Hoe improvement
Not that it means much for the jungle that is my garden, but I have a fine collection of hoes and weeders in my tool shed: short-handled ones, long-handled ones, Korean style, swope style, hula style...
View ArticlePart of the solution
Twice a month at Madison's Whole Foods store, marketing director Amanda Jahnke Bauer leads a tour of the grocery, pointing out ways shoppers can economize. Buy from the bulk aisles, purchase...
View ArticleR.P.'s Pastas frozen dinner debuts at Metcalfe's Sentry
As the local food movement burgeons in Dane County, synergy has taken hold in a really good way. Creative and entrepreneurial advances seem to elicit even more enterprise. A new, locally sourced frozen...
View ArticleApocalypse Mistele
You have to wonder about Nancy Mistele: She's turned a political victory into a personal defeat, and she has no one to blame but herself.
View ArticleWelcome to boom town
Nobody's lit up the fireworks yet or popped open the Veuve. But maybe someone should. The central city is booming in a way unimaginable only a decade or so ago. Construction cranes frame the skyline...
View ArticleEdgewater Hotel subsidy not worth it
So many things have gone wrong in downtown Madison it's understandable Mayor Dave Cieslewicz wants to make a big, bold statement by supporting the $109 million Edgewater Hotel renovation and expansion,...
View ArticleState of chumps
Todd Berry blames it on our genes. The president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance suggests the state's chronic indifference to federal help is buried deep within our political DNA. I think the late...
View ArticleThe GOP's dilemma
What an interesting state of affairs. The Republican Party has seemingly become a shell operation controlled by a vibrant and growing conservative movement. It views the GOP as a tool to put...
View ArticleMayor Dave is leading the wrong way on the library and the Edgewater
I'll say this for him: Mayor Dave Cieslewicz took the 11th-hour collapse of the Fiore Co.'s library plan in stride. Without missing a beat, he announced that the city will move quickly to Plan B --...
View ArticleUnlock the Madison east rail corridor
Mired in a rough patch of downtown redevelopment, City Hall has had a hard time managing these crises. In recent years, major development proposals -- Union Corners, Avenue 800, the Fiore library plan...
View ArticleHow Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett gets elected governor of Wisconsin
The email from the Republican partisan might as well have had a sound file attached of him laughing and chortling. He was among a number of activists -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- whom I asked...
View ArticleDave Cieslewicz may be best for Madison -- but what are our other options?
You have to like Dave Cieslewicz as mayor. He seems almost the perfect fit for a progressive-minded city filled with gently graying baby boomers. He's funny in a self-deprecating way. He's calm and...
View ArticleGive trains a chance: Dane County conservatives are wrongly trying to derail...
Local politics, lately, are kind of like a funhouse mirror. Everything is weirdly distorted. Take the recent push to force a commuter rail referendum on the November ballot. Advocates say the public...
View ArticleMy most memorable concerts of 2008 in Madison "and" Milwaukee
It was a marvelous moment, yet another reason why I love live music. The pleasures are visceral, surprising and life affirming. It's why I headed for the concert hall and the clubs 50-plus times in...
View ArticleMy favorite concerts of 2009, in Madison and (slightly) beyond
Recorded music only takes you so far. My soundtrack is constantly recharged by live music. I saw more than 40 shows in 2009, some notable ones out of town. What follows are my favorite concerts close...
View ArticleConsider other options on Overture Center
When pianist Olga Kern began playing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Madison Symphony Orchestra's season opener a few Fridays ago, the first gentle notes hung in the air. I could hear the...
View ArticleWisconsin civil servants and their unions face an increasingly hostile world
In September, before the Chazen Museum of Art began stashing some of its collection to make room for construction, I stopped in to see John Steuart Curry's iconic paintings of the Midwestern...
View ArticleWisconsin public sector jobs: Okay pay, great bennies
Public employees have it good in Wisconsin, but not necessarily as good as critics think. Begin with the fact that the state is relatively parsimonious when it comes to hiring. Wisconsin ranks 4lst in...
View ArticleMadison needs to embrace the future with a different mindset
In the mid-1990s, the Common Council's finance committee met behind closed doors to consider the city's economic offer to keep the expanding medical software company Epic Systems in Madison. "The...
View ArticleMy 17 favorite concerts of 2010, from Milwaukee to Stoughton to Madison
Chalk it up to one in a series of booking coups by the best venue of 2010 (in my opinion), the 475-seat Stoughton Opera House. I saw stellar jazz, country, blues and classical music in the beautifully...
View ArticleTim Cooley's exit reflects ongoing struggle over mayoral control
In government, bad news often comes on Friday afternoons, in hopes it will be lost in the weekend shuffle. So it was telling that as the long Martin Luther King Jr. weekend began on Jan. 14, Mayor Dave...
View ArticleHizzoner vs. Mayor Dave: Two iconic Madison pols battle to lead a threatened...
When Paul Soglin is asked why he's running for mayor once again after two earlier stints in office, he cites his love for Madison and tells an anecdote involving his wife, Sara, who encouraged him by...
View ArticleHizzoner vs. Mayor Dave: What they regret
Credit the Downtown Madison Rotary for asking the candidates for mayor a revealing question at a recent forum: What was your biggest failure?
View ArticleHizzoner vs. Mayor Dave: Who led on Overture?
The city's salvage job of the financially collapsing Overture Center for the Arts poses another leadership contrast between Madison's two mayoral candidates.
View ArticleGeorge Austin: The end of an era
This article originally appeared in "Isthmus" on Sept. 19, 1998.
View ArticleCaution needed on a proposed Madison Public Market
Launching a good project at the wrong time and in the wrong place can be disastrous, as Madison history shows.
View ArticleAugust 25, 1978: Don't drive in Madison
First of all, you must realize you're not meant to drive in downtown Madison. It's a basic fact of life here, like the ungodly cold winters and the packs of drunken high school students who roam the...
View ArticleNew Urbanism conference highlights Madison's successes and its challenges
New Urbanists "love" Madison. For a beaming Al Fish, UW-Madison's associate vice chancellor, that was the message last week when he chatted with attendees of the Congress for the New Urbanism's...
View ArticleCan unions reboot for the 21st century?
One can only marvel at how masterfully Gov. Scott Walker gutted Wisconsin's public employee unions. This was deft work, surgically precise in its neutering of 50 years of collective bargaining rights....
View ArticleAlliant Energy Center needs help
If you define a problem in the wrong terms and fail to see the larger context of why something is screwing up, chances are your solution will fail. Take the Overture Center for the Arts and its...
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