Isthmus: Feb 16-22, 2017 by Isthmus

FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

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VOL. 42 NO. 7

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MADISON, WISCONSIN

CALLING ALL

SURVIVORS

NICK BERARD

Training a troubled puppy helps Patricia McConnell confront her own demons

T:9.5"

T:11"

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■ WHAT TO DO

■ CONTENTS 4 SNAPSHOT

OLD-FASHIONED PRINTING

Learning the ancient art of woodblock printing.

6-11 NEWS

CRIME AND DEDUCTIONS

Corrections department draining inmates’ trust accounts, dignity, critics say.

12 OPINION

BEYOND SCHOOL CUTS MICHAEL POPKE

PAT DILLON

COVER STORY KNOWN WORLDWIDE for her expertise in animal behavior, Patricia McConnell, the former co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show Calling All Pets, is also a local icon. McConnell has made it her life’s work to help troubled dogs by teaching their caretakers how to read animal behavior and train their pets with positive reinforcement. But, as Pat Dillon reports in this week’s cover story, McConnell was living with a heavy burden of her own that she kept under wraps until a new dog, Willie, came into her life.

21 RECREATION NEITHER SNOW NOR rain nor heat nor gloom of night keeps those on fat bikes from getting where they need to go. Mike Popke checks in on Madison’s growing interest in off-road cycles with oversized tires. Says one enthusiast: “It’s like riding a giant tractor around. You feel like you can go anywhere.”

Democrats should seize the opportunity and focus on other issues for 2018.

15 COVER STORY

WOMAN’S BEST FRIEND

Patricia MConnell pens a memoir about the troubled puppy that helps her confront her own abuse.

21, 25 RECREATION

OVERSIZED FUN

Fat bikes are all the rage.

22-23 FOOD & DRINK

B-QUE TO COME

The food is good but Five Star Korean BBQ is missing some basics.

24 SPORTS

DIVING IN

Local swimmers are poised to take home medals at the state championships.

26 ART

SURVIVING TRUMP

Local and state arts leaders respond to reports that federal arts funds will be axed.

27 BOOKS

INNER POWER

Unshakeable Confidence spells out a meditative remedy for women in a sexist world.

JAY RATH

ARTS NEWS CONSERVATIVES HAVE targeted the National Endowment for the Arts since Ronald Reagan was president, and word in Washington is that President Donald Trump intends to slash funding for the agency from the federal budget. Jay Rath speaks to leaders of local organizations, who predict devastating results if this comes to pass.

28 STAGE

BEWARE THE WITCH

Kanopy Dance presents an elaborate version of the Russian tale of Baba Yaga.

29 MUSIC

BEAUTIFUL BREAKOUT

Katie Scullin hits a home run with her debut album, Pieces.

30-31 SCREENS

BLACK LIVES ON SCREEN

I Am Not Your Negro illustrates the powerful writings of James Baldwin.

36 EMPHASIS

Thursday, Feb. 16, UW Discovery Building, 7:30 pm “Dirt” often gets a bad rap (you dirty rat, dirtball) — but how does life exist on earth without soil? Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, will talk about the many threats to this precious resource, one-third of which is already degraded worldwide.

Resist and Build! Sunday, Feb. 19, Madison Labor Temple, 3-6 pm

Activists from around the world visit Madison to strategize about how to build a society that protects the rights and dignity of all people. Speakers include Sarah van Gelder, author of Revolution Where You Live; Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson; Dario Farcy of Cooperative Confederation of Argentina; and Elandria Williams of the Highlander Center. Local organizations Freedom, Inc., Madison Area Worker Cooperatives and the Mutual Aid Network will also be on hand to discuss their work. Spanish interpretation will be provided.

Greens dreams

FUNCTIONAL FASHION

Gnar Hoops & Happy World Clothing makes comfort and toxic-free construction priorities.

IN EVERY ISSUE 9 MADISON MATRIX 9 WEEK IN REVIEW 12 THIS MODERN WORLD 13 FEEDBACK 13 OFF THE SQUARE

A world without soil

32 ISTHMUS PICKS 37 CLASSIFIEDS 38 P.S. MUELLER 38 CROSSWORD 39 SAVAGE LOVE

PUBLISHER Jeff Haupt ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Craig Bartlett BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Mark Tauscher EDITOR Judith Davidoff NEWS EDITOR Joe Tarr ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michana Buchman FEATURES EDITOR Linda Falkenstein ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Catherine Capellaro STAFF WRITERS Dylan Brogan, Allison Geyer EDITORIAL INTERN Riley Vetterkind CALENDAR EDITOR Bob Koch ART DIRECTOR Carolyn Fath STAFF ARTISTS Todd Hubler, David Michael Miller, Tommy Washbush

ISTHMUS is published weekly by Red Card Media, 100 State Street, Suite 301, Madison, WI 53703 • Edit@isthmus.com • Phone (608) 251-5627 • Fax (608) 251-2165 Periodicals postage paid at Madison, WI (ISSN 1081-4043) • POSTMASTER: Send address changes to 100 State Street, Suite 301, Madison, WI 53703 • © 2017 Red Card Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

The Greater Madison Golf Show returns for those dreaming of spring and hitting the links. More than 100 exhibitors, seminars, contests and giveaways will get you ready to yell “Fore!” when the weather finally warms up for real. Also, Madison Parks golf season kickoff party returns to the Odana Hills clubhouse, with information on local leagues, games and giveaways.

Athletes for inclusion Tuesday, Feb. 21, Camp Randall Stadium-Heritage Hall, 7 pm

Three-time NCAA All-American wrestler Hudson Taylor isn’t just a champion athlete — he’s also a prominent straight ally for the LGBT community and founder of Athlete Ally, an organization dedicated to standing up against discrimination in sports. Come hear him speak at this event organized by the LGBT Campus Center and others.

FIND MORE ISTHMUS PICKS ON PAGE 32

FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

CONTRIBUTORS John W. Barker, Kenneth Burns, Dave Cieslewicz, Nathan J. Comp, Aaron R. Conklin, Ruth Conniff, Michael Cummins, Marc Eisen, Erik Gunn, Mike Ivey, Bob Jacobson, Seth Jovaag, Stu Levitan, Bill Lueders, Liz Merfeld, Andy Moore, Bruce Murphy, Kyle Nabilcy, Kate Newton, Jenny Peek, Michael Popke, Steven Potter, Adam Powell, Katie Reiser, Jay Rath, Gwendolyn Rice, Dean Robbins, Robin Shepard, Sandy Tabachnick, Denise Thornton, Candice Wagener, Tom Whitcomb, Rosemary Zurlo-Cuva ADVERTISING PRODUCTION MANAGER Todd Hubler ADVERTISING MANAGER Chad Hopper ADVERTISING ASSISTANT Laura Miller ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES Lindsey Bushart, Lauren Isely, Rebecca Jaworski WEB ANALYST Jeri Casper CIRCULATION MANAGER Tim Henrekin MARKETING DIRECTOR Chris Winterhack EVENT DIRECTORS Kathleen Andreoni, Courtney Lovas CONTROLLER Halle Mulford OFFICE MANAGER Julie Butler SYSTEMS MANAGER Thom Jones ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Carla Dawkins

Friday-Sunday, Feb. 17-19, Alliant Energy Center; Saturday, Feb. 18, Odana Hills Golf Course, 3-8 pm

n SNAPSHOT

Earliest printmaking artifacts found: PRE-220 A.D. IN CHINA Oldest surviving woodblock: “BOIS PROTAT,” DATING TO 1370-1380, REDISCOVERED IN 1898 Record for largest woodblock print: 282 FEET LONG, “TYPE A,” MADE IN 2007 IN MISSISSIPPI Woodcarving/ Printmaking Workshop: FEB. 28, 5-8 PM. REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Kathleen Loock (left) makes a woodblock print under the watchful eye of teacher Jenie Gao.

Ink blocks

ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

BY STEVEN POTTER

As she chisels the outline of an owl into a square piece of pine wood, Kim Kantor admits her inexperience. “This is certainly different than anything I normally do,” says the urgent care pediatrician. “I’m not very artistic.” Kantor and nine other students are learning to carve wood and make prints at an early February class at the Madison Central Library. None of them have experience creating art quite like this. But that’s the point. Aside from learning new skills and techniques, the act of creating art in an unfamiliar way can lead to personal growth and spark creativity, says Jenie Gao, the artist-in-residence who’s teaching the class through the library workshop program known as The Bubbler. “When we learn how to make something new, it opens us up to learning how other things are made,” says Gao, a 29-year-old

originally from Kansas. “And we also benefit from the willingness to work on something without knowing what the result will be.” The printmaking process the students are here to learn — also known as woodblock or woodcut printing — is an ancient technique, first used in China. Gao calls printmaking “the first social media.” It’s experiencing a resurgence. To begin, the students sketch their design in pencil onto the wood square. Most of the students pull up pictures on their phones for inspiration. The designs range from a Memorial Union chair and a sunburst to birds, fish and other animals. In this printing method, the students carve out the space around what they draw, rather than carve out the actual design. This creates an embossed surface that will be inked and pressed. Amanda Funk, for instance, needed to carve out the space around the Rocky Mountains, leaving her scenery outline intact. “You have to think about the negative space that you take

out to leave the image you want,” says Funk, an interior designer. “Your print will be a mirror image of what you carve,” Gao tells the class, “so if you’re putting in any text, make sure it’s reversed.” The carving itself is also done in a somewhat counterintuitive way. You need to hold the carving tool “not like a pencil but instead so it’s in line with your arm,” says Gao, demonstrating with a tool called a gouge. “It feels weird and unnatural at first, but this way, you have the most control.” It also causes some students’ forearms to get sore. “It’s a very repetitive but meditative process,” says Gao. “We don’t usually focus on things that require this kind of attention.” Next comes the inking and, finally, the printmaking. Using a small roller, students cover their design with a thick ink. Then, they press a large piece of paper onto the inked surface and use a wooden kitchen spoon to rub the paper onto the inked wood plank.

After that, they peel off the paper, leaving an ink impression of their design. During the three-hour workshop, Gao is happy to see students sharing tools and techniques. “Creativity is about connection,” she says. Gao is also asking for help from the community with constructing larger-thanlife replicas of birds for an upcoming art installation called “In Unison.” Students will help cut fabric for the flock of native Wisconsin birds made from repurposed clothing that will be hung from the ceiling of the children’s section in the library. Slowing down and taking the time to create art is one of its most important benefits, says Gao. “We live in a time of instant gratification, where everything is made for us,” she says. “Art is very much a delayed-gratification process. Creating art teaches patience.” n

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n NEWS

Off the bench Presidential election motivates school board campaigns BY JENNY PEEK

In the wake of November’s presidential election, many Madison residents are asking themselves, what can I do? The answer for a few Madison residents was to get involved in their community. “The election and the politics of our country drove me to run,” says Matt Andrzejewski, one of six candidates vying for two school board seats. “Everything is so divisive. We have to recognize that there are new chal-

lenges we’re going to face in the future, and they are coming fast.” Andrzejewski and Nicki Vander Meulen are running against incumbent Ed Hughes for his seat. Kate Toews was also motivated by the presidential election to seek an open seat (now held by Michael Flores, who is not running again) against Cris Carusi and Ali Muldrow. “I’m a huge believer in public schools and public education,” Toews says. “Realizing that the attacks we’ve seen on public education in

ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

SE AT 6

the state were about to get ramped up considerably from the federal government left me feeling like I have to do something.” With three candidates running for each seat, the Feb. 21 primary will determine which two candidates in each race move on to the April general election. The Madison school board is composed of seven members, who are elected to threeyear, staggered terms. Once elected, each member represents a specific set of Madison schools. The board also oversees the super-

intendent, approves the budget, sets policies and responds to community concerns. “While the superintendent and her staff are responsible for the day-to-day operations of the school, we bring that community voice and act as ambassadors of the schools,” says Hughes, who is hoping to win a fourth term. Collectively, some of the biggest issues facing the district — according to the candidates — are the achievement gap, teacher morale and disciplinary policies. Here are snapshots of each candidate.

SEAT 7

Cris Carusi

Ali Muldrow

Kate Toews

Matt Andrzejewski

Ed Hughes (incumbent)

Nicki Vander Meulen

Communications manager at UW-Madison Biggest issue facing Madison schools: Disparities and the achievement gap Stance on Personalized Pathways (the district’s new career-focused program): Carusi supports the program’s hands-on learning, but has reservations about asking eighthgraders to choose a career focus, and worries about the impact it may have on fine arts, language and students with special needs. What makes her unique? For the past several years Carusi has been attending school board meetings, so she feels ready to hit the ground running. Having children in both middle and high school, she believes, gives her insight into programming like Personalized Pathways. Parent: Children at Jefferson Middle School and Memorial High School. Quote: “I believe that our first focus should be on our neighborhood schools. They are our best opportunity to make sure we have strong schools for every kid, and having strong schools for every kid is our best strategy to try and hold back the tide of privatization that’s coming from the state level, and now the federal level.”

Racial justice youth organizer/ programing director at GSAFE Biggest issue: Racial disparity Personalized Pathways: Muldrow supports students’ self-determination in education, but worries Pathways will push students of color and low-income students toward careers in manual labor, while pushing affluent, white students toward higher education. For Muldrow, new programs must be examined with a lens toward equity. What makes her unique? The only candidate of color, Muldrow says her extensive work with LGBTQ youth and students of color has prepared her to advocate for students who feel marginalized. Muldrow also has experienced Madison schools firsthand, attending elementary, middle and high school here. Parent: Two young daughters enrolled at Isthmus Montessori Academy. Quote: “I’ve been thinking about running as this love letter to my community.... Schools have the potential to be this great equalizer where you go to level the playing field, and it’s unacceptable to have students be less likely to succeed based on physical attributes or disability or gender or sexuality.”

