Adults turn Halloween into display of bad taste

Transcription

Dueling ‘Draculas’
Ballet companies
in Madison and
Milwaukee dance
with vampires page 30
October 8, 2015 | Vol. 6 No. 23
6 Map challenge goes forward
A first-ever lawsuit against
partisan redistricting is moving
forward in Wisconsin.
11 Health care politics
Dems push health care
reform while Republicans
seek health care repeal.
Adults turn
Halloween
into display
of bad taste
page 9
32 Terror in your backyard
The Wisconsin Fear Grounds,
four of America’s scariest
haunted houses, return with a
brand-new way to terrify you.
Find out how to
download your
Scott Walker
mask inside!
34 LGBT Film Fest
Thirty years in,
UWM’s festival has
broadened its gaze,
with many of this
year’s films focusing
on families in flux.
2
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October 8, 2015
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An urgent, strikingly artful anthology of five short films about the
experiences of lesbians and gays in Kenya, where homosexuality
is criminalized.
|
October 8, 2015
3
News with a twist
THOU SHALT NOT …
WiG wants to remind
Kim Davis and the Liberty
Counsel of that bit in the
Ten Commandments about
not lying. Davis is the Kentucky clerk who, citing religious beliefs, has refused to
issue marriage licenses to
gays, failing in her job and
violating the U.S. Constitution. The Liberty Counsel
is her legal representation. At a recent gathering
of Christian right voters in
Washington, D.C., LC attorney Mat Staver displayed
a photo of what he alleged
were more than 100,000
people who gathered in a
soccer stadium in Peru to
pray for Davis. It turns out
that the photo was taken
more than a year earlier,
during a five-day “Jesus
Loves You” convention.
Later, after several statements refusing to acknowledge the misinformation,
Staver called his use of
the photograph an “honest mistake.” Maybe Davis’
adulteries and four marriages were honest mistakes, too. And don’t get us
started on
her “meeting” with the
pope.
WHAT A
‘GUY’ …
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin played
on the GOP attack team
that grilled Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards
during a House hearing on
Sept. 29. Grothman took
a “what’s in it for me”
approach and informed
Richards that “as a guy”
he doesn’t need to go to
Planned Parenthood and
has plenty of options. Richards informed the guy that
each year Planned Parenthood’s 22 health centers
in Wisconsin serve 65,000
people, many of them lacking lots of options.
ODD COUPLE
Conservative GOP state
Rep. Joel Kleefisch and
Democratic state Sen.
Lena Taylor of Milwaukee
overcame partisanship
through sportsmanship.
The duo went turkey hunt-
Proud Founding Member of
LGBT Chamber of Commerce.
Jordan
5th Generation
|
October 8, 2015
WiGWAG
ing together early one
recent fall morning and
posted pictures from
the experience on their
respective
Facebook
pages. Taylor bagged a
bird.
FOX FIX
Donald Trump’s “boycott” of Fox News lasted
less than a week — not
quite Gandhian in proportion. After Fox canceled an
on-air appearance, Trump
tweeted on Sept. 23 that
the network “has been
treating me very unfairly
& I have therefore decided
that I won’t be doing any
more Fox shows for the
foreseeable future.” But
he was back on the cable
network in six days, telling
Bill O’Reilly, “You’re always
fair.”
NOW HE’S AN
ACTION FIGURE
Speaking of Donald
Trump, a company has
created an action figure
of the bombastic tycoon,
complete with toupee. It
even talks. “I think he’ll dig
it,” said Emil Vicale, owner
of Herobuilders.com. “It’s
huuuuuge.”
COSTUMED SEXISM
The Representation Project, a feminist watchdog
group, is protesting the
Halloween costumes the
national Party City chain
is marketing to girls. The
group notes that less than
7 percent of Party City’s
costumes marketed to girls
are based on occupations.
And even those costumes
are highly sexualized —
like the girl cop costume
with a short skirt, black
vinyl boots and handcuffs
that’s more suggestive of a
streetwalker than a police
officer walking the streets.
Meanwhile, the group had
praise for Target and Disney for “reducing gendered
marketing to kids.”
THE POPE AND
THE DOPE
A publicity stunt featuring a life-size wax figure
of Pope Francis appearing to wave from the back
of a convertible caused
By Lisa Neff and Louis Weisberg
some confusion before the
real pontiff showed up in
New York City. Officials at
Madame Tussauds New
York debuted their wax
pope by showing off the
white-robed figure around
Manhattan in a popemobile-like car hours before
Francis’ plane arrived. A
surprised onlooker called
police after mistakenly
believing the figure was
actually the pope.
gler’s aircraft.
WILL YOU TAKE
THIS PIZZA …?
Memories Pizza, the Indiana restaurant that said it
would refuse to cater samesex weddings, did just that
— without even knowing it.
Before marrying his partner
in Illinois, Robin Trevino, of
the sketch comedy group
GayCo, drove to Walkerton,
Indiana, and picked up pizzas that he and his husband
later served to their wedding guests. He captured it
all on video, of course.
A GIFT FROM
HEAVEN?
Maya Donnelly awoke
to what sounded like thunder in the early morning
hours, but dismissed it as
a typical monsoon storm
and went back to sleep.
Later that morning, she
looked in the carport at her
home in Nogales, near the
U.S.-Mexico border, and
saw pieces of wood on the
ground. She found a bulky
bundle wrapped in black
plastic. Inside was roughly
26 pounds of marijuana
that authorities say was
worth $10,000 and likely
dropped by a drug smug-
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BURNING WITH FEAR
A man with an apparent case of arachnophobia
caused a fire at a suburban Detroit gas pump by
putting a lighter to what
he says was a spider near
his fuel door while he was
gassing up. A clerk shut off
the pump from indoors and
called the fire department.
The pump was destroyed,
but the driver was fine. No
word on the spider.
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October 8, 2015
5
6
|
October 8, 2015
Case to overturn Wisconsin’s overtly partisan
political districts moves one step forward in court
By Louis Weisberg
Staff writer
Democrats challenging Wisconsin’s 2010
political map in court reached a small milestone recently when they filed a rebuttal to
state Republicans’ motion to dismiss the
case.
Sachin Chheda, director of the Wisconsin
Fair Elections Project, expects the case —
known as Whitford v. Nichols — to get a
hearing later this fall by an appeals court
panel. The side that loses probably will
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which
has never ruled in a case challenging a
political map due to overt partisanship, as
this case does, Chheda said.
In the past, the high court has found
maps unconstitutional for being drawn in
a way that discriminated against minority
voters or failed to uphold the principle of
“one-person-one-vote.”
“We think we have a strong case (and)
we hope to get past the motion to dismiss
and get to the trial stage so we can have
a full examination of the issues,” Chheda
said. “We’re trying to establish a new constitutional standing. The Supreme Court
has said that there could be an instance in
which a map is too partisan to be constitutional. They’ve never had a measurement by
which they can make this judgment. We’re
proposing that measurement.”
Chheda is hopeful that a fair and politically neutral map will be in place in time for
the presidential election in November 2016.
GOP’S TOTAL CONTROL
After winning both chambers of the Legislature and the Governor’s Mansion in
Corcoran
a tea party wave
that swept the nation,
Wisconsin Republicans had total control
over the process following the 2010 census.
Whitford v. Nichols argues that Republicans
gerrymandered the state’s political boundaries to such an extent that they pre-ordain
the outcome of elections in the state.
And, indeed, the Wisconsin map is so
partisan that Democrats won 53 percent
of the statewide popular vote in the state’s
2012 midterm elections, yet Republicans
gained 61 percent of the state’s legislative
seats. Republicans also won 55 percent of
contested state Senate seats with only 45
percent of the vote.
“My rights as a voter are being violated,”
said retired university professor Bill Whitford, one of the plaintiffs in the Wisconsin
case. “If my vote counted as much as each
one of my fellow citizens, I would be able
to affect the shape of the Legislature. But
I can’t, because they’ve decided through
these maps that I simply don’t count.”
In 2010, Wisconsin Republicans and their
attorneys used a mathematical tool called
the “efficiency gap” to dilute the votes of
Democrats in order to ensure Republicans
win more district-level elections, according
to the plaintiffs in Whitford v. Nichols and
their attorneys.
“Wisconsin voters want fair elections,
where every vote counts for something and
every voice is heard,” said Peter Earle, the
lead trial attorney for the plaintiffs, speaking at a press conference announcing the
lawsuit in July. “When one party gains control of the levers of government and then
stacks the deck in their favor to keep control, wresting control from the people, that’s
contrary to Wisconsin’s tradition of fairness
and the requirements of the Constitution
for voters and parties to be treated equally.”
The Isthmus reported that GOP lawmakers created the boundaries in secret using
private law firms that were paid by taxpayers. GOP legislators, according to the
article, were made to sign oaths of secrecy
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before they could view their own redrawn
districts.
Such behavior prompted a group of Democrats to sue the state, arguing they were
the targets of political discrimination at the
hands of Republican lawmakers.
“This lawsuit is designed to return elections in Wisconsin and across the country to fair contests,” Earle said. “Legislative elections in Wisconsin have become
increasingly meaningless. We believe that
we now have a standard that the courts
can use and that will gain the support of a
majority of the Supreme Court, to overturn
gerrymandered maps. We have an opportunity to make a major change in how politics
works in the United States and help end the
partisan gridlock that grips the nation.”
The plaintiffs cited one study that
reviewed nearly all the redistricting plans
since the 1970s and found Wisconsin’s to
be one of the most gerrymandered.
NATIONAL ISSUE
The problem is national in scope: In 2012,
Republicans maintained a 33-seat majority in the U.S. House, even though GOP
candidates as a group got 1.4 million fewer
votes than their Democratic opponents and
President Barack Obama was re-elected by
an Electoral College landslide.
Today the nation has the largest number
of state governments run by Republicans
since the 1920s. Observers also say the
nation has an historic level of lawsuits over
the political maps they drew.
The numbers are staggering: In 2011,
428 congressional districts in 43 states
were ordered redrawn, along with 7,382
state legislative districts and hundreds
of thousands of local district boundaries.
Democrats were at fault for drawing 44
gerrymandered congressional districts and
885 state legislative districts. Republicans
were responsible for nearly five times the
number of district boundaries as Democrats were.
Courts have rejected all or part of redistricting plans in at least nine states. And
Brendan Corcoran
Karl Foster
Following the U.S. census at the
start of each decade, boundaries for
political districts must be redrawn to
reflect population shifts. Though in
some states commissions are responsible for drawing new congressional and state legislative maps, most
states, including Wisconsin, allow
state legislators to do the job.
Drawing legislative districts to give
an edge to one party, commonly called
“gerrymandering,” has been going on
in the United States for at least two
centuries. Most states don’t explicitly
prohibit it. The term “gerrymander”
comes from the name of 19th-century
Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry,
who signed into law an unpopular
redistricting plan that included one
state senate district shaped like a salamander.
courts had to draw the lines themselves
in 10 states, due to legislative stalemate,
according to Loyola Law School.
Courts this year are likely to draw new
maps in Florida and Virginia after legislators in those states failed to agree on new
maps to replace earlier ones thrown out by
judges. Alabama may need to redraw its
district lines after the Legislative Black Caucus went to court arguing that Republican
state legislators drew them to reduce the
voice of minority voters.
Redistricting plans have also been challenged legally in North Carolina, Virginia,
Maryland, Texas, Arizona and Rhode Island.
— Stateline and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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7
October 8, 2015
Vatican denies Kim Davis’ claim of support, highlights news
of pope’s private meeting with gay couple
From WiG and AP reports
The “say it isn’t so” moment arrived a few
days after Pope Francis departed from the
United States following a six-day whirlwind
tour that took him from Capitol Hill to soup
kitchens.
The popularity of the first pope from the
Americas soared to rock star heights during those days in late September, but then
came news of the pope’s meeting with antigay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis.
Among many progressives, Francis’ star
fell, only to begin to ascend again after
the Vatican indicated the Davis’ team had
greatly exaggerated the significance of her
meeting with Francis and that he had given
priority to a private meeting with a gay
couple.
Davis, earlier this fall, went to jail for a
few days for contempt of court. She was
violating the U.S. Constitution, flouting federal court orders and ignoring her oath of
office by refusing to issue marriage licenses
to same-sex couples in Rowan County, Kentucky.
The Vatican has distanced the pontiff
from claims that the pope endorsed Davis’
stand on same-sex marriage. In a statement, the Vatican said the only “real audience” Francis had in Washington was with
a small group that included a gay couple.
“The pope did not enter into the details
of the situation of Mrs. Davis and his meeting with her should not be considered a
form of support of her position in all of
its particular and complex aspects,” said
the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican
spokesman.
“The only real audience granted by the
pope at the nunciature was with one of his
former students and his family,” Lombardi
added. The man, Yayo Grassi, is an openly
gay Argentine caterer who lives in Washington. In a video posted online, Grassi
is shown entering the Vatican’s embassy,
embracing his former teacher and introducing Francis to his longtime partner.
The disclosures changed the narrative of
Davis’ encounter, making clear that Francis
wanted another, more significant “audience” to come to light.
“It is heartening news that Pope Francis
met privately with his friend and former
student, Yayo Grassi, and his partner of
19 years, Iwan. It now not only appears
that the pope’s encounter with Kim Davis
has been mischaracterized, but that Pope
Francis embraced these longtime friends,”
said Human Rights Campaign president
Chad Griffin.
DAVIS’ SPIN
A three-time divorcée, Davis became a
hero on the evangelical right for refusing to
issue marriage licenses to gay people, saying that to do so would violate her Christian
beliefs. The story of her encounter with the
pope was trumpeted by her handlers as
signaling Francis’ support for her actions.
“He held out his hand to her and she
grasped his hand,” Davis attorney Mat Staver, co-founder of the right-wing law firm
Liberty Counsel, told the press. “He asked
her to pray for him and she said she would,”
Staver said. “She asked the pope to pray for
her and he said he would.”
That is the pope’s custom with everyone
he meets.
Davis had been in Washington, D.C., to
receive a hero’s welcome at the Values
Voters Summit presented by the Family
Research Council, an extremist group that
denigrates LGBT people.
Staver said the pope thanked Davis for
her courage, told her to “stay strong” and
hugged her.
Francis was asked about conscientious
objection during a news conference held
on his plane departing for Rome. He told
reporters he couldn’t know the details of
particular cases, but that conscientious
objection “is a right. And if a person does
not allow others to be a conscientious
objector, he denies a right.”
LGBT civil rights advocate and Catholic Stephanie Kurcheck of Racine said she
P H O T O : A P P H O T O/ T I M O T H Y D . E A S L E Y
Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis speaks
after being released from jail on Sept. 8.
could admire conscientious objectors but
she could not abide those who discriminate
against others.
“Kim Davis is not like Gandhi or Martin
Luther King,” she said. “She’s no different
from the white racists who used religion to
defend segregation. And I’m deeply disappointed in this pope for not seeing that.”
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October 8, 2015
Federal court hears arguments
in Wisconsin voter ID case
After claiming ‘no interest,’
Walker to ax civil service system
The American Civil Liberties Union went
to court on Oct. 5 seeking to expand the
type of identification accepted under Wisconsin’s controversial voter ID law.
The ACLU has challenged that ID law, but
the measure has been upheld by the courts.
A case now before the U.S. District Court
in Milwaukee focuses on bolstering access
to the ballot by permitting more types of
acceptable identification for voting and by
allowing people who have difficulty obtaining identification to vote by affidavit.
The ACLU is asking that the current list
of acceptable identification, which it maintains is restrictive, be expanded to include
IDs for veterans, IDs for students attending
technical colleges and out-of-state driver’s
licenses.
Said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s
Voting Rights Project, “Thousands of Wisconsinites face barriers to the polls due to
the limited forms of ID mandated under
the state’s strict voter ID law. It’s unconscionable that even veterans, who have
so valiantly served our country, can’t use
their government-issued IDs under this
restrictive law. We’re asking the court to
help eliminate these obstacles by allowing
a broader range of commonsense options.”
Arguments took place on Oct. 5 at the
federal court on East Wisconsin Avenue
in Milwaukee before Judge Lynn Adelman.
The state told the judge the ACLU is ask-
Gov. Scott Walker wants the Legislature
to rewrite the 100-year-old rules designed
to protect the government from political
patronage and cronyism.
Walker’s endorsement of the changes to
eliminate the civil service system came all
but days after he abruptly quit the Republican race for president and began trying to
reassert himself as governor.
Just last year, Walker’s administration
denied having an interest in changing the
civil service system and delivering yet
another blow to state workers, who four
years ago were enraged when the governor
took away nearly all their collective bargaining powers.
The proposal, introduced by Assembly
Majority Leader Jim Steineke and state Sen.
Roger Roth, elicited immediate opposition
from Democrats and union leaders, who
said it would open the door to GOP cronyism and corruption.
The measure would reshape the state’s
civil service system by eliminating exams
for job applicants and instituting a so-called
“resume-based” system. Hiring authority
would shift from state agencies to the state
Department of Administration, a direct
extension of Walker’s office. The hiring
process would have to be completed within
60 days of the job posting.
“We have gotten a preview of what happens in Wisconsin when Gov. Walker and
ing the federal court to legislate.
The ACLU asked the judge to act before
the February 2016 primaries.
Wisconsin’s voter ID law — enacted
under Gov. Scott Walker and modeled
after the anti-voter laws promoted by the
American Legislative Exchange Council —
is considered one of the most restrictive in
the nation.
The ACLU challenged the law, arguing
that it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal
Protection Clause, imposes an unconstitutional poll tax on eligible voters and also
violates the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court declined to hear
the ACLU’s direct challenge to the law last
spring. The ACLU then turned the focus to
expanding access under the law.
Walker and other Republicans have
defended the measure as necessary to
combat election fraud, although no analysis shows fraud is a problem in the state.
Opponents of the measure maintain that
the purpose is to make it more difficult for
traditionally Democratic voters — older
people, the poor, students and minority
voters — to cast ballots because they are
less likely to have state-mandated IDs,
which are a Wisconsin driver’s license, a
U.S. passport, naturalization certificates,
college IDs that meet certain requirements
and active-duty military IDs.
— Lisa Neff
Critics predict a return
to cronyism.
his gang strip civil service protections away,
and it has been a disaster,” commented
One Wisconsin Now’s Scot Ross. “State
employees lost civil service protections
when WEDC was created, and it has been
plagued with unprecedented cronyism, corruption and incompetence ever since.”
“Any changes coming from a governor
who is clearly obsessed with silencing workers, punishing foes and concentrating his
own political power should be viewed with
alarm,” said Rick Badger, executive director
of the state’s largest public employee union,
AFSCME.
Walker said changes were justified
because there were cases of state workers
who viewed pornography at work but could
not be fired under the current system. “That
just doesn’t make sense,” Walker said.
“This is about preparing our state hiring
process for the future,” Steineke said. “We
have to modernize it so we can get the best
and brightest in.”
Steineke said he viewed the idea as
“employee friendly” and not as the next
step forward from the anti-union Act 10.
— AP and WiG reports
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October 8, 2015
9
Halloween for adults stretches the boundaries of good taste
By Louis Weisberg
Staff writer
Halloween used to be for children, but adults’ interest
in continuing the fun of their youth has turned the holiday
into a huge event — and moneymaker. Grownups also have
turned the outré holiday into one that strains the limits of
acceptable taste and behavior, and each year ups the ante.
Estimates of what consumers spent last Halloween are
as high as $11.4 billion, when you combine the costs of
costumes, decorations and candy, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.
Helping to push the popularity of Halloween are the
pop-up stores that arrive everywhere out of nowhere each
fall, just before the leaves start to turn. They take over highprofile but abandoned retail spaces like demons invading
bodies on the CW series Supernatural.
Operated by companies such as Halloween Express and
Spirit Halloween, they give what once was the eve of All
Saints Day a boost in visibility. They also provide tempting
opportunities to find something clever to wear for busy
adults who don’t have the time or talent to make their own
costumes.
Spirit Halloween, a chain of more than 1,150 pop-up
shops across the country, typifies the strategy and has
honed it to a science. The company crams an impressive
amount of business into a short amount of time. The staff
swells from the hundreds to more than 20,000 starting in
June and the company makes its revenue for the year in less
than three months. The typical store takes six days to set
up, opening Aug. 21 and closing Nov. 1.
“We are equivalent to an army operation in terms of the
way we mobilize and move products,” says Steven Silverstein, CEO of the New Jersey-based company.
Although pop-up stores have been around for decades,
they exploded when retailers got the idea of short-term
rentals for holidays like Halloween and Christmas. Spirit
Halloween was launched in 1983, as the holiday’s focus was
evolving from children and trick-or-treating to parties for
people of all ages, Silverstein says.
Planning for this Halloween began over a year ago. For
example, it takes 18 months to design and produce elaborately spooky in-store displays.
Employees scout for locations throughout the year.
Merchandise starts rolling into Spirit Halloween’s warehouses in May. By summer, sites have been chosen and, by
mid-August, the stores are prepped to receive the goods.
Trucks start arriving and the locations go from bare walls
and floors to racks and shelves bursting with costumes,
accessories, props and home decor.
WHAT’S IN?
