Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 32. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:41 for 9 hours 17 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 41 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
As the state approaches the 50th anniversary of its wild turkey reintroduction, the birds are found in all 72 counties, ranging from remote wilds to farms to urban parks.
Combining science-based wildlife management and multiple partners, including local and national conservation organizations and private landowners, the Wisconsin wild turkey project is widely regarded as one of the state’s most successful native species reintroductions.
“Quite frankly, there is nothing like it,” said Rob Keck, CEO of the National Wild Turkey Federation from 1978 to 2008 who now works as Bass Pro Shops hunting and fishing ambassador. “To go from zero to statewide and have decades of growth and stability, it’s remarkable in every aspect.”
Wild turkeys were native to Wisconsin but by the mid-1800s its population was strained. The pressures included the removal of vast areas of timber from southern Wisconsin, high turkey harvests by market and subsistence hunters and the disappearance of source populations in Illinois.
By 1860 wild turkeys were rare in Wisconsin, according to the DNR’s document titled “Ecology of Wild Turkeys in Wisconsin.”
The last wild turkey in Wisconsin’s original flock was killed in 1881 near Darlington, according to the DNR.
[…]
So by the 1970s Wisconsin DNR managers were set on a plan.
[…]
“Textbook case of restoring an animal that was once there, into a favorable environment, and watching it take off,” [then DNR wildlife staffer Charley] Burke said.
In 1983, just seven years after reintroduction, the DNR held the state’s first spring turkey hunting season. In 1989 it offered a fall season, too.
Saturday in Whitewater will see morning sleet giving way to less cloudy skies and a high of 35. Sunrise is 7:24 and sunset is 4:40 for 9 hours 16 minutes of daytime. The moon is in its third quarter with 50.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 49 BC, Caesar crosses the Rubicon, precipitating the start of civil war.
The U.S. labor market ended 2025 on a soft note, with job creation in December less than expected, according to a report Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 50,000 for the month, lower than the downwardly revised 56,000 in November and short of the Dow Jones estimate for 73,000.
At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.4%, compared with the forecast for 4.5%.
Since Monday, flames have spread across a vast area of the “Comarca Andina” in southern Argentina, considered one of the top tourist destinations in the heart of the Andes Mountains. More than 350 people were attempting to halt the fire with the help of air support — including helicopters, amphibious planes, and air tankers — according to the government of Chubut province.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:39 for 9 hours 14 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60.1 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone at a Macworld keynote in San Francisco.
At the College of the Menominee Nation in Keshena, a “phenology” trail identifies plants by common, scientific and Menominee names. Signs illustrate seasonal phases and traditional uses, braiding together Western science with Indigenous ways of knowing.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 55. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:38 for 9 hours 13 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 69.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1790, President Washington delivers the first State of the Union address in New York City.
There is a story today at the Journal Sentinel, framed with the tired formulation that two people are ‘pointing fingers’ at each other about past election actions from two of Wisconsin’s gubernatorial candidates:
“Barnes, who leads the Democratic primary for governor in name identification, criticized Tiffany, a Republican leading the GOP primary race, on the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection for his support of a lawsuit that sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“… let’s remind WI that you are an election-denier that tried to overturn the 2020 election at the bidding of Donald Trump,” Barnes said in a post on X.
Tiffany shot back, reminding X followers of a past post from Barnes following President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory that questioned its legitimacy.
“The election was, rigged?” Barnes tweeted on Nov. 9, 2016 ? a day after Trump defeated former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by winning key swing states, including Wisconsin.”
NASA is considering a rare early return of its crew from the International Space Station over an unspecified medical issue involving one of the astronauts. NASA canceled a planned spacewalk scheduled for January 8, the agency said.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:37 for 9 hours 12 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 78.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
What makes a good local candidate, in the fullest meaning of the word good?
I’d suggest the precepts of a venerable, ancient religion: good thoughts, good words, good deeds.
Expressed more fully, and described in secular political terms: good ideas, good communication, and good results.
I’d add one more: the candidate is his or her own person, free from a role as operative or tool of special interest machinations and manipulations. SeeThe Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town.
