America’s “Best Local Festival”?

The 16th Annual Milwaukee Short Film Festival returns this week, still better known internationally than in town.

“Color Me Obsessed” captures the essence of The Replacements

Turner Hall mounted Milwaukee’s first screening of the long-awaited, definitive Replacements documentary as part of its BAAM series on Saturday night.

Bay View Gallery Night

In Bay View, expect more than warm white wine and cheese squares. These neighbors like their Gallery Night a little spicier. See it all in action tonight.

A vigil for hope and healing as sun sets on Sikh tragedy

After a day of unspeakable violence against Milwaukee's peaceful Sikh community, supporters gather in Cathedral Square Park to offer prayers and support.

Sci-fi Spectacular Spectacular!

TCD, the MSO and Intercontinental offer a spectacular evening - an intimate dinner hosted by Tom Strini, followed by loge seats for the June 15 performance narrated by Star Trek's George Takei!

Call it now – It’s got to be Obey

David Obey isn't perfect, but he's effective with both parties. And in a heated Wisconsin recall election, what could be more important?

Education, education, education

We are engaged – right now – in a global race to see which nation will be the brain trust for the 21st century, and we’re losing.

Can Dems hold out for a hero in Walker recall?

With over 300,000 signatures collected in just 12 days, the Walker recall is all but inevitable. Now the Dems must choose a candidate who can win.

Barrett’s co-sleeping red herring

Desperate to distract from a failing school system and its financial woes, the City launches a foolish and destructive ad campaign to nowhere.

Tangled up in Blue

The Walker recall has me questioning the democratic process and what its priorities should be.

Through the filmmaker’s lens

Milwaukee filmmakers Matthew Konkel and Kara Mulrooney review out of town films screening at the 13th annual Milwaukee Short Film Festival.

A few words with Ross Bigley of the Milwaukee Short Film Festival

From racy romances to family-friendly sci-fi flicks and even an amateur monster movie, the 13th annual MSFF packs a cinematic punch this weekend.

My kind of hero

Smart, driven and prone to colossal gaffes, Jobs was what all true entrepreneurs want to be when they grow up: undeniable.

Judge rules that bargaining law not in effect

In a ruling early Thursday, Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi says that Wisconsin's contentious bargaining law is not in effect. The state says it will comply.

Up to 100,000 gather in Madison Saturday

Madison police estimate Saturday's rally to be the biggest yet, with between 85,000 and 100,000 protesting Gov. Scott Walker's budget policies

Wisconsin 14 return; will march to Capitol Saturday

Senate Democrats are happy to be home, but know the budget battle has just begun

Walker blames a few “radical” Dems for upcoming layoffs

Walker vows pink slips Friday. But will those come from the over 8,000 jobs slated for elimination in his upcoming budget?

Capitol Police clear building at 4 pm: Watch it live

70,000 protesters believe the Capitol is their house. Will the police force them out? Will these so-far peaceful protests turn ugly? Watch here.

Do we need unions? Should Obama defend same-sex marriage?

TCD's Jon Anne Willow and AM-620's Jeff Wagner take on these two questions today on TMJ-4's "What's Hot." What do you think?

pass the bill or the layoffs will begin

In his "fireside chat," Walker urged Democratic Senators to return to Madison and vote, or 1,500 state workers could receive pink slips next week.

How will Wisconsin’s budget battle end?

It may be too early to call, but if you had to predict the outcome of the current budget battle in Madison, what would it be? Vote here.

Honoring service on MLK Day

On the 25th anniversary of the MLK holiday, TCD talks to a Milwaukee couple serving in the Peace Corps in Moldova.

Katie Musolff paints Jeffrey Hollander

Musolff's final commission for the Pfister as 2010 Artist in Residence will show off her talents in portraiture to their best advantage

ThirdCoast Digest partner Chris Abele running for County Exec

TCD will cover the race, with Mr. Abele being in no way connected to the editorial process, just as he never has been.

Social media grows up

The recent merger between Hanson Dodge Creative and upstart Comet Branding signals that social media has a found a foothold in the marketing services business.

Wisconsin’s Small Government Experiment

Nobody in favor of small government has experienced it, though many of them have prospered despite pesky taxes. Are they really ready for what's coming?

You want tax cuts? Cough up those jobs

It's time to stop pretending an apple is an orange. Political posturing and a broken tax code are at the heart of the latest Congressional squawk.

Milwaukee Short Film Festival lights up the Lubar this weekend

One more proof that Milwaukee has been a "film town" for years, 12-year old MSFF just keeps getting better.

The Milwaukee Show!

This year's festival has offered much to impress. But for some of us, even Susan Sarandon's face pales in comparison.

MF’10 is almost here. And we’re there.

The 2nd annual Milwaukee Film Festival rolls out the red carpet tomorrow. TCD will cover it daily, with previews, reviews and lots of pictures and video

Pfister broadens its commitment to the arts with in-house storyteller

The Pfister Hotel is holding an open call for experienced writers interested in a 6-month residency. Details here.

Milwaukee Film spreads its love all over

As the Milwaukee Film Festival 2010 lineup is unveiled, expect to laugh, cry, cringe - and travel a little.

Art, Music, Love

MiMX promises a memorable end-of-summer Saturday for everyone - unless you're not a lover of music, film, fashion, food, coffee or beer. Or a kid or a grown-up.

Milwaukee Children’s Film Festival

Milwaukee Film blends awesome kid’s films with important lessons in media literacy for the whole family.

Fixing the economy, 12 jobs at a time

We didn’t learn anything new Monday. But Obama's appearance affords an opportunity to look at job creation, the bane of current global economic recovery efforts.

Mummies in Milwaukee!

Milwaukee Public Museum lands second U.S. exhibition of largest mummy-related collection ever assembled

Resources for SE Wisconsin residents

Last night's rainfall across SE Wisconsin hit residents hard. TCD offers resources for reporting damage and cleaning up.

Jamo’s

When the smoke clears, what will happen to the art of bar talk? Jamo wishes he had the answer

Polish vodka!

TCD asks – and answers – the burning, if inane, question in our entertaining summer series of eclectic 2-minute videos

Milwaukee Film unveils partial lineup for 2010 festival

The local premiere of Fritz Lang's now fully-restored Metropolis is just one of the treats in store for film lovers this fall

Catch the fever

VITAL Source Magazine used to throw some pretty good parties. Tomorrow is our ThirdCoast Digest debutante ball, and we think we might still have that old black magic.

Remembering Jude on Mother’s Day

It's my first Mother's Day without my mom. To her, I offer blessings, thanks and some overdue apologies.

Bruisers head for the big time!

The Shevils head for the championships and the Crazy 8's go winless. April's bout was hard-hitting, fast-moving and full of surprises. Here's the dirt.

Cherie’s bomb

The Runaways is based on Cherie Currie’s recently re-vamped autobiography, and is naturally meant to be her story. I wish it had been.

A year and a day

Thrills, chills and spills - the last year has been a little insane. Editor Jon Anne Willow regrets not planning a party for TCD's first anniversary, but hopes to do better next time.

Another Sold Out Show

Brewcity Bruisers Season 4 rolls on with another sold-out bout at the fabulous Milwaukee Co. Sports Complex. Gloria Hole and Dr Awkward guide you through the pulse-pounding action.

A behind-the-scenes glimpse of Innovative Motion

Adam Carr of Radio Milwaukee and TCD's Brian Jacobson reveal the personalities behind the Milwaukee Ballet dancers with details on the Pints Before Pointe kickoff event.

Remembering Pizza Man

The east side's Pizza Man is gone, but sharing does spur healing - as well as ideas for rebirth. Share your stories, hopes and fears - here.

(W)ringing out the old

As 2009 winds down at long last, TCD's editor finds herself at a loss for words. Sort of.

No need for media-fueled, inter-generational Cola Wars

The idea of a 3-way workplace cage match makes for interesting punditry, but at the ground level it doesn't hold much water.

The ordinary cruelty of children

TCD's Editor takes a carpool shift and receives an unexpected glimpse into the harshness of playground politics - and the resiliency of kids.

Is Barrett being coy?

Looks like Barrett's camp is building a new website. It's called Barret4Wisconsin.com. Has he made his decision? Is it finally time to let the cat out of the bag?

The way of the Soul

“Growing up” is too often a trick play, a series of potentially debilitating compromises of the soul. But it's never too late to mind your inner voice.

Tragic

My mother recently died from smoking cigarettes, leaving me to grapple with the thorny issue of slow suicide by addiction.

Checkers & Chess

This week: Wisconsin's gubernatorial bid. Now that Kind is out, who are the strongest contenders? Two vastly different viewpoints on one intriguing topic.

Milwaukee Finances “On the Precipice”

The City may soon find itself choosing between potholes and police protection.

Dillner in, Hefty out, Cabot snubbed

In a baffling emergency session Thursday evening, the Skylight board elected, in a close vote, to retain current management, namely Eric Dillner.

Dillner must go

There may be a place for your approach, Mr. Dillner, a place that embraces your psuedo-businessman style. But it's not here. You had your chance and you blew it.

A tragic exodus?

TCD hopes that this family can be brought back together again. Major morning update on Wednesday, July 22.

Windfall Theatre

Windfall Theatre holds auditions for its 2009-10 season.

TCD’s Comment “Lottery” – where everyone’s a winner!

Thanks to all who tried their "luck" in our comment lottery! You're all winners in our hearts!

Five Questions for Debra Brehmer

You may know her as an accomplished artist who specializes in haunting portraiture. Or perhaps you memory of Debra goes all the way back to her founding of the legendary Art Muscle Magazine; perhaps she was your professor at MIAD. Or maybe you just want to know what's going on with her latest venture, Susceptible to Images. Whatever you know, or don't know yet, about Debra Brehmer, she's an icon of Milwaukee's art scene old guard - and a fascinating person to know.

Five questions for Milwaukee Film’s Jonathan Jackson

Milwaukee Film Artistic Director Jonathan Jackson answers five of YOUR questions about film in Milwaukee.

Flash Mob Architects Invade Milwaukee

Monday I was standing on the corner of 1st Street and Pittsburgh Ave. in Walker’s Point, chatting with a co-worker, when we eyed an organized ruckus underway in the abandoned parking lot across the street. “Parking lot” is actually a rather generous term for the space, which could more accurately be classified as a thin, vaguely triangular strip of gravel littered with debris. But what was happening on that strip was nothing short of a transformation.

Princess Peach, Sparrow and the new no-holds barred gender equality

It’s spring break at my house and I’m trying to work more from home this week to maximize face time with the youngsters. It’s been kind of hit and run so far, but it’s still nice. Today I took a break in the afternoon to hang out in the family room with my 11 and 12-year old boys. As it was cold and gloomy, they were enjoying some rare daytime Wii play, which they chose to spend with a dubious game Michael had picked out as an Easter gift for the younger. It’s called Facebreaker K.O. Party, selected over my protest of its T rating. “Comic Mischief and Violence?” scoffed Michael. “Really, how could it be worse than Super Smash Brothers Brawl?” Sparrow The latter is a game that features major characters from all the Nintendo games throughout time. It’s a wacky romp through amusement park-type scenes where the object of the game is to knock other cartoon characters off the screen using such amazing powers as being sucked in by Yoshi’s super-long tongue and pooped out as an egg. I acquiesced to Facebreaker under the pressures of a tight shopping schedule and a mounting household campaign against my perceived over-protection of the kids. I came bearing popcorn and juice and took a seat on the sofa. I was just in time – the boys were setting up for a fresh match of Punch-o-matic, where their characters were chosen randomly for them. Harry’s was a thick man called Steve, a video game freak with pecs (and belly) the size of Rhode Island. Jesse, the one more fearful of being labeled “soft” in any way, drew Sparrow, a very buff but extremely feminine (and sexy) pugilist with wispy blonde hair and a surprisingly long reach. “No fair!” exclaimed Harry. “You always get Sparrow!” Super Smash Brothers Brawl “It’s not on purpose,” retorted Jesse, “and besides, you’re pretty good. You might still be able to beat me.” This was a little unexpected, so I sat up straighter and gave the screen my full attention. The boys were ruthless. Harry threw Steve’s considerable weight behind every punch, while Jesse had Sparrow hang back until Steve was winded. Then she came in for the kill, jabbing fast and hard. Though it made me a little sick to my stomach to see the glaze of bloodlust in the boys’ eyes, I have to admit I was rooting for Sparrow just a little. After all, Steve was a huge dumb guy and Sparrow was like a cross between Lara Croft and Cat Woman. Who can resist that? In the end, though, Harry’s superior skill won out. With a two-punch move, Steve lofted Sparrow across the ring. She hit the mat hard and as soon as she staggered to her feet Steve finished her off, messing up her face for good measure. The boys were strangely gleeful, delighting in Sparrow’s purple bruises and split lip, shown in close-up as Sparrow panted, head down but eyes looking up […]

Weigh in now!

ThirdCoast’s Jon Anne Willow is a guest panelist every Wednesday on WTMJ-4’s “What’s Hot” news segment. Weigh in on today’s topics! 1. Packers announce 2009 schedule. The team will enjoy 5 nationally televised games despite their poor season last year. Is this justified? 2. Why do people wait until the last minute to prepare their tax returns? 3. A principal in San Antonio is ticketed after a neighbor complains that an elementary school is too noisy. What? If you miss today’s program, you can watch it online here.

Zweig Public Art Project to go to full council this morning

Despite the efforts of outspoken detractors Bob Donovan (Ald., 8th District) and Joe Dudzik (Ald., 11th District) to kill the project in committee, a full house of supporters of the project that included Visit Milwaukee (title) Dave Fantle, Cultural Alliance Executive Director Christine Harris and many others, joined the project’s elected supporters – especially Nic Kovac (Ald., 3rd District) and Michael Murphy (Ald., 10th District) to rally sufficient support to move the project forward. The Common Council meets later this morning. Public comment will not be permitted on the issue, but the council is expected to cast the votes that will decide the fate of the E. Wisconsin Ave. endeavor.

Public comment opportunity on Streetscape Project Tuesday morning

On Tuesday, April 14 at 8 a.m., Milwaukee’s Public Works Committee (in City Hall Room 301-B) will again be considering the Janet Zweig proposal for the Streetscape Arts Project. Public comment is invited. This Committee will vote up or down on the project. Procedurally, it is likely to be taken out of Committee (no matter what the vote) and moved to the Common Council – which meets at 9 a.m. on Tuesday.  Public comment is not allowed at a Common Council meeting, but it is open to attendance. Emails and phone calls to the Aldermen are critically important, particularly if they come from a constituent. Please make lots of contact, and get your friends to do the same. Here is the Council website: http://www.ci.mil.wi.us/council If you are interested, here is the body of the letter we sent to each Alderman: We believe that a strong public art program raises our creative capital. Milwaukee’s image as an innovative city with a vibrant arts community and top-notch creative assets is critical to whether or not we can recruit talent to move here, or get good employees to stay here.  Having a strong public arts program is one step toward improving the image of Milwaukee, which doesn’t always get the credit it deserves for our arts and culture assets and amenities. This public art process was put in to place years ago and the project has been moving forward according to all of the guidelines. The money has already been approved. The public art committee was comprised of people with the background and commitment of the public interest to make an artist choice that will serve our community well and meet the budgetary requirements. The chosen artist, Janet Zweig, has committed to spend the $60,000 matching dollars being approved with local artists, thereby giving very valuable jobs to our city and helping to make the project community-relevant. Furthermore, she has a stellar international reputation for her work and a Milwaukee background. We don’t need to personally like every piece of public art that we vote for – that is a good thing!  Art is a matter of preference.  You just need to like the idea of crafting a first-class city that can compete in these trying economic times.  Art goes hand in hand with better transportation, business development and all of the other efforts to bolster our economy. We appreciate all that you do to make this a better place to live, work, play and learn. We, the creative industries, are equally committed to making this a better place for all – and to bring lots more people and business. Diverse, creative expression is an important component to our city’s attraction Thank you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Christine Harris President and Executive Director Cultural Alliance of Greater Milwaukee 648 N. Plankinton Ave Suite 425 Milwaukee, WI 53203 charris@culturalalliancemke.org

Milwaukee Rep Announces Latest Pay-What-You-Can Performances

If you’re looking for an affordable way to see some great live theater, Milwaukee Repertory Theater offers Pay What You Can for select performances, you literally pay what you can afford for the ticket. (A minimum donation of $5.00 is suggested.) Tickets go on sale at 5:30 on the day of the Pay What You Can Performance. There is a limit of 10 tickets per person for the Quadracci Powerhouse performances and 4 tickets per person for the Stiemke Theater performances. Pay What You Can Performances for I JUST STOPPED BY TO SEE THE MAN are Wednesday, April 8th and Thursday, April 9th. Dates for THE CHERRY ORCHARD are Tuesday, April 14th and Wednesday, April 15th. I JUST STOPPED BY TO SEE THE MAN will be playing in The Rep’s Stiemke Theater, and THE CHERRY ORCHARD is in The Rep’s Quadracci Powerhouse Theater. All Pay What You Can Performances begin at 7:30. Both theaters are located at 108 E. Wells Street. For more information, please call The Rep’s Ticket Office at 414-224-9490. Enjoy!

let’s get small

It’s been another terrible week for newspapers. Four Michigan cities will soon be without dailies; Reuters reported yesterday that Conley Media is cutting the Monday editions of the Waukesha Freeman and the West Bend Daily News (what will they call it now?); Cox Publications is cutting about 245 jobs at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Hearst Corp. is relieving about 200 employees of their positions at the Houston Chronicle; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is likely to see another round of layoffs very soon as well. These cuts represent staff reductions of 10 to 30-percent at their respective institutions, outpacing even the grim overall decline in American jobs exponentially. This is just one week, not even worse than last week, or the week before. We all get it. The newspaper iceberg is melting faster than polar bear habitat. Many journalists I talk to now have shifted their thinking from wondering when flood will subside to setting up their music stands on deck. This latter carries a certain air of tragic nobility, but it’s really a crying shame. Even iconic Madison newsman and WPRI think-tanker Marc Eisen seems unable to move beyond the mathematics of hopelessness. And that, if you have followed his illustrious and dedicated career, is not a good sign. Think about it: if the very people who hold our best hope for preserving journalism have given up, then what chance do we have? It’s time to think small In the now-notorious TIME Magazine article from February 5, 2009, former managing editor Walter Isaacson proposes that a micro-pay system for accessing online news content could help to rebuild plummeting newspaper revenue and decrease journalism’s reliance on the will and whims of advertisers. Regrettably, the article has been widely dismissed by many in the industry who are dead certain that readers will not pay for content. I beg to differ. We willingly pay for premium television, for cell phone service, for high-speed Internet, for satellite radio, for GPS service. We buy music on the web. We pay monthly subscription fees for web-based services and to download books to our Kindles. There was great resistance to all of these things at first, but in the end, appetite overtook the reluctance to pony up. I don’t understand why it would be different for news, which has never been consumed in such quantities as it is today. But despite how obvious it seems to me (and other, far more qualified minds), this thinking is widely dismissed by the dwindling journalism community itself as over-simplistic. “People will still find a way to steal it” is one argument, as is “Someone will always be willing to provide it for free.” So what? What about the thousands of pirate music sites you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting? As far as I can tell, the fact that people will continue to steal music didn’t keep iTunes from selling $3.4 billion worth of songs, 99-cents at a time, in 2008. That’s an $840 million increase over 2007, despite the […]

It’s time to change the conversation

Newspapers are too often confused with news. But if the container no longer works, it's time to find one that does. This is a re-post (with additions) of an earlier story.

It’s your world, explore away.

