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Photo by Erin Gosch.  When I came across a Little Free Library a couple of years ago on a Madison bike trail, I found the idea very appealing. Like birdhouses for books, these weatherproof bookshelves are popping up all over the metro area, and all around the country, too, inviting you to take a book, leave a book, or maybe just browse. My son, Ben, and I like to build things, and as we debated projects last summer, I thought back to that little trailside library. Dreaming up our own, we settled on a straightforward design that used redwood boards…

In April, we covered the @CityofMilwaukee Twitter handle that’s run not by city government officials, but by the Newaukee young professional group. This month, we look to a Republican state senator who attracted online imitators during the Act 10 fight – and still deals with the machinations today as he runs for Congress. Glenn Grothman, the quotable social and fiscal conservative from West Bend, prodded 35-year incumbent Tom Petri into retirement earlier this year in an impressive show of clout. But good luck finding his official Twitter account. Some three fake ones, all begun in early 2011, pollute more pertinent…

Milwaukee isn’t the only city to consider tightening its curfew hours after a wave of summer violence. In August, Baltimore lowered its curfew for teens ages 14-16 from 11 p.m. to 10 p.m. on weeknights. Year-round, kids under 14 will have to be indoors by 9 p.m., one of the strictest curfews in the country. Such restrictions sound like an easy fix, but their effectiveness in reducing crime remains debatable. A meta-review of 10 studies on the topic, conducted by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, found that stricter curfews have, at most, only moderate effects on local crime rates and…

Illustration by Pablo Iglesias The scene is repeating itself all over Wisconsin: A faithfully wedded couple of 50 or 60 years walks into a lawyer’s office and says, “We need a divorce.” They’re happy together, perhaps happier than they’ve ever been. That’s not the problem. Their reasons, it turns out, are financial. A seemingly minor provision, passed as part of the 2013-15 state budget in June 2013, greatly expanded the powers of the friendly sounding “Estate Recovery Program.” Under its auspices, Wisconsin may recoup a portion of what it has spent, through Medicaid, to house someone over the age of 55…