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A future downtown Milwaukee apartment high-rise site has been sold for $6 million. Site work has started at Water St. and St. Paul Ave.
A future downtown-area Milwaukee apartment high-rise site has been sold for $6 million.
The 35,000-square-foot lot at 333 N. Water St. was sold to an affiliate of Houston-based developer Hines by Dehl Properties LLC, according to state real estate records posted Wednesday.
Dehl, an affiliate of Interstate Development LLC, bought the site in 2017 for $5.6 million. That was nearly five times the assessed value of the parcel, long used as a parking lot operated by members of the Iannelli family.
Hines is developing a 31-story, 305-unit tower at the Historic Third Ward site, which overlooks the Milwaukee River at North Water Street and East St. Paul Avenue.
The estimated cost of the project, known as 333 N. Water, is $165 million.
The apartments will rent for around $3 per square foot — making them among the most expensive units in Milwaukee.
Hines started site preparation work this summer, with the tower to be completed by summer 2024.
It is one of two downtown high-rise apartment towers under development.
Construction continues on The Couture, a 44-story, 322-unit tower at 909 E. Michigan St. It is to be completed by late fall 2023.
Meanwhile, the 25-story, 259-unit Ascent has just opened at 700 E. Kilbourn Ave.
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2022-09-07T14:46:27Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee apartment high-rise project site sold for $6 million
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/07/milwaukee-apartment-high-rise-project-site-sold-6-million/8009440001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/07/milwaukee-apartment-high-rise-project-site-sold-6-million/8009440001/
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Republican Rep. Amy Loudenbeck of Clinton secured her party nomination for secretary of state and is challenging incumbent Democrat Doug La Follette as part of a concerted GOP-led effort to eliminate the Wisconsin Elections Commission. One possible replacement floated by Republicans is to transfer the commission's duties to the secretary of state’s office.
Loudenbeck enters the race in a strong position to usher in the end of an era in Wisconsin politics, mounting a well-financed challenge to La Follette, who has held the office for decades.
Here’s what you need to know about Loudenbeck heading into November.
Loudenbeck has been a legislator for more than a decade
Loudenbeck was first elected to the Assembly in 2010. She has represented the 31st District since then. She is chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Information Policy and Technology and is vice chairwoman of the powerful Joint Committee on Finance.
Loudenbeck graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and previously worked as a chamber of commerce executive, environmental project manager, supervisor in her hometown of Clinton and firefighter before working in the Legislature.
Loudenbeck has a monetary advantage
As of July, Loudenbeck raised $98,000, approximately five times as much as her Democratic opponent. She also gained support from a substantial majority of her caucus heading into the primary.
Loudenbeck made a point to attend in-person events on the campaign trail while La Follette was noticeably absent during the same period, taking an African safari during the primary and not holding events, citing concerns related to contracting a COVID-19 infection.
What are Loudenbeck’s notable political positions?
Loudenbeck is campaigning on using the secretary of state’s office to be a “check on WEC,” seeking to transfer election administration duties to the tiny office that has an annual budget of less than $300,000. Her criticism of the WEC comes after Loudenbeck voted to create it in 2015 after the fallout of an investigation into then-Gov. Scott Walker that pushed Republicans to create new elections and ethics commissions.
She contends election laws were not uniformly enforced during the 2020 election and says consolidating oversight duties into the secretary of state’s office will allow for a more centralized approach to electoral administration.
Loudenbeck’s platform is not a novel idea nationally. In fact, a majority of states grant their secretaries of state varying degrees of power over election oversight. What is significant is the push to do so emerging only in the past two years since former President Donald Trump and his allies began promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin in 2020.
Loudenbeck has also charged La Follette with inactivity and suggested he allowed the office and its day-to-day operations to become outdated.
What Loudenbeck has said, and not said, about elections
In an interview with the Associated Press, Loudenbeck would not provide specifics about how much control she believes the secretary of state should have over elections or changes she thinks should be made in the administration of them, saying those issues should be determined by the Legislature.
