Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:11 and sunset 6:08 PM for 10h 57m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On Saturday, tens of millions of Americans gawked skyward as the moon slid between the Earth and the sun, transforming the solar disk into a hollowed-out ring of fire for nearly five minutes. But if you missed the display, don’t fret — an even greater opportunity will arise on April 8, 2024, for residents of the Lower 48 from San Antonio to northern Maine.
This weekend’s eclipse happened during lunar apogee, the point in the moon’s orbit when it’s farthest from the Earth. That made it appear smaller in our skies, so it wasn’t large enough to fully block the sun. Only a beaded necklace of piercing sunlight protruded from behind the moon’s silent silhouette.
But April’s eclipse is a total solar eclipse, which will plunge folks from Mazatlan, Mexico, to Newfoundland into a midday darkness. The sun’s atmosphere will be briefly visible, something only ever directly seen, and charted, when the moon completely extinguishes daylight.
The eclipse technically begins over the Pacific about 2,000 miles south of Hawaii. The path of totality, which will be about 120 miles wide, then comes ashore during the early afternoon in Sinaloa, Mexico, before crossing into the United States south of Del Rio, Texas. The San Antonio and Austin metros are sideswiped by the path of totality; residents in both cities ought to plan to drive west.
Then Dallas and Little Rock are in the zone, as are folks along the Ohio River in southern Illinois and northwest Kentucky. That includes Carbondale, a city of 21,000 that was also on the centerline of the Aug. 21, 2017, total solar eclipse. Indianapolis, Dayton, Cleveland, Buffalo and Rochester, N.Y., are in the path of totality. So is Montreal, at least on the south side of the city. Eventually the path crosses New Brunswick and Newfoundland before continuing over the open Atlantic.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 55. Sunrise is 7:10 and sunset 6:10 PM for 11h 00m 08s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 3:30 PM, the Alcohol Licensing Committee at 5:30 PM, and the Library Board at 6:30 PM.
Colt and Kovu are high-flying bat dogs. The Border Collies are famous for their crowd-pleasing appearances at Madison Mallard and Lake Country DockHound baseball games.
How might lasers revolutionize deep space communications? NASA will test high-bandwidth laser (or optical) communications for the first time beyond the Moon with a pioneering technology demonstration called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC).
Sunday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 55. Sunrise is 7:08 and sunset 6:11 PM for 11h 02m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 0.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Saturday in Whitewater will be rainy, as was yesterday, with a high of 56. Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset 6:13 PM for 11h 05m 45s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
Roosevelt was in Wisconsin stumping as the presidential candidate of the new, independent Progressive Party, which had split from the Republican Party earlier that year. Roosevelt already had served two terms as chief executive (1901-1909), but was seeking the office again as the champion of progressive reform. Unbeknownst to Roosevelt, a New York bartender named John Schrank had been stalking him for three weeks through eight states. As Roosevelt left Milwaukee’s Hotel Gilpatrick for a speaking engagement at the Milwaukee Auditorium and stood waving to the gathered crowd, Schrank fired a .38-caliber revolver that he had hidden in his coat.
Roosevelt was hit in the right side of the chest and the bullet lodged in his chest wall. Seeing the blood on his shirt, vest, and coat, his aides pleaded with him to seek medical help, but Roosevelt trivialized the wound and insisted on keeping his commitment. His life was probably saved by the speech, since the contents of his coat pocket — his metal spectacle case and the thick, folded manuscript of his talk — had absorbed much of the force of the bullet. Throughout the evening he made light of the wound, declaring at one point, “It takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose,” but the candidate spend the next week in the hospital and carried the bullet inside him the rest of his life.
Schrank, the would-be assassin, was examined by psychiatrists, who recommended that he be committed to an asylum. A judge concurred and Schrank spent the remainder of his life incarcerated, first at the Northern Hospital for the Insane in Oshkosh, then at Central State Hospital for the criminally insane at the state prison at Waupun. The glass Roosevelt drank from on stage that night was acquired by the Wisconsin Historical Museum. You can read more about the assassination attempt on their Museum Object of Week pages.
As a little boy Jungle Jay Christie always dreamed of owning his own wildlife conservation park. That dream came true with Safari Lake Geneva nestled amongst farm fields near the Village of Bloomfield.
