The Gift of Wine

By Nathan Norfolk During holiday crunch time, wine makes a perfect gift. Wine is festive and especially suited for celebrations. And it’s always great for that last minute what-do-I-get-my-boss-or-my-uncle situation. If you don’t know anything about wine, don’t be afraid to ask a wine merchant for advice. They want you to come back and buy wine at their store again so you can feel at ease in trusting their advice. Just tell them your budget and be firm about it. You can even be cheap. There are hundreds of great wines that retail for less than 20 dollars, and there are many that are simply good for less than 10 dollars. If gift wrapping strikes fear into your heart, you can easily just slip a bow on the bottle. Most retailers also carry a plethora of decorative bags  made solely for gift giving. If you’re paranoid about getting just the right wine for a gift, here are a few simple guidelines. First, get something different. The big California wine brands already get everyone’s attention. A decent merchant will steer you clear of all the normal impulse wine buys you could get at any grocery store. There are many good wines at every imaginable price point, so that avoiding the Beringers and the Kendall-Jacksons of this world should be easy. Second, if you are going to buy someone a gift, you may as well get one for yourself. This may sound self-indulgent, but when do you have a better excuse to treat yourself than the holidays? Try the wine out and see what you think. This will give you the ability to a give a gift that is that much more personal. If you don’t like the wine, don’t give it as a gift (or at least don’t give it to anyone you really like). If you do like it, share your thoughts on the wine with the recipient. No one will think you’re cheap if you just give one bottle. In the best-case scenario you can cater to someone’s wine desires, but if you don’t know what they like here are a few safe suggestions at a variety of prices. • The real deal French Champagne starts at about $30 a bottle. No other wine is quite as elegant or appropriate for the holidays. Most of them will have the word “Brut” prominently displayed on the label. This indicates that the Champagne will be bone-dry. If you seek something a bit fruitier, look for Extra-Dry or Demi-Sec styles. A great budget Champagne is the non-vintage Duval-Leroy. • For those with Champagne taste and a beer budget, there are plenty of sparkling wines in the eight-to-20 dollar category. Sparkling wine simply refers to any wine with bubbles that isn’t made in the Champagne region of France. Italian Prosecco is bit more floral and fruity than Champagne and typically about half the price. Two great producers of Prosecco are Jeio and Zardetto, both retail for less than $15. • If you think […]

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 […]

By Lucky Tomaszek When I mention I’m a writer, I find that lots of people have a novel brewing in the back of their heads. They’ve been picking at it for years, sometimes; waiting for the time, the talent or the wherewithal to sit down and commit it to paper. Some have well thought-out plot lines and characters, while others have a rough idea of what they want to say and how they want to say it. But regardless of where they are in the internal planning stage, most shrug it off as another thing they’ll probably never do. I am one of these people! Or, at least, I was. I’ve been writing this column for over two and a half years. Additionally, I’ve written articles for professional journals and some short stories for myself and my friends. But a whole novel? What an overwhelming concept! I have kids and work and volunteer responsibilities. Would I have enough to say? And what would I do with it if I ever did manage to finish it? Building character.About a year ago, I overheard an offhand comment while I was sitting at Bremen Café. And in that one comment the idea for an entire book sprang into my mind. I tried to give the idea away to several other writers, and even an independent filmmaker friend. I tried to push it down and out of my head, but it kept percolating. Still, it wasn’t something I was willing to take on myself. I had an image in my mind of stacks and stacks of dusty, unfinished manuscripts littering my little flat, serving as another reminder that I sometimes have a hard time finishing what I’ve started. Then I heard about NaNoWriMo. It’s short for National Novel Writing Month and it happens every November. Last year about 42,000 people sat down with the goal of writing 50,000 words in thirty days; approximately 6,000 of them succeeded. The NaNo participants I met online said it was one of the most rewarding writing experiences of their lives. They had to push through all their own hang-ups and just write. Edit later, fret and panic later; write NOW! The support of writing with a group of people helped, too. The idea appealed to me. It had two of my best enticements to productivity; a firm deadline and social activity. I was nervous because November is always hectic, but every other month is really just as crazy when you look closely. Fifty thousand words seems like a lot to pound out in a month, but when I broke it down it was really 1,667 words per day. That didn’t sound so bad. I considered it for several months, worried about the toll it would take on my family life. When I’m on a writing tear I can get pretty focused on my keyboard. My kids aren’t babies anymore at five, seven and ten, but they’re young enough to need my attention for a large portion of every […]