“This isn’t a power grab,” Loudenbeck told the AP. “The Legislature should explore a wide range of policy options to utilize this constitutional office that is directly accountable to voters and look at what other states are doing and talk about restoring some traditional responsibilities, including election oversight, if appropriate, to the office.”
How Popular is Loudenbeck?
Loudenbeck is a relatively well-known figure in state Republican party politics. She won her primary by a comfortable margin of more than 31,000 votes. Two years earlier, she carried nearly 60% of the vote in her reelection campaign to the Assembly.
How do I contact Loudenbeck?
The Loudenbeck campaign can be reached at info@voteamywi.com.
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2022-09-07T14:46:33Z
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www.jsonline.com
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What to know about Amy Loudenbeck, Republican for secretary of state
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/09/07/what-know-amy-loudenbeck-republican-running-secretary-state-wisconsin/7906766001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/09/07/what-know-amy-loudenbeck-republican-running-secretary-state-wisconsin/7906766001/
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Pedestrian killed and driver arrested after north side Milwaukee crash
An unidentified pedestrian was killed and the driver arrested in a car crash on Milwaukee’s north side Wednesday morning.
Police did not provide details on how the crash occurred but said officers were called to the 4400 block of North Teutonia Avenue at 5:49 a.m. The victim is an adult female and the driver is a 23-year-old Milwaukee man.
Charges will be referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, police said.
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2022-09-07T19:20:13Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Pedestrian killed in crash on Milwaukee's north side
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/07/pedestrian-killed-crash-milwaukees-north-side/8012722001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/07/pedestrian-killed-crash-milwaukees-north-side/8012722001/
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Reagan High School's $22 million facility expansion made possible from COVID relief funds, private donors
Reagan High School is on track for a $22 million expansion that will add classrooms and athletic fields to the already high-ranking school that Milwaukee Public Schools leaders say has long outgrown its building.
MPS leaders ceremonially broke ground with gold shovels Wednesday, though construction isn't set to officially begin until later this fall on the project, which they expect will take about two years to complete — if they secure the full funding.
"Everyone deserves an equal chance to compete in a sport they value and to be able to develop their athleticism," Reagan student Ayush Patel said at the event.
Reagan High School expansion funded by COVID relief funds, private donors
Nearly half of the funding for the project is coming from federal COVID relief funds.
MPS has received about $770 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding, significantly more than other districts because funds were allocated based largely on how many students are served from low-income families.
While MPS invested some of the funding in academic programs to help students catch up, the district also invested heavily in upgrades to its buildings, which on average are 80 years old. Some work is COVID-related and focused on air quality, while other projects are broader.
Reagan is getting more funding than any other school. When MPS set aside $63 million for school renovations, school leaders requested over 700 projects totaling about $469 million.
Reagan requested $58 million and was granted about $10 million.
The district has raised an additional $10 million in other fundraising efforts so far, according to a news release. That includes donations of unspecified amounts from Mary and Ted Kellner, and the Pat Connaughton Foundation, district officials said.
Connaughton spoke to Reagan students Wednesday, saying he wanted to support the project because of the role that schools have played in shaping him and other Bucks players.
"You see us play within those 94 feet, but it's the things we've learned at a young age that helped us get to where we're at," Connaughton said, "even if it has nothing to do with basketball."
The project includes a science wing, athletic fields
As part of the project, MPS is planning to add a wing to the school. It will include STEM labs for science classes and a new lobby.
The school will also get six new tennis courts, a gymnasium, team locker rooms, concession stands and bathrooms as part of the first phase of the project, for which funding is already secured.
If the district secures enough funds, there are also plans for a new fitness center, soccer field and two additional tennis courts.
The final addition would be an $8 million field house with a turf athletic field.
Reagan students said the current grounds are difficult or impossible to practice on and most teams have to travel to other fields to practice and play games.
"It's kind of hard to practice track with no track," said Zion Owusu-Yeboa, 16.
Students said the addition would help make the building, originally built as a middle school, feel more like a high school.
"We need high school facilities for a high school and it's getting way too big, we have too many people," said Cameron McCullum, a junior who plays football and has started serving as the Husky mascot.