A World War I-era shipwreck was discovered 800 feet deep in Lake Superior, exactly 100 years after it first sank. Footage from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society shows the underwater discovery. The vessel, known as the Huronton, sank in 1923 after it collided with another ship during a pocket of heavy fog and smoke over the lake. Per CNN, the ship was found just miles from the Edmund Fitzgerald, a 1975 shipwreck made famous in a song by Gordon Lightfoot.
Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 56. Sunrise is 7:06 and sunset 6:15 PM for 11h 08m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 1.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress establishes the Continental Navy (predecessor of the United States Navy).
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with intermittent showers and a high of 56. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 6:16 PM for 11h 11m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 4.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1614, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchevpounds his shoe on a desk at the United Nations to protest a Philippine assertion. (No word on whether there were holes in his socks.)
American consumers experienced more moderate price increases across several key measures in September as costs climbed only gradually across a range of goods and services, the latest evidence that inflation is continuing to fade toward the Federal Reserve’s goal.
The Consumer Price Index climbed 3.7 percent from a year earlier, a report released Thursday showed. That matched the August reading, and it was slightly higher than the 3.6 percent that economists had predicted.
But after cutting out food and fuel prices, both of which jump around a lot, a “core” measure that tries to gauge underlying price trends climbed 4.1 percent, down from 4.3 percent previously.
Fed officials have been raising interest rates since March 2022 in an effort to slow economic growth and wrestle inflation under control. Inflation has been slowing for months, and the continued progress could add to their confidence that they do not need to lift borrowing costs more in order to wrangle price increases.
Whitewater has, before, seen improving national conditions that longtimelocal politicians and longtimelocal officials have failed to bring to the city. Whitewater’s special interests, operatives, and assorted flacks and sycophants have shamelessly left this city a low-income community by their own admission. See A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA and Whitewater’s Still Waiting for That Boom(where longtime local types bemoan the lack of success that is their own fault.)
If the national economy continues to improve, someone in this city will need to ensure that Whitewater is properly situated.
That positioning will not come from longtime (in and out over decades!) CDA men and councilmembers. Yesterday’s shameless failures and excuse-makers will not bring tomorrow’s successes.
It’s wrong, fundamentally, to accord deference and respect to those aged policymakers whose main production has been in their own self-promotion. Some of us have done well over these last decades, but many of our fellow Whitewater residents most certainly have not kept pace. (This libertarian blogger has no personal complaints, so to speak, but sees all around many legitimate policy concerns.)
Those councilmembers or CDA men, old or new, who cannot see as much need to be shown the door.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset 6:18 PM for 11h 14m 13s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 9.2% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Common Council and the Whitewater Unified School Board meet at 6 PM.
EAU CLAIRE, Wis. – President Jay Rothman today unveiled the Universities of Wisconsin, a new name and identity that emphasizes the constellation of Wisconsin’s 13 public universities.
The Universities of Wisconsin will replace the University of Wisconsin System as the preferred way to describe the universities. The new name will be accompanied by new brand graphics, including a logo, mark, and map.
“The Universities of Wisconsin is the best way to describe our thirteen excellent universities,” Rothman said. “This new name rightfully shifts the focus from the System to the Universities that are providing opportunities to the students and families we serve.”
“We have thirteen universities with one mission – to make Wisconsin Future Ready. For All,” added Karen Walsh, Board of Regents President. “I am proud to represent the Universities of Wisconsin, and everyone in our state can take pride in all the universities do to improve lives and communities.”
Gov. Tony Evers issued a proclamation to mark the occasion as “Universities of Wisconsin Week.”
Rothman announced the new name and identity at UW-Eau Claire, accompanied by Chancellor Jim Schmidt.
The announcement included a new video featuring the voice of Rothman’s predecessor, former Gov. Tommy Thompson.
“I have often said the Universities of Wisconsin are one of the state’s greatest assets, aside from its people,” Thompson said. “I have always been – and always will be – a champion of our universities.”
Here’s that logo:
It’s attractive, but not so attractive as the men and women who make the UW schools successful, on-campus and off-campus. It is they, those many who are literally attractive to others. It is they who retain and gain others for their institutions.
