Here we are, getting ready for our 2nd Annual Kites Over Lake Michigan this Labor Day weekend, Sept.1st and 2nd, at beautiful Neshotah Beach in Two Rivers. We had a great event last year, with great weather, spectacular kites and ground displays, masterful stunt kite performances by O2 and Fire and Ice and great crowds. The beach was packed both days and will be again this year. Once again, the festival will run from 11am to 4pm both days. On Sunday Sept. 2nd, there will be free kite making for kids from 9am to 11am. The event will once again showcase both internationally and regionally acclaimed kitefliers with their collection of unique kites. Back by popular demand will be the "running of the bols" featuring our sponsors, community leaders and the public. As great as last year's event was, we hope to surpass it this year. Kites Over Lake Michigan is brought to you by our title sponsors, the credit unions of Two Rivers, namely Shoreline, Prime Financial, Riverwood-Maritime and Two Rivers Community Credit Unions. An event of this size cannot happen without the help and support of all of our sponsors, the Parks and Recreation Dept. of Two Rivers, volunteers and the Two Rivers Business Association. For our out of town visitors, we recommend that you stay at our primary sponsors' hotels, Fox Hills Resort (800) 950-7615 or www.foxhillsresort.com, Lighthouse Inn ((800) 228-6416 or www.lhinn.com and Americinn (800) 634-3444 or www.americinn.com. Please mention you are here for the kite festival. See you this Labor Day weekend at Neshotah Beach! For more kiting events, please go to www.aka.kite.org and www.wisconsinkitersclub.com .
Nationally known Bryan Lee and the Blues Power Band will be appearing on stage on Friday, August 31 at 7PM in the JE Hamilton Community House in downtown Two Rivers WI.
Bryan Lee returns home for this very special performance!
Ticket price will be $15 at the door.
Proceeds benefit the JE Hamilton Community House - a good cause with exceptional music!
Musician and Two Rivers native Bryan Lee will perform. Tickets are available at Dr. Freud's in Manitowoc and Schroeder's Department Store and the Two Rivers Parks and Recreation Department, both in Two Rivers.
It is not often we have the opportunity to step into another culture. For Manitowoc County residents that opportunity exists right here in our back yard. The Hmong Pre-New Year Celebration last Saturday and Sunday welcomed everyone to take that step.
Beautiful traditional costumes coupled with the music, food, games, and dance made for a delightful, insightful and meaningful experience.
Lester Public Library thanks our Hmong friends for the invitation!
Late last week the Manitowoc Calumet Library System (MCLS) switched how our library patrons view our online catalog. The new look, powered by iBistro, offers many features the old software, EPS, did not.
Hmong Pre-New Year Celebration Saturday and Sunday, August 25-26, 2007 - Silver Creek Park, Manitowoc
Opening Ceremony at 9:30 am Saturday August 25
Hmong History
Many Indochinese migrated to Wisconsin after what is often called the "Secret War". This war was brought under the direction of the United States Government, who secretly recruited the Hmong to assist with military strategy blocking the Ho Chi Minh trail and rescuing American pilots whose planes were shot down by the Communist North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao during the second Indo-China War. In 1975 the United States Government decided to pull out from Indo-China (South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) and the Communist rule took over.
Many Hmong fled Laos from refuge in Thailand and the remaining were victims of chemical warfare, prison and persecution by the new government.
After settling in Thailand refugee camps, many were eligible to resettle in a third country, such as the United States and Other countries.
Currently there are nearly 30,000 Hmong in Wisconsin and about 2000 are residing in Manitowoc County.
Welcome Home 1st Battalion, 121st Field Artillery from Iraq!
Join the City of Two Rivers Saturday, August 25th, as we welcome home the 1st Battalion, 121st Field Artillery of the Wisconsin National Guard.
Members of the unit will be honored in a motor procession (starting at 1:30 p.m.) that will travel from the Aurora Medical Center to the Twor Rivers Armory, for a ceremony with speakers and special music at 2 p.m. Saturday, August 25th.
A woodcarving display, by local artist Jes, will be on display through the end of August.
While in the library to check out some books, videos, magazines, books on tape, music, use our WiFi Internet connection, or use one of our Internet computers, be sure to check out this display of unique wood carvings.
