So That Happened 4/14/2019

I'll be poking myself in here from time to time with rambling discussions of what is happening at Wis.Community, observations, and things you may or may not find interesting. This may at some point become a podcast. Or not. Bear with me. Call it a blog. Call it the musings of a quickly-aging guy. It's an experiment.

I am grappling with a lot of things. This website is one of them. It's been around first as Uppity Wisconsin (which is now folded in here) and for the last couple years as Wis.Community. It's a project I seem to have a need to do, but it's a love-hate relationship. 

For one, it's a money-losing proposition, at least so far. In that sense, it's not greatly different than a lot of other small local news projects. But it's my money that's being lost, so it's personal. Everyone needs a hobby, and I guess in my retirement from real work, this is mine. But some community support would be helpful. Please consider becoming a paid member if what is happening here is important to you. Personal memberships are only $20/year and more of those would go a long way to supporting this work. You'll occasionally get one of these reminders as time goes on, along with some others about how we can make this a community project instead of a Steve project.

I should mention some other things that are going on. I'm slowly looking into doing a major site upgrade and pulling the software here a little more firmly into current practice. I'm also considering just re-theming the whole site in the current code, but that is enough of a pain that it's more likely it's just all going to get upgraded completely. This will not happen any time soon, particularly considering family health issues which are taking me away from this much more than I would like. But it's where things are and will be for some time. Which also makes for some interesting and painful decisions about what will be covered. This week there is a budget hearing in River Falls, a budget forum with the governor in Eau Claire, a movie showing that I and Dunn County Farmers Union are sponsoring, a Medicaid Expansion Town Hall, and several other events, which need to work around chemotherapy sessions and the normal life events that seem to keep needing attention. What I am saying here is that if this is going to succeed, it would be great if I could convince some other people in the community to participate, cover meetings, write guest posts, write op-eds, letters to the editor, and more. If this is of any interest to you, please drop me a line.

On another note - I see that the Leader-Telegram has started their paywall. I have signed up for the paper (though oddly it apparently takes several days to kick in - maybe the paper boy needs to come to deliver the website, I dunno) and I hope that they will succeed, as more and more of the country is quickly becoming a news desert. So please, support journalists by subscribing to their work when you can. And while doing so, please consider throwing some bucks our way.