Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 01-02-25_THURSDAY_7AM

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Great talk with Suzanne Seggerman, co-founder of Games for Change, recently profiled because of a NIGHTMARE tenant, has suggestions to avoid this trouble. Open phones follow...and it is Conspiracy Theory Thursday.

The Bill Myers Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. Here's Bill Myers. Ten minutes after seven. Suzanne Segerman joins me. She has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, BBC, The Beeb, ABC News, too. And we're going to be talking about real estate with her.

But I wanted to talk to her about her nonprofit, too, because this intrigues me. She co-founded Games for Change, award-winning nonprofit of video games for social good. That is interesting. Suzanne, how are you doing this morning? Welcome to the show. Great to have you on. Oh, thanks so much, Bill. Happy New Year.

Thanks for having me. Indeed. Happy New Year, indeed. We could all use a little happier New Year as far as I'm concerned, all right? Games for Change, though. You know, normally when we think about video games, it's about, okay, what is the worst race to the bottom and most mayhem and social destruction? We can certainly come up with, okay? So I'm kind of curious. What about Games for Change? What did you do with that? I'm curious about that. Well, you know, I wasn't a gamer. I didn't know much about it, but I played this game that kind of brought me into a new country where you can make decisions about who you want to be president and who you want to be in your cabinet. And it really changed my mind about what games could be possible. And so I started promoting this idea of let's make new kinds of games,

games about poverty alleviation or the environment or, you know, creating good families, like lots of different ways that people can go about making games. And so there's now this kind of new category of games called games for social good. And they're about real world things, kind of like documentaries are in the film world. Yeah, do you actually – do people download them and buy them?

Does it work that way? I mean, I know that I always hear about stuff like Call of Duty. I'm not much of a gamer myself, truth be told, but I'm just curious how that works. Yeah, they're in every category. You can have little handheld games on your phone. You can play a serious game on a platform. There's all sorts of different opportunities now in these new kinds of games. And the serious game companies are taking them seriously, too. Just like when you get on Netflix and you have a choice to watch a documentary or you choose, you know, some shoot

them up. You can do the same with games. Yeah. OK. Now I have to ask you, what was it like being a person at a TED Talk? Because, you know, TED Talk almost seems like, man, you have arrived. If you get invited to do a TED Talk and then your videos get shared, you know, half a billion times, you know, that sort of thing. What was that like? What did you talk about on that? Well, I talked about the games. A lot of people didn't know that games are just a young medium. They're kind of like a medium about to grow up, just like film was back in the 1920s or something like that. And so it was really, it was, of course, very terrifying, but it was also a lot of fun to talk about something I really felt strongly about. Did they applaud when you were done? They did. Okay, so you weren't like anybody out there saying, hey, it's time to,

please clap, right? You didn't have to say that, right? No, I didn't. There might have been signs, but I didn't see them, luckily. Yeah, that's an embarrassing TED Talk when you have to ask them to clap, you know? Well, I'm glad to hear that. Suzanne, I wanted to take you to your current experience, and this is an article that you ended up sharing recently. And it has to do with how to make money with rental property. And in your particular case, though, it didn't work out so well. And so you wanted to share some of the pitfalls, what you've got to watch out for. You're thinking about, hey, I'm going to make a bunch of bucks.

I'm going to have a short-term rental maybe, or else I'm going to rent some houses or apartments I have. What happened with you? And by the way, where did you share that, if you don't mind? Where did you put that? No problem. You know, we had a place in New York City we'd been renting for a while, and it was terrific. And then one time, one bad guy moved in, and he basically tore down the entire interior of the loft. It was absolutely insane. When we arrived at night, I could see like pieces of my baby daughter's bedroom on the street, you know, waiting for pickup. It was just terrifying.

And we came in to say, you know, what's going on? This is an emergency. You can't do this without a, you know, Department of Buildings permit and permission for me, by the way. Yeah, because, you know, you being the pesky property owner, right? Little minor things like that, right? Right, yeah. And then he punched my architect in the face and broke both her hands. So it was really a bad situation. Yeah. And he has victims all over the world. I wrote about it. I called him the monster tenant. And it's a New York magazine. And so I got so much response from that. A lot of landlords were saying, you know, how do I stop that from happening to me? And so I ended up putting together a little list of recommendations for folks because it really can be a great way to make money, but it's also a huge risk and you have to know what you're getting into.

Now, did you make money with this apartment or with your flat? Was it an Airbnb or a longer-term rental? It was a regular long-term rental. We had normal tenants in there and everything went well for 10 years and then this one bad guy. It seemed to me that one of the biggest challenges that I've seen, and we've had a lot of people that I've known in Oregon, that, you know, when the COVID situation came around, ended up just going down in flames financially because you were told by government, well, hey, you know, you can't kick people out and nor can you charge them necessarily. And did that affect you or did that is what brought the monster into your existence? Or was there something else that did that? Well, you know, it's a really interesting question. I think the hard part for us was in the middle of the pandemic. They did have an eviction moratorium in New York City.