While Reagan is receiving the largest piece of funding, MPS is preparing projects at dozens of other schools with the COVID relief dollars.
At Vincent High School, an estimated $3.75 million is funding repairs to agricultural program areas, a new barn and remodels of its environmental science, horticulture, aquaponics and food science classrooms and labs.
Other top-spending projects approved include classroom additions at Greenfield Bilingual for an estimated $4 million, at Goodrich for $3 million and Milwaukee High School of the Arts for $2 million.
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2022-09-07T22:24:07Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Reagan High School to expand, renovate with MPS COVID ESSER funds
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2022/09/07/reagan-high-school-mps-expand-renovate-mps-covid-esser-funds/7973645001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2022/09/07/reagan-high-school-mps-expand-renovate-mps-covid-esser-funds/7973645001/
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MCTS looking for teens, ages 14 to 18, to serve as advisors for the transit system
The Milwaukee County Transit System is launching a teen advisory board, officials announced Wednesday.
It is part of an effort to increase community outreach, MCTS said in a statement.
"This exciting initiative empowers teenage residents to advocate for MCTS through fun and interactive sessions designed to develop their leadership skills. Teens will learn and share information about how public transportation affects them, their peers and their families," the statement reads.
MCTS is seeking 22 teens and the deadline to apply is Sept. 30.
Applicants must live in Milwaukee County and be between the ages 14 and 18. To apply visit MCTS' application site.
More:MCTS ridership increases as new route changes are set to be implemented later this year
Applicants must know what county supervisory district they reside in. To look it up, visit findyourcountysupervisor.com. There are three short essay questions in the application.
MCTS is looking for applicants that can start soon, with an official start date in October.
Job duties include agreeing to a nine-month commitment and attending two monthly meetings held on the first and third Wednesdays of the month from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Those who are selected to serve as advisors will receive a monthly stipend of $40 and bus passes, MCTS said.
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2022-09-07T23:54:39Z
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www.jsonline.com
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MCTS looking for teens to serve as advisors for the transit system
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/07/mcts-looking-teens-serve-advisors-transit-system/8016615001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/07/mcts-looking-teens-serve-advisors-transit-system/8016615001/
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A supply of updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters — the first to specifically target the more-contagious Omicron variant of the virus — is slowly trickling into pharmacies across Wisconsin.
State health officials are encouraging people to make appointments as soon as they can, saying supply and the number of available appointments are expected to increase greatly over the coming days and weeks.
The state health department has requested 114,000 booster shots from the federal government — the maximum allowed — and has started the work of doling them out to local vaccine providers.
At the same time, a number of private pharmacies with direct contracts with the federal government have received doses and are already taking appointments and walk-ins.
What to know about the new Omicron-targeted COVID boosters
The boosters are recommended for all people who had their last booster or completed the initial two-dose vaccine series at least two months ago, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state Department of Health Services.
Pfizer's new booster is authorized for use in people 12 and older, and the Moderna booster is approved for those 18 and older.
"These updated boosters are recommended to help ensure more people across the U.S. will be better protected against COVID-19," said Dr. Ryan Westergaard, chief medical officer of DHS's Bureau of Communicable Diseases. "As the weather cools down and we begin to make plans to spend more time indoors, we encourage everyone who's eligible to make a plan to get their updated COVID-19 booster this fall."
As of Wednesday, at least two local pharmacies had received their first shipments of the booster shots and had started distributing them, with more anticipated from the state in a matter of hours or days.
Milwaukee area pharmacies receiving booster shipments, city health department waiting
At Infinity Pharmacy on Milwaukee's southwest side, pharmacist and owner Mawra Bakr said she received 600 doses of the new Moderna booster Friday and 600 doses of the Pfizer booster Wednesday.
Demand for the shots has been strong: Bakr said the pharmacy has already administered 100 doses of Moderna since getting it Friday. The pharmacy is offering extended hours for people to come in and get the shots, and appointments are available on its website. Walk-ins are also welcome at 2700 S. 60th St.
"We just want to make it easy for everyone," Bakr said, adding that now is a great time for teachers and students to get their updated shots as the school year ramps up.
