Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

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By John Hughes Twenty-four years ago, 40-year-old Randy Keltner was in a bad way. Years of corporate stress, a sedentary lifestyle and indifference to nutrition had taken its toll. He found himself going from doctor to doctor with complaints, suffering and malaise. He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and sent home with, as he put it, “an approach which masked the situation with medications,” rather than healing it. Keltner felt, intuitively, that this was not good enough. There had to be more than diagnosis as fate, disease as something dire and foreign that visited you and stayed, or was corrected with pills and/or surgery. So, he took the road less traveled at the time. Not outwardly rebellious or counter-cultural in his appearance, this mild-mannered gentleman took a walk on the alternative side; alternative medicine, that is. In his office, he sits across a table from me, beaming. Founder and director of Ana, a massage therapy firm, he exudes excitement and youthfulness. After 33 years in the corporate world, Keltner retired from Hatco Manufacturing and went to school for massage therapy. He learned from Andy Schaefer, one of the best therapists in the nation. After a few years of principally doing table massage at his spa, he now makes house calls, or more accurately, office calls. He offers 15-minute treatments in business and office environments. “I want to serve,” he says, his face glowing. “If I serve and help people, help the community, the rest will follow. I want to serve people, to help them, and massage does that. It helped me.” His face is radiant. He is an attentive listener who makes you feel that anything you say will be given the benefit of the doubt. Somehow, by the way he stands, walks and sits at table, he exudes the sense of someone at home in his body. When he reports that he feels much better at 64 than he did at 40, it’s easy to believe him. The name Ana is partially derived from the Sanskrit word “Prana,” or dynamic life breath, which is equivalent to Chi, or Spirit. It is also inspired by two of Keltner’s grandchildren, both named Anna. “We had fun coming up with that name,” he says, in his soft, cheerful voice. For Keltner and his partner, Sharon Herrmann, massage is a “regular modality.” Keltner is also trained in Reiki and Cranio-Sacral Therapy, but their central passion is massage in the workplace. They come directly to any office, use no oils, and, using a special chair, massage fully clothed employees in the head, neck, shoulder, back, arms and hands. It’s an effective stress-buster and can be used as a reward in an office incentive program. Their popularity is growing. From August 28th until the 31st, Randy, Sharon Herrmann, and eight other massage therapists will be participating in the Harley Davidson celebrations by stationing themselves in South Shore Park from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., offering massages for 15 minutes, at $20 a piece. After all, […]

American Splendor

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Lovelier Than Ever

By Jason Keil Liv Mueller and Barb Endes have been hard at work this summer, putting the finishing touches on The Lovelies’ highly anticipated new album White Leather, their fourth release of smart, catchy, melodic rock due for release in late September. In a recent interview, Mueller shared that she’d been distracted, at least momentarily, by a review she stumbled upon from their recent show at the SXSW festival in Austin last March. The article described the band as “Laverne and Shirley meet the Everly Brothers,” going on to describe the band’s look while making little mention of their music. “They looked like they bought their outfits at the Chess King,” the reporter went on, only taking time to refer to their music as “bland.” But one scathing review can’t slow the juggernaut year for one of Milwaukee’s favorite bands. In addition to playing SXSW, breaking in their new drummer and dedicating most of their summer to White Leather, a tour of the Midwest and the South has been set up to promote the release of the new album. “I thought that the title encapsulated everything wonderful: Nancy Sinatra and Evel Kneivel, bubbles and danger, tough and soft, leather and lace,” says Mueller of White Leather. “Our friends and followers can expect to hear a great Lovelies record.” White Leather is, in many ways, a literal continuation of their previous release Hot One. In fact, four of the tracks from Hot One were re-recorded for White Leather, as their new label, St. Louis-based Force MP, feels they’re great songs that deserve a “wider audience.” Even with a degree of success in the testosterone-drenched world of rock music, there’s still a “chick rocker” label attached to The Lovelies. Mueller isn’t bothered. “Being a woman in music is very comparable to being a man in music, except Barb and I have these things called ‘breasts’ that get in the way of our guitar straps sometimes,” she says. “I see The Lovelies kicking open doors, breaking gender roles, and making so much money that Barb and I can finally get the sex change operations we’ve been waiting for!” Liv jokes. “But seriously, who knows where we fit in, or if we ever will. We’ve always remained true to our own style, and that makes us proud. I think there are a lot of female fronted bands that are getting a lot more respect than they used to.” Mueller remains distracted by the SXSW review, going so far as to shoot a response to the critic that seems to encapsulate The Lovelies unique sense of ironic fun. “I have never read a good rock review that didn’t go into great detail about the ‘appearance’ of a band before commenting on its music. I’m grateful that he tuned in to my ‘guitar centric-go nowhere tunes’ … In this day and age of hustle and bustle, Starbucks, traffic jams and video stores, I pose to you this question: Why go anywhere? EVEN in a song? My […]

Le Divorce

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Welcome to Milwaukee’s Eighth Wonder — Pier Wisconsin!