So you couldn't kick anyone out. And I think he knew this and took advantage of that situation, knowing if I can get myself in there, and he even tried to get in early, too, if I can get myself into that place, she can't kick me out. And that's essentially what he did. Luckily, we could and did kick him out, but it took a while, and he had to flee because the police were after him for having punched my architect. So in some weird way, you know, our poor architect, who's now fine, thank God, you know. By the way, is the monster in jail for the punching and the breaking and the assault and things like that? Or is that not punished any longer anymore in New York?

Oh, yeah. No, he's on the loose. I got to tell you, the cops were not. They kept saying, telling us, go to housing court, go to housing court. And housing court had two years backlog and something like 50,000 cases. So, you know, we had to do something else. We got very lucky and we put up a ring cam, a security cam and sort of watched them and then, you know, told the cops when he was home. And that, I think, scared him because he knew the cops could come. And I said, told the cops, you break that

door down. I don't care about that door. And I think and then he fled on his own. So but he flees, you know, he's done this to many victims, I found during the course of my research and in the article. So you weren't the only person that that he ended up destroying the homes of. He did this multiple times. But yet there were many people just well-meaning landlords like yourself, right? Yeah. Okay. So you're piecing together. You did a little detective work on this.

Suzanne Segerman with me once again. And I'm going to link to her site and everything else you can learn more about this. So you had the monster, and then you are looking out, and a lot of other people have been victimized by the monster, too. And what are some of your suggestions to help not be victimized by a rental monster like what you had? Well, the first thing is I always thought the broker was the one who was going to do all the vetting and pass the person along. And that isn't true at all. The broker basically just gives you the information they give to them. So you have to check everything that a broker passes to you. You have to do a background check

yourself. You have to do a credit report yourself. Not only that, you want to call up the educational institutions they say they went to school at, call up their employment and verify it. You have to do all the legwork. Do not expect that broker for their commission to get to do that for you. You have to do it yourself. So even if they do a test or a background check, you do your own to your specifications, right? Yep. Okay. You've got to check your local laws, of course, because some laws are not, they don't like that, but you do everything yourself as much as possible and try to find other people that know that person. So if they say, hey, I used to work for Hershey's Chocolate or wherever, you know, see if you could find someone who worked at the same company or some connection to them and sort of, you know, find somebody who knows them.

Do whatever you can. You're basically getting into a relationship with this person. So you really want to know as much as you can. I do like, Suzanne, how you talked about going online and then doing a housing, well, doing a word search for not only the name, but also include housing court, arrest, conviction, things like that, right? Those sort of things. Yeah. Yeah, really. Absolutely. You know, some law, again, some laws will not, New York City won't let you use that information, you know, before you let somebody into your home. So you have to find other ways to do, to get information on people. Now, has the, or are the laws really totally against the landlord these days? Is it just my impression of that or the wrong impression? How do you think about that? Because it seems to me that I knew so many people that, like I said, practically lost money on their rentals for a number of years because of what happened, not just COVID, but with other things, you know,

ban the box, you can't check and see if someone was a convicted felon, you know, all those kind of things. That's in Oregon, by the way, I think is, you know, what you can't do, you know, for that. And so it's like, you can't even know your tenant in some cases. What do you think? Well, I think it's different in each locale. One city is going to be very different from the other city, and different states have different laws. So you really have to get to know your own laws. In New York, it's very pro-tenant.

But you know there are a lot of bad landlords out there too. Oh, yeah. I have no doubt. I have no doubt. New York has a lot of bad landlords. Yeah. And I was kind of curious when, you know, you have property in New York and naturally it's rent control, right? You're in a rent control kind of situation there. Am I correct? No, no, God, not at all. Not at all. This is very, very, you know, expensive real estate on a very fancy block. Not when I bought it, not when I bought it. When I all. This is very, very, you know, expensive real estate on a very fancy block. Oh!

Not when I bought it. Not when I bought it. When I bought it, it was, you know, there were crack vials on the stoop and dealers around the corner. It was a very dangerous neighborhood. But now New York has become so, you know, cleaned up and safe, and my block is that rent control came to Oregon in our legislature, and it came in the response with zooming housing rates and rental rates. And I understand that because there's been a lot of inflationary pushes. There's been strain on the housing market. And yet what I've noticed is that rent control almost seems to make sure that if you are a landlord, the first thing you will do is raise your rent the maximum you're allowed, because you never know if that's going to change in the future. Could you comment on that? Has that ever happened? Do you know? You know, I know that rent control is a really complex...

It is. I know. You know, in New York, I know a lot... It hasn't worked in New York in a lot of ways. I think that it's a really good idea in principle, and I think you have to be very, very careful about how you institute it. But I know a lot of wealthy people are on top of these rent control places in New York.