The logo is only attractive for the efforts of many. Logos don’t imbue people with meaning; people imbue logos with meaning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 57. Sunrise is 7:03 and sunset 6:20 PM for 11h 17m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 15% of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin public schools have lost more than 32,000 students since 2019 due to an increase in private and home school enrollment and a decline in the birth rate, according to a new report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
At the same time, there are between 4,500 and 11,600 “missing children” from schools.
Using public, private and home school enrollment data since the fall of 2019, the report found thousands of school age children were unaccounted for during the 2022-23 school year, accounting for nearly one-third of the public school enrollment decline.
“These students would seem to be missing either because the data on them was not collected or, worse, because they disconnected from the education system in Wisconsin entirely,” the policy forum report found.
Department of Public Instruction officials noted in the report that private and home schools are not held to the same standard as public schools when it comes to reporting enrollment data, so there are likely those students who are being educated, but are not captured by state counts.
Private and home schools don’t collect data on students until they reach first grade, which could be a reason for the decline of younger students. But Ari Brown, one of the authors of the policy forum report said enrollment in grades first through fourth are also down.
There could be many other reasons for children not being accounted for in Wisconsin schools, including truancy, children being kept home to watch younger siblings or migration out of state, Brown said.
Monday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 54. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset 6:21 PM for 11h 19m 54s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 22.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Planning Board meets at 6 PM, and her Library Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1812, during the war with Britain, American forces capture two British ships in a naval engagement on Lake Erie: HMS Detroit and HMS Caledonia.
Clerks could begin processing absentee ballots a day early
A bill introduced by three Republican lawmakers would allow clerks to begin processing absentee ballots the Monday before Election Day — something election officials have long asked for.
Supporters of the change cite the confusion that results when scores of absentee ballots are processed late at central count facilities and added to the returns all at once, sometimes changing which candidate is in the lead.
….
Impossible absentee ballot deadline could be fixed
A separate, bipartisan bill only includes the part about fixing the absentee deadline.
In presidential election years, the February primary — which determines which candidates get on the April ballot — happens after the deadline to send ballots for the April election.
Clerks say the current solution of sending out one ballot with only the presidential primary candidates and a second ballot adding other local races is confusing for voters.
The bill would keep a 47-day deadline for sending ballots to military and overseas voters, but change the deadline to 21 days for all other voters.
A Senate committee voted unanimously to advance that bill to a full Senate vote, but the Assembly committee still needs to hold an executive session to give it the green light.
Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 54. Sunrise is 7:00 and sunset 6:23 PM for 11h 22m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 31.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1871, Peshtigo, Wisconsin was devastated by a fire that took 1,200 lives. The fire caused over $2 million in damages and destroyed 1.25 million acres of forest. This was the greatest human loss due to fire in the history of the United States. The Peshtigo Fire was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire which occurred on the same day, killing 250 people and lasting three days. While the Chicago fire is said to have been started by a cow kicking over a lantern, it is uncertain how the Peshtigo fire began.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 55. Sunrise is 6:59 and sunset 6:25 PM for 11h 25m 36s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 40.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
Wisconsin manufacturers are less pessimistic about the economy than last year and remain optimistic about their companies, but workforce challenges continue to be a top concern even as inflation and supply chain worries lessen.
That’s according to a new report from the Wisconsin Center for Manufacturing & Productivity, a public-private partnership that connects companies with resources. It surveyed 415 manufacturing executives from across the state and also took input from focus groups in Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and Menomonie.
Manufacturing stakeholders on Wednesday discussed the results at Titletown Tech in Green Bay. The survey found that 51 percent of manufacturers believe the business climate is headed in the right direction, but it’s not quite back to levels seen in 2021. That year, 55 percent said it was going in the right direction.
The survey shows that manufacturers are split regarding opinions on the health of Wisconsin’s economy. Twenty-three percent believe the state economy is growing; 36 percent say it’s mostly flat; 26 percent think it’s slowing down; and 12 percent believe it’s in a recession.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, America’s gross domestic product grew in the first two quarters of 2023 with annualized growth around 2 percent each quarter. After some forecasters predicted recessions in 2022 and 2023, forecasters at UCLA are predicting 2024 will be a weak year for economic growth, before rebounding in 2025.