Infinity is one of several pharmacies that was able to order the vaccine early through a direct contract with the federal government.
"Compared to two years ago, we have a much more diverse system of getting vaccine allocated to the state," Westergaard said.
More:Wisconsinites can now order 5 free at-home rapid antigen COVID-19 tests through a new website
More:A little more than one-third of Wisconsin residents have received one COVID booster dose, as a new shot is set to arrive
As of Wednesday morning, a Milwaukee Health Department spokeswoman said the city hadn't yet received its supply of the new boosters, but that it could come as early as later Wednesday or as late as Monday.
Hashim Zaibak, founder and lead pharmacist at Hayat Pharmacy, 807 W. Layton Ave., said the pharmacy has about 300 doses of the Pfizer booster and is expecting "a lot more" to come from the state later Wednesday.
Hayat is only accepting walk-ins. At any given time, he said two to three people are coming in asking for the new shot.
"(It's) definitely better protection for the Omicron variant," Zaibak said. "(The booster) is a combination of the Omicron plus the older ones. Since CDC is saying that more than 75% of the current cases are from Omicron, this definitely will give you better protection."
New boosters not recommended yet for children
Moderna and Pfizer's old COVID-19 boosters are no longer authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, so people can only receive the new ones if they want a booster.
The only exception is in children who are too young to get the new shots but are eligible for the old ones. The FDA said it wants more data from Pfizer and Moderna before recommending the boosters for younger children, according to STAT.
Dr. Smriti Khare, a pediatrician and the chief mental and behavioral health officer at Children’s Wisconsin, recommended that people get their flu shot and new booster dose at the same time, ideally before October. Khare is also a representative of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In the last two weeks, Khare said, the number of confirmed pediatric cases of COVID-19 have gone up 14% nationwide, a reminder that the pandemic is still ongoing.
She also reiterated that the vaccines are safe and effective, acknowledging some worries among the public around the idea that the newest boosters were not specifically tested in humans before they were approved.
Boosters are 'tweaked' versions of original COVID vaccines
The boosters are "tweaked" versions of the original shots, she said, not entirely new vaccines. Experts have "a tremendous amount of experience" with the technology that underlies the vaccines, she said.
"It's not dissimilar to what we do with influenza and actually the influenza vaccine changes every year without human trials," Khare said. "What is reassuring is with the new COVID-19 vaccines, there's actually going to be ongoing human trials that are actually entering the phase three right now."
Doctors are keeping a close eye on a rare but serious side effect seen in some people — most commonly seen in adolescent boys — called myocarditis. So far, data has shown that in the rare cases in which this inflammation of the heart muscle appears, it generally resolves itself very quickly, Khare said. She also noted that the rate of the same complication in COVID-19 patients is much higher.
"We are very comfortable in recommending this (vaccine) to parents," Khare said.
Search for vaccine availability in your area at vaccines.gov. Order free COVID-19 tests at sayyescovidhometest.org.
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2022-09-07T23:54:45Z
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www.jsonline.com
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New Omicron COVID boosters are now available in Wisconsin
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/health/2022/09/07/new-omicron-covid-boosters-now-available-wisconsin/8012302001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/health/2022/09/07/new-omicron-covid-boosters-now-available-wisconsin/8012302001/
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MILWAUKEE - MacDowell Montessori School eighth-grader Dooney Johnson has made an impression with his skills on the basketball court, but recent recognition for his contributions off of it has inspired him to do more.
Johnson received the National Basketball Players Association's the People's Champ Award last month at the second annual NBPA Players' Voice Awards NextGen.
The award is given to "the player who gives as much off the court as they do on it, always striving to make his or her community better through service and advocacy," the organization says. Nominations for the award were accepted for nearly two weeks before finalists were chosen July 22. Then the winner was chosen in open voting.
"I really like helping people as much as I can," he said. "When I get recognized for that and not just basketball, it feels really good."
Dooney's father, Torre Johnson, said seeing the community show support for his son as more than a basketball player was impactful for them both.