So they find ways to get around it. So I think it's all about the implementation, how well they actually put it together and enforce it. All right. Hey, back to some of your checklists, though, on the way to protect yourself from the monster. By the way, how much did it cost for you to refurbish your place with the monster who rented it? Well, our insurance, I luckily got insurance two years before this guy moved in. I don't know how I did it, but it was something called tenant's insurance. And I was very lucky to have that in place. So we could afford to put back two of the four bedrooms.

So it went from a four-bedroom to a two-bedroom. They gave us $100,000 in insurance. Wow. And he took down four walls of bookshelves, five closets, two bedrooms. I mean, he just ripped everything out. And you couldn't do anything. You couldn't kick him out. Just no way.

Not allowed to. Wow. No. I mean, I could have called Department of Buildings and said, he's doing work, quote, unquote, work without a permit. And they would have come and thrown him out. And they would have fined me. So I made a decision to go a different direction. So I could have gotten them out immediately.

So when it comes to the bad tenants, you have to do your diligence prior because once they're there, it's very difficult. And it also means meeting in person, not just letting the broker deal with it, right? Absolutely. Try to do as much as you can and meet them face to face. You know, bring a friend along, bring a broker, somebody, but, you know, recognize that you're going to be in relationship with this person for a while and you need to know who they are and trust your instincts too. I thought that one of the most interesting things you have on

this checklist is, well, actually number nine and number 10. Well, eight, nine, and 10, really. First off, if you have anything personal in these rentals, get them out, right? You don't want anything up there at all. Or lock them up. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. And also, and I guess if this is a more expensive rental, include a maid service. So this way they're required to let them in and you get to know what's going on if there's anything hinky, right? Yeah. That kind of thing? Yeah. This was furnished. I mean, it is furnished now. It's easier to get the maid service in if it's furnished. But if it's not, you could still ask for it. But the property manager check-in, number 10, that one is a really great thing to do because what you do is basically tell them, look, we're taking care of

you. We're going to make sure that everything works in the apartment. We care that much about you. Meanwhile, we're also going to get get in there make sure you're not bringing cockroaches in and you're not you know tearing something down yeah and you don't have 25 people living in in two rooms right right that kind of thing that's that's actually good my mother lives in an apartment complex like that every quarter they come in there they do an inspection and ostensibly yes to make sure that uh everything's working okay but it. But it protects both sides, really. It comes right down to it. Absolutely.

You know, making sure that, I mean, we all know what is really going on with that. Where can people read this article of yours, by the way, Suzanne? So it's in New York Magazine, so nymag.com. And you can also follow my, I'm doing updates and things on my social media so it's suzanne segerman on my instagram or facebook suzanne segerman.com too i'll put all that information up there for you are you at the point now where you you you just can't you don't want to do any more rentals at this point or have you recovered or is there still some ptsd that comes from this no i actually did have ptsd thank you for asking that uh nobody some PTSD that comes from this? No, I actually did have PTSD.

Thank you for asking that. Nobody's asked that before. And I really did. I had agoraphobia for about six months afterwards. But no, we have a fantastic tenant in there now. And we ended up, you know, strange quirk of fate. I decided we had to get legal fees paid. We didn't have the money for that. So we ended up furnishing it, which is much higher rent. And so we actually are doing quite well now that it's a furnished apartment. So in the end, he helped us. Just from lots of good decisions, I turned it around. Well, it sounds like you're a little blessed in that end part about it. Hey, one thing before we take off.

What about the squatter issue? Now, I know every state could be different. In your particular place, is there a certain amount of time where if someone squats in your apartment, then you have to hire the entire world to get them out? Or are they getting tougher on those kind of things now? We've all heard horror stories. You know, I know. I've heard those, too. i'm sure there's a squatter law in new york i don't know anything about it um i think it would be very hard to do you could just probably change the locks on our place but i've heard about it happening in queens and other places where people just move

in and they can't get them out it's very frightening to me. But yeah, I think across the country there, you know, people can move into places and then claim them as their own after a while. In some ways, this guy that moved into our place, the Monster Tenant, had planned to do something similar because he had mentioned the movie Pacific Heights, which is a movie about somebody doing just that. Before he moved in, he told me about Pacific Heights. So he had some crazy vision of what he wanted to do. I vaguely recall that. Before he moved in, he told me about Pacific Heights. So he had some crazy vision of what he wanted to do. Yeah, I vaguely recall that.

It was like a, not a Billy Crystal. Who was the, was he the? It was Michael Keaton. Michael Keaton, yeah. That's right, Michael Keaton. Wow, that's a movie I haven't thought of for a long time. And I hope to never have to think about it, given how creepy that was. Yeah, I know.

And I had never heard of it. I didn't even think to look it up before he moved in i was like oh how funny whatever that movie is moving on and it turned out he was playing out the narrative from that movie absolutely insane that's just wild you can read up more suzanne segerman.com and the other information i'll put up on kmad.com suzanne i'm glad you got uh got over that And just a cautionary tale, if you want to make some money with your rental this year, and we'll put that all up. Okay?