On a recent gray Sunday afternoon, a clerk at Party
City in Brown Deer said girls this year still are asking for
costumes based on the 2013 animated film Frozen, demonstrating the deep cultural impact of the movie’s female
empowerment story.
Girls also are expected to choose a lot of costumes based
on the Disney TV movie The Descendants, the story of the
children of Disney characters such as Cruella De Vil and
Cinderella.
For boys, another holdover is expected to dominate — in
their case the reptilian superheroes of the 2014 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Expect to see a lot of Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael.
Children love the Turtles, and so do adults who watched
them on TV and in movies when they were kids, Silverstein
says.
Adult costumes and accessories based on TV shows like
The Walking Dead and Orange Is the New Black are expected
to sell well. Costumes based on superheroes like The
Avengers or Batman will be brisk sellers.
From the political arena, there will be lots of Donald
Trumps, Taylor Swifts and even costumes based on anti-
P H OTO : STO C K
Among the unoffensive adult costumes expected to be popular this year are zombie getups inspired by The Walking
Dead and outfits based on Orange is the New Black.
gay Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis. In Wisconsin, it
wouldn’t be surprising to see a scattering of Scott Walkers
slithering about (for your own Walker mask, visit this story
on our website).
As usual, corsets and skimpy outfits for women are likely
to attract a lot of partygoers. Risqué costumes for women
are always big Halloween sellers.
For adults with gorier tastes, Halloween fare this year
includes bloodied zombies and ghouls and characters from
slasher movie classics like Nightmare on Elm Street and
Friday the 13th — proving that when it comes to Halloween,
some things never die.
HALLOWEEN CULTURE WARS
Taken as a group, the most popular costumes donned
each year provide something of a cultural snapshot of that
moment in time. The most revealing tend to be the politically incorrect.
Given that, every Halloween sparks national arguments
over cstumes that reflect current events in ways that are
widely considered tasteless.
In the early 1980s, drag queens dressed as Joan Crawford — holding baby dolls and coat hangers — were
ubiquitous at gay Halloween parades. That was a cultural
response to Christina Crawford’s tell-all memoir and the
subsequent movie Mommy Dearest, which chronicled the
movie icon’s allegedly brutal maternal skills.
As critics pointed out at the time, child abuse is not a
laughing matter. But that didn’t dampen the Halloween
merriment that the book and movie unleashed.
Every Halloween brings a new incarnation of the Halloween culture wars. They heated up early this year. In August,
petitions and social media outrage were already flying over
a blood-spattered dentist’s smock paired with a Cecil-like
lion head and over a replica of Caitlyn Jenner’s creamcolored corset set she wore on the cover of Vanity Fair.
“Trans is not a costume. Even though Caitlyn is a public figure and I could understand someone wanting to
celebrate her as a hero and as a public figure, this could
definitely take on a transphobic vibe,” said Addison Rose
Vincent, an activist who started a Change.org petition
asking Spirit Halloween to stop selling the costume, in an
interview with Philly Voice.
“We create a wide range of costumes that are often
based on celebrities, public figures, heroes and superheroes,” Lisa Barr, a spokeswoman for Spirit Halloween,
responded in a statement. “Caitlyn Jenner is all of the
above and our Caitlyn-inspired costume reflects just that.”
Is a Halloween costume that can be interpreted as
ridiculing transgender people or one that laughs at the
illegal butchering of the globally loved lion Cecil any different from Julianne Hough’s wearing of blackface or Prince
Harry’s turn as a non-Halloween Nazi?
Richard Lachmann, a professor at the University of
Albany who includes Halloween in his sociology of culture
course, said costumes seem to be more provocative every
year, with equally amped-up backlash. And there’s always a
base of people who feel it’s an “irreligious pagan holiday to
begin with and are ready to be upset,” he said.
Throw in a heavy dose of gore, loaded parody and ultrasexy costumes, Lachmann added, and Halloween is now
a free-for-all debate on what crosses the line of decency.
But is there a line at all?
“It seems like there isn’t,” he said. “The point for adults
is to be provocative, to do something that breaks the lines
of what’s considered acceptable.”
Still, one costume was yanked from the shelves of a Party
City store in Waukesha for hitting too close to home.
That costume is based on the horror character Slender
Man. In May, two 12-year-old girls stabbed a friend 19
times in a delusional attempt to curry favor with the fictional fiend.
When locals spotted the costume in a store just miles
from where the girl was stabbed, they protested to the
company, which agreed to remove the “Slenderman Partysuit” from local shelves.
“Our thoughts and condolences go out to family and
friends of the victim and the entire local community,” store
reps said in a statement to NBC 5 Chicago. “The local area
stores have pulled the costume in question. Party City
sells merchandise and costumes for all types of Halloween
customers, and nothing we carry is meant to be offensive.”
The manager of a local Halloween Express also opted to
pull the costume from his store, although it’s still available
online at both companies’ websites, as well as Spirit Halloween’s website.
— The Associated Press contributed to this story.
10
|
October 8, 2015
Supreme Court faced with tough major decisions
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
One of the nation’s more liberal nonprofits and one of
the most conservative U.S. think tanks may not agree on
the best outcomes of the new Supreme Court term, but
there’s concurrence on the most significant cases before
the justices.
There also seems to be all-around agreement that
progressives may not win the type of landmark victories
achieved in the 2014–15 term, most notably the high court’s
ruling in late June that paved the way for marriage equality
across the country. Conservative wins are far more common from the Roberts court.
The court began its new term on Oct. 5, with 34 cases
already on the docket and many more expected. The justices will hear arguments in 10 cases this month and arguments in another 10 in November.
Days before the term opened, the liberal People for the
American Way issued its “term preview” and the conservative Heritage Foundation issued its “overview.” Both
groups said the most significant cases to be heard this
fall will deal with affirmative action, organized labor and
redistricting. The court also is likely to take up cases dealing with religious liberty, abortion rights and affordable
health care.
PFAW, in its preview, cautioned that the justices “have
chosen to hear a number of cases that risk continuing the
aggressive rightward march that has characterized the past
decade. The 2015–16 term may be yet another one where
the American people enjoy less liberty, less equality, less
power and less control over our own democracy on the last
day of the term than we had on the first.”
The Heritage Foundation did not issue such a warning.
A LOOK AT NEW TERM …
To be argued:
• Redistricting. Perhaps the most prominent case cur-
rently before the court is Evenwel v. Abbott from Texas. The
justices will decide whether states can or must exclude
those not eligible to vote or not registered to vote from
population counts in redistricting.
The case deals with equal representation in elected
bodies, the constitutional guarantee of “one person, one
vote.” The plaintiffs, who live in rural Texas, maintain
that the Constitution requires each vote to be equal, so
districts should have equal numbers of eligible voters not
equal populations. Current practice is to count everyone in
the district.
Another case, Harris v. Arizona Independent Commission,
involves a state redistricting plan adopted by the Arizona
Independent Redistricting Commission, which was created
as a result of a ballot initiative aimed at removing partisanship from the mapping process.
The plaintiffs argue that the commission, for partisan
reasons, created a map that carved out districts for both
parties but to the disadvantage of Republicans.
• Affirmative action. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The court will hear this case for a second time. The
plaintiff’s first equal protection challenge to the use of
race in undergrad admissions at UT was heard in 2013.
Then, the court said schools must prove their use of race
in admissions decisions is narrowly tailored to further
compelling government interests and remanded the case
to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Heritage says the justices will decide whether UT’s
diversity rationale for enrolling more minority students
from majority-white high schools justifies using race in
admissions.
• Union representation. Friedrichs v. California Teachers
Association. In this case, the plaintiffs argue that because
they are not union members, they should not pay fair
share fees toward the public employee union’s costs in
representing members and non-members alike. The plaintiffs’ claim is that public sector collective bargaining is like
lobbying and their fair share fees support political activity,
violating their First Amendment rights.
PFAW says, “The decision in this case will have an enormous impact on working people’s ability to join together
and effectively negotiate for fair wages and benefits.”
POSSIBLE ARGUMENTS:
• Abortion rights. Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole out
of Texas. The case is a challenge to Texas’ requirements
that licensed abortion facilities meet the same building
requirements as an ambulatory surgical center and that
doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges at
a hospital within 30 miles.
Doctors and choice advocates maintain that these
types of regulations — adopted in Wisconsin under Gov.
Scott Walker — are medically unnecessary and infringe on
women’s ability to exercise their constitutional rights.
Another case, Currier v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, challenges a court ruling against a Mississippi
admitting-privileges law.
Conservatives would like the court to hear Currier and
progressives would like the court to hear the Texas case.
• Religious liberty. Multiple petitioners want the court
to address the accommodation for religious nonprofits to
opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage requirement. The faith-based groups argue that even
the accommodation violates religious liberty under the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
For news updates, go to wisconsingazette.com
and join our Facebook and Twitter communities.
Wisconsin poverty rate up from 2007, median income down
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
Nearly a quarter of a million Wisconsin children lived
below the poverty line in 2014, according to new census
data released in September.
The state poverty rate was 10.8 percent in 2007, but rose
to 13.2 percent last year. About 738,000 people in the state
were living in poverty in 2014, 150,000 more than in 2007.
Other numbers indicate the economic recovery since the
recession has boosted incomes for wealthier Wisconsinites
but the rest have not seen much increase in incomes — if
any — since before 2007. The median income for Wisconsin households in 2014 was $56,622, more than $5,000
less than in 2007.
Taking race into consideration, the income disparities
are extreme. The poverty rate for people who identified as
black or African-American was 37.7 percent in 2014 compared to 9.6 among white non-Hispanic Wisconsinites. The
poverty rate for black children was 49.4 percent, four times
the rate of white non-Hispanic children.
And the median income for African-American households was $26,100 in 2014, less than half the $56,100
earned by white non-Hispanic households, according to
an analysis of the census data by the nonprofit Wisconsin
Council on Children and Families.
“Wisconsin simply can’t accept three quarters of a million Wisconsinites living in poverty as the ‘new normal,’”
said Ken Taylor, executive director of the WCCF. “The
economy isn’t working for everyone, resulting in too many
families not making ends meet. We need to make sure
everyone has the opportunity to climb the economic ladder
and build a secure future.”
WCCF’s recommendations to decrease the poverty rate
include a hike in the minimum wage along with cost-ofliving adjustments, reversal of the 2011 cuts to the state
earned income tax credit for low-income families and
an expansion of BadgerCare to cover all adults up to 138
percent of the federal poverty level. “No policymaker who
claims to care about Wisconsin’s future can justify ignoring
poverty,” Taylor said in a news statement. “We’re all in this
together. If Wisconsin is going to thrive, everyone needs a
shot at opportunity.”
The new data showed the national poverty rate at 15.5
percent in 2014, down slightly from 15.8 percent in 2013.
The census bureau released the information about two
weeks before the U.S. visit of Pope Francis, who has prioritized addressing poverty and income inequality.
Francis, who met with President Barack Obama at the
White House and delivered a speech before a joint session
of Congress, addressed the U.N. General Assembly in New
York City on Sept. 25.
He referred frequently to the poor and linked extreme
poverty to the overconsumption and waste that is wrecking
the planet. “Economic and social exclusion is a complete
denial of human fraternity and a grave offense against
human rights and the environment,” Francis said. “The
poorest are those who suffer most from such offenses, for
three serious reasons: they are cast off by society, forced to
live off what is discarded and suffer unjustly from the abuse
of the environment. They are part of today’s widespread
and quietly growing culture of waste.”
Two days later, in his address to the General Assembly,
President Barack Obama committed the United States to
the U.N.’s new goals for eliminating poverty and hunger
BY THE NUMBERS
The U.S. Census Bureau released new data on poverty in September. A glance at the numbers for a sampling of Wisconsin counties.
County
2007 %
2014 % 2014 number
Dane
10.9% 13.9%69,507
Eau Claire
13.2%
14.5% 14,984
Kenosha 12.2% 16.7%27,158
La Crosse
14.1%
12.5% 14,069
Milwaukee 17.8% 21.9%204,226
Racine
8% 12.8%24,221
Washington5.2% 5.1% 6,691
Waukesha 4% 5.8%22,581
by 2030.
Commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals,
Obama said, is “not charity but instead is one of the smartest investments we can make in our own future.”
The goals include eradicating extreme poverty, expanding peace and good governance, combating inequality and
discrimination, raising living standards and quelling climate
change.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said “further progress will require an unswerving political will and collective,
long-term effort. We need to tackle root causes and do
more to integrate the economic, social and environmental
dimensions of sustainable development.”
|
October 8, 2015
11
Democrats push health care reform, GOP pushes repeal
By Lisa Neff
Staff writer
Americans filled 4.3 billion prescriptions last year, and
they’re still ailing from the skyrocketing cost of drugs.
Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and
Hillary Rodham Clinton gave voice to patient problems and
consumer complaints this fall, with both issuing plans to
rein in outrageous prices for prescription medicine.
“The pharmaceutical industry has become a health hazard for the American people,” said Sanders, an independent
senator from Vermont. “We now pay, by far, the highest
prices in the world for prescription drugs and one in five
Americans … cannot afford to fill the prescriptions their
doctors write.”
In 2014, an estimated 34 million people could not fill
their prescriptions because of costs. Surveys now show
that about 70 percent of Americans believe drug costs are
unreasonable and that drug companies put profits before
people.
Those polls were conducted before Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli made headlines in September for
raising by more than 5,000 percent the price of Daraprim,
a medication used to treat toxoplasmosis in AIDS patients.
Within hours of Turing purchasing the right to retail
Daraprim, the price for a pill that’s been sold for $13.50
went to $750.
“For Turing to charge insurance companies and self-pay
individuals with a cost (so much) greater for the same drug
is unconscionable,” said Scott Caruthers, chief pharmacy
officer of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the largest
global AIDS group.
AHF president Michael Weinstein said Turing’s greed
“is likely to go down in history as the straw that broke the
camel’s back on drug pricing.”
Shkreli announced in late September that he would lower
the cost “in response to the anger.”
Sanders, an advocate of universal health care, in midSeptember released a prescription drug plan that said the
federal government should use its bargaining power to
negotiate with companies for better prices; allow imports
from licensed Canadian pharmacies; prohibit deals that
keep generics off the market; and require drug companies
to report information affecting pricing.
Clinton, as first lady, led an effort blocked by congressional Republicans that would have provided comprehensive,
universal health care. She responded to Turing’s pricegouging almost immediately, pledging on Twitter a plan to
reform the prescription drug market that would “both protect consumers and promote innovation — while putting an
end to profiteering.”
Clinton has since issued a series of proposals to address
rising drug costs, including a monthly $250 cap on out-ofpocket drugs to help patients with chronic or serious health
conditions.
The candidate also proposed requiring that health insurance plans provide for three sick visits per year without
counting toward a patient’s annual deductible and offering
a refundable tax credit of up to $5,000 for families for
excessive out-of-pocket care costs.
“When Americans get sick, high costs shouldn’t prevent
them from getting better,” Clinton said in a statement.
“With deductibles rising so much faster than incomes, we
must act to reduce the out-of-pocket costs families face.”
A survey recently released by the Henry J. Kaiser Family
Foundation found that employer-sponsored health insurance premiums rose about 4 percent in 2015, considered
a moderate increase. But since 2010, both the share of
workers with deductibles and the size of the deductibles
have increased sharply — about seven times over the rise
in worker wages.
A recent Kaiser analysis found comparable countries
outperforming the United States on life expectancy at birth,
cost-related barriers to health care access and the burden
of disease, which takes into account years of lost life due to
premature death and years of life lost to poor health.
The Obama administration expects to see improvements
as more people have greater access to care under the fiveyear-old Affordable Care Act, which mandated insurance
coverage, expanded eligibility for Medicaid, prohibited
insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions,
provided for preventative care and lifted lifetime health
benefit caps.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the
national uninsured rate dropped to a historic low of 9.2
percent in early 2015, with 15.8 million people gaining coverage since the health care marketplaces opened in 2013.
Still, the GOP focus in the health care debate is almost
solely on repealing the Affordable Care Act. Congressional
Republicans have voted more than 50 times to repeal all
or parts of the law and, on Sept. 29, they voted again to
advance legislation that would dismantle the ACA.
The House Ways and Means Committee chaired by
Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan voted along party lines
to repeal the mandate requiring Americans to get health
insurance and also the mandate requiring larger companies
to provide health benefits to employees.
Ryan, in a statement, said, “This bill is a big step toward
dismantling Obamacare. … By tearing down many of the
worst parts of the law — like forcing people to buy insurance only to later tax them for it — we would stop Obamacare in its tracks and start working toward a more affordable, higher-quality, patient-centered system.”
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also wants the Affordable
Care Act repealed, although health care advocates in the
state maintain provisions have mostly benefited Wisconsinites.
“The ACA has dramatically reduced the number of
uninsured in Wisconsin and improved access to preventive
health care,” said Jon Peacock, research director for the
nonprofit Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.
The WCCF said by the end of June, more than 230,000
Wisconsinites had signed up for a marketplace plan under
the ACA and about 90 percent were eligible for tax credits
to offset costs.
12
|
October 8, 2015
Appointment of Rebecca Bradley would make 2016
judicial election a referendum on Scott Walker
ANALYSIS
AP and WiG reports
The death of Wisconsin Supreme Court
Justice Patrick Crooks with 10 months left
in his term could set up a spring election
that’s as much a referendum on Gov. Scott
Walker as it is on who should serve on the
state’s highest court.
Walker will likely appoint appeals Judge
Rebecca Bradley to hold the position in
advance of the election next year, in which
she’s already a candidate.
Common Cause in Wisconsin, the League
of Women Voters of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Wisconsin Voices sent Walker a letter asking him
not to name one of the three candidates
for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to fill out
Crooks’ term, which runs through July 31,
2016.
But Walker’s not expected to heed their
advice.
The governor has been behind Bradley during every step of her rapid judicial
rise. He’s twice named her to lower court
openings and he likely was a factor in the
$167,000 she got from the Koch brothers’ Club for Growth and the Republican
Party to retain the relatively obscure seat to
which he first appointed her on Milwaukee
Circuit Court’s Branch 45.
That was in 2012. In 2013, aided by all the
donations, she retained the seat against a
challenger, earning 53 percent of the vote.
In May, Walker appointed Bradley to the
District 1 Court of Appeals.
Now, just three years after her first
appointment to the bench by Walker, Bradley, 43, has her sights set on the state’s
highest court. If Walker does appoint her,
she’ll have the advantage of running as an
incumbent in the race for a 10-year term
next April.
Despite holding generally conservative
views on issues like abortion and corporate entitlements, Bradley has high-profile
friends in Milwaukee’s LGBT community
and seemed very pro-gay during an interview with WiG two years ago. Likable and
charismatic, she’s not the kind of judicial candidate normally associated with
Wisconsin Republicans. It’s hard to predict
what kind of Supreme Court jurist she’d
make, but the safest guess is that she’d
be more of a swing vote than a staunch
ideologue.
Two other candidates had also announced
their plans to run before Crooks died —
JoAnne Kloppenburg and Joe Donald. Both
are far more experienced jurists than Bradley and both are to the left of her politically.
In the past, Democrats have heavily
backed Appeals Court Judge Kloppenburg.
She came close to unseating Wisconsin
Supreme Court Justice David Prosser in
2011, losing by 7,000 votes out of the 5
million cast. That race came at a time when
left-wing bitterness against Walker over
Act 10 was at its height. Prosser vowed on
the campaign trail to support the governor’s
policies from the bench — a jarring message to deliver in a campaign that’s supposed to be non-partisan.
Kloppenburg, however, took the high
road, running a relatively low-key campaign
in which she refused to talk about partisan
issues. She says she’ll be more aggressive
in this race.
While Kloppenburg is generally considered the frontrunner for progressives, her
fundraising for the 2016 race has been
languid so far. Most of the $27,000 she’d
raised as of September came from a loan
she made to her own campaign.
The third candidate, Milwaukee County
Circuit Judge Joe Donald, presents himself
as the most politically independent choice
of the three, although Assembly Democratic Leader Peter Barca and other Democrats back him. He began his campaign with
robust fundraising, taking in $109,000 by
the end of June.
Races for the Supreme Court are officially
nonpartisan, but the reality in recent years
has been conservatives and liberals — and
well-funded outside groups — coalesce
around the candidates they favor and spend
millions helping to elect them.
‘CORONATION’
Naming Bradley to the court would solidify Walker’s ties with her and make the
election “absolutely … a referendum on
Walker,” said Jay Heck, director of government watchdog group Common Cause in
Wisconsin. “That’s really not where the
Supreme Court needs to be.”
Former Justice Jon Wilcox said no matter who is selected, it’s important to get
someone on the court quickly to reduce the
possibility of 3–3 ties.
In defense of considering Bradley for the
vacant seat, Walker cites two examples
of judges who were appointed to openings and later ran for full terms. But in
both cases from the 1990s, the judges had
not announced their plans to run before
they were appointed by then-Gov. Tommy
Thompson.
The situation caused by Crooks’ death on
Sept. 21 is different.
Crooks, who had been in failing health,
had said he was not going to run for reelection. All three of the candidates were
BRADLEY next page
BRADLEY from prior page
actively campaigning when Crooks died.
