Cathedral Square Farmer’s Market

Deep in the heart of the concrete jungle, otherwise known as downtown Milwaukee, lies an oasis—a breath of fresh air if you will. It is here that good ‘ol city folk gather on some green amidst the hustle and bustle of the city to enjoy the simpler pleasures in life. Welcome to the Cathedral Square’s Farmers Market, on the corner of Kilbourn and Jefferson Streets. I had the pleasure of visiting the market recently on a ravishing Saturday morning, complete with crystal clear skies and the anticipation one gets when delving into something new. I was not quite sure what to expect. I suppose, after recently visiting Old World Wisconsin, that I half-expected to see women dressed in prairie frocks and crisp linen aprons selling brick oven pies while nearby the men bartered off the family cattle. There were no such sights, of course, after all, this was downtown Milwaukee 2007, but there was certainly no shortage of tantalizing sights to see, feel and my favorite—taste! People come from all over Southeastern Wisconsin to sell their alluring handmade, hand crafted or hand-picked treasures. A pair of Amish friends traveled over 150 miles from Kendall, Wisconsin just to sell their mothers’ baked goodies. Also present was the family who nurtured their hobby of raising honey-bees into a sweet business, Rolling Meadows Honey Farm, offering everything from honey mustard to refreshing honey-lemonade. And the family who runs Lakeview Buffalo Farm. They enticed shoppers with a hearty snack of real Wisconsin cheese and buffalo meat sticks. Perhaps you would enjoy perusing the dozens of elegant pens from The Write Stuff, a father-son venture that turned into quite the talent (The vendor by the way is quite a charming Sophist—in a good way!). Maybe taking home a fragrant bouquet, a basket of fresh veggies, or some gorgeous summer jewels is more your style. Oh, and don’t forget to listen to the music! This time I got to enjoy Repeat Offenders, a cover band that is made up of 3 attorneys, 2 engineers and 1 paralegal (hence the name). Sitting under the shade of a maple tree I watched as children chased blue-gray pigeons while their parents engaged in neighborly conversation. It truly makes you begin to appreciate the simpler things in life. You know, life just tasted a little sweeter that Saturday morning. Stephanie S. Beecher Vital Source Street Team

Street Team Saw Fever Marlene @ Summerfest

For the past several years, as Summerfest approaches I always say I’m not going, citing my distaste for large drunken crowds and snobbish taste in beer as the reasons. Then i get chided because it is a music festival not a beer tasting party. Then I remember, oh yeah, I like music. Spurred by a dead-end tip that Andrew Bird was going to be opening for some band I’d never heard of, I decided it might be worth braving the herd. I was not terribly disappointed, instead, I was delighted to be introduced to the musical manifestations of Scott Starr and Kevin Dunphy, a handsome duo by the stage name of Fever Marlene. In searching for proof or denial of the Bird rumor I searched Fever Marlene’s website and got a dose of danceable rock compelling enough to ride my bike to the grounds. Honestly – the sound on stage, playing over concrete and metal bleachers, does not equal the same sound from their recordings. In my own private listening space I’m content to just do the chair rock and go about my business. Sitting in front of them up on stage I was galvanized by the raw attitude the music effused. At a festival of many less than exciting bands, these guys pulled in a very attentive crowd. From what it looked like, half at least knew half the songs, the rest were just drawn in by the half-electro, half-rock, all good beats. The best songs, I noted, were lip-synched by the crowd – Red Fire and We Are All Colors – both of which you can hear on their new album, “Civil War”. If you get the chance, check out one of their upcoming shows, it’s well worth it.

Fever Marlene, Summerfest 2007

Milwaukee Sketch & Improv Fest Goes National

Benefit Show for Pat Kasthurirangaian

Become a MARNmentee!