"It was good for him to see that there are people out here that love him and voted for him," Torre said. "That was a big deal for me to see that he does have the people behind him, and they do support him and want him to be successful at the next level."
Torre himself knows a thing or two about the next level. The onetime Milwaukee Juneau star averaged 17 points and nine rebounds as a senior before going on to play in junior college and then at Oklahoma State in the 2005-06 season and UW-Milwaukee in 2007-08. As he mentors Dooney to reach his potential, Torre has drawn upon his own experiences to reinforce lessons.
"He tells me a lot of stories about keeping your emotions in check, keeping your composure," Dooney said. "You can’t let anybody break you down. If you get knocked down, you’ve got to get up."
"My job is also to make sure he’s prepared for everything throughout this journey, because it is a marathon," Torre said. "That's the biggest issue in our community: Our kids play a lot of sports, period, and they don’t get the mental aspect of what’s required to play at that professional or collegiate level."
Working on his composure and mental fortitude may have also played a role in Dooney's recent off-the-court recognition. His nomination included not only community service performed with his teammates but the description of a bullying incident Dooney helped stop involving a classmate.
"He’s one of those guys, he stands up for the average person," Torre said. "Now that I know that my son likes that type of (service opportunity), I’m trying to reach out to other programs to get him more involved in the community."
An offer already extended from Grambling State is a reminder that college basketball soon could be within reach, but Dooney is focused on finishing middle school so he can join friends on the Juneau High School basketball team. Torre gushes at the thought of his son in the same high school colors he once wore, while Dooney also sees an opportunity to get one over on his dad.
"That would be pretty cool to live on the legacy, and beat some of his records too," Dooney said with a laugh.
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2022-09-08T13:18:47Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee eighth-grade basketball player earns community service award
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/2022/09/08/milwaukee-eighth-grade-basketball-player-earns-community-service-award/7975077001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/2022/09/08/milwaukee-eighth-grade-basketball-player-earns-community-service-award/7975077001/
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Why are the Brewers playing a doubleheader at home? Plus, a look at other memorable twinbills in Milwaukee
For the first time in American Family Field history, the Brewers will take part in a "true" doubleheader featuring a pair of nine-inning games, the result of a reconfigured Major League Baseball schedule on account of the league's labor stoppage.
By the time MLB and the players association came to terms in the spring, it was too late to start the season on time, necessitating the reschedule of two series in Milwaukee that were originally slated to kick off the season.
One of those, against Arizona, was moved to the end of the year and will now represent the final three games of the season. The other, against the Giants, was split between two spots on the calendar. The Giants won a 4-2, one-off game in April, and the other two games have been turned into a Sept. 8 doubleheader before the Brewers open a three-game series with the Reds.
The Brewers did play doubleheaders in 2020 at home to combat a flurry of COVID-19 postponements, though those games were seven innings apiece and didn't take place with fans in the stands. Otherwise, if you wanted to see two Brewers games in one day over the past two decades, you needed to be on the road thanks to the home stadium roof keeping weather-related postponements at bay.
Prior to the new stadium, the Brewers had some entertaining doubleheaders in Milwaukee over the years, all the same. Consider these.
May 22, 2000 vs. Houston: Milwaukee's biggest ninth-inning rally ever
The Brewers rallied for a stunning seven runs in the ninth inning to tie the Astros, then won the game on a walk-off homer by José Hernández for a 10-9 victory — and that was just Game 1. The Brewers had been 0-23 when trailing after seven innings but staged their biggest-ever ninth-inning comeback with fewer than 4,000 fans looking on. Then, Milwaukee won the nightcap, 6-1, thanks to eight strong innings from Jason Bere and three RBIs by Jeromy Burnitz.
More:The top 25 walk-off home runs in Brewers history
July 28, 1997 vs. Toronto: Steve Woodard
It'll forever be remembered for the debut performance of Steve Woodard, who threw eight innings and allowed only a leadoff double by Otis Nixon, out-dueling that year's Cy Young winner, Roger Clemens, in a 1-0 thriller. Mike Fetters worked the ninth to effectively record a no-hitter with 27 straight outs before a hit. In the nightcap, the Brewers turned a triple play in the fourth while nursing a 4-2 lead and wound up winning, 9-3. Fetters would get two saves the following night in another doubleheader, giving the Brewers a 4-0 record over 48 hours.