By Raymond Johnson Could there really be a better idea than to build a Great Lakes freshwater education center on the Milwaukee Lakefront, as proposed by Pier Wisconsin? Especially after a few years of our local water utility MMSD fouling up Lake Michigan by dumping (oops, “blending” ) raw sewage into our rivers? Those people should be given free lifetime passes once it is built — and be required to go every week. Thankfully, the project is back on track. The story So far. Local philanthropist Michael Cudahy agrees to give millions of dollars to Pier Wisconsin to build a freshwater education center. There is one condition — Mr. Cudahy chooses the architect. The firm — McClintock Architects — designs a badly over-scaled building that some (though not I) complain too much resembles the recently built Quadracci pavilion for the Milwaukee Art Museum, known as “the Calatrava.” The design is so bad (according to its detractors) that everyone freaks out, including said Quadraccis and Mr. Calatrava himself. Ideas are floated to keep the design but move the center. The Harbor Commission decides to reject a lease agreement for the center — reasonably citing the views that the six-story building would obstruct. Michael Cudahy freaks out — saying he will never give another penny to the city for anything. Fast forward a little. Mr. Cudahy reconsiders, and the Harbor Commission, turning 180 degrees, gives Pier Wisconsin a lease, with the stipulation that the building be redesigned. Apparently this design will be reviewed by several municipal agencies. The new design itself will be handled by said McClintock Architects, who will work closely with city planning director Peter Park, with some moderating by Larry Witzling, a professor of architecture at UWM. All this is good stuff, and the building produced by this team will probably be acceptable, maybe even decent. The problem is, decent is not good enough for our lakefront. Buildings on the lakefront need to be excellent. And moderation rarely produces excellence. Let’s open it up. What we need here is an open design competition. Open, meaning anyone can enter. Design as has been happening around our city over the last decade, though rarely in whole buildings. Competition is that principle upon which market economies are based, whereby excellence in everything from plumbing to philosophy is produced. The ingredients for an incredible open design competition are already in place. You have a benefactor (Mr. Cudahy) who appreciates excellence and could bankroll an open design competition for probably 1f the project cost. You have a city representative (Mr. Park) who knows a thing or two about design. And you have a moderator (Mr. Witzling) who is a nationally recognized leader in putting together open design competitions. You’ll notice I keep referring to an “open design competition,” instead of shortening it to “competition.” This is because all three of these words are equally important. The process must remain open, and be anonymous. A local woman who has been doing fabulous restaurant/bar renovations around […]

Brian Jones Lays His Hands on Peter Gabriel

By Brian Jones As sophomores in high school, my small group of friends and I spent most of our time trying to be as cool as possible. By “cool” I mean we knew we weren’t popular, so it was our goal to be as strange, and in our minds, cutting edge as possible. Nobody else in our central Illinois town wore the clothes we wore. Punk meets the new wave and we had an obligation to show everybody else how uncool they were (and, by extension, how cool we were) in our Soviet full-length wool trench coats. Of course nobody listened to the same music. We were determined to be whatever we wanted to be as long as it wasn’t like everybody else. We conformed to being non-conformist. Not many concerts come to Normal, Illinois so when my friend Paul asked me to go a Peter Gabriel show I was psyched. We knew him then only as the former front man for the 70s prog-rock group Genesis. At the time Gabriel was enjoying moderate success with a strange little tune called “Shock The Monkey.” What I did know was that Gabriel was the kind of artist who didn’t conform to any standards. He did what he wanted to do, and I wanted to see what that was all about. Paul and I put on our best punky clothes, complete with Clash and Sex Pistol buttons, and headed to Braden Auditorium one early December evening in 1982. I think Paul’s older sister drove us to the show, and I think we chugged two whole beers before we went in. Our seats were in the 4th row, just to the left of the stage. The house lights were still on when a man walked out. Nobody seemed to notice him at all. I said to Paul, “Hey what’s that guy doing, checking the mics or something?” He stepped up to the mic and said, “Excuse me… Excuse me… .” The man began again. No one really paid attention. “Excuse me. I’m Peter Gabriel. Thank you for coming out tonight. We hope you have a good time. I just wanted to let you know how things are going to go this evening. These fellows are about to come out and play for you and then we’ll be back a little later to entertain you. So please welcome The Electric Guitars.” It was him. He actually came out to introduce the opening act. He had already impressed me. After the Electric Guitars got through pounding an oil drum with a baseball bat and hitting a suspended piece of sheet metal like it was a cymbal, the lights went out. In the distance we heard drums. We looked around but couldn’t tell where they were coming from, when suddenly everybody turned around to see the whole band marching through the mezzanine pounding on marching drums. They headed out into the hallway, then reappeared right in front of us, marched up on to the stage, took […]