Snow turned Paris into a magical sight on Monday, drawing crowds to enjoy winter sports and build snowpeople near the Sacré Coeur in the north of the city.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 38. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:36 for 9 hours 11 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 86.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
This libertarian blogger has been a critic of conventional political paradigms to describe America’s national or state politics in these unconventional times.1 Trumpism is not a conventional political movement. It’s an authoritarian populist2 one, no matter how loudly or how insistently the some Trump supporters resist that description. (It’s worth noting that Trump influencers have begun to embrace that plain truth, even if some ordinary Trump voters still blanch at the description.)
Much of this criticism has centered on the conventional political analysis of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel‘s Craig Gilbert. (Gilbert’s views would have been insightful in a former era; ours isn’t that former era.) Gilbert’s latest assessment, of how Trump’s popularity may influence statewide races, comes closer to describing our time candidly:
Wisconsin exemplifies a powerful pattern in modern American politics.
The party that wins the presidency does a lot of losing in the elections that follow. Some scholars call it the “presidential penalty.”
When Republican George W. Bush was president (2001-2009), Democrats won both races for governor in Wisconsin.
When Democrat Barack Obama was president (2009-2017), Republicans won three elections for governor and their first U.S. Senate races since the 1980s.
[…]
Here in battleground Wisconsin, we may be seeing a “presidential penalty” not just in fall partisan races, but in Wisconsin’s most important nonpartisan elections, the April contests for state Supreme Court. Nothing like it has happened in the modern era. This is a new political phenomenon.
[…]
There are at least two other factors that help explain why the Trump presidency has not only influenced the outcome of court races but had a negative impact on Trump’s own party.
One is that Trump has been an unusually confrontational and polarizing president, utterly dominating the political arena and the public’s attention. You would expect such a president to have more impact on elections for other offices.
Closer, right? Gilbert describes Trump as “an unusually confrontational and polarizing president.” Yes, indeed. There’s more though. Trump is “unusually” confrontational and polarizing because he’s an authoritarian populist to his bones.
An analysis of Trump’s influence can only be accurate if Trump is described and understood accurately.
A massive star goes supernova giving birth to a pair of neutron stars. The orbiting stars merge creating a kilonova. Full Story: https://www.space.com/astronomy/stars… Credit: Caltech
Monday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:35 for 9 hours 10 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 93.3 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Why do local officials violate the law? There are three main reasons.
First, they are wholly ignorant of the law. Second, they misunderstand the law. Third, they have an interest they place above the law.
The first is corrected easily, the second with more difficulty, and the third only with great effort. That great effort will not rest on community sentiment; officials who have placed an interest above the law will not yield to community persuasion as they’ve already rejected opinions other than their own (or, more precisely, rejected opinions beyond the faction that they view as patrons and protectors).
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 30. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:34 for 9 hours 9 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.7 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, Operation Carpetbagger, involving the dropping of arms and supplies to resistance fighters in Europe, begins.
PBS Wisconsin interviewed Assembly Speaker Vos and Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer. Below are recordings of each interview.
An overall impression of delivery — Vos speaks as an older man recalling his talking points; Neubauer speaks as a younger woman conversing with others across a café table. He’s stiff and tedious to watch; by contrast, she’s natural and conversational.
Saturday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 24. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:33 for 9 hours 8 minutes of daytime. The moon is full today. It’s the January Wolf Supermoon.
On this day in 1777, American forces under General Washington defeat British forces at the Battle of Princeton, helping boost Patriot morale.
It’s a full moon today, and the moon will be large for the next few days. (While it’s cloudy now, it may yet be clear later in the evening.) So, so… what’s all the talk about (1) a full moon, (2) full moons with different names for different months, and full moons that are also called (3) supermoons?
It’s a simple three-step process to determine if a moon is a supermoon. Cultures for thousands of years have been noting when the moon is full, and which full moons are larger in appearance than others. There’s nothing difficult about it.
Here’s a quick primer:
The full moon. A full moon is easy to describe — it occurs when all of the moon’s visible disk is illuminated. That happens a bit more than every 29 days, and takes place when the moon and the sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, a position called opposition:
At full moon, the sun, Earth, and moon are aligned in space, with Earth in the middle. And the moon’s day side – its fully lighted hemisphere – directly faces us. Chart via John Jardine Goss/ EarthSky.