Six Milwaukeeans’ Best (And Worst) Holiday Memories

By Evan Solochek Tom Barrett (Mayor of Milwaukee) When I was 12, I served as an altar boy on Christmas morning. My mother woke me at 4:30a.m. for 5:30a.m. mass. We met my best friend and his mother and drove to St. Sebastian. I remembered being amazed at how many people would actually get up at that time in the morning to go to mass. It was a beautiful and meaningful service. When it was over, my mother and I set out for home, my anticipation of opening my presents growing to near-urgency as we approached our house. As I raced to the door ahead of my mom, she stopped me and gave me the heartbreaking news. My younger sister still believed in Santa Claus and, to preserve her imagination, I would have to wait until she awoke to see the presents under the tree. Of course, all Christmas stories should have a happy ending and this one does too. When I finally was able to look at the presents, I saw a brand new toboggan. There was fresh snow from the day before and I spent hours with my brother and sisters riding in Washington Park. Mark Borchardt (filmmaker, American Movie star) Last Christmas the cat got stuck up in the tree. Family and friends, including my kids and Ken Keen, were gathered at the house for the yearly celebration, but this unforeseen event became the main narrative of the day. What started out as a pedestrian incident turned into a tense, day-long ordeal. A variety of initial rescue attempts proved futile as the cat only moved further up the tree. Finally, the fire department was called, but they had abolished the service and their basic philosophy was that the cat got itself up there and the cat can get itself down. So much for that. It grew colder and night was closing in. The cat would surely meet a bitter fate if a rescue was not accomplished. Though my youngest daughter Dara’s heart grew increasingly concerned, it could not be broken. I climbed up on the motor home underneath the tree and vigorously shook the main branch that the cat had sunk its claws into. Terrified, it clung for dear life, so I shook the branch even more violently. The cat determinedly stayed on it for a while but then its grip started loosening, its stamina weakening. Excited voices rose as I shook the limb even more intensely. Suddenly, the cat’s back legs gave way and swung out in the air, a ballet of madness. Gasps from the ground erupted as the front legs finally gave way and the body took a free-fall through the dead branches of the tree. The plummeting cat almost missed the blanket but caught enough to break its fall. It bounded off and raced around the house. Dara reappeared with the cat in her loving arms and Ken concluded that the rescue required some kind of a fermented beverage. Keith Tozer (Milwaukee Wave […]

Talkin’ Turkey with Brian Moran

By Catherine McGarry Miller Chef Brian Moran makes everything oh-so-simple and delicious. Moran’s recipe for a perfect turkey dinner? Buy your bird fresh from the butcher. Lavish it with aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery and onions), adorn it with sage and thyme, sprinkle on a bit of salt and a generous grind of black pepper. Bake until the thermometer reads 170 degrees, et voila! Dinner! Balance is his byword. As a chef, Moran juggles flavors, textures, seasonings and customers’ needs. As a man of 46, he has created a harmonic blend of career, family, community service and recreation. Moran has been under the radar for much of his career in Milwaukee. As Executive Chef for the Milwaukee Club for 15 years, he was cherished by members and respected within the culinary community, but little known to the public. Now he’s stepping onto center stage, as chef for the St. Paul Fish Co. at the Milwaukee Public Market and teaching cooking classes for the Market’s Traffic Jam series. The Green Bay native has always had a passion for cooking. The fifth of eleven children, he marvels at his mother’s cookery and credits his parents’ strict but fair upbringing with his success. “I loved my mom’s cooking and still do,” he says. “She had German parents so I found that cuisine likable and easy to learn. The smells and aromas of her kitchen stay with me.” From his mother, he learned to love hearty comfort foods and to use lots of fresh vegetables to stretch a dish and a dollar. After high school, Moran went straight into the business. He washed dishes, bussed tables, bartended and even operated a fork lift in a giant freezer for eight hours a night. Seeing a chef’s tall white hat in the kitchen at work one night flipped a switch in his head: cooking was the career for him. He worked in restaurants while attending Fox Valley Technical College’s culinary arts program. His breadth of experience in the food industry created professional opportunities upon graduation, first in Green Bay and later in Milwaukee, where he moved in the mid-1980s. Moran has worked with some of Milwaukee’s top toques: Edouard Becker of the English Room, caterer Scott Shully, Sanford’s Sandy D’Amato and Jerry Malinowski of the Wisconsin Club. When he took the Milwaukee Club executive chef position in the late 1980s, the glove fit so well he wore it for the next decade and a half. The daily breakfast, lunch and dinner service kept him very busy, but weekends off were a plus for this devoted family man. “Club chefs work under the discerning eye of members who travel all over the world and eat at high-end restaurants so they expect a lot,” Moran explains. “I think I met their expectations.” He brought the club’s menu into the 20th century and beyond with lighter, healthier adaptations of traditional favorites – like substituting salmon for corned beef in hash. He also became renowned for his soups and seafood savvy. […]