As most people reading this know, we at Vital Media group were, until very recently, the publishers of VITAL Source Magazine. For seven years VITAL lived in print, found monthly on stands around the Milwaukee metro. Focusing mostly on arts and culture with some coverage of community initiatives and issues, VITAL was a great little mag that entertained about 30,000 people once every 30 days. There were addictive regular columns like SubVersions and REEL Milwaukee, locally authored comics and a puzzle page. We hosted some of the city’s most fun parties. But guess what? For all that we did right (and all that could have been done much better) it didn’t matter in the end. When the economic apocalypse hit last year, we knew by late December that it made no sense to hang on to our beloved, arcane publishing model. So we pulled the plug on the printed magazine, which garnered more attention in death than it ever had in life. Go figure. What transpired in the days that followed can best be called “a long story.” We’d had our new website in development for six months, but even though we were planning all sorts of new experiential features, it was still slated to be the turbo version of the traditional VITAL Source product. In hindsight, this would have garnered a resounding yawn from you and made us just another local website vying for ad dollars and reader eyes. And none of us needed seven more years of that. So, in a feat that I will go ahead and term derring-do, we sat down with a metaphorical clean sheet of paper and re-imagined ourselves from the ground up. We wanted to remain committed to our local audience, but from a broader horizon of interests and concerns. Of course, that’s just fancy marketing talk for wanting to offer more things of more compelling interest to more readers and include the ideas of more smart and interesting people. It’s not a revolutionary idea, by any means, but rather the Holy Grail for online publishers, an elusive recipe for the very elixir of life. On a broad scale, Slate and Salon do it right for newsies, as does Technorati for tech-types. These three sites (and others) author a great deal of their own content, but also pull in carefully selected feeds and stories from outside sources compatible with their audience’s interests. The result is a rodeo of voices, a veritable cornucopia of really good reading for folks with a certain set of interests. It’s kind of like the old portal idea from way back at the turn of the 21st century, but amped up with live feeds, sharing tools, social networking opps, video, podcasts and other stuff our (slightly) older siblings only dreamed about. We believe this model can fill a real need at the local level, at a time when worlds are colliding. On one side, most daily newspapers have moved too slowly to embrace the very real opportunities for high quality, […]

VITAL Source makes NY Times, thanks to MJS

Sheesh. Say what you want about the declining importance of our nation’s foremost daily newspapers, but I bet if you made the New York Times you’d tell all your neighbors. I know I would… and so I am. This morning we were all in the office, just settling into our coffee and email, when the phone rang. It was a VITAL reader who saw in today’s Times that VITAL had gone out of business. The reader had called to express his condolences but was delighted to hear that the story was untrue. We all work in one giant open office, so there’s no such thing as privacy. Ryan had taken the call, and from one side the conversation had sounded unremarkable. But as soon as she hung up, she yelled “What the _____!” and ran to a computer where she looked up the article in question. We all gathered round and read in horror. Here it is: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/business/media/26gamer.html The thrust of the story is about how the owner of one magazine, Hardcore Gamer, faced with shutting the book down, put it up for sale on eBay and successfully sold it. The lead paragraph mentions Vital Source as being among over a dozen magazines to fold in January 2009 alone. Even though it’s just a passing mention, it’s still the New York Times and I felt the need (once again) to clarify our position. Through the website, I emailed Stephanie Clifford, the author: I read with interest this morning your story about Hardcore Gamer and its quest to stay in business by selling to the highest eBay bidder. I do urgently need to clarify, however, one item. As the editor in chief and co-publisher of Vital Source, which you mentioned in your opening paragraph, I feel compelled to let you know that we are not folding, but simply ceasing to print. We currently enjoy a very healthy web audience and will be launching a much-expanded portal in early March. This portal … will serve the hyper-local constituency of the Milwaukee-area population, and allow us to better meet the information, entertainment and news needs of our audience. Of particular note is the fact that we have not lost one single print advertiser to the change; ALL of them signed up with us online. Thanks in advance for any consideration in clarifying this. I’m sure you know that many people will read your article and simply take it at face value if no addendum is offered. I can be reached at 414-XXX-XXXX if you’re interested in speaking further about how one magazine is evolving rapidly to meet the changing demands of the marketplace. Best Regards, Jon Anne Willow To my surprise (just because you never know if people read their site-submitted messages), I received a prompt and courteous response with the assurance that a correction (which she had me verify) would be printed in the paper with an addendum added to the online story. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who contacted her. […]

Thanks to our Fearless Leaders

Not much time to write at the moment, but I wanted to extend my sincere thanks to everyone who attended our Fearless Leaders Awards last Thursday evening. There was so much warmth in the room, and our leaders told some incredible personal stories that brought laughter, tears and smiles to the faces of all within earshot. It wouldn’t have been possible without our sponsors and network of support, so thanks to all of you as well from the bottom of our hearts. Soon we’ll be putting up a photo album from the evening and we are looking at some video footage we’d like to edit together. Stay tuned for information on the 2010 awards. That starts in the fall and promises to be bigger and better every year going forward. Peace, Jon Anne

Weighing in on the big announcement

I’m pretty sure this will be the last word on the subject of how it went when we made the announcement to go online full time, but I’ve gotten some really interesting feedback that I wanted to share. With only a couple of exceptions, the response from people was 100% positive, but a few folks had some advice for me on style points, with which I concur wholeheartedly. The letter below is from Shelly Tabor of BizTimes, and came to me through a LinkedIn group to which we both belong. I am publishing it with her permission. Hi Jon Anne, The talk in our office, BizTimes Media (formerly Small Business Times) was that Vital Source was done and the headline on the BizTimes Daily on Monday was “Publishers pull plug on Vital Source magazine”. Our reporters did get the information correct… the second and third sentences of the story correctly state that you are continuing your services and focusing everything to the web. I’m finding that it is more difficult for people to focus on the positive these days. Publishing is not dead… it is just going through a transition (like so many other industries). To survive and to appeal to a younger demographic, the focus must be web-based. I applaud you for taking the appropriate steps for survival and growth. My one bit of advice to everyone is to present information (press releases/ads/commercials) with a positive spin. I didn’t get to see your press release, so I am not saying that you did anything wrong. [Ed. Note: It was “VITAL Publications, LLC to cease printing VITAL Source Magazine”] Using this situation as an example… the first thing you should tell people is that focusing on the web product, planning for the future (and don’t be afraid to add a lot of frill and hoopla)… and then add that you will be discontinuing the print version. I know you are just trying to present the information, but your words paint a picture — and it’s better to paint a pretty one. The headline of our news report was so glum… you are not pulling the plug, you are simply regrouping and focusing on your future in publishing — a much greener future (both environmentally and economically, I hope)! I wish you much success in 2009! Can’t wait to see the website relaunch! Sincerely, Shelly Tabor Art Director BizTimes Media LLC — Biztimes.com | BizTimes Milwaukee | BizTimes Events | BizTech Expo | BizTimes Custom Publishing She is absolutely correct. I wrote the press release from a reporter’s viewpoint, not thinking about it through the lens of how it would be received, and the poor choice of headline was the kicker. I should have led with the good news and maybe some of the flap that’s ensued since the unfortunate MJS brief was posted last Sunday evening could have been avoided. And for my part in all of this, I owe MJS business reporter Rick Romell an apology. While his choice […]

What’s going on

What’s going on? Monday was kind of crazy around here. We announced that we are ceasing printing of our beloved VITAL Source, effective immediately, which in turn led to a (bigger than we expected) flood of emails, phone calls and damage control. But wait… immediately? Seems kind of sudden, doesn’t it? Seems so to us as well, but it’s like this… pardon the descent to metaphor, it’s one of my favorite literary devices and I’m short on time this morning. We went into 2008 with a burlap bag that had a little sand in the bottom. The sand represents revenue and resources. Over the year we filled it up pretty well for the first time, the customary numerous tiny rips seemingly repaired at long last. Then in late fall, we started to see signs of stress on our poor burlap receptacle. As the grains started to trickle out of a new little tear, we found ways to plug the hole or use less sand. Then suddenly, near the end of the year, we were faced with a couple of MAJOR cost increases. Which created a rip in the other side of the bag. Now there was a hole in each side of the bag and not enough sand coming in to keep it heavy. So we looked at every aspect of our bag and what caused it to rip most often. Sadly, it was producing the magazine in print form. Our printing costs increased dramatically January 1 and our revenue was somewhat weak – not terrible, but not enough for a small business with limited resources. The other parts of the business are still doing pretty well but the losses from the magazine would have ultimately emptied the bag entirely unless the economy magically turned around in less than a year. Which it’s not going to do. So we made a difficult decision. In actuality, this only affects the timing of an already-existing bigger plan. The new web portal we will now launch in February instead of April has been long in the planning and we would have liked to have done both simultaneously for awhile to see how the two worked together. But as unfunded operators with no desire to take on additional debt in these uncertain times, we had to make a choice: keep shoring it up and hope for the best or use our small reserves to follow through with our plan. We chose the future over the present. Our new site will be a forum for many voices within the community, expanding on the great base we’ve already built. We’ll continue to offer most of what was best about VITAL Source – SubVersions, REEL Milwaukee, Chow Baby!, One World, Stripwax, Talk Derby to Me, my column, What’s Happenin’ Milwaukee and more. We’ll also continue to steward Fan-Belt, Milwaukee’s most excellent independent music blog. And who knows? Maybe you’ll see VITAL Source Magazine on the streets again. Maybe sooner than you think.

VITAL Source is NOT calling it quits

So Rick Romell, who I was told was one of the best business reporters in the newsroom over at the ailing Journal Sentinel, posted a news brief on their website this evening that was cause for concern in several areas: 1. It was embargoed until Monday – a BIG journalistic no-no 2. It was grossly inaccurate in both spirit and fact 3. This guy pulled my chain for 30 minutes on the phone doing an interview, then basically condensed a statement I’d sent the paper, editing for length by removing important pieces of the truth and substituting some sort of sloppy interpretative dance version of of the facts. I know I’m not supposed to be rude, being a comrade in arms in the so-called journalism brotherhood, but hey, he shot at me first. And if it was an accident, well, I’m still bleeding, so if I poke him in the eye it was self-defense. I’m so angry I could spit, and I let their deputy business editor know it. In fact, that’s a direct quote from my email to Jim Nelson. Jim asked that I not be too quick to judge Rick personally, as it could have been the copy desk who took his story and dramatically changed it. The specifics of who did what don’t matter to me; the fact remains that this is some seriously sloppy, potentially damaging “reporting.” So what’s really going on? Here it is, in plain English. Just the facts. I’m pasting the press release itself so you can decide whether we’re going out of business by evaluating the same information received by the professionals. And the media wonders why nobody believes a word they say… FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Jon Anne Willow 414-372-5351 jwillow@vitalsourcemag.com January 5, 2009 VITAL Publications, LLC to cease printing VITAL Source Magazine; move will strengthen other business lines [MILWAUKEE, WI]—The majority partners in VITAL Publications, LLC, announced this morning that, effective with the current issue (January 2009), the company will no longer print local culture magazine VITAL Source. The company will continue to provide media distribution and creative services (including design, writing and copy editing) to Milwaukee businesses and non-profit organizations, and to operate its popular website, vitalsourcemag.com, which will relaunch in early February with a new focus and feature set to better meet the needs of its audience. Further information on the new site will be available soon. Though the magazine had a record year in 2008 and the company as a whole is expected to turn a profit for the first time since it was founded in late 2001, the recent sudden downturn in the economy has dramatically changed the magazine’s revenue forecast for 2009. According to the owners, the reduction in overhead realized by taking VITAL Source out of production will keep the company cash-positive and positioned to continue its growth trajectory. “This is what makes sense right now,” said Editor in Chief and co-Publisher Jon Anne Willow. “It breaks our hearts to think we won’t be […]

This is Fearless

By Amy Elliott, Brian Jacobson, Erin Petersen, Erin Wolf Introduction by Jon Anne Willow, photograph by Erin Landry The idea of leadership has been receiving a lot of play lately, not only in the media but also in the conversations of everyday people. Too often, in the last several years in particular, the term “leadership” is modified by adjectives like “vacuum,” “lack of” and “inadequate.” When we at VITAL began planning these awards in early 2008, it was in response to a general feeling that our community and our nation were in the grips of a collective malaise brought on in part by the sinking sensation that things were spinning out of control and nobody was stepping up to do anything meaningful about the country’s direction. We could relate, and there wasn’t much good news coming from the top. Nevertheless, we could all think of individual citizens who apparently missed the memo to abandon all hope and continued to work within their communities for positive change, keeping their chins up, chests out and heads down but not bowed. In fact, we thought of so many that we realized there must be hundreds more right here in Milwaukee. So instead of picking people we knew in a closed-door staff meeting, we put the vote to the people of our city. And over 3,000 of you weighed in. That’s democracy in action, and we thank each of you sincerely for taking the time to recognize the efforts of all our nominees and award winners. Most of you who read this will be familiar with the larger concept of leadership, though you may not have thought about it much until the recent presidential election brought the idea back into vogue. The term has since gained momentum, first as a campaign slogan and now as a very real expectation of our next president, who takes the helm in such troubling times. Leadership is not about being in charge – some of the best leaders are peers, not bosses – nor is it about being the face connected with a name or cause. Leadership comes from within, and very often lies dormant until required. After all, what sane person grows up wanting to go down with the ship, lead the charge to battle or otherwise commit to exposing themselves to all sorts of hopelessness and unpleasantness on a daily basis? The answer is that nobody sane would think this is a good idea. But as William Shakespeare famously wrote: “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” The latter circumstance, I believe, is how most greatness is uncovered. It is human nature to follow, to fit in and to believe that doing no harm is doing enough. It’s how most of us are wired, so if this is you, you’re in good company with most of the human race. But in your heart, don’t you ever yearn to hear a call that you can’t […]

Imagine if you will…

It’s been a long and grinding year, from the shotgun start of the presidential primaries to the historic election of Barack Obama and the concurrent (though unrelated) collapse of financial markets worldwide. You were there – you know – and you don’t need me to offer up yet another post-mortem on a year that can only be categorized as monumentally historic. Besides, the story of these times is so far from written that summarizing right now seems pointless. Instead, I humbly request that I be among the first to wish you peace, hope and better sleep in the new year. Don’t snort: the chance of my wish coming true is at least as strong as that of me getting a pony for Christmas. Please don’t feel responsible for making my equine holiday wish a reality; at this point in my life, if I ever decide that I must have my own pony I’ll find a way to make it happen. And you can find a way to grant yourself peace and restful nights: it’s actually within your reach, and I’m going to share the secret with you now. Remember when you were little and it was time to get ready for bed? Your parents would have you put away your stuff, take a bath and put on your jammies. Sometimes you’d have a snack and then crawl into your warm bed with a book or the radio playing quietly. Eventually you’d turn off the light and drift down into unconsciousness, thoughts of the day just past or the day ahead curling like mist around your dream factory, priming the pump for the night to come. Your details might be different from these, but the outcome is the same: a graceful transition from the chaos of the day into the solace of sleep, a chance to regenerate and face the new morning head-on. I neglected this ritual for nearly three decades. As a typical young adult I flew from bed to school or work, from obligated time into a frenzied social life, slamming back into bed late and crashing hard (or staring at the ceiling for hours) until my alarm clock pulled me with a squawk from my mattress once again. I didn’t prioritize it as a single mom and new business owner, either. How could I? Time becomes so compressed for grownups, until you look in the mirror one morning and realize that you’ve aged, the lines and gray hair informing you in no uncertain terms that there’s no traveling backwards. You can’t stop time and the inexorable hunger of its advances. Time is like fire: always consuming you, even as it paves the way for new beginnings. But you can steal from time – a moment here and there – and reclaim yourself. I can attest that the moments you take back from the voracity of the daily grind are well-invested, replenishing your under-valued emotional and spiritual reservoir and providing a source of strength from which to draw in […]

We’re all in this together

Occasionally I find myself in the awkward position of having to file this column in the figurative hours just before a momentous event. This time, of course, it’s the race between Barack Obama and John McCain for the presidency. I could have gone ahead and predicted the ’04 elections and written from that perspective, and I think I can predict this one. But in this sense, I’m not much of a risk-taker. So if you’re reading this after November 4, understand that this was written in October and check this space in December, where I might share some thoughts on the election. Then again, I might be as weary of the whole thing as you, ready to move on and just see what comes next. On second thought, I’m pretty sure I’ll be all done thinking about the election by December, so I won’t bore any of us with ruminating further on the implications of its outcome – you hereby have my solemn promise on that. But I can’t guarantee that I won’t still be thinking about the mess we’re in and how we’re going to get out of it. Barring the end of the world, I believe we can recover from this, even if the global power structure shifts dramatically. We may not come out on top of the super-power dog pile in the end, but either way it’s going to take a few years before we can tell how things are going to shake out. And whatever form the new world order takes, it, too, will be impermanent. Just ask the Macedonians. For years I’ve been obsessing over the now-arrived (and amazingly predictable) financial market collapse. I’ve been writing about our dangerously over-valued economy since 2003 and moved my money (what little there is of it) to CDs and long-term growth funds in 2006. I’ve only ever borrowed $500 against my house (to help pay for new gutters) and I drive a 1996 Corolla that’s been paid off for ten years and gets 35 mpg in town. I don’t have cable and my kids don’t freak out about hand-me-downs. Sure, my business could go belly-up in 2009 (though things look stable right now), but if it does, we had a good run and I’m probably qualified for some sort of job that will keep food on the table and a roof over our heads should VITAL’s little house of cards be blown away by the winds of changing fortune. Am I pessimistic? Absolutely not, in part because in my studies, I’ve learned at least one thing: nobody is invulnerable. A recent decline in demand for Chinese steel, coupled with stagnant or falling fossil fuel consumption in many developed countries, has driven oil prices down to less than $100 per barrel (at this writing). OPEC responded recently by signaling it would cut production to stabilize prices, but Saudi Arabia, the world’s single largest oil producer, broke ranks and declared it would continue with plans to increase production, partly to […]

One Question

In the run-up to this historic election cycle, VITAL asked a sampling of your elected officials one question. We deliberately chose politicians at the city, county, state and federal levels, both Republicans and Democrats, in the hope that the responses of five different people who serve their constituencies from different horizons of perspective would offer some collective insight into where we are, where we’re headed and how we’re going to get there in the next four years. Their repsonses virtually careen from fiery stump speech to party line recitation to four-point-plan. If you follow politics, not much here will surprise you, but it is a rather fascinating character study.–Jon Anne Willow Willie L. Hines Jr. Alderman, 15th District Milwaukee Common Council President Having grown up in public housing, I am well acquainted with severe struggles many residents of Milwaukee face. My nine siblings and I always knew that having food on the table was not something to take for granted. We witnessed decay and destruction up close. And we learned to be thankful for everything, in and out of season – regardless of circumstances. Those childhood lessons have equipped me with a unique perspective when it comes to government and serving the needs of citizens. I know that significant challenges present significant opportunities – it’s a belief that guides my everyday life as an alderman and as Common Council President. I’ve witnessed individuals and communities in my district overcome myriad obstacles, so I know that it can be done with the right mix of determination and sound public policy. In regard to unemployment, housing and transportation, Milwaukee can do much better. We can – and should – face down these challenges and transform them into opportunities for growth, prosperity and a better quality of life for everyone. Part of the solution rests in a word that is often talked about but seldom realized: regionalism.Just as Milwaukee has its share of challenges, so too do our suburban neighbors: New Berlin has the largest industrial park in the state, but they need employees; many Waukesha residents want to get in and out of downtown Milwaukee quickly, but our inter-transit system is anemic; Shorewood and Whitefish Bay rely on Milwaukee for their employment options, but they offer almost no affordable housing. By recognizing that we are all one community, we can leverage our mutual advantages to address our mutual shortcomings. If Milwaukee can have sister-city relationships with municipalities in China and Africa, surely we can collaborate with our suburban counterparts. Recently, the topic of regionalism was fiercely debated when New Berlin came to Milwaukee seeking a deal for Lake Michigan water. This was not a surprise; as soon as the Great Lakes Compact was signed, we new that New Berlin would be the first candidate on the docket to be vetted for full connection to Milwaukee’s world-class fresh water infrastructure. Some have said that the New Berlin/Milwaukee water agreement offered an example of regionalism. But I say regionalism has to be a twoway […]

Reconsidering the turkey

The other day my son and I were driving in the country when we saw a small rafter of wild turkeys hanging out by the side of the road. We stopped to watch, which eventually caused the big tom to lead the dozen or so females and adolescents back to the tall meadow stand at a leisurely pace, one eye on us and one on his charges. He perched in a low tree, puffed up and giving orders in what sounded like a calm but firm voice, not descending until it was time to form a rear guard of one. It was very cool. For a 10-year old, Harrison is a fount of history and science trivia. As we pulled away he asked me if I knew that Ben Franklin thought the turkey would make a better national bird than the bald eagle. “I did know that,” I replied. “Do you know why?” “Because he thought turkeys were smarter and more honest than eagles, and that was a better symbol for America.” I asked if he agreed. “I think,” he replied, “that the turkey would be a better symbol of how we should be, but the eagle is more accurate for how we are.” Indeed. Benjamin Franklin’s now-famous thoughts on the turkey were disclosed in a letter to his daughter in 1784: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. …[T]oo lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him. … [L]like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country…For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird …He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage…” Franklin never petitioned his idea formally. Maybe he already had a sense of the direction in which things were headed and didn’t see the value in ruffling any feathers (sorry). He was, after all, a pretty smart guy, and eerily prescient on a host of matters. Philosophically, as a publisher, I’m probably a lot like Ben Franklin, who worked as a civil servant late into his life, more interested in improving the postal service, the library system and municipal functions than holding great power on the world stage. So when you read VITAL Source online or in print, […]

Chances are

In America, life is dangerous. We hear ominous factoids all the time about the ways we’re in danger every time we eat, breathe, talk on our phones or walk down the street. In a very general way, we all have a sense that something bad could happen at any time. And it’s true! To illustrate, I’ve created a quick “Chance Chart” which is by no means complete but which gets the point across: Incident: Chance it will happen A man will develop cancer: 1 in 2 A woman will develop cancer: 1 in 3 A woman will be sexually assaulted: 1 in 4 A man will be sexually assaulted: 1 in 33 You’ll die from heart disease: 1 in 3 You’ll have a stroke: 1 in 6 You’ll be the victim of a serious crime: 1 in 20 You’ll lose a child this year: 1 in 5,000 Kind of puts things in perspective, don’t you think? All I’m saying is that there’s a lot out there to genuinely worry about, but I’ll make a gentleman’s bet with anyone that on a daily basis, we worry about a whole lot of stuff that’s a lot less important. Take, for example, our recent stress over what the rest of the world was going to think of us for throwing up a statue of Fonzie on the Riverwalk. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but then again I’m not the one who got my butt in gear and made an attention-garnering piece of public “art” happen. Love it or hate it, it brought in the national morning news shows and a handful of 20th century TV actors who wouldn’t have dropped in for breakfast otherwise. And in the end, how many New Yorkers are going to pass by Milwaukee for their summer vacation next year because our city has lame taste in bronze statues? The other day I was enjoying a cup of coffee at Anodyne and indulged myself in eavesdropping on two women who spent almost 15 minutes worrying (loudly, hence the indulgence) about what kind of First Lady Michelle Obama will make. According to them, Obama comes off as cold, bitter, even unpatriotic and racist. Seriously? Did either of them take the time to read her “controversial” Princeton thesis? And the “whitey” comment supposedly caught on video? Doesn’t exist. Here’s why some people really don’t like her: she’s Condoleezza Rice’s doppelganger, only younger and with better hair. And everybody – even Republicans – is scared of Condi, for more established reasons. But here’s my favorite. When VITAL published its August issue with Nikki McGuinnis’ contest-winning photograph of a little boy nestled on the shelf of an open refrigerator on the cover, we received a veritable blizzard of calls, emails and even real live letters on the subject. Some were positive, with remarks ranging from the issue’s general attractiveness to our “artistic daring.” Needless to say, there was also negative feedback. One, obviously written by an elderly woman, went so far as […]