Therapy

By Eric Francis For those of you planning to learn Chinese, or read War and Peace or dive into the Harry Potter series this fall, I have another idea for a project: Therapy. I have a friend who sometimes tells the story of a difficult period of his life, back around his college years. He is an educated and sensitive person. “I was so messed up I needed to see a counselor!” he sometimes says, still amazed after all these years, and speaking as if it were some great shame to need help. His perspective reveals the bias that we don’t need therapy unless we’re messed up; messed up is somehow shameful or wrong, as if we should not be this way. In that context, any form of needing help or desiring growth can be viewed pathologically, as a sickness, and thus wrong, instead of the desire to live a more full life. I speak from the viewpoint of having had very good experiences with therapists, which isn’t the case for everyone. But when you hear those stories, it’s worth checking whether the client went in seeking to learn about their own healing process and empower themselves, or to have someone else run their life. The starting point and the original intention have a lot to do with the outcome. In my own therapy process, I learned how to set the priority of taking care of myself. I learned to assess my relationships with my parents, and their impact on me, very honestly. I learned to ask for what I need in my intimate relationships. And most of all, I learned that I have the power to make choices. Disaster isn’t a necessary precondition. Most people opt for therapy when their life gets out of control, or when their pain is very intense, such as when they are getting divorced and things are falling apart. This is typical, and we are fortunate to have help available at such times (this was not always the case) but disaster is not a necessary precondition of working with someone. Therapy is an excellent growth tool and a process you can put to work for realizing your potential. Going into therapy involves acknowledging that you do need or desire some assistance, which is a tremendous step in itself. It also involves a commitment of your time and resources — both. The money is part of the picture, and so is having the dedication to show up for each session. The most important thing people learn in therapy is awareness. This is the same as learning how to be ourselves. In process, we talk a lot and eventually learn to listen to ourselves. This is worth paying for. You might ask why you can’t do this with a friend, and my response would be that a friend has other interests in you, and is unlikely to give you the objectivity, the room to change, or the opportunity to challenge yourself that you need. Perspective is […]

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

Hope Lives in Tonasket

By Richard Walters In the wake of the Trade Center tragedy, the Bush administration pushed through Congress the so-called “PATRIOT Act” — probably the most mistakenly-titled piece of legislation in the history of the country. At the time, none dared oppose it — after all, it was called the PATRIOT Act, and to fail to vote for it would be, well, unpatriotic, not to mention disrespectful to all those heroic folks who died. As the fog has cleared, Americans from coast to coast have awakened to the horrifying consequences of exactly what has been done to them. The resulting pockets of backlash, although widespread, have not been widely publicized so far (what else can we now expect?). But they’ve cropped up in some surprising places. At over fifty thousand words, the PATRIOT Act is a virtual novella of oppression. Within its pages, the Bill of Rights is shredded, and the blind lady Justice is summarily gang-raped. For those who haven’t read it (most of us), let’s think about the freedoms sacrificed in the name of national security. The gang rape of blind Lady Justice. Start with freedom of association. Your government is now empowered to investigate you because of the people with whom you converse, exchange letters, or have a cup of coffee. Then there’s freedom from unreasonable search and seizure — the government has the ability to enter your home without a warrant, and take a look around without telling anyone, the so-called “sneak and peek.” Freedom of information? The government can peruse your library records, video store check-out history, shopping patterns, credit card receipts, bank records, all without subpoena. And freedom of speech? Your librarian, banker, video clerk, can all be sent to prison if they tell anyone that an investigation is ongoing. Your right to counsel? Forget it — the feds can eavesdrop on conversations between lawyer and client. If you are accused of a terror-related offense, they can deny you access to counsel, period. Speedy trial? You can now be held indefinitely without being charged. Public trial? Nope, in camera proceedings are now authorized. Even if you are charged, you can be denied the right to question witnesses against you if “national security interests” are cited, without any requirement on the part of the government to provide proof. As to freedom of information, the government has now closed once-public immigration hearings, secretly detained hundreds of people of “questionable” ethnic background, and encouraged government officials to resist public records requests. Last but not least, God help you if you win the trifecta — questionable ethnicity, a connection (however tenuous) to designated terrorist organizations, and a suspicion of providing “material support” or “specific expertise” to those groups (such as treating a member of one if you’re a doctor, or representing one if you’re a lawyer). This makes you eligible for the bonus round —designation as a probable enemy agent or combatant, a secret trial without counsel before a military tribunal, with the possibility of a death sentence and […]

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 […]

Annie Lennox

By Brian Barney Annie Lennox Bare J Records www.alennox.net Just when it would seem that Her Grace Annie Lennox had pretty much done it all as a ground breaking artist and diva, she opens yet another door to a room of musical treasure. Introspective and engaging lyrical content cuts straight to the heart early on in “Pavement Cracks,” where the loveliness of her voice is used as an instrument with tones as full and rich as any string or woodwind can boast. Things pick up in tracks like “Bitter Pill,” where her reverence for Motown shines through with glorious background vocals (all performed by Lennox) and foot stomping rhythm. Stand out tracks like “Honestly” and “Loveliness” are Annie at her best, showing the fullness and power that has grown as the years have passed. As always, Lennox writes from the heart and soul, displaying in tunes like “Twisted” and “A Thousand Beautiful Things,” the sort of depth and emotion few artists can grasp as wholly as she. Closing track, “Oh God,” serves as the perfect point of decrescendo with haunting melody and breathy lilt. It’s been twelve releases since Annie’s gone solo, and she shows no sign of slowing. This CD is a MUST have.