Archive for April 2010

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Assaying the Doyle Years

April 29, 2010

I wrote earlier on Gov. Doyle for Wisconsin Interest. Here’s a shorter take for Milwaukee Magazine, using mostly different sources. The critical conclusion isn’t any different though.

The column begins:

A decade from now, one can imagine a beaming septuagenarian named Jim Doyle sitting on a dais in Milwaukee as the former governor is honored for ushering in a bold new era of train travel.

He will be lauded for laying the tracks of a 21st-century Wisconsin economy. The KRM commuter rail he helped launch would have by then joined I-94 as one of the main streets connecting Milwaukee with the booming Chicagoland economy, drawing thousands of new jobs to Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha. And he will be celebrated for securing the breakthrough $810 million federal grant for his high-speed rail line, thereby creating the “I-Q Corridor,” as tech-booster Tom Still first dubbed it, connecting bustling technology clusters in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago.

Or maybe not.Such are the iffy prospects of a burnished legacy for a governor whose two terms were haunted by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and distinguished by a leadership style that shunned risk and punted too many important issues.

Read more here.

Categories: Milwaukee Magazine, Politics

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Where Do You Get Your Veggies?

April 22, 2010

For some families in Milwaukee and Madison, the answer is from  a weekly box they pick up from a local farmer. I looked at the community-supported agriculture movement in a post for WisBusiness.com. CSA subscriptions are booming, but I found  some problems for both farmers and consumers.

The story begins:

The local food movement is providing a noticeable boost this spring to Wisconsin farmers who sell seasonal-vegetable subscriptions to families in the Milwaukee and Madison areas.

“We’re having a real growth spurt,” says John Hendrickson, a senior outreach specialist with UW-Madison’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. “Local food has just been exploding.”

In Milwaukee, more than a thousand people turned out at a March open house at the Urban Ecology Center. Fourteen farmers offered subscriptions in a program called community-supported agriculture (CSA).

“We saw a lot of people from the suburbs this year,” says coordinator Jamie Ferschinger. “The idea of fresh, local food, and getting it from someone you know, is starting to spread.”

Madison’s CSA program is far bigger. Consumer demand has so grown that the organizers moved the CSA open house from Olbrich Gardens to the much larger Monona Terrace Convention Center, where a record 42 farmers talked to about 1,700 interested consumers.

Read more here.

Categories: Organic Farming/Local Food, WisBusiness.com

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Questions for Michael Pollan

April 7, 2010

My interview with Michael Pollan is another piece from the recent past that I wanted to post here. We talked at his home in Berkeley for an hour plus. He is impressively, almost frighteningly,  articulate. But that should be no surprise to his readers. The story ran in the November 2008 issue of The Progressive. It begins:

Michael Pollan has got people talking. His recent books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, have captured the public imagination, setting off countless coffee shop discussions, dinnertime arguments, and oh-so-many blog posts.

Even more impressively, his exploration of modern-day agriculture and the dysfunctional American diet has prompted his readers to look at their own eating habits with a new sense of understanding and often a desire for change.

Read more here.

Categories: Organic Farming/Local Food, The Progressive

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Trouble downtown

April 5, 2010

I’ve written a lot on Madison development over the years. Those stories informed the skeptical take I offer on the library expansion and the Edgewater Hotel subsidy in this guest column for Isthmus. It begins:

I’ll say this for him: Mayor Dave Cieslewicz took the 11th-hour collapse of the Fiore Co.’s library plan in stride. Without missing a beat, he announced that the city will move quickly to Plan B — renovating the existing library at its Mifflin Street site.

But as unflappable as the mayor is, he can’t really hide the disarray at City Hall. Too many big and potentially signature deals have collapsed at the city’s feet during his stewardship…

Read more here.

For an earlier, equally skeptical view of the Edgewater proposal, read this Isthmus column from last September.

Categories: Development, TheDailyPage.com/Isthmus

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What’s black and white and bleeding all over?

April 5, 2010

I intend to post a few  stories I wrote before starting this online archive. This piece on the decline of the Wisconsin newspaper industry dates to March 2009 when it was published by  Wisconsin Interest.

It  cuts close to home. I’ve spent  my adult  life working in newspapers (save a post-college stint at a factory in Kenosha), including, The West Bend News, The Capital Times and Isthmus, plus a cup of coffee at The Janesville Gazette.

The story begins:

If you’re a deep-pocketed business executive in a flourishing industry, you gather at the richly appointed Fluno Center on the UW-Madison campus for your deep-thought conferences. More modest enterprises and nonprofits send their execs to the UW’s shop-worn Pyle Center for their soul-searching. This, of course, was the proper setting for a worried group of newspaper executives on March 28, 2008.

The good news was that they weren’t squirreled away in a dining room at Denny’s out on the Interstate. Given the parlous state of newspaper economics, this might have made more sense. Their papers might have split the cost of the $5.99 “Grand Slam” breakfast special.

“We’re in a time of decline,” Stephen Gray of the American Press Institute told the 60 or 70 people present. “It’s a time of fear, depression, even despair.” Yes, fear, depression, even despair. Nobody was shocked by Gray’s words, because everybody knew they were true.

Go here to read more.

Categories: Media, Wisconsin Interest

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My Life and Times With The Madison Public Schools

April 1, 2010

There’s nothing like parenthood for wiring you into education issues.  When my two daughters were in their K-12 years, I got a first-hand look at how the pedagogical fights in academia played out in my neighborhood schools.

This prompted a long essay in Wisconsin Interest in the winter  2007 issue. Given my previous post on the UW-Madison School of Education, this seems a good time to link to it.

Here’s how the story began:

Having kids is a lot like throwing dice. You never know how you and your mate’s genetic code will spill out. Snake eyes: The kid gets your mathematical obtuseness and your spouse’s fear of heights. Seven! The little tyke inherits your love of words and your spouse’s consummate sense of order.

Who knows how the dice will fall? It’s a crap shoot, so to speak. But that’s the nature component of spawning kids. The nurture element is another story. We try so hard to shape their environment to good effect.

How eye-opening, then, when I realized I had gotten it wrong with my older daughter….

Read here for more.


Categories: Education, Wisconsin Interest

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