I want to believe

A couple of weekends ago I painted my back landing. When I bought my house in early 2001 almost every wall was a flat white – supposedly to attract buyers – and I’ve been meaning to remedy this ever since. But time does have a way of slipping into the future and over the ensuing years my interior has devolved from boring to shabby through the hard wear only a young family can deliver. I was finally motivated to start with the hall by the relatively narrow scope of the project, seven years of little handprints that would no longer wash off and the unexpected acquisition of a cute storage cabinet rescued from my neighbors’ curb. In a fit of largesse, I also bought curtains, rugs and hanging shelves. Forty labor hours and a hundred bucks later I had the sweetest little entryway you can imagine – charming, really, in robin’s egg blue against dark wood, white and brushed stainless accessories showing off my vintage coffee pot collection to perfection. Most people enter my home through the back door, so it’s a great first impression. But now when you walk through to the kitchen, its flaws are immediately evident. Ugly, faded wallpaper peels from more than one corner, the cabinet bases are chipped, the ceiling fan is grotesque and the top of the fridge doubles as cereal box storage. The table and chairs are all wrong and there’s nowhere to put everything away. Frankly, the whole thing is a disaster and it’s making me crazy. Meanwhile, the kitchen continues to be the center of our home, piles of papers and crowded counters be damned. The peeling paper, dust in the corners and imperfect linoleum don’t seem to deter everyone from gathering there, leaving the typically tidy (and much more attractive) living room to gather dust. I’ve tried pointing out the kitchen’s flaws, but no one else seems concerned, suggesting that some well-chosen color would fix it right up. I’m less optimistic: it’s not as simple as throwing down a coat of paint when you have the organizational issues innate to an 83-year-old kitchen – a tiny, counter-less mess with (somehow) three doorways and two windows, plus ancient, energy-sucking appliances. To make any true functional improvements would cost at least a thousand bucks. And that wouldn’t even get me a dishwasher. I feel stuck. I recently opened a home equity line of credit to have my roof fixed, and there’s still plenty left to borrow on, but I’m worried about the payments. I’m not as over-extended as some people, but my apple cart could certainly tip over with a stroke or two of severely bad luck. In other words, I’m just like you, your neighbor and just about everyone else: I’m anxious about what’s still to come and have no idea how bad it’s really going to get. For now, at least, Milwaukee doesn’t have it as bad as many other cities. There’s little comfort there, I know, but at least […]

Mavericks and Leaders

There are only three paths in life for a free spirit: lazy dreamer, maverick and leader. Of course there’s a fourth option, and one that many attempt – some to the end of their days – avoidance of embracing one’s true nature. The strongest of these reassure themselves that they’re “doing the right thing” by attaining middle management status so their kids can have the opportunities they didn’t (though I believe this is a myth, and that foregoing your own fulfillment sets a terrible example). Others spend their lives bouncing from job to job, looking for that magical situation in which they can finally be happy. But for those who recognize their own nature and acknowledge its calling, none of the choices are easy (assuming the absence of a trust fund). Lazy dreamer is the most attractive option for the young. Life is simple: when you have ten bucks, you get three beers at your corner bar. You might have a guitar, or a cat, or a collection of first edition Raymond Carver hardbacks – things you cherish not for their material value, but because they’re special to you. You’re probably satisfactorily under-employed somewhere that offers a flexible schedule. Your friends are artists and activists, and collectively you reinforce each others’ belief in simple pleasures and the evils of material enslavement. It’s a good life for awhile, and some folks keep with it all of their days. For others, there comes a time – typically in one’s late 20s or early 30s – when la vie bohème loses its charm. You may want to set up house with your baby, you might be tired of being broke all the time or perhaps you’re simply sick of hearing that you’re a chronic fuck-up. At this disheartening fork in the road, there are two paths: the aforementioned denial of your nature (at least temporarily) or the reinvention of yourself as a maverick. Mavericks are the mythic darlings of American culture. They work tirelessly in pursuit of their personal goals while bowing to no man; they are the innovators, the self-made millionaires, the rock stars. They don’t punch a time clock. For hard-working free spirits, this is probably the best life imaginable. It’s helpful to have an in-demand business skill you can hone into a personal empire, but even if you don’t you can dedicate yourself to becoming a skilled artisan and make a nice living while maintaining your independence. One thing not taught in maverick school, though, is the catch: the successful ones will find themselves at another fork in the road, and they’ll have to make a choice: to stay free and accept the limits of the one-man band, or to build something larger than one person can achieve. It’s the very definition of irony. While mavericks enjoy (immensely, really) widespread fraternity with other mavericks, with the people for whom they provide services and with any envious joe they find on a barstool at 5:30 on a Friday night with their […]

Mavericks and leaders

There are only three paths in life for a free spirit: lazy dreamer, maverick and leader. Of course there’s a fourth option, and one that many attempt – some to the end of their days – avoidance of embracing one’s true nature. The strongest of these reassure themselves that they’re “doing the right thing” by attaining middle management status so their kids can have the opportunities they didn’t (though I believe this is a myth, and that foregoing your own fulfillment sets a terrible example). Others spend their lives bouncing from job to job, looking for that magical situation in which they can finally be happy. But for those who recognize their own nature and acknowledge its calling, none of the choices are easy (assuming the absence of a trust fund). Lazy dreamer is the most attractive option for the young. Life is simple: when you have ten bucks, you get three beers at your corner bar. You might have a guitar, or a cat, or a collection of first edition Raymond Carver hardbacks – things you cherish not for their material value, but because they’re special to you. You’re probably satisfactorily under-employed somewhere that offers a flexible schedule. Your friends are artists and activists, and collectively you reinforce each others’ belief in simple pleasures and the evils of material enslavement. It’s a good life for awhile, and some folks keep with it all of their days. For others, there comes a time – typically in one’s late 20s or early 30s – when la vie bohème loses its charm. You may want to set up house with your baby, you might be tired of being broke all the time or perhaps you’re simply sick of hearing that you’re a chronic fuck-up. At this disheartening fork in the road, there are two paths: the aforementioned denial of your nature (at least temporarily) or the reinvention of yourself as a maverick. Mavericks are the mythic darlings of American culture. They work tirelessly in pursuit of their personal goals while bowing to no man; they are the innovators, the self-made millionaires, the rock stars. They don’t punch a time clock. For hard-working free spirits, this is probably the best life imaginable. It’s helpful to have an in-demand business skill you can hone into a personal empire, but even if you don’t you can dedicate yourself to becoming a skilled artisan and make a nice living while maintaining your independence. One thing not taught in maverick school, though, is the catch: the successful ones will find themselves at another fork in the road, and they’ll have to make a choice: to stay free and accept the limits of the one-man band, or to build something larger than one person can achieve. It’s the very definition of irony. While mavericks enjoy (immensely, really) widespread fraternity with other mavericks, with the people for whom they provide services and with any envious joe they find on a barstool at 5:30 on a Friday night with their […]

Faster than the speed of time

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t waste at least a little thinking space over how much time speeds up as we age. The phenomenon has spawned numerous mathematical theories and countless arguments about physiology and environment that keep mathematicians and social scientists eternally butting heads in the halls of academia. In real life, the passage of time manifests itself as an increasingly kaleidoscopic sense of memory and the feeling that summer gets shorter every year. After all, when you’re six and you only have linear memories from maybe the last three years, an 11-week summer vacation is effectively 7% of your whole life. At 40, 7% is 145 weeks, or almost three years. That’s quite a difference. For ongoing, in-depth exploration of time acceleration theory, I suggest having a bunch of kids and spreading their ages out over as many years as you can. My sample is rather small for this model: I have five kids aged 10 to 18, with nieces and nephews expanding the data set to the ages of 5 to 21. My research has nothing to do with the kids’ perception of time, but with my own. I can’t keep up with how often these kids are metamorphosing, while my own growth has slowed to a barely evolutionary crawl. Two years ago my oldest daughter Alex was a high school junior looking forward to her 16th birthday, feeling like she had the world by the ass. This morning she probably got up early in the south side apartment she shares with her boyfriend, let the dog out and took the bus to her cashier job. She’s figuring herself out, and for now she just wants to work and live on her own. At this time in 2006, my son Harrison was having a hell of a time understanding that he wasn’t the center of the universe (partly my fault, for sure). Since then, he’s been through a slew of changes that could erode the emotional security of any man, but he seems more grounded than a lot of people I know, kid or adult. Savannah just reached the delightful age of 14, complete with all the age-appropriate trappings, and Jesse is starting to smell like puberty is not far off. But right now it’s Cassidy who amazes me the most. When I met Cass she was freshly 14, and the family member everyone was afraid of provoking. Known for her dark bursts of temper, she kept to herself a lot, painting her nails black and staring moodily into space for hours on end. As I was getting to know her siblings, I found some way to bond with each of them, but Cassidy was a pissed-off Cheshire Cat to me. I even lowered myself to her engagement style once or twice, to my great personal mortification. But in the thick of what I think back on as “the dark times,” Cass started sitting in the kitchen while I cooked, slicing vegetables for sauce and helping out […]

No more gilding the lily

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily… is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” —Shakespeare, from King John (1595): This morning my son and I were planning his 10th birthday party. I live in East Town Tosa, a neighborhood that straddles the border between affluent aspirations and working class reality. His first few years of school, in the early 2000s, I was frequently faced with extravagant birthday parties and gift-giving that felt like either intense competition between parents or the setting of an unhealthy precedent. Of course, everyone’s intentions were good, but it still bugged me. So each year when Harry’s turn to “celebrate” came, I sent a note to parents asking that he not receive gifts in excess of $20 and informing them that we would not open presents at the party, but would send thank-you’s afterward. To my surprise, a few parents whispered their approval in my ear, though just a few took up the call. Harry’s parties get great reviews – we’ve done a backyard campout, a day at Miller Beach, an all-night Star Wars movie-thon (complete with light saber battles in the living room) and my favorite – inviting three boys over to pick up all the sticks in my yard, then burning them in the fire pit while roasting marshmallows. Two for one, everybody wins! And here’s what you don’t see at his get-togethers: boys comparing the gifts they brought; begging for more tokens when they run out first; crying quiet tears in the back seat because they didn’t win a big prize at the arcade. The reason is simple: contentment truly is more about imagination than money. And Harry’s story is a metaphor for what I see all around me these days. Over the last decade, so many fools (yeah, I said it) have spent up their available credit simply because they could, blindly swallowing fantasy stories about an ever-expanding economy and America’s lifestyle entitlement. They believed it was okay to pay way too much for a house because interest rates were low; they justified gas-guzzling, expensive-to-insure, high-payment vehicles for the flimsiest of reasons, which in fact came down to no more than, “It’s shiny and I want it like an Oompa Loompa – now.” At the same time, over 40 million citizens were without health insurance and 13 million children were living below the poverty line. If put to the question, only the most megalomaniacal of conservative thinkers could believe the situation was good for the future of the nation. It just goes to show another apparent deficiency in our education system: the lack of emphasis on cautionary tales. The Panic of 1893, the 1907 Bankers Panic (the 4th in 34 years), the Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, the 1973 oil crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the 1990 oil crisis leading to the Gulf War, five recessions in less than 30 years. The list is incomplete, but long enough to establish a pattern: We rise, we fall. As individuals we don’t control market […]

Three Signs

I am superstitious, so I’m wondering what’s coming our way based on three signs I was given this morning. 1. A practically mythical turtle, whose singularly rare appearance is supposed to portend a major event, has been found by Cleveland Metroparks Zoo researchers in a lake in Vietnam. 2. An earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale shook southern Illinois early this morning. Its epicenter was 38 miles northwest of Evansville and the quake was felt as far away as Florida. 3. I hit 92% of the notes in AFL’s “Miss Murder” on Guitar Hero 3. I was playing on medium, but 4 stars is 4 stars, and unprecedented. As recently as last night I could only hit 79%, but this morning I passed 90% twice. What does it all mean?

New Model Army

I started writing my column this month on booze in the newsroom and other lost traditions. In my 21 years in journalism, I’ve witnessed the devolution of media culture from free-wheeling hotbeds of professional tension and excessive living into hushed, corporate cubicle warrens, with reporters and sales folk alike watching their companies’ stock prices as a key indicator of success or failure. I find this development counterproductive, unnecessary and possibly even fatal. Bloggers, gun-for-hire correspondents and foreign news agencies like the BBC and Al-Jazeera have become the new vanguard, and their work constitutes most of the heavy lifting in global coverage. The biggest loss is at the local level, where panicking publishers retire their most experienced newshounds in favor of cheaper, younger labor (or nobody at all), compromising our access to the information that affects us most directly by eliminating the beat reporter with intimate knowledge of the players. Experience has been devalued into obsolescence: a strong statement where exceptions are surely demonstrable, but generally true in my opinion. As a publisher, I absolutely understand the financial travails of for-profit journalism. I know that lifestyle sells to advertisers better than news coverage and that bills must be paid. I know that print is on the wane and web is on the rise, and that the big challenge is monetization of web opportunity. I also understand that the digital democratization of information is one of the greatest blessings of this modern age, but that as a result, it is increasingly difficult to be the exclusive source for anything. It’s a conundrum of biblical proportions and it’s threatening to take down the existing structure of the Fourth Estate. The New York Times and Washington Post are two excellent examples of locally-based daily newspapers that successfully serve an enormous national and international audience on the web, yet haven’t built enough web revenue to close the gap on lost print dollars. It’s democratization again; once online, news outlets compete with everyone else on the web for ad dollars and it’s no longer enough to send sales reps to every business and agency in town to exact the formerly customary pound of flesh. Advertisers now have the same limitless choices as media consumers, plus a long-standing bad taste in their mouth from the extortionary tactics previously employed by daily newspapers and the Yellow Pages. It’s a big mess, that’s for sure. High-quality local news coverage is an absolute must in every community. On the other hand, a long-term soft retail economy and broader competition for ad dollars has local news organizations stuck between a rock and an even harder rock. So, what’s the answer? I’m just one small publisher and I can’t solve all of the world’s problems – I can barely even keep up with my own stuff. But I have seen a few agile publishers here in Milwaukee do some pretty smart things to connect with their constituencies. The Small Business Times was started in 1995 by a group of Business Journal expatriates […]

VITAL’s 2008 – 2009 Spring Fine Arts Season Preview

By Jon Anne Willow and Lindsey Huster Spring brings a sea change in our fair city. Longer days, warmer nights and anticipation of the summer’s inherent ease all conspire to turn the tide of a particularly grueling winter. Yes, change is in the air in so many ways. From the White House to Wall Street and the Calatrava to Canal Street, seismic shifts in management, economics and principles are destined to affect us all in the foreseeable future. We have so much as consumers of local culture to keep track of with this ascent of the mercury.The Milwaukee Art Museum recently welcomed Daniel Keegan to the helm as Executive Director, replacing the highly successful and sometimes controversial <>b>David Gordon. He brings a love of new technology and multimedia to MAM; expect to tap into a guided tour from your cell phone, download a podcast about the latest exhibit and engage with your collection in new ways. Up the road and a few blocks from the lake, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andreas Delfs conducts his last season (and the MSO’s 50th) as Edo de Waart prepares to take the helm. By reputation, de Waart’s choices tend to be riskier and more contemporary than his predecessor. He also comes with an extensive collection of recordings, so look for MSO performances to be more readily available for download or CD purchase. This month he’ll conduct his first concert for the MSO, Holst’s The Planets, on April 18. The performance includes space exploration video footage provided by the Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA. Milwaukee gets another dose of fame from the MSO with new Pops conductor Marvin Hamlisch.He’s one of only two people in history to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize, not to mention a clutch of Golden Globes. On the funding and advocacy side, funding powerhouse Christine Harris, formerly President of UPAF, steps into a parallel role at the Milwaukee Cultural Alliance. Her UPAF shoes were filled by former Journal Sentinel Inc. VP Christy GarciaThomas, who brings media savvy and a strong background in sales and marketing to her new role. Both will try to shake the money tree to ensure ongoing funding for a city with incredibly rich and diverse cultural offerings. There are other changes, of course. Some have gone unreported, some are less glamorous in print but of equal impact in their own way. As a loosely defined collective, the arts face their own sea change. Technology is changing the way we interact with art; a slow economy could change the way current and prospective arts consumers consider discretionary spending. On the upside, the increasing sophistication of local audiences and an ever-more conducive environment for ambitious young artists to produce – and market – quality performances on a small budget bodes well for the health of our vibrant artistic scene. We’re also blessed with unparalleled generosity in private and corporate support of the arts for groups of all sizes and stripes. […]

Oh, those brilliant/lucky Clintons

The Clintons have always been brilliant politicians, possibly among the most amazing in all of American history. Bill’s got a little narcissistic egg on his face at the moment after his recent over-indulgences on his wife’s campaign trail, but he’ll pull back and be fine in a few years when America once again remembers the good times under his presidency. He’s golden, so no need to worry about him – as a nation we apparently live to forgive him, and I say that as a person who’s lived long in that camp, and in regards to many things, probably always will. I admit I can’t quite get past the unsolved mystery of Vince Foster, but maybe I’m just a conspiracy nut. I’m sure all those crime scene photos went missing due to a simple clerical error. It happens all the time. I digress, but not really. You have to admit that his death couldn’t have come at a better time for the beleaguered couple, at least as the whole Whitewater ordeal ended up playing out. No matter what the truth, now merely an unfortunate footnote in the storied history of Bill Clinton’s presidential legacy, Foster’s death caused Ken Starr and crew to jump all over its irregularities, adding to the confusion of an already impossibly convoluted mess and drawing attention away from the facts of the investigation. For the record, I am NOT accusing the Clintons of arranging for Vince Foster’s death. I’m just saying they’re lucky. And I’m reminded of old Vince because of another extremely lucky thing that happened to Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign this week. In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock and have somehow seen my blog but not the news, former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has stepped down from her post as a surrogate and Clinton finance committee member after making some rather awkward remarks about Barack Obama’s race advantage. In short, she asserted that if Obama were not a black man, he wouldn’t be doing as well as he is. Then – horror! – she refused to apologize, instead resigning from the campaign so she could continue to speak out against what she sees as a sexist media bent on running Hillary down because she’s a woman while being swept away by the grand notion of a black president. Think about it. Ferraro is 72 years old, her personal political halcyon days long past. She’s a loooong time friend of the Clintons with a decent reputation and she looks like that grandma who still gets her hair and eyebrows done every week. She’s got name recognition but nothing to lose. And now that she’s gone Ronin, she’s free – even expected – to say things Hillary would never get away with. Lucky for Clintion, at the least. Possibly brilliant. Only time will tell, or not. Some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Then I looked up

Yesterday I had an anti-epiphany. At least I think that’s what it was; I’ve never had one before and I’m not sure about the correct term for what I experienced. Epiphanies are big realizations or sudden flashes of inspiration. What I experienced was more like suddenly remembering something obvious I used to know and shouldn’t have forgotten. I was driving to pick up my sister and then my oldest daughter to do a little shopping for my wedding in June. I was thinking about table decorations and desserts and dresses and what we would do for dinner later when it occurred to me that it’s been awhile since I’d driven down the street thinking about shopping and dinner – and nothing else. It felt great. Normal. To celebrate, I turned the radio from NPR to a Top 40 station and started singing. Loudly. Now I imagine everyone goes through similar periods in their lives. One minute you’re routinely thinking about Saturday night or what color you’d like to paint your kitchen; the next it’s all very serious. Money. Health. Family crises. Career. Relationships. Sometimes everything at once. And before you know it, a year has passed – or maybe two – since you cared about your garden or what’s happening in your neighborhood, let alone the world. At 41, this certainly isn’t the first time I’ve been absorbed by matters of personal gravity, but what I didn’t take note of in the past is the actual process of returning to normalcy after heavy times. Then again, maybe I didn’t used to need a formal process. Probably I’m less resilient now in some ways than when I was younger, and therefore more conscious of what I’d like to avoid re-experiencing in the future. Remember how there was a time when you could fall in love easily, then have your heart broken and almost immediately do it all over again with equal abandon? Yikes. I’m madly in love with my fiancé, but getting to know each other contained elements of a job interview that I would once have found deeply disturbing. While chemistry was definitely a factor, neither of us dropped the reins until we were solid with each other’s personal resumes – from work ethic to parenting style. It was a first for both of us, and awkward in a few spots, but in the end we’re definitely better together for knowing and accepting each other up front. There are lots of things you can’t control – like, for example, who you meet – but you can control how much you engage with that person. It’s a model that can be extended across many parts of one’s life, and to good purpose. (I’m sorry if you already know this, but since this is my column I can only write from personal experience. Thanks for your patience as I work to catch up.) Which comes back around to coming back around. It’s so easy to lose yourself when life becomes intense, but […]

You don’t get a medal for showing up

At VITAL, our new year begins in February. I’d like to thank everyone once again for their support. It used to be a thrill just to write the rent check that proved we weren’t just a home office vanity project; as we’ve matured, though, my view of this whole endeavor has evolved. I have a thousand examples, but it all comes down to one idea, perfectly put by Thomas Jefferson: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” I now understand that our willingness to work our asses off is ultimately the reason we’re still here, far more than any visionary thinking or single lucky break. I was born in the ‘60s and influenced by both my grandparents’ work ethic and my father’s disdain for it (to be fair, he got over it later in life). Some of my peers joined Generation X. The rest of us went to work. Mine is the generation that brought about both the ubiquity of cocaine-derived drugs and many of the amazing technological advances that shape our world. The two extremes are actually closely related, both born of an inherent relentlessness, a desire to always move at the greatest possible speed, freed from barriers – of fatigue, social awkwardness, geography, even time itself. I’m not saying this is an entirely wonderful way to look at life; the socio-cultural fallout may not be fully measured in my lifetime. Even so, the ‘80s and ‘90s were a gas, a wild ride followed by a hard crash when the middle class economy slowed way down in the first years of the 21st century. But even before that I think there was collective pause, fueled in part by the regret of our parents, now missing the grandkids a thousand miles away, who saw what had become of their latchkey, Kraft dinner-consuming, Alex P. Keaton-channeling offspring. We had it all, but we traded too much to get it. The solution was clear: the next generation would be cared for with a vengeance. Sometime in the late 20th century, the desire to give one’s children “more” took on a new meaning: with the highest percentage of “affluent” Americans in our history, the trappings of attainment took on a nurturing mantle. It was the dawn of the age of the Soccer Mom, the bicycle helmet and the mentality that reasoning was a viable parenting philosophy. I admit it; I was initially swept into the new world order. My kid had a sticker chart that he filled up by performing such amazing feats as picking up his clothes and saying thank you. He actually earned toys for meeting the minimum expectations of socialization! But eventually, I saw what I, his teachers, his soccer coach and the rest of his network of support had wrought: a kid who expected to be rewarded for taking out the garbage. He’s a good boy: naturally nice, smart and funny. On the surface, he looks like […]

