Behind the Headlines

A recent study predicts that Great Lakes levels could drop dramatically in the years ahead due to climate changes.
U.S. Rep. John D. Dingell, D-Dearborn, and Michigan Department of Natural Resources Director Becky Humphries will be at Cabela’s in Dundee from 4 to 5 tonight to discuss the consequences of global warming for sportsmen during a public town hall meeting.
According to the recent “Seasons’ End” study on the threat climate change poses to hunting and fishing, by 2030 water levels in the Upper Great Lakes could drop nearly eight feet, leading to a regional decline of as much as 39 percent in the number of ducks in the region. Nationally, if the trend continues, up to 42 percent of the trout and salmon habitat could be lost before the end of the century. The town hall discussion will address what steps are currently being taken – both nationally and locally – to confront this issue as well as what more can still be done.

No, not for more politicians coming to town, but for an annual River Raisin clean-up scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 13 in downtown Monroe.
The City of Monroe Commission on the Environment is fielding volunteers to help scour the riverbed now that water levels are down in the wake of dam water-control gates being pulled.
Community volunteers will be retrieving litter, old shopping carts, discarded bikes and other trash and debris from the riverbed. The group will assemble at 9 a.m. on the Riverwalk west of the Monroe Street bridge, work until 11 a.m. and then be treated to a picnic in the park, with prizes, starting at noon.
More info is here.

By Charles Slat
Part of the national press corps following the Obama campaign is Monroe native and my old pal, Don Gonyea, 52, the White House correspondent for National Public Radio.
A 1974 graduate of St. Mary Catholic Central, Don and I used to cover the Monroe County Board of Commissioners together back in the late 1970s when he worked for the local radio station and I worked for, well, the local newspaper.
Don subsequently went to work for WDET, public radio in Detroit and later Michigan Public Radio before joining NPR.
Don said he believed that this was his first return to Monroe “on business” since joining NPR.
He arranged with the Obama campaign staff to make sure some of his Monroe family members could attend the rally at the Monroe campaign stop.
Samantha Tubman, an Obama staffer, accommodated and Don took the opportunity to introduce her to his relatives at the rally. They included Dan and Linda Staelgraeve and their son, Michael, and Greg and Mary Ann Applin.
It was Ms. Tubman who, when the press corps buses pulled up at the Plumbers & Pipe Fitters hall on Detroit Ave., told the reporters that they were in Monroe, Mich., the hometown of NPR’s Don Gonyea.
The bus erupted in a cheer, Mr. Gonyea reported.

By Charles Slat
There’s an old saying that TV always makes people look physically bigger than they are.
This always has held true for me, having seen a lot of famous people in the flesh over my career.
Former Michigan Governors Jim Blanchard and John Engler come to mind. They always looked large on TV but, in person, seemed smaller than average.
For some reason, it seemed just the opposite when I saw Barack Obama during his campaign stop in Monroe.
I expected to see someone, say, the size of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. Instead, he seems a bit larger than he appears on TV.
Maybe my TV is too small.

By Charles Slat
Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign stop in Monroe was unique not only because of the venue — a barbeque behind the Plumbers & Pipe Fitters union hall — but because of the Democratic heavy hitters it drew.
During his speech in Detroit earlier in the day, Sen. Obama dropped a lot of Michigan names, including that of U.S. Rep. John D. Dingell who, he said, “had to be in Monroe.”
That’s because Rep. Dingell was serving as a warm-up man in advance of Sen. Obama’s visit here. But others who chose to show up in Monroe were Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo and others.
My guess is that until Rep. Dingell, and later Sen. Obama, acknowledged the dignitaries in attendance, not all the barbeque attendees knew who they were picnicking with.
By the way, those hoping to crash the party without snaring one of the tickets that were distributed in advance might not have had a lot of luck. Detroit Ave., where the union hall is located, was shut down to all but authorized traffic and ticketholders. The picnic area also was cordoned off and secured by police.

By Charles Slat
More evidence that money fuels political campaigns:
I signed up for media credentials via e-mail the other day for Sen. Obama’s visit to Monroe today. The media registration made it clear that I only would hear back from the campaign if the credentials were denied.
Today in checking my e-mail, I noticed that a message from the Obama campaign had been quarantined like a lot of the other spam I get. The subject of the quarantined message was “Deadline: Tomorrow”
Was this something telling me when I had to show up at the Obama rally, some provision that would be made for me to meet my deadline for filing a story, a question of when my newspaper’s deadline was?
No.
It was a personal solicitation of a minimum $15 donation by the federal campaign-finance reporting deadline of Aug. 31. If I donated by then, I would receive a “first edition” 5-inch diameter Obama-Biden 08 magnet to stick on my car.

Do you want a local’s spin (so to speak) on Hurricane Gustav?

I just got an e-mail from one of my relatives to check out TV 11 in Houston at www.khou.com.

And here is my favorite newspaper and TV media link web site - click on the state you want, find the city you want and you’ll have the link to the local media.

– Paula Wethington

Mike at the Erie Hiker promises to blog what he can about the Obama campaign stop in Monroe. Be sure to stop over to his site and read his postings.

Michelle Swartz will be covering the event for The Monroe Evening News. Stories will be in our print edition Tuesday (Monday’s paper is an morning edition); and on monroenews.com in the meantime.