Walker insists that he will base his
appointment decision on three criteria:
finding someone who is an outstanding
attorney, has integrity and “understands
the proper role of a judge.”
Donald said in a statement that Walker should defer to the will of the people
and only appoint someone who agrees
not to run for the seat.
“Wisconsin doesn’t need a coronation,
it needs a Supreme Court Justice who
earns the support of Wisconsin voters,”
Donald said.
Kloppenburg said appointing Bradley “would appear to be an attempt to
thwart the people’s will.” But even if she’s
not appointed to the Supreme Court,
the fact that Walker twice named her to
judgeships before makes her “Walker’s
candidate,” Kloppenburg said in a statement.
Bradley’s campaign spokeswoman did
not return repeated messages from AP
seeking comment for the story.
The media will not likely learn about
Bradley’s appointment until after it’s
done. During his nearly five years as
governor, Walker’s been criticized for
making decisions privately. He’s unaccustomed to explaining his thinking to
voters or to asking for their input.
|
October 8, 2015
Shell abandons arctic exploration
P H OTO : RO B E RT A S H WO RT H / B E L L I N G H A M
Protesters in Bellingham, Washington, demonstrate in May against Royal Dutch Shell’s
plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean. Shell recently reversed course.
Royal Dutch Shell is departing Alaska’s
Arctic waters, abandoning “for the foreseeable future” its exploration for oil in the
region.
“This is a victory for everyone who has
stood up for the Artic,” said Greenpeace
USA executive director Annie Leonard.
“Whether they took to kayaks or to canoes,
rappelled from bridges or spread the news
in their own communities, millions of
people from around the world have taken
action against Arctic drilling.”
Shell spent about $7 billion on its Arctic
effort, seeking to tap a new source of oil and
revenue in the Chukchi Sea about 80 miles
from Alaska’s northwest coast. U.S. experts
13
have estimated the Chukchi and Beaufort
seas contain about 26 billion barrels of oil.
“Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin and the area is
likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the U.S.,” read a statement from Marvin Odum, Shell’s director
of operations in the Americas. “However,
this is a clearly disappointing exploration
outcome for this part of the basin.”
Shell was the strongest bidder for leases
in the Chukchi Sea in 2008, but not the only
company with interests in the region. ConocoPhillips paid $506 million for 98 tracts,
according to the AP.
Greenpeace’s Leonard said President
Barack Obama now has the opportunity to
cancel future drilling and declare the U.S.
Arctic off-limits to Big Oil. “There is no better time to keep fossil fuels like Artic oil in
the ground,” she said.
Greenpeace was at the forefront of protests in the Pacific Northwest, where demonstrators blocked Shell ships from departing to the Arctic.
The Sierra Club and 350.org also organized opposition the Arctic exploration.
“Drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean has
always been a misguided disaster,” said
350.org executive director May Boeve. “It
would worsen climate change and almost
certainly result in expensive and damaging
spills.”
— Lisa Neff
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October 8, 2015
EDITORIAL
He’s back — with a vengeance
In formally launching his quixotic White House bid in July,
Scott Walker tweeted right-wing activists that his presidential
run was “God’s plan for me.”
When he abruptly shut down his campaign two months
later, Walker said he was responding to a different message
from the Almighty. “I am being called to lead by helping to
clear the race,” he said, asking other low-polling GOP hopefuls to do the same and allow the party to coalesce behind a
candidate who is not Donald Trump.
But within hours of Walker’s departure from the crowded
GOP field, his former opponents were scrambling for dollars
from his former backers like vultures picking clean a carcass.
To date, not one of them has followed Walker and stepped
out of the ring.
Back in Wisconsin, Walker faces increasingly hostile voters.
Only 37 percent of registered Wisconsin voters approve of
the job he’s doing as governor, while 57 percent disapprove,
according to a recent Marquette Law School poll.
Walker ran for president with the off-putting goal of “wreaking havoc on Washington” and, unfortunately for Wisconsin,
that’s exactly what he seems intent on doing now in Madison.
Is he smarting over the humiliation of his train wreck of a
presidential run? He certainly seems angry about something.
He could have come back chastened and ready to help the
state that he formerly sacrificed to build up a presidential
resume. But he didn’t.
With all the pressing challenges facing Wisconsin, including
lagging economic growth, fleeing businesses, a broken state
budget, inadequate education funding, crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded prisons, the fastest-shrinking middle class
in the nation, and a rate of job growth that lags the national
average, he and Republicans in control of state government
have chosen to focus on divisive, unwanted and unneeded
legislation.
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One of Walker’s first priorities upon returning home to do
the job he’s paid to do is a bill cutting off federal funding for
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. That ideologically motivated bill serves no practical purpose for anyone, since none
of the federal Title X dollars that the GOP wants to deny PPWI
can be used for abortions in the first place. What the bill will
do is reduce the availability of quality affordable health care
for tens of thousands of poor women in the state.
Walker and his so-called “pro-business” GOP allies also
want to pass a law setting back medical research by forbidding
the use of fetal tissue in Wisconsin laboratories. That law will
not only help to stymie advances in controlling diseases such
as diabetes and Alzheimer’s, it will also cost jobs and reduce
state revenue by forcing the proliferating Madison businesses
that specialize in cutting-edge biomedical research to move
elsewhere.
Walker’s also dead set on eliminating the civil service
reforms adopted by the state over a century ago to eliminate
one the oldest forms of political corruption: rewarding donors
and campaign workers with lucrative government jobs. The
Republicans’ so-called “reform bill” will overwhelm state
government with workers who are not hired for their skills
or fired for poor job performance. All they need is the right
connections.
For evidence, look at the parade of unqualified cronies
Walker has placed with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, an intended job-creation agency that is
among his administration’s greatest failures.
Not one of these bills work on any of the challenges that
the majority of Wisconsin citizens want their government to
address. They represent the same kind of pandering and selfserving political scheming that has characterized the Walker
years and dragged Wisconsin downward in so many ways.
He’s back, and the past is prologue.
ON THE RECORD
“(The) LGBT community … are
like the gay white KKK’s. Get them
some pink hoods and unicorns and
let them rally down Rodeo Drive.”
— Rapper AZEALIA BANKS tweeting
one of her latest homophobic remarks. Her lengthy
anti-gay Twitter tirade began some weeks ago when
she sent out a comment calling a flight attendant a
“f**king faggot.”
“The only thing that separates women of color
from anybody else is opportunity. You cannot win an
Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”
— VIOLA DAVIS accepting her Emmy Award. She
was the first black woman to win an Emmy for best
drama series actress.
“Somebody once asked me, ‘What’s the difference
between business and politics?’ And here’s the difference: Politics is a fact-free zone. People just say
things.”
— CARLY FIORINA speaking at a town hall hosted
by the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association. Fiorina has come under repeated attacks for
spinning or contradicting the truth.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special
committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”
— U.S. REP. KEVIN McCARTHY bragging to Fox
News’ Sean Hannity about spinning the tragic attack
on a U.S. embassy in Benghazi into a smear campaign against Hillary Clinton. “I give you credit for
that,” Hannity responded.
“I really want to believe that the kind, sweet person who was there when my mom passed away is
still there. I was friends with Kim in the past, but I
don’t know this woman I’ve been seeing.”
— DALLAS BLACK, a gay resident of Morehead,
Kentucky, telling The Daily Beast that he and antigay Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis used to be close
friends, but she’s changed over the years.
“It probably would have been better for me if I
didn’t come out, I would be on a roster. But, as I said,
I have no regrets whatsoever.”
— MICHAEL SAM telling the Hollywood Reporter
that coming out when he did probably hurt his career
in professional football.
“We’ve constructed an idea of masculinity in the
United States that doesn’t give young boys a way to
feel secure in their masculinity, so we make them go
prove it all the time.”
— Sociologist DR. MICHAEL KIMMEL speaking in
a trailer for the masculinity documentary The Mask
You Live In.
“When I look at cities around me that have a
Planned Parenthood clinic … usually in those cities,
as a guy, I could go to many clinics locally that have
all the machines that one would need, all these clinics as far as I know take Medicaid dollars, so you
could go to any of those clinics to get any medical
service you could.”
— U.S. REP. GLENN GROTHMAN telling Planned
Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards that
her organization’s clinics are unnecessary for him “as a guy.” Grothman
shared his opinion during a House
hearing.
|
15
October 8, 2015
Opinion If I ruled the world
JAMAKAYA
Fifty years ago, Tony Bennett scored a hit record with
the altruistic “If I Ruled the
World.” In 1995, Nas and
Lauryn Hill struck gold with
a much racier hip-hop song
of the same title.
If it’s good enough for
Tony and Nas and Lauryn,
it’s good enough for me. In
a world increasingly out of
control, why shouldn’t I fantasize a better one?
If I ruled the world, all
the Republican candidates
for president would get it
into their little pea brains
that the most intrusive regulations U.S. women suffer
from are not taxes and gun
control but laws controlling
our uteruses and sex lives.
If I ruled the world, every
gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender person who
hasn’t done so would come
out to someone on National
Coming Out Day, which is
on Oct. 11. Debates in legislatures and courts about
marriage and other rights
continue. We can each
play a part in swaying public opinion by being honest
about who we are with fam-
ily, friends and colleagues
at work.
If I ruled the world, congressional hearings would
only be held on issues we
really need information
about. Those testifying
would actually get a chance
to speak and be listened to
and committee members
turning such hearings into
Stalinist show trials would
be hauled off with the old
show biz hook.
For her dignity, intelligence and strength of character, Planned Parenthood
CEO Cecile Richards, daughter of legendary Texas Gov.
Ann Richards, would follow
her mother into elected
office and become president
of the United States in 2016.
If I ruled the world,
women, who are still paid
less than men 52 years after
the Equal Pay Act, would
pay only 79 cents on the
dollar for all retail purchases, rent, hotel stays, transportation costs, etc.
If I ruled the world, all
global warming deniers
would face a fate appropriate to their offense:
Pinocchio-sized noses followed by heat exhaustion,
If I ruled the
world, those
testifying at
congressional
hearings would
actually get
a chance to
speak.
drowning, famine, lung disease. AM talk radio jocks
would receive the type of
hatred and merciless judgments they inflict on others,
preferably from their own
children.
If I ruled the world, the
next mass killing by a young
male loner who can’t make
it with girls would take place
in a location that might actually make a difference — like
maybe the board room of a
major gun manufacturer.
If I ruled the world, HBO’s
Game of Thrones would end
with its three righteous
heroines — Daenerys Targaryen, Brienne of Tarth
and Arya Stark — ruling an
Amazon Empire far away
from the Seven Kingdoms
after having defeated the
rapists and zombie hordes
of the North.
In a similar vein, if I ruled
the world, Charlize Theron
and Emily Blunt would continue to star in action movies and ONLY action movies.
If I ruled the world, Justice Antonin Scalia would
choke on spaghetti noodles
while writing one of his vitriolic dissents, opening the
way for another Supreme
Court appointment by President Barack Obama. This
is something the president
does really well and we’re
way overdue for our first
African-American woman
justice.
If I ruled the world, I would
put the “fun” back into fundamentalism by organizing
an international Whoopee
Cushion Day. Guerilla bands
of fun lovers everywhere
would plant whoopee cushions on the chairs of bloviating preachers of all faiths.
Videos of the Fundamentalist Fart Fest would be posted
online, causing the world to
laugh religious zealotry into
insignificance.
Opinion Dear Kim Davis ...
JIM OBERGEFELL
Dear Kim Davis, As you
may know, when you fall
in love with someone, you
hand your heart and soul
over to them. Anyone who
has committed to sharing their life with another
human and forming a family unit knows that it is the
biggest and most rewarding adventure you will ever
take.
You know that all of the
laughs and all of the tears
won’t fall on the echo of
an empty room, but will
instead be received in the
warm embrace of someone
who has pledged to see you
at your best and love you at
your worst.
You know that person is
there to help pick you up on
those days when the odds
are stacked against you. You
know that you never have to
do the dishes alone.
No one is above
the law, Kim,
not even you.
When I met John, I had
no idea that I would spend
the next two decades building a life with the man who
would one day inspire me
to demand our right to be
recognized by our country.
I earned the right to lawfully call him my husband,
just as you have a right to
call your husband such.
Love transcends gender.
You’re imposing the same
indignities on couples in
Rowan County that John
and I suffered when Ohio
would not legally recognize
us as a married couple.
Thankfully, the law is now
changed so that nobody
should ever have to experience the injustice that John
and I endured. No one is
above the law, Kim, not even
you.
I joined the fight to have
our love treated equally
precisely because our love
is equal. The love that any
family shares is no more
or less worthy than that
of any other, and it’s not
fair for you, or anyone, to
judge. It’s your job to simply do your job. Issuing a
marriage license at work is
not a personal endorsement
of my marriage any more
than recording a deed is an
endorsement of my home
ownership.
It’s simply following the
rules in this civil society in
which we’ve all agreed to be
members.
What truly matters is the
kindness and compassion
we share with our families
and with those around us.
Love makes a family. And
as of June 2015 the federal
government agrees.
I did not fight for my
right to call John my husband in vain. I stand today
in his memory and proudly
declare him my legally wedded spouse. Do not stand in
the way of others seeking
their legal right to have their
love recognized.
Jim Obergefell is the lead
plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme
Court case that resulted in
marriage equality nationwide.
He was writing for ACLU
Action.
ON THE WEB …
To sign the open letter with Jim in support
of marriage equality,
please visit: action.aclu.
org/secure/letter-kimdavis.
16
|
October 8, 2015
NATIONAL NEWS
OBAMA: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
NO DEFENSE FOR DENYING
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
Freedom of religion isn’t reason enough
to deny any American their constitutional
rights, President Barack Obama said on
Sept. 27 as he addressed members of the
LGBT community.
Speaking at a Democratic Party
fundraiser, Obama said while Americans
hold dear the constitutional right to practice their religion free from government
interference, that right can’t be used to
deny constitutional rights to others.
“We affirm that we cherish our religious
freedom and are profoundly respectful of
religious traditions,” Obama said during
remarks that were interrupted by repeated
applause and cheers. “But we also have
to say clearly that our religious freedom
doesn’t grant us the freedom to deny our
fellow Americans their constitutional
rights.”
“And that even as we are respectful and
accommodating genuine concerns and
interests of religious institutions, we need
to reject politicians who are supporting new
forms of discrimination as a way to scare
up votes. That’s not how we move America
forward,” he added. That was an apparent
reference to some of the Republican presidential candidates.
Earlier in September, Kentucky county
clerk Kim Davis spent several days in jail for
refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay
couples despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that made same-sex unions legal nationwide. Davis said such marriages violate her
Apostolic Christian faith.
In other national news …
• FARMWORKER PROTECTIONS: The
Environmental Protection Agency
announced increased protections for the
nation’s 2 million agricultural workers
and their families. Each year, thousands
of potentially preventable pesticide
exposure incidents lead to sick days, lost
wages and medical bills. U.S. Secretary
of Labor Thomas E. Perez said, “No one
should ever have to risk their lives for
their livelihoods, but far too many workers, especially those who work in agriculture, face conditions that challenge their
health and safety every day.”
• SEAL DEATHS: Scientists are looking
at ocean-warming trends to figure out
why endangered Guadalupe fur seals are
stranding themselves and dying in alarming numbers along the central California
coast. Approximately 80 emaciated fur
seals have come ashore since January
— about eight times more than normal.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration declared an “unusual
mortality event” for the animals.
• DOROTHY’S HOME STATE: Local laws
SHIFTING IMMIGRATION PATTERN
P H OTO : STO C K
Over the next 50 years, Asians will surge past Hispanics to
become the largest group of immigrants heading to the United States,
according to estimates in a new immigration study by the Pew Research Center. Researchers expect the tipping point to occur in 2055.
banning discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation and gender identity
cover only 4 percent of Kansas’s workforce. There is no statewide ban, leaving
about 55,000 LGBT workers in Kansas
vulnerable to employment discrimination,
according to a new report from UCLA
School of Law’s Williams Institute.
• MONUMENTAL CHANGE: A six-foot-tall
granite monument of the Ten Commandments that has sat outside the Oklahoma
State Capitol for several years is on its
way out. A panel that oversees artwork
at the statehouse voted 7–1 in late September to authorize the privately funded
monument’s removal after the state’s
highest court ruled that it violated the
Oklahoma Constitution.
• SHUTDOWN AVERTED: Having dodged
the immediate threat of a government
shutdown, congressional Republican
leaders were looking ahead to talks with
President Barack Obama on a long-term
budget pact. Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he
and retiring House Speaker John Boehner
spoke with Obama and talks were
expected soon.
• HUCKABEE RANT: GOP presidential
candidate Mike Huckabee blasted Barack
Obama’s nomination of an out gay civilian as Army secretary. Huckabee’s Facebook supporters called on Congress to
try the president for treason. Obama’s
nominee Eric Fanning currently serves
as undersecretary of the man he’s been
nominated to replace — John McHugh.
McHugh, a former Republican congressman, is also a civilian. Fanning’s background includes serving as special assistant to Defense Secretary Ash Carter and
holding senior positions in the Air Force,
including serving as that service’s undersecretary from 2013 to 2015. Huckabee
never served in the military due to “flat
feet.”
— from AP and WiG reports
WITBIER. DOPPELBOCK.
LAMBIC. SCHWARZBIER.
WE BREW A BEER
FOR EVERY TASTE.
|
17
October 8, 2015
REGIONAL NEWS
these unique Great Lakes islands,” said
Tom Melius, Midwest regional director of
the FWS. “We couldn’t do this without a
common vision among all the partners.”
Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge was
established in 1912 as habitat for migratory birds and consists of the 325-acre
Plum Island and the smaller Pilot and Hog
islands. With the addition of St. Martin and
Rocky Islands, the refuge will increase by
five times its original size.
Along with the other islands in the Grand
Traverse chain, St. Martin Island is part of
the Niagara Escarpment and has significant bluffs, which have rare native snails
and plants associated with them. In addition to the bluffs, the island also supports
forests, wetlands and an extensive cobblestone beach.
Both St. Martin and Rocky islands, along
with others in the Green Bay National
Wildlife Refuge, provide important stopover habitat for birds that migrate through
the Great Lakes each spring and fall.
In other regional news …
P H O T O S : C O U R T E S Y T H E N AT U R E
C O N S E R VA N C Y/ F R Y K M A N G A L L E R Y
The shoreline of St. Martin Island. The
Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge is
expanding to include most of the island
and all of Rocky Island.
PROTECTION GROWS FOR
LAKE’S ‘STEPPING STONES’
The Green Bay National Wildlife Refuge
will expand to include most of St. Martin Island and all of Rocky Island in Lake
Michigan, adding another 1,290 acres to
the 330-acre refuge.
The islands are part of the Grand Traverse chain, which extends from Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula to Michigan’s Garden
Peninsula.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
The Nature Conservancy announced the
expansion in late September.
“It’s gratifying to see our shared conservation missions coming together to protect
• GE GOING: General Electric Co.
announced in late September plans to
move 350 Wisconsin jobs to Canada due
to Congress’ inaction to reauthorize the
Export-Import Bank. In response, U.S.
Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, said,
“We have seen significant job losses
across the country directly related to the
failure of House Republicans to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. Now, the
state of Wisconsin is feeling the brunt of
their extreme economic agenda.”
• RYAN’S DISINTEREST: U.S. Rep. Paul
Ryan of Janesville said he’s not interested in replacing Rep. John Boehner as
speaker of the House of Representatives.
Boehner announced in late September
that he will be resigning at the end of
October.
• LAKEFRONT LAND DEAL: The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’
board has put off deciding whether to
sell a parcel of state-owned lakefront
property to one of Scott Walker’s major
donors. The agency wants to sell 1.75
acres along the Rest Lake shoreline to
Elizabeth Uihlein for $275,000. Uihlein
and husband Richard donated nearly $3
million to Walker’s presidential super
PAC. She owns a condominium complex
adjacent to the property but it lacks lake
access.
• DON’T MESS WITH HIS VIEW: Richard
Uihlein is also in the news for seeking
state approval to keep a 12-acre floating bog away from property in northern
Wisconsin. He’s proposing moving the
bog north and fastening it to the lake
bed, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
reported. “This is the most preposterous
idea that I have ever heard,” said Brett
McConnell, an environmental specialist
in the conservation department of the
Lac Courte Oreilles band of Lake Superior Chippewa. “I would hope that every
single person affiliated with the flowage
would be opposed to this.”
• DOMESTIC VIOLENCE DATA: Fortythree people in Wisconsin lost their lives
to domestic violence in 2014, according
to the Wisconsin Domestic Violence
Homicide Report released in conjunction
with anti-violence walks hosted by the
Zonta Clubs of Madison and Milwaukee
and by End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin.
The report says 36 people were victims
of domestic violence homicides. Six
people were perpetrators of homicides
who then committed suicide and one
individual was a perpetrator of domestic
violence who was killed by responding
law enforcement.
• LIFTING THE CAP: University of Wisconsin-Madison officials plan to ask UW
System regents for permission to lift the
school’s cap on out-of-state students, a
move they say would attract more young
people to Wisconsin. It also would bolster the school’s coffers considerably as
it struggles with deep budget cuts. Currently out-of-state undergraduate enrollment at any UW campus can’t exceed
27.5 percent of the total undergraduate
enrollment based on a three-year average.
