Editor’s Letter

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris. We’ve made it through the political season, or, as the president has called it, “the silly season” (though his party wasn’t laughing after November’s midterm election). Now we can move on to more, ahem, serious times – the holiday season.  With the holidays, of course, comes good food. As a reader service for this month’s cover story, dining critic Ann Christenson picks the very best new restaurants in metro Milwaukee (Page 34). Many have sprung up in the city’s Bay View and Walker’s Point neighborhoods, reflecting a trend of creative risk-taking that Christenson finds refreshing. …

Photo by Hien Nguyen You can’t help but notice that something’s going on in Downtown Milwaukee. There’s movement, transition. Old buildings are coming down, new ones are going up. Highways are being reconfigured and bridges repaved. But it’s more than the sky-high construction cranes and countless orange traffic cones (the price we pay for change). Ideas are flowing, big plans are circulating. A transformation is in the works, and a sense of excitement is in the air. In this month’s cover story, Assistant Editor Dan Shafer lays out the pieces of the puzzle that could form a new and improved Downtown.…

Photos by Adam Ryan Morris It was a sunny Saturday in July, just another day in Milwaukee…  My son suggested kayaking on the Milwaukee River, so we started by visiting the Urban Ecology Center, where members can “borrow” for free as many kayaks (or canoes or bicycles or cross-country skis) as they want. We strapped two kayaks to the tops of our cars. Destination: Lincoln Park.  Along the way, we were pleasantly interrupted by a parade, a South Side celebration of a Puerto Rican holiday. We paused as floats of blue, white and red rolled toward National Avenue.  We drove…

When I was growing up and my parents talked about getting old, my father would often make the preposterous claim that, when he died, he wanted to be buried in the backyard under the silver maples that he had planted as a young man. “Just put me in a wooden box and dig a big hole,” he would say. My mother would roll her eyes. She didn’t share her husband’s choice for final disposition. Yet both of them were adamant that they never be placed in a nursing home. “I’d rather live in the garage,” said my father, with complete…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris From 2000 to 2010, the number of vacant houses in the United States increased by 4.5 million. That’s an astounding figure. Today, in the city of Milwaukee, an estimated 5,000 houses sit vacant and abandoned, the vast majority in impoverished neighborhoods. Other cities fare far worse: Cleveland, 15,000 vacant houses. Philadelphia, 40,000. And Detroit, as many as 70,000. As our January cover story points out, the problem is an outgrowth of the housing crisis. The 2008 recession pushed jobless rates higher and higher, causing record numbers of foreclosures. As homeowners were forced to vacate, houses…

Photo by Adam Ryan Morris There’s a worn cliché I’ve seen around that harkens to the days of bell-bottom jeans, patchouli oil and bad poetry. It’s a bumper-sticker manifesto, short and sugar sweet: “Practice random acts of kindness.” No surprise, there are several Facebook pages bearing the same slogan, inviting people to save the world through kindness. There’s even The Random Act of Kindness Foundation funded by an anonymous donor, promoting World Kindness Day (Nov. 13) and World Kindness Week (Feb. 10-16), and featuring “kindness testimonials” from all around the globe. OK. It sounds all warm and fuzzy and dripping with…