Farming can be somewhat isolating, says Chris McGuire. Especially during the growing season when there’s so much to do, farmers are in their fields a lot, and much of that time is spent alone.
McGuire knows what he’s talking about. He and his wife, Juli, are CSA farmers near Belmont. Their business, Two Onion Farm, is part of the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC).
MIDDLETON — In the latest employment coup for the suburbs, the UW Medical Foundation is consolidating its administrative operations here in a new $20 million building in the Discovery Springs development.
Some 800 employees of the medical group could eventually be accommodated in 200,000 square feet of office and warehouse space west of the Beltline and north of U.S. 14. It includes 775 surface parking spaces.
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray will co-chair a new task force charged with examining discrimination in the state’s criminal justice system.
Gov. Jim Doyle formally created the Commission on Reducing Racial Disparity in Wisconsin’s Criminal Justice System by executive order this morning and announced the panel’s makeup in a news release.
Also named to the 24-member commission are Madison attorneys Victor Arellano and Stan Davis, Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard and Pam Oliver, University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor.
LaMarr Billups has had a great ride in Madison, but he’s on his way to Washington, D.C., to a post at another major university.
Billups, 54, has been the UW-Madison’s director of community relations for 11 years and has served as a special assistant to two chancellors. In mid-May, he will become vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown University, providing leadership on a variety of labor-related issues.
He is well known locally as the university’s representative on city and county committees and as a board member of several prominent organizations.
The state Public Service Commission today denied a request by Dane County and the city of Madison for an independent study on the need for new power lines in the area.
….American Transmission Co., the power line company for Wisconsin, has proposed constructing a controversial 345-kilovolt line across southern Dane County, with one of the three possible routes going along the Beltline freeway.
IF YOUR big claim to athletic fame is that you are Bucky Badger, what do you do if you suddenly find yourself playing basketball against former NBA guard Spud Webb? Or football against Andre Reed? Baseball vs. Darryl Strawberry and soccer against Cobi Jones?
You trash talk ’em, that’s what.
When he decided last summer to return to the University of Wisconsin for his sophomore season, Jack Skille said he wasn’t ready to make the jump to the top level of professional hockey.
His second season with the Badgers took a significant and frustrating detour, but Skille is now 100 percent sure he’s set.
The only catch is, the Madison native isn’t bound for the NHL just yet.
Mentions that Dane County, fueled by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the state government, is enjoying growth and now has an estimated 463,826 residents.
University of Wisconsin reserve wide receivers Jarmal Ruffin and Diondrae Jenkins, neither of whom was expected to compete for playing time in 2007, have decided to leave the program.
LaMarr Billups, senior special assistant to the chancellor at the UW-Madison, is leaving for a position at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He has been the director of community relations for the University of Wisconsin for 11 years, and has served as a liaison to the city of Madison and several local organizations.
Billups will begin his new post as assistant vice president for business policy planning at Georgetown in mid-May, providing leadership and expertise on labor-related issues.
ONE OF my favorite interviews in a decade of writing columns came in November 2005 when Jeannie Cheatham had her autobiography coming out and I reached her by phone at her home in San Diego. Cheatham’s book – “Meet Me with Your Black Drawers On: My Life in Music” – was a rollicking and candid account of the life that made her a living legend in jazz and blues circles.
I had phoned because Cheatham and her husband, bass trombonist and bandleader Jimmy Cheatham, spent much of the 1970s in Madison. Jimmy’s teaching job at UW-Madison brought them to town, and they established their presence with regular jam sessions at the Inn on the Park on the Capitol Square.
…the Cheathams’ Madison friends have scheduled a memorial jazz jam session to honor Jimmy…the founder and director of the Experimental Improvisational Black Music Ensemble, which continues today under the direction of professor Richard Davis.
A freak accident on a Georgia freeway has claimed the life of a second student from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Authorities said 23-year-old Jason Schluter of Lyndon Station died Tuesday at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon. He was driving a minivan that was hit by a tire that flew off of a semitrailer truck late Friday night as he and other students headed south through Georgia on a spring break trip to Florida.
Global warming is a threat second only to all-out nuclear war and America has to act now, a famed environmentalist and geneticist told a Madison audience Tuesday night.
To not take action against climate change would be un-American for a country that put a man on the moon, said David Suzuki, 70, who has hosted the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s natural science series “The Nature of Things” since 1979.
Suzuki spoke to crowd of about 500 in the Union Theater as the last speaker in the 2006-07 UW-Madison Distinguished Lecture Series and got a standing ovation when he finished.
It’s not what you wear to vote in the upcoming spring elections but what you don’t wear, according to the University of Wisconsin College Democrats, who encourage Madison students to “Vote Naked” by way of absentee ballot before leaving for spring break.