Naked is a state of mind

2007 was quite a year. It’s a true and complete summary, and pretty much expresses the one universal aspect of the passage of the twelve month period we’ve culturally agreed spans a calendar cycle. The events themselves were for me,as for you, momentous in ways, predictable in others. Periods of unbelievable chaos intermingled with bouts of monotony and fits of restlessness. And like you, I grew in ways and probably shrank in others. Also like you, I learned a few things and remembered a few I’d forgotten (to my detriment) and which, like thousands of other unimaginative columnists and bloggers reflecting on the old year and projecting for the new, I will share with you now in list form. Living on your own terms is better than lots of money. It truly is, unless money alone is how you set the terms. When you’re happy and you know it, then your face will really show it. People respond to positive vibrations, of course they do. Strangers smile at you, old men chat you up at the hardware store, kids and dogs climb all over you (but not cats – they’re consistently drawn to whoever doesn’t like them). Don’t fake it, though. That’s creepy and easy to identify. Speak your mind when you have the chance. I learned this one the hard way, with a now-former dear friend. By the time I was honest about my fears for her, it was too late. I was already irrelevant. Save your change. A lot of people already know this, but I came late to the game. Naked is a state of mind. This is possibly the most interesting thing I learned this year, when we published last month’s holiday cover featuring a beautiful young woman clad only in snow and a big red ribbon. Most folks loved the playfulness of it, though a few were concerned that we were objectifying women (Incidentally, we’re almost all women over here). Some mused (including two other publishers – go figure!) that we might have done it to sell more ads: a crazy idea, as anything vaguely risqué in Milwaukee tends to scare away more advertisers than it attracts. I’ve taken the liberty of showing, through a sloppy application of Photoshop, that she’s actually less naked than if she were wearing a bikini. We got almost halfway through the month before the crazies started weighing in, but I guess it was inevitable. The one below is my favorite. Needless to say, fisher8624 never wrote back. I’ll leave you with it, as well as my response. VS —–Original Message—– From: fisher8624@yahoo.com Subject: Your Nude Cover FYI – a whole army of good upright people are taking stacks of your magazine with the nude cover and throwing them in the nearest trash can. STOP SPREADING PORN !!! We do not live in the backwoods of Africa where people run around with nothing on !! Your cover people may have such uncivilized tendencies but most of our society is civilized […]

Fantle gives the Bronze Fonz back story

“Bronze the Fonz.” Bewilderingly, this simple phrase has rekindled Milwaukee’s on-again, off-again debate about public art. On one side is the art community, with illuminati ranging from MARN Executive Director and Hotcakes Gallery owner Mike Brenner to Milwaukee Art Museum CEO David Gordon to Brooks Barrow, owner of a gallery of the same name, protesting the proposed life-size bronze statue to be installed on Milwaukee’s Riverwalk. On the other side is Dave Fantle of Visit Milwaukee, ersatz patron organization of the piece, working in concert with Dean Amhaus and Spirit of Milwaukee. In what can probably be best categorized as a clumsy PR strategy, Dave made a very enthusiastic, very public announcement about the impending arrival of the leather-jacketed 70s TV icon, assuming that people would understand and embrace the installation. I say it was clumsy PR because in the end, what should have been a simple addition to the many attractions of our Riverwalk has become contentious, with Brenner and Barrow loudly threatening to leave the city and Gordon imploring (in a very genteel way, of course) Visit Milwaukee to see reason and keep the Fonz off Wisconsin Avenue. In an email exchange of my own with him (which I chose not to copy to the known universe), I asked him for clarification of Visit Milwaukee’s motives with the piece, why it was announced as a fait accompli and what, if anything, he had done to connect with the art community in making his decision. His responses felt pre-rehearsed to me, doggedly breezy and optimistic. Polite but firm. I wasn’t satisfied; email is a pretty pathetic tool for meaningful discourse, so we met to discuss this whole crazy affair. He was seated at a table at Mocha when I arrived, holding a printed, marked-up copy of VITAL managing editor Amy Elliott’s recent anti-Fonz blog. We went over it in some detail, each of us probably carrying certain assumptions about the other’s viewpoint. He wasn’t happy, and I must admit that at first I wasn’t really concerned about his discomfort. I maintained to him that the issue wasn’t the statue itself, but the feeling that we so rarely commission public art these days in Milwaukee and this Fonzie thing came out of nowhere, with no discussion, no open bidding process and no effort made toward community buy-in. In short, the whole thing was lacking in transparency, a thing most people don’t utilize when it’s there but that everyone decries when it seems not to be. In response, Dave explained in greater detail his position and the genesis of the statue itself. Now, the whole thing makes much more sense to me and in fact is no skin off anybody’s nose. I asked Dave if I could publish some of his comments and he agreed. Perhaps they will shed some light. In a nutshell: a while back, Dave Fantle and Dean Amhaus looked into TV Land’s sponsored program of erecting statues of TV icons in the cities where their programs took […]

Learning to Fly

There will be parties and openings. There will be better, more informed coverage of and commentary on local culture from the ground up, ramping up our website so we can bring you even more new stuff all month long. And starting with this issue, we’re commissioning our covers for at least the next year. Each will feature original artwork created just for VITAL by some of the city’s most talented painters, illustrators and photographers. It may or may not be related to anything inside the book; it’s a canvas, not a story illustration. And it’s pretty damn exciting.

How very exciting for us

On December 1, after almost four wonderful years in our current offices in Riverwest, we’re moving to the Arts Building in Walker’s Point, located at 133 W. Pittsburgh Ave. The space is amazing, affordable and will allow us to warehouse client materials from our distribution business all in one spot plus have secure parking, an exterior sign and a few other niceties we’ve always lusted after. We’ll also be surrounded by artist studios and other creatively-fueled small businesses, both in the building and in the neighborhood in general. We simply couldn’t be more excited. In the meantime, there’s so much to do with the build-out and the holidays and all, so I imagine we’ll all be a little tired by the end of the year. But hopefully in a good way. We’ll post pictures when everything is ship-shape and hold an open house sometime in the spring, maybe during Gallery Night. I don’t know if you all know this either, but the lovely and talented Element Everest has joined our team to help us with advertising sales and marketing. We met when we were interviewing her for a story in October’s Music Issue and she knocked my socks off. She’s a tour de force and I love how she has no fear. She believes in what we’re doing and she’s out there talking to people every day about getting involved and being part of it too. You may already know Element from Radio Milwaukee, where she continues to work in promotions and pull the occasional air shift, or you may know her from local hip hop group Black Elephant. Or you may have just picked up her new, debut solo record, Life Is A Heist. My favorite cut is “Famous.” It’s the “You’re So Vain” for the new generation- funny, biting and spot-on insightful. I’m digging it and you will too. Here’s another fun thing: I have a recipe in WMSE‘s new cookbook, WMSEats. It’s for Lunch Lady Lurlene’s Wacky Cake. I love wacky cake. It’s the best chocolate cake in the world and it’s really cheap and easy to make. Coincidentally, it’s also naturally vegan, although I ruin that with white icing or cream cheese frosting every time. The whole book is really great, filled with tasty recipes from drinks to comfort food to fancier stuff, all submitted by local WMSE supporters and listeners. You can get your own during their pledge drive, which started October 31 and goes until they raise $125k. Contribute by phone at 414-799-1917 or online. That’s it for now. I’m off to fill out an occupancy permit application and look at an artist’s portfolio. I am so lucky to have my life. Peace, Jon Anne

We’ve got to help Alan Keyes

Typically I don’t read every political email I receive anymore than I pore over my spam, but sometimes a subject line catches my attention. Recently, Alan Keyes was excluded from a Fox News-sponsored Florida GOP debate on the premise that he didn’t have the required 1% straw poll vote, even though the Iowa Poll allegedly had him at 2% just a week after he entered the race. Turns out, none of the polls used by the Florida GOP included Keyes’ name. Granted, they may have been taken before he declared his candidacy, but he’s in the race now and everybody knows it, even if his only true role ends up being to keep arch-conservative Christian issues in the debate. Keyes’ people sounded off, launching an email campaign to barrage Florida GOP chair Jim Greer with complaints. This morning I received another email from the Keyes campaign. He was recently excluded from the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, reportedly because he entered the race too late to be included. His staff, however, cites that attendee Fred Thompson entered the race barely a week before Keyes. Most top tier candidates were there – unlike the Values Voter Debate held in September, where Keyes came in just behind Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee in a field absent Giuliani, Thompson and McCain. Keyes’ camp acknowledges that political event organizers have the right to invite (or not) anyone they choose, but that groups like the FRC are lying when they claim to invite ALL candidates. In the run-up, Keyes, clearly a candidate, didn’t get his invitation in the mail and when his camp called to see if it was lost, they were told that he simply wasn’t asked to participate. It seems a little sad to picture them all sitting around the office waiting for the mail and then calling the FRC, only to learn that they weren’t invited. I imagine their initial incredulity, followed by quickly rising ire and a subsequent email blast bitch-slapping the FRC, perhaps fired off in anger in the middle of the night. At the end of the day, I don’t really care about Alan Keyes’ candidacy. And it amuses me that I know so much about his campaign through official emails that dish dirt in that whiny, sanctimonious tone to which my ears have been deaf since I was a teenager tuning out my mom over dirty clothes on the floor. My first response is to tease Keyes for his picked-on demeanor and holier-than-all posturing, but in fact his situation reveals chilling political truths. Prior to the advent of email as the political machine’s communication tool of choice, citizens had to rely on the media to report stories of exclusion, favoritism and other abuses of power in a reportedly inclusive system. In Keyes’ case, there’s little chance his story would have gotten much play – he’s the quintessential fringe candidate. But by his ability to communicate with me directly, I am informed firsthand of ways in which his […]

A matter of perspective

By Blaine Schultz, Jon Anne Willow and Kenya Evans + Photos by Kat Jacobs and Erin Landry In planning this story, we originally set out to pair young musicians with seasoned veterans and see what kind of school would be in session as a result. But what happened instead was vastly more interesting: organic dialogue stemming from a common love. What follows are three interviews with six musicians penned by three writers. The questions for each were different, as were the settings and interview styles. But the messages overlap, intertwine and paint a bigger picture of what it takes to live one’s passion. From creative process to overcoming jadedness to living with your choices, these six musicians laid it all out. Very special thanks to the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music for opening their doors for the photo shoots for this story. You’ll find more incredible images in our gallery at vitalsourcemag.com. —Jon Anne Willow Peder Hedman and Jason Mohr By Blaine Schultz + Photo by Erin Landry It is a too-warm September evening in Jason Mohr’s backyard, but nobody’s complaining. Bug spray and citronella candles help, but this year’s crop of mosquitoes arrived late and hungry. In a far-ranging conversation that spans Mohr’s thoughts on how a songwriter may be unconsciously predicting his own future to Hedman’s take on what it means to keep a band together when domestic realities come to the fore, it was never really obvious that two decades separate this pair of Milwaukee musicians. A common point of reference for both guitar mavens is the Maestro Echoplex, a vintage analog tape echo unit. Hedman brought to the interview a Stylophone, a gizmo he picked up at Value Village. The crude, handheld synthesizer may be best known as the instrument that plays the solo on David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” The Peder Hedman Quartet is in the final stages of self-releasing Don’t Fall Down; Mohr’s group, Juniper Tar, is nearly ready as well with the provisionally-titled Free Bird. Both bands begin with interesting songs and then subtly warp them to their own needs. And make no mistake, the musicians who collaborate with Hedman and Mohr are as talented and beyond ordinary as you will find. “Take a look at this, the first press I ever got,” Hedman says, setting an age-yellowed copy of the Crazy Shepard on the table. The 1982 article profiles the Null Heirs, accompanied by a grainy black and white photo. Since then, bassist Mike Frederickson went on to form The Moseleys and play bass with Robbie Fulks; keyboardist John Duncan played with Gear Daddy Martin Zellar (and Tiny Tim); Kent Mueller ran the late KM Art. Hedman played in Liquid Pink, then Tweaker, which landed him down south for years. It’s a sharp contrast to Mohr’s less than a decade of band experience, highlighted by an EP with his previous group, Telectro. “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it … well, I’m making my mark,” Hedman says of his […]

Chris Abele

‘Chris Abele’ and ‘Argosy’ may draw blank stares from the average Joe or Jane; ask a local arts supporter, though, and you’ll get a knowing nod. Abele is the 41-year-old head of the Argosy Foundation, established by his father John, co-founder of Boston Scientific, in 1997. The foundation moved from Boston to Milwaukee, where Chris was alerady living, in 2003. Since then, he has generously given his own time and money here and nationwide, supporting the work of groups like Planned Parenthood and the Boys and Girls Club and making appearances at political functions around the world. The Argosy Foundation supports the arts, but its broader mission is to improve the human condition through better access to healthcare, education initiatives for children, environmental protection, improving public safety and more. In the interest of full disclosure, Chris Abele is VITAL’s only financial investor to date, having purchased a (very) minority share of the magazine several years ago. Since then he has made himself scarce, letting us do things however we see fit. He says it’s his way of supporting something he believes in strongly – the enduring relevance of a diverse media. How did the arts become a focus for you? The arts have been part of my life as long as I can remember, largely because I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family who provided plenty of opportunities to experience and learn about music, theater, dance and visual art, [and] shared their passion for it. Our family has supported various arts groups for as long as I can remember. My personal involvement started with the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, but has developed into far more here in Milwaukee. What do you hope to achieve with your contributions of money and time in the arts community? For the groups themselves, I hope to encourage them to strive for ambitious goals; one aspect of Milwaukee that I love is a temperament of relative understatement, which can sometimes mistranslate into diminished expectations of just how much we can achieve and how high we can aim. I would love to see a greater level of pride and celebration of some of the great art that does happen here. For the city writ large, I would love to help people realize just how much we have here and foster a more collective understanding that a life without art is a life deeply diminished. Why is it important to foster the arts at the local level? Our foundation supports arts nationally and internationally, but we are headquartered here in Milwaukee and we believe that part of good corporate citizenship is support for the local community. Personally, I think we have a better arts scene than many people outside Milwaukee imagine, and I’m very excited about how much it continues to grow. What do you consider your greatest achievement as an arts supporter? I’m not sure if it’s for me to declare anything in particular a “great achievement” but I feel good […]

Your papers, please

In August, Lucky and I went to Monterey, California, to visit our dad. We had an amazing time driving the coastal highway through Big Sur, picnicking on a friend’s private beach and cooking like the three of us were still the big Italian family we grew up with. But it wasn’t all just for a lark. My dad’s been sick since last fall, though he didn’t tell us until recently, and all of us are starting to think about the impending “future.” Lucky and I saw my dad in a new light this time: no longer entirely the Pacino-channeling, devastatingly charming, problem-fixing free spirit we grew up with, the man who met us at the door this time was a little too thin, with pure white hair and a big smile that caught me off guard with its open expression of joy at our arrival. In many ways, I like this man better. He’s mortal at last, which probably clears the road for both Lucky and I to look at ourselves and the people we choose in a more realistic way. And even if you’re not into psychoanalysis (sadly, I think it might be a blossoming obsession of my own middle age), it was so nice to be able to really talk to him without the layers of external image that have previously defined him for us. We traveled on relatively short notice, so to save almost $200 per ticket we chose to land in San Jose, then rent a car and drive the 90 minutes to Monterey. For those who’ve never experienced the pleasure of SJC firsthand (though I should note that a renovation is underway), the terminal is the size of a postage stamp and equally useful to air travelers. There’s one bathroom past the secured area – and by that I mean ONE unisex, one-toilet bathroom serving hundreds of people at all times. There’s no place past security to buy water or anything else (and as in airports everywhere, you can’t bring it in with you); there’s one tiny “food court” near the main entrance and it’s a fairly long bus ride to the understaffed rental car building. Needless to say, the security lines were looong, winding the equivalent of several city blocks when we entered the queue to catch our ride back to Milwaukee. We had plenty of time to chat up our fellow travelers, but when the novelty of that wore off after about five minutes, I daringly made eye contact with an attractive black woman in a sharp navy blazer and impossibly well-tailored khakis. She was in a kiosk, positioned under a sign that read “Now You Can Fly Through Airport Security.” The woman was stylishly hawking Clear, a pay service that allows member travelers to expedite airport security checks by whisking through Clear’s own “designated security lane with special benefits,” bypassing the teeming masses and leaving plenty of time to make gratuitous cell phone calls at the gate while waiting for everyone else. […]

Green is the new black

“In 60 seconds, you can make toast, water a fichus, take a power nap and, now, save the Earth.” That’s heavy stuff, especially coming from renowned global climate expert Cameron Diaz. She’s teamed up with Al Gore on his latest megalomedia campaign, 60 Seconds to Save the Earth, a contest where young people can submit video shorts meant to “inspire change.” “Because the planet needs a good publicist,” is the tagline, delivered with a big smile by JT’s sometimes main squeeze. Plus the winners earn neat, energy-consuming electronics or even a hybrid SUV! I feel better already. It seems like Al’s back on track to change the course of global environmental decay. His worldwide Live Earth concert was a total bust with its insanely high cost (the citizens of Hamburg, in fact, are stuck with a $1.3 million tab from their event), insulting resource consumption (the private jets for artists alone used enough fuel to fly around the world over nine times), unforgivable lack of focus (no money was raised) and even lackluster ratings. I was also a little worried when the news media outed him for his scandalous personal consumption of energy. It really was pretty lame when he justified his 20-room Nashville estate by bleating that he and Tipper both work from home. It doesn’t count anyway, he added, because they buy “carbon offsets,” paying to have trees planted elsewhere. And the zinc mine on his property continually cited for dumping toxic chemicals into a nearby river and from which he receives about $20,000 a year? Fear not, Green Warriors, the mine was closed in 2003 so he’s all done with that little embarrassment. Just don’t ask him about the shares in Occidental Petroleum he continues to manage for his family. That’s none of your business. And that’s what this is all quickly boiling down to, isn’t it? Celebrities jumping on yet another bandwagon, donning hemp t-shirts and organic cotton jeans to show their solidarity with Mother Earth. The “in” crowd is batting around terms like “carbon offsetting” and “biodiversity” at cocktail parties by chlorinated pools, having arrived in their Escalades. For the rest of us who want to appear socially conscious, there’s the industrious J.C. Piscine Company, also out of Nashville (they make both the Jesus fish and the Darwin fish – clever!). They can’t keep fake hybrid badges that go on the backs of cars on the shelves. The weekly shipping alone could probably supply Africa’s U’wa tribe with electricity for a year. Do I seem bitter? I am, a little. Everything we do as individuals will have negligible overall impact on our climate. Change must come from the big polluters, so it appears we’re pretty much at the mercy of commerce. What can we do while we’re waiting? First, it can’t hurt to familiarize ourselves with some popular terms from the Green Movement. Awareness begins at home, after all, and it’s always nice to be able to understand what the stars are talking about. It’s […]

Cheap adversaries

We’re having a tribe rummage sale soon, and it’s long overdue. We’ll all be attempting to foist off what we no longer have room for on people who still have some space or, ideally, an actual need for it. It’s time to purge. Yesterday I took two pickup trucks full of stuff to my sister’s to store until the big day. There were about 20 boxes of boys’ clothes plus all my baby hardware and some old bikes. I’ve decided not to sell any of my own clothes. Going through them, I remember on some level that I was in love with most of the items now gathering must in my attic when I bought them, but time has not been kind to the majority, which were “fabulous deals” or on clearance at Target. Buttons have fallen off, zippers ripped (and not because my pants were tight!) and cloth has faded unevenly. I have a metric crap ton of cute t-shirts that are either too snug under the arms, too loose in the body, too short at the bottom or all of the above. And I’m not even attempting to sell my cheap bookshelves, computer desk and other remnants of modular storage desperately needed on the day they were purchased. Most barely made it through the move into my house and are reinforced with L-brackets, extra screws and wood glue. They’re going straight to the curb. You get what you pay for, I guess. I’m going to have to replace my desk and bookcases right away, but I’m not running off to a discount store for an instant fix. Nope, this time I’m doing it the new-fangled way: I’m buying used. I’ll start with Craigslist and local eBay listings, trolling other people’s rummage sales on the weekends to satisfy my craving for a tactile shopping experience. My goal is to spend $200 on a desk, chair, area rug and several sets of shelves, all of either reasonable quality or unbeatable price. And I know I can do it, too, with a little patience. By August, the proceeds from my own rummage sale will fund my new junk and I’ll never have to set foot in a Kmart to make it happen. Aside from the Benjamins I’ll save, I’ve been wondering what has caused this shift in thinking in me, the poster child for convenient problem-solving and lifelong lover of clearance deals. Because I’m serious, I have no interest in driving to Schaumburg for a cheap FLÄRKE, even if it does have five shelves. I find the whole idea uncharacteristically irritating, and I wonder if I’m the only one. Localized online selling and the catapulting popularity of thrift shopping and swapping have created new options for people weary of a disposable culture, where 30-plus years of discount retailers flooding the market with cheap goods have created the expectation that we not only don’t have to pay much for what we own, but that there’s no need to care for it because […]

A crash course in teen parenting

Dear Readers, As I write my column this month, I’m sitting at my patio table in the early chill of a spring morning. I can only write when I’m alone, and today this is the only quiet corner of my universe. I am so far behind that the rest of the magazine is already at the printer, waiting for this last addition. As I shared a few months back, I am marrying a man with four children, three of them teenage girls. Until March of this year, my only child was a third grade boy and the rest of our tribe’s kids ranged in age from 2 to 11. I was still enrolled in Parenting 101: instilling values and a work ethic, providing emotional safety and stability, helping with homework and prioritizing quality time. Given this, I feel grossly under-prepared for my new parenting life. I am now a step-mom, which comes with the inherent complexities of who I am to the kids and where our boundaries lay, plus the myriad dramas that sometimes seem to dominate our lives. A few weeks ago it was the 15-year-old wanting her upper ear pierced. Last week it was the soon-to-be 13-year-old lobbying for a cell phone (and a car) for her birthday. This weekend, it was a matter of life and death. On Saturday, my fiancé and I were on our first real date in months, the younger children all safely occupied for the evening and the oldest, 17 year-old Alex, two hours north with a friend, interviewing the Amish for her senior final project. Michael had left his phone in the car, and as we got in after dinner it was ringing. It was Alex’s number, but it wasn’t Alex on the line. Her friend, a boy, had made the call, and he was clearly upset. From the passenger seat I could hear shouted fragments of his side of the exchange. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gull, I’m so sorry!” “The car flipped over three times…” “I got Alex out but the paramedic needs to talk to you…” And again, “I’m so sorry.” Michael laid his forehead against the steering wheel for a moment while the boy gave the phone to the paramedic. I could feel the blood chilling in Michael’s veins as his face turned to ash. Finally, we were informed that our daughter had sustained “a crushing injury” to her hand, a laceration of unknown severity to her foot and that further examination was needed at a hospital in Fond du Lac, over an hour from where we were. “Who’s screaming?” asked Michael. “That’s your daughter, sir, she’s pretty shaken up,” replied the paramedic. “Give her the phone, let me talk to her!” Michael’s voice was shaking, and as I write, I am reliving the panic we both felt in that moment. “Oh, Daddy, we tried to stop but we couldn’t and the car flipped over and over and over and I thought I was dead I really thought I was […]