Or, if you are in the library to check out the woodcarvings by Jes - check out all the items listed above!
2007 Wisconsin Library Association Annual Award Winners
We are always happy to share good library news!
The Awards & Honors Committee is pleased to announce the 2007 winners of WLA's annual awards:
Wisconsin Library of the Year, Middleton Public Library Wisconsin Librarian of the Year, Alice Sturzl, Laona School District Wisconsin Trustee of the Year, Lowell Wilson, Lakeshores Library System Citation of Merit, Frank Fiorenza, President, Village of Potosi Highsmith Award, Hedberg Library Friday Family Fun Night, Carthage College, Kenosha Muriel Fuller Award, Bea Lebal, Director, T.B. Scott Free Library, Merrill
Report Refutes Claims of Social Networking Dangers
A study debunks the common assumption that MySpace and other social networking sites are breeding grounds for sexual predators seeking to harm students.
Heather Havenstein, Computerworld
Wednesday, August 08, 2007 4:00 PM PDT
The study, which surveyed students between the ages of nine and 17, parents and school district leaders, found that only .08 percent of the more than 1,200 students surveyed had actually met with someone in person that they had encountered online. In addition, 4 percent of students said they have had conversations on a social network that made them uncomfortable, less than 3 percent of students said that unwelcome strangers have tried repeatedly to communicate with them and 2 percent reported that a stranger they met online tried to meet them in person. Parents' responses were nearly identical to student answers to these questions.
"School district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report," the report said. "Only a small minority of students has had any kind of negative experience with social networking in the last three months."
The report, called "Creating and Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational - Networking," was funded in part by Microsoft, News Corp. (which owns MySpace) and Verizon. The National School Boards Association is a non-profit association of school boards representing 95,000 local school board members. In stark contrast to what students reported, more than half the districts said that students providing personal information online has been "a significant" problem in their schools.
The students surveyed were heavy users of social networking,
City Manager's Weekly Message with a Nod to the Library!
Another Weekend of Great Events
The hot, dry summer of 2007 just keeps rolling along, and local community events continue to be blessed with great weather and solid attendance.
Congratulations to Rogers Street Fishing Village, the Friends of Mariners Trail, and the
Lakeshore Knights Car Club on their successful events this past weekend.
Rogers Street filled two days with of music, food, drink and water-oriented activities at the historic fishing village on the banks of the East Twin River. All proceeds of Rogers
Street Days benefit the ongoing operation and upkeep of the Fishing Village Museum.
Friends of Mariners Trail had a good turnout for their first-ever 5k run, as well as the fun walk and auction that have been features of the Mariners Trail-a-Thon for four years now. FOMT works tirelessly to promote the great trail linking the Port Cities, and to raise funds for future maintenance of this important quality of life asset.
The Lakeshore Knights filled up Walsh Field with vintage autos for its 17th Annual Car
Show, with all proceeds benefiting Manitowoc County Special Olympics.
Library Flickr Page Highlights Local Events
TR’s outstanding new Library Director, Jeff Dawson, is also a great chronicler of community events in Two Rivers and throughout the area, with the photos that he posts on the Lester Public Library’s “Flickr” page.
Since their arrival from Kansas earlier this year, Jeff and his wife Mari have been enthusiastic attendees/participants at numerous community events. His photo perspectives on those events, as well as activities at the Library, can be viewed at
Hello, I'm Jeff, Lester Public Library's relatively new Director (just hit my 5 month anniversary).
I know SOMEBODY is looking at Blogging LPL (thanks Mom!) and I would like to hear back from you.
So I will make it easy - What are you reading right now?
To respond click on the 'Add a comment' link below and type away!
What am I reading? I am thoroughly enjoying "You Suck: A Love Story," by Christopher Moore- a great summer read that involves young vampires in love, comic, tragic - heck, read it when I'm done!