Thank you so much. Good meeting you. Thanks so much, Bill. Have a great week. You too, now. It is 727-KMED-993-KBXG. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Really appreciate that.

That's 770-KMED. Dangerous time because it is the first conspiracy theory open phone time of the year. 770-5633. Given my conversation with Suzanne Segerman, anybody else have some tenant horror stories? Now, I know you'll see it on both sides of the aisle, right? She had the monster that did about $100,000 damage to her New York apartment. Yikes.

And it was pretty much a luxury place, though. But, man, just amazing story about that. I also see, though, the other side of it. There is the story that was in the Road Valley Times, I believe it was, the other day, about the folks, the low-income folks that are living in a you know mobile home park in the talent area that are concerned because the rents have just gone up and up and up for a number of years now and their space rent in many cases close to if i recall correctly about 750 bucks that kind of thing and is that necessarily out of line with the market rate? Probably not.

But Oregon is a rent control state now. And I know that she couldn't really speak to that. She wasn't dealing with a rent control apartment, Suzanne, going back to her. But I can't help but think that if you're in a rent control place like Oregon now and you're told that you can rent or that you could raise the rent nine ten percent whatever the rate might be i think we're at nine or ten percent that you're permitted you know this time around a maximum each year that given that the state has already told you that we're going to control what you can do with that wouldn't you if you're a landlord have a great incentive to automatically raise the rent each year

when the state is telling you, hey, this is the max you can do it? Because then if the state is saying that that's the max that you can do it, they can also change that and ratchet it down and say, well, I'm sorry, you can only raise it 1%. I mean, once you've already gone down that road of rent control, isn't that the ultimate response? Just a natural incentive to raise the rent when you're told that the state's going to limit what you can raise. I'm just talking about what this means in the real world. And then in many ways, I think it's better off when there is no limitation whatsoever,

because then if you're a landlord you don't have the pressure to think that well i'm not actually being screwed too badly right now with the property taxes etc etc but you know if the property taxes go up next year i can pass that along and then you don't worry about it but in a rent control situation aren't you going to automatically assume the worst about what Oregon will do? Let me just raise that issue. So I'm sympathetic on both sides of the rental coin. I haven't read it for a lot of years, but I know a lot of people who do. 7705633, we can talk about that. It doesn't have to be about that, but anything else on your mind too. Let me go to Matt. Matt, Happy New Year. Good to hear from you. What's up? Happy New Year, Bill. I had two quick things.

One, I hate the term radicalized. The terrorism thing is near and dear to my heart. And the first thing that I started hearing out of reporters' mouths, or actors, as you guys pointed out earlier, is that, oh, this guy Jabbar was radicalized. Well, they're acting as if it was passive, right? Well, radicalized basically to me sounds like, oh, you know, he's a good guy. It's like, you know, whenever you have a serial killer and the neighbors say, oh, he was a perfectly fine guy.

Yeah, well, you're radicalized like you caught a cold, in other words, right? Yeah, it's somebody else's fault. That's my problem with it. It's like, oh, he was fine, but oh, he got radicalized. So they're blaming somebody else for what this guy did. He's a despicable human being, and the world's better off without him. By the

way, I'm looking at headlines and right at the top here, they're saying that the guy with the cyber truck, that they served together on the same military base. There's Las Vegas Cybertruck bombers served at the same U.S. military base as the New Orleans. Yeah, that just came out. And that sounds like a bit of a very convenient connection, wouldn't you say? Well, the second headline is both trucks rented using the same Turo app.

But so my second thing is when the financial crisis hit and real estate got cheap, I was actually looking at deflexes to, you know, be a landlord. I thought, oh, you know, diversify a little bit. And I went into a place. The price was right. But there was this giant, this giant disco ball hanging there. There were all these fairies and court things hanging from the walls with blacklight paintings of fairies and Dungeons and Dragons. And I stood there and I looked around and I said to myself, would I let this guy come to my house for dinner? And the answer is no, you would not let him come to your house for dinner,

right? And I decided I never want to be a landlord all because of that. I just thought, you know what? I know the people I'm going to rent to are not going to be like, they're not going to pay their rent all the time. They're going to be calling me in the middle of the night when the toilet doesn't flush. And I thought, why would I want to get myself involved in any of this? Yeah, it seems to be a harsh deal to be a landlord these days. Now, I know I'll get people that will talk about their lousy landlord, and I have no doubt that they exist. But overall, I think the legal realm is, or at least the state of Oregon and the state of Oregon, the thumb's a little bit more on the renter's side. At least it looks that way. Would that be a fair assessment, the way it's looking these days? It is.

And I talked to a friend of mine who has, I think, seven or eight rentals and has for 25, 30 years. And if you can't, if you cannot kick out a dirt bag, there's a problem in our world. And I hear from landlords that say that it's next to impossible to kick out the dirt bag. It takes months in many cases. He said from his point of view, he said, I charge less rent when I have great tenants. And he says the only time I raise rent is I, you know, I got to replace the roof. They've been in there 15, 20 years.