“We thought it was a really good idea just because people do not necessarily care or want to vote by mail,” said Adam Lang, electronic media chair for the College Democrats. “Hopefully saying ‘Vote naked’ is amusing enough or interesting enough to get people to vote.”
If you see a classic film on the big screen sometime in Madison over the next few weeks and are amazed that it looks and sounds just as good as the brand-new films at the multiplex, you might have Michael Pogorzelski to thank.
Pogorzelski is a 1996 graduate of UW-Madison who has gone on to be director of the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles, which preserves tens of thousands of films on behalf of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, particularly those that won or were nominated for Oscars. He has also become a respected film preservationist and film restorer who has worked on dozens of classic films.
The first of what organizers hope will become the annual Greenbush Day celebration will take place Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. at UW-Madison’s new Welcome Center, 21 N. Park St. The event is free and open to the public.
“This event will celebrate the neighborhood’s past, present and future,” said Ruth Olson of the UW-Madison Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, one of the organizers. “It will provide an opportunity to learn about the rich history of the area, experience its current vitality and see some of the prospective plans for future development.”
On a similar stage a year ago, Jinelle Zaugg, emboldened by the nectar of a national title, boldly pronounced Wisconsin the New State of Hockey.
….On Monday evening, moments after celebrating a second straight NCAA title with more than 600 fans, cheerleaders, band members and assorted hangers-on at a reception the Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion, Zaugg held her ground on that topic as firmly as she grasped the national championship trophy in her hands.
CHICAGO – Even though the University of Wisconsin has been eliminated from the NCAA tournament, you can rest assured that nearly everybody who follows college basketball knows all about the Badgers.
Wisconsin was one of the most publicized teams this season as networks like HBO and ESPN eagerly traveled to Madison to report on the team’s successes on the court that included winning 17 straight games, attaining the No. 1 ranking in the country for the first time in school history and winning a school-record 30 games overall and 13 in the Big Ten.
Faculty and staff raises at the University of Wisconsin will probably drive tuition increases of between 4 and 5 percent in each of the next two years, according to UW-Madison Vice Chancellor of Administration Darrell Bazzell.
“The Board of Regents proposed a 3 percent annual increase, but that does not include an assumption to pay for the pay plan,” Bazzell told the Madison Academic Staff Association at the Memorial Union on Monday.
Legislators have proposed a bill that could change the geographic mix of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, which is now tilted heavily toward Madison and Milwaukee area members.
AB 194, offered by Rep. John Murtha, R-Baldwin, and supported by several colleagues, would require that at least one of the board’s citizen members live in each of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is defying a request from the music industry to pass along settlement offers to alleged copyright violators who use the UW’s computer networks.
Certain computer users have been pinpointed by the Recording Industry Association of America for allegedly violating copyright – that is, sharing music files on the Internet with others – for free – using peer-to-peer software.
TOWN OF DUNN — In a part of her heart and mind, Ani Lhundub Jampa is still a dancer, although she has not sung or turned a pirouette for years.
Her life is one of unusual balance, sometimes caught between faith and realism, respect for tradition and the trappings of progress. For eight years, Jampa has been a Tibetan Buddhist nun and her community’s bridge between old and new worlds.
Leading research institutions, including the UW-Madison, have warned that years of stagnant funding are threatening U.S. progress in medical research.
Nine universities – including Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Yale – produced a report for Congress. It says promising research has been halted in midstream due to flat funding from the National Institutes of Health.
(Psychology professor Richard Davidson is quoted.)
….Unfortunately, legislators, who earlier embarrassed themselves with an audit of UW faculty and staff sick leave usage, have shot themselves in the foot yet again.
Just as legislators were exposed by the news media as not reporting their own sick days, an examination of legislative salaries and benefits in Wisconsin compared to other states will once again reveal legislative hypocrisy. For Wisconsin’s legislators rank among the best paid in the nation when you examine their salaries, their generous per diem payments, their sick leave conversion privileges and their participation in the Wisconsin Retirement System.
In short, in a peer comparison with other legislatures, they rank far ahead of UW faculty and staff compared to their peers.
Are you miffed that CBS didn’t show the opening minutes of the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team’s game Sunday?
You’re not alone.
Jill Sommers, the program operations manager at local affiliate WISC-Ch. 3, fired off an e-mail to the network blasting its decision to leave Madison-area viewers in the dark as UNLV took an 8-2 lead in an NCAA tournament second-round game in Chicago.
Coach Lisa Stone ran the University of Wisconsin women’s basketball team through game-day preparation, including a 40-minute scrimmage to shake off rust two days before the Badgers’ second-round game against Arkansas State in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament.
With a long break between games, that preparation paid dividends Sunday as the Badgers romped Arkansas State 77-45 at the Kohl Center.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – Davidson College announced Monday it will eliminate loans from its need-based financial aid packages and replace them with grants and work-study, a move school officials said would allow students to graduate debt-free.
