Monday, 1/31

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 actually trying to work on in here almost (gulp) two years 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 six and a half years since I last updated it, and in that time several people listed on it have passed away and many businesses I mentioned have gone away, some related to the pandemic and some not.

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 six and a half 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 a few months ago 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 six and a half 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 2015. 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.

Really.

(jim@wmqt.com) 

Friday, 1/28

That seemed to go well.

“Cops & Robbers” is now in the (pardon the pun) history books. We had around 400 people, maybe half the house, join us at Kaufman, not a bad number when you consider it's the 25^th month of 2020. We did end up recording the show; once I know any details I'll pass them along, should you be interested.

Since I did that show last night and now have to go host a TV show in a little bit how about if I cheap a little and leave you with one of the video segment I produced for the show last night...

Because you're curious about the history of Prohibition in Marquette, right?

Have a great weekend!

(jim@wmqt.com)

(ps--as a bonus there's a spelling error in one of the titles on the video.  I watched it 100 times while editing it and didn't even notice (duh).  See if you can spot it!)

Thursday, 1/27

Today's the big day.

Well, technically, tonight's the big night, the evening that my pal Jack & I return to the stage for the live presentation of “Cops & Robbers” for the Marquette Regional History Center. It's been a couple of years since we've done this on this big of a scale (and, in all honesty, we're still not too sure if it might actually still be too soon to do something like this, especially with Omicron still raging), and we're both ready to go. Join us if you can and if you feel comfortable doing so. The History Center is hoping to have a recording of the show available next week if you can't make it or if you don't feel comfortable.

Either way, we hope you enjoy.

I'll give you details on how it went tomorrow. Today, though, we get to put our favorite word—repurposing--into practice, as I'll share the newspaper article I wrote to get people ready for the event. I do have to mention something, though—I turned in this article (about an event from 130-some years ago) not knowing the fate of one of the individuals in it. Lo and behold, Beth Gruber from the History Center went out of her way to look up a few details and share them with me, so that the article has a MUCH better finish now than it did before.

So thanks, Beth. I appreciate it!

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

At the time, the murder scandalized the city. Now, it's just a forgotten footnote in local history.

Marquette has been home to some rather infamous killings over the years, but one that occurred on a Saturday evening over 130 years ago may have been one of the most gruesome. In fact, at the time the Mining Journal called it “a brutal butchery”. Yet today no one recalls the night that Larry Finn beat his wife to death.

Larry Finn was born in Ireland and came to Marquette during the Civil War. He met a young local woman named Margaret Higgins, and after getting married they settled, along with many Irish immigrants, in South Marquette. Their home, across the street from the then Hampton Street school, had recently been destroyed in a fire, and they were living in a two room shack nearby.

By all accounts it was not a happy marriage; neighbors said they frequently heard fights between the two. So when they heard another argument between the couple on the evening of Saturday, November 28th, 1887, which included Margaret yelling “murder”, they didn’t think to alert the authorities.

One neighbor, Richard Miller, later told the Mining Journal he wished he had.

Despite the fact he had been arrested several times on charges of public intoxication, and despite the fact that bars in Marquette had been told by authorities not to sell liquor to him, Larry Finn was drunk that evening. As far as authorities could tell, he came home as his wife was making dinner and had a kettle of hot water boiling on a wood stove. As the fight broke out, Finn grabbed the kettle, hitting Margaret with it repeatedly until, as a Mining Journal article floridly put it, “Her head was a shapeless mass”.

When police officers finally arrived at the home, they found “traces of a desperate struggle, broken dishes and furniture telling the fury of their fight”. They also found Larry Finn with burns down his right arm, suffered as boiling water ran out of the kettle he used to viciously strike his wife.

Finn was taken to the Marquette County jail, where an inquest jury of six residents–including Sidney Adams–was impaneled. The jury went to the Finn house the next morning to visit the site of the murder, while at the same time two reporters from the Mining Journal went to visit the accused in jail. There, he claimed to remember everything up until he started for home after drinking that Saturday, then forgetting everything else that had happened until he woke up in jail Sunday morning. The Mining Journal reporters thought he was telling them that in an attempt to save himself.

