I'm both appalled and apologetic that I have not yet posted in 2012. This is a busy time of year for the chamber, with numerous programs and events to plan and implement: Life Skills Expo, Career Opportunities Expo, the Empty Bowls Dinner, the Wine Tasting, Mini Business World, the Radio-A-thon and the Annual Dinner and Awards Night. There is also the last few sessions of Community Leadership Academy to wrap up and the Golf Outing and Aurora-MACC race to begin planning.
Of course, we could not do all these things if it weren't for our Business & Education Partnership, our Leadership Academy Alumni, and our committees and sub-committees. UW-Marinette and NWTC play huge roles in many our events, as do many other organizations, including the M&M Area Community Foundation, Aurora Healthcare and Karl Schmidt Unisia.
I am sure I am missing something.
What I am not missing these days is a very cool Facebook Page called You Know You're From Menominee When... The page was written up recently in the EagleHerald by Mike Desotell, who seems to know everybody and everything there is to know about our community.
But there are scores of people, many of them bearing familiar names, who contribute to this Facebook page, and they all enjoy talking about the good old days of Menominee and often Marinette. (I like to think you can't have one without the other.)
As a weird hybrid who grew up on both sides of the river and went to a high school - Catholic Central - that drew from across the area, I consider myself pretty much a native of both cities. My father's family is deeply rooted in Marinette (1870s) and my mother's in Menominee (1880s). I can appreciate the old days on either side of the river. I hope someone creates a similar page for Marinette, too.
It's comforting in this time of intense change - much of which we cannot control - to look back on the old days, when kids knocked on each other's doors to communicate (instead of using their thumbs on a little keyboard) and actually played the outdoor games their parents played (instead of using computers for everything).
Menominee and Marinette have rich and colorful histories, peopled by hardy pioneers and lumber barons, woodsmen and scoundrels, fancy ladies and clubwomen: The McDonalds, Old Yellow Dog, Mae Dugas, Ike Stephenson, John Henes and so many more.
Why not join the more than 1000 Facebook fans who live in the present but appreciate the past? The Internet has given us one more way to create that precious sense of community that allows us to work together to make our towns even better places to live. That, of course, is what a chamber of commerce is all about.
And would somebody please start a Marinette page?
