While researching information about Woodstock, I hit upon a video of the Jefferson Airplane performing their song Volunteers. Like any good earworm chorus, the ‘Volunteers of America’ got stuck in my head. One thing led to another and the constant recycling of the lyric started touching off random memories connected with the word ‘volunteer’. […]
August means cooler evenings, a noticeable shortening of the daylight hours as we reach the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox, and (hopefully) clear skies to provide some prime sky watching conditions. It is also the time of year when people eagerly anticipate the annual Perseid meteor shower. The peak of this […]
“‘That’s some tale, old timer.’ Yeah, and it gets better everytime I tell it.” Where this conversation came from doesn’t pop to mind immediately, but I know that it has served me well for several decades. Not the part about ‘getting better every time I tell it’, mind you. I use it to remind myself […]
We left The King – Part 1 just as the Russian and American space programs were preparing to attempt the first manned space flights. In his 2021 book, BEYOND – The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space (Harper-Collins), author Stephen Walker goes deep into the inner […]
No, not Elvis. Not LeBron James. Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. If the name does not ring any bells, that is okay because any references to him were scrubbed from the records in his native Russia so thoroughly after 1957 that even the CIA could not identify him. Nobody working for him in the Soviet space […]
WOAS-FM Wraps Year WOAS-FM will wrap up the COVID influenced 2020-2021 broadcast year at the end of June. We would like to extend our thanks to everyone who helped fund our transmitter repair last fall and the students who jumped on board for the second semester of what turned out to be a most unusual […]
There are times when the human race makes me shake my head in wonder. There are multiple ways that we can make the world a better place, yet as soon as something ‘unusual’ happens (for lack of a better word), many people pull the universe into one small unit: themselves. If one considers all […]
The Sturgeonaba River? If you have never heard of this Upper Peninsula waterway, that is okay because I made the name up. This ancient river may have occupied the valley systems that now host the northward flowing Sturgeon River and the southward flowing Escanaba River. When Fred Rydholm first told me his theory involving […]
Part 1 of W,W, & O began my attempt to take a personal tour through the weird, wonderful, and obscure places and things mentioned in Kath Usitalo’s book Secret Upper Peninsula. (Reedy Press – 2019). Even though I promised to keep each segment short, Part 1 still ended up thirty some entries (or about […]
Those who know me best find the easiest gift giving solution to send my way for birthdays or Christmas are books, music, or more books. While sorting through last year’s stash of new reading material, I happened upon a 2019 book by Kath Usitalo: Secret Upper Peninsula – A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and […]