2003-05 Vital Source Mag – May 2003
Borrower Beware
By Bethany Sanchez PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES A cautionary tale “Mrs. Green” is a 72-year-old widow, who has lived in her home for 28 years. When a home repair contractor knocked on her door in April 2000, Mrs. Green had great credit, and she had almost paid off her entire 30-year mortgage. The contractor told her that it looked like her house needed some work. Mrs. Green acknowledged that her roof leaked, the house needed painting, and that the front porch was deteriorating and unsafe. However, she told the contractor that she could not afford to make the needed repairs, as she was on a very limited, fixed income. The contractor told Mrs. Green about a lender who would give her a home repair loan. The lender came to Mrs. Green’s house, helped her with her paperwork, and then sent out an appraiser who valued her house at a surprisingly high amount. The lender gave her a loan that not only paid the cost of the repairs, but also refinanced Mrs. Green’s mortgage and consolidated her credit card debt. The new interest rate was twice that of the old mortgage. Mrs. Green paid almost $5,000 in fees on the new loan and doubled her monthly debt payment. Shortly after the loan closed, Mrs. Green’s brother-in-law died. She used some of her monthly income, and tapped into her very limited savings to travel to New York to help her sister with the funeral and burial expenses. These expenses stretched her resources and caused her to, for the first time ever, send in her loan payment late. When the next month’s statement arrived, Mrs. Green found that she had been assessed a huge late payment fee, and when she did not pay the fee, the amount considered to be overdue continued to increase until the lender threatened to foreclose on the property. Not having many options, Mrs. Green decided to sell her house and move in with her son, but she found that the loan amount was $20,000 more than the market value of the house. The appraisal had been falsified. Mrs. Green was trapped in a loan that she couldn’t pay, and couldn’t even sell her house to entirely pay off the loan. She had no way “out.” “Mrs. Green’s” story is only one of hundreds involving Milwaukee area homeowners who have become victims of what is called a predatory loan. The details of these stories and loans vary widely from homeowner to homeowner, but the despicable practices of predatory lenders usually take a devastating toll on the homeowner. What is a predatory loan? A predatory loan is a loan that is unsuitable for the borrower, designed to exploit vulnerable or unsophisticated borrowers. A predatory loan has one or more of the following features: Mrs. Green’s story actually combines several of the things the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council hears over and over. The most common reasons people are seduced by these loans are an urgent need for cash […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Private Thoughts of War
By John Hughes One of the many stories of the Iraqi War and Reconstruction is the personal thoughts and feelings of rank and file Milwaukeeans. Beyond poll numbers, beyond anti-war demonstrations and radio talk shows, beyond politicians, pundits and headline grabbers, there are the common woman and man. In a series of five interviews with Milwaukeeans of both genders, from different neighborhoods in the city, Vital Source spent time with some of your neighbors, who shared their thinking on this war and its widespread implications. We asked them why the United States went to war. We asked whether or not the consequences of not taking action are worse than the bloodshed and death that continue after weeks of fighting. The interviewees shared their hopes and fears for the outcome of the war. They were asked their opinions on military intervention in North Korea, which, like Iraq (until weeks ago), has a murdering despot at the helm and, far more demonstrably than Iraq, possesses weapons of mass destruction. Finally, we asked the two women and three men what should and would happen if, once democracy is established in Iraq, the citizens there were to freely vote to cut off the supply of oil to the United States. The people in question were thoughtful. A query would be posed and, almost universally, a reflective pause would follow before an answer was given. Each appeared to be nurturing the question, thinking his or her way through. They were all well informed, and had been following the news on television and radio, in the press, and on the Internet. They weighed the pros and cons of the war with gravity. At times, even their stated position (for or against the war) could not be easily delineated once in conversation on the subject. And even those whose viewpoints came out at the same place arrived there by very