The roof has to be replaced. He said, so I always just left the rent where it was because you know i'm fine and so you you work that out but he i asked him what was going to happen when the rent control thing passed in oregon he told me flat out he goes i'm just going to have to raise them every other year but you see that's what i thought that see that's what i thought was going to happen i'm looking at that that story in uh in the road valley Times in which the people in the mobile home park, the senior citizens and people of limited means there, they're all talking about that the rates have gone up every year. And to me, when you have the state already telling you that we are going to limit your ability to raise it, we will permit you to raise it this year, you well know that the landlord's going to look at this as, hey, wait a minute, maybe next year they say I can only raise 1%.

And I know that the property taxes are going up 3% or 4%, you know, those kind of things. And I can't make it pencil that way. Or you're going to need a roof or all these other things, right? So doesn't rent control, in essence, hurt it more than it helps overall? Well, look at argentina um when malay got in there that's one of the things he got rid of was rent control and the rent did go up but you know what happened they set it back down again he's only been in there a year i mean the guy has he's done every free market thing you can think of doing right and and so the rents went

up and people were freaking out but then what happened is a bunch more uh housing things were built because people said well now i want to invest in real estate because i'm not going to be regulated like i was before it's going to be worth my money to invest and when all the other housing came out of the market the rent came down yeah well what's happening in in oregon is that they're trying to do the opposite they're going to say oh we have a we we don't have affordable housing, so we're going to have lots of regulation on this. But why isn't the affordable housing coming up? Because, well, you limit what we can charge.

They're going to define what is affordable, not what can actually be built. That's all. What was Kamala Harris' solution for inflation? It was to fix prices. Yeah. This is what the left always does. They never say to themselves, why are prices high? It's because of scarcity.

You've said this a thousand times on the air over the years I've been listening. If it's scarce, it's expensive. So let's make it plentiful. There you go. Thank you very much. Good hearing from you. Happy New Year. 738.

We'll catch up on the rest of the news. Anything else on your mind? It is open phones on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. You can take it anywhere you want. This is the Bill Maher Show. Changing weather norms means changes to water quality. Be sure your drinking water is safe. The highs and lows of water levels, increasing cases of contamination,

and land use changes can all impact your world. Hi, I'm Matt Stone with Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on KMED. 742, it is up and phones on Conspiracy Theory Thursday, dangerous time. Always gets me a little scared when we do those sort of things. We'll have a Diner 62 quiz coming up probably in the next few minutes, if not next hour, sometime before now, between now, when Mark Lee, lee van camp and robbins end up coming on i'm also going to be talking with uh cynthia cynthia hughes who is the founder and director of the patriot freedom project because we're getting into the fifth year anniversary i'm

sorry the fourth year anniversary rather of the january 6 riots and and people still in jail and we're going to be talking a bit about what happens legally with these people. We'll have that coming up a little bit after 8 o'clock this morning. All right. So we had the Ducks lose yesterday. I'm not surprised. It was Ohio State. Oh, well.

Fortunately, I don't I'm not into the football games to the point I'll watch the Super Bowl. That's about it. But it's just, it's just not me. Just not me. If you're into it, God bless you. But you're probably depressed this morning. I can't help you.

Those sort of things. But I had a wonderful time off, by the way. People were wondering what I was, what did I do on my time off? Well, there was one day the day after Christmas that the storms were just knocking things off the air. So I was a little busy that day, all day. But we finally got things working again. And then the rest of it was very quiet. And, you know, gosh, it was, you know, we had some friends over for kind of a pre-New

Year's Eve celebration on Saturday. That was a lot of fun, a lot of great people came over. We had mimosas in the morning, you know, that kind of thing. So that was a lot of fun. And we had that. But other than that, it was like Linda and I, we sat around, we watched some movies. I played around in the garage on my workbench,

my electronic workbench a lot, and I'm working on tube gear and, you know, like a tube amplifier. I still have the old tube oscillators from the old KMED AM1440 and the KCMD, no, not KCMD, KCMX, the old KCMX AM880. You know, when those AM sites were shut down a couple of years ago, that, you know, these were all abandoned in place, these old transmitters, and so I grabbed these parts from it, and so I have them working. They both work now, and I can have a little low-power AM broadcasting on 880 and 1440 if I wanted to.

So if the world goes to hell, I'll put up a big antenna, and then we'll communicate on AM broadcast. Illegally, of course, but if everything has gone to hell, who's going to come get me, right? So that's kind of the way I look at it. So I was having fun with that and wiring things and watching capacitors smoke and blow up as part of the experimenting process. But that's the way that went. But it was great. And Linda got us a Yahtzee game. I hadn't played Yahtzee.