Monthly names for the full moon each month. The names are applied to a full moon in a given month aren’t the creation of astronomers, but are simply traditional cultural descriptions people apply to a moon in a particular month. (Different cultures have different names.)
Supermoons. When the full moon is closer than normal to Earth, a position called perigee, then it’s called a supermoon. Supermoons are simply full moons that are closer than average to Earth. Any month’s moon could be a supermoon, depending on whether that moon is closer to the Earth (perigee) than on average in that month and year.
This January, the Wolf Moon is closer to Earth than average, so it’s a Wolf Supermoon.
“Technically, the Harvest Moon is the Full Moon closest to the September equinox around September 22. The Harvest Moon is the only Full Moon name determined by the equinox rather than a month. Most years, it’s in September, but around every three years, it falls in October.” See Anne Buckle, Aparna Kher, and Vigdis Hocken, Traditional Full Moon Names, timeanddate.com ↩︎
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 22. Sunrise is 7:25 and sunset is 4:32 for 9 hours 7 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 98.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1942, thirty-three members of the Nazi Duquesne Spy Ring, headed by Fritz Joubert Duquesne, are sentenced in federal court, in the largest espionage case in United States history.
Many years ago, and for many years, a January post at FREE WHITEWATER would offer predictions for the year ahead. They were styled in the fashion of the late William Safire’s predictions at the New York Times. These turbulent recent years have made predictions too audacious to attempt for this blogger (and I think for Safire, too, if he were to see these times).
Instead, rather than specific predictions, one can confidently offer a list of the general forces that are likely to be influential in Whitewater. In this respect, those social forces are roughly the same as those present in the last few years. SeeWhat Ails, What Heals (11.14.22) and ‘What Ails, What Heals’ and What’s Changed (10.2.25). While the change over the last three years has been in favor of what heals in this city, those who would drag Whitewater back, by hook or by crook, are relentless and insatiable.
A few remarks follow, however, about the people and factions that comprise the negative and positive elements at work in Whitewater.
Arguments and counter-arguments. Old Whitewater, a culture that praised a few and scorned all others, did not encourage debate among those few, or anyone else. While there were arguments in favor of this project or that, no one was expected to do more than join a chorus of praise for these ideas.
And so, and so, those who came up in Old Whitewater, like the special interest men of this town, had no experience responding to counter-arguments. These men weren’t less intelligent than others, but they were less capable of forming and following a debate with sound reasoning. They are now men in their sixties and seventies whose quality of reasoning was less necessary to them than mere social pressure (‘SHUT UP AND SING OUR TUNE‘). Live your life that way, and your actual argumentation is weak, comprising little more than bad statistics, bad faith claims, and a barrel of fallacies suitable for any discussion.
My remarks concern policies of and within the City of Whitewater, where I am a resident and property owner: residing here in the city, not across the town line; owning a home here in the city, not elsewhere; voting as part of this city’s electorate, not with a different one; loving this small and beautiful community, above any other. Here now forever, happily and thankfully so.
One hopes more people would move to Whitewater. Critics (and supporters) within the city carry more credibility than those who live elsewhere.
The work of a lifetime. If the boosters were bad for this city (and they were), if toxic positivity is bad for this city (and it is), and if the special interest men are advocates of their own interests over the majority (and they are), then there is still work ahead in this city.
Jupiter is at its biggest and brightest all year, the Moon and Saturn pair up, and the Beehive Cluster buzzes into view. 0:00 Intro 0:11 Jupiter at opposition 0:50 Moon and Saturn conjunction 1:11 The beehive cluster 2:00 January Moon phases Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://science.nasa.gov/skywatching/…
Deep in south India is a jungle kingdom that has inspired legends. Kabini, in the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, is home to a rogue confederation of animal tribes all vying for territory, power and resources. Now a new king, Saya, is on the rise. He is the only black panther in this jungle and hiding in the bone dark forest, the shadows are his only ally. Lineage doesn’t favour him, but he’s got cunning and grit — and he plans to claim Kabini as his kingdom.