Jan Zabinski, the innovative director of the Warsaw Zoo, and Antonina, his empathic wife, lived joyfully on the zoo grounds during the 1930s with their young son, Ryszard (Polish for lynx), and a menagerie of animals needing special attention. The zoo was badly damaged by the Nazi blitzkrieg, and their bit of paradise would have been utterly destroyed but for the director of the Berlin Zoo, Lutz Heck, who wanted Jan’s help in resurrecting extinct “pure-blooded species” in pursuit of Aryan perfection in the animal kingdom. Resourceful and courageous, the Zabinskis turned the decimated zoo into a refuge and saved the lives of several hundred imperiled Jews. Ackerman has written many stellar works, including A Natural History of the Senses (1990) and An Alchemy of Mind (2004), but this is the book she was born to write. Sharing the Zabinskis’ knowledge of and reverence for the natural world and drawing on her poet’s gift for dazzling metaphor, she captures with breathtaking precision and discernment our kinship with animals, the barbarity of war, Antonina’s unbounded kindness and keen delight in “life’s sensory bazaar,” Jan’s daring work with the Polish Underground, and the audacity of the Zabinskis’ mission of mercy. An exemplary work of scholarship and an “ecstasy of imagining,” Ackerman’s affecting telling of the heroic Zabinskis’ dramatic story illuminates the profound connection between humankind and nature, and celebrates life’s beauty, mystery, and tenacity. — Donna Seaman
Roger Street Days today Friday 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm and Saturday noon to 10:00 pm at the Historic Rogers Street Fishing Village, 2010 Rogers Street, Two Rivers.
This community festival and fundraiser will feature live music, smelt, food and beverages, kids games, boat building and sail making for kids, a kayak parade on the river and more!
The festival is free, including free access to the museum Friday and Saturday. For more information call 920-793-5905.
The various incarnations of Siskel & Ebert & Roeper represent more than 1,000 TV programs, on which the three of us, and various guest critics, reviewed more than 5,000 movies. And now at last an online archive exists with all of those reviews.
Starting Thursday, Aug. 2, visitors will be able to search for and watch all of those past debates, including the film clips that went along with them, plus the “ten best” and other special shows we did. The new archive will be at www.atthemoviestv.com, and will be the web’s largest collection of streaming reviews.
Gene and I knew those old shows would be worth saving, but for a long time nobody agreed with us. In the years before home video, it seemed like a waste of expensive video tape to preserve hundreds of episodes of our earlier incarnations on “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You,” “Sneak Previews” or “At the Movies.” After all, the movies we were reviewing weren’t going to be opening again, and who’d want to watch a show of old movie reviews? Right?
We began on the air in 1975. Four or five years later, home video first began to attract attention, but in the early years there were format wars, buying a tape could cost $79, and most big recent movies weren’t available. Then all of that changed, and the current era of DVDs and Blockbuster and Netflix and streaming online content began to unfold. Today, there would be an audience for the original Siskel & Ebert reviews of, say, “Batman” or “Jurassic Park,” or Ebert & Roeper trading opinions on “Crash” or “Brokeback Mountain,” or Martin Scorsese and I picking the best film of he 1990s.
As nearly as I’ve been able to tell, very few of our programs taped between 1975 and 1985 were preserved. The tapes were erased and re-used, or just thrown away to make room. Television lived for today’s program, not yesterday’s. I remember when Janet LaMonica, an assistant producer for “Siskel & Ebert,” climbed into a dumpster and rescued most of the work Gene Siskel did locally for WBBM-CBS.
At first we were produced by PBS. Then Tribune Broadcasting. When we went to work for Buena Vista, they started saving the shows. And in a daunting effort over recent months, Buena Vista (now the Disney-ABC Television Group) has digitized hours and hours of those old analog tapes, amounting to more than more than 5,000 reviews.
The archive will be searchable in various ways, but I imagine most users will want to look up reviews of specific movies. For example, the program where Richard Roeper and I went three weeks early with our reviews of “Monster,” and its performance by Charlize Theron. When she won the Oscar, we weren’t a bit surprised. Or the entire show that Siskel and I devoted to
Friends of Mariners Trail are pleased to announce the fourth annual Mariners Trail-a-Thon, Fun Run, and Trailgate Party. Please join us along with the Two Rivers and Manitowoc Park and Recreation Departments and the Manitowoc County Track Club as we present nearly a morning full of activities, including a walk along the shores of Lake Michigan, a 5-mile Fun Run also along the Lake, a radio auction of great items that were donated by local businesses, and a family Trailgate party hosted by the Recreation Departments. Enjoy games, prizes, food and refreshments along the jewel of the lakeshore - Mariners Trail.
