I hung up the phone after interviewing Russ Decker recently and I knew I had one. After you write enough stories, you know when you have a quote (in the radio biz they're called "actualities") that is likely to draw interest. Those of you reading elsewhere might not know Russ Decker, but he's the Wisconsin Senate Majority leader, a guy who can set the legislative agenda. Earlier, his office had put out a press release where the Democrat from Weston, near Wausau, had called for the figurative heads of most of the deer managers in the Department of Natural Resources. He told me the same on the telephone.

            As a background, deer hunting in Wisconsin hits about the same fever pitch as a bride about two days before her wedding. I don't hunt, but the devotees are into it, and I mean into it. I sit through citizen meetings...

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            The Pilgrims in America were smart enough to understand something that has become foreign to most Americans: it takes a lot of work and a bit of luck to eat.

             As anyone with a mid-section the size of mine will attest, we live in a land where people argue about quality, not quantity, of food. You remember the trauma of Turkey Days Past: "the gravy is lumpy!"

             I think Thanksgiving is the most underappreciated holiday we have in America. While it is a day off from work, and most people use it to gather for a gluttonous meal with family, friends and sometimes strangers, each decade the meaning of the holiday slips away from most folks.

              President Lincoln set up the day in the midst of ...

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September and October were marked contrasts this year. We barely had a drop of rain in September, while October has been wetter than normal. I heard someone carping about the rain/snow we've been having, only to remind them we're still nearly eight inches of moisture short this year and about 30 inches short over the past five years. I guess it's your perspective.

The last two months have also been a mixed bag of things. Fall color came early this year in September, but the leaves stayed green on many trees after some hard frosts. The green leaves fell off the trees without turning color. I should be careful, it could fuel some conspiracy theorists out there.

Speaking of fuel, they're at it again. Our local utility announced the natural gas bills would be about 30 percent lower this winter than last. Hurray! Then they had to revise it to cut the percentage of savings. Why? There's plenty of natural gas being produced and stored.

An ambiguous report came out saying...

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As the years go by and you sit through local government meetings, talk to politicians and their handlers, bureaucrats, lobbyists and the occasional loon, the monologue tends to sound much the same.

You get to have a fondness for the word "excited," because almost everyone talks about being in that state when something new is announced. So when you hear a politician actually say something that appears to be unfiltered, your ears pick up.

The state Technical College System Board met recently at Nicolet Area Technical College in Rhinelander for their regularly scheduled meeting. That's the group that oversees all the Technical Colleges, as opposed to Nicolet's own board which takes care of local business.

While I didn't get public notice that the state board was meeting (unless you ask, many times you don't get on the state notice list), I did get notice from the Governor's office 19 hours before Jim Doyle's appearance that he would be speaking at the...

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As the debate about health insurance reform rages on, I thought I would take a moment to give another perspective. Some folks our family know very well are both diabetics, but not the same type of diabetics. These people are real, but for reasons of not revealing more than is absolutely necessary, they've asked me keep their true identities hidden. There's a bit of a fear that the information might be used against them in the future. Paranoid? Look around at how information is used on the Internet and you decide.

The woman, who I will call Selma, is Type I, or insulin dependent diabetic. Her husband, let’s call him Ray, is Type II, using medication to regulate blood sugar. Insulin is produced in the pancreas and when you eat, especially carbohydrates, the hormone pops in to help metabolize your blood sugar. So when you eat that piece of pie, mostly simple carbohydrates, the pancreas shoots out the insulin and your blood sugar fairly quickly will return to the normal range.

Last column I asked readers to think positively about all of us getting some rain in one of the nation's driest areas. We had mixed results. The day the column was posted, it rained. "Wow," I thought, "NewsoftheNorth.Net has some connected readers." It continued to rain, not much – on and off – for a few days. In a drought, any rainfall is a positive.

Then we hit a spell where it was dry and sunny. One night at 6 p.m. the weather gurus said we had a 20 percent chance of rain. At 4 a.m. we had two-thirds of an inch of rain in some thunderstorms. Go figure.

A week ago I was at a family function outside of Shawano. That night we had a series of thunderstorms move through like I remember in my youth: lots of lightning, some wind and a gullywasher of rain. One hundred miles to the north in Rhinelander, dry as a bone.

Today as I write this, there's another chance of rain. The meteorologist on the Weather Channel said Rhinelander has a precipitation deficit of seven inc...

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Most of the time I use this space to talk about issues, or occasionally some off-the-wall aspect of our existence. But today I'm going to talk about something that is a need for all of us, tall or short, thin or ample, gender, race, wealth or lack thereof , doesn't matter. It's called water. Maybe you can help.

I live in a community smack dab in the middle of lots of water. The first time I flew out of the Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport, what caught my eye was the water. Everywhere. There are more than 1100 lakes in Oneida county, more than that in Vilas county.

But for the better part of a decade, the climate in Wisconsin has been split in two. From about State Highway 29 south, ample moisture has fallen. But north of that line it's been dryer than popcorn without butter. Year after year storms would brew in the Dakotas, and by the time they reached northern Wisconsin, they were gone. My boss Mick Fiocchi coined the bumper-sticker slogan, "Nort...

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I've been on vacation for a few days, so I've tried to turn off the news for awhile. Of course, you can't turn on the idiot box without seeing Michael Jackson. Congress and the President are in the midst of some important things with healthcare and the environment, but we get instant updates about Jackson's death from the 24/7 "news" providers. But that "news"  is what it is, so why think about it? Celebrities apparently top calamity.

In July, the movie shot mostly in Wisconsin, Public Enemies, debuts, with a good deal of it shot at Little Bohemia in Vilas county. Yup, Johnny Depp and company in the Northwoods, retracing the steps of the Midwest's notorious John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and the gang.

But I'm beginning to wonder about our "friends" in Madison, our elected officials, and whether the recent budget deliberations don't put them into a real "Public Enemies" list.

I've harped about open meetings enough times here that I don't need to talk...

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Just before writing this I finished a phone call from my brother-in-law in Texas where it was a balmy 96 degrees. It was 46 here and raining. But it brought to mind the old mantra of "Don't Mess With Texas."

Friends, as unseasonably cool as it is tonight, I'm burnin' Texas hot because of the action taken recently by the folks who present the Grammys. For those of you who don't care about music, the Grammys are a bit like the Oscars are to movies. When you get one of those awards, why it's almost as great as getting the silver globe on "Dancing With the Stars"! I jest (I think).

The folks who give out the Grammys told the musicians and followers of polka music that they no longer deserved an award category. It's a little bit like be uninvited to the family reunion. A little history here is necessary.

My mom and dad both liked polkas. I think they both liked Big Band music more, but I grew up watching various TV shows with some of the polka bands frequenting Wisconsi...

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There have been many stories about the dead coming back to life. Jane Loudon published a novel in 1827 called The Mummy, about the year 2126 in England where society had become technologically advanced, but morally bankrupt. Scientists were able to bring to life an Egyptian mummy who tries to redo the mistakes of the past, but things don't work out.

Spring is also a time of rebirth. But this spring, like the Mummy in Loudon's book, a mining company has returned to ask Oneida county for permission to explore for minerals at an abandoned site in the Town of Lynne in western Oneida County. I cringed a bit. I'm not here to debate whether mining should or shouldn't happen in the Northwoods. Rather I'm going to discuss the anticipated swirl of controversy that always results from mining in Wisconsin.

Mining perspective

A little history: northern Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula have riches in the granite. Copper, zinc, lead, gol...

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