– Paula Wethington

Update: Charles Slat got the assignment, not Michelle! Here’s his report:

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080901/BREAKINGNEWS/809019997

It’s 10:40 a.m. Sunday Aug. 30 in Monroe, Mich. Tickets at the local Democratic Party office will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis starting at noon for a presidential campaign visit Monday by Barack Obama. (Story at monroenews.com)

I was just driving through downtown — and made a point to drive down Washington St. to see how many were lining up.

That line is HUGE already, and growing! When I drove past, the line had already snaked around the corner of Front and Washington Sts.

– Paula Wethington

By Charles Slat
Don Gonyea is a Monroe native and Washington correspondent for National Public Radio.
His reports have been heard almost daily on the public broadcasting network and he’ll soon be with the Obama campaign as it wends its way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
But there may be a homecoming in it for him.
He told The Evening News Wednesday that the campaign will be concentrating on swing states between now and the election. Michigan is a swing state, of course, and Mr. Gonyea predicts a few visits by the Obama campaign.
“Maybe he’ll give a speech by the Custer statute in Monroe,” Mr. Gonyea joked. “Can you see 75,000 people in St. Mary’s Park?”
We’ll try to catch up with Mr. Gonyea between now and Election Day to get the perspectives of a hometown boy who might soon be reporting closer to home.

By Charles Slat
Downtown Monroe will look a little different this holiday season.
That’s because the Downtown Development Authority will use light-emitting diode (LED) Christmas lights to deck the halls instead of the traditional lights that have adorned the downtown in the past.
DDA director Andrea Jones says the lights will give the downtown a different look and save about 90 percent of the energy that traditional lights would use.
‘Bout time considering that Santa’s sleigh has made use of wind power for decades.

When you want good music, ya call Ray Parker Jr.
Probably best known for his theme to the “Ghostbusters” movies, Mr. Parker played the River Raisin Jazz Festival on Sunday and the crowd went crazy when he broke into his signature piece.
“That was the highlight of my seven years of jazz festivals,” said John Patterson, president of the Monroe County Convention & Tourism Bureau, which organized the event. “When that huge crowd yelled `Ghostbusters.’ It was an awesome moment. It sounded just like the record, and everybody’s face lit up.”
As he was checking out of the Hotel Sterling in downtown Monroe Monday morning, however, he set the record straight about the lyrics of the song. It’s not “Who ya gonna call?” or “Who ya goin’ to call?”
“Those lyrics are nowhere in the song,” Mr. Parker said. “It’s who ya gon call?” That colloquialism is lost on most listeners, he explained.
Mr. Parker, by the way, is still collecting royalties on that song and the music will be used again on an upcoming release of a Ghostbusters video game.
Part of his performance Sunday, included a rendition of “Shaft,” a tribute to composer Isaac Hayes, who died last week.
Mr. Parker said he enjoyed his gig in Monroe. Having most recently played Chicago and a number of European cities, he was looking forward to returned to his Detroit hometown for a couple of weeks.
He said he never had stopped in Monroe before and just viewed it as a place on the way to Cedar Point.
“I think the whole city’s wonderful,” he said. “It seems like the whole town is involved” in the festival.

By Charles Slat
CHICAGO — This is what political campaigning is all about.
Sen. John McCain’s visit to DTE Energy’s Fermi 2 nuclear plant was a media event designed to, well, attract media coverage.
Attending a journalism educator’s conference here, I guess I was a little surprised to see McCain’s photo on Page One of USA Today, which was delivered to my hotel room. A tiny photo of McCain standing behind a podium with Fermi’s cooling towers in the background graced the front page with a tinier caption explaining how he was touting nuclear power.
Inside was a larger article with two photos, one with McCain chatting with DTE Energy boss Anthony F. Earley in the Fermi control room.
The Chicago TV news stations also were playing up the story with some stock footage of nuclear plants and B-roll of McCain wearing a DTE Energy hardhat standing beside the Fermi generator.
Some of the reports said the Fermi 2 plant was meant to replace one that had a near-meltdown.
Well, not exactly, but this campaign stuff is more about face-time than substance and accuracy.
Bottom line: We all knew McCain was a strong supporter of nuclear power. There was little news here beyond Monroe County, but the candidate scored heavily on national face-time.
And that’s how campaigning works in the information age.

I’m a Funky Winkerbean comic strip fan. It’s a bit hard to keep up with the plot here in Monroe, with only the Sunday strip in The Monroe Evening News. It’s even more confusing these days with a jump ahead in the timeline of the story that started a few months ago — readers are still getting used to what favorite characters are doing.

So here’s the backstory for Aug. 10.

The woman you see in the first box is Lisa Moore. She died last fall of cancer.

Before she died, she and her husband Les sat down with a camcorder so Lisa could record messages to be shown in the future to their young daughter.

Today’s comic strip shows one of those video messages. There was a strip awhile back in which we saw Lisa do this recording session.

Way back in the story line, Lisa got pregnant in high school. Les was one of her best friends, and stood by her during the ordeal. That baby was given up for adoption. Les and Lisa started dating after a high school reunion, got married, and had one daughter, Summer.

Summer is now watching this video as a teenager, hearing her mom explain what happened during her high school years.

– Paula Wethington

The Michigan Voter Information Center will allow you to check if you are registered to vote, provide the location of your voting place and show you a ballot in advance.

– Paula Wethington