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Off the Editor’s Desk 3-1-23

If there is nothing else to talk about, do the weather!

If silence grips the conservation in your group, one can always turn to the weather as a topic and it is always making a change. The snow of last week brought back memories of the Halloween snowstorm of 1991.

As many of you may remember, back in 1991, it started snowing about the same time as the kids came trick or treating and by the time the last one rang our doorbell, the snow was almost to my knees. The bad part of having snow on the October celebration of Halloween is that that snow stayed around all winter long and it took the April sun to melt it away. It seemed like back in those days a snowstorm was always followed by sub zero temperatures.

So, I thought, what is the record cold temperature in Wisconsin and looking it up I found that in the Village of Couderay, in Sawyer County along Highway 70, holds the lowest temperature ever recorded. With clear skies on the night of February 3, 1996, it allowed temperatures to drop across much of the Midwest. On February 4, 1996, Couderay recorded a temperature of 55 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit).

While I was looking for information about how cold it is, I found an interesting thing about how hot it is in Wisconsin. On July 27, 1931 the thermometer rose to 106 in Downing. So that is a swing of 161 degrees. I wonder if anyone shouted out global warming back in 1931?

Turning to another subject and that is the war in Ukraine now entering its second year. Has your support of our funding military operations dropped or increased?

An article in the Capitol Guardian notes that public support for arming and funding the Ukraine’s fight has dropped substantially from a year ago, and public opinion has turned decidedly in favor of non-intervention. A new AP poll shows over half of Americans reject outfitting Ukraine with weapons and sending financial aid to the country, and objection is highest among Republicans.

Well under half of Democrats (43%) now see the Ukraine situation as a “major threat” and just 29% of Republicans do.

Americans quickly tire of most endeavors that we get involved in. Take a look at our presidential election every four years. The fellow that got elected with all kinds of fanfare and carried both the house and congress with him, but within two years the population turns against him and the other party takes control of the congress.

In early 1945, as the war in the Pacific raged on and with the death of American service people soaring, American public support for the war waned.

On February 23, 1945 a picture taken by Joe Rosenthal of six Marines raising the American flag over Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribacki that was published in most American newspapers, raised the public support for the war and President Harry Truman ordered those Marines back to the states for fund raising appearances. Three of the original Marines in the photo had been killed by the time the president acted and the other three toured the states. The fund raising by those three was the largest bond drive of the war and Pima Indian, Ira Hayes; one of the six Marines, from Arizona, became a national hero.

I will continue to back the United States funding the war in Ukraine and ask President Biden to try to get other members of NATO to do their share of financing the effort against Vladimir Putin’s army.

Thanks for reading!     ~Carlton

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