Rise and Shine Otters, it’s Spiess in the Morning your locally sourced broadcaster podcaster coming to you live from the spectacular studios next to the swamp.
It’s June 6th, and I hope you woke up ready to groove with the greats, because this date is stacked like a pile of used books at Kate’s Corner a week after the Kindle went on sale.
Let’s start with the heavy hitters. Brace yourself otters. June 6, 1944: D-Day. The Allies hit the beaches of Normandy like thunder on a steel drum. It wasn’t about glory—it was about grit. They didn’t post about it, hashtag it, or livestream the landing. They just did it. So if you’re having trouble today finding the strength to fold the laundry, remember those boys wading into gunfire with full packs and full hearts.
You want perspective otters? Most of us struggle to storm the post office before it closes at 4 p.m. These guys stormed Omaha Beach under machine gun fire. So maybe take a deep breath before you yell at the internet when the YouTubes buffers.
Now for something lighter. Or weirder. Depends on your mood.
On a quirkier note, June 6 is also National Yo-Yo Day. Up, down, twist, repeat—the yo-yo is basically a metaphor for dating in your 20s. Or 40s. Depending on your zip code and willingness to swipe right.
And, for those of you looking for an excuse to be sweet today—it’s also National Applesauce Cake Day. Which is oddly specific, and yet somehow comforting. Because nothing says “domestic rebellion” like sneaking fruit into your dessert and pretending it’s healthy. The Viking Cafe might just cook up a batch if we ask nicely—pair it with their Friday lunch special and you've got a culinary paradox that’s tough to diagnose.
Want something sweeter? How about a Donut. Yeah. That simple, circular pastry. Deep-fried dough—sometimes glazed, sometimes sugared, sometimes frosted with a Jackson Pollock swirl of icing and sprinkles. A celestial object in the bakery galaxy.
But let’s not reduce the donut to a snack. Oh no. It’s a spiritual object. A Buddhist might call it a metaphor for the void, the eternal cycle of samsara. The hole in the middle? That’s life, baby. The missing center. The absence that shapes the whole. It’s not what's there—it's what's not. It’s Samuel Beckett with sprinkles.
Native American legends often talk about sacred circles. The circle of life. The medicine wheel. And in our own Americana modern mythology, maybe the donut’s our humble reminder of cycles—work and rest, day and night, hunger and fullness, longing and satisfaction.
If you really want to challenge the cosmos today, dunk a chocolate covered circle of life in your coffee with one hand, while yo-yoing with the other.
Quick Community Billboard update: Q & A with Justice Alan Page at the Pelican Rapids Public Library - Retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page will provide insight on the Diane and Alan Page Collection and how the TESTIFY Exhibit was created to showcase significant art and artifacts from that collection. A companion program to the TESTIFY Exhibit, on view at the library through June 30. Click here for more info
Plus Abbie had a bumper crop from her hen. Fresh Eggs - $9 for 30 eggs (washed or unwashed) - call or text 763-355-2891. Anyone want an omelet bar for Father’s Day?
Birthday roll call? Buckle up.
Björn Borg, Swedish tennis machine, born in 1956. The man played like a Norse god with a racket. Five straight Wimbledons. Hair like flowing poetry. He didn’t grunt—he glided.
How about some cinematic intensity—Robert Englund, Freddy Krueger himself, was born this day in 1947. Sleep tight tonight, otters. Just don’t fall asleep.
Now on the other end of the spectrum we’ve got Paul Giamatti, born 1967, an actor with the ability to make existential crises look downright Shakespearean. Whether he’s battling the wine list in Sideways or playing John Adams with powdered-wig angst, the man gives soul to the stressed-out everyman.
Want more Birthdays? Check out these tasty licks.
Steve Vai, guitar virtuoso and part-time space alien, also born this day in 1960. If you’ve never heard a guitar sing, cry, and spiral into another dimension in one solo—go look him up. He makes six strings sound like a NASA experiment gone right.
Not to imply this birthday boy plays second fiddle or guitar, but James Shaffer, aka "Munky" of Korn also blows out some candles today. He’s also ranked in the Top 25 of of greatest guitar players of all time. Imagine that, June 6 giving the world two of the greatest guitar players on the planet.
Colin Quinn, comedy’s curmudgeonly philosopher, born in 1959. He first gained attention for his work on Saturday Night Live anchoring Weekend Update, the show's news parody segment. For me, I remember Quinn on MTV's game show Remote Control. He is New York sarcasm with a philosopher’s bent. Like if Aristotle ran a comedy club in Brooklyn.