August 24, 1993 vs. Oakland: Benches clear
The Brewers roared to life with four runs in the seventh and four in the eighth for a 9-2 win in the first game, then won a wild nightcap in the 13th inning, 7-6. The teams combined for 35 hits (21 for the Brewers) in the second game and finally won on Dave Nilsson's two-out single. Pat Listach's two-run single with two outs against Dennis Eckersley in the ninth tied the game with the Brewers down to their last strike on back-to-back batters.
But it'll be remembered for something else, at least for those who stayed past midnight. After Eckersley gave up the lead, he began jawing at umpires about the strike zone, netting an ejection along with A's manager Tony LaRussa. They continued their protest, which brought Brewers manager Phil Garner out to complain about the delay.
LaRussa went after Garner and everything broke loose, leading to nine player ejections. Dickie Thon was tackled by a much larger Athletics player, and B.J. Surhoff needed stitches to repair a cut after he was punched by former Brewers reliever Edwin Núñez. The games ended just before 2 a.m.
August 14, 1992 vs. Boston: Gumby plays hero for the last time, Eldred just getting started
The first game was wild, featuring Jim Gantner's lone home run of the year (and final of his career) to give the Brewers a walk-off win in 13 innings, 8-7. It was only his third homer in five years and first in 11 months. But it doesn't even get that far without Scott Fletcher's two-run double in the 12th to re-tie the game (after the first two batters of the inning were retired). The Brewers tied the game at 5-5 in the ninth on Robin Yount's sacrifice fly.
Then came the nightcap, where Cal Eldred allowed three hits in eight innings and one walk on his way to a 1-0 shutout, with Yount's first-inning single accounting for the only run.
August 9, 1988 vs. Boston: Joey Meyer vs. Clemens
Rookie first baseman Joey Meyer led off the ninth against Red Sox ace Roger Clemens with a blast that just curled around the right-field foul pole to give Milwaukee a 3-2 win. The crowd chanted "Jo-ey, Jo-ey" as he circled the bases, then demanded a curtain call in a game where Paul Molitor recorded his 1,500th career hit. The chants continued into Meyer's first at-bat of the nightcap, though the Brewers lost, 5-1.
Aug. 17, 1983 vs. Boston: A final push to first place
The Brewers wiggled into first place with the sweep of Boston, including a two-out, walk-off single in the 10th by Ted Simmons to give Milwaukee a 4-3 win. The Brewers scored five times in the fourth inning of the nightcap and prevailed, 5-1, giving the Brewers a half-game lead in the American League East. But the team would stumble from there, finishing 11 games out by the end of the year and at one point falling as far back as 14½ out en route to an 87-75 season. Though, to be fair, that had as much to do with white-hot Baltimore (what is it with bird opponents and late-season success?).
July 8, 1979 vs. Detroit: Oglivie's three-homer day (and more)
Ben Oglivie homered three times in the first game against the team that traded him to the Brewers, and Milwaukee needed every one of those blasts in a 5-4 win. He wasn't done, either, with an RBI double in the nightcap as Milwaukee prevailed, 3-1, behind pitcher Bill Travers.
July 11, 1976 vs. Texas: Hank's amazing swan song
Beloved Hank Aaron, a fixture for 12 seasons with the Milwaukee Braves, came back to where it started in 1975 and 1976 in the final stage of his career. He launched his 755th and final home run July 20, 1976, but his second-to-last was pretty special, too.
The Brewers scored twice in the bottom of the ninth to force extras, and Aaron took Steve Foucault deep for a walk-off home run in the 10th against the Rangers, giving Milwaukee a 5-4 win.
Nostalgic fans lingered long after the mob of Brewers had descended into the dugout, and Aaron returned five minutes later for a curtain call.
That was the second win of the day. The Brewers scored five runs in the seventh inning of the opener for a 6-3 win.
