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When you were small, thanks to fairy tales, you were quite afraid of giants.
You simply knew they were just waiting to crush your house or grind your bones to make their bread. With hands the size of small cars, they’d pick you up and fling you aside. And if a giant didn’t do it, an ogre could unless, of course, you’re a princess and, as in the new book by Betsy Schow, you’re “Spelled.”
Crown Princess Dorthea was really “pixed.”
The Chequamegon Screaming Eagles dispatched the Phillips Loggers 10-0 in five innings last Friday in Park Falls. The Eagles will face St. Croix Falls in Cumberland tomorrow, Tuesday, at 11 a.m. in the Sectional semi-final round. Chequamegon and St. Croix are both #1 seeds.
The Eagles’ last three games have been decided by the 10-run rule in five or six innings.
At Myra Grapa's Ranch of Rescued Hope, people don't just ride horses – they dance on them. Equine vaulting is a unique sport that combines dance, gymnastics, and horse-riding in stunning display. While quite common in Europe, horse-vaulting is somewhat unusual in the US, and there are very few places in Wisconsin where the sport is taught.
“I first became interested in vaulting after I'd seen it in a book when I was 15 years old,” said Grapa, who has been operating her Phillips-area horse ranch since 2012. “There weren't any options for me to take lessons at that time, and it kind of became a goal of mine to start a team in the area.”
For the past three years, Grapa has been offering vaulting lessons to anyone – child or adult – who is interested. The program has slowly grown with only two vaulters in the first year, four in the second, and 11 this year. “I really love this sport. Because it is so unique, however, there are not a lot of opportunities for people who would like to learn.”
Chequamegon’s Kevin Koski came away with a second-place finish Saturday at the WIAA State Track and Field Meet held at UW-La Crosse. Koski, who placed third in Friday’s 3,200-meter run, came back Saturday to post a second-place finish in the 1,600-meter in 4:20.66, just being edged by Boscobel’s Dakota Kauffman’s 4:20.63. Kaufman also won Friday’s 3,200.
Jesse Isaacson of Prentice finished second in the boys high jump event with a 6-06.0 jump, just under the winning height of 6-08.0 by Jordan Wesner of Princeton.
Prentice’s Sydney Wildun and Cheyenne Hawkins placed 8th and 9th respectively in the girls triple jump. Wildun stuck a jump of 34-10.25 and Hawkins 34-09.0 Betsy Schreier of Cashton won the event with 37-10.0.
Kennan and Catawba will be celebrating their 48th annual Lumberman's Day celebration this weekend, June 13 and 14. The day, which honors the area's rich history in the lumber industry, will hold a plethora of fun events for all age groups.
The two-day events begin Saturday with 8 a.m. registration for the 4K Fun Run/Walk, starting out from Kennan Memorial Park at 9 a.m. Event day registration is $15, and monies raised from the entry fee will go to the Kennan-Catawba Lions Club.
Race participants and spectators can then return to the Park where a variety of tasty foods will be available at 11 a.m. Contestants in the bean-bag tournament will take take their places at noon in the park for the enjoyment of spectators.
Midwest utility regulators are meeting in Wisconsin today, where they will hear more concerns about rising fixed fees on customers' monthly bills.
The Alliance for Fair Utilities is a coalition of faith, social justice and environmental groups. Officials with the alliance said they plan to deliver letters to people attending the Mid-American Regulatory Conference in Milwaukee, complaining about the increase in monthly fixed charges.
Phil Montgomery, regulatory conference president and Wisconsin PSC member, won't discuss the past and pending monthly charge cases here, but said there are many ways people can make their views known.
The local Stamp Out Hunger food drive was a success this year, according to Postmaster Paul Withey. This year’s drive included rural carriers, highway contract carriers, city carriers, and clerks from Clam Lake, Butternut, Fifield, Glidden, and Park Falls. Withey said it was also important to thank volunteers from the Lord’s Cupboard Food Pantry for their assistance on Saturday and Monday with the various food donations from local communities.
The annual food drive has grown into a national effort that provides assistance to the millions of Americans struggling to put food on the table. The Stamp Out Hunger food drive, held on the second Saturday in May, has become the nation’s largest single-day food drive.
Gov. Scott Walker says he thinks state lawmakers will reduce new borrowing for road projects, but he doubts that they'll completely eliminate it.
Walker's transportation budget would increase borrowing by $1.3 billion, an amount lawmakers have said is too high. Walker has said he won't support any new taxes or fees to lower that bonding, which led Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to suggest Wednesday that lawmakers might get rid of new bonding altogether. That would mean $1.3 billion worth of road projects delayed or cut.