It was also discovered by those reporters that the day before her death Margaret Finn had visited a lawyer’s office to see about the possibility of leaving her husband.

The jury found Finn guilty of the killing of his wife, and he was sent away. According to US Census records Finn was still an inmate at the Jackson State Prison in 1900, after which it appears he moved back to Marquette to live with a brother. No known records exist of his death or burial.

In the 134 years since the incident memories of the killing have been lost to the community, but at the time it occurred the murder of Margaret Finn stood as one of the most scandalous incidents in a city that had been founded less than forty years before.

Wednesday, 1/26

I like the scent. What can I say?

One of my many jobs around our apartment is the washing of dishes. It's something I do every day except one, when Loraine takes over and makes sure that it's actually done right. When she did it this week I was in the other room flipping through the pages of a book. She came into the room with the latest bottle of dishwashing liquid I purchased, held it up, and said, and I quote, “Here's another example of why you are so not a man”.

What? Real men don't use lotus blossom and lavender dishwashing liquid?

First of all, just so you know, a very big running joke between Loraine and me is that I basically do nothing like a “man” would do, and we're both okay with that. So I wasn't shocked by what she said; in fact, it made me laugh. After all, what “real“ man would buy his dishwashing liquid because it smelled like lotus blossom & lavender? What “real“ man” would buy his dishwashing liquid just because it was purple and he liked the color?

Heck—do “real” men even pay attention to things like dishwashing liquid? Do they even know what dishwashing liquid is?

I like washing dishes; I really do. It's a couple of minutes of mindless activity in a day filled with activities where I have to overtax my brain. Sure, often times my brain fails me, but even if it did screw up while washing dishes no one would notice. That's why I like doing things like washing dishes and doing the laundry. And if I'm going to spend a few minutes each day washing the dishes, shouldn't I be using dishwashing liquid that smells good and makes my hands soft all at the same time?

It's like aromatherapy, with the added benefit of giving us clean dishes!

So if you're in the market for a new dishwashing liquid (assuming, of course, you still do dishes by hand), I highly recommend picking up a bottle of Palmolive's Lotus Blossom & Lavender. Not only does it clean your dishes well, but it smells nice, too. And isn't that what everyone looks for in a dishwashing liquid...even a “man”?

Yes, I know I'm hopeless. What's your point?

8-)

Now, something regarding yesterday's about people who still have their Christmas trees up and lit. No more than 10 minutes after I posted it I received a text from a wise old guy (hi, dad!) who mentioned another reason for people leaving their trees up—people who have members serving in the military. He knows several who leave their trees up until their sons or daughters or husbands or wives return home safely from wherever they happened to be stationed and can celebrate with everyone.

I did not know that. So perhaps one or more of those trees I saw while running yesterday were because of that. I guess you really DO learn something new every day.

Thanks, dad!!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 1/25

It's been a month now. Don't you think they should start to come down soon?

While out running early in the morning I happened to pass probably a half dozen homes spread throughout the city of Marquette, homes that proudly had Christmas trees in their front windows. Not only did they have the trees still proudly displayed, but they had them fully lit up, which is why I noticed them in the first place.

Even though Christmas was a month ago today.

Now I'm not here to rain on anyone's Christmas parade. But we're just a couple of weeks away from Valentine's Day, which is itself just a month away from St. Patrick's Day, which is then just a month away from Easter. Shouldn't it be time to look forward to what's coming up instead of still celebrating that which has been?

Or am I looking at this the wrong way? I know there are people who just love the Christmas holidays. There are people who get their decorations out right as the leaves change colors, and there are people who start to listening to Christmas songs while the rest of us are looking forward to “It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”. I get that. I get that feeling of anticipation for your favorite time of the year. I do the same myself when the weather first hints at warmth and I start looking forward to summer. But once October rolls around I know it's time to put away the flips flops and beach gear and haul out the winter stuff. I don't want to, and wish I didn't have to, but I do it.