Aug. 1, 1971 vs. Washington: Bobby Mitchell's first career homer, then his second
The Brewers won both games, 4-3 and 3-2, thanks in large part to Bobby Mitchell. He hit his first career home run to drive in a difference-making three runs in Game 1, and then his second career home run plated two runs in the sixth to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead in Game 2.
They were his only two homers of the season and he wouldn't hit another until 1973. He only played in the second game because he had the big hit in Game 1.
In the mark of a different era, the combined game times for the two battles: 4 hours and 9 minutes.
May 10, 1970 vs. Washington: Two walk-offs in first doubleheader
The first home doubleheader in Milwaukee Brewers lore is also the only one in franchise history to end with two walk-off wins, 6-5 and 7-6 triumphs. Wayne Comer's RBI single won the game after Ted Kubiak led off the ninth with a game-tying home run in the first game, and Jerry McNertney's RBI single broke a 6-6 tie in the ninth of Game 2. The franchise had its ninth and 10th wins ever.
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2022-09-08T16:01:50Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers playing rare doubleheader at home; a look at other DH moments
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/08/brewers-playing-rare-doubleheader-home-look-other-dh-moments/8002479001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/08/brewers-playing-rare-doubleheader-home-look-other-dh-moments/8002479001/
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One North Carolina apartment complex was responsible for endless asthma attacks. Then the community started 'raising holy hell.'
In 2017 Josie Williams and the Greensboro Housing Coalition walked through the Cottage Grove neighborhood, pointing out issues that can lead to health problems. Williams is now executive director of the group. Photo courtesy University of North Carolina-Greensboro
A DEVASTATING DISEASE | TRIGGERS IN THE HOME | POSITIVE STEPS | WISCONSIN'S PLAN | Q&A: SIGNS, SYMPTOMS
GREENSBORO, NC — Avalon Trace apartments used to represent one of Greensboro's worst asthma hazards. The 176-unit complex accounted for 20% of the asthma-related emergency room visits from the surrounding Cottage Grove neighborhood.
However, the complex’s identity as a health hazard, and its subsequent transformation, stands as a model for addressing health through housing.
The Greensboro Housing Coalition, a nonprofit umbrella organization, worked with health systems and a local university to pinpoint locations like Avalon Trace as asthma hotspots in the city.
In concert with residents and community leaders, the coalition then mounted a public pressure campaign against the complex’s owner and encouraged residents to report their poor housing conditions. Eventually, the owner sold to a new developer who brought the complex up to code, and even gave it a new name: Cottage Gardens.
Although the upgrades at Cottage Gardens are ongoing, emergency department visits have dropped significantly.
Cottage Gardens is the renamed apartment complex formerly known as Avalon Trace. A new owner purchased the complex in 2016 and is in the process of upgrading it. The Greensboro Housing Coalition, a partnership of governmental, nonprofit and community organizations, banded together to identify one of the worst asthma hotspots in the city, the former Avalon Trace apartments, and used a political and public pressure campaign that ultimately resulted in the apartment complex being sold, remediated and brought up to code. Talis Shelbourne / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
For Josie Williams, executive director of the Greensboro Housing Coalition, it all started with building trust in the community.
“We’re working with those who have the lived experience,” Williams said. “We don’t move until we have the decision-making of the residents.”
Poor housing, health normalized for residents
The median income in southeast Greensboro’s Cottage Grove neighborhood was a mere $12,500 in 2018, and 80% of residents were renters.
Dozens of those residents lived in Avalon Trace.
Although the building had 176 units, only 127 were habitable, as nearly 50 had been overrun with rats, raw sewage, cockroaches and mold.
Stephen Smoot, 69, was a native-born New Yorker who was new to the state when he moved to Avalon Trace in 2015.
After he started living there, he described the apartments as “trash.”
“The place was filthy,” he recalled. “There was carpet everywhere. Place smelled like pretty hell (because) the carpet holds every aroma you put into it. My bathroom had a sink hanging off the wall and all that held it up was a stick. There was black mold around the tub.”
He remembered taking a break from barbecuing one day when he noticed his bedroom window appeared noticeably darker. He went inside to check.