The Chequamegon Screaming Eagles and Phillips Loggers baseball teams will face off in the first round of Sectionals at 4:30 tonight in Park Falls. The first-seeded Eagles defeated Ladysmith 4-2 on Wednesday after their first round bye. The third-seeded Loggers overcame the sixth seed Cornell/Lake Holcombe 6-4 on Tuesday, then beat the second seeded Hurley Midgets 7-3 Wednesday night when the game was called for lightning in the sixth inning. The winner of tonight’s game will move on to the Sectional semi-final round next Tuesday in Cumberland where they will play the winner of tonight’s St. Croix Falls (#1) and Grantsburg (#2) game. Chequamegon won both regular season games between the two teams this year.
Phillips High School has selected Tyler Timothy Fischer as a 2015 representative to the 74th session of Badger Boys State. Tyler, son of Timothy and Georgiana Fischer, is a junior at Phillips High School.
Badger Boys State is a youth leadership program sponsored by the Wisconsin American Legion designed to educate youth in the duties, privileges, rights and responsibilities of American citizenship. The program has been developed on the fundamental principle that young people learn best by actively participating in the process. As much as possible, the mechanics of government in Badger Boys State are modeled after Wisconsin’s own government at the city, county and state level.
Badger Boys State representatives are selected by local high schools throughout Wisconsin based on their qualifications as good students, exhibiting strong leadership skills and in the top third of their class.
A time capsule buried 25 years ago in front of the Lidice Monument in Phillips was dug up recently by City of Phillips employees as members of the Czech-Slovak organisation looked on.
A few of the items from inside the capsule included: two half dollars dated 1990; a letter from former Congressman David Obey; a letter from former president of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, a history book and memorabilia, the Czech-Slovak org by-laws; a container of soil from Lidice; various articles from The Phillips BEE; various photographs, a play manuscript, and several other brochures. The items will be displayed at the Lidice Service on 19 June at the 1st Baptist Church and again at the festival.
The organization plans to bury a capsule again during this year’s 32nd Annual Phillips Czechoslovakian Community Festival planned for June 19-21.
It started with just one child who was struggling to read and grew from there. Twenty-five years later, Park Falls resident Beth Lindgren has helped teach innumerable students to love reading. Each week, she has volunteered three hours in Ginny Luoma's fourth grade classroom at Chequamegon Elementary School.
The volunteer work began when fourth grade teacher Luoma asked Lindgren to help with a particular student who was struggling to read. Lindgren, who is an RN, was a stay-at home mom at the time, and she wanted to give back to the community in some way. So three days out of the week, Lindgren volunteered an hour and pitched in to team-teach with Luoma's reading class. “She really does whatever I need help with during the reading period,” said Luoma.
Lindgren's background as a nurse helped her in her new project, and with plenty of child psychology under her belt, she found she loved working with the kids. “I didn't know how much I would enjoy doing it until I started,” she explained. “It's really a lot of fun and that's why I've done it for so long.”
The late Leo Heikkinen was honored by the Price County Economic Development Association on May 20 with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his distinguished service to Price County.
In attendance were many members of the Heikkinen family, former employees, PCEDA President Dennis Rodewald, Greg Krause, and delegates from state and local offices.
After Rodewald’s introduction to the evening, Krause gave a recap of the life and times of Heikkinen, starting from the bust of the pine logging industry in the 1920’s, to Heikkinen’s development of a cable jammer, to the expansion of his original logging equipment repair shop into an incorporated business in the 1960’s, which lead to over 300 local jobs, to the far-reaching use of Prentice Loaders, including by NASA, and eventually to the civic leadership that has become part of his lasting legacy.
End sections of the report examine Price County findings through the filter of a “Community of Capitals Framework” laid out by sociologists Cornelia Butler Flora and Jan L. Flora as a tool to improve people's understanding of the community and how it functions.
“Every community no matter what its size or where it is located has resources or assets. If a community is going to survive and thrive it will need to build on those assets,” the report explains. “When a community is able to invest these resources and assets to create new resources it becomes capital.”
The sociologists hold that if any of seven capital areas, including Natural, Cultural, Human, Social, Political, Financial, or Built, is elevated above others, the rest of the capitals are threatened, according to the report, which points to Flora’s conclusion that “Sustainable communities are those with economic security for all, a healthy ecosystem, and social inclusion for all residents.”