Sandra Bernhard, fearless and fabulous, born 1955. Actress, comic, provocateur. She’s the kind of voice that doesn’t just cut through the noise—it rearranges the whole song. Most of the females who make you laugh today have Sandra to thank for paving the path few dare travel when she did.
Pin-up poster girl Staci Keanan, of Step by Step and My Two Dads fame, enters the world on this day in 1975. If you were raised on ‘90s sitcoms, she was that girl-next-door with a brain and better lines than the adults.
And let’s not forget Nathan Hale—American patriot, born in 1755. A man so devoted to liberty, he regretted only having one life to give for his country. These days, some folks regret giving one hour to jury duty. Perspective, people.
So what does June 6 really mean? It means you’ve got Freddy Krueger, a Founding Father, and a tennis legend all blowing out candles together in some cosmic birthday lounge. Toss in a virtuosic guitar solo, a monologue from Giamatti, a snark from Sandra Bernhard, and you’ve got yourself one-heck-of-a-party.
This is Spiess in the Morning, reminding myself and anyone listening, some days are loud, some days are soft, and some—like June 6—are a symphony of strange, sacred, and slightly sarcastic.
Aloha otters, you’re waking up with Spiess in the Morning — your bastion of free thought, philosophical meandering, and mildly over-extracted espresso.
Now, I was walking down by the river yesterday with my trusted companion Gouda. Sky was the color of a bruised peach, sun just hanging out like it had nowhere better to be. And I saw a little ripple—no drama, no flair. Just a ripple. And then, boom. A flash of copper. There it was. A sunfish.
And in an instant, my Libra mind kicked in - from catching sunnies with corn to what the ancients tried to teach me about what a sunfish means to me.
Now the sunfish—Lepomis to the Latin lovers out there—isn’t your flashy, exotic world traveler. It’s a freshwater marvel, a little pan-sized poem. There are over two dozen species in the sunfish family, from the ever-pugnacious bluegill to the pumpkinseed, that painter’s palette of fins and freckles. And of course, the green sunfish, with its big mouth and bigger attitude. These fish are the middle children of the aquatic world—underappreciated but always present, always doing the work.
To the Ojibwe and other Native American tribes, the sunfish was more than just a catch of the day. It was a symbol of persistence, of balance. Some legends tell of sunfish guiding lost travelers by rippling the surface of water to reflect the stars—nature’s GPS before satellites began spinning over our heads.
It’s like 5000 candles lit in the lake. Hmmm…
Now, in the Cherokee tradition, they were considered clever, elusive spirits—small, but never insignificant.
In modern America, though? Sunfish get the short end of the angling rod. Overshadowed by the glamor of walleye and the brute force of bass. They’re like garage poets in a world of bestselling authors—uncelebrated, but quietly brilliant.
But here’s the thing: sunfish are survivors. Drop ‘em in a muddy farm pond or a clear alpine lake, and they’ll figure it out. They build nests like little architects of the shallows, sweeping away sand with their tails. The males guard those nests like a stoic dad in a rocking chair on a Sunday porch.
It’s tender. It’s fierce. It’s everything.
And did you know? There’s a saltwater cousin—the ocean sunfish, or mola mola. That one’s a living flying saucer, weighs up to two tons, and just kind of bobs along through the currents like it forgot how to fish but never forgot how to float. Ancient mariners used to think they were sea monsters—symbols of good luck, or omens, depending on your mood and how empty your rum bottle was.
We humans, we’ve got this odd tendency to overlook what doesn’t sparkle loud enough. But there’s poetry in the quiet. There’s grace in the ordinary. The sunfish reminds us that life doesn’t always need grandeur to be meaningful. Sometimes it just needs a quiet pond, a few dragonflies, and a breeze that smells like memory.
So here’s to the sunfish—spangled little soul of freshwater America. Not the loudest in the ecosystem, but maybe the most honest. Kind of like this media network. We’re not a skyscraper in New York. We’re not a plush penthouse in LA. We’re just a shed next to a swamp. And we’re still swimming.
Stay groovy, otters.
Spiess in the Morning coming to you from the spectacular studios next to the swamp, where the sun’s crawling up the spine of the Pelican River and the wind smells like birch and old stories.
Community Billboard reminder - Tonight at the I-94 Speedway it’s the Prelude to the Dick Johanneck King of Dirt-Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour. Pits open at 4:30 and the races start at 7pm.
Otters, I woke up this morning thinking about speed. Not the amphetamine kind, not the kind you get ticketed for doing 65 in a 40 in Elizabeth—but the kind that's been stitched into our species like a bright red thread in a wool blanket.
See, ever since the dawn of time, we’ve been chasing. Chasing each other, chasing dreams, chasing what we thought we lost—or what we thought we needed.