• BAN THE BOX: In response to a bipartisan bill recently introduced in Congress
that removes the box on federal employment applications that ask whether job
seekers have a past felony conviction,
state Sen. Lena C. Taylor, D-Milwaukee,
announced she planned to re-introduce
her state “Ban the Box” bill “to give residents who have made a mistake in life a
fighting chance.”
• COSBY LOSES DEGREE: Marquette
University rescinded an honorary degree
it awarded Bill Cosby in 2013, when
he gave the annual commencement
address. Other universities, including
the Jesuit school Fordham University,
have taken back degrees bestowed on
Cosby. Cosby has been accused by at
least 20 women of drugging and raping
them. “By his own admission, Mr. Cosby
engaged in behaviors that go entirely
against our university’s mission and the
guiding values we have worked so hard
to instill on our campus,” Marquette
president Michael Lovell and provost
Daniel Myers wrote in a letter to the
Marquette community.
• WRIGHT RESULTS: Frank Lloyd Wright
experts announced on Oct. 6 that the
Madison house Linda McQuillen bought
for $100,000 has been verified as an
American System-Built House, part of
Wright’s effort to develop and market
well-designed homes at a more affordable level — his first effort to reach a
broader audience. It is the second such
house identified in the past four months,
one out of only 16 ever built and 14 still
standing.
Follow breaking news at
wisconsingazette.com.
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October 8, 2015
COMMUNITY BRIEFS
sors. Brian King, of Marriott International,
gave the keynote address.
The first scholarships will be awarded for
the 2016–17 academic year.
For more, go to creamcityfoundation.org.
In other community news …
• FOR THE CAUSE: More than 3,500
participants turned out in September to
support the Walk to End Alzheimer’s at
Henry Maier Festival Park in Milwaukee.
The walk exceeded the $725,000 mark.
Organizers reported a 29.5 percent
increase in money raised over 2014 and a
40 percent increase in participants.
P H O T O : C O U R T E S Y/A I D S WA L K
Walkers and runners from across Wisconsin raised $402,542 to support HIV prevention, care and treatment programs throughout the state at the 26th AIDS Walk Wisconsin and 5K Run, held Oct. 2. Above, Michael Turchin and his husband, singer Lance Bass,
serve as honorary chairs of the successful event.
CREAM CITY LAUNCHES
SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
Cream City Foundation launched a postsecondary educational scholarship program
to develop leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community of
Southeastern Wisconsin..
“The LGBTQ community is entering a
period of leadership transition as longtime leaders begin to pass the torch to a
new generation,” CCF president and CEO
Peter J. Holbrook stated in a news release.
“Post-secondary education attainment is
one pillar of developing our future leaders
who identify as LGBTQ. This is especially
critical among gay and transgender people
of color who experience lower educational
attainment and higher rates of homelessness than their peers.”
The program and partnership were
announced at the 2015 Business Equality Luncheon recently held at Potawatomi
Hotel & Casino. The seventh annual event
drew more than 350 people and 33 spon-
• WINTER READINESS: The Coalition for
Justice and Mothers for Justice United
are collecting hats, socks and mittens
from 6 to 8 p.m. on Oct. 13 and Oct. 27 at
All Peoples Church, 2600 N. Second St.,
Milwaukee.
• HALLOWEEN HAPPENING: Costumes
are recommended for the Women’s Halloween Dance hosted by the LGBT Center
of Southeast Wisconsin on Oct. 31. The
event is at Casa Capri, 2129 Birch Road,
Kenosha. Also, the dance is the kickoff
for a series of “Gather the Women”
events. For more, email gtwseries@gmail.
com.
• CINEMA, CHURCH & SEXUALITY: The
United Methodist Church of Whitefish
Bay, 819 E. Silver Spring Drive, hosts a
six-week fall film festival, “The Bible and
Homosexuality.” The first film screens on
Oct. 14 and the series continues at 6:15
p.m. on Wednesdays through Nov. 18.
For more, email Gary Gussick at gussick.
[email protected].
• CLIMATE CHANGE CONVERSATION:
The League of Women Voters Wisconsin
invites the public to hear from Outrider
Foundation managing director Tia Nelson on the issue of climate change at 9
a.m. on Oct. 10 at the Courtyard Marriott, 2266 Deming Way, Middleton.
The league also will host discussions on
redistricting, voting rights and election
laws. For more, go to www.lwvwi.org.
• ARTS APPRECIATION: The United
Performing Arts Fund will distribute
$9,175,000 — a 1.1 percent increase
over 2014 and the most in UPAF history.
UPAF’s 15 member groups will receive a
total of $8,991,549, with the remaining
$183,451 supporting 18 affiliates. Wisconsin Gazette is a UPAF sponsor.
• ALL ABOARD: The Great Pumpkin Train
departs from the National Railroad
Museum depot, 2285 S. Broadway, Green
Bay, on Oct. 10 and Oct. 17, transporting adults and little ghouls and goblins
to the pumpkin patch on their quest for
a perfect pumpkin. The event benefits
the museum, one of the oldest and largest institutions of its kind in the United
States. For more, go to www.nationalrrmuseum.org.
• TURNING 20: The Madison Area Volkssport Association aka Dairyland Walkers
celebrates its 20th anniversary on Oct.
10 at Garner Park, 333 S. Rosa Road,
Madison. At noon, there will be a short
ceremony recognizing the charter members of the club, with cake being served
afterward. For more, email Don Suloff at
[email protected].
HAPPY H20 DAY: This month, the nonprofit Midwest Environmental Advocates
encourages Wisconsinites to think about
the impact of the Clean Water Act, which
Congress passed on Oct. 18, 1972. The
act relegates federal pollution control
powers to the states. It’s up to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
to manage its water pollution permit
program.
Send community briefs to [email protected].
Find more community news
at wisconsingazette.com.
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19
October 8, 2015
Pet
Hush puppies: Vet says music curbs shelter barking, stress
By Sue Manning
AP writer
Can music tame the savage beast? Can
it hush puppies and calm kitties?
A veterinarian thinks so. Dr. Pamela
Fisher has put music in over 1,100 animal
shelters, saying that it calms dogs and
cats, and even cuts down on barking.
Fisher started the nonprofit Rescue Animal MP3 Project nearly four years ago by
asking artists around the world to donate
dog- and cat-friendly music. The result
was MP3 players packed with 30 hours
of classics, including music by Beethoven,
Mozart and Chopin, nursery rhymes like
“Three Blind Mice” and harps, pianos and
violins mimicking ocean waves and gentle
breezes. She gives them free to animal
shelters, sanctuaries and spay-and-neuter
clinics.
“I have used therapeutic music in my
practice and wanted to figure out a way to
help the shelter animals in my own community,” said Fisher, a holistic veterinarian
whose practice in North Canton, Ohio,
includes alternative approaches like aromatherapy. Her “community” has grown
to include shelters in all 50 states that
house over 115,000 dogs and cats.
One fan is Tania Huycke-Phillips, the
foster and facilities coordinator at Bay
Area Humane Society in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“It just de-stresses them,” she explained.
“They are still happy and wiggly, they just
aren’t barking.”
Beyond the music, the shelter staff does
all it can to reduce stress for the dogs,
including toys, treats, food and spending
time with them. “Reducing stress shows
off their personalities and they get adopted quicker,” Huycke-Phillips said.
Another fan of therapeutic music for
animals is Tina Gunther, vet tech at the
Cut Bank Animal Shelter near Cut Bank,
Montana, and its sole volunteer (there
are no paid employees). Winter temperatures at the rural shelter for six dogs
and six cats routinely run
well below zero, and
“the wind blows
nearly every
day. We
call them
black blizzards — the top soil is just blown
away,” Gunther said.
To calm the animals, Gunther tried the
radio. Besides hit-and-miss reception, the
news and sports featured yelling people
and disturbing sounds. Then the project
MP3 player was installed for the dogs on
one side. “The difference has been dramatic,” she said.
She and her husband had
to buy a second player
for the cats. “When
they play songs
they
like,
they go and sit by the speakers,” Gunther
said.
No one has studied the impact of Fisher’s specific music recipe. But some have
looked at how music and noise in general
affect animals. A 2012 Colorado State University study published in the Journal of
Veterinary Behavior found that dogs were
more likely to sleep and less likely to bark
when Mozart, Beethoven and other classical artists were playing, but not when
heavy metal, altered classical and other
sounds were.
Fisher’s website features many testimonials about the positive effects of her MP3
players, including a video from the Tuscarawas Humane Society in Dover, Ohio,
that shows dogs relaxing and settling
down after hearing the music. Tuscarawas
shelter director Lindsey Lewis says on the
video that the music has calmed the atmosphere and lowered the noise level.
A survey of more than 500 shelters
conducted by Fisher also validated her
approach, finding barking reduced by half
and animals on average more relaxed.
To buy the MP3 players, Fisher applies
for grants, collects donations and holds
fundraisers.
The music also helps relax staff members and that benefits the animals too,
said Fisher, who grew up singing and playing folk music on the guitar.
The project brought Fisher a new best
friend, but it took a look, not a sound,
to seal the deal. She was installing the
music system at Summit County Animal
Control in Akron, Ohio, in 2012 when a
mutt named “Lili stole my heart with her
glance.”
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20
|
October 8, 2015
Feral cat adopted by employees of West
Texas courthouse becomes local celeb
By Ronald W. Erdrich
Abilene Reporter-News
In the storied history of the Stephens
County Courthouse in west Texas, Thomas
likely is not the first fat cat to stroll its halls.
But he’s probably the first to do it on four
legs.
In 2013, a too-skinny, pitiful-looking creature wandered up to the building’s west
door. With his gray fur clamped to his
body, the little cat sat down to lament his
bedraggled state. It was winter, and by all
reports it was raining, if not worse.
“Yeah, he looked like a wet rat,” Richard
Cook, who maintains the courthouse, told
the Abilene Reporter-News.
“He just came up to the west door and
everybody was just ‘Oohing’ and ‘Ahhing,’
thinking ‘Poor cat,’” recalled Sharon Trigg,
the Stephens County treasurer. “The judge
decided we’d take him in.”
County Judge Gary Fuller is credited
with naming him Thomas. A collection was
taken and the cat was neutered and vaccinated. Then came the wait for him to get
comfortable in his new home.
“He wouldn’t come indoors for a while,”
said secretary Bonnie Marsh. “But gradually, he finally just kind of moved in.”
Those skinny days are long gone, now.
Thomas weighs in at a hefty 16 pounds
and no matter how many rounds he makes
through the courthouse, his new shape
looks like it’s here to stay.
Some days he’ll visit Marsh for a nice
rub-down. Later on, the cat will move down
the hall to Joanie Gipson in the county
clerk’s office, or drag himself over to Trigg’s
office for a sprawl across her desk.
To be truthful, though, it’s not just her
desk he takes over. Thomas is likely to
oblige himself at any workstation if the
human occupant lets him.
“He just jumps up there when he wants
his belly scratched,” Gipson said. “If you
don’t respond within a certain amount of
time, he’ll leave and go find someone else.
He’s not partial.”
If there’s no desk to be had, there’s
always the floor in the main hallway. That
is, until Cook comes by.
“He’ll follow me around, up and down
the hall, up and down the steps,” Cook said.
“I’ve got to go up on the third floor a lot.
He’ll try to beat me up there, sometimes.”
The emphasis is on the word “try,” however.
“It depends on how aggressive he is,
because most times he only gets so far and
then just flops down on the floor,” he said,
laughing.
He’s not much of a mouser, either. Some
time back, a rodent showed up in the clerk’s
office.
“He just looked at it and watched it go
by,” Cook said, laughing again.
Well, what about a favorite scratching
post. Does he have one of those?
“Yeah, my shoe,” Cook said.
“We have to buy Richard new shoes
every once in a while,” Marsh laughed.
Trigg likes having Thomas around.
“I’m a cat lover. To me, he’s relaxing,” she
said. “When he comes and sits in here, he
relaxes me.”
Not everyone likes a cat; even Thomas
knows that. Accordingly, he only visits the
offices where he’s welcome.
“Every time I come in and see the cat
upside down or in one of his weird positions, I can’t help but smile,” Trigg said.
“Because he’s got a million of them.”
But if his lounge act starts dragging, Trigg
knows how to get a move-on — bring out
the comb. A cat can only stand so much
grooming from its humans.
Unfortunately it does result in stray fur.
Trigg resigns herself with a sigh, admitting
the likelihood of cat fur filed away with
some of her records.
“I just put it in the trash can when I find
it,” she said.
He’s a smart cat, but he’s not so smart as
to figure out how the door opens to get outCAT next page
|
21
October 8, 2015
CAT from prior page
side. On the other hand, he is smart enough
to wait for somebody to do it for him.
When outside, Thomas likes to hang out
beneath the hedges, or maybe pad through
the grass to sniff the wind. Trigg said Thomas has a girlfriend named Gracie, who also
was fixed. The two of them play or lounge
when the heat gets to be too much.
“Most of the time when I lock up, I’ll go
out and call him and he’s ready to come in,”
Trigg said. “But if he’s not ready to come in,
he’ll run you for a merry chase.”
They keep a litter box and cat food in
the basement. They used to lock Thomas
there, too.
“But we thought that was cruel and inhumane. So we just let him roam the courthouse,” Trigg said.
But just in case, Trigg makes it a point to
drop by during the weekend.
“I feel bad that he’s up here by himself,
I can’t stand it that he doesn’t have anybody,” she said. “Because he’s a people
pers— uh, cat, you know.
County Commissioner D.C. Sikes remembered the time someone took Thomas as
their own.
“Yeah, somebody kidnapped him,” he
said.
“They found him at some apartments
across town,” Cook recalled.
But by now everyone knows Thomas.
“A lot of people look for him,” Trigg said.
“We get people from out of town who want
to see Thomas the cat.”
AP Member Exchange shared by the
Abilene Reporter-News.
P H O T O : R O N A L D W. E R D R I C H /A B I L E N E
REPORTER-NEWS
In this July 24 photo, Thomas gets a belly
rub from Joanie Gipson while laying on her
desk in the Stephens County Clerk’s office
in Breckenridge, Texas. Thomas weighs
in at a hefty 16 pounds, and no matter
how many rounds he makes through the
courthouse, his new shape looks like it’s
here to stay.
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October 8, 2015
Celebrating Senior Living!
Ask About Our Exclusive Charter Club Specials!
Call Today! (414) 436-0311
Tony
gives back.
Candace 1989
When Tony started working as a waiter at The Pfister Hotel in downtown
Milwaukee 29 years ago, he needed a good daycare center for his
toddler Candace.
A leisurely life of socializing with new friends, participating in
stimulating activities, enjoying delicious chef-prepared meals,
hopping onto convenient transportation, and receiving hassle-free
care when you need it, is just around the corner. Our bright and
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Whether you choose our assisted living apartments for discreet,
understanding care when you need it, or our memory care that
is dedicated to the unique needs of older adults facing memory
challenges, there will be a safe place for everyone in our community.
The United Way-funded Early Childhood program at Neighborhood House,
gave her a safe place to learn, grow and play.
Tony is grateful United Way was able to provide a resource that allowed
him the flexibility to work and support his family. Because of that he’s
been donating to United Way’s Community Impact Fund his entire career.
1111 E. Capitol Drive | Shorewood, WI 53211
Learn more about how you can get involved at UnitedWayGMWC.org
UnitedWayGMWC.org
@UnitedWayGMWC
/UnitedWayGMWC
UNITED WAY of GREATER MILWAUKEE & WAUKESHA COUNTY
www.HarborChase.com
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23
October 8, 2015
ut on the town
October 8 – 22
A curated calendar of upcoming events
JOYCE YANG 8 p.m. Oct. 15
When making a list of precocious, prodigiously
talented young artists, make sure Joyce Yang
makes the cut. The 28-year-old South Korean
pianist received a piano as a present for her fourth
birthday and began dazzling audiences shortly
after, winning competition after competition in
her home country and eventually making her way
to Juilliard. There she started pre-college studies
as a preteen. She’ll perform solo at UW-Madison’s
Union Theater, with a program including Rachmaninoff’s “Dreams” and his Sonata No. 2. At
800 Langdon St. Tickets range from $10 to $41.
Visit uniontheater.wisc.edu or call 608-265-2787
to order.
ADLER’S COMEDY CLASSIC
8 p.m. Oct. 9
FM 102.1 DJ Jon Adler will host a number of rising stars
for this evening of comedy. Artists on tap include rising
Canadian comic Jon Dore and Nikki Glaser, a semi-finalist
on Last Comic Standing and frequent guest on Inside Amy
Schumer. But the biggest headliner is actually two headliners: The Sklar Brothers, identical twin comedians famous
for a variety of sports and comedy podcasts and shows.
At Turner Hall Ballroom, 1040 N. Fourth St., Milwaukee.
Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at 414-286-3205 or
pabsttheater.org.
‘SCOTTISH FANTASY’ Oct. 16 to 18
‘iTOPIA’ Oct. 16 to 31
Get your kilts and bagpipes ready. For their next concert
program, the Madison Symphony Orchestra and conductor John DeMain will be taking their audience to Scotland,
with a performance of Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, which
prominently features authentic Scottish melodies. But don’t
expect only Scottish sounds — the program also includes
one of Haydn’s “Paris Symphonies” and Rachmaninoff’s
Russian Symphonic Dances, making this a particularly
global evening. At Overture Center, 201 State St., Madison.
Tickets are $16 to $85 and can be ordered at 608-258-4141
or overturecenter.org.
No one quite knows how the rise of technology and the
digital realm is affecting humanity, but that hasn’t stopped
artists from trying to figure it out. One foray into the subject
matter comes from Cooperative Performance Milwaukee,
who’ll stage Don Russell’s devised work iTopia in October.
The one-act follows four characters as they attempt to navigate through a world of increasingly virtual communication,
adding dance and poetry to traditional dramatic scenes. At
Theatre Gigante Studio, 706 S. Fifth St., Milwaukee. Tickets
are $15 and can be purchased at cooperformke.com.
‘JAMES AND THE GIANT
PEACH’ Oct. 16 to Nov. 15
‘TIMBER!’ 7:30 p.m. Oct. 10
When you think of acrobats, you may think of leotardclad gymnasts tumbling through the air or walking tightropes, not lumberjacks and farmers. But Canada’s Cirque
Alfonse company is flipping the script — and just about
everything else — in Timber!, a show inspired by the
strength and skill of North America’s early settlers. With
violin-toting folk musicians accompanying, this troupe will
turn logs into props for balancing acts and strength contests, axes into just another thing to juggle and a huge twoman saw as an obstacle to gracefully fly over. At the South
Milwaukee Performing Arts Center, 901 15th Ave. Tickets
range from $10 to $45 and can be purchased at 414-7665049 or southmilwaukeepac.org.
First Stage kicks off its season with this
musical adaptation of a Roald Dahl classic.
When an orphaned boy accidentally uses
a magic potion to grow a giant peach, he
finds himself on a journey of enormous
proportions, in which he and a group of
human-sized insects will have to live and
work together as a family to survive. At the
Marcus Center’s Todd Wehr Theatre, 929
N. Water St., Milwaukee. Tickets range from
$13 to $33 and can be ordered at 414-2672961 or firststage.org.
24
ut on the town
|
October 8, 2015
‘FIESTA: A HISPANIC HERITAGE
CELEBRATION’ 5 p.m. Oct. 17
In its season opener, Early Music Now aims for intercultural fusion. Fiesta will bring the world-class Latin-Baroque
ensemble Rumbarroco to Milwaukee, where they’ll perform
a program in which early European Renaissance music
meets the music of the Americas. At UWM’s Helene Zelazo
Center, 2419 E. Kenwood Blvd. Tickets range from $29 to
$59, with student tickets $10 to $20. Visit earlymusicnow.
org or call 414-225-3113 to order.
MILWAUKEE JEWISH
FILM FESTIVAL Oct. 18 to 22
‘PRINCE UNCOVERED’ 8 p.m. Oct. 17
After spending evenings reinterpreting the works of
musicians like Stephen Foster, Marvin Gaye, Patti Smith
and Quincy Jones, Alverno Presents is turning its eye on
the iconic, mononymous Prince. Under the guidance of
minimalist folk band Hello Death, a collection of Milwaukee artists will “uncover” songs from Prince’s discography,
re-interpreting them in new and unexpected ways. At the
Pitman Theatre, 3431 S. 39th St., Milwaukee. Tickets are
$25 and can be purchased at alvernopresents.alverno.edu.
Now in its 18th year, the Jewish Community Center’s Milwaukee Jewish Film Festival returns with some of the best
examples of contemporary work. This year’s feature films
include Mr. Kaplan, a Uruguayan film about a 76-year-old
man who believes he’s found a Nazi in hiding, and Apples
from the Desert, about an Israeli girl who breaks away from
the restrictions of her religious Sephardic parents to attend
dance classes and learns about the secular world around
her. The five-day festival also includes two documentaries,
about the late Theodore Bikel, an actor who was one of the
most popular interpreters of the work of Jewish storyteller
Sholem Aleichem, and about famous Jewish delis in New
York City and elsewhere. All films screen at Marcus North
Shore Cinema, 11700 Port Washington Road, Mequon. Tickets are $10, $9 for seniors, with multi-night and VIP packages available. Visit jccmilwaukee.org for a full schedule.
