Overheard in the WLUC newsroom this week, from one of our sports guys: “Do you think the UP is going to become the new Spring Break destination for college kids?” Not a bad question given the fact that we’re edging up toward 60 degrees under sunny skies, and we haven’t seen snow in weeks.
You notice everybody’s got a smile on their face around here? And then there’s my dog romping on the beach last weekend, with hardly a patch of snow anywhere in sight. She’s thrilled.
But, of course, we all know we’re going to get slammed by a blizzard before this winter says goodbye.
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Enough with the health care reform debate already. Just do it, vote yes or no, and move on. No wonder Americans are sick of politicians.
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Seems to me there’s a distinctly anti-intellectual movement afoot among Americans these days.
How else to explain the enormous popularity of Rush Limbaugh (a dropout from Southeast Missouri State, Glenn Beck (never attended college except for one class at Yale where he was enrolled as a non-traditional student, and he dropped out of that class), and Sarah Palin (bounced around from Hawaii Pacific University to Northern Idaho College to Matanuska-Susitna College to the University of Idaho where she finally graduated)?
Maybe we don’t want our leaders from the Ivy League anymore. Maybe we don’t trust “book-learning” anymore. We just want “common sense” and “street smarts”. Historians might refer to Limbaugh, Beck and Palin as populists; others might just refer to them as scary.
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If you get a chance, watch Jerry Harju‘s commentaries on TV6—Tuesday at 11 on the late News, Wednesday at 5:30 on the Morning News.
A couple of his observations from this week:
“Remember when you used to reach into a mud puddle just to retrieve a penny?”
“Remember when they used to threaten to keep a kid back in school if he didn’t meet the standards for the grade, and they actually did it?”
“Remember when being caught with a weapon in school meant the teacher took away your slingshot?”
Maybe you’ve got to be older to appreciate those observations, but I can assure you they’re absolutely true.
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I’m still working on the Upper Peninsula art book with Paul Grant. We may not meet the mid-July deadline. It might be early December instead. We’ll see. Stay tuned. In any case, we’re both starting to get excited about it. We’ve collected about 40 of his paintings so far from the last 30 years, and he’s also working on some new ones.