Drop City

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Rishi Tea’s founders subscribe to the leaf itself

By John Hughes It is not widely known that Rishi Tea, perhaps the finest tea company in the world, winner of an unprecedented three consecutive Best Tea awards from the Specialty Coffee Association of America, is a six-year old Milwaukee-based venture, founded by three graduates of Rufus King High School. Joshua Kaiser, whose brainchild this was, and his colleagues Aaron Kapp and Benjamin Harrison, still in their early thirties, have founded an elegant, growing, socially conscious, organic tea company. They purvey a product which might very well redefine your understanding of tea with one sip, and which supports traditional tea artisans. They work out of a warehouse within these city limits, but all their tea is derived directly from specific, known gardens in rural Asia. To sit and speak with these three is to encounter three distinctly different personalities which mesh well together, and which are united in their passion for truly great tea. In an interview in mid-May, Joshua, Aaron and Benjamin spoke for two hours with Vital Source, and spoke with a depth of commitment and seriousness uncommon for persons of any age. They have been studying tea in depth for many years — it’s variety and history through the millennia; it’s being touched by culture and vice versa; it’s commerce and “mind-boggling evolution;” and the art of it’s cultivation. These are men who will continue to learn about all the aspects of tea for a long time, and who only want to continue to improve their company. Their quest for Quality is exhilarating. Three students of the leaf make good. Joshua Kaiser, who graduated from Edgewood College in Madison, has had a fascination with tea for years. He wanted a career which allowed independence, creativity and travel. He wanted to form a loose leaf tea company, rather than one with broken bits of leaf in tea bags. He wanted to “track the production of quality tea” down through the centuries into the present, to find it now, and to offer the market tea from a single origin, a single garden in a special village for each variety, grown with traditional techniques. He wanted to offer an alternative to multi-origin tea, sold as a commodity by brokers all over the world, where the packaging was most of the cost of the product. He wanted to give business to Asian practitioners of the ancient art of tea cultivation, so they and their craft could survive. A serious young visionary with a swarthy demeanor, which occasionally melts into a smile, he recruited Aaron Kapp, and then Benjamin Harrison. Aaron was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an interest in gardening, and a personal friend. A talkative and cheerful man, Aaron attracted Kaiser with a whimsical wit and the ability to work long and intense hours. Benjamin had graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, and was succeeding in the corporate world of New York City. He has a steady, even-keel temperament and was the last of the three to […]

Levity

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Will the Arts Building in Walker’s Point remain true to its name?

By Matt Czarnik Standing quietly, nestled among the rusted and busted, soot-stained leftovers from Milwaukee’s industrious history, and on the outer edge of the city’s lower Southside redevelopment projects just off 2nd St. in Historic Walker’s Point, is 133 W. Pittsburgh. In its early years it was a candy factory, then Bostrom, a seat cover manufacturer whose mosaic-formed name the front of the building still bears. But it wasn’t until 24 years ago, when this urban landmark was rented by artists devoted to their calling and living on their creativity did #10 Walker’s Point acquire its awakening. Embedded amidst the clamorous clang and eerily audible traffic hum emanating from Interstate 94 just blocks away, and the remaining machine shops and manufacturing plants still in the area, the building was, until recently, owned by Joan Julien. Her deep ties to Milwaukee and embracing attitude toward the local artists who rented the studios have, for over two decades, helped nurture the space from its industrial beginnings into what is likely to be a central attraction for the incoming group of people hungry for the city. Welcome to Milwaukee’s Chelsea Hotel. The success of 133 W. Pittsburgh is one of the great stories of an enlightened approach towards rebuilding a forgotten neighborhood from the soulless skeletons left beaten and unattended on the landscape. For leatherworker Ilze Heider, whose studio houses both her workshop and showcase of original designs, the interior was just open space without walls when she arrived 18 years ago. With its industrial-sized stairways and squeaky wooden antique freight elevator, large washrooms and utility sinks, the historical significance and link to the past makes the building almost legendary; an idea of Bohemia not unlike the famous Chelsea Hotel in New York. Housing artists, who live for their work and are usually struggling to live off their work while craving the sounds, sights and smells of city life, has defined the soul of 133 W. Pittsburgh. For many of those present, however, the future is increasingly unclear. For most of the occupants, this is where they spend time creating and conducting business, giving private lessons or showing work to clients. In all, 25 professional artists have studio space in the five-floor building, creating everything from paintings to ceramics to blown glass. The artistic diversity of it makes it a popular attraction for people embarking on the city-wide gallery walks held frequently throughout the year around downtown, the Third Ward and Walker’s Point. One of the building’s most unique, regular occurrences is the seasonal Studio Art Crawl. It’s a three-day, one building extravaganza where tenants, friends and customers get together to visit, see new work and buy original artwork. An uncertain future? But as fashion photographer Tom MacDonald, who has a studio in the building, describes it, the rent is the hot issue most artists here would rather not discuss too much. The hush-hush is that the recent sale of the site to Olson Development, and the building’s long waiting list of prospective […]