Entrepreneur and founder of Toews Consulting and Latitude Biggest issue: Teacher morale Personalized Pathways: Based on feedback, Toews believes about a third of the community is excited, a third is worried, and a third is waiting to see what happens. Toews finds herself in the latter group, and is looking forward to the pilot and a robust conversation about the outcomes, before making a decision about whether it works for Madison schools. What makes her unique? As an entrepreneur, Toews has experience managing large budgets and staff. And being a parent of young children, she argues, gives her a vested interest in the long run. Parent: Three children, a son currently in first grade at Franklin Elementary and two other kids in daycare. Quote: “We have a $450 million budget that the board is asked to prioritize. We’re in an uncertain funding time and we need to be very careful with our resources. I’m thrilled that our community has invested so much in our schools, but we live in a very scary time and in a very uncertain time, particularly for budgeting, so right now I think my experience balancing budgets is a critical one.”

Psychology lecturer at UW-Whitewater Biggest issue: The achievement gap Personalized Pathways: Andrzejewski is opposed, concerned with the rollout of the program and the top-down communication from the administration. What makes him unique? Andrzejewski moonlights as a statistician, and says he’ll use that skill to bring a skeptical, critical eye to data and evidence before the board. Parent: daughter is a freshman at West High School. Quote: “The board has been sedentary; a lot of people have been incumbents for a long time, and the status quo isn’t going to cut it anymore.... I want to make sure we’re empowering teachers to do the best they can. I would love to find ways in which we could lower class sizes and increase pay for teachers.”

Attorney and partner at Stafford Rosenbaum LLP Biggest issue: The achievement gap Personalized Pathways: While supportive of pathways for its engaging and collaborative curriculum, Hughes would like to see the process slowed down to ensure the community is comfortable with the change. What makes him unique? Hughes is the only incumbent running for school board. He has served for nine years and is currently head of the board’s Operations Work Group. This past year, he spearheaded the efforts in support of the recent referendum. He is also part of the Leading Locally education group. Parent: His son and daughter graduated from East High School in 2005 and 2010, respectively. Quote: “I can be an effective spokesperson responding to the political attacks on public education. These are lively times with our schools, and we’re under attack from a lot of different directions, and my background and knowing the players and having dealt with these issues for a while is beneficial in being able to convey the positions of the district to those who are making policies that affect us.”

Juvenile defense lawyer, founder of Vander Meulen Law Office Biggest issue: Suspensions and expulsions Personalized Pathways: While optimistic about the opportunities pathways could provide, Vander Meulen has concerns with the program’s implementation and says it’s an example of inadequate communication from the district to the community. What makes her unique? Vander Meulen is the first person with autism to run for Madison school board. She says that perspective gives her the ability to communicate for those unable to communicate for themselves. Quote: “I wasn’t supposed to be educated. I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Asperger’s and attention deficit at 3 and a half. They told my parents I belonged in a school solely for the disabled. I know what it’s like to be in a different situation and to have to fight, and now it’s my turn to fight for others.”

FEBRUARY 16â&#x20AC;&#x201C;22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

n NEWS

Lock ’em up, take their money State prisons ramp up deductions from inmates who work or get outside help

ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

BY BILL LUEDERS

Imagine your job pays just 35 cents an hour. After two 40-hour weeks, that comes to $28. Your workplace provides basic meals and living quarters, but you must buy incidentals like deodorant, shampoo, lotion, writing materials, envelopes, postage, clothing items like gym shoes, and any non-provided food items or snacks. Now imagine reaching for that $28 to meet these needs and finding it’s been cut to $6.45. That’s the experience Reo L. Covington, an inmate at Oshkosh Correctional Institution, relates in a November letter to Peg Swan, a prisoners rights advocate in Richland County. It is one of many such letters that Swan has received in recent weeks. Across the state, Wisconsin prison inmates are crying foul about deductions being made to their trust accounts, which hold the money they make at prison jobs or is sent in by loved ones. They say the state Department of Corrections is abusing its new statutory authority to withhold money for restitution and other costs; the DOC has admitted that some deductions were made in error. “It really clearly has a lot of people in prison very upset,” says David Liners, state director of Wisdom, a faith-based advocacy group. “People are kind of desperate.” Molly Collins, acting executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, says her group has been hearing from inmates and will take a look at the new policy. But based on what she already knows, her assessment is harsh: “Is it horrible? Yes. Are they taking people’s dignity and what little bit of selfdetermination they have in prison? Yes.” The deductions target a wide range of costs, from court fees, victim restitution and “victim witness surcharges,” to supervision fees imposed by the DOC, to child support. Swan, a retired nurse’s aide who corresponds with inmates all over the state, calls what is happening “a huge scam — the DOC is literally stealing money from inmate’s accounts.” Early this week, Swan mailed a petition to Dane County Circuit Court seeking a John Doe probe into the deductions, alleging violations of law. The petition from her advocacy group, Forum for Understanding Prisons, includes testimonials from more than 20 state prison inmates. The DOC has said in correspondence obtained by Isthmus that it is applying its new powers appropriately. But the agency knew beforehand that its conversion to a new computer accounting system would result in errors that would have to be sorted out after the fact. “During recent testing, DOC discovered a distribution irregularity that affects fines, court costs and attorney fees,” wrote Jim Schwochert, administrator of the DOC’s Division of Adult Institutions, in an Oct. 3

memo to inmates. He asked for “your patience over the next few months while we roll out this new software system,” adding, “Should new issues arise, we will work diligently to resolve them as quickly as possible.” New issues arose. In prison-posted answers to frequently asked questions dated Oct. 14 and Nov. 3, the DOC provides mostly opaque answers to such questions as, “I paid off my obligation, why does it still show I owe?” The response: “If the court ordered you to pay restitution or court costs at the time of sentencing, then it is still an obligation you owe.” The memo said steps were being taken to “reconcile the balances.” On Jan. 18, Schwochert posted a memo acknowledging that the new system had made some “improper deductions” that would be

to a Nov. 30 letter to Wisconsin Secure Prison Facility inmate Nate Lindell, who challenged the deductions. The act also amended the state’s restitution statute to empower the DOC “to collect, from the defendant’s wages and from other moneys held in the defendant’s prisoner’s account, an amount or a percentage the department determines is reasonable for payment to victims.” But many state prison inmates contend the DOC is taking money for charges they don’t owe. Roy J. Jones, an inmate at Stanley Correctional Institution, has records showing he paid off his assessed court costs as of September 2004. But prison officials deducted $22.56 for court costs, later explaining that an earlier deduction was wrongly applied to a different

DAVID MICHAEL MILLER

reversed. “We apologize for the confusion this process has caused,” he wrote. Agency spokesman Tristan Cook admits that, for a time, “additional money beyond the amount DOC prescribed was being taken from a limited number of inmates’ accounts.” The collection of restitution was temporarily suspended to resolve the issue, and now, Cook says, “the correct amounts are being withdrawn.” The confiscated money, Cook explains, goes to “the entity or person to whom it is owed.” For instance, the subjects of court-ordered restitution are supposed to get those sums. Fees deducted for account overdrafts, loans or institution restitution go to the DOC. Act 355, which passed the Legislature last year, amended state statutes to let prison officials “use a prisoner’s money to be paid towards applicable surcharges, victim restitution, or the benefit of the prisoner,” according

surcharge and needed to be paid again. Jones is among the petitioners seeking an outside probe. In some cases, prison officials have acknowledged errors. A Nov. 28 information request from Matt Elliott, an inmate at New Lisbon Correctional Institution, stated: “You took 120 percent of $60 I just received!... It is extremely clear you do not know what you are doing.” A prison official responded, “This was due to a computer glitch. Your disrespectful words are not appreciated!” In a follow-up exchange, the same official told Elliott, “That money has been distributed and we cannot give it back. We were not aware this glitch was happening.” Elliott, who provided these records to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, expounded in an accompanying letter: “To me it seems like straight-up theft. If I were a store and I kept charging you $20 every week after you only made one purchase from me,

then told me I won’t refund your money because this has already been distributed or because there was a computer glitch, are you just going to roll over and say, ‘Oh well, my loss’?” DOC spokesman Cook says the agency “determined that 50 percent of wages and moneys held in an inmate’s trust account is reasonable for the purposes of this statutory provision.” But, he notes, “Inmates with multiple obligations may see 100 percent of their wages or moneys withheld.” A Jan. 25 memo from an official at Columbia Correctional Institution calls the notion that 50 percent represents an upper limit for deductions a “common misbelief.” Swan says she’s heard from inmates reporting that 100 percent of money sent in for them is being confiscated: “So you send $50 to your loved one and he gets zero.” Some inmates have been informed they owe hundreds of dollars in debts and obligations going back more than 20 years. Beverly Walker has stuck by a man who has been locked up for more than two decades. Now she’s sticking up for him as well. Walker says the money she sent her husband, Baron, an inmate at Oakhill Correctional Institution near Madison, used to be subject to just a 10 percent deduction — to a fund set aside for his eventual release. Suddenly last fall, the prison began withholding 60 percent, including a 50 percent deduction for restitution, she says. “If I sent him $100, he would get $40,” says Walker, a consultant on social justice issues for Wisdom and other clients. “I had to continually send in larger sums of money so he could meet his basic needs.” Baron Walker buys much of his own food because, as a Muslim, he cannot eat pork. Walker says Baron, convicted of armed robbery more than two decades ago, “was never assessed any fees for restitution. We still have not been provided with any explanation of where these fees come from.” Covington, in his letter to Swan, says he is “not unempathetic to victims who have suffered losses due to crime.” He believes they should get “reimbursement or restitution.” But he contends that his victim, a Madison bank he robbed in 2008, has never received any of the money deducted from his account. Moreover, he argues, the DOC’s new policy is “sabotaging the rehabilitative efforts” of state prison inmates. They can’t win for trying, and now are pushed into criminal activity while incarcerated just to get the things they need to survive. Shannon Ross, an inmate at Oakhill, says the new policy “just kind of chips away at morale” and “embitters” inmates, especially those who really need the money being taken. He says the change “expands the black market in here, which is not fruitful for corrections, as the word is meant.” n

n WEEK IN REVIEW

■ MADISON MATRIX the property in 2015 with hopes of turning it into a homeless shelter, but, as it turns out, people think the working poor are more desirable neighbors than the truly destitute.

THURSDAY, FEB. 9

ov. Scott Walker’s bienG nial budget plan includes more money for K-12 schools than was even requested by state Superintendent Tony Evers, but Madison schools may lose $16 million because they’re not in full compliance with Act 10, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Because sometimes, in politics, you have to punish children. n Members of the Dane County Board vote 30-3 to move forward with developing the former Messner property on East Washington Avenue into affordable-housing units. The county bought n

BIG CITY

TUESDAY, FEB. 14

alker’s budget would W eliminate the Department of Natural Resources’ subscriber-supported Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine, the State Journal reports. Silly science, it’s just liberal snowflake propaganda. n A German shepherd from Edgerton named Rumor wins top honors at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, besting 2,800

Is President Donald Trump getting ready to say “you’re fired” to chief of staff Reince Priebus? A close friend of Trump tells The New York Times Priebus is in “way over his head” and might be on the way out.

A new $240 million proposal to redevelop the Alliant Energy Center campus would renovate and expand existing buildings. This includes the Dane County Coliseum, which some county supervisors had proposed demolishing.

other pups. She’s the hero this town deserves. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 15

Madison’s ice rinks are officially closed for the season, officials announce. Yes, 50-degree temperatures in February are totally normal; nothing to see here. n Madison’s Street Use Staff Commission votes to allow Thursday night farmers’ markets on the 200-400 blocks of West Gorham Street for three nights this summer. Maybe the bounty will spread to the State Street retail establishments. n

WINNING

LOSING

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The Madison Parks Division needs an extra $2 million to expand Central Park after a recent audit found that the cost for the project was grossly underestimated.