Learn more!
Support clean water
Visit our website: www.1kfriends.org - Follow us on Facebook & Twitter
Fighting for cleaner lakes and rivers at the source
We’re helping communities in southeastern Wisconsin stop polluted runoff through cost effective and attractive “green designs”.
We’ve also introduced The Green Infrastructure Scenario Tool to help people see the impact on everything from flooding and
basement backups to jobs, water quality, and energy savings in order to make sound investments.
Check out the Green Infrastructure Workshop
led by 1000 Friends of Wisconsin and Milwaukee’s
Sixteenth Street Community Health Center.
Learn about the Green Infrastructure Scenario Tool.
November 4th 1-4pm
For details and registration:
www.wafscm.org/annual-conference/
Email Carrie with questions:
[email protected]
1000 Friends of Wisconsin
16 N. Carroll St - Suite 810 - Madison, WI 53703
608.259.1000
|
25
October 8, 2015
A curated calendar of upcoming events
October 8 - 22
KEEP READING FOR…
Dueling ‘Draculas’: Bram Stoker’s vampiric antagonist is foremost in the minds of both the Milwaukee and Madison Ballet this
year, with two radically different
productions taking flight in October. Oct. 16 to 17 (Madison), Oct.
22 to 25 (Milwaukee). See page 30.
P H OTO : R I C K B RO DZ E L L E R
Milwaukee LGBT Film and Video
Festival: UWM’s celebration of
LGBT cinema celebrates 30 years
with a record-breaking number of
film programs. Oct. 15 to 25. See
page 34.
‘Madama Butterfly’: The Florentine Opera begins its season with
this classic tragedy of romance and
betrayal. Oct. 16 and 18. See page
36.
‘WICKED’ Oct. 21 to Nov. 1
Back by ‘popular’ demand, the national tour of Wicked returns to Madison for a twoweek stay. One of the biggest Broadway blockbusters ever, Wicked tells the story of two
young women: one an ambitious social climber and the other a brilliant but misunderstood
dreamer with green skin. By musical’s end, they’ll be better known as Glinda the Good and
the Wicked Witch of the West, but it’s in the journey these two friends take that the story
finds its magic. Don’t feel left out, Milwaukee — Wicked will be flying straight from Madison into your neck of the woods. At Overture Center, 201 State St., Madison. Tickets are
$45 to $135 and can be ordered at 608-258-4141 or overturecenter.org.
‘The Ballad of Emmett Till’:
Renaissance Theaterworks presents a musical retelling of a ‘50s
tragedy that helped spark the civil
rights movement. Oct. 23 to Nov.
15. See page 38.
WISCONSIN BOOK FESTIVAL
Oct. 22 to 25
OK, every day should feel like a book
festival, but if you need an extra push,
the Madison Public Library Foundation is
setting aside four days to celebrate the
written word. More than 70 events will
take place throughout the city, with notable visitors including 2013 Pulitzer winner
Adam Johnson, Wisconsin-based storyteller Nickolas Butler, Caldecott medalist
Kevin Henkes, National Book Award winner Timothy Egan and Wisconsin poet
laureate Kim Blaeser. Or, if author panels
aren’t your cup of tea, just pop into your
local library and enjoy the festival with
whatever set of bound pages strikes your
fancy. Visit wisconsinbookfestival.org for
more details.
‘LUMINOUS’ 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22 to 24
Wild Space Dance Company will inaugurate one of the Mitchell Park Domes’ new greenhouses with Luminous, a site-specific work that will open their 2015–16 season. In partnership with saxophonists from Duo d’Entre-Deux, the company will dance among shadows
and reflections, with the skies above the glass providing a one-of-a-kind backdrop for each
show. At 524 S. Layton Blvd., Milwaukee. Tickets are $20, $15 for students and seniors;
premium tickets including a pre-show talk with Friends of the Domes member Michael
Johnston are available for $25. Call 414-271-0307 or visit wildspacedance.org to order.
OPPORTUNITIES TO FIND
YOUR MISSION IN LIFE.
Business Leaders with a Conscience
Featuring Shary Tran, ’08
October 19, 2015 — 6:00 p.m.
Tres Vidas Performance
October 22, 2015 — 7:00 p.m.
Fall Campus Visit Day
October 30, 2015 — 9:00 a.m.
Cardinal Stritch University | 6801 N. Yates Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217
RSVP: www.stritch.edu/events
OUR MISSION IS TO HELP YOU FIND YOURS.
26
|
October 8, 2015
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Get started at uwcu.org/studentrefinance.
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variable and can change quarterly. For further information on rates and costs for the Variable Rate Student Loan Refinance, see the Application Truth in Lending Disclosure at uwcu.org. You will be required to review
the Application Truth in Lending Disclosure prior to submitting an application. The minimum loan amount is $5,000. Your interest rate will be determined by your credit score or your cosigner’s, whichever is greater.
November_9.5x10.7_WIGazette.indd 1
10/2/15 4:08 PM
|
October 8, 2015
27
Duckhorn’s wines rooted in careful cultivation
By Michael Muckian
Contributing writer
In Zach Rasmuson’s mind, winemakers
are stewards of the land on which their
grapes are grown. Success comes as the
result of careful cultivation of the fruit, as
well as preservation of the vineyard soil
and environment.
“Any winemaker will tell you that wine
quality is rooted in the ground,” says Rasmuson, the former pinot noir specialist
for Duckhorn Wine Co. who now oversees
the six winemakers that work for the Napa
Valley, California, firm. “You can’t make
good wine from bad fruit.”
With careful cultivation, effective harvesting techniques and masterful blending, Rasmuson adds, a winemaker can
make good wines and, in some cases,
great ones.
Founded in 1976, Duckhorn is a Napa
Valley powerhouse that embraces six
brands culled from 700 acres of estategrown grapes, including 20 acres from the
newly acquired Red Mountain vineyard
in Washington state that produces Canvasback Cabernet Sauvignon. In addition
to the Duckhorn and Canvasback labels,
the company also makes wine under the
Paraduxx, Goldeneye, Migration and
Decoy brands.
Each brand has its own varietal profile
and winemaker, but there is uniformity in
commitment and style among the wines,
Rasmuson says.
“People should recognize that the
waterfowl theme indicates a similarity,
but each wine is made with passion and
commitment,” says Rasmuson, who originally was responsible for ratcheting Goldeneye Pinot Noir to a high level. “Our
brands are complementary and we all play
well together in the sandbox.”
The coming holiday season may call for
better wines to go with dining and entertainment opportunities and any of the
Duckhorn brands can help those events
take flight.
Cross-tasting the Duckhorn brands is
as informative as it is fun. Start with the
Decoy label, whose name is perhaps an
inside joke, since this lower end of the
family is not “low” in any way. At $24
per bottle, the wine does not fall into the
“cheap” category and the end product,
produced by a winemaking team led by
Dana Epperson, is still better than the
best efforts of a lot of competing vineyards.
P H OTO : D U C K H O R N W I N E CO.
Duckhorn Wine Co., a Napa Valley powerhouse that has a variety of wines but a uniformity of style, has a variety of solid, top-tier
options for the coming holiday season.
The Decoy 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon,
which includes 3 percent merlot and 2
percent cabernet franc grapes, begins
with an aromatic nose of blackberry and
toasted oak with hints of cocoa and spices
on he back end. The well-structured wine
boasts a balance of fruit and tannins on
the palate that lead to a pleasing finish.
Epperson steps away from Bordeaux’s
noble grapes to produce a Decoy 2013
Zinfandel that, in turn, strides ahead of
its varietal brethren. Made from 98 percent Dry Creek Valley zinfandel grapes
and seasoned with 1 percent cabernet
franc and 1% petite syrah, the wine boasts
plum and blackberry aromas and flavors
with the same impressive structure as the
other Decoy wines, but without zinfandel’s sometimes ragged edge.
Epperson wraps it all together in the
Decoy 2013 Sonoma County Red Blend.
Composed of 25 percent merlot, 20 percent cabernet sauvignon, 15 percent zinfandel, 15 percent cabernet franc, 11 per-
cent petite syrah, 9 percent petit verdot
and 5 percent malbec, virtually no grape
goes untouched in this wine. The notes of
plum, black cherry, cassis, baking spices
and licorice are prominent in this bal-
anced blend.
The blending continues with the
Paraduxx 2012 Proprietary Red Napa
Valley Wine ($44). Winemaker Don
DUCKHORN next page
28
|
October 8, 2015
DUCKHORN from prior page
First Act: Dine Out
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LaBorde cites near-perfect growing conditions and a bountiful yield of more —
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Blended from 60 percent cabernet sauvignon, 37 percent zinfandel and 3 percent petit verdot, the wine offers hints of
blackberry, oak and vanilla on the nose
and ripe raspberry and blueberry notes
on the palate. One again, a well-balanced
structure and tannins contribute to a long,
satisfying finish.
Dan and Margaret Duckhorn founded
their winery with an emphasis on the five
noble grapes of Bordeaux. In 1997, their
attention moved to pinot noir, a more delicate grape that thrived in a cool-weather
climate. Two recent vintages prove that
their concept and aim were spot-on.
The Migration 2013 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir ($36), the first vintage
released since 2001, capitalizes on coastal California’s maritime climates that so
significantly influence the grapes. Winemaker Bo Felton has created a wine of significant finesse, with strawberry, cherry
and pomegranate on the nose and palate,
with nutmeg and clove flavor notes that
carry the wine to its long, lingering finish.
Failure to mention Goldeneye 2012
Anderson Valley Pinot Noir ($54) would
be an oversight most (ahem) “fowl.” Current winemaker Michael Fay produces a
wine that soars above most others, with
sweet and savory elements blending for
an outstanding finish. Anticipate notes of
leather and lavender balanced with hints
of plum, cherry and blackberry. The wine
features a mouthfeel that’s plump and fulsome, and leads to an elegant finish.
All this and we haven’t even touched on
the Duckhorn wines. Winemaker Renée
Ary does an excellent job, creating wines
well suited to fly at the head of the flock.
She also offers the only two white wines
we tasted in this sitting.
The Duckhorn 2013 Sauvignon Blanc
($29), blended with 16 percent sémillon,
is crisp and clean, with the anticipated
flavors of melon, lemongrass and citrus.
The wine’s elegance is further enhanced
by a pleasant fullness, giving it pleasing
substance without straying from the varietal’s primary characteristics.
The Duckhorn 2013 Napa Valley Chardonnay ($34), coopered entirely in French
oak, arrives with an impressive amount
of finesse. The oak provides both balance and nuance, combining flavors and
aromas of pastry dough and pear with
the acidity of Honeycrisp apples. Silky
and supple are best words to describe
this wine.
The Duckhorn 2012 Napa Valley Merlot ($51) goes a long way to dispel the
negative image of the grape when offered
as a standalone varietal. Blended with 88
percent merlot, 7 percent cabernet sauvignon, 2 percent petit verdot, 2 percent
cabernet franc and 1 percent malbec, the
wine offers a backbone of velvety tannins
and notes of dark fruits, spice and hints of
vanilla and toffee largely from its French
oak cooperage.
Ary’s crowning effort, of course, is the
Duckhorn 2012 Napa Valley Cabernet
Sauvignon ($68). A blend of 79 percent
cabernet sauvignon, 17 percent merlot,
2 percent cabernet franc and 2 percent
petit verdot, the wine delivers supple tannins and a rich mouthfeel laced with dark
fruit, milk chocolate, bright raspberry and
piquant cinnamon.
As this glorious cabernet and the rest
of the Duckhorn wines demonstrate so
clearly, the soul is in the soil, and the
beauty is in the blend. These current
wines are more than worth the time and
effort they’ve put in.
|
29
October 8, 2015
A simple Cuban marinade can add big punch to oven fries
By J.M. Hirsch
AP food editor
Most of the foods we eat — even among those of us for
whom eating is a career — pass our lips and leave not even
a fleeting memory. But then there are those that linger not
just on our tongues, but in our minds.
Over the years, a handful of such foods have entered my
life. My great grandmother’s rustic pork paté. My mother’s
spanakopita. The sunflower seed risotto I ate at a small
restaurant in Copenhagen last spring. The sinfully rich
liverwurst spread thickly on sourdough that was my afterschool snack when I lived in Germany as a child.
And there is mojo sauce. The first time I tasted it was
during Hurricane Katrina, which had forced an extended
stay in Key West. We ate dinner at a dive where the meal
itself was forgettable. But plopped onto the table was a
basket of fried plantain chips and a bowl of mojo sauce for
dipping: orange and slightly chunky and flecked with green.
I had no idea what it was, but as soon as I tried it I
couldn’t stop eating it. It was sweet and sour and tangy and
refreshing with just a tiny hint of heat. It was similar to a
salsa, but so much more refreshing. The waitress explained
that it was a Cuban-style mojo, and that there are numerous mojo sauces from different parts of the world.
Cuban mojo generally consists of minced garlic, onion
and parsley that are mixed with sour orange juice, lime
juice, olive oil and a hit of cumin. Traditionally, it is used to
marinate pork or for dipping chips, such as plantains.
I wrote down the list of ingredients, but never made it.
Until now. I found the card on which I’d scribbled the recipe
and remembered that flavor. Plantain chips don’t necessarily excite me, so I decided to recreate it paired with something big and bold — roasted potato wedges dusted with
smoked paprika. It’s a perfect combination.
MOJO SAUCE WITH PAPRIKA POTATOES
Start to finish: 45 minutes
Servings: 8
Ingredients:
6 medium russet potatoes
Extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
Ground black pepper
¼ cup lime juice
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ cup sour orange juice (or
tablespoons orange juice and an additional 2 tablespoons lemon juice)
½ small yellow onion, coarsely chopped
¼ cup loosely packed fresh parsley
2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon ground cumin
6
Directions:
Heat the oven to 400 F. Line a baking sheet with foil.
Cut each potato in half lengthwise, then cut each half
lengthwise into about 5 wedges. Mound the wedges on the
prepared baking sheet, then drizzle with 1 to 2 tablespoons
of oil. Toss to coat evenly.
In a small bowl, mix together about 2 teaspoons salt,
the paprika and 1 teaspoon of pepper. Sprinkle this evenly
over the potato wedges, toss to coat evenly, then spread
the potatoes in a single layer on the baking sheet. Bake the
potato wedges for 40 minutes, turning the wedges halfway
through.
Meanwhile, prepare the mojo sauce. In a blender, combine ½ cup of olive oil, sour orange juice, lime juice, lemon
juice, onion, parsley, garlic, sugar and cumin. Pulse on
and off for 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until the onion and
parsley are very finely chopped, but not pureed. Taste, then
season with salt and pepper, pulsing again to mix.
The recipe makes extra mojo sauce, and you’ll be happy
for it. Refrigerate the extra, then drizzle over grilled or
roasted meat (especially pork) or vegetables.
Serve the potato wedges with the mojo sauce on the side.
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|
October 8, 2015
!
T
U
O
WiG
Dueling ‘Draculas’ offer ballet with a bite
By Michael Muckian
Contributing writer
Call it coincidence, or credit dark forces dancing in the human psyche. Either
way, Wisconsin’s two premier ballet companies are opening their seasons with
productions of a story that ballet fans
will really be able to sink their teeth into:
Dracula.
Madison Ballet kicks off its 2015-16
season Oct. 16 and Oct. 17 with three
performances of artistic director W. Earle
Smith’s original production of Dracula, at
the Overture Center’s Capitol Theatre.
Driven by Madison composer Michael
Massey’s rock score, the 2-year-old production is perhaps the only dancing “steampunk” version of the classic horror
novel first penned in 1897 by Irish novelist
Bram Stoker.
Less than a week later, Milwaukee Ballet opens its own season with four performances of artistic director Michael
Pink’s own version of the Stoker classic,
Oct. 22 to Oct. 25 at the Marcus Center.
Performed to a score Pink describes as
“filmic” and written by frequent collaborator Phillip Feeney, Milwaukee Ballet’s
Dracula was first created in England in
1996 and has been seen by more than 1
million people worldwide.
Each version adds its own unique spin
to the famous vampire legend.
“One of the things intriguing to me is
that when it comes to scary creatures, the
vampire is the one we both love and hate,”
Smith says. “It’s like, deep inside, we all
want to get bitten by a vampire. There is
something really sexy about that.”
Pink sees a similar appeal in the legend.
He considers Dracula as being driven
almost entirely by the ballet’s main character, perfectly adaptable to the medium
of dance.
“The beauty of Dracula is that he communicates with very few words,” says
Pink, who created the original production when he was still with the Northern
Ballet Theatre in Leeds. “He is this calm,
steely guy who never hurries because he
will live for eternity. Dracula is a largely
silent character best portrayed through
movement.”
STEAMPUNK SPOOKS
Smith’s interest in Dracula was piqued
when the “little brother” he mentored
through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane
County kept asking to be taken to the
Twilight movies and other recent vampire films. Smith read Stoker’s novel and
researched other sources of vampire lore
for five years before joining forces with
Massey to conceive and execute his production.
“In dance, the story is told through
movement, so I had to pull out the biggest
story lines and condense the work down
to a CliffsNotes version,” Smith said.
“(Massey) and I worked on the music for
2 1/2 years. He had a lot of experience
in composition, but none regarding ballet, so I had to help him understand the
format of a pas de deux and other movements.”
The ballet’s steampunk aesthetic —
quasi-Victorian with technological elements integrated — originated in a
DRACULAS next page
P H O T O S : A N D R E W W E E K S ( L ) A N D T O M D AV E N P O R T ( R )
Both the Madison Ballet (left) and the Milwaukee Ballet will be staging productions of Dracula this October, each with their own take on the Bram Stoker tale.
DRACULAS from prior page
discussion between Smith and costume
designer Karen Brown-Larimore, who then
worked with the late Charles “Jen” Trieloff,
the show’s set designer, to create the original two-story steampunk world in which
Dracula’s vampire coven thrived. (Trieloff,
a well-regarded set and prop designer in
the Madison area, died of a heart attack
last fall.)
“I love the rock ‘n’ roll component and
the steampunk design, which came about
by chance,” Smith says. “I didn’t want to
do a true period piece, but wanted to make
it more accessible. Steampunk does that.”
Smith’s production strays from more traditional ballet fairly regularly, incorporating
elements of jazz dance and contemporary
choreography. The choreography has a contemporary, urban feel he says mixes well
with the steampunk designs.
Smith likes his Dracula tall and terrifying.
Dancer Joe LaChance, new to the role this
year, is 6’4” — a commanding presence on
stage.
“He did a lot of training at Ballet Chicago,
MADISON BALLET’S
NEW SEASON
In addition to getting its
vampire on with a production
of W. Earle Smith’s Dracula on
Oct. 16 and Oct. 17, the Madison Ballet also offers a full slate
of performances for the 2015–16
season.
The company welcomes the
holidays Dec. 12 to Dec. 27 with
its annual production of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker at Madison’s Overture Center, joined by the
Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and
maestro Andrew Sewell.
Repertory I takes the stage Feb. 5-6
in Madison’s Bartell Theatre (113 E.
Mifflin St.) to showcase the works of
both established and upcoming chore-
so he brings that Balanchine aesthetic to
the stage,” Smith says. “And of course he’s
sexy. You’ve got to have a sexy Dracula.”
After its run at the Overture Center
concludes, Madison Ballet’s production of
Dracula will be presented Oct. 21 and Oct.
22 at the supposedly haunted Grand Opera
House in Oshkosh, and then again next
March at the Juanita K. Hammons Hall for
the Performing Arts in Springfield, Missouri.
DARK MYSTERIES
Pink’s draw to Dracula had to do with
his fascination with the legend, as well as
a desire to present a compelling story most
audience members could relate to.
“We asked ourselves, ‘how do we avoid
the gimmicky fang thing?’ Do we go kitschy
or deadly serious?” says Pink, referring
to discussions with the late Christopher
Gable, the ballet’s co-creator and former
artistic director of Northern Ballet Theatre
who died of cancer in 1998. “We decided
the most powerful thing we possess is our
imagination and we created a world with a
ographers. The full program is still to be
determined.
The company again returns to Overture Hall March 19-20 for artistic director W. Earle Smith’s original production
of Peter Pan. A three-story pirate ship
provides a dramatic backdrop to J.M. Barrie’s classic tale of the boy who wouldn’t
grow up.
The Madison Ballet ends its season
at the Bartell Theatre with Repertory
II, another classical and contemporary
program running from April 22-23. This
program, too, will be announced closer to
the premiere date.
|
31
October 8, 2015
sense of illusion and mystery about it.”
Pink and Gable did the show’s 1996 media
launch at The London Dungeon, a macabre
tourist attraction that chronicles the city’s
horrifying past. Audience response to subsequent performances was overwhelmingly
positive and the ballet developed a base
of fans that followed the company from
performance to performance as the show
toured England.
“They would come to each performance
in full costume and makeup, adding an
additional element of horror to the proceedings,” Pink says. “It was like one unending gothic Halloween party.”