different paths. In all, our conversations with these “average Milwaukeeans” reflects the complexity of millions of conversations on the subject of war and its aftermath heard daily in our city and around the country. Five people, five perspectives. An East Side woman, Katherine, who professed to viewing spirituality from an Eastern perspective, who spoke of “karmic loops” and quoted Sartre, called President Bush “an idiot” and then came down squarely on the fence with regards to endorsing or opposing U.S. actions in Iraq. She called herself “a hybrid hawk and dove.” Dan, a Milwaukee man living a stone’s throw from the West Allis border in a traditional blue-collar neighborhood, was opposed. Dean from St. Francis was also opposed. Terry, from Racine, spoke at length and with fervor using language that made me refer to him as “pro-war.” He became quiet at that moment and said, “Sometimes war is a necessary evil, but it is always evil. I prayed every day that the war would not happen, that a diplomatic solution would be found. But when the war began, I prayed for victory.” Mary from Glendale was articulate […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
A Poet’s Journal
By Russ Bickerstaff 04-09-03 The Bucks just won a game which brought them within one game of the playoffs. I don’t care. I’m wondering what happened to all the poets. I’m at the Y-Not II on the second Wednesday of the month and there are less than six of us there for the East-Side Milwaukee Poetry Slam. When had Milwaukee’s oldest poetry slam become such a secret? The whole scene on the east side has seemed pretty inactive in the past couple of years. In the past seven years, I’ve seen attendance at poetry venues on the East Side run a strange parabolic wave. There are high points that mirror this low: I remember the summers of ‘98 and ‘99 when there were four or five open mics every week and no one made it to them all. Now things are scarce. The Y-Not II is a long corridor of a bar with an elevated stage in back. There’s a podium there with a microphone that amplifies the voice throughout the room. Geo Kiesow shows up early to turn on the stage lights and the sound system. Geo’s been hosting the Y-Not II poetry slam for years. Fresh from a fishing trip, he does a piece from years ago that he wrote about fishing with his dad on Lake Poygan. It’s a very conversational piece that wraps the mind in the feel of northern Wisconsin. This is Geo’s literary home: the poetry of genuine rural life – not the romanticized visions typically found in nature poetry. The words feed through the speakers and Geo’s out there on Lake Poygan fishing in his childhood. I nearly drowned in that lake the day after my high school graduation. Geo and I were born in the same hospital down the road from the foundry in Neenah, Wisconsin. In spite of this, we come from very different places. The co-host for the evening is Tim Grair. He’s doing cover pieces: the poetry of Patricia Smith (no, not Patti Smith – Patricia). I’ve heard him do pieces of his own stuff. It’s a very diverse body of work. He’s covered everything from the fashion industry with his “Max Factor Massacre,” to the intricacies of growing-up with “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll at 11.” He’s not performing his own stuff tonight. Maybe he’s just not feeling it. Or maybe there just aren’t enough people here tonight. Years ago the Y-Not II poetry slam was much better attended. We don’t have enough people performing for the night to hold the slam competition, so the evening ends with only an open mic. Long-time East-side poet JoAnn Chang tells me that there’s a big poetry performance at the Mecca’s poetry slam on the west side Thursday night. Slam competition teams from another state are coming in to perform with national slam poets from Milwaukee. I can’t make it. I’ve got my own poetry venue to host that night. 04-10-03 I’m brooding pleasantly over a cup of coffee at […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Brent Gohde’s Funeral March
By Brent Gohde I don’t know about you, but when I was sixteen, it was a virtue to be more morbid than the next guy. At lunch one day, I think it was Eric Thompson who posited the question of what song we wanted played at our funeral. If there was a vote, I think Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” would have won. Pearl Jam’s “Alive” was too obvious. Unable to resist a punch line, even – I figured – in death, I went with Alice in Chains’ “Man in the Box.” Ha ha. Good one, Gohde. I’m sure we discussed for a minute the logistics of editing out the “s” word from the lyrics while it plays in church. But we forgot about it, went to geometry, got beat up in gym, and at the end of the day, headed to the parking lot. Cliques parked in their own unofficially designated areas each day, so we were all