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n NEWS

A keystone property City pushing for bigger Park Street development than neighborhood wants Wall purchased the 1.6-acre dairy site in 2015 for $3.5 million, according to city records, and says lenders are reluctant to back an apartment project that might struggle with empty storefronts. T. Wall Properties is planning 156 apartment units in Parr d. St. R three buildings, the tally T. Wall Properties’ four-story proposal for the triangle of Park Street r e est at four stories with an h c and Fish Hatchery Road pleases neighbors. But city officials want upper-story loft. Struc- Sh at H something taller, with more retail space. o h tured parking would be rt s W Fi . M of one L provided at a ratio S id ak t. la es stall per unit. “The new four-story and some sort of architectural statement at nd id e S That is far smallert. version does not mea- the corner. S t. than two previous prosure up, nor is it consis- Wall has yet to submit final plans or any arposals, including a plan tent with plan recom- chitectural drawings for the reconfigured projfor a pair of five-story buildings with 6,000 mendations for this site that date back ect, which is scheduled for another presentasquare feet of commercial space that was to 2002,” city planner Tim Parks told the tion before the city Urban Design Commission approved by the city council in 2015. commission. “What is being proposed on Feb. 22. In the new proposal, Wall is also begrudg- now is a smaller project in both size and Ald. Sara Eskrich, who represents the area, ingly including 1,900 square feet of first-floor character. In this location, more — rather hasn’t taken a formal position on the smaller commercial space even though he thinks it’s than less — height and development is project, much to the chagrin of some neighbors going to be difficult to rent. desired.’ who’d like to get her on board with Wall’s four Wall maintains there are already 12,000 When the dairy plant closed in 2004, story proposal. square feet of vacant space between this it prompted widespread discussion about “I take positions on developments only triangle intersection and West Washington what might come next. Some mentioned once they arrive at decision-making commisAvenue. a hotel that could serve the medical fa- sions, in order to engage with neighborhood “You just don’t have the [population] den- cilities along the Park Street corridor and residents openly and in an unbiased manner,” sity to support that much commercial space nearby UW-Madison campus. she says. But she adds that commercial space at on Park Street,” says Wall. “Maybe in another Finally, in 2012, UW Health built a four- street level “is critical to the long-term vibrancy 10 years, but not right now.” story clinic and parking ramp on the south of Park Street.” Representatives from T. Wall Properties end of the site. It left open the most vis- Several neighbors have grown excited over went before the Urban Design Commission ible piece of the property. City planners talk about having an ice cream parlor occupying with the scaled-down plans in November continued to push for a six- or seven-story ground-floor commercial space in the project, but were rebuffed over the lack of com- mixed-use project at Park and Fish Hatch- something that would pay homage to the former mercial space and the size of the corner ery centered around workforce housing dairy — without generating bar-time traffic. building. The commission referred the and mass transit. But now they seem re- “Something like that might actually begin to matter and instructed the developer to signed to a smaller development as long as create the ‘walkable’ Park Street that everybody make changes. it includes ground-floor commercial space keeps talking about,” says Rothburd. n St.

S. Pa rk

. W

For more than a decade, the triangular intersection at South Park Street and Fish Hatchery Road has been waiting for a rebirth. The former Bancroft Dairy site, once billed as the “keystone property” to redevelopment in south Madison, remains a vacant lot. City planners have long envisioned a major project there, featuring a mix of housing and commercial spaces. A 2005 Wingra BUILD study said the parcel should be transformed into “a landmark, flatiron structure that takes full advantage of the prime location, access and visibility.” But whether that vision will be realized remains in doubt. Questions about the viability of the retail market along Park Street combined with concerns about the scope of the project have led to a series of starts and stops. Developer Terrence Wall is now trying to finesse a $15 million project that will meet the city’s desire for more density at the site while also currying favor with the increasingly proactive Bay Creek neighborhood. The gentrifying south-side neighborhood — which recently pushed back against plans for a four-story apartment project at the site of the Jade Garden restaurant — remains largely opposed to any intensive uses at the dairy site. A survey of residents found that 90 percent want a maximum four-story building there with limited late-night activity. “Terrence came to us looking for our support for a smaller project,” says Bay Creek resident Carrie Rothburd, who lives near the site. “He’s doing just about everything we’ve asked for.”

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Judicial oversight Marque e law professor debunks myths surrounding mass incarceration BY ERIK GUNN

The conventional wisdom about mass in- lawmakers’ rhetoric, has forged a public concarceration is that prisons are bursting at sensus in favor of stiff prison terms. the seams because lawmakers took away “There’s still in the political system a widethe discretion of judges when it comes time spread belief that longer sentences and tough to sentence people convicted of crimes. treatment of criminals will reduce crime,” says Prisons are bursting at the seams — more the law professor, whose interest in sentencthan four people in 1,000 are behind bars at ing policy dates back to his years at Yale Law any one time, a rate that’s risen sharply over School. “The research doesn’t really support the past four decades. that. Research shows that incarBut despite widespread ceration is more effective when belief that stiff mandatory it’s used sparingly.” sentences are to blame, MarBut O’Hear says misunderquette University law professtandings continue to cloud the sor Michael O’Hear argues discussion of mass incarceration. that it’s a lot more complicatHis book aims “to dispel some of ed — and that in Wisconsin, the myths.” judges kept a lot more control The underlying problem is over sentencing than some real enough. Over the last four deof their peers in other states. cades, O’Hear reports in his book, And that means solving the prison populations have explodproblem won’t be as simple ed. Wisconsin prisons held 2,046 as wiping away a slew of tough Michael O’Hear inmates in 1973, about 45 people sentencing laws. for every 100,000 state residents; O’Hear — who will speak Feb. 21 at by 2013, there were 22,471 inmates, more than UW-Madison — argues his case in a new 400 per 100,000. The national trend was similar, book, Wisconsin Sentencing in the Tough- with state prisons going from 178,835 inmates on-Crime Era, published in January by the in 1973 to 1.36 million in 2013. University of Wisconsin Press. It seeks to Yet the forces behind those trends aren’t explain, in the words of its subtitle, “How uniform. judges retained power and why mass incar“That story of law-driven mass incarceraceration happened anyway.” tion does hold true in some other states — The book comes amid growing debate most importantly in California,” O’Hear says. over the impact of the enormous growth in There, an especially stringent “three strikes” the prison population nationwide, a debate law mandating life in prison for people conthat touches on everything from racism to victed of a third felony helped fill state prisons drug laws to mental health treatment to the through the 1990s. sheer — and ever-increasing — cost of preOther states copied California, including venting and punishing crime. Wisconsin — yet here, “three strikes” was only O’Hear is no defender of mass incarcer- narrowly applied, and its effects were far more ation. And he knows that politics, including limited, he found.

Speaking his mind in the city he once ruled!

Read him online at

.com

By his own admission, O’Hear’s book doesn’t deeply explore the role of racism in the growth of prison populations — not because he thinks it’s trivial, he says, but because its complexity was beyond the scope of his research. The impact of race, he agrees, is worth greater study in its own right. O’Hear does believe there are solutions to the prison population bomb. One thing that can help, he suggests, is expanding effective alternatives to prison for certain offenders — something that even Republican lawmakers and Gov. Scott Walker have increased funding for in recent years. So would restoring some system of reducing sentences based on inmate behavior — but with greater transparency than the old parole system displayed. “I’m a big fan of good-conducttime laws,” O’Hear says. Still, he acknowledges that broaderbased reforms face stiff headwinds. Whatever their role in ramping up prison populations, lawmakers do help shape popular perceptions about sentencing policy, and those perceptions remain deeply, emotionally punitive. Says O’Hear: “The tough-on-crime politics of the 1990s are alive and well.” ■ O’Hear will speak Feb. 21 at UW-Madison Law School’s Lubar Commons, noon-1:30 pm, along with UW-Madison law professor Cecelia Klingele.

FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

starring former Madison Mayor

“Three strikes” and other laws ratcheting up prison sentences were part of a “tough on crime” trend that took hold in the 1980s and continued through the ’90s and beyond. In Wisconsin, O’Hear says, “the most important law adopted during this whole period was ‘Truth in Sentencing.’” That state measure essentially abolished the option of paroling inmates before the end of their prison terms. O’Hear joined the Marquette law faculty after three years in private practice in Chicago just as Truth in Sentencing was about to take effect amid dire predictions from lawyers and judges in the state that the prison system would all but collapse under its weight. Yet by the time that law was implemented in 2000, most of the growth in the state’s prison population had already taken place, topping 20,000. Incarceration leveled off at about 22,000 in 2004. O’Hear says that the evidence shows that after truth in sentencing, judges at least somewhat changed their sentencing practices — sometimes replacing longer terms that included parole with shorter ones now that parole was no longer an option. Sentencing severity did increase, he agrees, but the overall effect was less dramatic than critics had predicted. In many other instances, lawmakers in the 1980s and ‘90s who were worried about growing state budgets scaled back proposals that might have prompted even greater prison expansion than already took place, he adds. In an interview with former Gov. Tommy Thompson, O’Hear says, Thompson told him that while he was always concerned about being tough on crime, he also was determined to keep the state Department of Corrections budget lower than that of the UW System — and succeeded in doing so. Only after Thompson’s tenure did the balance shift, O’Hear reports.

Another challenge to conventional wisdom is O’Hear’s finding that tougher drug laws aren’t behind the soaring prison population in the 1980s and ’90s. Because of that perception and the related one blaming steeper mandatory minimum sentences for more widespread imprisonment, national reform movements have focused on eliminating mandatory minimums for drug crimes and developing better drug treatment programs. These may be worthwhile goals, but they have limitations. “Mandatory drug treatment in the criminal justice system is limited in what it can accomplish,” O’Hear says. Failure rates are high — which doesn’t mean they’re a waste of time, but does mean they need more persistence to improve them. “Drug addiction is an extremely difficult problem.” More to the point, however, the Wisconsin experience has been that “drugs are not the main driver” of the state’s higher prison population, he explains. “Sexual and violent offenses are.” Understanding these details and others is important, O’Hear says, because Wisconsin shows that more generous judicial discretion doesn’t guarantee a reduction in mass incarceration.

n OPINION

Walker budget creates opening for Dems The opposing party can now focus on issues other than school funding BY ALAN TALAGA Alan Talaga co-writes the Off the Square cartoon with Jon Lyons and blogs at Madland.

Gov. Scott Walker is running for a third term. He hasn’t announced it yet, but his intentions are pretty obvious with even the most cursory glance at his proposed budget. Lots of new funding for K-12 schools and flat tuition rates this year for the UW System before a tuition cut in fall 2018 — just weeks before the next election. The only way this budget could be more of a re-election ploy is if Walker included a line item to deliver free pancakes to every household in the state on Election Day. While Walker is trying to buy his way into a third term, he has given Democrats a tremendous opportunity — school funding doesn’t have to be the biggest issue in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign. In the 2012 recall and the 2014 election, schools were at the forefront. When Walker challengers Tom Barrett or Mary Burke talked about reinvesting in schools, the governor could turn around and frame it as a giveaway to teachers. To the average Wisconsinite, it looked like Democrats were more concerned with the well-being of teachers than anyone else. It is important for a Democratic candidate to support public schools, but the last two gubernatorial races were dominated by that topic alone. Major issues that affect large numbers of Wisconsinites went ignored or were underdiscussed. Of course, Democrats will still be asked how they would better fund Wisconsin’s schools. While they should be ready to discuss the inherent inequity in per-pupil funding and vouchers, these issues should not be the centerpiece of their campaigns or 30-second TV ads. Walker is going to try to steer the conversation back to Act 10 whenever he can, ransoming new funds for schools until districts like Madison agree to have employees pay an arbitrary percentage of their benefit plan. But Democrats shouldn’t take Walker’s bait; they should set their own agenda and control the

DAVID MICHAEL MILLER

conversation, not just react to the funding cuts of the last several budget cycles. Talk about raising wages. Start with an increase to the minimum wage. All of our neighbors except Iowa have raised their state minimum wage; come on, we should at least be able to do better than Iowa. Michigan even passed its wage increase under a Republican governor. If employers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula can afford to pay workers $8.90 an hour, Wisconsin’s employers should be able to as well. Instead of talking K-12, talk prenatal to 4. Day care is more expensive than college tuition in Wisconsin, putting us among the least affordable states in the nation when it comes to childcare. It is a tremendous burden for even middle-class Wisconsinites across many demographics. Democrats need to make a comeback in rural western Wisconsin. Much of that area was pulled in by the promise of jobs and revenue created by frac sand mining. Now, the number of mines has exploded

and longtime residents near the mines have seen their air quality plummet along with their property values. Give local residents more of a voice in the process. But Democrats don’t need to just win back rural voters. They also need to boost turnout outside of Dane County. If Democrats want to improve voter turnout in the Milwaukee area, they need to have the courage to push for reform of our state’s

THIS MODERN WORLD

criminal justice system. Our state faces the largest racial sentencing disparities in the nation, particularly in Milwaukee, where black offenders are prosecuted more often for nonviolent offenses than white offenders. We are sending people to prison, separating families for years at a time, for low-level drug crimes. As a result, nonviolent offenders are filling up our prisons. Wisconsin is spending far more than our neighboring states on corrections. Not only are taxpayers footing the bill to keep these people locked up, we are losing out on potentially productive members of the workforce in a graying state that desperately needs more workers. Minnesota sends far fewer people to prison, opting instead for more alternatives to incarceration. Despite this “soft-on-crime” attitude, the land of 10,000 lakes has yet to descend into a lawless wasteland. Finally, any Democratic gubernatorial candidate would be an absolute fool not to run on medical marijuana legalization. Democrats recently got a big boost on this issue from an unlikely source: Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester). Vos, arguably the most powerful member of the state Legislature, said last month he was open to legalization. There’s bipartisan support to move on it, and Walker is against it. That’s an opportunity. With school funding on the backburner, all of these issues are opportunities for Democrats this time around. It’s up to the Democrats to take advantage of them. n

BY TOM TOMORROW

ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

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■ FEEDBACK

Blame the media In “Lost in Wisconsin” (2/9/2017), Dave Cieslewicz found no space to mention what is arguably the top reason for the Republican takeover of Wisconsin and America: the complicit, complacent media with its fear of being seen as liberal for speaking truth to power. Instead we get false equivalencies and “both sides do it, he said she said” reporting with little or no analysis; just grab a quick quote from the other side. No mention either of dark money’s influence. Bill Dunn (via email) Please, please continue “Lost in Wisconsin” as a series. Clearly, as the author suggests, there is much more material here and many discussions to have. I’m mailing copies of the article to family and friends. It is the kind of incisive and dissecting conversation that we need to have to begin to reboot and reset. Give us more!! Teresa Mahoney (via email) Two of the main themes of “Lost in Wisconsin” were that Democrats need to listen more and have a more emotional message. On both counts I think Dems do a better job than the Republicans. Where we fall flat is in the actual messaging. For eight years President Obama did good work with great results, but rarely took credit for it. Dems also like to skirt around the issues they care most about, like pro-choice, welfare and government spending. We need to start

proudly owning these important stances. Finally, the Democrats should be able to stand up and agree that the government is too big at times and that the federal government should be less intrusive. State power is very important as long as no one is left behind. Eliminating inefficiency, corruption and graft while supporting good programs that help promote a standard of laws and expectations across this country are all wonderful and should be talked about openly. Democrats only lost by a few percentage points, so we don’t need to change direction dramatically to be successful, but we do need to get our thoughts out there in every village, township, city, county, state and federal elected office. No race should go uncontested. Jason Dorgan, Blue Mounds (via email)

Correction An article in the Feb. 9 issue, “Less Talk, More Action,” incorrectly reported that the Common Council will consider a resolution on Feb. 21 to hire a consultant to evaluate the possibility of running the city on 100 percent renewable energy. The date of that consideration has been postponed. Also, the city uses 51.3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, not including natural gas. It is set to build a 100-kilowatt solar system, not a kilowatt-hour system.

THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN THE HUMANITIES PRESEN

Share comments with Isthmus via email, edit@isthmus.com, and via Forum.isthmus.com, Facebook and Twitter, or write letters to Isthmus, 100 State St., Suite 301, Madison WI 53703. All comments are subject to editing. The views expressed here are solely those of the contributors. These opinions do not necessarily represent those of Isthmus Publishing Company.

THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES PRESENTS THE CENTER FOR THE OFF THE SQUARE BY HUMANITIES ALAN TALAGAPRESENTS & JON LYONS

WHAT WE KNOW, WHAT WE MISSED, WHAT’SWHAT NEXT:WE MISSED, WHAT WE KNOW, MAKING SENSE OF THE 2016 ELECTION WHAT’S NEXT: SENSE OF THE 2016 ELECTION withMAKING ALTA CHARO, KATHERINE CRAMER, LUCAS GRAVES,

THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES AND INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN THE HUMANITIES PRESENT THE CENTER CENTER FOR FOR THE THE HUMANITIES HUMANITIES AND AND THE THE CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES ANDPRESENT INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN HUMANITIES THE CENTER FOR HUMANITIES AND INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN THE THE HUMANITIES PRESENT THE CENTER FOR THE THE HUMANITIES ANDPRESENT INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN THE HUMANITIES INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN THE HUMANITIES INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN THE HUMANITIES PRESENT PRESENT

LOUISE YOUNG LOUISE YOUNG

F F

Professor of Japanese History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

LOUISE YOUNG SAF LOUISE YOUNG with ALTA CHARO, KATHERINE CRAMER, LUCAS GRAVES, SERGIO GONZALEZ, ERIK OLIN WRIGHT SAF RETHINKING EMPIRE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: S Professor of Japanese History, University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Japanese History, University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Japanese History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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■ COVER STORY

CALLING ALL

SURVIVORS

Training her troubled puppy helps Patricia McConnell confront her own demons BY PAT DILLON

■

PHOTOS BY NICK BERARD

atricia McConnell sits across an oak farm table

ing All Pets, McConnell helped clients tame their aggressive canines while dealing with her own demons — shame and guilt and fear. Despite her calm and friendly demeanor, McConnell battled severe symptoms, often imagining someone was poised to strike her with a baseball bat. She dodged dark spaces and avoided one-on-one encounters with men — even in professional settings. And then she brought home Willie — a darling pup and descendant of her beloved dog Luke — who quickly exposed himself as a traumatized mess, one she identified with. In The Education of Will, McConnell, who has also authored several bestselling books and DVDs on dog training and behavior, describes with humor and heartache how Willie’s turbulent reactions to everyday noises and movements, as if he were “living on the edge of terror,” mimicked her own. This story of mutual healing is timely and witty and brave. It will likely resonate with anyone who’s dealt with the painful fallout of abuse and touch the hearts of those who have loved troubled pets. And it offers surprising insights into human nature — often through the soul of a spirited canine.

Your book confronts your PTSD symptoms brought on by sexual assault and other traumas. How did these events affect your life? Part of what is so damaging about so many traumas is that beyond what happened to you, it’s kind of a crime against self. What is so pervasively, corrosively destructive about that is you begin to distrust yourself. I felt that because of the things that happened to me, I couldn’t trust my family, I couldn’t trust people outside my family, but, much worse, I felt like what happened was my fault. Who then could I count on?

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FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

at Redstart, the Black Earth farm she shares with her husband, Jim Billings. Her border collies Willie and Maggie and her King Charles Cavalier spaniel Tootsie alternate between seeking her attention and snoring at her feet. Outside, 10 ewes scrounge for feed atop an icy bluff. McConnell has to wait out the frozen conditions before safely sending the dogs out to bring the sheep down. The decision to leave them isn’t easy. “It’s hard to see the sheep stranded, but it’s important to listen to our collective wisdom,” says McConnell. “They know it’s too icy to risk coming down to the barn. I know it’s too dangerous to risk sending the dogs up, so right now I’m glad they’re a little pudgy — I know that they won’t starve.” Isthmus sat down to talk to McConnell about her powerful memoir, The Education of Will, where she reveals decades of silently managing post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by sexual assault and other traumas. (An excerpt from the book follows.) During her 25 years as a zoologist and animal behaviorist and 14 years co-hosting the popular radio show Call-

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he Wartmann Endowment for the Performing Arts Center and IKI Manufacturing Inc.

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undertaken approximately 1,000 tours in 97 different countries and, in that time, the boys have sung more than 27,000 concerts. There are currently 100 choristers between the ages of nine and fourteen, divided into four touring choirs. They perform about 300 concerts each year, attended by almost half a million spectators around the world.

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ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

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never before seen performances from around the world and exclusive behind the scenes access. Songs for Mary, a biography of the Virgin Mary in 21 motets and songs, followed in 2013. In 2015 they released Bridging the Gap – the Power of Singing and Good Shepherds. Also in 2015, the Choir entered a long-term partnership with Universal Music – Deutsche Grammophon. Their first release was a holiday recording called Merry Christmas from Vienna.

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– The Salt Lake Tribune

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n COVER STORY You write about the physical exhaustion you experienced raising Willie, putting you “on red alert that something horrible was about to happen.” How did you find the resolve to keep going? When Willie was at his worst I considered rehoming him. I talked to my staff about it, but what I didn’t tell them was that when he leapt up barking like a machine gun out of the blue, I’d become terrified. I would have to do deep breathing. One of the symptoms of PTSD is hyper-arousal, extreme startle response. Mine had seemed to die down, but when I got Willie it got way worse again. But after talking to my staff, I looked at his face, and I just knew that he had the same demons inside him that I did. I felt like, okay, I’m going to fix it for both of us. Your book is coming out just weeks after millions took to the streets in response to the inauguration of Donald Trump, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women. Many women are talking about their experiences with sexual assault for the first time. Are you ready to be in the forefront of that conversation? I’m ready to speak out. I’m ready to not just speak out for myself, but I’m ready to encourage everyone to speak out. I’m not just talking about survivors of assault; it’s also important for others to speak out. Every father needs to talk to his son. Every man needs to talk to his friends about what are acceptable behaviors — the difference between admiring a woman and having the right to touch her. It is critical for everyone to make it clear that there are boundaries. There are behaviors that are acceptable and require compassion and respect. That’s not a lot to ask.

VIENNA BOYS CHOIR

Your other two books, The Other End of the Leash and For the Love of a Dog, compare the perspectives of people and dogs. How did you approach writing The Education of Will? I was originally motivated by healing myself. I started writing as a form of therapy, with no commitment to publish. When Willie set me back, I was just forced to deal with the fact that I thought I had gotten better but I was nowhere near better enough. There’s a lot of symbolism in your book. How conscious were you of that? There are things that I was very aware of, like the bird songs, for instance. I love birds; they’re an important part of who I am. A big never seen performances part ofbefore this story is about place, living on the land inaround southern andexclusive the birds from theWisconsin, world and are such an integral part of place. They are behind the scenes access. Songs for also symbolic of having a voice.

Mary, a biography of the Virgin Mary in 21 motets and songs, followed in 2013. In 2015 they released Bridging the Gap – the Power Singingwilland Patriciaof McConnell read from The Education Will atthe A Room of Good Shepherds. Also in of 2015, One’s Own at 6 p.m. on Feb. 22. Choir entered a long-term partnership with Universal Music – Deutsche Grammophon. Their first release was a holiday recording called Merry Christmas from Vienna.

Your writing has a lightness and sense of humor to it, despite the serious content. One of the goals of this book is to improve my writing. I value it more than I can say. My father loved literature, and he’d take us into his library and say, “Now, what would be the perfect book for you?” Brilliant writers just blow me away, so to be able to write well is something that means the world to me. My two editors helped me with this book, and I’m eternally grateful. They pushed me and educated me and forced me to be a better writer. Why did you tell this story? Stories are part of what keep us connected, and being connected is inherent to who we are, and where we gain our strength. My hope is that this book will help others as much as reading other memoirs helped me. They enabled me to change my life story from one of being a victim into one of being a survivor. I also wrote this book for dogs. Dogs, too, can be traumatized, and need compassion and understanding, not “dominance” and force. We need to fight every day against the myth that force is power. Force is the absence of true power, and forcing frightened, traumatized dogs into “behaving” harms dogs, and diminishes us. Dogs need benevolent social connections too; I think that’s part of why we love them so much. I hope everyone who reads The Education of Will comes away feeling empowered, and knowing that with the right support, both people and dogs can heal from almost anything. Are you scared of going public with this part of your life? Yes. I have visions of standing mute and blank-eyed in front of the audience once I go on book tour, too cowardly to even begin to speak. But, as Brené Brown so eloquently reminds us in her books and TED Talks, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable — to accept and forgive our humanity — doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us stronger.

CHAPTER THREE

remained down and focused on the smells of other dogs. He returned in adolescence with a serious aggression problem toward other dogs. Since then, hundreds of dogs had entered my office and ignored me, slamming their noses to the ground, snorting their way around the room as they sucked up the scents of my four-legged clientele. It didn’t matter if they were puppies, adolescents or full-grown dogs, obsessive sniffing appeared to correlate with one thing: serious aggression toward other dogs. As Willie snorted around, his nose pressed to the grass, I realized I had been holding my breath. I made myself take some deep breaths and waited for Willie to finish sniffing. He continued. I waited. The air forced in and out of his nose was so loud, it sounded like it was powered by an industrial bellows. Eventually, it was time to go inside. I called his name. No response; not even a flick of an ear. I crouched and held a treat within an inch of his nose. Nothing. Willie continued to suck up the dogs’ scents like a dehydrated elephant at a water hole. After a few more attempts to lure him inside, I picked him up and carried him in. One look at the receptionists and Willie melted into pudding. Eyes glowing, he licked faces and wagged his entire body, charming everyone. He thought nothing of his vaccination — he was too

busy kissing the vet’s face. Willie wiggled gleefully as the vet examined his mouth, and he squiggled and happy-faced his way throughout the entire exam. When we were done, the vet commented on what an adorable pup he was. I put him down on the floor, his puppy leash tangling around his oversize paws. Willie and I smiled our way out into the lobby. Then, horror of horrors, we discovered a bichon frise puppy sitting on the linoleum like the disembodied tail of a rabbit. A bichon puppy is a tiny thing, as intimidating as a fluff of whipped cream. Unless you were Willie. All happiness gone, Willie’s body went stiff, his mouth snapped shut, and he backed up as if he had seen a monster. I was looking at an adorable fuzzball of cuteness. He was looking at Godzilla. “Willie, Willie!” I said cheerfully, trying to jolly him up and show him there was nothing to be afraid of. He dived under a chair and began to growl. I took some more deep breaths, hauled him out, and put him in the car. It might seem strange to worry about the behavior of an eight-week-old puppy, but animal behaviorists know that even young pups can act in ways that suggest serious problems later on in life. Did your pup chew up the remote control? Think nothing of it; that’s as normal as a toddler who wants to put everything in her mouth. You expect it, deal with it, and it goes away. Did an eight-week-old pup go stiff and emit a menacing growl right out of a horror movie while standing over a piece of popcorn? That’s not typical and is predictive of serious trouble if not handled right away. Time to call a trainer or behaviorist — or maybe Stephen King with a scene suggestion. The problem with Willie wasn’t just what he was doing; it was the age at which he was doing it. His behavior replicated that of mature dogs whose extreme fear of other dogs had developed into teeth-bared, hard-eyed aggression. Adult behavior is rarely a good thing to see in a puppy, but it happens. “Puppies of the Corn,” I call them: dogs who, like the glaze-eyed children in horror movies, are adorable one moment and terrifying another. Babies aren’t supposed to act like aggressive grownups, and it is chilling when they do.

