for the engineers in Marquette, wondering if I could lead the tour. That's a no-brainer. I love doing tours, I love going to Germany (in fact, according to my DNA test I'm 19% German myself) so why not? Admittedly, I don't speak much (if any) German, but if there's one thing I've learned is that Germans, especially highly educated ones like engineers, often speak English better than some people for whom it's their first language.

So that shouldn't be a problem.

However, there was one slight problem we had to work around. Germans are huge World Cup fans; in fact, Germany's the defending champion. We were originally going to do the tour tomorrow morning; however, that's the time Germany's taking on South Korea in their final Group F match. If Germany wins they will probably move on to the next round (depending upon the final score and winner of the Mexico/Sweden match), so it's been arranged for the engineers to lunch at Aubrees when the match is on (amazingly enough, during the lunch hour here in the U.S.) So most likely I'll get to lead them around after the match, which means they'll either be very excited by what they just saw or they will be slightly depressed.

I'm hoping for the former. After all, one of my favorite RB Leipzig players is on the German team, I've kind of been cheering for them, as well, especially after an amazing last-minute win for them this past weekend against Sweden (a team with another of my favorite RB Leipzig players on it, sadly). So with any luck, the tour will following a lot of cheering on their part.

Sp if you see me leading a lot of people around tomorrow (or happen to be eating lunch at Aubrees tomorrow and hear a lot of German being spoken), that's who the group is—German engineers visiting Marquette. Guess I can cross that one off my bucket list, now.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 6/25

So did you have lazy weekends or fun weekends?

The reason I ask is that somewhere in my travels over the past few weeks, I read an article about how for most people their weekend takes two forms—they either have a “lazy” weekend, where they sit around and don't do much, or they have a “fun” weekend, where they get out and play and do stuff they normally don't do. According to the article, research has shown something a little counter-intuitive, that people who have a 'fun” weekend actually go back to work on Monday more refreshed and rested than people who have a “lazy” weekend.

Weird, huh? But based, at least, on my own experience, I kinda think it's true. I know that in any given “normal” winter I spend a lot of my weekends inside, lying around, reading, and generally not doing too much. Then when I go back to work on Monday, I'm still kind of “blah”. But during the summer, when Loraine and I are out walking and biking and exploring and doing whatever, I feel recharged when I go back to work. Now, I always chalked it up to the fact that during the winter it's cold and you don't get a lot of sun, but after reading that article...

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I'm proof that the research really IS accurate!

Like most people, I had not given one iota of thought to how I spend my weekends. Maybe some of that is because I usually work part of a weekend, maybe some of that is because there are just certain chores that need to get done on a weekend, and so that's how I spend part of that time. But now that I've read the article, and have seen how it actually applies to the real world (or at least MY real world), I'm thinking this--

I'm thinking that no matter how tired I am, that no matter how beat down the previous week had made me, that I need to go and have FUN. Not sit around and take a nap, not hang out and watch the clock count down the hours until the weekend's over, but to get out and have fun like it was a sunny summer day.

Even if it's not.

Now, I realize that won't be possible every weekend of the year, sad to say. But if knowing is half the battle, then I consider myself well-armed to get the most of our whatever time off I can scrounge, especially on a weekend.

Hope you can do the same, too. So when you get to your next Saturday and you're wondering what you should do, just remember—the more you do, the better you feel. The science says so!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 6/22

I finally have my answer. I now know why I look the way I look.

You may remember that a couple of months ago I spit in a tube and sent it off to Ancestry DNA, so I could find out a couple of things about myself, mainly why I have a dark complexion for someone with Irish and Scandinavian roots (two peoples not usually know for swarthy skin). The complexion comes from the Irish side of my family, so I was able to come up with three theories as to what might have caused it--

-I had some kind of Mediterranean blood that I didn't know about.

-It came from the Moors, a north African people who conquered part of southern Europe and traded a lot (including DNA) with the Irish people.

-That I was just a freak, and that a genetic mutation overruled the fair skin with which my ancestors had been born.

The test results came back yesterday, and they were quite interesting. Among the things I discovered? Four percent of my DNA comes from the Iberian Peninsula, which Ancestry defines as Spain, Portugal, and the north African country of Morocco, right across the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain. The three peoples share the same DNA profile. So part of my DNA comes from a swarthy culture. We can rule out theory “C”, which means I'm not a freak.

And I'm guessing that comes as a surprise to a LOT of people.

8-)

The source of my darker complexion doesn't necessarily rule out either theory “A” or theory “B”. The DNA could come from the Moors; after all, they ran the Iberian Peninsula for centuries, where they both traded and warred with the Irish. Their heritage lingers, too, in that a large chunk of the population of both Spain and Portugal have Moorish blood in them. That's where theory “B” comes in.

But in doing some digging into theory “A” I've also discovered that the sinking of the Spanish Armada by the British a couple of centuries ago could be the blame. You see, Spain was a world naval power for hundreds of years, and liked to war with its neighbors quite a bit, as well. The neighbors got fed up, and the English finally sunk the Spanish Armada—hundreds of ship and thousands of sailors—off the coast of Ireland. Many of those sailors swam to shore and, instead of going back to Spain, made homes in Ireland, where they had families and passed down their genes.

That's why theory “A” could be true.

I honestly don't know which of the theories is correct, and in the end I don't think it matters. What's important is that I found our the origin of my complexion, and had that question answered. That's why I did the test in the first place.

Isn't science wonderful?

On that note, have yourself a great weekend. Hopefully, if you ever have a question about yourself or why you are the way you are, your answers come with something as simple as spitting in a tube!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Thursday, 6/21

And happy first day of summer!

I was speaking with one of my meteorologists about the longest and shortest days of the year on the air a couple of days ago, focusing on the first day of winter people can leave their home, go to work, and then go home, and not see a lick of sun because of the shortness of the day. Well, last night, for some bizarre reason, I was jolted awake in the middle of the night by the thought that the exact opposite of that will occur today.

And then, of course, I couldn't get back to sleep.

But when you think of it, it's true. Say someone goes to bed at 10pm and wakes up at 6am. If they were to do that today in Marquette, they'd be going to bed just after the sun had set and the sky was still light. They'd then be waking several minutes after sunrise, when the sky was filled with light. They'd go to bed when it was light and wake up when it was light, not seeing a lick of darkness, just like some people don't see a lick of sun on the first day of winter.

Nah; I don't think it's a concept worth getting up for in the middle of the night, but what does my sub-conscious know, right?

Back in the days when I Roller-bladed (back before I cracked a rib after wiping out and Loraine told me I couldn't Roller-blade any more) I used to go out at 10pm on the first day of summer and blade around a bit, just because I could. I mean, there aren't a lot of places in the U.S. where you can do that. But because we're on the far western edge of a time zone and because we're quite far north, we get to do stuff like that. I always felt that I should do just because we could, just because no one else could.

Maybe THAT'S why I wake up in the middle of the night with weird ideas.

So have yourself a great first day of summer, no matter what happens. Who knows...maybe YOU won't see a lick of darkness all day yourself!

(jim@wmqt.com)