A Mighty Wind

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A Recipe for Disaster

By Mary McIntyre The Iraqis have been given time to contemplate the high price they’ve paid for their “liberation” since the toppling of the Saddam statue in Baghdad. One month later, electricity is still not reliably available. Outbreaks of cholera caused by contaminated drinking water have been reported. Hospitals are unable to administer effective medical care. Lootings, shootings, and acts of vandalism continue. Schools are not operating. People are unable to report to their jobs. (There’s little incentive anyway, since most of the workforce dependent on the now fallen government for distribution of pay hasn’t received any since March 16). Violent confrontations between our forces and Iraqi demonstrators are on the rise and resentment of the US occupation is steadily mounting. Outside of assigning contracts to American companies for rehabilitating the oil industry, plans for reconstruction seem to have ground to a screeching halt. What accounts for this state of paralysis? Though unlikely to heed the lesson offered by the current state of affairs, the neocons have been shown that there’s more to regime change than manufacturing lies and dropping a few bombs. There is no order because — there is no money. Just prior to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, former chairman of the Pentagon Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, exclaimed through his article that appeared in the March 21 edition of The Guardian, “Thank God for the death of the UN.” However, as the following Catch-22 exemplifies, saying it does not necessarily make it so. Catch-22:No aid without (still missing)WMD, no trade without aid. The rest of the world still takes international law seriously. France and Russia are holding fast to their stance that sanctions should not be lifted until there is confirmed evidence that Iraq is free of the WMD that the US insisted were present. So far, the special group assembled by the US to find such evidence at the sites cited by Colin Powell last February has come up empty-handed. The US has asserted that funding the reconstruction cannot get underway until full trade is resumed. Adding to this, the UN resolutions requiring Security Council approval for Iraqi oil sales and the disbursement of revenue have not been willed away. As a result, countries are reluctant to buy Iraqi oil. Lastly, the Bush Administration’s request to 60 countries to forward the millions of dollars worth of Iraq’s frozen assets in their possession to a US controlled fund apparently hasn’t happened. At the time this suggestion was first made last April, even Britain had refused to do so, instead wanting the assets in its possession to instead go to the UN. Currently overwhelmed by a state of chaos and violence, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) established by the US and Great Britain is in the process of regrouping. Retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner is being rotated out earlier than originally planned, replaced by State Department official Paul Bremer. Barbara Bodine, the current “mayor of Baghdad,” is being recalled after only three weeks for […]

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 […]

At Swim Two Birds

By Michael Seidel “I stare of your face and I don’t know the first word to say.” With uncertainty — that’s how At Swim Two Birds’ record Quigley’s Point starts off. And that initial utterance sets the mood for the entire record. At Swim Two Birds is Roger Quigley, the vocal half of English cult figures The Montolfier Brothers. In 1998, Quigley — letting his surname stand in place of a proper “band” name — released, via France’s Acetone label, a record of semi-muffled brilliance called 1969 Till God Knows When. After that, he fell silent, presumably to focus on writing, recording and touring with The Montgolfier Brothers. Now Quigley’s back, with a new moniker nabbed from a classic of Irish literature, picking up more or less where he left off. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that the structure and fidelity of his songs have been greatly influenced and improved by his affiliation with The Montgolfier Brothers. The songs, like TMB songs, are stark and unflinchingly honest. Instrumental parts repeat almost into hypnosis, but before they teeter over the brink, they’re lurched back into cerebral groundedness by the lyrics. Oh God, the lyrics! “All I want / all I need is the sun that warms the air I breathe / I am missing you / I’ll get over you.” Whenever anything is so simple, realistic and aching, poetry is can’t help but ooze from it. Despite all the uncertainty that continually pokes the surface of the songs, Quigley’s Point can’t help but convey a mood of optimism because, after all, if the glass is half empty, the only reasonable thing to do is fill it up again.

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, […]