The Greeks had Hermes, god of speed, winged sandals and all, flitting across the world to deliver news and sometimes mischief. Native lore tells of Coyote, trickster and runner, always pushing, always moving, always losing—and yet always teaching.
Racing’s in our bones. We went from foot races to chariots, horses galloping under open skies, man and beast breathing as one. And then came the combustion engine—guzzling fire like a dragon in heat—dragging us into the blur of NASCAR and the Monaco Grand Prix.
As my mind begins to paint me a picture, it goes a little something like this — somewhere back in the Pleistocene, a couple of cave guys—let's call them Og and Zug—finished their mammoth steak a little early one night, looked over at that freshly carved stone wheel, and one of them rolled it down a hill just to see how fast it could go. And boom—there it was. The first race. No flags, no stands, just pure motion. The idea that you could beat something. Beat the other guy. Beat the hill. Beat time.
It’s primal, folks. It's in us. In our marrow. That need to chase. To compete. To see who can get to the tree line first. Get to the end of the driveway first.
Who can get to God first. Even Adam and Eve, back in Eden, were in a kind of spiritual race—a race for knowledge, for freedom, for a taste of that forbidden fruit.
Fast forward a few millennia, and you've got the Greeks at the Olympic Games, horses thundering around a dusty track while philosophers argued about the soul under fig trees. And if you listen close, you can still hear those hooves echo in the Kentucky Derby, where thoroughbreds with names like “Ethereal Dream” and “Thunder’s Vow” try to outrun their own bloodlines. We cheer. We cry. We place bets not just on horses, but on time itself.
But horses gave way to horsepower. The smell of hay got replaced by octane. Man and beast were separated by steel and pistons. Enter the age of the automobile—1911, the first Indy 500. A track, a wheel, and a dream to go faster than fear. It's funny, ain't it? How the wheel we once rolled down a hill now spins with 800 horses under the hood and cameras broadcasting to a million screens.
And yet… it's still just a race. Still just the same question: “Can I get there before you do?”
But it's not all engines and ego. The Lakota tell stories of the wind being alive—a spirit that runs across the plains, faster than the deer, faster than time. They say if you’re lucky, and if your heart is clear, you can feel it race through you. You don't own it. You become it. That's the kind of racing I think we’ve forgotten. The kind where you run not to beat someone, but to feel something. To remember you’re alive.
It's the rhythm of being human. It’s the heartbeat of motion.
This is Spiess in the Morning, may your feet be swift, may your wheels stay true, and may you never forget the joy of the chase. Over and out.
SONG BY PATRICK THIEL & HALEY E. RYDELL
SONG BY CIRO & TOPHER
You're listening to the OtterTalk media network on your new age digital dial, the home of philosophical ponderings, existential meanderings, and now… cyber wanderings.
The winds of change have swept over our little swampy hamlet once again—not with snow this time, but with streaming. Yours truly, along with the rest of the OtterTalk crew, is pleased to announce our latest sponsor: Paramount Plus—the digital temple of stories, memories, and popcorn dreams.
Now, before you go running off thinking we’ve sold our souls to the algorithm, let me assure you—this ain’t just your average partnership. We’re doing it our way. Old school radio meets new school streaming. We're talking show reviews, film reflections, and sports commentary—all filtered through the kaleidoscope that makes us us.
There’s a hyperlink up on our site, although it may have calmed down by now, and if you subscribe through it, well, we get a few bucks to keep the transmitter humming and the coffee pot brewing.
That’s modern capitalism with a smile—supporting local airwaves with global stories. Helping trickle those global dollars down to our local economy.
But this isn’t just about selling subscriptions. No, my friends. This is about the evolution of how we watch… how we experience stories.
Today is National Drive In Day. Remember Drive Ins? That way of life was on it’s way out while I was on my way into driving. But I did hitch a ride a few times to a Drive In.
As I sit here in the spectacular studios next to the swamp, the glow of the dawn light trying to get through the blinds, I find myself reminiscing about Days of Thunder.
You remember that one—1990, Tom Cruise, burning rubber and shaking egos in NASCAR circles. Back then, I watched it at one of the last days of a Minnesota Drive-In. I was in a Suburban with a few others and we fogged up the windows from inside and out. We had a cooler of root beer, and a speaker hung on the car window, and it always seem to sound like it had just escaped a fish tank. The air smelled of popcorn, wet grass, and unspoken possibilities.
Fast-forward three decades. Last week I streamed Days of Thunder on my laptop while eating lentil stew, curled under a blanket I bought from a roadside tent and little Gouda snoring at my feet. Same movie. Same scenes. Same Tom Cruise looking like he’d race God if He showed up in a stock car. But the experience? Worlds apart. No window speakers. No date. No foggy windshield. Just pixels and memories.