The liberal arts college had capped loan amounts in recent years to reduce student debt, but higher education experts said it’s the only college of its kind to halt loan handouts in need-based aid packages.
The number of reported robberies in Madison reached a new high last year, climbing above 400 for the first time.
In its 2006 Uniform Crime Report – a yearly tabulation of crime that police departments are required to submit to the FBI – Madison police reported 435 robberies, a 31.8 percent increase over last year’s 330. Street robberies, by far the most common type of robbery, saw an increase from 185 to 240, a 30 percent increase.
Area anti-war activists and veterans will observe the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq this evening with candlelight vigils, a panel discussion and a downtown rally.
….On the UW campus, the Campus Anti-War Network is hooking up with Iraq Veterans Against the War for a panel discussion around the theme, “Support Our Troops or Refuse to Kill.”
You may think you know of all of the colorful characters who passed through Madison in the blur of the 1960s, but you don’t, at least you don’t if you haven’t heard of Harley Lewin, who might be loosely described as the Wyatt Earp of intellectual property attorneys.
CHICAGO — The effusive Alando Tucker usually dominates the conversation when the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team congregates in the locker room after a game. It doesn’t matter if the Badgers win or lose, Tucker enjoys expressing his opinion on some subject.
Yet Tucker was uncomfortably quiet after seventh-seeded UNLV eliminated the second-seeded Badgers from the NCAA tournament with a 74-68 upset victory Sunday afternoon at the United Center.
The younger Badgers waited for Tucker or fellow seniors Kammron Taylor or Jason Chappell to say something, It never happened because this was an especially tough loss to absorb.
Mark Johnson was involved in another championship at the Herb Brooks Arena Sunday, but this one didn’t involve any miracles.
Johnson, who scored two goals in the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s “miracle on ice” upset of the Soviet Union, coached the University of Wisconsin women’s team to its second consecutive national title with a 4-1 victory over Minnesota Duluth in the championship of the NCAA Women’s Final Four.
When it’s all said and done, no duo did more at the University of Wisconsin than Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor.
There were a number of moments Sunday when it became apparent that one of the best seasons in Wisconsin basketball history would not end well, but this one tends to stand out:
With a little more than 2 minutes left in the first half and UW down 12, the rattled Badgers were forced to call time out when they couldn’t even get the ball across midcourt against UNLV.
When one of the most successful seasons in Wisconsin Badgers history came to one of most unsatisfying endings possible, coach Bo Ryan looked at his players on the court, shrugged his shoulders and went over to shake hands with UNLV coach Lon Kruger.
Jason Chappell, the artist, T-shirt designer and man with possibly has the largest Bob Marley CD collection in the Big Ten, could win the Wisconsin Badgers’ title of Mr. Mellow hands down. Being uptight is against his nature.
As his team keeps winning in order to stay alive, Wisconsin men’s hockey coach Mike Eaves talks about the Badgers as if he’s in the World Series instead of the WCHA Final Five.
Asked about goaltender Brian Elliott’s 16th collegiate shutout, Eaves had hardball on his mind Thursday night after the Badgers blanked Michigan Tech, 4-0, in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association tournament’s opening game.
Not once – from the season opener in September through the women’s Western Collegiate Hockey Association title game on March 3 – could anyone legitimately question the focus or the desire of Mark Johnson’s players.
It continues to live on in legend and lore of the ancient Classical world, a cataclysmic volcanic eruption that snuffed out a whole city by surprise and remains a symbol of nature’s power and civilization’s fragility.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and buried Pompeii deep in ash, a town and all its citizens were wiped out. But over centuries the worldliness and beauty of Rome have also been emerging from the ruins.
A fine-looking, family-friendly piece of that history and art will go on display Saturday at the UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave.
University of Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves and his players are facing history, or so they’ve been told.
It wasn’t until the final game of Kammron Taylor’s sophomore season that he truly felt that he belonged.
As part of national Sunshine Week, March 11-17, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council is for the first time giving awards in recognition of people and events that shaped the fortunes of open government in Wisconsin in 2006, for better or worse.
Among them:
â?¢ Open Records Scoop of the Year (the “Scoopee”): Patrick Marley and Stacy Forster, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Last fall, some state lawmakers waxed indignant at reports that 80 percent of UW faculty claimed no sick leave in 2005, adding to a nest egg they can later cash in for health care benefits. These enterprising reporters, using the open records law, found that lawmakers were doing the same thing.
A local biotech company is eyeing major growth after acquiring platform technology from global pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline Inc.
….The UW-Madison spinoff, which was formed six years ago, now expects to become profitable within two years, although one giant deal could make it instantly profitable, according to GenTel CEO Alex Vodenlich.