Why Unity Matters

By Phillip Walzak In a letter to the editor printed in the last issue of Vital Source (November 2005, Vol. 4, Issue 10, pg. 6) a left-leaning and clearly impassioned reader excoriated me for a mistake I made in a previous column. In the piece entitled “Political Math 101” (August 2005) I wrongly attributed to Al Gore the infamous “I invented the Internet” line – a line he never actually said. It was clearly an error, and I fully acknowledge it and apologize. But the reader’s letter revealed far more than a sloppy mistake on my part. It unmasked an ugly trend that has seeped into lefty politics since the departure of Bill Clinton, and threatens progressivism’s chance for electoral success in the future. The Letter. “If the author would have checked his own facts,” the reader penned, “he would have found that what Mr. Gore actually said was that he ‘funded’ the Internet.” Actually, It appears we both got it wrong: then-Vice President Al Gore really said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer in March 1999: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Certainly not as bold as claiming Gore himself invented the Internet in a computer lab, but also more forceful than simply asserting he appropriated funding in some spending bill. No matter, the semantics are petty and pointless – but I admit that I enjoyed the irony for being taken to task over incorrect information by someone who himself got it wrong. I don’t mind being shown up – if I get something wrong, call me out. I can take it. To the point, it was the angry, negative, visceral tone of the letter that caught my attention. The enraged reader wrote he “was appalled to find the author regurgitating the same right-wing-fueled misquote of Al Gore” and slammed me for being “too damn lazy to do his own research.” After recovering from the body blows, I checked my wallet to be sure I wasn’t a card-carrying member of the RNC. The Politics of Disunity.It’s too bad the reader was so quick to dismiss my points, because my article basically blasted the Bush Administration for having no credibility when it originally sought office on a platform of being credible. I used the Al Gore line to demonstrate Bush’s line of attack, and to highlight the Administration’s hypocrisy in the wake of the Valerie Plame leak. The reader would probably agree with that. But instead of talking about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and how the Bushies have played politics with our national security, the end result is that two progressives have now expended time and energy discussing a six-year-old quote from a now irrelevant politician who hasn’t held elective office in half a decade. In political jargon, we’re off-message, and this gaffe – not my misquote, but rather the reader’s obsession with it – epitomizes the penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to politics that our reader and so many other […]

Forgotten Milwaukee

By Frizell Bailey Few would argue that a quality education is critical to a child’s success in life. There is a clear correlation between educational attainment and income level. So it would seem a no-brainer that the surest way to tackle the economic disparity that exists between blacks and whites in Milwaukee would be to offer poor blacks students a quality education. However, black students in Milwaukee all too frequently fail to receive one. According to a 2004 Milwaukee Public Schools Report, 61 percent of MPS seniors graduated in 2003. Broken down by race, the study found that while 71 percent of white students graduated, only 56 percent of black students did. Why is there such a huge gap between white and black graduation rates? The easy answer would be to talk about the failures of Milwaukee Public Schools, which are, according to critics, the logical culprit. Educators, the argument goes, simply are not doing their jobs. We need more accountability. We need to rid ourselves of these no-account teachers who simply want a paycheck. Some see a solution in school choice. The Choice Is Yours.In 1990, then-Governor Tommy Thompson signed a state budget into law that included a pilot program allowing 1 percent of Milwaukee Public School students to opt out of the district in favor of private, non-sectarian schools. Then in 1995, Thompson proposed expanding the program to include religious schools. The Legislature approved the measure, making law what would become the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). At the heart of the issue for proponents of school choice is a free market. Just as in any other industry, the theory goes, public schools have no incentive to innovate if there is no real competition. The thinking has been that parents, given a choice, would remove their children from failing public schools and enroll them in “better” private or charter schools, given the choice. As for public schools, they would either learn to compete or go the way of the dinosaur. Either way, students would receive a better education. This rationale, of course, fails to consider one fundamental element of human nature. People will do anything for money. Who’s Minding The Store?Perhaps the biggest criticism of choice schools is that there is insufficient accountability. And there is perhaps no more glaring an example of choice school failure than Harambee Community School. Cleveland Lee, the school’s chief financial officer, was found guilty of theft and filing false income tax returns. Lee embezzled almost $750,000 from the school, using the money to buy luxury cars and remodel his home instead of educating students. Legislative leaders have tightened oversight of choice school finances in the wake of such scandals. But these new rules still do not give the Department of Public Instruction authority to oversee the educational programs of these schools, though in recent weeks DPI has sought to enforce educational standards as outlined by existing minimum school standards law. Anyone Can Teach?Within the program’s current structure, there are no qualification requirements […]