The Prentice Buccaneers track and field teams will be represented by Sydney Wilund, Cheyenne Hawkins and Jesse Isaacson at the WIAA State meet held in La Crosse this weekend. Wilund advanced in the triple jump while Isaacson won the Regional and Sectional Championship in the high jump.
Prentice traveled to Athens for their Regional meet Tuesday, May 26.
Sydney Wilund won the long jump with a distance of 15-06.25. She also won the triple jump with a distance of 34-07.5.
The Park Falls Girls' Softball Club's Diamond Dusters 14-U team opened its season on Saturday, May 30, with 20-1 and 17-7 victories over Ironwood at the Park Falls Athletic Complex.
Five Diamond Dusters pitchers – Josi Orr, Eva Pasewald, Taylar Bortz, Brook Bogdanovich and Kennedy BeBeau – held Ironwood scoreless until an unearned run in the fifth and final inning of game one, allowing six hits and four walks, while striking out seven. Kiana Schmidt went 3-for-3 with a pair or triples and three runs scored and Bogdanovich, Kelsie Wiezorek and Pasewald had two hits each.
Rachel Callow, Orr, Pasewald and Bortz worked in the circle in game two, allowing seven hits and five walks, while fanning seven over four innings. Hannah Borne went 3-for-3 and Grace Wegner, Orr and Pasewald added two hits each.
The Phillips Loggers softball team earned the first Regional Championship in school history with a 10-5 victory over the Hurley Midgets Saturday, May 30.
The ride to the championship was a bit crazy as weather and upsets kept all the teams in the bracket guessing who they would be playing, when and where.
Chequamegon entered the tournament as the number one seed and received a first round bye in the upper bracket.
The Chequamegon Screaming Eagles baseball team ended their final Marawood North Conference matchup for the year by reaching the 10-run rule with a four-run fifth inning on May 28.
The 10-0 win over visiting Abbotsford capped a nine-game winning streak and earned the team the #1 seed in the WIAA State Tournament and a first round bye. The Eagles played Wednesday in Park Falls, but results were not available at press time.
Chequamegon finished 2015 conference play just behind Athens. Both teams are 10-2 in the MNC, with the Blue Jays owning the tiebreaker.
In rural Wisconsin, friends and neighbors often volunteer their time to provide life-saving care to people in their time of need. But some emergency medical services are seeing fewer volunteers and communities are struggling to come up with the money to provide care.
In some areas, residents are served by a hybrid system of professionals and volunteers. On a recent shift, Rayne Edinger and another paramedic headed out from the Ashland Fire Department to help Red Cliff's volunteer EMS with a patient.
“We’ll step out, grab our gear, climb into their ambulance, receive a report from the EMTs and basically pick up from there,” Edinger explained.
This past Friday evening, well over 100 people gathered at St. Teresa’s Catholic Church banquet hall for a meal, silent auction, and supportive gathering for the purpose of saving the Cinema North movie theater in Phillips from closing its doors.
As a result of changing technology in film industry, theaters across the country over the past several years have been required to update their projection equipment and the area where it is housed. The total package has a price tag of about $50,000. With about 75 percent of what you and I pay at the movie box office going back to the movie industry and their distributors, that leaves very little for updating of equipment in these denominations.
The owners of Cinema North, Kathy and Jim Billek, have exhausted just about every resource available to them to raise the needed funds for this equipment update. They are firmly committed to keeping the movie theater a viable business for our community with the best the movie industry provides in the coming years, providing this required equipment update funding can be resolved.
Hello friends,
This week’s column is about growing food plots with your kids and hunting together over them. I really enjoy both.
There was frost on top of our turkey blind this morning when my 14-year-old daughter, Selina Walters and I got inside of it. No problem, I had a two-burner propane stove hooked up to a 20-pound propane tank that was camouflaged and outside of the blind.
Last fall, I kind of ran my stove over with my truck and this morning when I lit it, there was a boom which was an explosion, which meant no stove today.
For half the morning of May 21, Phillips Elementary students stood, sat, and crouched in various positions, in various costumes, in front of various displays detailing important, historical individuals. The students were each pretending to be a statue of a historical figure of their choice, for the 11th annual Phillips Wax Museum in the elementary gymnasium.
The event, which has been the capstone project for fifth graders for over a decade, represents over two months worth of research in reading and language arts classes.
Julie Zumach and Rod Dymesich are fifth grade teachers that lead the event. The teachers said the wax museum is not only a highly-engaging project, but the student work done in preparation for the project also fulfills common core standards for research. According to Zumach, the students decide on their historical figure in late March and start researching their chosen individual for the next several weeks. After that, the parents are allowed to get involved, and the kids work alongside them, teaching their parents about their person from history so that a display - and a costume - can be put together.