I've never been much of a game player. Never been much of a game player. But there was just something that she said, I got us a Yahtzee game. I haven't played Yahtzee in probably 10, 15 years, right? And so we played a lot of Yahtzee. Or I should say, I was there rolling the dice. Linda was actually winning the Yahtzee game. And so she was kicking my butt through most of the holiday.

But we just had a great time. Loved it. Made wonderful meals and went to cart rides and got nice steakies and things like, it's just life was good. It was very relaxing, so we enjoyed that. So that's what I did. Nothing important, which to me is like almost the best vacation that one can have. Doing nothing important.

You know, sometimes you can go on vacation. Like when we went to France a number of years ago, that's not a relaxing vacation, but that was an adventure vacation. This was a relaxing vacation. You get to sleep until 7 or 8. I never get to do that normal times. It was beautiful. So that's what I did. What about you, huh?

I noticed that Garth and Rosemary, they were sharing a post about that. They ended up taking a cruise out to Hawaii. Boy, it's a nice time of year to head out there and do that, Garth and Rose. But they had a good time. Good to see Rose doing okay also. 747. This is an article I saw in the Road Valley Times. It just kind of cracked me up.

How would you approach this one? What to do when no one can pronounce your child's name correctly? Oh, my goodness. Here we have a first world problem, apparently. And this was written by Amy Bazzari from the Chicago Tribune. Navigating the world as the parent of a child with a unique or difficult to pronounce name can be a constant source of frustration. Navigating, when I named my, and she talks about, when I named my daughter Chiara, I never considered that people would struggle with its pronunciation. Her name, which means light or clear in Italian,

and it is deeply rooted in our family's heritage, is a super common name in Italy and ranked number 15 among baby girl names in Italy in 2023. But as Chiara began her school journey, we quickly realized that few native English speakers could pronounce her name correctly. Name pronunciation has been a hot topic lately, especially as Vice President Kamala Harris ran for president. The correct pronunciation of Kamala, which means lotus flower in Sanskrit, is Kamala. There's the emphasis on the first syllable, sounding like

Kamala. In a 2016 video during her Senate campaign. Harris even had a cast of kids explain what other pronunciations of her name weren't correct. But despite her best efforts, Harris's name continued to be mispronounced by many, sometimes even deliberately. Oh, no. What are you going to do? Then they had some Irving Park kids they were talking about in Chicago, because we're supposed to be shocked and outraged about this. CPS students Sheetlali, it's spelled X-I-T-L-A-L-I, Hernandez, and Lakia Williams, who both attended Carl Schurz High School in Irving Park, have encountered similar frustrations when it comes to people pronouncing

or rather mispronouncing their names. My mom wanted me to have unique names, so she named me Zichtlali, an Aztec name that means princess of the stars, Hernandez said, which I guess is better than being named after cutting the hearts out of the princesses as an Aztec, but I digress because, you know, once again, we're supposed to respect all cultures. As someone who grew up with the last name of Protzak, that's my legal last name, it's been that way forever.

You know, I've been putting up with this for years. It's like, so what? So what? Is this a big deal? I guess the main thing is that maybe if you don't want the kids to be laughed at and made fun of, think about how people will try to pronounce it. Now, let's look at this Chiara. Chiara.

Now, it looks like Chia. So just call her Chia Pet. How about you just call her Chia, right? Chia Pet. All right. so just call her chia pet how much she was called chia right chia pet all right um and to me this is a problem in the a solution in search of a problem i guess but the main thing is what to do when no one can pronounce your child's name correctly okay well first off don't open up the medicine cabinet and name your child after what you're reading on the bottles okay that's that's what i would say i don't know if you have a take on that or not but uh there you go but once again it's coming out of liberal chicago what can we expect rule number one if you're looking to sell off within adults

under 50 schedule your appointment today at faxassist.com. Sponsored by Pfizer. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 106.3 KMED. I wonder if anybody ever named their kid Numacoccal. Yeah, this is my son, Numacoccal. Yeah, he's catching, man. It's 7.52. Let me talk with Brad. Hey, Brad, how you doing this morning? Happy New Year.

Good to hear from you. Hey, buddy. It's always good listening to your voice. I hope you had a good time off. Oh, it was a wonderful time off. There's only one thing I forgot to do from you. Hey, buddy. It's always good listening to your voice. I hope you had a good time off. Oh, it was a wonderful time off. There's only one thing I forgot to do, though. I did not get it done. And one of my New Year's resolutions is to make my grandmother Prozac's

patitsa recipe. I was going to ask you if you guys had tried making that yet. Yeah, you know, we were doing other things, and we did have some folks over and things like that, so that kind of fell by the wayside. But, you know, we were doing other things, and we did have some folks over and things like that, so that kind of fell by the wayside. But, you know, it's wintertime, and it's a great time to bake. And all Petita is for the uninitiated, and we of Slovenian and Polish heritage, we know this stuff. It's like a nut roll, right, that's rolled up.