together. And my friends and I would have been tuned to Lazer 103. We started the engines at the same time, and what song was on, but Alice in Chains’ “Man in the Box.” All of us opened our doors, put one foot on the pavement, looked over our roofs at each other. “Dude, Gohde’s totally gonna die.” But as it happens, God doesn’t tip you off via commercial radio when your time has come. That only happens in horror films and college level creative writing assignments. But I persevered, thanks in part to extremely defensive driving on the way home. And since then, I’ve lightened up more and more. If you’d asked me again a few years ago, I would have said “Spiritual,” this beautiful song by Spain, later recorded by Johnny Cash. My friend’s band also covered it, and I drunkenly made him promise me he would play it at my funeral. It would bring the house down. A plea to Jesus from a man who doesn’t want to die alone? Not a dry eye in the house. Oh, baby. Now that’s a funeral. More recently that would have given way to straight up not-tap-dancing-around-the-subject-at-hand Joy Division, just because I really liked Joy Division for a while. But I have this awful image of my grandma having to cover her ears. So maybe I should just defer to my grandma on this. But New Order sounds nicer these days. Yes, a nice funeral-slash-dance party. And you all can have a great time, and I’ll… well… the odd thing is this: I’ll care. I’d love to report that it makes no never mind to me, and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” or Christina Aguilera, I’ll never know the difference. But it turns out there’s still a very self-involved part of me that demands a decent soundtrack to accompany the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the thousands of mourners who will certainly throw themselves at my casket/urn and regale the assembled masses with eulogies of my genius and courage. Hymns schmymns, let there […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Confessions of an Old Paperboy
By Andrew Hollis I found myself unable to sleep one night last week, which resulted in my wandering aimlessly around the house in the ghostly predawn hours. I finally settled in on the couch to watch an old black and white on the tube when I heard a muffled but distinct “thud” just outside my front door. Upon investigation, it turned out to be the early morning delivery of the Sunday Journal. I stood, barefooted on the frosty porch, strangely transfixed. There it was – clinically wrapped in blue plastic, catapulted all the way from a shiny white truck driven by a tired-looking man in his late thirties. At this moment, childhood memories of my life and times as a paperboy for the Milwaukee Journal came flooding back to me. Ah, the good old days! First off, for those that may have forgotten or were simply unaware, in the not too distant past, gangly boys aged 12-16, once delivered the daily paper right inside your door. For many a middle-aged man like me, this was their first “real” job, an entrepreneurial rite of passage and a ticket to get out of the house (and onto the streets) that your mother couldn’t argue with. The newspaper designated routes and established regional managers to ensure papers were delivered to homes on these routes from “stations” scattered across the city, better know to us paperboys as “shacks.” The shack for my route was on 25th and Morgan – a short bicycle ride from my home in the Southlawn Housing Project. Seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, me and hundreds of other paperboys across Milwaukee would spill out of our shacks and into the pre-dawn morning like raccoons, making our way across empty streets and playgrounds and into quiet neighborhoods to deliver our routes. Back then, routes were handed down from generation to generation like family heirlooms and good ones were hard to come by. A perfect route (a paperboy’s Xanadu) was a big route with only apartments. You couldn’t do better. Next best were those closest to your shack or routes that took you through neighborhoods where your friends hung out. There were some routes where it felt you had to walk to Illinois to drop off your first paper. I was somewhat lucky – I had a route with half apartments, but still a hike from the shack. Life at the shack. A paperboy lives in two worlds: the shack, and out on his own – on his route. The manager who ran our shack held our unfailing respect, primarily because he was the biggest ox of the neighborhood. The shack was akin to a nuclear fallout station: a 15 x 30 foot steel box with a pitched roof and riveted doors at each end. The inside was lined with military surplus type steel tables, the kind you would find in the County Morgue, standing on a chewed up wooden plank floor. Overhead hung a large […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
ADULT.