And maybe that's how the people with their Christmas trees up still feel.

I remember a phone call I took on the air a decade or so ago, when somehow the topic of Christmas lights came up. The caller complained about her neighbor, a gentleman in the city of Marquette who still had his outdoor lights up and turned on every evening. Mind you, this was in May, if I recall correctly, and she was wondering if he was ever going to take them down. So I guess I'm not alone in this. There probably SHOULD be a limit to how long you have your Christmas stuff up.

Maybe a month's okay, though. Maybe the people who still have the trees up are basking in the afterglow of the holidays. Maybe they had a really great Christmas season, and don't want it to end. Maybe they had family members who couldn't make it home for the actual holidays and are just getting around to celebrating them now. In that case, we'll cut them some slack, and let things be, at least for now.

However, if I go running a month from today and the trees are still up and lit...well, then, we may have to revisit this discussion. And maybe—just maybe—we won't be quite as understanding.

We'll have to see.

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 1/24

Maybe I should just stop talking. Maybe THAT will help.

As you may recall, it was one of those weekends, a three day span spent shooting TV, doing radio, announcing a thousand or so names at a ski race, and taking care of a bunch of other stuff, I now find myself with a slightly scratchy & sore throat, probably thanks to vocal chords that have been pushed a little too close to their limits of tolerance.

Oh, goody.

Thankfully, I haven't actually lost my voice. At the moment you can just tell that it sounds a little...strange. Not that it's strange in a bad way; you can just tell that it's not normal. That makes me think of two things. The first is what athletic trainers tell you—if a muscle hurts or feels strained when you're working it, you might wanna stop whatever it is you're doing it lest you risk injuring it further. And the second?

I'm not really in the right career field to stop talking for a day or two to let my voice rest.

It's funny; I'm probably in one of the few jobs where it's worse to lose your voice than it would be to lose your mind. I mean, think about it—without a voice in radio, you're nothing. You're dead air. You're like a mime with no one to annoy. But if you lose your mind; well, that's a different matter. You can still speak. What you say may no make much sense, and you might not be on the air very long (especially if your boss is listening), but you could still be on the air.

Unlike, say, someone without a voice.

Like I said, though, I'm lucky in that regard. I can still speak. It's just a little uncomfortable when I do it, especially when I speak with any kind of volume. So if I in any way sound weird on the air today (and I don't think that I will), you now have the reason why.

I just really need to stop talking for a day or two. But with radio and more TV and that History Center show at Kaufman Thursday night?

That won't be happening any time soon.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 1/21

It'll be interesting to see if I remember what to do.

Tomorrow's the 24^th annual Noquemanon Cross Country Ski Marathon, the first one in two years, and as one of the few people who's volunteered at each & every one of them, I wonder what it'll be like. The same? Different? A smaller field of racers? A bigger one?

We'll find out tomorrow, I guess.

I have no idea how whatever changes there are will affect my job announcing at the finish line. Will there be the usual gaggle of people at the finish line cheering on the participants while ringing cowbells? Will they stay home? I don't know. Part of me hopes there are at least a few. I know skiers are exhausted when they come across the line, and hearing a cheer or a cowbell always helps them cross the line in style. That's especially true during my favorite part of the race—the last hour, when stragglers slowly make their way “home”-- and are looking for any reason to keep going.

However, if wouldn't be surprised—and, if we're being honest, I'd almost be a little more comfortable—if the crowd is thin to non-existent. While that might not be a good thing for the skiers, it might be for public health, and while it's a big pain in the butt that IS something we have to think about these days.

Let's just hope that next year's race—the 25th—just gets back a little closer to “normal”.

On that note, have a great weekend. And if you happen to know or see anyone involved in trying to put this year's race together, let them know they've done a great job under the strangest of circumstances!

(jim@wmqt.com)