Last year, we had a great day along Mariners Trail. We had more than 100 walkers, had a great radio auction, made more people aware of the trail, and raised several thousand dollars, with every dollar going back into Mariners Trail improvements. A huge THANK YOU goes out to our walkers, volunteers, sponsors, and the Two Rivers and Manitowoc Parks and Recreation Departments.
TWO RIVERS — It's going to be raining Ping-Pong balls in Two Rivers on Friday afternoon, Aug. 3.
A plane will drop the balls over Central Park at about 2 p.m., according to Allan Evanoff, promotion chairman for the Two Rivers Business Association.
More than 600 of the 2,500 balls being dropped will have writing on them promoting local businesses or offering discounts, according to Evanoff. Nearly 30 businesses purchased from five to 100 balls each.
"It's been over 20 years since it was last done," he said.
The ball drop is part of Maxwell Street Day, an annual sidewalk sale in Two Rivers organized by the Two Rivers Business Association. The name comes from the tradition years ago of holding sidewalk sales on Maxwell Street in Chicago, Evanoff said.
Previously held on a Thursday, the event has moved to Friday this year.
"We're trying it to see if that might be a more effective day," Evanoff said.
In the past, sales were offered on Thursday and that was the end of it, he said. With the event on Friday, most sales will continue on Saturday and some even on Sunday, although they may move indoors.
The change in day also will give people who work during the week and those who visit Two Rivers on the weekend a chance to take advantage of the sales, according to Evanoff.
While the hub of activity will be downtown, some stores not on Washington Street also will offer sales as part of Maxwell Street Day, he said.
In addition, Central Park downtown will be filled with displays for Community Care Day, which is held annually in conjunction with Maxwell Street Day.
About two-dozen groups involved in some type of community service, such as the police and fire departments, hospitals, and Lions and Elks clubs, will set up exhibits, according to Mike Zimmer, director of Two Rivers Main Street, the organization that holds Community Care Day.
"They spend a day showing everybody what they do," Zimmer said. It's a chance for them "to showcase their contributions to the community."
While it's the sidewalk sales that bring people downtown, "most everybody goes through the park," he said.
Some of the organizations will have vehicles on display, such as a boat and an SUV from the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department. A dunk tank will be offered by the Two Rivers Police Department.
The Two Rivers Parks and Recreation Department will offer children's activities, including games, face painting and trivia, in Central Park, according to Judy Goodchild, acting director of the department.
Food will be sold in the park but it will be on a limited basis.
"We'd like to see the people going to our restaurants," Evanoff said.
Whichbook gives readers an enjoyable and intuitive way to find books to match their mood.
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The standard way of organizing books for choice, on shelves in a library or a bookshop, or on the web, starts from the products available - the authors, titles, publishers or genres. Whichbook enables, for the first time, the choice of book to start from the individual reader and what they are looking for.
How is whichbook.net different from other book sites?
If you're not good at remembering book titles, or if you are the sort of reader who likes to choose by browsing round a little and seeing what tempts you, whichbook.net is the perfect solution to help you find what you are looking for.
When you know the title of a book, it's easy to find it by searching the shelves in a bookshop or library or by using a catalogue or an internet bookshop. If you know you want a particular genre - crime, say, or fantasy - it's easy to go to that section.
But what are the things readers long to know and are unable to find out? Whichbook offers choices which are not available anywhere else - plot shape, type of main character, country the book is set in.
You may be reluctant to take a risk on something different because you're not sure it will satisfy you. You have your favorite writers who can be trusted to deliver the goods. But there are thousands of books out there. One of those might satisfy you even more but how can you tell? whichbook.net enables you to search for a book that up to now may only have existed in your own mind!
Instead of looking for a crime novel, you can look for a book that is unpredictable, very romantic and a little bit sad. Or a challenging book that's also funny with plenty of sex. Whichbook will find titles which match your preferences. If you don't fancy any of the books offered, change your choices and try again - there are 20 million different individual permutations possible!