Pink’s production offers more traditional
ballet, but in a production he describes as
having “a bigger, more theatrical Broadway
value” thanks to elaborate scenery, lighting
and special effects. The show relies on Victorian-era period costumes and sets created by Tony-winner Lez Brotherston, which
lends an authenticity to the proceedings.
Pink’s production calls on two Milwaukee
Ballet company members to fill the role of
Dracula. Davit Hovhannisyan has played
MILWAUKEE BALLET’S
NEW SEASON
Michael Pink puts the bite on audience members with his own production
of Dracula Oct. 22-25, but that’s just the
beginning.
The ballet will perform its annual rendition of The Nutcracker Dec. 12-27, at
the Marcus Center. The Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra, the Milwaukee Children’s
Choir and 150 students from the Milwaukee Ballet School and Academy will bring
the Tchaikovsky classic to life.
The company travels to the Pabst Theater (144 E. Wells St.) Feb. 12-21 to perform Pink’s original production of Dorian
Gray. Based on Oscar Wilde’s controversial philosophical novel of hedonism and
mortality, the ballet will feature the music
of longtime collaborator Philip Feeney.
Dracula before, while Alexandre Ferreira is
a newcomer to the role. Pink admits playing
the vampire is a demanding task.
“It’s the gift of a powerful male role in ballet and they have to have total immersion as
with any acting role,” Pink says. “Stillness,
power and discipline are required, and the
Dracula role calls for that stillness and
omnipresence.”
ON STAGE
Madison Ballet’s production of Dracula runs for three performances Oct.
16-17 at Overture Center, 201 State St.
For tickets and info, call 608-258-4141
or visit madisonballet.org.
Milwaukee Ballet’s production of
Dracula runs for four performances Oct.
22-25 at the Marcus Center, 929 N.
Water St. For tickets and info, call 414273-7121 or visit milwaukeeballet.org.
In Kaleidoscope Eyes, three
works will share the bill at the
Marcus Center March 31 to
April 3. Choreographer-inresidence Timothy O’Donnell
will stage his fifth world
premiere, Genesis competition winner Garrett Smith will
debut a new work of his own,
and Trey McIntyre’s A Day in
the Life will feature a pastiche of
Beatles songs as background to
eight dancers.
Sensational costumes, ingenious
sets and outlandish characters define
Alice (in wonderland). Choreographer
Septime Webre’s vibrant dance brings
Lewis Carroll’s fantastic tale to life, taking audiences down the rabbit hole May
19-22 at the Marcus Center.
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|
October 8, 2015
Terror abounds at the Wisconsin Fear Grounds
By Larry Zamba
Contributing writer
What’s the scariest haunted house in
the country?
Ask a lot of people, and you’ll get a horror movie-ready response: right behind
you.
The house in question is the Wisconsin
Fear Grounds in Waukesha, which consistently ranks as one of the top haunted houses in the United States. Haunted
Attraction magazine gave it the No. 1 spot
for Wisconsin and the nation at large,
while USA Today readers have placed it
as high as second place in a still-ongoing
contest.
For such a spooky place, the Fear
Grounds started small. Husband and wife
duo Tim and Ann Marie Gavinski started
it all with an annual small spook house in
their garage, for their neighbors, before
making the big, scary investment.
“Tim was nearing retirement,” Ann
Marie says. “And one day I asked him,
‘What’s next?’ Tim replied, ‘I want to start
a haunted house.’”
In 2004, beginning with a $55,000
investment to build and a matching
amount in advertising, they opened their
first haunt — The House of Darkness — at
the Walworth County Fairgrounds. The
people’s need for entertainment that could
provide fear-induced shots of adrenaline
grew and the Gavinskis subsequently
expanded to the Waukesha Expo Center.
P H OTO : W I SCO N S I N F E A R G RO U N DS
The Wisconsin Fear Grounds feature four distinct haunted venues to explore. New this
year is “Morgana’s Escape,” an interactive escape game.
When you visit the Fear Grounds, Ann
Marie says, “You know you’re going to get
a great scare. We put on a huge theatrical
production. We have 100 monsters every
single night.
“I would never ask our actors to do
anything I wouldn’t do and we’ve done
it all. I have to give credit to the great
people who work here — we wouldn’t
succeed without their dedication and willingness to come back year after year.”
The whole thing starts in August, when
methodically packed trailers are unloaded
and a crew of 12 carpenters assembles
the four houses. The entire Fear Grounds
encompass 55,000 square feet.
As there are multiple houses in one
location, the Fear Grounds are more like
a haunted sub-division. Compared to the
3,500 other haunted houses in the United
States, it’s unique in that regard.
The Gavinskis recommend at least 90
minutes for the full set, if you can make it
through them all.
FEAR GROUNDS HOUSES
Morgan Manor: All things ghoulish and
terrifying orbit around Morgana and her
eight sisters, who have a twisted thing for
terrorizing people in their old Victorian
manor. There are the obligatory jump-outat-you moments of frightening fun — it’s a
classic old-school haunt. One of the most
startling moments occurs in the Green
House.
Unstable: Grip your friend’s hand tightly and hurry through the dead cornstalks
to the stables where the horses and barnyard animals are kept. Gentle reader, a
spoiler alert: Make sure you’re into blood
and gore before you embark.
No self-respecting modern haunt would
be complete without zombies. So, if you
have a thing for The Walking Dead, try out
Revenge Paintball. It’s the chance to hone
your zombie kill skills before the Apocalypse and a way to entertain kids under
10, who aren’t allowed into the haunted
houses.
If all the terror scares up your appetite,
don’t worry. The Fear Grounds offer carnival-style food — including hamburgers,
hot dogs, cider, popcorn and caramel corn.
The Fear Grounds are open Friday and Saturday through October, as well
as Sunday, Oct. 25, and Thursday, Oct. 29.
If you somehow miss that wide window,
you can swing by Nov. 13. That’s when the
Gavinskis will reopen the houses for the
annual TransWorld & Netherworld Haunted House three-day Legendary Haunt Tour,
and they’re inviting the public to join 7:309 p.m.
Ticket prices depend on which houses
you want to enter and how fast you want to
get to them all. Morgan Manor is $13, while
Morgana’s Escape is $30. The Three-Hunt
Combo Pass is $30 ($20 if you reserve
tickets online and arrive between 7 p.m.
and 8 p.m.), but that requires you to wait
in line, usually an hour or more. To skip the
lines, you can get a Morgana Manor Speed
Pass ($25) or Three-Hunt Combo Speed
Pass ($45). To reserve tickets or for more
details, visit wisconsinfeargrounds.com.
CarnEvil of Torment: This “three ring
circus of evil” is based on the premise of a
traveling freak show of yesteryear. If you
are at all claustrophobic or afraid of the
dark, be forewarned: This house immerses you in total darkness and challenges
you to work your way out of the obstacle
course yourself (if you can’t handle it, just
say, “I quit” and you will be escorted out,
although you will have to pass through a
personalized “Hall of Shame”).
Morgana’s Escape: The final house —
new this year — is an interactive escape
game. Fright seekers are locked in a room
and given clues and puzzles. They must
solve the riddles, locate three keys and
unlock the doors or “abandon all hope, ye
who enter here.”
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33
October 8, 2015
Matt Damon the heart of ‘The Martian’
By Sandy Cohen
AP entertainment writer
Without Matt Damon, the solitary fight for survival on
Mars would be lonely indeed.
Alone on screen for most of his scenes as an astronaut
stranded on the red planet, the Oscar-nominated actor is
the winning heart of Ridley Scott’s epic space adventure, The
Martian.
With Damon’s charm center stage, Scott has crafted
an exciting, hopeful story about humanity at its best: The
brightest minds working together for a common goal that
bridges international borders and forges a feeling of unity.
Affable and intelligent, playful and determined, Damon’s
Mark Watney is so endearing and entertaining as a narrator
and subject, it’s easy to see why the world would want to
save him.
The story begins with Watney accidentally left behind
during a NASA mission to Mars. When a fierce storm forces
an emergency evacuation from the planet, he disappears in
the chaos and is presumed dead. He isn’t, of course, and as
his fellow astronauts mourn him during their months-long
journey back to Earth and NASA officials struggle with how
to explain his death to the public, Watney wakes up, injured
and alone.
But he’s incredibly optimistic and resilient. He fixes his
wound with minor surgery and immediately goes about
prolonging his survival, knowing it could be years before a
manned spacecraft returns to Mars. He puts his skills as a
botanist and engineer to work, devising a way to grow crops
in the arid soil and make water by burning hydrogen. He
rewires old equipment from a past Mars mission in hopes of
communicating with NASA.
Watney is curious and talkative, keeping himself company
by narrating his every move. He tracks his obstacles and
progress in daily video logs. He chats to himself in footage
from the helmet cam in his spacesuit, cracking jokes he
knows no one can hear.
Seeing his efforts through various camera perspectives —
the helmet cam, a bunk cam inside his sleeping quarters, a
dashboard camera inside his space rover and the video diaries where he appears to talk directly to the audience — adds
visual interest, though Damon would probably be just as
magnetic talking to a hand-held camera in an empty room.
Meanwhile, NASA director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels
at his most clinical) and Mars mission chief Vincent Kapoor
(Chiwetel Ejiofor) learn through satellite photos that Watney
is alive. As NASA spokeswoman Annie Montrose (a miscast
Kristin Wiig) scrambles to protect the agency’s public image,
the men strategize how to bring the stranded astronaut
home.
The Martian unfolds in three settings, all spectacularly
realized by production designer Arthur Max. There’s life on
Earth, set inside NASA’s sterile Houston headquarters and
the lively Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and life on Mars, a dusty,
red, rocky expanse where nothing lives (which filmmakers
actually found in Jordan). Then there’s life aboard the film’s
elegant spacecraft, from the rugged rover Watney uses to
explore Mars to the Enterprise-inspired ship that carries his
fellow crewmembers and their commander, Melissa Lewis
(Jessica Chastain).
Unlike other recent big-screen space trips, the science
here is presented simply enough that no suspension of disbelief or quantum leap through the time-space continuum
is necessary. It all seems plausible, and author Andy Weir,
upon whose novel the film is based, insists it is, calling it “a
technical book for technical people.”
“I had no idea mainstream readers would be interested at
all,” he said.
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PRESENTED BY JENNY AND BOB HILLIS
IN HONOR OF BOB AND GENIE FRIEDMAN
|
October 8, 2015
Three decades on, UWM’s
LGBT Film Festival focuses
on families in flux
By Matthew Reddin
Staff writer
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The Milwaukee LGBT Film/Video Festival
is celebrating its 30th anniversary and festival director Carl Bogner is looking forward to
the biggest program in recent memory. Over
11 days, he and UWM’s Peck School of the
Arts will bring more than 30 feature films
and shorts programs to the city, all centering around LGBT themes — but many not
defined exclusively by those themes.
Bogner hasn’t been involved with the festival for all three decades — 2015 marks his
17th year — but in his time, he says, LGBT
filmmaking has come leaps and bounds, and
that’s reflected in this year’s work.
Early LGBT film festivals, he says, were
often disproportionally filled with international films because U.S. filmmakers weren’t
turning their lenses on LGBT stories. They
also focused most often on lesbian and gay
stories, ignoring more nuanced tales of sexual identity or stories about trans individuals.
Times have changed and, this year especially, films are expanding beyond their LGBT
protagonists to tell stories about the families
and communities surrounding them.
Take this year’s opening film is From This
Day Forward. The documentary follows filmmaker Sharon Shattuck’s Midwest family,
reuniting to plan her wedding. Her father Trisha, a transgender woman, came out while
Shattuck was in middle school, but Trisha
and Shattuck’s straight-identified mother,
Marcia, were able to stay together. Years
later, Shattuck’s film is like a home movie,
tenderly exploring the dynamics of the family unit and trying to parse out how her parents’ marriage lasted.
It’s the first time, Bogner says, that the
festival has opened with a trans-focused
film, and it’s a decision that’s long overdue.
Last year, the festival ended with a screening of 52 Tuesdays, a feature film about
a transgender man and his daughter that
featured a similar pairing of a central trans
character within a broader narrative about
ON SCREEN
family. “Films about the trans experience
have become more varied and complicated
and harder to pigeonhole and as rich as any
other film,” Bogner says.
While it’s a big step for the festival to open
with From This Day Forward, Bogner says part
of the reason he was drawn to the film and
selected it was because of its low-key tone.
“It might seem like an atypical opening night
film, just because there’s something quieter
about it. Making it opening night might be
the most sensational thing about it.”
Bogner says that, if the festival is defined
by anything, it’s “deliberately eclectic selections” — everything from historical work
to boundary-pushing experimental films to
coming-of-age tales to painfully essential
documentaries. From the outset, he says,
he’s tried to make the festival a place where
you can come across films you might not
otherwise consider making part of your
personal canon. “Canon formation always
seems like a curious process,” he says. “The
festival, maybe to the irritation of some,
always had the desire to introduce new work,
or get things in front of people that they
might not have seen.”
To further that goal, this year Bogner’s
experimenting by making tickets free for
all students, from UWM and otherwise. It’s
a gamble — as he says, he could suddenly
walk into a theater to see all 300-odd seats
taken up by students — but one he thinks
is worthwhile as a way to help develop
an appreciation for the film festival among
younger generations, who he says may not
feel the same compulsion to seek out LGBT
cinema that their predecessors did. “Their
whole lives, they’re probably felt like they’ve
had access to queer media,” he says.
With more than 30 films and programs,
there’s too much packed into the LGBT Film/
Video Festival to cover in this space — so
Bogner provided a few highlights, along with
his thoughts on why they’re suited for this
year’s festival.
The 30th annual Milwaukee LGBT Film and Video Festival will run Oct. 15-25,
sponsored by UWM’s Peck School of the Arts. Performances will be at either the
Oriental Theatre, 2230 N. Farwell Ave., or the UWM Union Cinema, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd.
Tickets for Oriental Theater shows are $15, $10 for seniors and students. Tickets
to Union Cinema shows are $9 general admission, $7 for seniors and Union Cinema
members and, for the first time, free for all students; select films are free to all. To
order, visit uwm.edu/lgbtfilmfestival.
The festivities will kick off with an opening night celebration, beginning at the
Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum at 5 p.m. After the screening of From This
Day Forward, a discussion with Sharon Shattuck and father Trisha will follow the
film, and a reception will take place afterward at Beans and Barley, 1901 E. North
Ave.
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October 8, 2015
Milwaukee LGBT Film Festival recommendations
‘From This Day Forward’
‘Nighthawks’
‘The Summer of Sangailé’
A documentary about a transgender parent and the
transformational capacities of love and understanding,
From This Day Forward is a moving portrayal of a Midwest
family coping with one of the most intimate of transformations. On the occasion of her own wedding, filmmaker Sharon Shattuck depicts her family, including her transgender
father Trisha and straight-identified mother Marcia, in an
attempt to understand how her parents stayed together
and absorbed the changes that could have separated them.
Carl’s Take: “I love how delicately observed the film
is. There’s nothing sensational about it — it’s matter-offact; it’s frank. I think people will be able to inhabit it well
because it feels like a home movie and they’re good people.
It’s just really beautifully made.”
The first significant out film in the U.K., the 1978 film
Nighthawks depicts Jim, a grade school teacher who makes
no efforts to hide his sexuality from his colleagues and
cruises the gay pubs at night. Often likened to a documentary, this film’s politics reside in its details of daily routine,
until the astounding near-final scene when a student confronts Jim about his sexuality.
Carl’s Take: “The politics of the film seem determined
not to sensationalize the main character. It has a ‘we’re
just like everyone else’ approach. What makes it amazing
to me is this penultimate scene that takes place in school,
where one of his colleagues is sick, so his classroom is
overcrowded with kids, and one of the kids challenges him
on his sexuality and begins asking all these inappropriate
questions. And he answers them. It just seems like an act
of queer radicalism.”
This movie (in Lithuanian with subtitles) that literally
soars shares a wondrous tale of a 17-year-old girl’s overcoming her crippling doubts to realize her dreams of being
a pilot, and her relationship with a more instinctively daring
girlfriend who gives her the necessary wings. The relationship of Sangailé and Auste is a delight to encounter and the
film is a winning tale of transformative love and a portrait
of dreams risked and realized.
Carl’s Take: “One of the things I was struck by is it’s really beautiful and whimsical. I took pleasure in the way the
resolution for this heroine is not just that she’s in a couple
— that’s bonus — but the way she takes some risks that she
hadn’t been able to take before. It’s a really satisfying film.”
‘Tongues Untied’
‘Stories of our Lives’
‘Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party’
Marlon Riggs’ still-powerful, 1989 film is an artful collection of voices and performances around what it means to
be African-American and gay. A chorus of poetry, recollection and song testify to experiences of marginalization and
activist resistance.
Carl’s Take: “The film department owns a couple of
prints (including) Tongues Untied, which I can’t show
enough. It remains, I think, the model of what a poetic
manifesto about identity can be. … What’s great about it is
it’s about the hardships and the marginalization that these
men face by being black and gay, but also it’s a convincing
celebration about the community that these men find and
also the joy that they get in their identity. It’s a remarkable
document.”
An urgent and strikingly artful anthology of five short
films about the experiences of lesbians and gays in Kenya,
a nation where homosexuality is criminalized. The stories
unfold in high schools, urban centers and fantastical landscapes and feature rebellious high school girls, personal
declarations, a black man wondering about the touch of
a white guy and resistance to government oppression
through dreams.
Carl’s Take: “This film has been banned since its
release last October for promoting homosexuality. I must
confess, when I heard about the film, I thought it was
essential viewing but I was also expecting a serious collection of public service announcements. But it’s really
beautifully made, really well acted.”
An enthralling, beautifully made drama that revolves
around the birthday party of one teenage boy, growing up
in a Christian household and questioning his sexuality. At a
pool party thrown for Henry’s 17th birthday by his parents,
including his father, the newly ordained pastor of an evangelical church, the intersection of numerous contradictory
characters offers each a chance to negotiate their public
self, as Henry remains swim in the emerging possibilities
of ways to be.
Carl’s Take: “It’s not just about Henry. The action sort of
revolves around him. In many ways I feel like it’s an essay
film on the variations of the closet. For a lot of characters it
has to do with issues of faith. I thought it sounded like such
a stagey premise; however, it’s really well made. I think it’s
a real accomplishment.”
Thursday, Oct. 15, at 7:30 p.m., Oriental
Thursday, Oct. 22, at 5 p.m., Union Cinema (FREE!)
Friday, Oct. 16, at 9 p.m., Union Cinema
Thursday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m., Union Cinema
Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 7:30 p.m., Oriental
Sunday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m., Union Cinema
36
|
October 8, 2015
Politics flutter through Florentine’s ‘Madama Butterfly’
By Michael Muckian
Contributing writer
For all its musical beauty and complexity,
classical opera lives by some fairly simple
rules: Love causes conflict and dramatic tension between characters. Beauty manifests
in tragedy, usually the death of the lead
soprano. And the hero is always a tenor,
leaving the villain to rumble in his thunderous bass baritone.
Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly,
which on Oct. 16 opens the 2015–16 season for Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera Co.,
observes the first two of those three rules.
But its narrative turns the notion of heroics
on its head, and the tragedy has a political
patina that is as historically accurate as it
may be currently applicable.
“I am in no way trying to make the opera
political, but it is interesting in its portrayal
of the patronizing way America historically
viewed much of the rest of the world, especially countries not of the same race,” says
William Florescu, the Florentine’s general
director. “You certainly see continued examples of that happening today.”
Written in 1903, Madama Butterfly tells
the story of Cio-Cio-San (soprano Alyson
Cambridge), a young Japanese girl who falls
in love with Pinkerton (tenor Eric Barry),
a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy stationed in
Nagasaki. Pinkerton marries Cio-Cio-San as
a matter of convenience, fully preparing to
leave her once he returns stateside in favor
of finding a true “American” wife.
The early 20th century saw the rise of
America as a world power and the emergence of Japan and other East Asian countries in the global consciousness, and Puccini’s opera reflects that period. Pinkerton’s
actions, while reprehensible, were considered appropriate for Americans of the period, and making him a morally suspect hero
is Puccini’s way of questioning that mindset.
“By his actions, Pinkerton is saying, ‘I can
take a lease on a woman in the same way
I can take a lease on a house, and as an
American it’s my job to travel the globe and
take what I want,’” Florescu says. “It’s not a
quaint period piece. Pinkerton inhabits the
American exceptionalism that’s still present
today.”
Despite his obvious transgressions, however, Pinkerton still remains a traditional
leading man in many ways. He shares
romantic moments and beautiful love duets
with Cio-Cio-San, as tenor and soprano roles
usually do, creating a dichotomy that gives
Madama Butterfly a depth and dimension
that are unique among contemporary works.
“In North America over the past 10 years,
Madama Butterfly has been performed more
often than any other opera,” says Florescu,
who is directing the Florentine’s production.
“The score is very sophisticated and difficult,
and it has the most difficult soprano role in
the entire Italian repertoire.”
Before writing the opera, Puccini saw a
nonmusical dramatic version of the story,
drawn from numerous sources, on stage in
New York, Florescu says. The Italian composer had almost no knowledge of English,
but was nevertheless consumed by the story’s inherent tragedy.