It's a baked nut roll, and they're delicious as far as i'm concerned food of the gods hey we all could use a couple extra nuts exactly exactly so what were you thinking huh well the reason i called was two reasons one of which i wanted to thank you i don't know how you guys came to uh the decision decision of bringing in MBR as part of your format. Those guys are great. They're very funny. What a great, you know, the Limbaugh, you know, to replace Limbaugh is a big call. But they've done a great job.

You know, the thing is, is that, and I think they'd be the first to tell you, they never were about replacing limbaugh because limbaugh can't be replaced there's there's just no way limbaugh was a one of a kind and but they were definitely a different style of talk radio more of a uh you know a a dialogue kind of thing with guys talking about these things and with various different perspectives especially given the generational breakdown. You've got the boomer, the Gen Xer, and the millennial all doing that together. And so it's interesting to hear the differences through the years from them.

I enjoy them. And the other reason I called, because you asked me, you guys, what Dr. Powers might have discussed, oh, gosh, now I can't think of the name of the fort. It's Fort Lane. Fort Lane. I don't know if you've ever discussed Fort Lane, but that's a fascinating element of our history in this valley. Do you know about Fort Lane? No, I don't.

Where was Fort Lane? Could you help me out with that? Fort Lane, if you get on Tolo Road and it's on your way to Gold Hill and you head towards the river, there's actually a site that was marked by the Daughters of the American Revolution. But I believe the Southern Oregon University has got a dig site there. But that was a fort that was built in 1855 through 1857. And that was during, was that during the Indian War period, right? It was to protect binaries and miners.

Yeah, I don't think that we've ever talked about that. And one of the reasons being is that we don't usually, because the segment in even his book was called Where Past Meets Present, and it's kind of like it's not about something which is no longer there, but there has to be some connection to what's going on right now. But I suppose there could be. Really, you can talk about what it was like then and the changes that came within the various cultures here in Southern Oregon, you know, from that time. If you like history, Phil Sheridan, who was famous in the Civil War era, his first outpost

of duty was at Fort Lake out of West Point. Oh. You know, there's another book which I've been reading right now. In fact, Bob Shann. You know Bob Shann? Listener Bob calls all the time. We hear from him from Medford all the time. He lent me a copy of Captain Jack.

Did you ever read that book? Oh, I would love to read that. Yeah, well, it's a first edition. I'm very careful with it. And, in fact, he asked me if I was done with it. I think he wants his first edition back. I'm about a third of the way through it. And it is such a fascinating read to look at the wars in the Indian territories here in southern Oregon and northern California at that time.

How the Modocs and the Klamaths did not get along, and the balancing acts that the United States government with their forts and their outposts were doing, trying to keep peace and the push. And then, you know, you'll read these letters that talk about, well, you know, we want you to take care of the Indian problem, peaceably if you can, forcefully if you must. Right? You know? And you look at this, and yet you were talking about taking people and just force-marching them 300 miles to the coast, you know, in some cases. Right?

Yeah, a sad point in history if you were an Indian. Yeah, yeah. It was really rough. But, you know, Captain Jack, of course, leader of the Modoc tribe, and they wanted nothing to do with the Klamaths. The Klamaths and the Modocs apparently hated each other. And I never really knew that part about it. And then they got sideways. Modocs, of course, got sideways with the United States government. And then they ended up going up into their cave dwellings up in the rocks, you know, above the area.

I took my kids when they were little to Captain Jack's last time. You ever been there? No. No, I never have been. I want to now. To see what they defended themselves, the Fortress of the Rocks, it's incredible. It's just an incredible story. Oh, I know.

And, you know, you want to talk about, you know, people that were putting it all on the line, whether you agreed with their cause or not. You know, people that would do stuff, they were made of something sterner. Sterner stuff, I would dare say. Do you agree? Oh, absolutely. And real quickly, if you've got time, a great story regarding this. A friend of mine, he's retired now, used to run the museum at Fort Clement. One day, a guy and his wife came into the museum, and he had a, it was an era rifle, 1871 or 2, Springfield.

Anyway, he shows him the rifle. He says, what do you think? He says, yeah, I'll give you $300. He says, just him. And, you know, the guy walked off mad. A month later, the wife walks in with the same rifle. Are you so willing to buy this for $300? He says, man, this gun is worth way more than $300.

I just want to get rid of it. Turns out her husband died. Bottom line to this story, he does a search on it. That rifle went all the way back to Custer's last stand. Oh, how much was it really worth out there on the market? $400,000. Whoa. Oh, my gosh.

Did you wish that one? Yeah. He paid her the $300,000. I think he still has it. You know, I think I probably would have sold it for the $400,000. I would have given her some of that, too. I would. You know?

And I would have put it in gold. Yeah, exactly. Happy New Year, Brad. Let me go to the next call. Like I said, it's open phones on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning, Bill. Michael Shaw here. Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to you too, Michael. What's on your mind? Well, one of the things that I have on my bucket list at the beginning of every year is to deal with my stockpile of ammo. To take stock of what do I have, what do I need, what do I need to rotate and things like that. So it's just one of those reminders of people should look at where they're at with those sort of things. It's like I looked at mine over the weekend and realized that even though I have plenty of 5.56 and 9.0 and 5.7 and such, and 45, I'm severely lacking in 12-gauge shotgun shells.