To be young and Polish on a summer evening

Lidia Sobierajski has possibly the coolest job held by any young professional in Milwaukee. At the tender age of 34, she’s Director of Polish Fest, the nation’s largest Polish cultural festival. That having been said, it’s among the smaller of the often-Titanic ethnic festivals that descend upon the Maier Grounds in the summer, drawing diverse crowds from all over the country. That’s a shame, because in addition to truly exposing our city’s proud Polish cultural traditions to those unfortunate enough to never have lived on the South or East sides, Polish Fest is not only a great time, but the first cultural festival of the summer. It also has the benefit of being a bit less crowded, for those of us who prefer traversing the park from end to end in less than two hours. At least that’s the case for now, unless Lidia has her way. The daughter of Polish immigrants (her father came to the U.S. after WWII), Lidia Sobierajski grew up in Milwaukee immersed in both her parents’ native culture and her own American lifestyle. A classically trained musician with a degree in Mathematics and Piano Performance/Pedagogy from Alverno College, she and her sister approached Polish Fest’s organizers in 1998 to hold a Chopin youth piano competition. It’s been a great success, and in 2004 she realized her dream of overseeing the entire festival. “I felt like I had a million ideas,” she explains, “and thought that if I was just given the chance, I could help Polish Fest grow.” And so, armed with a mission and leading an army of dedicated volunteers, Lidia is working day and night to craft a new image for Polish Fest. Seated in the conference room of the Polish Heritage Alliance’s gorgeous new center in Franklin, Lidia looks more like an intern than an executive – but the resemblance is only skin deep. Dressed in black pants and a black t-shirt with POLISH FEST emblazoned in rhinestones across the chest, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman bristles with energy and intelligence as she relates all Polish Fest has to offer. She’s the real deal, and under her guidance Polish Fest may just come into its own in its 26th year. Musically, the fest is known mostly for polka, native folk music and cultural dance demonstrations. This is an important element of a genuine cultural festival, and Polish Fest will always remain true to its mission (unlike a few others that shall remain nameless). After all, it just wouldn’t be Polish Fest without Jimmy Sturr and his Orchestra or the Polish Connection on the Non-Stop Polka Stage. And then there’s the often underrated (though actually quite delicious) food that will always be a mainstay. But Lidia has been slipping in new stuff, geared toward a younger crowd, as well as running vodka and spirit tastings through Stawski Imports that feature some of Eastern Europe’s finest offerings. This year, Friday is the night for the young to come out, with the return of the […]

(Sigh) I’ve outgrown Martin Scorsese

The other night I watched Martin Scorsese’s latest, The Departed. Not having paid much attention to mainstream film this last year, I not only didn’t know the film had won several Oscars, but that it was a Scorsese film at all. Michael just brought it home because he’d been wanting to see it, and I was game to spend a couple of hours on the sofa. For those unacquainted, The Departed is the story of two Boston cops (Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio) who each come up on the mean streets under the influence (one directly, one indirectly) of local crime lord Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). There were Mick, Dago and “black guy” (which amused me) references aplenty, shot in the understated wide-shot, natural light style made famous in the 70s by the maverick filmmaker cult that included Eastwood, Altman, Coppola and Scorsese himself. I was engaged by the cinematography, the hilariously obvious symbolism and the fast-paced, profanity-laced banter. The violence was highly stylized, the relationships between characters one-dimensional and consistently representative of missing family ties. This was all established in the first few scenes, and about 20 minutes or so in, I commented that whoever the director was must be a Scorsese devotee. That’s when Michael revealed that this was no knock-off, but the genuine article. My curiosity piqued, I began watching even more closely. I’ve always considered Scorsese a master of this certain genre, and I wanted to see what he had to say. Turns out I had already sussed it all in the establishing scenes. Nothing wrong with that, after all I defend the Star Wars movies to people who really care about filmcraft. Also Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg. I may or may not personally love their work, but it has a distinct signature and the people flock to see it. It’s called auteurism, and for most aspiring directors it’s a goal. When someone sees your work and knows by characters, themes and the look and feel of the movie experience that this is your work – and they like it – the director has succeeded. Meanwhile, back on my sofa, I’m watching with an open mind, disbelief willingly suspended, in it for the fun. On cue, we meet Scorsese’s classic Female Character (Vera Farmiga). Beautiful, smart (or so we are told) and pure of heart. She’s a police shrink engaged to one of the cops but irrepressibly drawn to the other. She represents Good. She wants to help them both. They are fractured and they need her. Or so we are told. The thing is, we can’t possibly know this from anything the character herself does or says. Her lines are mostly frustrated, exhorting speeches, her range of emotions narrow (giggles, tears, rants against Corruption). Naturally, she sleeps with the cop to whom she’s not engaged, which for some inexplicable reason is meant to create an unbreakable bond between them which is never explored further (or even mentioned again). It is the only sex scene […]

Atomic Tattoo victim of personal taste and undue influence

Normally it’s considered proper etiquette to author one’s own blog, but I received this open letter from three local folks who brought to my attention the poor treatment received by one new local business – Atomic Tattoo on E. North Ave. – from another – Hooligan’s. I was so incensed when I read this letter that I felt I had to post it in its entirety. Please leave comments and show your support for Atomic accordingly. Whether or not they are a business you would personally patronize, this kind of treatment is at least part of what keeps our neighborhoods from flourishing. Thanks, Jon Anne Dear Neighbors, Recently, Atomic Tattoo opened up on North Avenue by Open Pantry. I don’t know the owners well, but I was really enjoying watching them get set up, especially when they started working on covering the building with a cool mural they designed themselves. The paint hadn’t even finished drying before the owner of Hooligan’s stepped up to see to it that no freaky tattooed people got to represent too much of themselves on what he viewed as his turf. He rallied his troops and forced the shop owners to paint over hours and hours of their hard work. First of all, I am not aware of anyone who has ever claimed tattoos have ruined their lives, but who isn’t aware of an organization called Alcoholic’s Anonymous? The guys at Atomic are selling art that is so deeply meaningful to the people that buy it they brand it on their bodies. More tattooed people than not will tell you the story of why their artwork is so precious and about the healing it’s offered them. Hooligan’s sells booze. So who’s really the bigger detriment here? Who’s really poisoning and doing more harm community? I’ve heard story after story of people whose lives have been destroyed by alcohol, but not one about a tattoo that ruined someone’s entire life! The owners of Atomic have jumped through the same hoops and faced the same headaches every other business owner has had to go through to set up shop and they deserve to represent themselves in the way they choose. It’s a tattoo shop! What could be a more fitting façade for their building than covering it with their work? Hooligan’s has a sign that looks like it’s from the 1960s with pictures of beer on it. The sign is an eyesore if you ask me, and as far as anyone knows could be enough to tempt an alcoholic to relapse, but nobody makes him take it down. And they shouldn’t, because that would be disrespecting his right to represent himself in the way he prefers. The East Side and Riverwest represent a lot of different things to a lot of different people; that’s one of the best things about it. Most people in Milwaukee think of these neighborhoods as places where the more open-minded people dwell, and that’s another big reason why forcing Atomic to paint […]

Wrong is wrong

Dear Readers, Freedom to say what you want, smoke where you want and carry a gun in your jacket pocket are all under loud discussion at the moment. The question of how much restraint is appropriate in our local schools should also be near the top of the list, though public outcry on this matter is grossly under-reported for reasons that should be obvious to all but the most insulated or ignorant of us. Also not in the headlines is proposed state legislation that would prohibit municipalities from requiring revenue-sharing with cable companies to fund public access television programming. Passage of the bill, co-proposed by our own Jeff Plale, a Progressive in name only, would radically reduce public access programming, the last bastion of equal time broadcasting. With so many axes to grind and fortuitous access to the the Fourth Estate, I’m weighing in this month on several issues in list form. I apologize in advance for the inelegance of the format, but I am limited in word count exactly as anyone else who writes for VITAL. 1. The statewide smoking ban. Guess what? It’s happening. It’s time to stop whining and meet up with modern thinking. To say that a person has the right to fill another person’s space with life-threatening toxins is like saying, to paraphrase smoker Angie Miller, quoted in Ted Bobrow’s cover story this month, that because you choose to hit yourself in the head with a hammer, you should be allowed to hit other people in the head with a hammer. Wrong is wrong. Smoke outside. 2. Handcuffs in Milwaukee Public Schools. Teachers are being assaulted in their classrooms at alarming rates. School safety officers sometimes have to physically restrain students for up to an hour while they wait for police to arrive. I don’t necessarily disagree that these adults need more effective tools to deal with their daily reality. My problem is with the discourse. To pretend this solves any problem is foolhardy, if not downright disingenuous. It’s a band-aid on a massive head wound. We wouldn’t be in this position if the mental and physical well-being of so many of our MPS students wasn’t in such jeopardy. School Board Director Charlene Hardin suggested recently on WNOV AM 860 that what students, teachers and staff need in the schools is parental presence, a whole other can of worms with causes rooted far outside MPS. It needs to be possible. Wrong is wrong. Peel the onion, don’t pretend to patch the missing roof. 3. The right to bear arms. At the time of the framing of the Constitution, the right to bear arms was tantamount to the right to survive. With no organized police force and high consumption of wild game as a food source, a gun in every home was necessary. And I bet they were rarely concealed. But in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy, some pundits have suggested that if concealed weapons had been allowed on campus, Cho Seung-Hui might […]

Six things you should know about VITAL

Dear readers, Anyone who’s ever worked in the business of communication knows this to be true: Professional communicators are some of the most ineffective personal communicators. Anyone who’s ever owned a small business knows this to be true as well: By the time you do everything you have to do to get your “product” out there, it’s often the part about explaining what you’ve got that gets neglected. Here at VITAL, we sometimes forget to tell people about the cool things we’ve been working on, so absorbed are we in creating it. So this month I want to take a few minutes to tell you about some things of which you might not be aware, but might enjoy if you knew about them. 1. VITAL is much bigger than it looks. We have a pretty great new website and we publish new content almost every day. There are blogs by myself (Up All Night), Lucky Tomaszek (Oh, Mama!), Russ Bickerstaff (Between Stages), Matt Wild (Please Send Help), Mehrdad (The Prescient Persian) and a biting and often hilarious conservative-leaning perspective from acidic local comic Michael Gull (Messiah Simplex). We publish online-exclusive show, film, music and concert reviews all month, plus articles and interviews – including a recent chat with the Decemberists – and a much more comprehensive events calendar. You can comment on stories, download content via RSS or check out our numerous image galleries. You can print, send to a friend or contact anyone on our staff. Visit us soon at vitalsourcemag.com. 2. VITAL is very popular in the UK. We have a Myspace page, and in the last six months hundreds of people, publications, bands and (for whatever reason) modeling agencies from the UK have not only “friended” us, but have been very active on our page. Tracking our website traffic, we see that a surprising number of our online viewers hail from there as well. They send us letters and leave us comments. They think we’re ahead of our time, for whatever that’s worth. Check out our page at myspace.com/vitalsource. 3. VITAL loves you back. In February we launched VITAL’s eNews You Can Use. It goes out twice a month and keeps you up to date on everything new we’ve published to the website as well as upcoming VITAL events. And, to show our love, we give away stuff to our subscribers in every edition, from concert tickets to sexy VITAL t-shirts and sometimes even bigger gifts. All you have to do is write us back and tell us what you’re interested in – no catches. You can subscribe from our home page at vitalsourcemag.com and unsubscribe any time. Naturally, we’ll never spam you or sell your name. We also offer amazingly cost-effective advertising for local businesses, so you can be better communicators than us. Contact me personally to learn more about our “Love to the Independents” program. 4. VITAL is everywhere. Some people still think that because our offices are in Riverwest and we’re active in our […]

Rites of Spring

On March 9, I accepted Michael Gull’s proposal for marriage. If you read his blog or have ever seen his stand-up comedy, and if you have ever read my column, you may be thinking “I bet they’re fun to watch the news with.” Or not. For those unfamiliar, we’re the new James Carville and Mary Matalin of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with me in the role of Carville. I’ll be honest: I’m the last person I would have expected to see in a life partnership with someone whose political views are so opposed to my own. Or are they? Michael considers himself a “Reagan Republican” by way of explanation regarding his strong feelings that G.W. Bush has really fucked things up. This doesn’t clear up much for me, never having been a fan of trickle-down economics or presidents who star in movies with monkeys, but I always nod understandingly when it comes up. It’s not the point for me. I respect his conviction and appreciate that we can have lively conversations about our opinions that never turn pesonal. I’m also a little comforted by the fact that he’s pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and pro-education. It’s a start. But at my age, “I do’s” come with more than a wedding cake and new pots and pans. When the ring slipped on my finger, I also received four stepkids and a big black cat. That’s six new members for the Tribe counting Michael himself. My sister and her partner just bought a house, which added an adult, two large dogs and a four-and-a-half foot iguana, plus a brother who rented Lucky’s old flat next door. That’s five more. My girl Joy recently got engaged and they also bought a house. He brought a cat. That’s two more, bringing the total of new “official lifetime” members to 13. If you count the original Tribe as me, my sisters (including Joy), and our kids and pets (yeah, we count the pets), we stood sixteen strong before. So now there’s 29 of us, but only 19 with thumbs, unless you count the iguana. Which also means we have way too many pets, and I didn’t even count the fish. I now live my life in a series of story problems. Here’s one I practice a lot, though I still can’t figure out the equation: A woman leaves her office on the East side at 5:25 and drives west at 25 mph. If she has 7 miles to travel in rush hour traffic, what is the possibility that she and her partner can feed the five kids, take one to soccer practice and another to work and still have time to do the dishes and a load of laundry before bed? This is another favorite: There will be 20 people for Sunday dinner in a typical bungalow. If six adults can sit at the dining table and six kids can sit on the striped picnic cloth on the floor, where in the hell is everybody else supposed to sit? […]

A new hope?

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, First off, thank you to everyone who came down to our 5th birthday party on February 24 at Turner Hall. I will freely admit that at press time the party hasn’t happened yet, so I’ll refrain from any mention of what a huge success it was. I can with confidence, however, thank our wonderful sponsors. Time Warner Cable made the party possible and WMSE really helped us get the word out. The Brewcity Bruisers, Pabst Theater, Coldwell Banker, The Oxygen Network, HBO, Windfall Theater, Atomic Tattoo and Hairys Hair Bar all sponsored booths, worked the room and/or donated fabulous prizes, which we in turn gave to you, our readers. Please support them in the coming year with your patronage. They truly put the rubber to the road when it comes to supporting local, independent media. ********************************************************************************* I’ve been thinking a lot lately about consumer confidence, and here’s why. VITAL is free to the people and supported by advertisers. It’s a common model, though like most startup businesses, the majority of free publications fail within their first two years. Ours didn’t, but it’s grown slowly. Initially, of course, there were normal factors to consider: lack of awareness, a weaker distribution network than our peers, etc. In time we overcame these hurdles and saw good results. Today, we have terrific advertisers, a talented staff, a sounder distribution network and a fantastic printer. But I’ve been in the media business a long time, and the hustle we do at VITAL to keep the numbers up is beyond what I would’ve previously considered the norm. At first I thought the issue might be about the state of print, but it’s wider. Everybody’s in the same boat, from the daily newspaper to the weeklies, the glossy monthlies and even broadcast and online media. If ad spending is up nationally (it’s at an all-time high), why are local outlets flat? This has been bugging me for about a year now, and I’ve spent that time trying to figure out the reason. I’ve caucused with other publishers, drunk untold cups of coffee with local business owners and managers and polled VITAL’s readership both formally and anecdotally. Some of what I heard comes down to quality issues – who wants to be associated with something they think is sub-par? But a big part of the reason, at least according to my highly unofficial research, is confidence. The economy has been in a slump for the entire life of VITAL, with the latest findings by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) showing that for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans spent more than they’re worth in 2006, mostly on gas, mortgages and prescription medications. These days, average people stay home more and consume less, and this in turn puts the squeeze on local businesses, from clothing boutiques to restaurants and theaters. You can connect the rest of the dots yourself. But there may be good news on the horizon. The Fed […]

Blister on the bun

Good for the Violent Femmes. They’ve landed what most bands only dream about – a major deal with a major fast food chain. If there was any question about the long-term financial security of Miltown’s all-time favorite nihilist-pop sensations, we can officially put the issue to rest. It’s nigh unto impossible to turn on network television these days without encountering hot cheese melting over a slab of ground beef to the opening strains of “Blister in the Sun.” “Blister in the Sun?” From the same company who brought you the Frosty, Dave Thomas and an iconic little girl? Every time it comes on, I watch closely to see if this time, just maybe, I will discern a legitimate connection between a cup of chili and Gordon Gano’s crying girlfriend of 23 years ago. So far no luck. One recent evening the whole conundrum was bugging me so much that I actually emailed Wendy’s directly and asked them if anyone there had ever listened to the song. I’m still waiting for an answer, but when it arrives – and I’m sure it will – I promise to post it right away. For now, I’m going with one of two possibilities: 1. Wendy’s ad execs are on crack 2. Nobody at Wendy’s has ever listened to rock music 1:32 a.m. ‘Night

Yeah, we’re five

By Jon Anne Willow + Mehrdad J. Dalamie From Mehrdad: February 2007 marks the beginning of the sixth year of VITAL Source. As I look back, I cannot help but wonder if we would have survived doing it any differently. By that I mean that all the ambition in the world would not have meant anything without all the sacrifices we made; running two businesses, virtually hundreds of hours a week; sleep deprivation, zero financial resources and so much uncharted territory could and would push any normal person out of the rat race in which we found ourselves. I’m not sure what other forces were behind us but a few are certain. The love and desire to be an alternate voice within Milwaukee’s established media brought us here in the first place. And more importantly, the desire by the public, you, to hear what we had to say has kept us going. I started VITAL, but the second year brought a fresh breath and perspective, an intelligence that transcended all that previous, and like rocket fuel propelled us forward: Jon Anne Willow, my partner in my madness, to whom everything is indebted. We are celebrating our fifth anniversary on February 24th and we’d like you to join us. It would not be possible without your support. Thank you, Mehrdad J Dalamie Co-Publisher Dear Readers, Mehrdad is too nice. He’s been the water all along, holding up the boat so it doesn’t sink. All the wind in the world doesn’t matter if you’re dry-docked, and VITAL would be if not for him. He does all manner of unglamorous, sometimes seemingly unrelated work at all hours of the day and night to make sure our little ship of enterprise sails; he is the unsung force behind our continued existence. So next time you run into him behind the bar at Bremen Café, shoveling the sidewalk or delivering copies of the magazine, see him as a man who understands what it means to do whatever it takes to make dreams come true. He is that man, and I am grateful to know him. And as he said, it’s our birthday this month. How cool is that? This year has marked the launch of our new website (complete with blogs and all the modern bells and whistles), an increase in circulation and distribution, growth in advertising sales and most importantly, a spike in something intangible – access and awareness within the community. You’re telling us about stories that need to be told, inviting us to your events, coming to ours, writing us letters, visiting our website, being our myspace “friends” and generally showing us that you like VITAL (really, really). And that’s incredibly cool. So this issue is full of presents for you in the form of puzzles and games. Dwellephant’s maze opens the section and Brian Jacobson did one called Silent Sentinels which is all photos of local statues where you guess where they are and what they represent. Some of them are […]

A Soldier’s Question

This letter is from my friend Joe Klein, who’s stationed in Iraq. I wrote about him last July when he was shipped out. He’s a middle-aged, blissfully married father of two. He’s been there long enough now to start asking the deeper questions. Here’s one he sent me today. Jon Anne, I am currently on 5 day R&R in [blank]. The conversation that continues to amaze me is how … and I know it in myself … we start to take death in a fatalistic way. The armor we wear becomes in encumbrance … If it is my time, it *is* my time. These men and women have divergent views. The closer to combat each moves, the less the self seems so important. A fatalistic peace settles upon the consciousness of those who face danger. The training desensitizes us to the threat made against us. The divergence is related to distance from the sound of explosions or gunfire. It seems to me the rear echelons fear more then those on the front line. So many young men and young women … The enemy becomes faceless and inhumane. I cannot let myself be lost in the dehumanization. I only see men and women, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. We are all embraced in the violence. We are all touched by fear. We are all dancing to the tune … played by far away presidents, parliaments, congresses, kings and mullahs. I ask myself … how do we make it civilized again? How do we restore peace and learn to love each other? Please tell me, how? — Joseph T. Klein

Second-Generation Tribe

I’ve been home for the holiday and am, as always, amazed at how metro Des Moines, Iowa, has grown and changed since I grew up here. Some of these changes, like shopping centers and multi-lane highways, are to be expected – such things weren’t widely required most places in the Plains region of the Midwest when I was a girl. Others are more surprising – population of my hometown of Norwalk (formerly 7 miles south of Des Moines, now not discernibly separate) was 1,300 in the 1970 Census. Today, 11,000 suburbanites enjoy three golf courses, two coffee shops, a nice library, a public swimming pool and skate park, multiple convenience stores and fast food restaurants plus much more. With my rudimentary understanding of how population, business and property ownership affect the tax base, I can safely guess that the kids in my old high school now have separate uniforms for track, basketball and softball. My Norwalk girls basketball team is ranked number one. They were on the front page of my county newspaper (circ. 8,630), along with lots of other high school sports news. I didn’t stay with my parents in Norwalk. There’s just too many of us now for their modest two-bedroom split level, so the nine attending members of the Willow/Tomaszek/Garner tribe stayed at a Best Western. Last night was our final evening in town and my parents reserved the breakfast room and trucked in a bunch of food for a swimming party. Family members, friends, their mates and all their children streamed from the buffet to the pool and back, exclaiming over the new babies, new photos and new information incepted since our last meeting. The last of us finally gave up on Totally 80s Trivial Pursuit just before midnight and finished cleaning up before stumbling to bed. It was my boyfriend’s first time to meet everyone, and in introducing him to everyone and explaining the sometimes protracted associations, it occurred to me that my tribe in Milwaukee was not an original idea. My sisters and friends made our tribe in response to a desire for the love and support of a big, extended family close by. Last night’s gathering was anchored by my parents’ friends from forever. Then there were us kids, our own friends and our kids, several of whom are already almost old enough to have their own kids. Some of us only see each other every few years or so. One of my friends has a four year-old I still haven’t met. But it doesn’t matter; we all know that if that little boy ever needed anything that one of us could provide, it would be given without question. So our tribe in Milwaukee, as it turns out, is an extension, a satellite office if you will, of a core that emanates at least in part from a small Iowa town where, 35 years ago, a group of young parents met (or re-met from childhood) and created the big, extended family they all […]