Faculty at Wisconsin technical colleges are paid more than faculty at the University of Wisconsin System in many areas of the state, a state audit found.
….The audit by the Legislative Audit Bureau – requested by the state Legislature – found that average annual earnings for full-time faculty exceeded annual earnings at the two-year UW Colleges by about $22,000.
Tickets to the Wisconsin men’s basketball game Friday at the United Center in Chicago are getting harder to find as the clock ticks down to tipoff, but are still available through online brokers.
While tickets through the university are non-existent, as of this morning seats still remain on StubHub.com and TheTicketKing.com for Midwest Regional first- and second-round games. Availability is shrinking, however, with only a third of the tickets that were available on Tuesday remaining 24 hours later.
“It’s alive . . . ALIVE!”
Gene Wilder’s exclamation (echoing Chris Clive’s in the original 1931 version) in “Young Frankenstein” comes to mind as the ninth annual Wisconsin Film Festival sparks to life this week, with the full schedule being announced on Thursday and tickets going on sale Saturday. The 110-film behemoth will rampage across the entire downtown for four days April 12-15.
Peggy Choy has worked for years to uncover the past. It now reveals itself as a great and ancient face, riven with scars as deep as a bomb blast or an earthquake crevice.
It is the face of the Earth.
The historically steeped University of Wisconsin-Madison choreographer and dancer has created a concert-length dance-theater work that explores how women have courageously and fiercely worked to care for the planet.
For his work this season, Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan is the Journal Sentinel’s coach of the year.
Alando Tucker was being his usual courteous self to the coaching staff Tuesday when the headman spoke up. “I don’t see why he has to say nice things about the coaches,” Bo Ryan said. “He gets 35 minutes a game.”
Why doesn’t that seem like enough anymore?
Full-time faculty at two-year Wisconsin Technical College System schools are among the top earners nationally and make more on average than their counterparts at many University of Wisconsin campuses, according to a state Legislative Audit Bureau report released Tuesday.
Badgers forward Alando Tucker the Journal Sentinel’s state player of the year for the 2006-’07 season.
THE SPRING issue of On Wisconsin, the magazine of the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association, is out with a terrific cover story on Kentucky Fried Theater and the four brilliantly warped minds behind it.
The four – David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Dick Chudnow – are pictured on the cover looking as solemn (and, it must be said, damn near as old) as the faces on Mount Rushmore.
Physically safe working conditions and fair employee treatment help make a workplace healthy, but some say another aspect needs to be confronted.
The on-the-job bully, who is usually but not always a boss, drains productivity, creativity and employee health, says Gary Namie of Washington, director of the nonprofit Workplace Bullying Institute, established in 1997 and financed by consultant work.
Quoted: Corliss Olson, a labor educator at UW Extension’s School for Workers
The University of Wisconsin is hoping to use its bid to the Women’s National Invitational Tournament as a springboard to bigger and better things in years to come.
“For our young team and players to extend their season and experience postseason is a great thing,” said UW women’s basketball coach Lisa Stone. “I’m thrilled and very excited about this opportunity.
University of Wisconsin graduate Mary Gilbertson is outraged by the prospect that the tiny Department of Comparative Literature will be closed, despite strong protests from faculty, students and alumni.
Gilbertson, a New York City resident who graduated in 1962, described herself as “an enraged alumnus” speaking for some in the department who are afraid to speak out.
Leaders of Madison’s Hmong community say that the most serious insult against the hundreds of families here is not the words of a University of Wisconsin law professor, but the language of the Patriot Act.
Far more damaging than an alleged slur made in a classroom against their culture, Hmong leaders say that the Patriot Act and the Real ID Act of 2005 threaten a partnership made more than 40 years ago that opened the United States to Hmong refugees.
The best thing about the University of Wisconsin’s humbling loss to Ohio State on Sunday is that it puts the Buckeyes in the Badgers’ rear-view mirror for good unless the teams reach the national championship game.
As expected, the University of Wisconsin failed to receive an at-large berth in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.
However, late Monday the Badgers (19-12) learned they had received a berth in the 48-team Women’s National Invitation Tournament
Two number theorists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison were flying above the clouds on their way to a conference in the summer of 2005, and halfway between Detroit and Manchester, N.H., a more than 80-year-old mathematical mystery unraveled.
KARL HARTER was stunned Friday to learn that a movie version of his book was in the middle of shooting in eastern New York state.
“What?” Harter said. “You’re kidding me.”
No kidding. “Winter of Frozen Dreams,” Harter’s true crime account of the notorious Barbara Hoffman murder case that gripped Madison in the late 1970s, is halfway into a 35-day shoot in Schenectady, N.Y. (Hoffman was a student at UW-Madison.)
