End Game

Every summer, there’s a big stink at the lakefront. Most people assume it’s caused by sewerage overflows, but the smell actually arises from the growth of algae – tons of cladophora blooming in the shallows of the lake. I had long wondered where the stuff comes from, and whether it could be harvested and used. So I set off on a little adventure to find out. I took a ride on the research vessel manned by UW-Milwaukee’s Great Lakes WATER Institute. “Keep your eye on the water,” one of the scientists on board told me. About a mile from shore,…

On April 1, voters in Marshfield passed a referendum to ban smoking in the workplace, including bars and restaurants. In a huge turnout, more than half of the town’s registered voters also cast ballots for mayor, several aldermen and county supervisors, and a state Supreme Court justice. And they decided their central-Wisconsin city of 19,000 did not need a second firehouse. But it was the smoking ban that drew the biggest vote and widest margin of victory. Of the 6,534 who cast ballots on the issue, 64 percent voted for the ban, and Marshfield joined 34 other Wisconsin communities –…

Not long after I moved to Milwaukee, I was invited to a wedding. Because I knew almost no one in town then, I seized on this social event and went, Wisconsin-winter style, wearing a long velvet dress, scarf and thick boots. The wedding was as lovely as a postcard, with thick snow falling on evergreen boughs and red and gold ribbons lining the walk to the church. The reception followed in a nearby hotel – complimentary martinis, an understated disc jockey, a friendly crowd. I congratulated myself for seemingly assimilating to the local ways. Then came the Chicken Dance. On…

On March 3, at age 87,Laurence Rathsack died of natural causes. He departed as he lived, quietly, with little hoopla and modest headlines. Yet he left a huge legacy. Rathsack was an explorer of sorts, an artistic experimenter who wanted viewers to see beyond “that tyranny” of camera-created reality, as he once put it, who sought to portray physical objects “as though one were seeing them in a totally new way.” To achieve this ambitious goal, Rathsack chose the medium of the Sunday painter – watercolors. Yet he rejected the typically fluid or improvised feel of that medium and worked…

My father liked to make predictions. He would pace the kitchen floor when I was a kid and opine about the changing world. I was held captive (if not captivated) by his windy forecasts of what was coming. He was right about a lot of things. That’s not easy for a son to say sometimes, that his father was right. But looking back, I admit, the man had some vision. He said, for instance, that Wisconsin one day would be coveted as a green haven, cool and clean. Very true. As global warming melts the Sun Belt, our North Woods…

Gale Klappa seems like a model business leader. The energetic We Energies chief executive helped create the Milwaukee 7 group to promote the region’s economy. He is the local boy made good, a UW-Milwaukee graduate who served as co-chair of the UWM capital campaign that has raised more than $120 million, with a goal of growing the university and enhancing its impact on the community. But ironically, Klappa’s company has meanwhile been killing local businesses – and residents – with ever rising gas and electricity prices. The company also seems lukewarm about a plan to save residents and businesses an…

When I moved to Madison in the mid-1980s, I was shocked by the reactions I got. To some Madisonians, I was immediately suspect. I was from Milwaukee, after all, which they saw as a backward city of beer, ba-bushkas and bowling, with racial problems and a reactionary government. I was treated more than once to someone’s imitation of a Milwaukee accent, a dumbly provincial, “We go down by Schuster’s” way of talking that was so stereotyped and thirdhand, I was dumbfounded. A writer who covered classical music for Isthmus, the weekly where I was arts editor, once informed me that…

On Friday, September 14, at the end of the week of hell, I drove past the Milwaukee Art Museum and noticed pedestrians along the new bridge that connects the Calatrava addition with O’Donnell Park. In light of the horror in New York and Washington, D.C., the art museum’s directors had opened the latest phase of the addition two days ahead of schedule, inviting the public into the pavilion and reception hall for free. I circled around and parked on Wisconsin Avenue. Visitors stepped onto the bridge tentatively at first, then marched curiously on, watching workers planting trees in the gardens…

We’re finally getting over our rivalry with Chicago. Like a younger sibling coming into her own, comfortable with herself at last and yet still a little jealous of her big brother, Milwaukee is stepping out from the shadow of Chicago, shaking off that hang-dog feeling of inferiority. We can’t compete with Chicago. We really never could. Not since the railroads made the Windy City a nationwide crossroads has Milwaukee stood shoulder to shoulder with her sibling to the south. So, as the world gets smaller and borders become irrelevant, rather than compete, we’re learning to appreciate Chicago for what it…

It looked so good on the drawing board – a glistening glass and brick renovation of the 94-year-old Auditorium, with a two-tiered performance hall that would seat 4,200, a honeycombed-domed rotunda and an outdoor terrace. The Milwaukee Theatre would be a building for all occasions – civic and corporate, conventions and concerts, even Broadway musicals. But the luster has already tarnished. Last August, the DNR accused developers of violating asbestos laws, and in January, construction crews discovered cracked floor slabs, broken structural beams and rotted pilings underground. Costs went through the roof, jumping $10 million to nearly $42 million. Suddenly,…