30 a.m. – A Thanksgiving letter to my mother

Dear Mom, I’m already up, itching to start the turkey. But everyone here is still asleep and I know that as soon as I start banging pots around the whole house will be up. So for now I am enjoying a quiet cup of coffee in the pre-dawn stillness. I am upstairs in my office, which is my sanctuary, all my lists laying in a pile on the kitchen table. I will look at them later. In point of fact, I’ve been making Thanksgiving dinner for 21 years today, if you count the crazy potlucks my friends used to do in college the weekend before the holiday, and I don’t really need the lists. They just comfort me. This year there won’t be Kraft dinner on the side – my old school pal Ron’s annual contribution – or chips and dip guiltily slipped into the mix by Doug, Dave or Pat. By the same token, Wanda’s amazing spaetzel from her mother’s recipe are probably being boiled up somewhere in Texas as we speak and Halston’s apple pie is sitting on a window sill in rural Missouri. No, today’s dinner is higher-minded, with sage and mint-stuffed roasted turkey made with herbs from my summer garden, dried and preserved just for today. Lucky’s homemade applesauce with cinammon and my cranberries with orange zest and red wine will fill the house with sweet smells, complemented by five homemade desserts from Michelle and 10 pounds each of mashed and sweet potatoes dutifully peeled by Lena and Emma and prepared by Beth. Mehrdad will bring his famous saffron rice with Wisconsin cranberries. He’ll make the world’s best gravy from my pan drippings. And If Brian and his daughter can make it, they’ll bring real homemade southern mac and cheese, possibly the world’s best comfort food. There will be other dishes as well, laid out on my buffet for a feast of biblical proportions. We’ll all praise each other’s cooking as we sip Pinot Grigio. The kids will spill their drinks and ask how much they have to eat before they can have dessert. My two-bedroom bungalow will fill with the sounds and life of 25 or 30 close friends and family members. I know I’ll look around despairingly at least once, sure that the house will never be clean again. I know I’ll almost call my son’s name when corraling the kids for dinner, forgetting as I always do that he is never with me on this day. The day will pass in a blur, with a second meal at Michael’s mother’s in the late afternoon and a get-together in the evening for adults at Joy’s. I will fall into bed exhausted, probably late. But right now it is quiet. I am drinking coffee alone. And I wish, more than anything, that you were here. I love you, Jon Anne

Pelosi’s secret sauce

I have to concur with Matt Wild – Nancy Pelosi is hot. I, too, found myself, just last night, having fevered dreams of a vague nature that involved Ms. Pelosi’s famous smile and those burning brown eyes. Granted, these same dreams were also rife with broader symbolism – my son missing his train to Iowa today, my dog peeing all over the floor as I entertain 25 people for Thanksgiving and Newt Gingrich’s hair. Maybe these dreams are the by-product of sleeping on a heating pad. Or maybe they’re really tied to broader fears of failure and embarassment. Pelosi stands in the doorway of history. Not just in the most obvious way, as the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House, but also as an elected official who holds in her hand the power to influence the re-connection of a nation as severely divided as at any time in the memory of its living citizens. Her stated commitment to ethics has already been shaken by what the media is casting as personal loyalty over broad stewardship (as evidenced by her failed bid to install John Murtha as Majority leader and her backing of an impeached and convicted Federal judge for chair of the House Intelligence committee). She is seeing firsthand that her actions will be watched around the world and not just on the Hill, and conservative bloggers and Op-Ed writers are already sharpening their pitchforks for a good old-fashioned character assassination. But I believe in Nancy Pelosi, because she’s got a secret weapon that has yet to be taken into account. I know this weapon not only exists, but will come to play a major role in her ability to herd the cats of the House into the corral. To me, it’s as plain as the nose on her Romanesque face, and anyone who thinks they can take her on and win is wasting time and energy better spent falling into line and working for the bipartisanship this country so badly needs. For those of you without my crystal vision, I’ll share what some of us already know: Ms. Pelosi is Italian. When attempting to figure this woman out, it is absolutely imperative that this facet of her makeup not be ignored. I can personally tell just by looking at pictures of her that she possesses the paisano triple-threat in abundance: she’s beautiful, matriarchal and used to getting her way. Her primary goal is to be effective, and nobody can bend an exchange to their own purposes like an Italian on a mission. She will listen, flatter, cajole and compromise. She will make her associates feel valued – if that’s what works. If that doesn’t work, she will threaten, punish and call out her detractors with quiet righteousness. And if, somehow, she still finds herself in a backslide, she will resort to the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of the Italian woman. She will express her disappointment. She will roll her eyes heavenward and then down […]

Are we the last?

Will my generation be the last to count among themselves at least a few whose ideal weekend afternoon includes sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of warmed up coffee, reading the paper and listening to the game on AM radio? Will the kids who will control the media when we’re old save the execution of AM until the last of my generation is dead, if only out of respect for tradition? As the sun from the kitchen window warms my arm and the smells of Sunday breakfast linger in the air, I have but one thought. Kids, you don’t know what you’re missing.

33 a.m. Bye-bye, Mr. Bowen

Those (like myself) who don’t keep a list of all civilian personnel currently embedded in Iraq might not be familiar with attorney Stuart W. Bowen Jr. A Republican and long-time associate of the current president, Bowen was sent to Iraq in 2004 to open a federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. During his tenure, he has exposed shoddy and dangerous construction, fraudelent use of funds and numerous incidents of bribery and conspiracy related to the reconstruction of Iraq. He’s even sent some of the worst offenders to jail. Not surprisingly, he has repeatedly investigated three of the biggest U.S. companies with contracts in Iraq – Haliburton, Parsons and Bechtel. What may be surprising (or not), then, is the language buried deep inside the massive military authorization bill signed two weeks ago by Bush that eliminates Bowen’s position on Oct. 1, 2007. From a few yards back, it figures. But many of those who followed the bill closely are more taken aback than the average bear. And that includes Republicans. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is especially shocked. She says she read what she thought was the final conference report (this is where House and Senate versions of a bill are made to line up) and that the provision was not there. Other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are in agreement. Turns out the language was slipped in at the last minute by “Congressional staff members working for Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and who declared on Monday that he plans to run for president in 2008.” (NYT, Nov. 3, 2006). Josh Holly, House Armed Services spokesman and, I’m sure coincidentally, a member of Hunter’s staff, said that “politics played no role and that there had been no direction from the administration or lobbying from the companies whose work in Iraq Mr. Bowen’s office has severely critiqued.” Haliburton, Parsons and Bechtel, naturally, aver that they made absolutely no effort to lobby against Bowen or his office. Several lawmakers have come forward to say that they will fight the termination. Let’s see what happens next.

And trade “them” for what?

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, Being a monthly publication has its disadvantages of timing. Never is this more apparent to me than when I have to write this column before a momentous event, knowing most people won’t read it until after. Such is the case with these midterm elections. As of this morning, both liberal and conservative think tanks are predicting that Democrats will pick up 18-22 seats in the House (15 are needed for a majority) and 2-3 seats in the Senate (of the six needed for a majority). In short, by the time you read this, it’s likely that Democrats will take back one of the houses and hold a stronger position in the other. It would seem that change is in the air. But I’m troubled. The other evening, VITAL hosted a screening of Robert Greenwald’s Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers to a packed room at Bremen Café. Granted, this is pretty far-left stuff, attracting mostly those who already know they’re mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore, so I wasn’t surprised that the lively talkback session after the film touched on wholesale revolution in the streets. But as PeaceAction’s George Martin whipped up the crowd with enthusiastically rejoined calls to “Send them home!” I couldn’t help but ask: And trade “them” for what? Is our collective memory so short that we’ve forgotten that Republicans rode into Washington in 1994 as reformists, vowing to end a very real decade of Democratic power-mongering and scandal? Does anyone recall that even though Democrats are campaigning on Bush’s poor handling of the “War on Terror,” 145 of 211 Democratic Representatives voted in favor of the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act and only one Senator against? Or that 66 Democrats in the House voted in favor of the reauthorization in 2005 and only three Democratic Senators against? Are we impressed today by Congressmen like Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who positions himself as the “People’s Defender” yet voted in favor of Bush’s recent evisceration of the Constitution as it pertains to prisoners of war? Will Democratic voters, at some point, acknowledge the irony of their present mood? Let’s put this in perspective. This election serves one very valuable purpose: to restore some modicum of party balance within the three branches of our federal government. But a Democratic House will not have the power to make sweeping changes to our domestic policies on health, education, jobs, campaign reform and the federal budget. And even if the will to do so is there, this cash-strapped nation is so committed to military spending at this point that to withdraw significant funding from the war to reallocate it to domestic interests would potentially put the lives of our deployed soldiers in even greater peril. I’ll lay down money that few Democrats with future political aspirations will take up that charge, for fear of alienating their home base and drawing easy fire from angry, organized Republicans. It’s all very interesting. While I applaud the […]

27 a.m.

So on Monday four of us from the office went for a free lunch at Bravo! It’s a new “Italian” place in Bayshore Mall’s soon-to-be-unveiled shopping village. The restaurant itself was passable, with economically-priced entrees of biblical proportions and $6 desserts. The staff was “practicing,” which meant thousands of people got invitations for a complimentary meal over three days, to help the staff get the kinks out before the real opening in a few weeks. Except for the fact that the server didn’t take my order first (I was the only female at the table and we had a comment card with which Charlie was judiciously keeping score) and the manager completely interrupted us to give his spiel, it was fine. If I ever get tired of waiting in line for a table at Maggiano in Mayfair I’ll consider Bravo! an option. What was really interesting (and a little disturbing) about the whole experience, though, had little to do with fake Roman columns abutting black-painted, acoustic tile ceilings. It was the shopping village itself that both fascinated and frightened us. Hundreds of workers in hard hats scurried about, frantically putting the finishing touches on storefronts, landscaping and street dressing in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to be open by holiday shopping season. And wow, I do believe this will be a one-of-a-kind retail experience for most of us Milwaukeeans. Ever been to the city of Kohler? How about Disney World? On a cruise ship? The new Bayshore has exactly that feel. It’s a city within a city, complete with street signs, sidewalks, condos(!) and a town square where school groups and jazz acts will no doubt entertain shoppers as they spend their way through the plaza. I bet there will be greeters in blazers to help us find our way around and to let us know what exciting retail events are on tap for the day. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some sort of card program is in the offing, where you can just charge away on your Bayshore card and get one convenient bill in the mail at a later date! Needless to say, we didn’t litter or take pictures. We had no desire to have some guy in a cartoon animal suit quietly escort us to an underground holding area for questioning. No, we certainly didn’t want to share the fate of the two young women being escorted out of Kohl’s in handcuffs as we hit the parking ramp. Hopefully they were just shoplifting and hadn’t tried to pull the head off Bayshore Bear, the mall’s shopping mascot.

Shoot from the hip

By Jon Anne Willow You may have heard of Cedar Block, Milwaukee’s premiere presenter of offbeat creative events with an emphasis on group participation. You may have heard of Saul Leiter, the New York street photographer who blazed the trail for the use of color in art photography in the mid 20th century. And you may have heard of lomography… or not. But even if none of these are familiar to your ear, you will surely have heard of the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) and of Milwaukee Street in Milwaukee. And whether you’ve heard of all these things or only the last two, you will soon see them brought together in what is perhaps one of the most interesting collaborations of local and national photography this year. In Living Color: The Photographs of Saul Leiter opened at the Art Museum on September 28. Unlike his ersatz contemporaries in Abstract Expressionism, Mark Rothko and Richard Pousette-Dart, Leiter’s work wasn’t embraced by the formal art community until recently. But like Fellini or Bergman among filmmakers, his influence has been felt among photographers for decades. And now Milwaukee will be first to acknowledge his contribution to the form with the first-ever major exhibit for the 82-year-old photographer. As early as the late 40s, Leiter worked primarily in color, shooting scenes of New York City that stunningly captured urban life in saturated frames and off-kilter focus. At that time, color photography was not only expensive to process, but viewed by many as a baser form of the medium. Leiter’s photos further insulted the “art world” by presenting technical “imperfections” rather as augmentation, an approach with which he was rewarded by resounding silence from curators around the world. To his vast credit, Leiter didn’t care: he continued to ply his trade his own way, presenting his work as slide shows with his photographs blown up to the scale of full-size paintings. The MAM exhibit will include a room devoted to a digital slide show in that vein, along with around 70 color prints, a selection of black and white photos and four of his watercolor/govache paintings. Enter Cedar Block, the brainchild of Brent Gohde, ostensibly a member of Milwaukee’s emerging DIY Art Movement. (Though the city has yet to be recognized nationally as a haven for such, we are confident it will, so we’ll just say it now). Gohde, like his peers, is firmly committed to the principle that there is a place for every artist who wants to work, even if their talents and opportunities don’t fall into traditionally accepted tracks. To that end, Cedar Block stages unusual events, from Weird Science Fairs to essay contests, and now an exhibit of lomography-inspired photographs by local artists in conjunction with the Leiter exhibit. “There’s never been a voice that shouldn’t be heard,” says Gohde. “These events provide a venue for the non-traditional artist to show their work, have it displayed in a world-class museum. My fondest hope is reaching further quarters of the Milwaukee community […]

What kind are you?

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, My boyfriend is my favorite kind of conservative. A drive past a “Give Peace a Chance” yard sign is enough to get him started. “I don’t want to hear from anyone about being unhappy with the way things are going unless they have a plan to change it,” is one common complaint. If I mention that he himself is unhappy with “the way things are going” he is quick to point out that he’s not complaining. (God forbid we ever end up at a red light behind a “Republicans for Voldemort” bumper sticker: The only thing that bothers him more than liberals without a plan is fantasy andscience fiction.) When afforded these impromptu opportunities to engage in political debate, the conversation plays out predictably. He lays out his argument with the usual tent stakes of the superior organizational power of the Republicans and his support of decisive action and a clear agenda over ideological drift and Tower-of-Babel pluralism. His resolve typically begins to falter, though, when questioned directly on whether the decisive actions to which he refers represent sound policy, and whether the clear social and moral agenda of his party truly adhere to the founding principles of Republicanism. Like many conservative individuals, he is a person of common sense, secretly disappointed in just how far his party has strayed from its core values. I’m pretty sure I’m also my boyfriend’s favorite kind of liberal. I pound the tent stakes of our nation’s fall from grace: of a once-compassionate government which no longer guards the interests of its most vulnerable, which thumbs its nose at the rest of the world’s economic and social interests, which aggressively seeks to erode such basic personal freedoms as privacy and reproductive choice. My resolve typically begins to falter, though, when he points out that despite the fact that many Americans on both sides of the political fence share my views, my party has done nothing to effect change except make the aforementioned charges. Yes, Democrats are working hard to win back Congressional seats in these midterm elections on a vague platform of curing these ills, but the party was beset on all sides for over a decade before it started to retaliate with any force. “The war has been such an effective distraction,” I attempt to argue. “People don’t want to buck the leadership when faced with such a crisis.” I even sometimes add lamely, “Besides, these things take time.” (God forbid we end up at a red light behind a “Democrats Have Moral Values, Too” bumper sticker. The only thing that bothers me more than liberals without a plan is whining statements of the obvious.) Not so secretly, I am also disappointed in how far my party has strayed from its core values. But what is the solution? The events of the last five years have shown in stark relief just how little difference there is between elected officials. Even if given a free pass on the […]

The Letting Go lesson

Dear Readers, I’ve been living on my own for more than two decades now, and over time I’ve moved slowly, inevitably, towards a more structured existence. Sometimes I get a little misty thinking about the good old days of scoring sofas from the curbs of better neighborhoods and organizing my social life around whose car had gas or what clubs were on the bus line. Other days, I revel in my ability to make a cake without running to the store for eggs and usually having a pen and paper handy when I need to make a list. But one thing about my life has never changed. I don’t send holiday cards or annual family letters. I just don’t like the idea of buying boxes of someone else’s pictures and words, agonizing over personal notes to all the people to whom I wish I’d been a better friend or relative over the past year and clogging the U.S. mail and landfills around the country with another five pounds of paper waste. And family letters are a trap. Too optimistic comes off as false; too pessimistic is a real downer. Needless to say, I no longer receive many holiday missives, and the stack gets shorter every year. At this rate, I estimate I’ll be completely free from them by 2008, except for a few holdouts who never trim their list to exclude non-participants. Wish me luck. That having been said, and never having been one to deny my own hypocrisy, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the past year at Vital. One year ago, things were looking pretty bleak. Within two weeks, I lost my managing editor and ended an often-rocky relationship with my art director. The same month, my much-loved administrator/sales assistant/ad designer decided she needed to leave to focus on her last year of grad school. Already stretched paper-thin, I picked up the slack as best I could, which wasn’t very well. Subsequently, ad revenues fell off as I spent more time doing other things (I also used to be the sales staff) and we fell behind with some bills. By February, the wolves were at the door. At our birthday party that month, I wandered around in a state of self-indulgent melancholy, drinking a little too much and silently thinking “goodbye” to everyone who came out to celebrate with us. Afterwards, I hid in my home office for three days, wrapped in my bathrobe, not even able to get it up to take a shower or answer my phone. Mehrdad and I had a few incredibly depressing conversations about the nature and implications of failure. In the meantime, though, we felt we had to keep putting out Vital until we had a plan. So we did, and I’m here to tell you that the experience was one of the most valuable of my life. It totally sucked to operate through the emotional filter that our beloved publication was in hospice; so much so, in fact, that we […]

December 2005

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, This is something every American should see. Gyeongju, Republic of KoreaNovember 17, 2005, 12:15 p.m. local timeTranscript excerpt from press conference with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun Q: Mr. President, Vice President Cheney called it reprehensible for critics to question how you took the country to war, but Senator Hagel says it’s patriotic to ask those kinds of questions. Who do you think is right? BUSH: The Vice President. Q: Why? BUSH: Well, look, ours is a country where people ought to be able to disagree, and I expect there to be criticism. But when Democrats say that I deliberately misled the Congress and the people, that’s irresponsible… It’s irresponsible to use politics. This is serious business making – winning this war. But it’s irresponsible to do what they’ve done. So I agree with the Vice President. . . . ME: He must be kidding. He is kidding, right? Dissent is “using politics?” Even more laughable, when did the Bush administration grow averse to the practice? Anyone remember Bill Frist’s crocodile tears on the Senate floor over Terry Schiavo? How about Libby and Rove dropping the dime on Joe Wilson’s wife when his weapons investigation didn’t come back from Africa as instructed? We could sit around all day thinking of more examples, but let’s not. The holidays are stressful enough without rehashing our national shame. Bush’s words have already been all but washed away by Rep. Murtha’s call for withdrawal from Iraq and the Republicans’ subsequent quashing of that resolution, as well as by the president’s free-falling approval ratings, but his statement is an event of major significance. It may not be news, per se, but to hear the words spoken plainly, in front of an international audience, should at least piss you off and embarass you on behalf of your country, regardless of your party affiliation. In this month’s “We The People” (p. 31), Phil Walzak takes up another aspect of the partisan struggle. So-called “liberals” are angry with current policies that favor war, bloat the national debt and prey on the vulnerable, and yet they (we) continue to offer no alternate plan, disagreeing over details and letting conservative strategists frame the debate. We all know this, but it’s crucial we knock it off right now. Can we put our differences aside, even if only long enough to take up the mantle of responsible governance? Are we really so willing to risk our very democracy that we can’t unify on key issues? Some say the beauty of liberalism is its plurality of ideas, and this is certainly true, but when one faction seeks to undermine the very tenets of our nation, it is the sworn duty of the other(s) to defend them, and to build bipartisan alliances with others who hold the same belief. Oppression is not inevitable. We can restore our lost principles. But we have to call it like we see it and not turn away because it seems scary and […]

Redemption Song

Here’s the thing about Liz Phair. If you’re a great admirer (as I am) you might be intimidated by the prospect of speaking to her directly (as I was). Even as a seasoned feature writer with two decades of bylines in my files, I was so nervous that when her publicist patched us together that I kind of froze. “Hello?” she said, her speaking voice a little higher and more melodic than I’d imagined. “Are you there?” Tongue-tied, I almost hung up, but I was on assignment, so instead I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. I confessed my insecurity, potentially sealing my fate as a pathetic amateur in her eyes. “God, don’t you hate that? That happened to me not too long ago.” She giggles, but it’s a conspiratorial girl-giggle, meant to put me at ease. She then tells the story of being in Michael Penn’s home recording studio, working on tracks for Somebody’s Miracle, when Joni Mitchell popped in. Penn invited Liz into the kitchen to meet her all-time musical hero, but, she confesses, “I was so freaked out, my ass was frozen to the couch. Absolutely frozen. I could not get up. When I finally did, I kind of hung back by the doorjamb. I had nothing interesting to say to her.” She goes on to tell about meeting Mick Jagger (again) recently, and how she tried to lighten things up by being friendly and cracking a joke. But everything she said seemed to come off as offensive in some way, so she just shut her mouth. We agreed that it was probably the difference between being Midwestern and being from, well, about anywhere else. I pushed aside unbidden thoughts of the great girlfriends Liz and I would surely have been in a different life and pressed on. Here’s something you may not know. Liz Phair is at peace with herself. This is a relatively new development, a spiritual transition years in the making. Nothing shakes up one’s world quite like parenthood, except perhaps a painful divorce or a career inexplicably on the slide. For some, the death of a much-loved relative can turn everything upside down. And when it all comes down more or less in a continuum, there’s no time to process each piece individually. It’s a true “get real” moment, fall or rise. Liz has risen, and her first big step was self-forgiveness. “There is an acceptance in me now,” she says. “I feel like I turned a corner in my personal life where I stopped running from all my bad qualities and said ‘enough is enough.’ I don’t want to live the rest of my life alone; I don’t want somebody making excuses for me, I don’t want to be somebody that my son needs therapy to get over.” But inner equilibrium is learned behavior for the woman who had the (mis)fortune of releasing one of the most acclaimed debut records of all time, then proceeded to ride celebrity like […]