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FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

ill, who soon became Willie, lay curled up in the crate beside me as I drove him to his first vet appointment, a few days after I had returned his brother to the breeder. He kept his chin flat on the floor of the crate, his eyes looking into mine every time I glanced in his direction. The countryside was awash with the yellow of sunflowers and goldenrod and the green of head-high cornstalks. It was hot, so I parked in the shade on the side of the building, in a small lot bracketed by the drone of traffic and the sound of dogs barking. As I lifted Willie from the car and the barking got louder, he panicked and flailed out of my arms with the strength of a dog 10 times his size. He tumbled onto the ground and began streaking toward the road, moving as far away from the barking as he could get. An eight-week-old puppy is pretty fast, but I was able to catch up and grab him before he committed suicide on the highway. Hearts beating against each other’s chests, I carried him back to the clinic, sat down on the cement steps, and held him as I tried to calm us both. It was unclear who was more frightened. After a few minutes it was time to move on, so I checked his collar and leash to ensure that they would stay attached. I checked them again. And again. I’d worked professionally with dogs for almost two decades by the time I got Willie, but the incident eroded my faith in my ability to keep a puppy safe. When I set him down, Willie put his nose down in front of the clinic and began to sniff like an industrial vacuum cleaner, so hard that his nose was scraping against the concrete. I expected his nose to start lengthening like that of an animated creature in a Disney movie. My heart fell. I knew what this sniffing might mean. His uncle Luke would have quickly sniffed his way around the area and happily moved on, anticipating what was coming next. But there was no sense of curiosity in Willie’s behavior; it was desperate and obsessive and foretold serious trouble as he got older. Early in my career I had seen a puppy named Yugo, a brindle-brown Labrador cross who entered my office as if his nose were attached to the carpet. He managed a weak wag when his olfactory investigations brought him close to me, but his head

■ COVER STORY Once I was asked to evaluate a litter of sevenweek-old Labrador puppies, and I was taken aback by their responses when I gently lay them down on their backs. Usually, puppies will squirm a bit and then settle down, perhaps mouthing your hands with bright eyes and cheerful faces. A few will go soft and still, eyes all liquid innocence. However, four of the puppies in this litter fought as though their lives depended on it, then went rigid while their eyes turned into cold, glittery marbles that stared straight into my own. If they’d had a gun, I think they would have used it. Two of them tried to leap up and bite my face, snarling as they did. Oh, my. I followed their progress and learned that three of them had been euthanized as young adults because they had bitten so many people. McConnell, at age 15, training her dog Julie.

With cases like that in mind, I called Willie’s breeder when we got back home to ask if anything had happened in his past to explain his behavior. But nothing she knew of could explain Willie’s reaction to other dogs. His parents had good dispositions, Willie had played well with his littermates, and she was aware of no traumatic incident related to the other dogs. Willie had seemed cautious when he first met my other dogs, but he’d quickly become comfortable around them. Lassie had even begun teaching him to play tug games with her. His behavior at the vet clinic was inexplicable. What could have happened to turn a squirming, happyfaced puppy into a terrified wreck in the presence of unfamiliar dogs? ■

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Can art be taught through the radio? WHA’s Let’s Draw brought art education to classrooms throughout Wisconsin from 1936 to 1970. This exhibit combines a look at Let’s Draw with work by six artists who take very different approaches to drawing: Emily Belknap, Tony Conrad, Nina Ghanbarzadeh, Zach Mory, Lee Mothes, and Katie Ries.

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ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

Thanks to Wisconsin Academy donors, members, and the following partners and sponsors.

Overture Center for the Arts • Madison, Wisconsin

For related events, visit wisconsinacademy.org/gallery Presented in partnership with Wisconsin Public Radio

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Going fat Oversized tires create big fun on ice and snow BY MICHAEL POPKE

driving a tank,” says Navarro, 33, a longtime triathlete who competed on tri teams during postgraduate studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the UW-Madison. She’s also participated in IRONMAN Wisconsin. “The majority of people that are on fat bikes aren’t racers,” says Isaac Neff, who was a longtime bicycle shop manager in Madison before opening the mobile business Neff Cycle Service last year, specializing in off-road bikes. “They’re actually casual riders, and I think that’s why the bikes have been so popular in Madison.” For those not in the know, fat bikes are off-road cycles with oversized tires that typically measure between 4 and 5 inches wide. By

comparison, many mountain bike tires are in the 2- to 4-inch range. Fat bikes provide greater riding stability and better tire grip, which make them ideal for traversing snow, sand or mud. A decent fat bike with an aluminum or steel frame costs about $1,000. Fat bikes rolled onto the local cycling scene about seven years ago, according to Neff, a national cyclocross champion. “My opinion at the time was that they were kind of ridiculous,” he says. “But riding them changed my mind. Riding on snow is particularly fun to do. You just have to try it.” Many local cyclists have done just that. Fat bikes provide year-round riding opportunities

for commuters, and many mountain bike enthusiasts have gone fat, too. “When you ride a fat bike, it puts a huge smile on your face,” says Lee Unwin, organizer of the Madison Winter Festival Fat Bike Race at Elver Park on Feb. 18. “It’s like riding a giant tractor around. You feel like you can go anywhere. They are very stable, durable and relatively inexpensive compared to ‘regular’ bikes.” The nighttime race, also known as “Winter Fat,” runs from 8 to 9:30 p.m. on a

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Kristina Navarro, a kinesiology professor, never rode a fat bike competitively until last year. Yet in the past month alone, she won Madison’s Frozen Assets Fat Bike Race, sponsored by the Clean Lakes Alliance, placed second in the Snowshoe Scurry in Pleasant View and, most impressively, was crowned champion in the “Master” category for females between ages 30 and 39 at the 2017 USA Cycling Fat Bike Nationals in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “What is awesome about fat bikes is that anybody can pick one up and ride, and it’s such a fun way to get outside in the winter. But the first time I got on one, I felt like I was

n FOOD & DRINK

I brake for fernbrake Five Star Korean BBQ has true Korean touches — but no barbecue BY AMELIA COOK FONTELLA

Five Star Korean BBQ gives out a number of false cues right from the get-go. Despite its name, the place doesn’t currently offer Korean barbecue (that’s the dish that’s cooked on tabletop grills), although it is in the works. Nor is it a sushi place, despite a bright green sign in the window that reads “Sushi Fish.” Five Star, in the former Blair Street BBQ at the corner of Blair Street and East Washington Avenue, focuses on Korean cuisine. I was eager to try the bibimbap, as it’s one of my favorite Korean dishes. This beautiful, veggie-laden rice dish comes with a rainbow of turnips, zucchini, bean sprouts, carrots, mushrooms, spinach and fernbrake (a Korean green, also known as gosari). It also has a small amount of beef, which the menu describes as “ground.” Instead, the beef is thinly sliced, which was a pleasant surprise. The dish is topped with a fried egg, perfectly cooked with crispy edges. For an extra buck, get it in a hot stone bowl, which will transform some of the rice into a crunchy delight. Meat lovers should try the bulgogi, the closest Five Star currently gets to barbecue. Sliced chicken, pork or beef is marinated in a sauce that offers a magic combination of sweet and umami, and is then grilled and brought to the table sizzling. Save for some sesame seeds, there’s no garnish, but it doesn’t need any. It’s simply a pile of meaty goodness, served with a side of rice. I tried the beef, and every bite was tender. Bulgogi is a simple dish, but has big, rich flavors. I was excited to find ja jang myun, a Ko-

rean take on a Chinese dish, on the menu. It’s popular in Korea, but I’ve never seen it at any Madison-area restaurants. A family-size bowl of wheat noodles comes buried under a thick, black soybean sauce topped with julienned cucumbers. Hidden in the dark sauce are tiny cubes of pork, potato, carrot and zucchini. It’s sweet and slightly metallic-tasting, making me think of SpaghettiOs (and not in a bad way). There are more than a dozen entree-sized soups on the menu. Many of them have a rich, red spicy broth that derives its color and much of its flavor from the same hot pepper flakes used in kimchi, the fermented cabbage that’s a staple of Korean cuisine. Yook gae jang includes beef and a flurry of add-ons, including green onion, mushroom, egg and thin rice noodles. Some restaurants skip the fernbrake (it can be expensive), but here it adds a wonderful earthiness. The shredded beef, in a tangled ball in the middle of the bowl, is fairly bland, especially compared to the beef in other dishes. Pescatarians will have an easier time ordering here than vegetarians, who may end up ordering meat entrees without the meat. There’s no dedicated vegetarian section to the menu. Entrees come with traditional banchan, an assortment of side dishes for the table to share. During my visits, two types of house-

Eats events

Brunch social ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

Sunday, Feb. 19

Free baked goods. Need we say more? Gluten Free Badgers is hosting the social at newly opened Bloom Bake Shop. Plenty of gluten-free (and vegan) cookies, cupcakes, biscuits and toaster pastries will be available. 1851 Monroe St., 11 am-noon. More info on the Gluten Free Badgers Facebook page.

A perfectly cooked fried egg tops off the bibimbap, which has a bounty of beautiful veggies.

FIVE STAR KOREAN BBQ 605 E. Washington Ave., 608-630-9840 11 am-10 pm Tues.-Sun. $6-$22

LAURA ZASTROW

made kimchi made an appearance, along with pickled turnips, seaweed, broccoli, eggplant, a green salad and fish cakes. While some Korean restaurants bring these sides early in the meal like an appetizer, here they were always served simultaneously with the entrees. The banchan, along with generously sized entrees, makes appetizers almost superfluous, but it’s worth making room for the Korean dumplings called mandoo. The mandoo wrappers are as thin as noodles, with great texture.

The steamed kimchi mandoo are plump, belly button-shaped dumplings filled with chopped kimchi and ground pork. They’re steamy and soft, a perfect way to start a meal. The meat mandoo is equally delicious. Filled with pork, glass noodles, cabbage and carrot, it’s good steamed or fried. Even though the food at Five Star is very good, the location leaves something to be desired. Five Star is marooned at a busy intersection with a very small parking lot that’s difficult to park in; otherwise, plan on parking at least a block away on East Main Street. Inside, bare purple walls and a mismatched tile floor don’t add anything in terms of atmosphere. Service is quirky, though friendly. Our server was at our table every few minutes to chat, but dirty dishes piled up, and water glasses remained unfilled. There are issues in the kitchen as well. When I attempted to order a kimchi pancake and kimchi jjigae soup, I was told the kimchi wouldn’t be fermented enough to use in those dishes for 10 to 15 days. (Apparently what kimchi there was ended up rationed to the banchan.) I was shocked. I can’t imagine a Korean restaurant surviving nearly two weeks without an ample supply of kimchi. While the food that’s available is consistently good, Five Star Korean BBQ needs to get some kimchi. Stat. n

Food news Pop-up Southern dinner

Disco Fries

Zandrus’ Tapas

Tuesday, Feb. 21

615 State St.

419 State St.

A Pig in a Fur Coat chef Dan Bonanno is whipping up a “modern Southern meal” to raise funds for the Goodman Community Center’s TEENworks employment program. Menu includes smoked brisket, chicken, baked beans, cornbread, collards, coleslaw and apple cobbler with ice cream. Tickets ($15) at tinyurl.com/goodmanpopup. At 149 Waubesa St., 5:30-7:30 pm.

Minnesota-based Disco Fries is holding a soft opening this week and is expected to be fully open on Feb. 22. Madison is home to only the second Disco Fries; the flagship store at the Mall of America features a Disco Fries’ slightly different menu. “Breakfast All Day.” Here, look for Southernfried poutine featuring fried chicken, chicken gravy, cheese curds, onions and, of course, fries. The “Breakfast All Day” piles two fried eggs, bacon and American cheese on top of frites. Disco Fries will be open late (until 3 a.m. Thursday-Saturday). This will be the second specialty fry business to try to find a niche on State Street. Mad City Frites closed last April after being open for less than two years.

Palmyra Mediterranean Grill is going in a new direction. The restaurant, which opened in 2014 in the space that housed Yellow Jersey bicycle shop for nearly four decades, closed this winter for remodeling. It’s expected to reopen this spring with a new name, Zandrus’ Tapas. The focus will be on the Spanish side of Mediterranean cuisine. The Common Council will consider the restaurant’s liquor license application on March 7.

Winter dinner Wednesday, Feb. 22

The Hop Garden is teaming up with Paoli Bread and Brat Haus on a four-course meal featuring beet and goat cheese salad, charcuterie and cheese plate, pork tenderloin and chocolate truffles, paired with a beer flight. Tickets ($40) must be purchased in advance by calling 608848-7666 or 608-636-3220. At Hop Garden Tap Room, 6818 Canal St. in Paoli, 6 pm.

Sujeo 10 N. Livingston St.

Korean fried chicken, spare ribs, salt and pepper squid — Tory Miller’s Asianfusion restaurant is now offering home delivery for lunch and dinner. Orders can be placed online at sujeomadison. com or by phone at 608-630-9400.