With Price County experiencing declines in both its overall population and the number of young adults between the ages of 18 and 39, UW-Extension, Price County, administered a survey titled “Attracting & Retaining the Next Generation of Price County Residents” as part of larger efforts geared at addressing current demographic trends.
The process began last May when UW-Extension staff members in the county brought together a focus group of 10 young adults in order to boost their understanding of those factors that people in the target 18 to 39-year-old age group value in a community they consider home.
A survey was next distributed electronically through a tool called Qualtrics as well as through the use of a tablet at community events during the summer months in order to increase response levels (intercept surveys), according to the introduction in the survey report completed by Gail Huycke, community resource development educator for UW-Extension.
Constantly changing and variable weather in the past week continued to keep fishermen guessing on most waters across the Northwoods. Several cold fronts and regular rain showers dropped water temperatures a bit and this has continued to confuse the bass and panfish species that have been trying to spawn. Some warm temps in the last several days have bumped water temperatures back into the low to mid-60's on many lakes and this has spurred on a slug of bass and panfish activity. Both largemouth and smallmouth bass should be in the middle of their spawning periods and many dished out areas can be observed in the shallows - with the males often sitting tight and guarding the nests. Crappie have been finishing up their nesting activities, while pumpkinseed and bluegill are just starting to congregate prior to their spawning rituals.
Two years of challenging weather made things tough for loggers and for Price County timber sales … but as the old rock song goes … in the 2015 season, the future’s so bright “ya gotta wear shades!”
Price County Forestry and Parks Administrator Eric Holm said that the spring sale has just concluded and it looks like the final figure is $1,461,162 noting that figure reflects a 78 percent increase over average totals.
Holm said that it has been a year when all the stars aligned and the good weather and the strong demand for lumber have led to amazing prices for stumpage.
Environmental groups say unnecessary highway projects are behind a big jump in borrowing in Gov. Scott Walker's transportation budget.
Walker's proposed transportation plan would increase borrowing by $1.3 billion. A coalition of environmental groups, including 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin, blamed alleged bad planning by the state Department of Transportation. Steve Hiniker, executive director of 1,000 Friends, said the DOT uses unrealistic traffic projections to justify major highway expansions while smaller local roads are in shambles.
"And so what this means is that local municipalities — town roads and the like are causing more damage to vehicles, crash rates are increasing, and all of this is because of a misplaced priority," Hiniker said.
School district administrator Rick Morgan presented the annual Wisconsin school district performance report to the school board at the May 18 meeting. This report is based on the testing data from the WKCE/WAA. The results run a year behind, noted Morgan, reporting on the 2013-14 school year at the meeting.
The Phillips School District did well on the report, with the Phillips School numbers closely matched to statewide numbers. Comparison reports to other school districts can be gained through the WIN website at the Department of Public Instruction. Comparison of school-to-school is done within the district, but was not presented at this particular meeting. “If anyone on the school board or in the community has an interest in looking at that, I encourage them to do so,” said Morgan.
“We need to make sure our students are ready to compete as they go off to other institutions,” said board member Stephen Willett. “Every year we have a group of kids that graduate from various institutions, and we should know what has happened to them. We need to know where these kids are and their success stories so that our kids can know they can have success out there. Our kids think they can't do as well because they come from a school district of 800 kids instead of 8,000.”
The Chequamegon High School softball team wrapped up its fourth straight Marawood North Conference championship this past week with a doubleheader sweep of Prentice/Butternut on Tuesday, May 19, at the Park Falls Athletic Complex.
The Screaming Eagles also were awarded the #1 seed for regional play, which opened this week.
Chequamegon swept Prentice/Butternut 15-0 and 20-1 to finish 11-1 in MNC play and win the title outright after sharing it with Athens the previous three seasons. The Screaming Eagles have posted a record of 37-5 in MNC games over the past four seasons.
Despite a drizzle of rain that persisted throughout the morning, the community and VFW members turned out to honor those who have served.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has notified the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources of the agency’s plans to review a water quality protection permit for a large-scale hog farm planned near Lake Superior.
Iowa-based Reicks View Farms submitted an application to the state for a Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit this winter. Reicks subsidiary Badgerwood, LLC is proposing to build a large-scale farm of 26,350 hogs in the town of Eileen in Bayfield County.
In a statement provided by EPA spokesman Pete Cassell, the agency writes, "Due to the size and location of the proposed Badgerwood facility as well as the concerns raised by Wisconsin tribes, EPA plans to review the draft (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit for this project."
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