Top Fives

By Jon M. “Big ‘Uns” Gilbertson, Vital Source and BeyondFive Albums That Make Me Glad To Have Testicles 1. AC/DC, Highway to Hell2. Afghan Whigs, Black Love3. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back4. The Stooges, Fun House5. Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat Kevin Groen, Vital Source Top Five Albums That Make People Ask, “Who’s this?!” (Not in a condescending way, but in an, “I want to get this” way)1. Blanket Music: Cultural Norms2. Mates of State: Team Boo3. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: Shake the Sheets4. Plush: Underfed5. Fiery Furnaces: Blueberry Boat Haven Langhout, WMSE, Moct Bar, Vital Source (and more!)Top Five Favorite Summer of 2005 Albums.1. Hot Chip: Coming on Strong2. Patrick Wolf: Lycanthropy3. Weird War: Illuminated by the Light4. Magic Arrows: Sweet Heavenly Angel of Death5. Colder: Heat Eric Lewin, Vital Source Top Five Records To Be Stranded On A Deserted Island With1. The Clash: London Calling2. The Beatles: The White Album3. Grateful Dead: American Beauty4. Stone Roses: S/T5. Nirvana: Unplugged in New York Jason Mohr, Juniper Tar, WMSETop Five Records To Fall Asleep To1. Vashti Bunyan: Just Another Diamond Day2. Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois: Apollo3. Miles Davis: In a Silent Way4. Early Day Miners: Let Us Garlands Bring5. Neil Young: Dead Man – Motion Picture Soundtrack Liz Phair, HerselfTop Five Current Faves1. Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life2. Dave Matthews: Stand Up3. Rilo Kiley: More Adventurous 4. Missy Higgins: The Sound of White5. Jack Johnson:  In Between Dreams The Rhythm Chicken Most Spun CDs in the Last Two Months in His Post-Communist Apartment Block Home in Krakow, Poland1. Call Me Lightning: The Trouble We’re In2. Replacements: All For Nothing, Nothing For All3. Bright Eyes: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning4. Chariot’s Race: Existence5. The Clash: Give’m Enough Rope Evan Solochek, Vital SourceTop Five Road Trip Records1. Weezer: Blue Album2. Ben Folds Five: S/T3. The Shins: Chutes Too Narrow4. The Decemberists: Her Majesty, The Decemberists5. The Anniversary: Designing A Nervous Breakdown Lucky Tomaszek, Slightly Crunchy Parent, Homebirth MidwifeTop Five Albums for Childbirth, in no particular order1. Various Artists : Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack 2. Indigo Girls: Swamp Ophelia3. Kate Bush: Hounds of Love 4. Enya: Watermark 5. Sarah McLachlan: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy Matt Wild, Holy Mary Motor Club, Vital SourceAll-Time Top Five Records1. Dead Milkmen: Big Lizard in My Backyard2. They Might Be Giants: Lincoln3. Pixies: Trompe le Monde4. The Beatles: Help!5. Def Leppard: Hysteria Jon Anne Willow, Vital Source, Bremen CaféTop Five Records To Hear While Writing1. Beatles: Let It Be2. Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Ease Down the Road3. Liz Phair: whitechocolatespaceegg4. Brad: Shame5. Tangle Eye: Alan Lomax’s Southern Journey Remixed Erin Wolf, Chariot’s Race, Vital Source Top Five Discs to Pound the Pavement With Running Sneaks1. Luna: Lunapark2. Fugazi: The Argument3. Rogue Wave: Out of the Shadow4. The Pixies: Trompe le Monde5. Idlewild: 100 Broken Windows VS

October 2005

Dear Readers, In the wake of the mind-bending chain of events in the four years since 9/11, most people who are honest with themselves will acknowledge that their political and social beliefs influence their outward behavior more than in the past. I was not around for McCarthyism; I was a child during Viet Nam, but I imagine the elevated tension between co-workers and neighbors with differing viewpoints is similar to the mood that divided Americans in those other times. Never in my lifetime have I heard people so commonly characterized by their political affiliation. “Joe in accounting? He’s okay, but he’s a conservative.” “Lisa down the street? She’s an MPS teacher, so you know she voted for Kerry.” I did not believe in God on September 10, 2001. I had never felt a Presence, and therefore didn’t believe “the faithful” had, either. I was angry at organized religion for the dogmatic subjugation of congregations by both fear of hell and the promise of moral superiority (okay, I’m still pretty pissed about that). But on September 11, when the planes rained fiery death on thousands of innocent humans, I felt, through my whole body, a great tearing, a sucking loss of life force instantly filled by a rushing wave of intense sorrow stronger than I could ever have imagined. In the days that followed, I could see my own reflection in the faces of everyone I met. We all wanted to help, to fix the horrible thing that had happened. We all wanted to cry, and we did – in our cars, at our desks and in our living rooms. Living through this, I came to understand the nature of God. God is not 19 extremists flying hijacked instruments of death into people-filled buildings. Nor is God a raging hurricane plunging hundreds of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens into a living nightmare. God is what happens in the wake of such tragedy. God is when we all really, really feel the pain together. When we extend a hand to help, giving of ourselves without considering the social or political views of those we’re helping. God is Love. We are God. And whether you affix the existence of God to a “collective We” or not, you may be starting to notice a change in the air these last few weeks. I think we’re sick of fighting with each other; (almost) ready to move past our relentless divisiveness, for now anyway. As a citizenry, we’ve got problems we can only fix if we work together. We need real jobs, we need quality schools and we need a safety net for the vulnerable. These are the greatest threats facing America now, and as more citizens are personally confronted with basic needs not met – and not prioritized – by our leadership on both sides of the aisle, I believe we will turn back to each other for answers, for hope. In doing so, we can push our will upwards and into the American […]

Liz Phair

“I don’t have to say what I’m thinking, because the radio’s on and everyone’s heard my latest song.” From “Got My Own Thing” At the water cooler of a figurative Music Lovers World Headquarters, two Liz Phairs are discussed. The first Liz will never overcome the happy accident of having penned one of rock’s all-time greatest debut records. This Liz now makes stylistically confusing records that disappoint the “fans” who’ve known her since “when,” who are always on the brink of giving up on her but can’t quite. The other Liz stands straight, ready to spit in your eye or (worse) turn her back on you if you don’t like her shit, which has been about her and her own creative process – not you – all along. It is the second Liz who made Somebody’s Miracle. Miracle brilliantly connects the dots of Phair’s past work and frames all within the context of an artist who finally, fully understands her creative voice. Its 14 songs are an amalgam of frank self-understanding and third-person narrative, and Phair deftly mines the territory she first tapped in earnest in whitechocolatespacegg, creating characters so real their stories seem autobiographical. Her guitar is also back from its one-record hiatus, complete with Phair’s signature quirky picking style, still charmingly evocative of a passionate teen playing on the foot of her bed. Overall, it’s a simpler record than 2003’s self-titled release, though its polished production values send a clear message about the evolution of Phair’s musical direction: she’s moving forward. You can come if you want to.  VS

Mark Metcalf is the Accidental Actor

Mark Metcalf had been supporting himself as an actor for over ten years before he realized that he really was one. “All during that first decade” he says, “I kept thinking I was going back to the West Coast to get my degree in Marine Biology.” Metcalf, a stage, film and television actor, director, film producer, and now also Mequon restaurant owner and morning radio show regular, was born in Ohio in 1946. After moving to New Jersey with his family in 1959, Metcalf returned to the Midwest to pursue a degree in Engineering at the University of Michigan. It was there he discovered acting. At his roommates’ urging, he auditioned for a theater department production. His motives weren’t entirely pure. “I was convinced when they suggested that the girls in the theater department would be a lot, um, friendlier, than the girls in the engineering department.” He laughs. At 58, Mark is distinguished, a veteran of both his profession and parenthood. Tallish and thin, his dark blond hair is a little long and his attire tasteful, favoring earth tones. He quickly assures me that it only took seconds for his motivations to shift entirely. “I fell in love with acting instantly when I walked into the green room and saw all these people together, laughing and fighting and arguing one minute, and making love on the couch the next. All the vital emotions were right there out in the open. It was a world I had been craving and needing, without knowing it.” Mark was hooked. He moved to New York in the early ’70s and performed in both classical and modern theater. He eventually moved out West to work in film. In 1978, he earned a permanent place in pop culture history as crew-cut fraternity jerk Doug Neidermeyer in National Lampoon’s Animal House. I asked him how he dealt with instant celebrity. “I was thinking moment to moment at the time. After the movie was done, I took almost two years off to produce my own film. I know now that had I continued to act through that period when I was the “hottest,” things may have turned out differently as far as my acting career.”  That film was Chilly Scenes of Winter, also released as Head Over Heels. It was a good film, but not a big commercial success. He’s done other directing and producing projects, and continued to act on stage, but the two other roles he’s best known for emanated from the small screen – as The Maestro on Seinfeld and The Master on Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But Mark was unhappy as a television actor. It was a grind, he says, like any day job. Work wasn’t generally awarded on merit, and the professional challenge was, in his words, “less than zero.” When his son was six, he and the boy’s mother, Libby, a Wisconsin native, decided to head back this way. They wanted a healthy place for him to grow up, and knew […]

December 2004

Dear Readers, It seems like this would be the month to recount a touching holiday memory, wish everyone peace in the New Year, mention that it’s my two-year anniversary with Vital Source and be done with it. But in the words of Chuck D., I’ve got so much trouble on my mind. I’ve been trying, hard as I can, to engage in the same liberal/progressive group hug so extensively talked about in this issue. I’m trying to tell myself that given the choice between the ineptitude we knew and the vote of no-confidence we couldn’t trust, it’s not surprising-and maybe even not the worst thing in the world-that we stick with the leadership we have for another four years. But I don’t know if I can continue to tamp down my uneasiness and be a good national citizen in light of some pretty scary shit going on around the country and in our own backyard. I’m kind of freaked out about Weldon Angelos. He’s the 25-year old Utah man convicted for the first time of selling pot while carrying a pistol in his bootstrap and having more guns at home. Granted, it’s no way to raise a family, and I have a low opinion of him for putting his two young sons in harm’s way, not to mention the example he was setting. But U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell was forced to sentence him to 55 years with no probation because of the weapons possession element, which forced the case into federal court. Now before you dismiss me as a sniveling liberal soft on drug crime, hang on for just a second while we place this in its larger context. Judge Cassell himself, described as a brainy, conservative former law professor, surveyed the maximum sentences for other federal crimes, and this is what he found: Hijacking an airplane: 25 years. Terrorist bombing intending to kill a bystander: 20 years. Second-degree murder: 14 years. Kidnapping: 13 years. Rape of a 10-year-old: 11 years. Selling pot while carrying a pistol: 55 years. Needless to say, Cassell is mortified, Angelo’s family is devastated and people everywhere are starting to call for re-examination of mandatory sentences and the possibility that some violate our Eighth Amendment rights under the Constitution. In the meantime, Weldon’s plans are to sit behind bars until he’s 80 years old and his sons are old men themselves. So much for family values. Speaking of which, I have a good friend whose two sons are teenagers in New Berlin. The eldest is a senior, and he’s had his share of troubles. He’s been picked up by New Berlin’s finest for awful crimes like stealing a hood ornament off an abandoned car, leaving campus for lunch and littering in a Taco Bell parking lot (that one earned him four squads and a canine unit). This week, he received a detention for swearing. The naughty nugget? “Jesus Christ.” Yep, that’s what this seventeen year-old boy said, and the fine administration of New Berlin […]

November 2004

Dear Readers, Years from now, I hope to re-read this particular blog and laugh, picturing myself propped up on pillows trying to balance my keyboard on my lap, cursing over not breaking down and getting the laptop which would come in so handy now as I try to type without throwing my back into another painful spasm. I have restricted myself to ibuprofen until this column is finished, but my head is nevertheless filled with fog from the pain in my back and leg. I shift again. I cannot get comfortable. I should see a doctor. Maybe I can wait until tomorrow… It seemed like a good idea at the time. I awoke before everyone else and, as is my wont, began thinking about how I could maximize a few stolen moments of “alone time” before the demands of breakfast and soccer and an all-day production marathon took over the rest of my waking hours. I was feeling a little toxic after a long week of work, and decided a nice bike ride to my local coffee shop on North Ave. would be just the thing. I’d pick up donuts and be back before anyone even knew I was gone. It had been raining earlier, but it was fairly warm, just a little misty. I live on the east side of Wauwatosa. The residential streets in my neighborhood are quiet and mostly level, perfect for an easy ride. I took Meinecke west about three blocks past Cranky Al’s, then headed back east on North, riding in the bike lane. As the lane came to an end, I tapped the brakes. I remember my wheels locking up on the wet pavement, then the quick realization that yes, I was actually going down, then a full spin in the middle of the normally busy street, my body twisting most unnaturally. My right cheek kissed the pavement as my bike landed on top of me. I lay there for a second. A nice older lady was standing over me, trying to lift my bike and urging me to get out of the street. At first I thought the cuts and bruises on my leg were the worst of it, but as the minutes wore on, it grew increasingly difficult to breathe. Every inhale brought a stab of pain and not enough oxygen. A steel band formed quickly around my torso. I had seriously messed up my back. Like an idiot, I still stopped at Al’s for donuts, refusing rides home from several of the good neighbors there, insisting that I could make it on my own. Stupid. By the time I stumbled in to my house, I could barely stand. Eight hours later, I am sitting up for the first time. Call it instant karma. Three days ago, my art director, Tony, flipped his truck on the same off-ramp he takes every day. He’d realized too late as he took a tight turn that he hadn’t compensated enough for the wet road conditions. […]

October 2004

Dear Readers, An oft-discussed but little understood theory of Albert Einstein’s is that of length contraction, in which a decrease in length is experienced by objects traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light (at least 10� but only in the direction in which the object is traveling. Extended, this theory applies to time itself. Simply stated (and possibly somewhat misstated, so I’ll ask advance forgiveness from mathematicians and physicists here): if something is moving fast enough in a certain direction, it actually moves faster than time. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because, like almost everyone I know, I am overwhelmed by how quickly time passes. It truly does feel like the more we’re in motion, the faster time moves. The more we try to do, the more we are faced with decisions we must make that affect both our present and our future, the less time we seem to have to think about what we’re doing. Even though the physics of this phenomenon are beyond my understanding, I can identify with the thought that the faster we move, the faster time does indeed pass. I wish there was a scientific way to physically measure the speed of change as it pertains to both personal and global events and situations. If that were possible, we might find that we are indeed hurtling along at 1/10 the speed of light, the point at which time does indeed start to contract, and things are really happening more and more quickly. The next step would be to see if there was any way at all to slow the world down a bit, to give each of us more time to consider the implications of our decisions and actions. In practical terms, we could more thoroughly evaluate how our two major parties have switched identities in twenty short years. Mysteriously, the Republican party claims banner rights as guardian and gatekeeper of corporate interests and the moral well-being of all Americans, while the Democrats represent balanced budgets, global relations, smaller government and, most interestingly to me, personal choice and autonomy. Does anyone yet remember that the Republican party was founded 150 years ago, right here in Ripon, Wisconsin, by socialists pissed off at ineffectual Democrats and Whigs, both of which had become parties of complacent conservatism, content with the enslavement of blacks and the congenital economic and social structure slavery fostered? Abraham Lincoln was their leader. Trust buster Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, too. My, how times have changed. And so quickly! Think about that on your way to the polls. Something else to think about this election season is the considerable influence of third parties on our two party political system. When we think about third parties, we think of their most colorful characters – Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura, Ralph Nader. But while no independent party has yet succeeded in gaining legal and financial status that would make it competitive with either the Democrats or the Republicans, some of […]

October 2004

Families on the edge? Having read your article “Brave New Family” in your September issue, I can’t help but think you are missing out on one important aspect in the work-family-money triad. Authors Willow and Tomaszek spoke of the difficult choices parents need to make when it comes to working and raising families, and of the sacrifices some are making financially in order to have more time with their kids. Nowhere do they mention what is necessary to get ahead. Those interviewed seemed extremely focused on the present without mention of what it takes to earn enough for retirement, future college education for children, or for emergency situations. They describe families truly living on the edge, as when they described Becca and Joe’s only car being stolen. I don’t disagree with the picture that they paint. These are tough times and we all have difficult decisions to make about work and family time. Throw into that mix a need to think about future financial drain and the issue becomes even more complex. Denise Lubotsky Riverwest (Milwaukee) Kudos for Cosby Dear Ms. Willow, I am writing to comment and thank your writer, Frizell Bailey. I admired his comments about Bill Cosby. [“Cosby’s Clarion Call,” August 2004] Written with such clarity and to the point, I wish it could be reprinted and discussed in many publishing and other media venues. Sincerely, R.A. Holzhauer Milwaukee Love that new look – rrrowwrr! You almost had me fooled. Earlier this month [September 04], I went around on my customary hunt for a copy of Vital, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I was sad, thinking you had finally been gobbled up by some media giant or otherwise closed up shop. But then I noticed this magazine I’d never seen before. I picked it up and there you were – Vital Source MAGAZINE. Way to go! Jeff Reitzer Milwaukee Just picked up the new Vital Source from Ray’s in Wauwatosa. The new size is great, very nice use of color, too. I also thought the new layout was more logical and easy to follow. Keep up the good work. Jessica Wertzke Wauwatosa Props to the SCP Dear Lucky, Thank you for your piece on the difficulty of finding school clothes for children that are cute, but not “cool.” [“Slightly Crunchy Parent” September 2004] Anyone with kids, especially girls, faces this battle. But it was nice to see you treat it with a mixture of firmness and humor. I loved your “fashion code” for your kids! It was funny and too true at the same time. Thanks again, Lisa Maryland (by email)

December 2003

Dear Readers, This is such an emotionally charged time of year. Colder weather, increased contact with family, insane schedules, and the pressures of our consumer economy settle themselves like a weight onto the shoulders of many. Depending on who you are, and/or where you are in your life, you might be heading towards a rush of anticipation, reflection, hope, stress, financial worry, love, antipathy or dread as the holidays approach. Or maybe all of them together. This is the season when I most wish I was a kid again. I grew up three decades ago in a small town in Iowa. Most of the year, we were the least conventional family in town. My mom was a divorced woman who owned her home, which she bought herself, even though it meant she made most of our clothes and doomed us to subsidized hot lunch at school. True to our activist roots, we were part of the “underground railroad” for objectors fleeing to Canada to avoid going to Viet Nam. Behind the water heater in the basement was a cot with a trunk next to it, on which sat a small lamp and an alarm clock. It wasn’t unusual for me as a five year old to enter the kitchen in the morning to find a tired-looking young man I’d never seen gulping coffee and eggs, on his way to the next place. The neighbors thought horrible things about my mom and her cavalcade of “male friends.” But what could she say in her own defense? It was from her example that I learned to keep secrets. At Christmas time, however, you’d have thought we sprang straight from a Rockwell postcard. Some of my dearest childhood memories are of painting wooden ornaments for our tree, making paper chains and listening to holiday music before bed, curled up on the couch with a cup of eggnog, the room illuminated only by the lights on the tree. I remember the thrill of opening the door to carolers, neighbors come to call. Despite their year-long suspicion of us, they didn’t skip our house, and we invited them in for chocolate and cookies, with something stronger for the grownups. Even as a kid, I could sense something about people getting along because of the holiday. I hope I can pass that on to my son, not just at the holidays, but all the time. In truth, people have more in common than in difference. And while I try to live and work according to my beliefs, I am not a friend of meaningless divisiveness. It’s such a waste of energy, and you miss out on the caroling. Speaking of memories, we all got to yakking at a recent staff meeting, and ended up spinning our own holiday/family yarns for each other. We ended up deciding to share them with everyone in this issue, and we hope you like them. On the other hand, you can skip over that piece if it’s not your cup of […]

Milwaukee’s New Cellulloid Heroes

Everybody’s a dreamer and everybody’s a star and everybody’s in show biz, it doesn’t matter who you are. —The Kinks It’s the story of an event that’s long overdue. Of an idea whose time has finally come. It seems like a natural phase in the evolution Milwaukee’s urban identity, something the city and its leadership would have embraced years ago. But bringing to life the Milwaukee International Film Festival has been die kampf, in large part, of Dave Luhrssen and Louis Fortis. Long recognized as one of the city’s culture tastemakers, Dave Luhrssen is a lover of film. As Arts and Entertainment Editor of Shepherd Express, Luhrssen has had the luxury, as the weekly newspaper has grown, to hand off the lion’s share of the writing to the legions of freelancers who contribute the majority of the section’s weekly coverage. But he prefers, for the most part, to review the films himself. So it’s not surprising that an International Film Festival would be his brainchild. Not that he and Fortis, Shepherd Express Publisher and festival co-founder are the first to try. According to Luhrssen, “several people in the past decade have floated the idea. I know of two groups who got to the talking point, meeting with people, etc. but never got very far.” A film festival may seem like one of those things we should just “have,” especially for a city spoiled by public spectacles like Summerfest, the Big Bang and even the Circus Parade. But staging an event of this magnitude is no picnic. “To do this, you really need a group of people with a financial platform to stand on,” says Luhrssen. “It’s enormously expensive. It’s very hard for it to come to life from within a coffee shop with interesting people who have good ideas. It needs the kind of support that comes from access to the right groups and the pockets to support up-front funding.” So in the spring of 2002, Dave and Louis, after months of toying with the idea, batting it around over coffee and floating it to a few trusted colleagues, decided to get serious. Destination: Mid by Midwest But as the planning got underway, the question went beyond what (a film festival) to what, exactly. That Milwaukee filmmakers would be featured was never in question. But how to showcase them in such a way that the festival would attract the overall attention it deserved and be of interest a broad audience was a bit of a challenge. The duo, along with Programming Director Jonathon Jackson, came up with a brilliant solution. The festival would include a regional competition, now called Mid by Midwest, featuring the work of filmmakers specifically from the region. This would give the festival a one-of-a-kind programming track (this is the only festival in the nation to feature the work of Midwestern filmmakers) and create a logical place in which to spotlight Milwaukee filmmakers specifically. “It was one of those really obvious things” says Dave. “Like, why didn’t […]