MARN seeks Mentees for Mentoring Program! To strengthen the network of support for artists, provide in-depth professional resources and to contribute to the health of Wisconsin’s arts community, MARN has created MARNmentors specifically for visual artists, literary artists, filmmakers and arts administrator in the Milwaukee area. MARN will act as a liaison between established working artists and administrators and those who are pursuing a career in the arts. Twelve established artists and three established arts administrators with a track record of professionalism and who have a desire to pass on their knowledge to developing artists, have been selected as Mentors. MARN and its Mentors believe it is essential to Milwaukee’s art community that we cultivate relationships among our artists, and provide opportunities that encourage emerging artists to stay and work in Milwaukee. Deadline to apply is July 31, 2007, please submit: *One page letter of intent, detailing what you’d like to get out of MARNmentors. *10 Visuals or samples of your work. *One page personal statement, include information about you and your work. Send to MARN, P.O. Box 713, Milwaukee, WI 53201. Questions? Contact Mike Brenner, brenner(at)marnonline(dot)com or 414/433-1900. There is a $200 fee for MARNmentors, due upon acceptance to the program. Scholarships and payment plans are available. Visit the MARN website. MARN’s MISSION Milwaukee Artist Resource Network (MARN) is a nonprofit art-service organization dedicated to enriching the community by supporting individual literary, performing and visual artists. MARN empowers artists with access to educational and professional resources and creates a network for communication and collaboration. MARN sponsors arts-related events, including and involving other organizations and businesses, making the arts accessible to people of all economic and educational backgrounds. THE VISUAL ART MENTORS Santiago Cucullu was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and currently lives in Milwaukee. He received his M.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1999 and his B.F.A. from the Hartford Art School in Connecticut. In addition he was a resident at the Core Program at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Recent solo projects include exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; INOVA, Milwaukee; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston; and Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago. Group exhibitions include the 2004 Whitney Biennial; How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Fresh: The Altoids Collection at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, New Waldek Dynerman is a professor in the Fine Arts Division, where he has taught drawing, printmaking, and painting since 1983. He works in wide range of media including painting, works on paper, and sculpture. He was the recipient of Milwaukee County Fellowship in 2001, and he showed his work in over sixty group and solo exhibitions in U.S. and Europe. Lane Hall is a Professor in the Department of Visual Art at the Peck School of the Arts at UWM. He works collaborately with artist Lisa Moline on […]

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 […]

Coming soon — Scene and Heard

VITAL Source Presents Random Exposure 2

Join VITAL Source Magazine after work this Thursday, June 14 at the endlessly fascinating Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design for Random Exposure 2, a gallery exhibit of over 60 finalist and winning photographs from VITAL’s annual photo contest. Last year’s event was a smashing success, and this Thursday will set a new bar, with beverages provided by Point Brewing Co. and the Milwaukee Ale House, appetizers by Bremen Café and music by The Glamour. A short film presentation of the judging process will loop in the auditorium as party-goers nosh and take in some amazing photography in one of Milwaukee’s most interesting art spaces while surrounded by the funky sounds of Milwaukee’s most dynamic DJ duo. Just $3 at the door and the rest is free! 5:30 to 7:30 pm at the Eisner Museum of Adverting and Design, 208 N. Water St. Thanks to the sponsors: the Eisner, Point Brewing Co., Picture Perfect and Bremen Café. Under 21 welcome.

This Thursday! VITAL Source Presents Random Exposure 2

Join VITAL Source Magazine after work this Thursday, June 14 at the endlessly fascinating Eisner Museum of Advertising and Design for Random Exposure 2, a gallery exhibit of over 60 finalist and winning photographs from VITAL’s annual photo contest. Last year’s event was a smashing success, and this Thursday will set a new bar, with beverages provided by Point Brewing Co. and the Milwaukee Ale House, appetizers by Bremen Café and music by The Glamour. A short film presentation of the judging process will loop in the auditorium as party-goers nosh and take in some amazing photography in one of Milwaukee’s most interesting art spaces while surrounded by the funky sounds of Milwaukee’s most dynamic DJ duo. Just $3 at the door and the rest is free! 5:30 to 7:30 pm at the Eisner Museum of Adverting and Design, 208 N. Water St. Thanks to the sponsors: the Eisner, Point Brewing Co., Picture Perfect and Bremen Café. Under 21 welcome.

PrideFest Photo Galleries

Please visit our new PrideFest and Pride Parade photo galleries! Enjoy!

Anybody ever wonder why I’m skeptical about state mandated vaccines?

This HPV vaccine has scared me since before its official FDA approval last year. When several states introduced legislation to mandate its use in pre-teen populations, I was incensed as well as dubious. The first reports are now coming about how potentially dangerous this vaccine can be. Read on… http://www.judicial watch.org/ 6299.shtml Judicial Watch Uncovers Three Deaths Relating to HPV Vaccine Event Reports Obtained from FDA Detail 1,637 Adverse Reactions to Gardasil (Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine. One physician’s assistant reported that a female patient “died of a blood clot three hours after getting the Gardasil vaccine.” Two other reports, on girls 12 and 19, reported deaths relating to heart problems and/or blood clotting. As of May 11, 2007, the 1,637 adverse vaccination reactions reported to the FDA via the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) included 371 serious reactions. Of the 42 women who received the vaccine while pregnant, 18 experienced side effects ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormities. Side effects published by Merck & Co. warn the public about potential pain, fever, nausea, dizziness and itching after receiving the vaccine. Indeed, 77% of the adverse reactions reported are typical side effects to vaccinations. But other more serious side effects reported include paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures. “The FDA adverse event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Any state or local government now beset by Merck’s lobbying campaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine for young girls ought to take a look at these adverse health reports. It looks as if an unproven vaccine with dangerous side effects is being pushed as a miracle drug.” Judicial Watch filed its request on May 9, 2007, and received the adverse event reports from the FDA on May 15, 2007. Judicial Watch has posted the adverse event reports below. (A recent study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also questioned the general effectiveness of Gardasil.) ###