Border crossings Beers worth traveling over state lines to drink In 1990’s The Hunt for Red October, Vasily Borodin (Sam Neill) is second in command to Sean Connery’s Marko Ramius aboard a Soviet nuclear submarine. At one point in the film, the two men are discussing their plans for (spoiler alert) their defection to the United States, and Borodin mentions his desire to live in the American West afterward. “I will live in Montana,” he declares. “I will have a pickup truck. Maybe even a...‘recreational vehicle.’ And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?” “No papers?” he asks Ramius, dubious. “No papers,” Ramius assures him. We can, for the time being, still cross state lines without offering ID or stating our purpose, and so long as we have that freedom, and since this is a beer column, let’s talk about beers worth going over state lines for. Obviously, there are nearby breweries worth visiting: Surly in Minneapolis, Goose Island in Chicago, Toppling Goliath in little Decorah, Iowa. But those beers distribute to Wisconsin. I’m talking about the beers that come from the far reaches of the United States but can’t quite make it across the border into our state. A few of these bad hombres are coming up from south of Wisconsin — Missouri, to be precise. Schlafly Beer is made by the Saint Louis Brewery, a confusing arrangement necessitated in part by a contentious

relationship between the brewing Schlaflys and their conservative icon relative, Phyllis Schlafly. The conservative Schlafly took issue with the family name being used to sell alcohol, though her lawsuit to prevent such use was ultimately dismissed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2016. So unless her surviving relatives — Ms. Schlafly passed away about a month after the ruling — continue the suit, you’ll still be able to walk into bottle shops in Illinois and eastern Iowa and ask for a Schlafly beer. Maybe its Tasmanian IPA, or its excellent Pumpkin Ale, a standard-bearer for the often love-it-or-leave-it style. Also from St. Louis, Urban Chestnut is distributing its classic Old World-style beers to Illinois shelves. Look for tongue-tying names like Schnickelfritz, Zwickel, and Stammtisch. Elsewhere in Missouri, and in a lot of states not named Wisconsin, Boulevard Beer brews a whole bunch of beers. Frankly, it’s easier to say which states Boulevard doesn’t distribute its classic Tank 7 saison or its big Smokestack Series beers. For now, Wisconsin isn’t one of them. Rumors, however, swirl; some folks wonder if maybe this is soon to change. Prairie Artisanal Ales hails from Oklahoma, and makes such sought-after stouts as Bomb! and Noir. Those beers and others are distributed to Iowa and Minnesota, but not Wisconsin. From farther west of the Mississippi, there are a great number of beer migrants not quite reaching

A bar and bottle shop

Kyle Nabilcy’s “Two-Cent Pint” column about beer and beer culture runs Tuesdays at Isthmus.com.

Diet tiki Rummin’ with the Devil from Gib’s is wonderfully weird

BarleyPop brings a West Coast combo to Madison self-serve doors that open to an impressive array of bottles. A bar that seats about 10 faces a long line of taps offering the products of local breweries, regional beer makers, national brands and a handful of imports. Hajdik also plans to have a regular tap reserved for ciders. “We want to offer a variety, from well-known and accessible, all the way to rare sours and barrel-aged beers,” says Hajdik. Opening weekend, premium sours and wild ales sold well. Funk Factory Geuzeria’s pear and cucumber lambic didn’t make it through opening night. BarleyPop’s taproom doesn’t serve food; however, Hajdik hopes to bring food carts to spaces nearby. Patrons can also bring in items from nearby restaurants. Bar pint prices start at $4/ glass. Growler prices vary, starting at around $12/ refill. The BarleyPop Tap and Shop is open 11 a.m.10 p.m. Monday-Wednesday; 11 a.m.-midnight Thursday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.

— ROBIN SHEPARD

The last time we spoke with Gib’s bartender Beau Devereaux, he was experimenting with aguafaba as a vegan alternative to an egg white cocktail. This week, he’s invented another weirdly creative health-food-inspired drink, a riff on a daquiri that may or may not have medicinal properties. The cocktail, Rummin’ with the Devil (like the Van Halen song), starts with a flourish — dry ice is poured into a shortstemmed goblet, creating an exciting smoky effect as the carbon dioxide sublimes. Is it necessary to chill a glass this way? No. Is it entertaining? Yes. The cocktail itself employs rum, aloe vera gel and honey — a combination that Devereaux learned via the internet is purported to cure cancer. A few drops of saline solution and orange flower water plus a few ounces of almond milk complete the cocktail, which is shaken vigorously, strained and garnished with a pineapple leaf.

The result is cool, refreshing and exotic. There’s no citrus, which is unusual, and the almond gives the cocktail a pleasant nuttiness and satisfying viscosity, which is helped along by the aloe. It feels rich but it’s actually light, and it’s low in sugar, putting it right in line with Devereaux’s personal mantra: “Drink light and snack heavy.”

— ALLISON GEYER

FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

Madison’s newest beer hangout is the BarleyPop Tap and Shop at 2045 Atwood Ave. It joins a host of other beer venues on Atwood that make up a “beer row” of sorts. But BarleyPop is a unique blend for the Madison area: part beer store and part tap room. BarleyPop sells about 200 bottled beers and 40 taps of draft selections. Patrons can drink those in the tap room; they can also carry out mix-and-match six-packs, 64-ounce growlers, and 32-ounce crowlers and howlers. Owners Jason Hajdik and Brandon Dorman are both from Madison, but Hajdik got the idea for BarleyPop after traveling to the West Coast and seeing similar businesses in Seattle and San Diego. The taproom is 1,800 square feet with a capacity of about 40. Near the entrance of the long, narrow bar room there’s a row of

Wisconsin terra firma. Durango, Colorado, sends cans of Ska Brewing’s lovely Modus Hoperandi and others to Illinois but, with the odd exception of North Carolina, no farther east. The distribution map of the wild beers of Crooked Stave looks like a route from a Ticket to Ride game, circuitous and haphazard. You’ll have to hit Iowa for those iconic 375 mL bottles of Nightmare on Brett and Vieille Artisanal Saison. Fort Collins, in particular, cranks out a lot of beer for a small Western city; neither Odell nor Funkwerks are sold here. The former makes everything from interesting sours to hoppy pale ales that are sold in Minnesota and Iowa; the latter’s beers are as funky as its name implies and only recently started distribution in those same states.

From the farthest of our teeming shores, the state of California, come a handful of breweries from cities proudly bearing Spanish-language names. San Marcos is the home of Port Brewing and its boutique offshoot The Lost Abbey. While many of Lost Abbey’s more well-known sours stay in-state, both Lost Abbey and Port distribute quality beers to the Chicago metropolitan area. From Paso Robles, Firestone Walker was recently welcomed into the Duvel Moortgat fold along with Boulevard. As such, an expansion of its distribution footprint would not be a total shock, but for now, the Chicago metro area is as close as it gets. (Iowa looks to come aboard soon, perhaps within months.) And though it was once partially brewed in the state of Minnesota, San Francisco’s 21st Amendment — yes, there are 21 of them and even more! — is now only narrowly available in the Twin Cities market. Look for its cans in cube-shaped four-packs, including a nice black IPA called Back in Black, or one of my favorites, the controversially fruity Hell or High Watermelon. So unless it’s Sunday in Minnesota (the state still prohibits liquor sales on that day), it doesn’t matter when you make a run over the border to buy beer, or why, or where it comes from. It’ll always be welcome to stay in Wisconsin until you’re ready to drink it. n

JUSTIN SPRECHER

BY KYLE NABILCY

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When the best swimmers in the state dive into the pool at the UW Natatorium for the 2017 WIAA State Swimming and Diving Championships on Feb. 17-18, the Madison area will be well represented. Daily Lunch & Drink Specials Madison Memorial is chasing its seventh TUESDAYS RAILS consecutive state$1.75 title after dominating the Big Eight Conference in dual meets for the FREE POOL Mon & Thur 9pm-close pastServing 20 years. Food But if the to Spartans’ 2 am! third-place performances in conference and sectional meets earlier this month are any indication, 119 W.they Main Madison 608-256-2263 willSt. need to swim•out of their minds www.to thenewparadiselounge .com beat Madison West and Middleton. A shakeup atop the Big Eight is imminent. The Regents have swimmers in all but one state event and could very well be crowned the new kings of Wisconsin high school swimming, but they will need to put together the meet of their lives to chase down Waukesha South-Catholic Memorial, which has been perched atop the Division 1 Wisconsin Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association rankings every week for the entire second half of the season. Hartland Arrowhead and Eau Claire Memorial-North also will be in the mix for a team title.

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all but one of the 11 events at state. The Wisconsin State Journal did the math: Monona Grove Top high school accounts for almost 11 percent recruit Paul DeLakis of the entire Division 2 field and competing in the 12.5 percent of the spots in the men’s 200 meter eight individual events. breaststroke. Madison Memorial, Middleton and Monona Grove also each will have one diver participating in the state meet. The Nat is an old building with steep bleacher seating and cramped spectator restrooms, but there’s also something magical about it. I’ve been there countless KEITH ALLEN times (as a swim parent but never a swimmer), and there’s nothing quite Eau Claire’s team is especially noteworthy, like hearing the roar when a relay race is as it’s led by senior Paul DeLakis, who’s built like determined by hundredths of a second, or Michael Phelps and, according to CollegeSwimwitnessing a new meet record, or noticing a ming.com, is the state’s top high school recruit grown man cry because his son swam faster and the sixth best in the country. than ever before. Those are times when the In Division 2, Monona Grove High School will place feels a little bit like the Olympics. be tough to beat, despite a powerful Madison If you’ve never attended a high school Edgewood team that won’t be far behind. The swim meet and want to know what all the Silver Eagles haven’t surrendered the top WISCA excitement is about, here’s your chance. ■ spot all season, and they will have swimmers in

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■ RECREATION

Fat bikes

Kristina Navarro never rode a fat bike competitively until last year. Now she’s a national champion.

continued from 21

2.5-kilometer course that winds through the upper woods near Elver Park’s sledding hill, across flat sections and rolling terrain. Only half the course will be lit, and riders will need to supply their own lights — although Unwin hopes to make lights available from a local vendor on race night. “Anyone and everyone with a fat bike is encouraged to come out, and no license is required,” he says, adding that this is the only time cyclists will have the opportunity to ride at Elver. “We have always made it a point that this is a fun race, and if you take it too seriously you will be disqualified. I think it’s one of the reasons it’s been so popular. We will award the top three men and women beer and cheese curds, so the only thing

we are serious about is [helping] the winners [get] their winter fat on.” The Frozen Assets Fat Bike Race two weeks ago was another nighttime event that began on Lake Mendota and looped around downtown Madison and the UW-Madison campus. “Offroad riding at night is super-fun,” Neff says, adding that most fat bike races happen during daylight hours. “It adds another layer of challenge.” “You can usually find a race within a couple hours of Madison just about every weekend of winter,” Unwin adds. “Fat biking has become so popular that even during the summer most mountain bike races have a class just for fat bikes.” Navarro, who lives in McFarland and works at both UW-Madison and UW-Whitewater,

trains year-round on multiple types of bikes. She laughs when admitting she even rode in early December when temperatures hit minus 10 degrees in Madison. But ski goggles and boots built specifically for riding fat bikes protected her from the cold. You’ll probably see Navarro out on the Winter Fat course, too. And she’s one of five pro-elite riders on the recently formed Team Neff Cycle Service racing team, which also includes 25 recreational racers. Team NCS participates at events in Wisconsin and around the country. They race in all disciplines, but off-road is the team’s specialty. “Madison has a really vibrant cycling scene,” Neff says. “And bigger, wider tires are really taking over.” ■

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The Organ in Oratorio & Opera Organist Samuel Hutchison with tenor Andrew Bidlack and bass Kyle Ketelsen

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MSO Principal Organist Samuel Hutchison and the colossal Klais join forces with two brilliant singers in Overture Hall for a program of favorite arias and overtures from Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, and other opera favorites.

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Arts organizations brace for Trump budget cuts BY JAY RATH

For the past month, the arts world has been in an uproar, wondering whether President Donald Trump will slash federal arts funding. Madison’s arts leaders are watching closely and preparing for the worst. “It could be very destabilizing, and I predict that many local arts organizations will not be able to survive it,” says Karin Wolf, administrator of the Madison Arts Commission. On Jan. 12, The Hill, a website and Washington, D.C., newspaper, reported that the new administration was planning to privatize the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. The article was quickly taken up by other press and circulated widely on social media. Americans for the Arts, a national advocacy nonprofit, immediately sent action alerts to members and began circulating a petition. “Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but I don’t think there’s reason to panic to the level that some are panicking already,” says George Tzougros, executive director of the Wisconsin Arts Board, which receives half its budget from the NEA. “Needless to say, it makes the arts community nervous,” he adds. “However, we’ve got to remember that there’s a long, democratic process ahead, where the president will have to offer a budget and the Congress will have to deal with that, and the people will have their say.” The NEA is an endowment in name only; the grants it awards are not drawn from interest on any principal. Its annual budget is $148 million, a comparatively minuscule part of the $4 trillion federal budget. The combined budgets of the NEH and NEA account for about .002 percent of federal discretionary spending. In the last decade, at least 10 city nonprofits have received direct support from the NEA, including the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Forward Theater, Madison Symphony, YMCA and Madison Children’s Museum. The NEA also provides $800,000 to the Wisconsin Arts Board. The board then grants funds to artists, organizations and local arts commissions. Wolf says the Madison Arts Commission has received more than $100,000 in grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board in the last decade. The commission’s annual grant budget is roughly $67,000, $10,000 of which comes from the arts board. The city also receives direct funding from the NEA through competitive grants. For example, NEA dollars helped launch the Madison Public Library’s popular Bubbler program, and the hiring of environmental artist Lorna Jordan, who helped design Central Park.