By Haven Langhout ADULT. is the real-life couple Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller and a variety of undisclosed electronic music gear. Anxiety Always is their second full-length EP, their first being 2001’s Resuscitation. Like its predecessor, Anxiety Always features more songs about alienation and anxiety, but this album has a more human touch to it. Perhaps it’s the addition of a bass guitar played by Adam Lee Miller. It’s not strictly computers and gear anymore. Or maybe it’s because Nicola Kuperus’ vocal style isn’t as deadpan and flat as in the past. She actually has an inflection when her voice isn’t being fed through some processor. In “Kick in the Shin” she sounds a bit wounded delivering the lines “kick in the shin, is that how you say I love you?” – a definite departure from her previously emotionless delivery on other ADULT. releases. ADULT. has a sense of humor. I’d like to think so with the lyrics on “Turn Your Back” where Kuperus taunts us “Could’ve been me, could’ve been you – neh neh neh, neh neh neh.” Or on the track “Shake Your Head” where Kuperus admonishes us to “ask your mother, the end of guessing games.” The stand-out track on this album is “Glue Your Eyelids Together”, a catchy tune with a nice dirty bass line and the chorus “glue your eyelids together!” There’s almost a manic punkish energy to it. I prefer Resuscitation because of its sparse, clinical quality, and it took me awhile to warm up to this album. Perhaps it’s because it gets a bit too “busy” in some tracks and Kuperus can sound shrill at times. But if you like this sort of music and keep in mind that ADULT. is being tongue in cheek, you’ll definitely enjoy this album, and it would make a fine addition to your collection.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
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
May 1st, 2003 by Jon Anne Willow
Fatal Flying Guiloteens
By Jeremy Saperstein I’ve discovered the lost link between Captain Beefheart and Raw Power-era Iggy. They tell me these boys put on hellaciously fierce live shows, and I don’t doubt that, based on this record. Listening to it on headphones in a roomful of innocent fellow humans, I’m tempted to either go into a catatonic state or a frothing seizure. Maybe both. Not for everyone.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
All Girl Summer Fun Band
By Greg Sampson For a time I thought it unfortunate for the girls of All Girl Summer Fun Band that I remembered their 2002 self-titled release mostly for its lukewarm reception by many critics. I remember hearing the album myself, and while I found their music catchy and even pleasant, my overall reaction could not be characterized as much more than, well, underwhelmed. It wasn’t long before I moved on to other bands who I thought were doing something more interesting and meaningful, whose music had more depth than the giggly, bubblegum punk that AGSFB were turning out. Remembering the arrogant conclusion I jumped to last year, AGSFB’s latest release, 2, really sounds like a straight-out ‘screw you’ to all the self-righteous critics who dismissed them as being too girly, too high-school, and their music too thin. In this album they’re still singing about the same crushes and make out sessions, and have even added some celebrity worship into the mix (get this: they wrote a song called – you know it – “Jason Lee.”). But in this album they sound surer of themselves, more like they know that yes, this is in fact the music they want to be making, and these are the things they want to be singing about. They don’t care what I, or any other critic for that matter, thinks. Good for them. The subtle bad attitude they exude seems to work for AGSFB on this album, and it makes 2 compelling and listenable. Only the truly heartless wouldn’t find a song like “Samantha Secret Agent” so catchy that it didn’t merit a second listening. By staying on the same road on which they started with their first album, they seem to have created a sense of progression with this release, which is a good thing. But now that they’ve shown they aren’t going to change for the critics, the big question is whether AGSFB will change for themselves. As we all know, the novelty of a band and the catchiness of its music is a fleeting thing, and audiences are notoriously fickle when that’s all there is to hang on to. So they will have to change, or they will disappear. The good news? All Girl Summer Fun Band is more than attitude, catchiness, and late-teens/early-twenties romanticism. Something might be happening in 2, just below the rigid adherence to their undergraduate ways. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some real growth in their music in the future.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