Puccini also was drawn to all things American, as much of the world was at the time.
He used “The Star Spangled Banner” in his
score more than 28 years before it became
the U.S. national anthem. He also was captivated by the tragedy of his heroine, which
Florescu says invoked deep emotions in the
composer.
“Puccini tended to fall in love with his
heroines as he was writing the operas about
them,” Florescu says. “It was Cio-Cio-San’s
tragic nature, as well the exotic nature of
Japan and dynamic character of America
that drew him to this story.”
The elements that drove the opera’s success also created inherent challenges with
its composition, forcing Puccini into several
rewrites of what became one of his most
famous works. But the composer’s labors
also added to the quality and depth of the
final result, Florescu says.
“He really luxuriates in the score, which
makes Butterfly a little more obtuse and
more of a connoisseur’s opera,” Florescu
explains. “For whatever reason, he decided
to take his time to develop scenes, which as
a director is a lot of fun, but it becomes more
difficult for the singers.”
Fortunately, the director believes, his principal performers are up to the task, both
musically and dramatically.
“(Cambridge) is a very engaging stage
actress, but she also has the voice and stamina you need for this role,” Florescu says.
“This is her first Butterfly, but she is credible
and sympathetic actress and has the voice
to do it.”
Barry, who is making his Florentine Opera
debut, also fills the bill, projecting a commanding stage presence required to fully
inhabit Pinkerton’s role, Florescu adds.
“He owns any room that he is in and has
the right voice quality for the role,” the director adds.
FLORENTINE OPERA’S
NEW SEASON
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
takes flight at the start of a
new and colorful season for
Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera
Company.
Post-Puccini, the Florentine
ushers in the Valentine’s Day
weekend with Vienna: City of My
Dreams, a romantic revue featuring four of the company’s Opera
Studio Artists making their Florentine debut. The program of light
opera and musical theater favorites
runs Feb. 12 to 14 at the Wilson Theater at the Marcus Center’s Vogel Hall.
In March, Three Decembers takes the
The Florentine will open its season with
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
For Florescu, who counts the opera as
among his top 10 favorites, the current
production is exciting. Despite its musical
sophistication, Madama Butterfly also can
be a good introduction for opera newbies
because of the beauty of the music and simplicity of the story.
“It’s good the first time you see it and
even the fifth time, because you discover
things operating at new levels,” Florescu
says. “That’s one of the great things about
the work.”
ON STAGE
The Florentine Opera’s production of
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly runs Oct. 16
and Oct. 18 in Uihlein Hall at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts, 929
N. Water St., Milwaukee. Tickets range
from $33-$136. Call 414-273-7121 or visit
florentineopera.org.
Wilson Theater stage. The poignant and
witty chamber opera by contemporary
composer Jake Heggie chronicles three
decades in the lives of a Broadway diva,
her adult son and daughter. The work will
be performed March 11 to 20.
The season wraps up May 13 and 15
with Die Fledermaus, Johan Strauss II’s
comic tale of playful deception played
against a backdrop of beautiful Viennese
melodies. The all-star cast includes the
return of Bill Theisen, who left his role
as artistic director of the Skylight Opera
Theatre in 2013 to direct the University of Iowa opera program, in the role of
Frosch. Die Fledermaus will be performed
in Uihlein Hall at the Marcus Center.
|
October 8, 2015
The Rep’s ‘Lion’ roars into Milwaukee
By Anne Siegel
Contributing writer
Most people write their autobiographies
in the final years of their lives. But what if a
young man prematurely has gone through so
many of life’s hurts and joys that he can write
an interesting and full autobiography well
before his 40th birthday?
That, my friends, is how you get The Lion.
This one-man show, starring Benjamin
Scheuer, is perfectly suited for the Milwaukee Rep’s intimate Stiemke Studio. Over the
years, the Stiemke has become a haven for
shows that don’t quite fit the established
boundaries of conventional theater. Many
of these shows are stunners; some can be
life-changing.
The Lion isn’t so much a theater piece as
it is a hybrid work that combines folk music
and storytelling. But when you think about
it, isn’t that the point of theater — to tell a
good story?
The Lion comes to Milwaukee after critically acclaimed runs off-Broadway and in
London’s West End. The play is now on tour
and Milwaukee audiences are among the
first around the country who will experience
what The Lion has to offer.
Sitting alone on a stool, Scheuer is flanked
by a half-dozen guitars in a near furnitureless room. The wall behind him (kudos to set
designer Neil Patel and lighting designer Ben
Stanton) can morph from the peeling paint
of an unheated, New York walk up, or shine
with the gleam of realization as Scheuer
uncovers some nugget of personal truth.
Even more intriguing is how the set and
lighting work together above the stage. Far
above the actor’s and audience’s heads, a
ring of low-wattage light bulbs hang, subtly
encouraging an embrace between the two.
The effect may not look like much, if it’s
noticed at all. Some audience members may
look at it and wonder if the Rep is doing this
production on the cheap (it isn’t). But the
effect works, whether the audience realizes
it or not.
Much the same happens when Scheuer
starts singing to the audience. Scheuer is a
handsome man, with an infectious smile. He
smiles a lot. Even his eyes smile. He wears a
suit and tie. Unlike his formal outfit, his blond
hair fittingly looks like a tangled lion’s mane.
The tale begins when Scheuer was a young
boy with a difficult father. His father’s indifference — not to mention his outright verbal
attacks — always haunted Scheuer. Why
couldn’t his father treat his oldest son like he
treated his wife or his other two boys?
The only thing that binds father and son is
a love of music — he is the one who teaches
his son how to play the guitar. “He taught me
to play the chord G major and I never looked
back,” Scheuer sings. Throughout his life,
Scheuer regards the guitar his father gave
him as his “greatest gift.” In return, Scheuer
gives a precious gift to his audiences — the
ability to examine their own lives.
One of his father’s favorite songs ends
with the refrain, “it’s how we weather the
storm,” i.e., how we react to life’s challenges.
Scheuer gets a lot of experience of this at a
P H O T O : M AT T H E W M U R P H Y
Benjamin Scheuer tells his life story through song in The Lion at the Milwaukee Rep.
relatively young age.
Some of his heartbreaks and losses are
typical; some are not. He moves into a New
York apartment with a young woman. Eventually, she slips through his grasp. Scheuer
heals his heart by cutting himself off from his
mother and two younger brothers, who now
live in England, his mother’s homeland.
Under Sean Daniel’s subtle direction,
Scheuer delivers his truths in a simple,
straightforward manner. He doesn’t make
himself out to be better or worse than he
is. He lays out the facts of his life and tries
to explain his emotions during the rough
patches.
He remembers a song his father sang
when he was a kid. It had to do with animals
and what characteristics each type of animal
had. “What makes a lion, a lion?” Scheuer
asks, rhetorically, during the 70-minute performance. As a child, Scheuer believes it is
the lion’s roar. But by the end of his show,
Scheuer has come to learn a whole lot more
about lions and he believes he has discovered the lion in himself.
Now, as he passes 30, Scheuer reveals
how the powers of forgiveness and acceptance have taught him to cope over time.
“I’m trying now to be a better man,” he says
near the end of the play. And audiences, who
have sat riveted for more than an hour, can
go home and think about their own lives and
where they go from here.
ON STAGE
The Lion plays through Nov. 8 at the
Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s Stiemke
Studio, 108 E. Wells St. Tickets start at
$30 and can be purchased at milwaukeerep.com or 414-224-9490.
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|
October 8, 2015
Renaissance Theaterworks sings ‘The Ballad of Emmett Till’
By Kirstin Roble
Contributing writer
by Ifa Bayeza
ON STAGE
Renaissance Theaterworks’ production of The Ballad of Emmett Till runs
Oct. 23-Nov. 15 at the Broadway Theatre
Center, 158 N. Broadway, Milwaukee.
Tickets are $38, with student and senior
discounts available and can be purchased at 414-291-7800 or r-t-w.com.
In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till
didn’t do anything wrong.
While visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, he spoke to a young white married
woman at a small grocery store. Several
nights later, the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam, took
Emmett from his relative’s home to a small
barn where they beat him and gouged out
an eye before shooting the boy. After all of
that, Emmett’s body was dumped into the
Tallahatchie River, weighed down with a
cotton gin fan tied around his neck with a
barbed wire.
The body, mutilated and disfigured, was
discovered three days later and sent home
to Emmett’s mother in Chicago. She was
overcome with grief, but also outraged at
what had happened to her son. To make
sure that her son did not die in vain, she
requested that he have an open casket
funeral so that the world could see what
injustice had been done to a young African
American boy while visiting Mississippi.
Emmett Till’s story has resonated with
those seeking social justice for 60 years.
Emmett’s story has been immortalized
in countless history textbooks, documentaries and magazines, but perhaps one of
the most poignant and thought-provoking
adaptations is Chicago author Ifa Bayeza’s
2008 musical The Ballad of Emmett Till,
which is being presented by Renaissance
Theaterworks as the first production of its
2015–16 season.
“Every year, our company tries to do
shows that examine the complexities of
the human heart,” said Renaissance artistic
director Suzan Fete in a recent email interview. “This season, we have chosen three
shows based on real events, true stories
about ordinary heroes. We were shocked at
how few people know about Till’s story as it
is an essential part of history.”
The musical tells Emmett’s story from
his perspective, haunting and tragic as it
is. A single actor, Marques Causey, plays
Emmett, known as Bo to his friends. The
other five actors on stage, three men and
two women, play Emmett’s family, friends
and his killers.
Fete says the poignancy of this show
comes from the fact that Emmett, a boy of
14, is telling much of the story on his own.
“The story begins very joyful, and then
takes a turn. It’s very powerful. Playwright
Ifa Bayeza uses contemporary prose, jazz
and gospel music when telling his story. It
really grabs the audience,” Fete adds.
To keep the audience focused on the
performance, director Marti Gobel decided
to keep her set intentionally sparse. “This
show is about the actors telling a story.
We don’t want it to get bogged down by
over-teching it,” she said in a recent email
interview.
The show will feature a three-piece band,
with a blues guitarist, harmonica player and
percussionist tapped to support the performers. Gobel says the show borrows from
numerous styles including jazz, doo-wop
and even some Delta blues.
In addition to the performance itself,
Renaissance Theaterworks is offering informal talkbacks after several of the shows.
The company also has partnered with Milwaukee Public Library to offer a workshop
and tickets to select at-risk youth reading
groups. In addition, they have partnered
with PEARLS for Teen Girls, a local nonprofit dedicated to supporting teen girls of
color in Milwaukee, to offer a workshop in
conjunction with a private performance for
70 girls.
Gobel’s goals for the production can be
summed up simply: “I hope that people
leave with a desire to make sure our country
never falls on such times and social philosophies again. I want us to take pride in
how far we come, but be angry at what still
needs to be changed.”
The Ballad of Emmett Till is a powerful
story for all to see, and one that is not to
be missed.
|
October 8, 2015
Mad Contemporary: Current exhibitions at MMoCA
By Kat Minerath
Contributing writer
Have you been feeling starved for contemporary art? The Madison Museum of
Contemporary Art is celebrating its 10th
anniversary, which means the museum is
currently packed full of exciting exhibitions,
including one in a new multimedia gallery.
MMoCA has been interested in new
media for some time, but never before had
a gallery completely dedicated to video art.
The Imprint Gallery, which opened on Sept.
18, changes that, with Kim Schoen: Have You
Never Let Someone Else Be Strong? as its inaugural exhibition.
The title refers to the L.A. artist’s centerpiece: a 22-minute looping video that fixates
on the play of fountains at the Bellagio Hotel
in Las Vegas.
Through tightly cropped shots, Schoen
draws our attention to the weird apparatuses that create the opulent play of light
and water in the middle of the desert landscape. The mechanical hardware emerges
and submerges from its liquid setting, taking on the character of an industrial Esther
Williams water ballet. Water shoots forth in
sprays and eruptions, sometimes appearing
analogous to fiery pyrotechnics and alternately like cool blue desolate expanses. The
visual effects are a close-up spectacle, made
ironic by the invisible context of the artificial
playground built in the arid land.
A different video installation — Jennifer Steinkamp’s monumental Rapunzel 9,
which covers a wall with waving arrays of
wildflowers — introduces Taking Their Place:
Recent Acquisitions in Context. As its title
suggests, the exhibit is a showcase of works
newly added to the museum’s permanent
collection, artfully organized into a series of
thoughtful themes and juxtapositions. The
deviation from strict chronology instigates
an engaging dialogue between viewers and
images.
The opening section is interestingly organized into headings of “Pop Art: New York”
and “Pop and Post-Pop Art: Los Angeles,”
offering a distinction to highlight regional
variations in this broad movement.
There is a good dose of Andy Warhol
and his dollar sign prints, as well as notable
pieces by James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha. Claes Oldenburg shows
his longevity with the witty “Pizza/Palette,” a
lithograph from 1996. The pie is a wonky oval
with a single slice waving upwards, beckoning and amusingly upsetting the balance. It
is deliciously, delightfully topped off with red
for sauce, squiggly green line peppers and
purple olive blobs.
On a more serious note, the exhibition’s
Social Commentary section draws us to a
place where art speaks with a powerful voice
on range of issues, from race to sexual ori-
entation and gender. The Guerilla Girls are
represented by screenprints that exemplify
their use of advertising tropes to investigate
the recognition (or lack thereof) of women
artists in the museum and the high-end art
world.
Nancy Mladenoff’s “Ideology Primer” succinctly critiques the malformation of young
minds into stereotypical roles. In this painting on fabric, a 1950s-fashioned man sits
with a young boy. Both are seated as he
instructs the lad while holding an object like
an oversized pencil nib, a bullet casing — or
any number of objects with phallic significance. In the background, a discreet pattern
is formed by outlines of soldiers wearing gas
masks and porting rifles. Smaller figures of
musclemen accent the scene in a variety of
poses, showing off well-toned bodies. There
is a whiff of mid-century Americana, and it
is a scent that lingers. Although the piece
was done in 1989, these notions are still very
recognizable today.
In the same gallery space are two portraits of Mao Zedong by Leon Golub from
his Portraits of Power series. Perhaps most
surprising is another Warhol piece, his “Birmingham Race Riot of 1964.” Like newsprint in high contrast, Warhol appears as a
documentarian but with a more heightened
sense of social activism than he is generally
credited.
Other highlights include beautiful largescale ambrotypes by J. Shimon and J. Lindemann in the Photography section, a lithograph of Joe Wilfer by Alice Neel in Portraiture, and the mysterious “Pitahayas” by Frida
Kahlo in Still Life, where the luscious red
fruit is joined by a diminutive skeleton with
springs for arms and wielding a scythe.
Details and a discreet point of view are
central to the exhibition Natasha Nicholson:
The Artist in Her Museum, effectively a giant
cabinet of curiosities. Nicholson takes found
objects, recovered by herself or gifted from
friends, and arranges them in combinations
that speak to their essence of form. The
exhibition consists of four rooms that emulate Nicholson’s studio setup.
Nicholson’s motivation comes from a
love of physical objects, and the wonder
that comes from their survival over the long
course of time. In the digital world, so much
of what we make exists only in virtual form.
In the face of changing technology what is
made may be lost or made obsolete, no longer accessible.
Her exhibition reminds us of the pleasures
of tangible things, the interest that comes
with living with assorted oddities, and the
role of the museum — personal or otherwise
— to create a new and alternate environments for pleasure, perusal, and transformation.
P H OTOS : M A D I SO N MU S E UM O F CO N T E M P O R A RY A RT
Stills from Have You Never Let Someone Else Be Strong?, the video centerpiece of
MMoCA’s first installation at its new multimedia gallery.
anniversary
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One weekend only!
October 10th & 11th
Enter our Great Pumpkin Contest
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See contest details in store and
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ON DISPLAY
Taking Their Place: Recent Acquisitions in Context is on view through Jan. 3.
Kim Schoen: Have You Never Let Someone Else Be Strong? is on view through Jan. 10.
Natasha Nicholson: The Artist in Her Museum is on view through Nov. 8.
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is at 227 State St. For more information,
visit mmoca.org.
39
2107 E Capitol Drive, Shorewood WI 53211
modgenmke.com
40
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October 8, 2015
With Stonehouse’s imagery, expect a ‘stegosaurus moment’
By Michael Muckian
Contributing writer
As career inspirations go, artist and Milwaukee native Fred Stonehouse’s “aha”
moment came at an early age and in a most
unexpected place — a convergence that
would send Stonehouse on a lifelong journey
to becoming one of the country’s leading
neo-surrealists.
According to Stonehouse, the magic
moment came in a Spartan-Atlantic Discount Store, one of several proto-big-box
stores that littered the Midwest in the 1960s
and 1970s.
“I was shopping with my mother when we
walked past a bin of tiny plastic dinosaurs in
the store’s toy section,” Stonehouse remembers. “There was a multicolored stegosaurus
that spoke to me, becoming a weird treasure
that I had to possess.”
Even at 19 cents, the dinosaur was denied
the little boy. Still, the 4-year-old boy had
to have it and, with no pockets in his short
pants, Stonehouse stuck the little creature
in his mouth and calmly walked past the
checkout as his mother paid for her other
purchases and left the store.
The theft was discovered in the family
car and Stonehouse was forced to return
the dinosaur, but the image’s impact never
left him.
“I knew stealing was wrong, but this was
beyond morality,” says Stonehouse, who
now teaches painting and drawing at the
P H OTOS : MU S E UM O F W I SCO N S I N A RT
In Stonehouse works, like “Batman” (left) and “Lost,” neo-surrealist imagery create a
dreamlike, fantastical impression.
University of Wisconsin-Madison. “This was
the first time I knew that the way things
looked would be a powerful force for me.”
That force has since blossomed into a
unique style, examples of which will be on
display in Fred Stonehouse: The Promise of
Distant Things, which opened Sept. 26 at the
Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. A
concurrent MOWA exhibition, Out of Madison, features the work of seven of Stonehouse’s former students. Both exhibits run
through Jan. 17, 2016.
Stonehouse’s art is almost instantly recognizable, and it’s the rare viewer who isn’t
taken aback by the surreal juxtaposition of
fact and fancy. Human heads — many with
horns — sit atop animal bodies, while other
humanoid figures dangle tentacles, vomit
blood or spew rainbows. Skulls abound in
landscapes Stonehouse says is the stuff of
dreams.
“It comes from a pretty concrete place,”
Stonehouse says. “I use the logic of dreams
in my work, but it seems weird in the waking
world.”
Stonehouse compares his imagery to anyone who has tried to explain a particularly
vivid dream, only to discover he or she could
not really describe it at all in waking terms.
He also cites influences from his youth that
made an impact on his image-driven psyche.
Stonehouse was raised as a strict Catholic, so much of his first imagery was of the
saints in surreal settings that helped illustrate Christianity’s supernatural side. His
Sicilian household also entertained a lot of
talk about ghosts and spirits as authentic
entities. Other images also filled his young
eyes.
“I grew up in a working class neighborhood
around 35th Street and Fond du Lac Avenue
with a lot of tattooed guys who worked with
my father at A.O. Smith,” says Stonehouse,
who himself sports some impressive ink.
“This was the ‘60s, when we had a lot of
weird comic book art and were just becoming aware of Mexican folk art.”
Stonehouse says the varied, diverse and
often fantastic visuals made distinct impressions.
“I was a consumer of all these images that
seemed to have these magical powers and
I am always adding these images to visual
vocabulary,” he says. “I run them through a
filter to make them personally mine, but they
come from all these different sources.”
Many of the images and their settings are
a form of self-portraiture or refer to members of the artist’s family, he says. Skulls
denote a “trickster” who crosses the barrier
STONEHOUSE next page
STONEHOUSE from prior page
between the living and the dead, while animal-headed figures tend to represent innocence and stand in for women and children
in Stonehouse’s life, he says.
There are four recurring and ongoing character types in Stonehouse’s narratives: the
animals, the skull, the devil and the “doofus,”
as he calls him. In most cases, Stonehouse
sees himself as the doofus.
“I don’t expect anyone else to understand them in this way, but it’s like having
an ensemble or cast of characters and I’m
the director of this cast,” Stonehouse says.
“Sometimes, new characters show up or
their parts get mixed around, but it’s almost
like they’re just changing costumes.”
The MOWA show is a retrospective going
back to 1993 — the cut-off point of a similar
exhibit at what is now the Madison Museum
of Contemporary Art back in 1992, Stonehouse says.
The MOWA exhibit is unique in that it
has a tattoo booth in which visitors can get
temporary Stonehouse tattoos, and carnival-style cutouts through which visitors can
push their heads, literally becoming part of a
Stonehouse creation. Carnival sideshow art,
not surprisingly, was another influence on
the artist, Stonehouse says.
The extra attractions provide visitors with
greater access to Stonehouse’s unique style
of art. If there is one thing that annoys the
artist, it’s those who think his work may be
too esoteric for the common viewer.
“I am not an artist who thinks he is too
good for a lay audience,” Stonehouse said.
|
41
October 8, 2015
“I am still a working-class kid raised in Milwaukee with a wife who just retired from 37
years on the Harley-Davidson assembly line.