Wolf says any NEA cuts will also “affect the local arts ecology in general.” Federal arts dollars jump-start a leverage chain, because the state is required to match NEA funds. In addition, the cachet of NEA grants allows organizations to more easily find additional matches from individuals and the private sector. “Having the imprimatur of the NEA helps leverage other funding by stating that the work we are doing is artistically important and worthy of support,” says Madison Opera general director Kathryn Smith. Even relatively small grants can have a big impact. In its current fiscal year, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters received $10,000 from the NEA, $7150 from the Wisconsin Humanities Council and $2,000 from the Wisconsin Arts Board. Jane Elder, academy executive director, says the federal grants make up 18 percent of the group’s annual $106,000 gallery program budget. “That’s big for us, given how lean our operations are.” The existence of the Arts Board could even be at risk. During Gov. Scott Walker’s first term, state aid to the arts was deeply cut, from $2.4 million to $759,000 — just enough to match (and keep) NEA dollars. Without those federal funds, the governor and Legisla-

TO D

ture might be motivated to cut arts support altogether. “I couldn’t imagine there would not be plenty of ideas about that on the table,” says Anne Katz, executive director of Arts Wisconsin. “The governor of Mississippi has already forwarded a proposal to get rid of their arts commission.” Katz says she is especially concerned about access to the arts; the NEA estimates that 40 percent of its activities occur in high-poverty areas. “The money that the Arts Board gives out, and the NEA gives out, and the city and the county, is all about helping people participate in the arts,” she says. As President Trump is distracted by other matters, Tzougros remains concerned but not panicked. He’s even created an office poster: “Keep Calm and Create On.” ■

■ BOOKS

Mindful resistance Mare Chapman’s Unshakeable Confidence lays out a plan for female empowerment BY HOLLY HENSCHEN

Madison psychotherapist and meditation instructor Mare Chapman believes mindfulness is an important step toward empowerment. Chapman has distilled the nine-week course she’s taught for 20 years into a new self-published book, Unshakeable Confidence: The Freedom to Be Our Authentic Selves. Chapman’s class teaches women how to dismantle the damaging thought patterns instilled by a maledominated society while helping them learn to be at home in their own skin. Chapman believes that women’s selfconfidence is eroded by living in a sexist culture. “It’s still pervasive in our culture that women don’t matter as much [as men],” Chapman says. “The effect of sexism and misogyny over a lifetime just strips away our sense of our self.” When treated as subordinates, women deflect attention away from themselves and focus on the external “other.” This process leaves women caring for people to a fault, dependent on their approval and validation for self-worth. It also sets women up to

T H R O U G H Chapman’s book is based on a nine-week course she has taught for 20 years.

judge and doubt themselves, leading to mental 2 0 health issues. “Subordination is oppressive, and oppression is depressing. It creates a lot of anxiety and a lot of very uncomfortable self-consciousness,” Chapman says. “Our minds create a lot of fake news all the time.” In her first career as an occupational therapist, Chapman was founding director of Yahara House, a Madison community mental health center. But even in that leadership role, Chap-

1 man 7 noticed that she second-guessed her per-

formance and deferred to men. “So much of my energy and my attention was focused on ‘How should I look? What do I need to say? How should I respond?’ and being really attached to that external impression,” she says. Digging for answers, Chapman studied insight meditation. Its core intention is to release the mind from conditioned habits in order to see reality clearly and access one’s true nature.

“I thought, ‘Holy cow, this is a profoundly radical and revolutionary practice!’” she says. Chapman went on to study with Jon KabatZinn, one of the first researchers to put meditation on the scientific map. Her other teachers represent a who’s-who of the mindfulness movement: Jack Kornfield, Christina Feldman, Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh. Unshakeable Confidence is an experimental handbook written in a nurturing yet matter-of-fact tone. Guided meditations and contemplations cap each section, directing readers inward. “There’s a deep longing as human beings to be authentic, to have real connections with ourselves and with each other,” Chapman says. “It doesn’t feel good to be fake.” Chapman’s pleased that the timing of her book can help equip women with a broader awareness. “It is such an important time for women to really step up,” Chapman says. “We have to work with our minds to find our courage to step forward more strongly in the world, to have the confidence to run for office and to get involved.”■ Chapman will read from Unshakeable Confidence during a book launch on Feb. 17, 6 p.m., at A Room of One’s Own.

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n STAGE

Forest hauntings Kanopy’s Baba Yaga brings a Russian folk tale to life BY KATIE REISER

In Baba Yaga: A Portrait of the Wickedest Witch, Kanopy Dance uses modern dance, ballet, puppetry, masks, film and lavish costumes to explore the legend of the forestdwelling witch who is a prominent character in Slavic folklore and the center of the Russian folk tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful.” The show, which runs through Feb. 19 at Overture Center’s Promenade Hall, is clearly the product of extensive research by company co-directors Lisa Thurrell and Robert E. Cleary. At the center of Baba Yaga is a kind and earnest girl named Vasilisa (Olivia Rivard, an excellent dancer who does more acting than dancing in this show). She lives with her vile stepsisters (Cleary and Carlos Armacanqui, in drag), who tease and torment her, sending her into the spooky forest to obtain a replacement for the light that they have intentionally extinguished. She is accompanied on this hero’s journey by a magical doll — a gift from her dead mother. Along the way, she encounters graceful sprites, majestic trees, menacing minions, a spinning hut on chicken legs and Baba Yaga herself (played

with relish by Thurrell). Baba Yaga assigns Vasilisa impossible household tasks, threatening to boil her in a cauldron before eating her up if she can’t manage to complete them. Vasilisa achieves them all with the help of her doll and is able to bring back the light in the form of a glowing skull, which traumatizes her stepsisters. Thurrell, Cleary, Kerry Parker, Elyse Snider and Kiro Kopulos each contributed sections of choreography to the production, and most of the choreographers collaborated on the final scene, which ends in a zany chase scene with the characters running around the theater and across the stage. Some portions of the show are quite magical, like the scene choreographed by Thurrell, depicting Vasilisa’s arrival at Baba Yaga’s hut. A fence of human bones is represented by skull torches placed on the ground and projected on a screen behind the action. The cutest hut to ever be perched on chicken legs is brought to life by Maia Sauer (sporting a clever costume by designer David Quinn). Vasilisa is ushered through the forest by the Mystic Spirit (Brienna Tipler, who is consistently lovely), and the effect is otherworldly and new. Other scenes feel unnecessarily protracted. The exchange of the light from Baba

MATZNER PHOTOGRAPHY

David Quinn’s clever costume designs help create an otherworldly feel.

Yaga to Vasilisa goes on too long. However, on opening night there were more children in the audience than usual, and they didn’t seem to be squirming. Dee King plays the role of narrator with gusto and charm. He’s also in charge of manipulating the magic doll, which he fully commits to, but I’m wondering if the doll would have been more effective as a larger marionette. At times,

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the doll seems more Cabbage Patch Kid than magic doll, and her small movements get lost in all of the action swirling around her. I didn’t love everything about Baba Yaga, but I appreciate Kanopy’s search for unusual material. And certain elements of the show are unforgettable — including a trio of elaborately festooned tree dancers in a trippy procession through the woods. n

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■ MUSIC

Pulling it together

Scullin’s emotional songs reflect her soul-searching journey.

Katie Scullin’s album Pieces is an accomplished debut BY AARON R. CONKLIN

There’s a pile of reasons the title of local songstress Katie Scullin’s debut album, Pieces, is particularly apropos. Over the two years it took her to complete it, she and her bandmates recorded parts of it in six different places: her living room, her kitchen, her parents’ cabin and three different professional studios. Then there’s the emotional stuff, which is a little more difficult to untangle. Pieces is a culmination of a lot of hard work and soul-searching for Scullin, a fullvoiced vocalist who’s had no shortage of early-career success. She won SummerFest’s

Emerging Artist award while fronting the band Rivalries in 2009, has multiple Madison Area Music Awards in her trophy case and won 105.5 Triple M’s Studio M competition as recently as 2014. Even with all of that in her corner, Scullin’s had to overcome a few emotional obstacles. “I was at a point in my career when I wasn’t sure how to accomplish being a full-time musician,” says Scullin, who’s also mom to a 5-yearold. “There were definitely points of crash and burn, of asking myself, ‘Is this special enough to be something?’” It doesn’t take more than a single spin through the disc’s 11 tracks to get that the answer’s “yes” — and to see how it reflects her journey. The album’s opening track, “Whitney,”

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isn’t named for a particular person, but encapsulates the struggle to rise above feelings of self-doubt to keep pursuing your dreams. “Porch Hangs,” one of Scullin’s personal faves, is a slower track she actually began writing way back in 2009, while watching a thunderstorm come in soon after her boyfriend had been deployed to Iraq. The backbeat hits like the first raindrops on wooden planks before the song builds to a power-driven ballad fueled by con-

templative lyrics, ending up with Scullin looping the words, “running around in my head.” That has some current personal resonance, too. Now that she’s mastered the art of recording and releasing an album, the inevitable challenge of marketing it rolls in. Scullin is hoping to get to the point of being able to tour, and wants to turn her attention to writing and recording some acoustic numbers. For now, she’ll rock the songs in local clubs. She’ll host an album pre-release party at Funk’s Pub in Fitchburg on Feb. 17. As Skullin notes, it’s almost exactly two years after she began recording it. It sounds like the final piece just fell into place. ■

WISCONSIN UNION THEATER

“SHADOWLAND” BY PILOBOLUS

THE S OLDIER’ S TALE

Feb. 23, 2017

performed by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra with Narrator James DeVita Also on the program:

H AY DN

Symphony No. 102 in B-ﬂat major

BRAHMS

Violin Concerto in D major

Tickets: 258-41 41 or at Overture Center

SOLAS Mar. 5, 2017

RISE UP & SING!

UNIONTHEATER.WISC.EDU 608.265.ARTS TM

The Anonymous Fund

Evjue Foundation

FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017 ISTHMUS.COM

feat. Heritage Blues Orchestra and Ruthie Foster Mar. 9, 2017

PATRICIA B. McCONNELL

■ SCREENS

Our race problem I Am Not Your Negro brings James Baldwin’s writings to life BY MARJORIE BAUMGARTEN

READS FROM HER NEW MEMOIR

Wed, Feb. 22 at 6pm In this powerful, soul-searching memoir, animal behaviorist Dr. Patricia McConnell recounts for the first time the compelling story of her dark past, memories of which are triggered by a troubled dog named Will.

BOOK S NE W & USED 315 W. Gorham St. • (608) 257-7888 www.roomofonesown.com Mon.–Sat. 10–8, Sun. Noon–5

MADISON MUSIC COLLECTIVE PRESENTS

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When the great author, essayist and public intellectual James Baldwin died in 1987, he left behind 30 pages of an unfinished manuscript titled Remember This House. The manuscript was a personal account of the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., which occurred over the course of five years (1963-68). As Baldwin wrote in his book proposal, he wanted “these three lives to bang against and reveal each other, as in truth they did, and use their dreadful journey as a means of instructing the people whom they loved so much, who betrayed them, and for whom they gave their lives.” Now, 30 years after Baldwin’s death, the Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck has brought Remember This House to fruition with the Academy Award-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro. The film uses the words of Baldwin’s manuscript (narrated by screen great Samuel L. Jackson in his natural voice, copying neither Baldwin’s lyrical cadences nor the fiery oratorical delivery for which the actor has become known) to explore the genesis and depths of America’s so-called Negro problem. Peck blends historical and contemporary film and television footage, still photographs, written words and music set to Baldwin’s words to excavate the roots of America’s self-perpetuating fantasy. Baldwin’s lan-

Samuel L. Jackson narrates a scathing manuscript from Baldwin (center).

guage, always greatly admired by other writers, still comes through with its pinpoint precision, mellifluous rhythm and stirring undertow. An avid watcher of movies, Baldwin cites many examples of the complexity of screen identity, and Peck supports Baldwin’s examples with film clips that delve into the images of John Wayne, Doris Day, Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier. Peck also employs a great deal of historical material from the 1960s, documenting the marches, riots and political movements of the era as well as the commonalities and differences among the three murdered leaders. Baldwin calls out his country’s “moral apathy,” and how it is the responsibility of witnesses to get the story out. Peck enhances the archival material with fresh images of the racial offenses

Cinematic landmark Restoration of Daughters of the Dust is essential viewing BY JAMES KREUL

Bobby Watson

alto sax

Donald Brown piano

Ray “Bulldog” Drummond bass

Marvin “Smitty” Smith drums

SUNDAY, FEB. 19 ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16–22, 2017

3 PM CONCERT

(doors open 2:30 pm)

FIRST UNITARIAN SOCIETY ATRIUM

900 University Bay Dr., Madison, WI

Tickets available NOW at: madisonmusiccollective.org IN ADVANCE: Gen’l Admission $25/$20 MMC, MJS AT THE DOOR: $30/$25 MMC, MJS STUDENTS: $10 with ID

shoved into public light by the recent Black Lives Matter movement, which, despite lending I Am Not Your Negro a contemporaneous context, also permanently fixes the film in time (perhaps to its long-term detriment). Ideas and their visual illustrations come at the viewer in a cascading torrent. The editing by Alexandra Strauss deserves its own recognition for its painstaking exactness. Never one to toe any party line, Baldwin was not a Black Muslim or Christian, a member of the NAACP or the Black Power movement. He had an acuteness of vision that was distinctly his own, and his work belongs on every bookshelf in America. Now, with the wide release of I Am Not Your Negro, Baldwin’s words can be heard on every movie screen in the land. ■

Last year’s Academy Awards were tagged #SoWhiteOscars, but not long ago filmmaker Julie Dash faced #SoWhiteMaleFilm, period. Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) was the first feature film by an African American woman to receive wide theatrical distribution in the U.S. The Library of Congress selected it as a landmark independent film for the National Film Registry in 2004. The UW-Cinematheque screens the digital restoration of Daughters on Feb. 17, introducing it to a generation that might be unaware of the obstacles Dash overcame as a black female filmmaker. Dash cites her father’s Gullah family as the inspiration for Daughters. The Gullah are descendants of slaves on the coastal Sea Islands who developed their own distinct culture and dialect of English creolized from West African languages. When the film begins, it’s 1902, and the Peazant family prepares to leave their generational home at Ibo Landing on St. Simons Island, Georgia. The extended Peazant

Director Julie Dash based the film on her Gullah ancestors.

family, including some who have already moved North, assemble for one final meal together before they depart. Nana Peazant (Cora Lee Day), the matriarch, insists on remaining at Ibo Landing to preserve the old ways and maintain a connection to their ancestors. Grandson Eli (Adisa Anderson) and his wife Eula (Alva Rogers) are expecting a child with an uncertain paternity. That unborn child, linking past and future, appears as a spirit and provides voice-over narration for the film (Kay-Lynn Warren).

