A Note from our CEO, Scott Soderberg

 

I’ve always maintained that we here in the Upper Midwest have a climate advantage over the rest of the country. Sure, winters (apart from this year) are usually too cold, sometimes too snowy, and always too long. Even so, most of us enjoy enough winter activities to make it quite tolerable. But there is a lesser-known advantage to living here, which I find to be very powerful. 

Growing up in New Richmond as a youngster in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I couldn’t wait for the last day of school and the first day of my next Wisconsin summer. Freedom awaited in the garage, where I could jump on my bike and go anywhere in town it could take me: to the Mary Park community pool at zero-dark-thirty in the morning for swimming lessons in the coldest pool that has ever been; to the high school for the community recreation activities; to the dime store with buddies to see if the new packs of bubble gum baseball cards had come in; or just down the block with the neighbor kids to the baseball field at Cherokee Park to play ball until our parents screamed (usually multiple times) from our front doors that dinner is NOW.

Of course, those activities are different now as an adult, but the beginning of summer is still something that holds a special kind of magic here in the north. But why might that be? I truly believe our advantage is that we appreciate it more than folks do in milder climates. Summer is such a high point here that our childhood memories of it replay in our adult minds even now when the weather finally warms up for good. Even though summertime is a limited engagement, here's to hoping yours is filled with old and new memories of living in this special place.