And yet—somehow, it still worked. The thrill, the speed, that soundtrack with guitars and testosterone—it still got the heart revving. That’s the thing about stories, folks. Whether it’s told by a firelight, a flickering projector, or beamed into your phone at 30,000 feet, the human need to feel is constant.
Now with Paramount Plus, you’ve got more than Days of Thunder. You’ve got a buffet of nostalgia and novelties—Mission Impossible marathons, sports that span continents, Star Trek galaxies, Yellowstone cowboys, SpongeBob metaphysics, and some good ol’ fashioned courtroom drama.
And here at OtterTalk, we’ll be your guides, your critics, your wandering monks of the media mountain. Every week, we’ll highlight one film, show, or sports moment, dissect it, laugh about it, cry a little maybe—and reflect, in our own unique way, on what it means to be human in a world that's racing faster than Cole Trickle on a Sunday afternoon.
So check out our special page on the station site. Click the link, support the station, and stream your heart out. Because whether you’re sitting in a bus at a drive-in, or curled up in a cabin with a steaming mug of cocoa, one truth remains: stories are the gasoline of the soul.
This is Spiess in the Morning, reminding myself and anyone else listening that whether it's wheels on pavement or pixels on screens—just keep chasing what moves you. Stream on otters. Stream on.
CLICK HERE FOR SPECIAL PARAMOUNT PLUS PARTNERSHIP PAGE
OTTER TALK COMMUNITY CALENDAR
Q & A with Justice Alan Page at the Pelican Rapids Public Library - Retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page will provide insight on the Diane and Alan Page Collection and how the TESTIFY Exhibit was created to showcase significant art and artifacts from that collection. A companion program to the TESTIFY Exhibit, on view at the library through June 30. Click here for more info
Paul’s Fresh Eggs - $3/dozen - call or text 218-205-7779
Abbie’s Fresh Eggs - $9 for 30 eggs - washed or unwashed - call or text 763-355-2891
Summer Fest in Fergus Falls is Friday June 13 and Saturday June 14.
Friendship Festival in Pelican Rapids is June 14. Bring your own chair.
The Shoreline Bowling Alley in Battle Lake has open bowling All Summer Long. Call 218-864-5265 for more info or stop by 505 N Lake Ave, Battle Lake, MN.
The Bookmobile stops across from the Parkers Prairie Post Office every other Wednesday throughout the year. You can find the Bookmobile there from 3 pm to 4 pm. Not only does the Bookmobile have books, movies & magazines to check out, but the Bookmobile and member libraries also offer a wide variety of electronic resources including Ebooks, downloadable audiobooks, streaming movies, TV and music, and a wide variety of educational databases and distance learning resources.
Join The Depot on 59’s Summer Volleyball league in Erhard, MN! 8 Weeks- Ages 21+- Coed Teams.
Volleyball & Chill Wednesday:
May 28-July 23
July 30-September 10th
Power Players Thursday:
May 29-July 14th
July 31-September 11th
Sign your team up today by calling 218-842-5185 or stop by The Depot on Hwy 59 in Erhard. $20 Per team sign up $2 per person per night. 100% payback.
If you have a community event for the Community Bulletin Board, email studio@ottertalk.media
Food & Festivities
Long Bridge Bar, Grill & Marina (Detroit Lakes): Check out the Pepper Jack Slaw Dog, a 1/4 lb all beef hot dog served on a poppy seed bun with sweet chili sauce, spicy pepper jack cheese, and topped with coleslaw.
Knotty Pine (Elbow Lake): Offering great food, cold drinks, and fantastic service. It’s Create-Your-Own-Pasta time - your choice of pasta, protein, sauce and veggies!
Garden Bar (Alexandria): Locally owned, The Garden Bar is committed to providing its guests with a memorable dining experience through fresh and eclectic menu options, an extensive wine and beer list and hand-crafted cocktails. Celebrate Truffle Day and try the Pomme Frites, which are hand-cut, then topped with gruyere, bacon, scallions and truffle aioli.
Rothsay Powerhouse (Rothsay): Burgers, wings, walleye fingers, dinner specials and much more! Live Music, tasty drinks and friendly staff.
Want Otter Talk to highlight a local musician or upcoming gig? Email studio@ottertalk.media
Happy Friday Everyone! Feel free to like, share and or comment!
Please tune in Monday for more local lakes area tunes, totally tubular tales, and some small-town smiles.
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Have some news? How about an idea for the show? Email studio@ottertalk.media
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