Oh. And, you know, those are still relatively economical to buy, really. Well, they are. But, I mean, a standard – I've got a standard Ithaca 12-gauge. Actually, it's a police riot gun. Yeah. And that loaded with double-eyed buck is a great self-defense weapon. Well, you know where my challenge on ammo is, Michael, is rotating. Because, you know, what'll happen is that I'll buy fresh ammo, let's say, to go shooting,

and I don't go shooting enough lately. I have to make a little more time for that in 2025. But, you know, I'll buy the stuff that I already have in boxes that I just picked up on the sales, you know, around here at the various stores, you know, that'll put stuff on sale. And yet, I've got, like, PMC ammo ammo that i bought from coastal back when it was big r probably 15 years ago sitting in ammo boxes there you know and i know it's still good i've shot some of it though i have to start rotating that old stuff out though even though i know that ammo lasts for many many years if you store it right, you know. No, I agree.

Rotating it out is always a big issue. So a good reminder on that part. So I guess what we need to do is like what I do with the stuff I put in the freezer. I put a label with a date on it. Yeah. We need to date our ammo. Maybe so. You know, shoot by and then put a date in you know that kind of thing but i and speaking of which that

ammo to tell you i if i recall correctly i think i bought the ammo at big r which is now coastal we know it is coastal i think it was sick i think it was um i think it was 124 grain nine millimeter for i want to say 699 i think on a Black Friday sale. It was something like that. And it was like, man, I haven't loved that. Loving that kind of price, that's for sure. About half where it is right now. Yeah, it's real hard to remember to do those basic things. But I guess we need to put it on a calendar as a reminder. Good point.

Thanks for the reminder. Let me go to the next line here on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. Good morning. Hi, who's this? Hello? Hello? Hi, you're on.

Who's this? Yes. Oh, good morning. Bismarck. Hey, Bismarck. I was talking about that Fort Lane. Yes. If you're right there

where the Tolo Tavern used to be, there's a contractor shop there. You go down that road that used to take you to the dam on your left there's actually a cemented pyramid of rocks which is a marker for that fort that he was talking about so people can actually drive up and see the marker and there's a little brass plaque on it that tells you with a date and everything yeah i'm gonna go i'm gonna go look that up i'm gonna go look that up well I'm going to go look that up.

Well, looking it up on the computer. Well, no, no. I meant like go there. I'm just going to go there. It's not that far. It's just before you get to the dam. It's in between two homes. And it's like, it's all open.

And then right there where the pile is, it's all thicket. And then past it, it gets back into open again. But I was calling because he got my memory going. So my stepfather was in a metal detecting club back in the 1980s. So Fort Wagner, which is now at the bottom of where the Medford sewer, the water treatment plant is out there, the Twoville area. Yeah. So they had a big thing back then because my father was was involved with the historical society and they metal detected the entire area where the fort was they found

you know horseshoes lots of union buttons um belt buckles all kinds of little metal artifacts and somewhere they got put into the museum and then probably stored away somewhere. But where the Fort Wagner is, is at the bottom of those huge water holding tanks now. So every time you drive past a water treatment plant, that's where the other fort was. Well, thank you for a little education on that. I didn't know that, Bismarck. Appreciate the call. Grab one more. That'll be news time.

We're going to talk a little January 6th politics here. Where that's going. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. This is Colonel Jay. Hey, Colonel Jay. Welcome.

You were talking about ammo. Yes. They were talking about double buck for home defense and stuff like that. Yeah. Home defense in a time of trouble is pheasant shot high brass pheasant shot you send the other guy home picking out pellets out of his back that disables him there's like two other guys that have to pick the pellets out of his back and that keeps them distracted and anybody else that comes around you put some more pellets in their back

and they just weaken the weaken uh their forces yeah yeah i don't know you know something i i've heard kind of that i don't know if um well i guess i want to make sure whatever ammo if god forbid i had to fire it off in a home would actually be you know a stopper it won't penetrate it won't penetrate walls that's why i said yeah but will pheasant shot actually uh you know will it stop an attacker though you think yeah no no look man i've been shot before i'll tell you what it is is extremely disturbing and it doesn't feel good. Yeah, yeah, nobody says, hey, volunteer to shoot me with a pheasant shot. I get that, okay?

But, yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I would advocate it necessarily for if the self-defense folks would. Well, you know, we can all have an opinion on that, all right? I appreciate the call. Thanks for making it. Six after eight. We'll check news here in just a moment, too. KMED, KMED, HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.

This is Bill Meyer, and the savings keep coming from Sky Park Insurance. Here's Kurt from Grants Pass. The quote from my previous insurance...