Dash emerged during the “L.A. Rebellion” of African American filmmakers coming out of UCLA’s film school. Led by Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Haile Gerima (Bush Mama), these filmmakers sought a wider range of images and stories of African Americans, and explored alternative forms of storytelling. While Dash could have made a linear family melodrama, Daughters plays out like an unfamiliar ritual, the significance of which we have to learn, along with its rules, as we watch. The Peazants speak in Gullah, which is challenging to understand at times (one voice-over has subtitles). But along with the deliberately paced lyrical beach imagery, that spoken language provides a rhythm essential to the culture that Dash has affectionately re-created. After 26 years, Daughters of the Dust remains fresh and vibrant, perhaps because few subsequent African American directors have shared the L.A. Rebellion’s vision while working in the mainstream. By abandoning recognizable forms, Dash reminds us that change must be preceded by seeing things anew. ■

Revenge of the Ninja: A man who comes to the U.S. after his family is killed by ninjas discovers he has been set up as a heroin importer. Central Library, Feb. 16, 6:30 pm. Malcolm X: Black History Month screening: Spike Lee’s epic biopic about the Black Nationalist leader (Denzel Washington). UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 16, 7 pm. Loving: Black History Month screening: Biopic about Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple arrested for their marriage in Virginia who took the fight to the Supreme Court. UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 17-18 (6 pm) and Feb. 19 (3 pm).

f Stop down to sample all o le d n a h n a c u o y i il h c e h t SATURDAY, FEB. 18 . 6-8PM $10 for Adults • FREE for Children (10 & under)

15 RECIPES You Decide The People’s Choice Winner!

Hell or High Water: Estranged brothers go on a bank-robbing spree as revenge for a foreclosure threat to the family land, and draw the attention of a retiring Texas Ranger. Pinney Library, Feb. 17, 6:30 pm.

Visit Essen Haus Madison’s “4th Annual Mad City Chili Cookoff” Facebook page to learn how to cut the entry fee to $2

Vessel: Documentary about a doctor performing shipboard abortions for women with no legal alternative. Hawthorne Library, Feb. 17, 7 pm. Daughters of the Dust: Julie Dash’s drama about Gullah women. UW Cinematheque, Feb. 17, 7 pm. See review, opposite page.

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Cooley High: Black History Month screening: High school friends in ’60s Chicago are enjoying life, until they are falsely arrested. UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 18, 7 pm.

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Safety Last: Duck Soup Cinema: You’ve seen the still of Harold Lloyd hanging on the face of a giant clock, now see the classic silent comedy it’s taken from. Overture Center-Capitol Theater, Feb. 18, 2 & 7 pm. Wild Girl: Comedic western stars Joan Bennett as tomboy heroine Salomy Jane. UW Cinematheque, Feb. 18, 7 pm.

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Film events

The Yellow Ticket: To travel in pre-revolutionary Russia, a woman must use a prostitute’s passport. UW Cinematheque, Feb. 18, 8:30 pm. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: UW Cinematheque: The titular boy wizard investigates a prisoner’s escape. Chazen Museum of Art, Feb. 19, 2 pm.

50th Anniversary!

Starving the Beast: Documentary about college campuses (including UW) disrupted by political and market forces. UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 19, 6 pm.

MODEL RAILROAD SHOW & SALE

Memory Presents: Program No. 2: Micro-Wave Cinema short films screening. UW Cinematheque, Feb. 19, 7 pm. Boyz N the Hood: Black History Month screening: Writer-director John Singleton follows three young men navigating life in L.A. UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 20, 7 pm.

February 18–19, 2017 9am–5pm

Me Before You: A caretaker and her recently paralyzed employer form an unexpected bond. Madison Senior Center, Feb. 21, 1 pm. Mekonen: The Journey of an African Jew: UW Hillel Israeli Film Festival: Documentary following Israeli Defense Forces commander Kekonen Abebe. UW Memorial Union-Play Circle, Feb. 22, 7 pm. Blood Simple: An affair leads to the hiring of a skeezy P.I. (M. Emmet Walsh) for a murder plot in this modern noir classic by the Coen brothers. Bos Meadery, Feb. 22, 7 pm.

Alliant Energy Center Exhibition Hall

O r in Swif t Wine Dinner

Karmen Gei: Adaptation of Bizet’s opera Carmen, set in West Africa. UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 23, 7 pm., 7 pm.

Call 608-294-3031 to reserve your spots today! $75 per Person

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The Bad Kids: Documentary about teachers who take an unconventional approach to improve the lives of struggling students. Central Library, Feb. 23, 6:30 pm.

Train to Busan: A bullet train is both potential salvation and destruction for survivors of a zombie-creating virus. UW Union South-Marquee, Feb. 23, 9:30 pm.

90,000 Sq. Ft. of Model Railroad Fun–All Scales

Febr uar y 24th, 2017 | 7:00 PM Join us at CIRC on Friday, February 24th for our very first wine dinner! We’re collaborating with Orin Swift Wines to give you a menu of delicious food and tantalizing wines that you (and your taste buds) won’t soon forget. Four courses. Three wines. One incredible night.

Do Not Resist: UW Havens Center Social Cinema: Documentary on the militarization of U.S. law enforcement, set against 2015 civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Union South-Marquee Theater, Feb. 22, 7 pm.

Madison, Wis

picks The Head and the Heart Tuesday-Wednesday, Feb. 2122, Orpheum Theatre, 8 pm The Head and the Heart are one of indiepop’s great success stories. The Seattle sextet spent the better part of a decade playing second banana to big names like Vampire Weekend, Dave Matthews and Death Cab for Cutie before signing with Warner Brothers to release Signs of Light, their third LP, in 2016 (which went on to peak at #5 on the Billboard 200). With two other up-and-coming acts: L.A. chanteuse Springtime Carnivore and Chicago psych-pop throwbacks Whitney.

thu feb 16

PICK OF THE WEEK B OOKS

of the hip-hop/EDM/rock sounds of the Starfoxx Project; a tour kick-off/CD-release set by Dead Horse Trauma, visiting from Iowa; and more Madison metal by scene vets Breech and newcomers Desolate.

MU S I C

Erin Celello and James DeVita Thursday, Feb. 16, Central Library, 7 pm

Madison Pop Fest Thursday, Feb. 16, High Noon Saloon, 8:30 pm

Pop Fest promises to be a great night for fans of the Smiths, Belle & Sebastian or just plain melodic goodness. Slumberland Records’ Real Numbers (Minneapolis, pictured) will headline, joining forces with Proud Parents, Pollinators, Jonesies and Exploration Team.

If you’re curious about how a novel becomes a play, check out the conversation with novelist Erin Celello and playwright and acclaimed actor James DeVita. The two writers put their heads together to turn Celello’s Learning to Stay (about a husband who returns from Iraq) into a play, which Forward Theater Company will premiere on March 23. The company’s dynamic artistic director, Jennifer Uphoff Gray, will facilitate the discussion.

Hamilton Leithauser Friday, Feb. 17, High Noon Saloon, 9:30 pm

As frontman for the Walkmen, Hamilton Leithauser has long been a staple of New York’s tastemaking indie rock scene. But with his latest release, 2016’s I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, Leithauser steps away from his band, collaborating with a fellow buzz-band expat, Vampire Weekend’s Rostam, to create a haunting, lush album in the spirit of David Byrne’s work with Brian Eno. With Lucy Dacus.

Bos Meadery: greenTONE, free/donations, 7 pm. Brink Lounge: Briana Patrice Bruckner Trio, free, 7 pm.

ISTHMUS.COM FEBRUARY 16-22, 2017

Chief’s Tavern: Hoot’n Annie, string band, free, 8:30 pm.

The Frequency: Township, Street Names, The Longest Year, 8:30 pm. High Noon Saloon: Madison Pop Fest: Proud Parents, Real Numbers, Pollinators, Jonesies, Exploration Team, 8:30 pm. Majestic Theatre: William Singe, Alex Aiono, 8 pm. Mickey’s Tavern: Mal-O-Dua, free, 5:30 pm; Tippy, Scammers, Cop Circles, free, 10:30 pm. UW Memorial Union-Fredric March Play Circle: UW Black Music Ensemble, UW Mead Witter School of Music concert, free, 8:30 pm.

sat feb 17

Dave Rempis with Stray Passage Friday, Feb. 17, Arts + Literature Laboratory, 8 pm

Jazz isn’t going to get much freer than it will be this evening with Chicago saxophonist Dave Rempis. Rempis, an accomplished player and collaborator extraordinaire, will perform a 30-minute solo set and then get down to business with the Madisonbased improvisational trio Stray Passage. Bandung: Jeff Alexander & Anapaula Strader, The Oudist Colony, free, 9 pm. Bos Meadery: Eric De Los Santos, 7 pm.

MUS I C

Katie Scullin album release Friday, Feb. 17, Funk’s Pub in Fitchburg, 8 pm

The Madison-based singer-songwriter has a slew of awards on her mantle already, but her debut solo effort, Pieces, is truly remarkable. See story, page 29. With Trap Saturn, Miles Nielsen & the Rusted Hearts.

Brink Lounge: Patter: A Vocal Gala, 7:30 pm; The Organic Quintet, jazz, 9 pm.

Ultrea CD release Friday, Feb. 17, The Red Zone, 8 pm

Madison metallists Ultrea unleash their third studio release, The End of Illusion, including the rousing call to arms (and lead single) “Divided We Fall.” The evening also includes the debut

The Frequency: Cruisr, Spirit Animal, Bad Bad Hats, 8:30 pm. Knuckle Down Saloon: The Claudettes, 8 pm. Liquid: Zomboy, Stratus, Tombz, Trini, 10 pm. Majestic Theatre: Phun, Phish tribute, free, 9 pm. Mickey’s: Leopold & His Fiction, Kazmir, 10:30 pm. Red Rock Saloon: Bobby McClendon, 10 pm.

Willy Street Pub/The Wisco: Cold Black River, Derx Brax Band, Wrestle The Reaper, 9 pm.

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FRI, FEB 17 ★ 8PM ★ $7

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Rocket Bureau Saturday, Feb. 18, Mickey’s Tavern, 10:30 pm

Adam Devine Friday, Feb. 17, Orpheum Theatre, 8 pm

With high-profile roles in films such as Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates and the Pitch Perfect franchise, Adam Devine is inarguably the breakout star of Workaholics, the hit Comedy Central show he co-created. Now Devine returns to his standup roots to make Madison laugh with his charming, frat-boy-witha-heart-of-gold sense of humor.

Do you like the rock ’n’ roll? If so, Kyle Motor’s home recording project Rocket Bureau is custom-made for you, so don’t miss this rare chance to see a full band bring the songs into clubland. An excellent lineup also boasts a pair of visiting Milwaukee bands: Static Eyes (including various former Gut Reactions players) and a rare appearance by Head on Electric. Crystal Corner: The American Dead, Christopher Gold & the New Old Things, Lou Shields, 9:30 pm.

Richard II

Knuckle Down: Aaron Williams & the Hoodoo, 9 pm.

sat feb 18

SUN. FEB. 19

6pm $7 sug. don. 5 pm dance instruction

SAT, FEB 18 ★ 9PM ★ $7 Grammy Nominated

& The HooDoo

THE CAJUN STRANGERS

Wear Hawaiian

____________________________________

MON. FEB. 20 5:30-6:15 pm $3

for $4 margaritas or boat drinks! FRI. FEB. 24 Martin Lang CD Release w/Oscar Wilson SAT. FEB. 25 Alex Wilson

THE KING OF KIDS MUSIC

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WED. FEB. 8

6-8pm $5 suggested

Harmony Bar: The Family Business, rock, 9:45 pm. High Noon Saloon: Cindy Set My Hair on Fire, Super Tanker, 5 pm; Coyote, Stereo Frontier, Feed the Dog, Armchair Boogie, 9:30 pm.

This collaboration between BST and Madison Shakespeare Company, directed by Christopher William Wolter, sets the early play by the Bard in our modern media-saturated times. A political leader steps aside as a populist uprising sweeps the country.... As Will once said, “such stuff as dreams are made on.” ALSO: Saturday & Thursday, Feb. 18 & 23, 8 pm.

Claudettes

____________________________________

Frequency: Colony House, Deep Sea Diver, 8:30 pm.

T HE AT ER & DA N C E Friday, Feb. 17, Broom Street Theater, 8 pm

The Family Business

“Ray Charles meets the Ramones” - NPR

Aaron Williams

9:45 pm $7

Cork ‘n Bottle STRING BAND

Lazy Oaf Lounge: Chaos Revolution Theory, 10 pm.