I am not a snob.”
Stonehouse recently gave a talk to a group
of editors at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
and described one audience member who
had a big smile on his face. The smiling editor described Stonehouse as “one disturbed
individual,” which caused the artist to smile.
“Don’t judge me and pay more attention
to what’s going on in your own head,” Stonehouse offered by way of explanation.
Stonehouse is a little more gentle and generous of spirit toward most of his audiences.
“I think of my work as half-joke and halfprayer and if viewers find something halfhumorous and half-touching, then that’s
enough,” Stonehouse said. “What I really want them to have is that stegosaurus
moment where they say, ‘Wow! I’ve got to
have that.’”
ON DISPLAY
Fred Stonehouse: The Promise of Distant Things runs through Jan. 17, 2016,
at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205
Veterans Ave., West Bend. For more
information, call 262-334-9638 or visit
wisconsinart.org.
OCTOBER 17TH
UWM UNION CINEMA
NAZ & MAALIK
Jay Dockendorf’s tender film – sweet and fraught – about two teenage
Muslim boys daring to be out about their feelings for each other.
LGBT
Wedding
Expo
Presented by Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce
Sunday, november 8th 2015
11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Hosted by: Hilton Milwaukee City Center
509 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53203
Event is free and open to the public.
You can register to attend
or learn more online at www.WisLGBTWeddings.com.
A special thanks to
our media partner:
OCTOBER 21ST
ORIENTAL THEATER
THE SUMMER OF SANGAILÉ
Alanté Kavaïté’s beautiful film about one young woman’s dreams of
flying and the love that gives her wings. Winner! Best Director –
World Cinema, Sundance 2015
42
|
October 8, 2015
A ‘little bit’ of Melissa Etheridge goes a long way live
By Gregg Shapiro
great tour and the perfect opportunity.
If you’ve ever attended a Melissa Etheridge concert, you know that she is a consummate entertainer. Her casual and playful stage banter results in a relaxed and
friendly rapport with the audience.
She’s also a performer who comes fully
alive when she is on a stage, singing and
playing guitar and generally rocking out. On
her new live album A Little Bit of ME: Live In
L.A., Etheridge does a splendid job of capturing that energy over the course of more
than two hours. She plays some new songs
and lots of fan favorites. She is even joined
onstage by the band Delta Rae on the songs
“I’m the Only One” and “Monster.”
WiG spoke with Etheridge in the late
spring about her live set and more. She’s
scheduled to perform at Appleton’s Fox
Cities Performing Arts Center on Oct. 9 and
Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater on Oct. 14.
The DVD opens with a Kansas tornado.
Being from the same place as Dorothy
Gale, did The Wizard of Oz have special
meaning to you growing up? Yeah! I totally
remember that we’d watch it at the same
time every year, right around Halloween.
Being from Kansas, “We’re not in Kansas
anymore” is the only thing that Kansas had
until high school, when we had the band
Kansas. That was it. Coming out (to California), I never realized how iconic the movie is
(to the gay community); all the undertones.
I would say, “I’m from Kansas. I got here via
tornado.”
Contributing writer
A Little Bit of Me: Live in L.A. is your third
live album. How do you know when it’s the
right time to release a live album? I don’t
think I know when it’s a good time (laughs)
to release a live album. I think the opportunity presented itself. One of the main
reasons I did was because I had a whole
new band, new musicians. So the music
pops and it sparkles and it’s new. …And I
think I’m getting better. It’s like, “See where
I am now!” I don’t know when it’s time. I just
knew that this was a new band, this was a
You’ve been performing songs such as
“Bring Me Some Water” and “Like the
Way I Do,” both included on the DVD, for
more than 25 years. How do you keep them
interesting and fresh for yourself as a performer and for the audiences? You can see
on the DVD, those songs, especially “Like
the Way I Do,” it goes into improvisation.
I love that part of it. I love guitar playing. I
wrote both of those songs when I was still
playing in the bars. When I was playing it
for 10 people, wishing they’d want to hear
it. Now when I play it, thousands of people
scream and holler and know the song. It’s
like, “Yeah, this is what I wanted. That’s
what I asked for.” So it’s fun every time.
Do you make an effort to perform at
In her newest live album, A Little Bit of ME: Live in L.A., veteran performer Melissa
Etheridge captures the energy of her current live set. She’ll visit venues in Appleton and
Milwaukee in October.
least one song from each of your dozen
studio albums or has it become impossible to do that? It is kind of impossible
to do that. I wish I could. A two-hour set
is like 15 songs. Five or six of them are the
hits I want to play. That only leaves time
to do a few new numbers. I usually try to
get extra songs from the first, second, third
and fourth albums because those are the
ones that I think people really listen to over
and over. I’ll throw in something from those
other years in between (laughs). I’ll try to
throw in something from Fearless Love or
Breakdown or Lucky. It just depends on the
audience.
Is there one song more than any other
that you, personally, want to be remembered for? More than any other? It kind
of depends on where you are. If you go
overseas, that one song is “Bring Me Some
Water.” That was really a hit over there.
“Bring Me Some Water” was huge in Europe
and Australia and Canada. It’s different
everywhere.
You mentioned your 2002 live album
Live… and Alone which includes a cover
of Joan Armatrading’s “The Weakness in
Me.” Joan is currently on her own live solo
tour. Have you had a chance to catch her
this time around? We keep in touch with
ON STAGE
each other. I was set to go to a show here in
L.A. on May 9 and I was called out of town. I
was really disappointed to have missed her.
I love seeing her so much. We did talk a lot
about what it was like being out there solo
and what that is. She’s so great!
Earlier we talked about Kansas. It was
fascinating to watch what you found about
your family on Who Do You Think You Are?
Are you glad that you participated in that
show? I loved doing that so much! Believe
me, when I saw that house in the end; that
blew my mind. When the guy said that the
house was still standing in that little town
in Missouri; it’s unbelievable. There are all
these old houses. They’ve really kept it.
It’s amazing. It really made my past come
to life. When you start to realize that your
ancestors were real people with real stories
and challenges and choices, it puts your
own life into perspective.
Have you started writing songs for your
next studio album? Yes. I went back in
to the studio for two or three days and
recorded a couple of songs. We’re thinking
and we’re seeing what people are loving.
Nothing I can nail down or tell you about
right now. But I’m always thinking about
what’s next.
Melissa Etheridge will perform on Oct. 9 at Fox Cities Performing Arts Center,
400 W. College Ave., Appleton; and on Oct. 14 at the Pabst Theater, 144 E. Wells St.,
Milwaukee. Tickets to the Appleton show are $46-$66, and can be purchased at 920730-3760 or foxcitiespac.org. Tickets at the Pabst are $50-$76 and can be ordered at
414-286-3663 or pabsttheater.org.
|
October 8, 2015
The Sets List
WILD BELLE
8 p.m. Oct. 12 at Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee. $12,
$15 day of show. pabsttheater.com.
Brother-sister duo Elliot and Natalie Bergman made
waves with Isles, their debut album so named because
of their goal to make each song have an isolated, unique
musical genre. They haven’t released any hints as pithy
for their anticipated followup, Dreamland, so their
Turner Hall show this month might be the easiest way
to get a glimpse of what’s coming soon. Local synthpop
band Canopies opens.
LUCINDA WILLIAMS
8 p.m. Oct. 15 at the Pabst Theater, Milwaukee. $40.
pabsttheater.org.
Few artists can bare their soul quite like Lucinda Williams, the measured, brilliant country and folk singer/
songwriter who’s earned herself a place in music history
for albums like Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. This notoriously slow recorder has picked up the pace in recent
years and her current tour is supporting Down Where the
Spirit Meets the Bone, a 2014 release on her own record
label. She’ll be joined by her longtime backing band,
Buick 6.
CONOR OBERST
8 p.m. Oct. 16 at the Barrymore Theater, Madison. $25.
barrymorelive.com.
If it feels like Conor
Oberst was just here,
you aren’t crazy. The
indie folk artist has a
lot of projects on his
plate and one of them
— a rare reunion of
‘00s emo/punk band
Desaparecidos — was
just at Milwaukee’s
Turner Hall Ballroom in
September. But when
Oberst shows up in
Madison this month, it’s
all about him. And since
his solo work is characterized by intimate and
personal songwriting, expect to get to know him just
about as well as you can get to know anyone standing
on a concert stage.
JANET JACKSON :: ‘UNBREAKABLE’
Fans of Janet Jackson have had a rough decade, suffering
through three lackluster albums since 2004’s Damita Jo. It
has been seven years since her last
album but her reunion with producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on
Unbreakable is a triumph. The title
song is an easy, soulful callback to
past successes, as is the intimate
“After You Fall.” Jackson explores
new territory in the gentle country
bounce of “Lessons Learned,” about
abusive relationships, and heads to
the dance floor with Missy Elliott on
“Burnitup!” Perhaps best of all, she
closes with the upbeat spirit of Sly and the Family Stone on her
shoulder for the eminently funky “Gon’ B Alright.”
NEW ORDER :: ‘MUSIC COMPLETE’
PASSION PIT
8 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Rave, Milwaukee. $27. therave.
com.
When a new Passion Pit album drops, the big
question isn’t as much whether you should pick it
up — it’s which catchy earworm is going to burrow
its way into your brain before you notice. For Kindred, the indietronica band’s third album, the most
likely contender is “Lifted Up (1985),” the upbeat,
romantic lead single. But the truth of the matter is
just about anything Passion Pit frontman Michael
Angelakos comes up with has the potential to stick
with you — and if you don’t believe us, his live show
should prove it.
GARBAGE
8 p.m. Oct. 18 at the
Orpheum Theater,
Madison. $38 to $50.
madisonorpheum.com
Twenty years after
the debut album that
made their name, altrock band Garbage will
return to the city where
they got their start.
Starting as an informal
jam session between
producers Steve Marker, Duke Erikson and Butch Vig (of Nevermind fame),
the group added Scottish vocalist Shirley Manson and
exploded onto the scene a few years later, with a crossover pop sound that challenged the waning grunge
genre. The band has released four albums since, but you
can be sure this show will be heavy on the classics.
Music reviews
43
New Order — minus bass player Peter Hook — looks on
paper like a puzzle with a piece missing. But Music Complete,
New Order’s first album in a decade,
remains whole nonetheless. Longtime fans will recognize the spirit
of one of the most influential electronic bands of all time. The album
kicks off with the breezy “Restless,”
a near-sequel to the classic track
“Regret.” The throbbing disco of
“Plastic” is a descendant of Donna
Summer’s legendary “I Feel Love.” La
Roux’s Elly Jackson appears as guest
vocalist on two tracks, most notably
on the funky “People on the High Line.” Closing the album, the
Killers’ Brandon Flowers appears on the wistful “Superheated.”
With Music Complete, New Order might just have one of the
year’s best electronic dance pop albums.
CHVRCHES :: ‘EVERY OPEN EYE’
If you fell in love with Scottish alternative pop band Chvrches
after their debut album The Bones of What You Believe, consider
Every Open Eye a perfect second
date. The sophomore album is more
self-assured, cleaner and even more
resonant than the first. Both “Leave
a Trace” and the almost giddily
uptempo “Clearest Blue” will draw
you to the dance floor. “Bury It” is a
throbbing throwback to ‘80s synth
pop echoing the best of Depeche
Mode. The album closes beautifully
with the gorgeous, spare, contemplative “Afterglow.”
SILVERSUN PICKUPS :: ‘BETTER NATURE’
ARLO GUTHRIE
8 p.m. Oct. 21 at the Union Theater, Madison. $30 to
$100, $10 for UW-Madison students. uniontheater.
wisc.edu.
8 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Pabst Theater, Milwaukee. $45.
pabsttheater.org.
When a song is 18 minutes long, you can’t perform it every time you’re on stage, no matter how
good it is. That’s why Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary Woody Guthrie and a magnificent folk singer
in his own right, only breaks out “Alice’s Restaurant
Massacree,” the talking blues song about how he
got a citation for littering that inadvertently kept
him from getting drafted, every 10 years. Luckily, the
50th of those years has rolled around, so Guthrie’s
hitting the road to spread the tale once again.
Silversun Pickups’ fourth album is so big and forceful that at
times it gets exhausting. “Cradle (Better Nature)” and “Connection” kick off the collection with
a bombastic sound that is instantly
catchy but sonically overwhelming.
Instead try the downtempo “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)” which
features vocals by bass player Nikki
Monninger. Silversun Pickups have
evolved into a streamlined synthdriven rock machine in the last
decade, but the sometimes ragged
soul of the band feels like it has been
driven into the background under
big processed beats and raging guitar. Better Nature is good, but
fans have heard most of this before.
— Bill Lamb
44
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October 8, 2015
ENTERTAINMENT BRIEFS
EAU CLAIRE MUSEUM CELEBRATES
10 YEARS
The Children’s Museum of Eau Claire
started off as a chance idea — sparked by
a young girl’s question of why the city didn’t
have one. But when her father, Patrick Rebman, talked to friends Suzie Slota and Tina
Eichstadt about it, it started to become a
reality. The trio spread the word and the
museum officially opened its doors in 2004.
This year, it’s concluding a yearlong celebration of its 10th anniversary.
According to Slota, attendance the first
year was about 50,000 and executive director Michael McHorney says this year’s attendance hovered around the same number.
Additionally, the museum has served as an
anchor for downtown Eau Claire, bringing a
young demographic into the community.
For more, visit cmec.cc.
TREVOR NOAH TAKES OVER ‘DAILY
SHOW,’ PRAISES STEWART
South African comic Trevor Noah moved
in at The Daily Show on Sept. 28, promising he’d try not to make predecessor Jon
Stewart seem like a “crazy old dude who left
his inheritance to some random kid from
Africa.”
Noah took over as host after Stewart
decided that 16 years of lampooning politics
and the media — half of the 31-year-old
Noah’s life span — was enough and stepped
down in August. Despite a new desk and set,
Noah retained much of Stewart’s staff, the
show’s theme music and format.
Noah paid tribute to Stewart early in the
telecast, saying he was “more than just a
late-night host. … He was often our voice,
our refuge and in many ways our political
dad. And it’s weird because Dad has left and
now it feels like the family has a new stepdad
— and he’s black.”
LEINENKUGEL ‘FAN PACK’ GIVES
NEW DEFINITION TO ‘HATBOX’
Your old foam cheesehead looking a little worse for wear? New Packers gameday apparel is no further away than a box
of Leinies! The Wisconsin brewery recently
unveiled its Honey Weiss “fan pack,” a bright
yellow, 15-can box in the shape of a triangle,
designed to be emptied and worn as headgear. That’s using your thinking cap.
MEET ‘VAL’: HILLARY DOES ‘SNL’
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton
appeared on the season opener of Saturday
Night Live as a wise bartender named Val
who pours a drink or two for, ahem, Hillary
Clinton (played by SNL regular Kate McKinnon).
It was an unusual move (most political
candidates who appear on SNL do so just
for a cameo, rather than actually acting) but
one that highlights Clinton’s goals to pres-
P H OTO : N B C U N I V E R SA L
“Hillary Clinton” (Kate McKinnon, left) opened up to “Val” (the real Hillary Clinton) on
Saturday Night Live’s season premiere Oct. 3.
ent herself as more warm and personable
in this presidential bid. The former senator,
First Lady and secretary of state also has
appeared this year on talk shows hosted by
Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres.
Among the Clinton foibles the sketch
poked fun at: Clinton’s slow opposition to
the Keystone XL pipeline, her late-arriving
support of gay marriage and her inability to
take a vacation. Former cast member Darrell
Hammond popped in as Bill Clinton, only to
run away at the sight of double the Hillary.
— from WiG and AP reports
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ALL SIGNS:
JAN. 1 – DEC. 31
with Dr. Sterling Asterix
It’s official: Summer’s over, everybody. Venus
is packing her bags and moving back in with
her lesbian lover Virgo. Mercury is journeying
north to the CVS to pick up some cough syrup.
Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are effectively staying right where they are because their orbital
periods are so long they may as well be standing
in place.
You, on the other hand, should get a move on!
The planets aren’t fixed in one place, and you shouldn’t be either.
Let’s set an arbitrary date: October 28, when Venus, Mars and
Jupiter are all gonna hang out at Conjunction Junction to catch a
Hocus Pocus/First Wives Club double feature. Do your thing before
then. Or else spooky creepy haunted stuff, etc. Boo.
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|
October 8, 2015
MOVIE VILLAINS
ACROSS
1. Egypt’s sacred flower
6. Spinning toy
9. Hoodwink
13. Resembling an orangutan
14. Biology class abbr.
15. Printer cartridge contents
16. Ranee’s wrap
17. Long, long time
18. Valued for its soft down
19. *He ruled Nottingham
21. *Evil and No, e.g.
23. Reggae precursor
24. Apiece
25. *Lex Luthor breached
the Hoover ____ in
“Superman”
28. Center of activity, pl.
30. Not digital
35. 500 sheets
37. Australian palm
39. Mediterranean appetizer
40. World’s largest
continent
41. Run ____ of the law
43. Wildly
44. Going to
46. Intense rage
47. Fine threads
48. As opposed to shut
down
50. Miss America’s
accessory
52. To boot
53. Facebook’s “psst”
55. Opposite of their
57. *____ Bill of The Silence of
the Lambs
61. Opposite of greenhorn
65. Wombs
66. ____ My Children
68. Church assembly
69. Motion Picture
Association of America,
e.g.
70. Waikiki wear
71. Last letter of Greek
alphabet
72. First-rate, slang
73. In the past
74. Gossipy
DOWN
1. Bonnie one
2. Moonfish
3. Michelin product
4. Internet patrons
5. Crown Prince of Abu
Dhabi, e.g.
6. Not kosher
7. Lennon’s widow
8. *The evil Tai Lung in
2008’s Kung Fu ____
9. Just ____ ____
10. Back arrow key action
11. Jury colleague
12. Makes mistakes
15. House music
20. Flora’s partner
22. South American edible
tuber
24. Adhere to certain views
25. *Rocky’s Russian rival
26. The Tortoise and the Hare
author
27. Easternmost state
29. *McFly’s bully
31. “Poor me!”
32. As far as one can go
33. Convex molding
34. *Greedy corporate
financier
36. Buddenbrooks author
38. Saint’s “headdress”
42. Popular disinfectant
45. Type of nanny
49. Short for “politician”
51. *Baby Jane
54. Aussie bear
56. “No ____ or reason”
57. Followed by “excuse me”
58. Home to Bryce Canyon
59. Greek cheese
60. Worry unnecessarily
61. Hodgepodge
62. Afresh
63. Wooden pegs
64. June 6, 1944
67. *Disney villain, “Peg-____
Pete”
We posted... you commented...
BARB N. MARK STROSAHL: He should be
required to take a pay cut for those months.
Jerk.
Major donor to Scott Walker wants
to move 12-acre bog away from his
property
GOP’s attempt to end fetal tissue
research would harm medical
progress and Wisconsin economy
RANDY THORSON: We need to keep him
away from what’s left of Wisconsin.
JOYCE PHILLIPS: Why does the GOP hate
Wisconsin?
JOHN WENDT: Sounds like someone needs
help weaning themselves from their government dependence.
SUZANNE JACKSON: It’s called nature! If you
are afraid then go crawl back under your city
rock!! I’ll live there no problem.
JANICE WENDEL: Yes. I was enjoying watching Walker make a fool of himself nation- and
world-wide, instead of continuing his destruction of WI.
KRISTA JEAN KLAAS-SINGH: I want to move
Scott Walker and his supporters far, far away.
ESTHER MILLER FROST: Again, Republicans
shooting themselves in the foot when it comes
to job creation or just keeping jobs IN Wisconsin.
Calendar shows how little candidate
Walker was in Wisconsin
Feedback from our
digital platforms.
facebook.com/
wigazette
@wigazette
RANDEE WALTZ: At least he wasn’t messing further with state employees & pensions &
education.
BONNIE WOERPEL: Too bad. Don’t mess with
Mother Nature.
TERRY AMLONG: Oh well, another ploy for
the GOP to totally f$$k up the Wisconsin economy and screw our excellent research people.
These people will flee the state if their research
grants don’t hold up! These are jobs they are
throwing away. It never fails to amaze me what
Repubs will do in the name of Christianity, but
now want to take responsibility when it comes
to allotting money and food stamps to the poor
and our needy homeless veterans.
|
October 8, 2015
47
48
|
October 8, 2015
GREEN TIE GALA
OCTOBER 28, 2015 – DISCOVERY WORLD, MILWAUKEE, WI
PLEASE
JOIN
US
FOR
A bipartisan presentation from two Wisconsin statesmen, former U.S. Representatives David Obey and Tom Petri.
Hors d’oeuvres from the award-winning Bartolotta Catering & Events.
A festive reception with Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters’ board and staff,
conservation partners, business leaders, and elected officials.
Wed n esd a y, Oc tobe r 28
5: 30 – 8 : 00 P. M.
PILOT HOUSE AT
D ISC OV E RY WORLD
Program will begin at 6:15 P.M.
500 N Harbor Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53202
Purchase your tickets online at
conservationvoters.org/greentie

Adults turn Halloween into display of bad taste

Transcription

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