November 2003

Dear Readers, I’m always hesitant to hail new heroes, especially when all I have to go by is a single action. With that disclaimer, my new hero (not displacing Chief Tonasket out there in Washington) is Nathaniel Heatwole. If you’ve been living in a box, Heatwole is the 20-year old Massachusetts lad who loaded a couple of Southwest Airlines flights with dangerous contraband like boxcutters and bleach on several occasions from February to September without getting caught, then told the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) about it by email on September 15. A month later, when they finally got around to reading it, they contacted Heatwole at the phone number he left them. He was promptly arrested and now faces up to ten years in prison. He claims he committed an act of civil disobedience out of concern for a lack of real airport security. The Fed, naturally embarrassed, is dying to prosecute him to the full extent of the law. U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio has made his position perfectly clear. “This was not a prank. This is not poor judgment,” DiBiagio said. “This is a crime… ” Right he is. But what, exactly, is the nature of the crime? And, one could argue, who committed it? Also from the “scary but true file,” George Bush recently told Brit Hume in a Fox News interview that he doesn’t bother reading the news. It’s so bizarre that I have to print a portion of it here: HUME: How do you get your news? BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. In all due respect, you’ve got a beautiful face and everything. I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage. HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you’ve… BUSH: Practice since day one. HUME: Really? BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there’s opinions mixed in with news. And I… HUME: I won’t disagree with that, sir. BUSH: I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world. HUME: Mr. President, thank you very much. Indeed. I don’t even have anything to add to that. Except that the hair on the back of my neck won’t lay down. Maybe some gel or something would do the trick, I don’t know. By now you’ve probably heard that the letters […]

Milwaukee Colleges

The words “higher education” are loaded with meaning. While most would agree that it’s hard to get very far these days without at least some post-high school training, there are as many takes on what constitutes “education” as there are roads to it. For some it’s a Bachelor’s or better from a college or university that, right or wrong, is the required calling card for entry into many white collar professions. For others, it’s a certificate or Associate’s degree in a specialized field or an apprenticeship in a skilled trade. Our city has a rich history of fostering the long-term well being of its individual citizens. And while, through mismanagement or merely the unfortunate circumstances of a changing world (which is more true could be argued without end), much of the higher social conscience that shaped Milwaukee’s development has withered to some extent with time. We still have sidewalks in city neighborhoods, a robust (but shrinking) amount of urban green space and access to nutrition and health care for most children living below the poverty line. On the other hand, our parks system has become the city budget’s redheaded stepchild. As a population, we gave up an excellent trolley system without batting an eye, and have left our current transit system to an eternal struggle for viability. Poor families must work in what could be arguably termed conscription conditions in order to receive aid, forced to leave their children to be raised on the streets without parental guidance. As a community, there’s much to work through. Wisconsin still fosters higher education. Fortunately, higher education is an area where Milwaukee is still strong. Despite tuition increases and decreases in financial aid at both the state and federal levels, Wisconsin has continued to perform well nationally, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education’s study, Measuring Up 2002, in such standards of higher education as affordability (6th), completion (12th) and benefits from a degree. This last bears explaining, for although the state was ranked 41st, it tied or beat the top achiever (Colorado) in four of the nine sub-categories, including both measuring increased income from receipt of a degree. Our state’s overall score in the benefits index was brought down by studies done in 1992 and 1994 on adults demonstrating high level prose, document and quantitative literacy skills conducted by the Center for Education Statistics National Adult Literacy Survey, and the U.S. Department of Education, respectively. In the year 2000 (the last for which consistent data was found), 64

What the hell?

Dear Readers, I’d like to open this month with a question: What in the hell is going on in America? Have we been so successfully distracted by the “Iraq Conflict” and the near cataclysmic domestic situation that we don’t care about obvious attempts to undermine democratic process? So that’s two questions, but really, what does it take to make us mad these days? While America munches Doritos and consumes the laughably mismanaged Gray Davis recall like so much reality TV, 11 Texas State Senators are hiding in New Mexico (at press time), using the only constitutionally allowed means (breaking the quorum in the Texas Senate) of blocking an illegal redistricting, spearheaded by Gov. Rick Perry and House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R- Texas) and passed by the U.S. Supreme Court without legislative review. The new districting, which falls outside Texas’ legal frequency of once per US census, is a blatant effort to gerrymander US Congressional districts to a solidly Republican majority. Perry has called in The Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation and Justice to “help bring these guys back,” even though they’re not breaking the law. The Governor has indicated he will continue calling special sessions until the Republican redistricting plan is enacted, despite the fact that the Republican-controlled Texas Supreme Court recently rejected the Governor’s writ of mandamus filing to compel the Senators to return. Meanwhile, eleven Democratic state senators are exiled from their state, unable to be with their families, friends and constituents, for fear of being arrested. In the most recent indignity, Republican Senators voted to fine the absent Democrats up to $5,000 per day, and to revoke parking and other privileges for their staffs, for as long as the Senators are away. Needless to say, while these measures are mean-spirited, they have not been effective. Meantime, Ashcroft is on a stump tour of the country to garner support for the PATRIOT Act, parts of which are scheduled to expire soon. The Administration doesn’t want that, and they’re meeting with more opposition than anticipated. Of special note is that the Attorney General has cancelled his scheduled Milwaukee visit, the only stop in the state. No explanation has been given, so we must ask ourselves: does he feel adequate support won’t be found here, or is he confident enough in our habitually low voter turnout that he doesn’t need it? Read Richard Walter’s special We The People feature, “Hope Lives in Tonasket.” It’s the story of how a tiny town of mostly conservative farmers has passed a town resolution to protect the Constitution from “enemies of the state, both foreign and domestic.” The time to leave affairs of state in the hands of the “experts” has passed. I truly believe this country was founded on principles of Liberty And Justice For All, and the time has come to get off the couch and take notice. Use it or lose it: it’s a phrase never more loaded with meaning for each and every one of us. Back here in […]

Riverwest Rising

It’s hard to say where it started. The first “event” could be marked as the racist rally downtown last November. Add to it an undercurrent of widespread frustration stemming from innumerable social ills: a dismal economy; a confusing, seemingly interminable “war on terrorism”; continually decreasing funds for education; a less than successful attempt at welfare reform; long term high unemployment, with hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of Americans having exhausted both benefits and their savings. The list, as they say, goes on and on. In the Riverwest neighborhood, where Vital Source has its offices (as well as sister businesses Bremen Café and The Guardian), signs of unrest have been building over recent months. We’ve come a long way since the early 90s, with areas along Center, Locust and Clarke, as well as pockets throughout the area, blossoming with successful businesses, due in large part to the dedication of early pioneers like Fuel Café and Linneman’s. Home owner occupation is at decades-high levels; property values have (legitimately) increased. Children of all races play along the sidewalks as hipsters, artists and working class Joes walk the streets. Yes, there is crime here. Car break-ins are frequent, as are incidents of burglary and vandalism. But in ever increasing numbers, to the credit of those who won’t be driven “west”, or even east, Riverwesterners are doing what’s required to take Riverwest back from the brink of becoming another urban wasteland statistic. The gauntlet of hate is thrown down. So, as a community, we’ve been collectively horrified over the last several weeks by disturbing events, which, until very recently, have been passed over by both the mainstream media and, if you ask people around here, the serious attention of law enforcement officials. First it was a series of dumpster/garbage can fires set by arsonists with gasoline. Then the now publicized beatings of several residents by groups of youth, often on bicycles. Scean Rose, owner of Riverhorse, a club in the 700 block of E. Center, has reported “frequent” incidents of purse snatchings and worse outside his bar, in plain sight of patrons. In the words of John Mellencamp, it’s hard times for an honest man. People are understandably shaken. And in the midst of the crisis, the gauntlet of hatred has been thrown down. On Saturday, July 12, racist flyers were distributed throughout Riverwest by a group calling itself RAM- the Riverwest Anti-Nigger Movement. The handbill called for “you niggers to vacate all white premises IMMEDIATELY!” There’s more, and it’s even worse. In fact, it’s obscene. It was meant to frighten, to breed hostility and paranoia, to pit neighbor against neighbor. But it has backfired. Riverwest will be walking. And watching. On July 14, two meetings were held. Notice of the first, held at Onopa Brewing Co., spread by word of mouth for less than a day. Over 50 people attended, even though the meeting was held in the afternoon before many people were home from work. It was mostly younger people, and action was […]

August 2003

Dear Readers, As a community, we love the Harley. Probably more than any otherwise disparate group of mostly non-riders, Milwaukeeans appreciate the growl of the engine, the flash of the chrome and the signature emblem unique to one of our city’s greatest shared treasures. This month marks Harley Davidson’s 100th anniversary, and the party will be long-remembered. We chose to pick a little slice called the Riders Ranch, and tell you all about it. It’s pretty dang cool. Check out the story, and think about heading over. Good seats are still available. Hate has raised its ugly head in Riverwest, but the neighbors are brandishing olive branches and dancing in the streets in answer. See “Riverwest Rising,” this month’s We The People, for more about how this community has come together in the very face of division in its lowest form. This month’s Vital sports several shorter, light reading pieces. If you enjoyed our wine piece last month, check out “Morsels,” Cynthia Vasques’ quest for succulent softshell crabs in landlocked Wisconsin. There’s even a recipe. (We’re not afraid to break the mold that way…) We think you’ll also dig Bill Wandschneider’s piece on con artists, “Slicker than a snake on ice.” He joined a band of them for a weekend, living the life and learning about “the Quickness.” It’s a great story. As we go to press, I am on the way home to Iowa. On July 19th, my grandfather, Russell Rudolph Berard, passed away at the age of 83. The circumstances of his death were sudden and unfortunate, but his legacy to me, and the hundreds of people he quietly helped throughout his life, will live for a very long time. Russ was born to Italian immigrant parents in Des Moines, Iowa. He worked with his hands for the city for most of his life, eventually retiring as a supervisor. For him, this was the beginning of his “real” life in many ways. Uneducated and not exposed to “opportunity” as we know it today, Russ was keenly intelligent, political, and morally outraged at the lack of access to meaningful services suffered by the people with disabilities who fall through the cracks of social services. He spent countless hours — and thousands of his retirement dollars — in the garage workshop of his modest southside ranch home building contraptions to help folks live independently: winches for getting in and out of the shower, mouth-operated wheelchair controls, even a crazy electric leg framework so a young woman suddenly paralyzed from the waist down could walk upright. Some of his inventions were over the top, but all were greatly appreciated. His was a labor of love. He was always there for family and friends. He bailed me out of a number of jams as a rowdy teenager, never spilling the beans to the rest of the family, but “leaving it to me” to “do what (I) know is right” by telling my own parents, at least after the fact. He never judged […]

July 2003

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, First off, I’d like to congratulate the winners of our Danceworks Summer Camp scholarship drawing and essay contest. We received lots of entries (interestingly, not one single essay) and, after tough deliberation, chose three. The winning entries are below, and black and white doesn’t do them justice. Thanks to everyone who entered. We had a great time with this month’s cover story. With the economy “a little slow” these days, more of us are looking closer to home for vacations. In our last editorial meeting, a straw poll revealed a rising popularity (at least for now) in day trips. Everyone had fave spots within a day’s drive, where one can discover the spirit of Wisconsin — from grass roots entrepreneurs building attractions in the middle of nowhere, to awesome (someone else’s words) limburger cheese sandwiches. We chose a handful of our favorite nearby getaways. We hope you enjoy our little tour. Speaking of the spirit of Wisconsin, Andrew Muchin’s piece on Wisconsin’s Jewish history is both a nostalgic look at times that once were, and a wistful reminder that the close knit community that once defined rural America is fading, never to return. The pictures are phenomenal. With the Tobacco Control Board now a thing of the past (that didn’t last long, eh?), the already fragile “tobacco settlement” allocation for anti-smoking efforts has once again been substantially reduced. And even research showing a decline in youth smoking in the state over the course of the Board’s tenure (a brief three years) could not save them. Coincidentally (?), the tobacco lobby in Wisconsin is uncommonly strong. But there’s at least one group that will fight on, whether or no they are brought into the funding fold of the new office in the Department of Health. Strive Media Institute is a full service agency (they produce the FACT anti-tobacco campaign), publisher, and producer of an Emmy-winning TV show (Gumbo TV), based right here in Milwaukee. Their work is good, really good, as a matter of fact. And the coolest part is that they’re all high school students. Writers, producers, photographers, web developers, on down the line. Strivers become leaders, and know that the only way to keep the power with the people is to understand the bigger picture. These kids are amazing, as are their adult mentors. Strive is another hidden gem in Milwaukee’s bursting treasure chest. Frizell Bailey reports on Strive and the Big Tobacco big picture in Wisconsin. By the time this issue has been on the streets a few weeks (the challenge of the monthly), a new budget will probably be passed. Everyone seems to have their pet watch areas. While it’s so hard to pick just one, I am most intrigued by Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer’s movement to “time out” property taxes for three years. Doyle has said he will veto it, no matter how much wheeling and dealing Panzer and Dennis George (D- Milwaukee) accomplish behind closed doors. And while […]

By Jon Anne Willow It’s happening around the world. Corpus Christi, Texas; Tarifa, Spain; Hood River, Oregon; Vancouver Island, British Columbia; The Florida Keys. And now it’s reached the Lake Michigan coastline. The mitigating condition is wind on water: the sport is kiteboarding. It’s a solo sport, but full of camaraderie. It’s wild to watch, and must feel more wild to do. Using a lightweight (usually inflatable) kite attached to the body with a harness, kiteboarders use the wind to flip, skip and, literally, fly over the water. Some call it the sport of the future, and some say the future’s already arrived. Kiteboarding (also known as kitesurfing, fly surfing, and kiting) has grown at a phenomenal rate in the last five years, but was only conceived in 1979, when William G. Roeseler first published a paper on kite sailing. His son Cory became a pioneer of the sport in its current form. Darren Mathers, a transplanted Liverpudlian, all around water sport expert, and employee of Southport Rigging in Kenosha, says growth of the sport in this area mirrors the general trend. “About a year and a half ago, I would have said 6 or 7 people were into kiteboarding around here. Now, I’d say around 60 or 70. That’s Chicago to Door County. It’s growing really fast.” Gene Likhtered is one of Wisconsin’s early adopters. A Milwaukee resident, Likhtered has been boarding about three years. He used to windsurf, but made a transition to kiting because it was more fun in the light wind predominant in this part of the country. A quiet, rugged young man, Gene has the look of someone who’d rather be outdoors. He sits calmly across the desk during our interview, but his eyes stray often to the window, where a beautiful spring afternoon bears promise to brisk evening winds on the lake. He’s heading up north for the weekend with some friends, gear in tow, hoping for a chance to fly. I ask him about the conditions here in comparison to major kiting destinations. “The wind here is definitely not as consistent as in some other places,” he muses. “You have to watch all the time for conditions to be right, but it’s worth it. And there are some pretty good spots up in Door County and down further south of here.” Mathers mirrors Likhtered’s thoughts. “It’s not ideal, but it’s worthwhile. The wind conditions here are generally gusty. We get good wind and we get poor wind. For Lake Michigan you have to pick your location based on wind direction.” Simple beauty. The beauty of kiteboarding is its simplicity. All that’s needed is wind and a kite. Even the board is optional, especially for beginners. Kiting can be done on land with a mountain board (an all terrain skateboard), on snow with a snowboard and on water with or without a kiteboard. This makes it the perfect sport for Midwesterners, who enjoy wind, water and snow in abundance, but don’t necessarily have access […]

June 2003

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, With summer just around the bend, the thoughts of many turn to lighter matters. It’s the thing to do, especially for a population whose warm weather days number fewer than national postal holidays. It’s the perfect time to feature one of the fastest growing and exciting sports in the world — kite-boarding. This may or may not be your first exposure, but its’ star is rising, and with good reason. I hope you enjoy the piece, and maybe even take a kiteboarding lesson yourself. I think I might. And even though our realm of concerns expand to vacation scheduling, festivals and backyard cookouts in the summer months, it’s important not to forget that the world is turning around us. We are all weary from endless news of the war, the economy and other harbingers of bad times to come (and some that have already arrived). But as citizens (used in the broadest sense of the word) of both America and the world, it’s crucial we not forget to pay attention to the signs of change around us as acutely as we note the sound of the neighbor’s lawn mower and the birds of early morning. Change is in the air. But how that change is manifested in long term ways is still up to us. Really. One more quick note:Due to the popularity of the Danceworks Kid’s Art and Essay Contest, we’re extending the deadline for entry through the first week of June. Kids from all over the city are entering, so get your submissions in soon. For details, check our website at vitalsourcemag.com, email me at editor@vitalsourcemag.com, or call our offices at 414.370.5351. Peace, Jon Anne From the Publisher:As an immigrant, I often wonder about my role as a member of the society that has accepted me as one of its own. Often, I see myself as an equal in a land that accolades itself as a melting pot embracing every possible racial and ethnic background as its own. Yet there are times that I fear when it comes to it, I will be treated differently because of my Middle Eastern background. Given the current course of events, anyone in my position most certainly feels this way. However, there is this confidence I have always put in the American people, which I have often asserted in past writings. My belief in the fact that an informed America will always side with the underdog has always and continues to form the basis of my strong admiration of this society, despite its sometimes seemingly callous disposition. There are times in the media when the portrayal of people of the Middle East fuels the fire of hatred, and it is unfortunate that there are some who buy into this misrepresentation. I know that fear is the factor that some elements utilize to stir up hatred and I know that lack of understanding leads to fear, and it is only logical to maintain misinformation to upkeep fear, […]

Jon Anne Willow gives “A Little Respect”

It was the late 80s, when black turtlenecks and mascara for all ruled the world. On one hot dance floor, two crazy kids find love and a little respect.

May 2003

By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, It’s been a month of highs and lows, a state of being which seems to be going around. Science buffs may recall here the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy under normal conditions cannot be created or destroyed, but simply transformed from one type of energy to another. Sounds kind of astral to apply physics to events and feelings, maybe, but I’ve never seen a reason why such a sound law wouldn’t apply across the board. So, while I’ve got lots to be thankful for in terms of Vital’s progress this month, we’ve also felt the stresses that always accompany troubled times, when people aren’t feeling quite themselves, are worried about the future, and feel cut off from the sense of surety that generally accompanies life in America. On the other hand, applying the above law, maybe there’s hope in loss of complacency. But anyway, enough of that. We’d like to thank everyone who came out for our first birthday party at Onopa (see pictures below, or visit our web site for a full gallery). The bands were amazing, the food delicious, and the party-goers looked beautiful. As the song goes “Everybody had a good time.” We raised a good piece of change for 91.7 WMSE, to which all proceeds from the night were given. We also gave away a trip for two to Las Vegas from Funjet vacations and lots of other prizes from our local sponsors. We’ll see you again next year. At long last our web site is up and running. Check us out at vitalsourcemag.com. In the coming weeks, in addition to reading, printing and sending your friends articles and features from Vital Source magazine, you’ll be able to write your own book, film, theater and music reviews, rant in 50 Words, give us Your 2 Cents, sign up for our email list and much more. Check back often, as we’ll also update Vital’s Picks throughout the month. This month’s cover story is from Andrew Hollis, a former paperboy and petty larcenist. Confessions of an Old Paperboy will bring back memories of youth, even if you never experienced news carrier life yourself. We The People explores whether it’s realistic to “teach” a love of democracy to an ancient theocratic society. Today, Iraq. Tomorrow, the world? We continue to hone Vital Culture, and our commitment to covering the arts community beyond their events schedule. You’ll find more ink dedicated to the important outreach work our arts groups do throughout the year, as well as season announcements, employment openings, auditions and more. We hope you like it. Peace, Jon Anne

April 2003

Dear Readers, Between the time this issue of Vital Source was created and actual press time, America entered into war with Iraq. This is one of the disadvantages of being a monthly publication, and our lack of coverage of the war and its implications, for April anyway, cannot be helped. For May, I would love to share reader letters and short essays on the war, especially from people whose lives are directly touched. Please send all correspondence to editor@vitalmilwaukee.com, or by mail to the address in the staff column. The war is being televised, and things are happening quickly. While I feel confident we’ll never fail to support our troops again (a la Vietnam), there are underpinnings to this particular conflict that, if unchecked, will bring fundamental changes to our democracy. In an increasingly technological world, access to information is the key to power. But the stripping of personal freedom and overt censorship are not the answers. Individual liberty, access to due process, and innocent until proven guilty are the cornerstones of our Constitution. Fundamentally, we as a nation agree on two key points: we want our men and women home quickly, and a swift end to the war. But we must take care that, in our zeal to “end oppression” in the Middle East, we do not eliminate oppression’s most powerful natural enemy – a nation of free peoples – our nation, the United States of America, and the democracy for which it stands. A perfect snapshot of our confusion occurred on Oscar Night. Michael Moore, in his acceptance speech for Best Documentary, was met with a mix of boos and cheers (boos were later mostly attributed to Teamster crew members) when he said (speaking on behalf of himself and others present onstage): “… we live in fictitious times. We live in a time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president… We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it’s the fictition (sic) of duct tape or the fictition (sic) of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush.” All Oscar winners are technically given 45 seconds to speak from the stage. At precisely 45 seconds, Moore’s microphone was cut mid-sentence and the orchestra began to play. Conversely, Richard Martin’s acceptance speech for Chicago ran well over a two minutes, but contained no political references. He was not cut off. And even though Adrian Brody mentioned the war in his four minute accectpance speech, he only went so far as to wish a speedy end to the conflict and to express his support of the troops. Brody was also not censored. This may seem a small event, but all who watched the Oscars witnessed censorship first hand. We must pay attention to these breaches of free speech, whether or not we agree about their content. Consensus is not the point. Free speech is at risk. Please read Paul McLeary’s We The People. It covers […]