Community

The College of Menominee Nation’s Theater Department plans to hold a community discussion next week about the Menominee Pageant research conducted over the past academic year.

The presentation of the work will be held from 12-1 p.m. Thursday in Room SD223 of Shirley Daly Hall on CMN’s Keshena campus. Some of the digitized audio files will be played during the program.

The project was led CMN faculty member Ryan Winn, who will continue to honor a promise to Menominee elders by both staging a traditional Menominee Pageant before the annual Menominee contest powwow in August and creating an archive for pageant artifacts in the S. Verna Fowler Academic Library throughout the past academic year.

CMN and the Wisconsin Arts Board funded two student assistants to help with the research.

Hockey has expensive skates and bulky pads. Baseball requires a leather glove, a batting glove, and spikes. Runners have one piece of equipment — running shoes.

Running shoes do a lot more than protect your feet as you pound on the miles. Sometimes they can make or break your dedication to the sport, said Sally Egan, a ThedaCare licensed athletic trainer and certified strength and conditioning specialist at Shawano Community High School. She is also a 20-year runner who runs the Leopolis Triathon and half marathon races every summer.

“If your running shoes don’t provide enough support or shock absorption, you will feel it in your muscles, tendons, knees and hips. For people just starting out, that pain can turn into an injury or discourage them from continuing to run,” she said. “The best way to truly explore if running is right for you is to give yourself your best advantage. Invest in good quality running shoes from the very beginning.”

Entertainer Wayne Newton is bringing a bit of Las Vegas showbiz to Shawano County.

The 75-year-old singer and musician is scheduled to present his “Wayne Newton: Up Close and Personal” show at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Mohican North Star Casino Resort in Bowler.

Tickets are $35 each to watch the entertainer reflect on his career and perform highlights from his 50 years in show business.

Best known for his signature hit song “Danke Schoen,” Newton has also appeared on television and in movies, and has become a fixture in Las Vegas, where he is known as “Mr. Las Vegas.”

For information about his Friday show, go to northstarcasinoresort.com.

April showers bring May flowers and, right on schedule, our native woodland wildflowers are beginning to burst into stunning bloom. The miracles of May have arrived.

In our gardens and surrounding forest and wood lots, native wildflowers burst into colorful bloom with the arrival of warmer temperatures in May. A warm spring thus far has prompted many species to begin blooming a bit earlier than normal.

Classic spring beauties such as marsh marigolds, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, violets and more begin to carpet the forest floor and woodland garden patches with the arrival of May.

Among their beautiful blooms, ferns begin to unfurl on the forest floor, reaching skyward in graceful arches of emerald green.

Camp Tekakwitha has gone through several changes since its beginning 90 years ago, and more appear to be in store for the Diocese of Green Bay camp on Loon Lake in Shawano County.

“We’re definitely trying to expand,” said camp director Rebecca Sievers, who spent 10 years at Tekakwitha as a camper and four as a counselor. She has been the director since last November.

“It holds a special place in my heart,“ she said. “My biggest goal is to uphold the integrity of the camp.”

In addition to hosting summer camp for kids ages 7-17 each summer, the 37-acre camp is used by 50 t0 60 groups — religious and school groups, clubs and organizations — each year for retreats and gatherings. A family camp is held on Labor Day weekend.

Tekakwitha opened in 1926 as a Catholic camp for girls from the inner city of Chicago. It now hosts boys and girls and adults of all faiths.

“It’s through the ministry of the Green Bay diocese, but open to anyone,” Sievers said.

Chris Marcks is making and selling T-shirt blankets, and donating the money to Hope Community Church.

Marcks was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She graduated from Forest Hill Central High School and went on to earn a degree in human resources management from Michigan State University. She worked eight years in the construction industry and now does a variety of professional services as an independent contractor.

Marcks moved to Shawano in 2011. She and her husband, Jason, a commercial pilot for Air Wisconsin, have two children and live in the town of Wescott.

Q How did you get started making T-shirt blankets?

A “The idea first came from a certificate from the rugby club in Grand Rapids doing a breast cancer fundraiser. I was a rugby player, and that was the first time I heard of it. I made my first blanket for my husband and myself five years ago. I wanted to do a fundraiser for Hope Community Church to help pay for the new addition.”

A while back, I received the shock of my life. I was presented the Friend of Agriculture award by the Shawano County Agricultural Society at its awards banquet held at The Main Event in Cecil. This was to honor me for my years of writing about farm life. I still feel very unworthy, weeks later.

Cocktail hour was held before the banquet and shortly after we were treated to an amazing dinner. I was there under the pretense my brother was receiving an award because he and my sister-in-law had hosted a Brunch on the Farm for the Shawano County Farm Bureau. I am so proud of my brother for the way he has managed my home farm. He and my sister-in-law and their kids are excellent stewards of the land, so when they asked my husband and me to come, I readily agreed.

This week, I had time to explore the wilds of my backyard. Why is that blue flag there? How bumpy is that hole that arrived one year ago?

It seems that when a person builds a house in the woods, stumps get buried in the backyard. Then, after a few years, and some rain, those stumps turn to mush and there is a hole. It is something I discovered when I was looking at daffodils a year ago.

I was very fortunate that I saw it, or I would have fallen into it, or before we tried mowing the lawn. I think the John Deere would have partially dove in. I recalled that someone came with a bucket full of dirt and just dumped it in, and then it was never tended to by leveling it off. So the blue warning flag remained, and that part of the yard was not attended to. I am determined this year will be different.

Youth from St. Martin Lutheran Church in Clintonville spent Saturday night in “Shanty Town.”

Shanty Town is a community service project designed to raise awareness about being homeless and the living style of those less fortunate. Shanty Town was located in the fenced play yard at St. Martin Lutheran School.

“We are reminded what it is like to be without a home, seventh-grader Ben Behnke said. “It is fun and maybe once in a lifetime that I will do this.”

Ben said his mother got a refrigerator box from an Appleton store for his shanty. He and his father spent much of the day duct taping and folding to create a bedroom.

“I have a heavy blanket, a Memory Foam blanket and a mattress pad,” Ben said.

Jonah Klockzien was able to find a big box in the dumpster at the Landmark Motel. He found a mattress along the highway and made a couch. He made a door, created a table and brought along a deck of cards.

I know of no other food product that has taken a more circuitous route to mainstream culinary prominence than the tomato. The twists and turns of this historical journey are many, and widely debated.

Ironically the famous tomato dishes of the Mediterranean countries such as Italy, France and Spain literally have their roots in Central and South America.

The consumption of tomatoes probably began in the Andes mountains of Peru, where wild tomatoes can still be found. By the time the Spanish arrived, there was widespread cultivation of tomatoes across Central and South America. Initially, the Europeans thought the fruit to be toxic and only the native people could eat them and survive. This belief lasted for many years.