“I pulled those drapes, and the window was covered with flies on the inside,” he said. “There had to be hundreds of them.”
Smoot also began using a breathing machine. He said although he had smoked for several decades, he never had problems breathing until he moved into the apartment.
“If you’re lying here and breathing that (mold), even if you didn’t smoke, you’d probably still need that pump,” he said.
Smoot chose not to move because he had trouble finding a place once he came to Greensboro and after living with other people for several years, he appreciated the privacy.
“Sometimes, you got to take what you can get until you can do better,” he said with a smile. “(Avalon Trace) was heaven for me because it was mine.”
It’s a common sentiment among many residents of substandard housing, said Sel Mpang, a community engagement associate at the coalition.
“One of the things I’ve learned ... is you have to be very sensitive about people’s living situation,” she said. “Because even if that home can be in the worst condition for anyone to live in — and you’re wondering how is this OK? — if you report it to code or get the landlord involved, the house could be condemned. Then where would they go?”
“A lot of people fear losing their only home,” she said.
That’s especially true of families who come to Greensboro from countries such as Haiti, Liberia, Mexico and Vietnam. New to the country and often facing a language barrier, immigrants can be particularly vulnerable to getting stuck in substandard living conditions.
Mpang, a Vietnam refugee who came to Greensboro with her parents when she was 6 years old, experienced that firsthand.
“When we came to America, the homes we lived in, they had mold,” she said. “I didn’t have asthma, but I’m thinking it was a situation where maybe my parents didn’t know mold could cause that.”
Sel Mpang, a community engagement associate at the Greensboro Housing Coalition
This is a pattern, a recurring reality for people who live in this area.
In fact, she found during canvassing that many residents don’t make the connection between their housing conditions and their family’s health.
“This is a pattern, a recurring reality for people who live in this area,” she said. “Some of the parents, it’s so normalized, some of the things they have to face day to day. It becomes part of their routine, so they don’t know what’s beyond that.”
Partnerships helped identify ‘asthma hotspots’
In 2014, the Greensboro Housing Coalition partnered with the local health system, Cone Health, and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro (UNCG), and formed the Asthma Partnership Demonstration Project. The project focused on reducing home-based asthma triggers.
The coalition also applied for a Community Centered Health grant from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of North Carolina to conduct outreach.
In 2017, community activist Sandra Williams, from left, Josie Williams of the Greensboro Housing Coalition, and then Center for Housing and Community Studies at the University North Carolina-Greensboro Director Stephen Sills examined asthma hot spots in Greensboro, North Carolina. Josie Williams is now executive director of the Greensboro Housing Coalition. Photo courtesy University of North Carolina-Greensboro
When canvassing, they regularly heard the name “Avalon Trace.”
By 2015, the asthma project’s partners were able dig deeper beyond the anecdotes.
Stephen Sills, a former professor at UNCG, founded the university’s Center for Housing and Community Studies. (Sills is currently vice president at the National Institute of Minority Economic Development’s Research, Policy and Impact Center.)
After applying for funding from a local philanthropic group, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, Sills was able to develop a relationship with Cone Health, which gave the university access to its data.
When Sills mapped the addresses of emergency room visitors with asthma issues, Avalon Trace was identified as an “asthma hotspot.”
That data translated to extremely substandard housing conditions that researchers were able to document in person.
“People had roofs that needed repair, sewage that was backed up, broken windows, no door seals, gaps in the walls between window units that were 2-3 inches wide – all of the things that cause there to be hot, moist, wet and pest-infested units, all of which are bad for respiratory conditions,” Sills recalled.
“Pest infestations were really the worst thing,” he continued. “When the new owner went into the place and started ripping through the walls, (roaches) were crawling. There was water that would come in whenever it rained; one resident had a swimming pool they would set up whenever it rained. We had units where you would flush the toilet and it would come back out into the bathtub. No ventilation in the bathrooms, so (they) had serious issues with mold.”
Seeing the conditions firsthand humanized the problem and motivated coalition partners more than numbers ever could.
As Williams put it: “Data just isn’t enough. You need the qualitative to mesh with it.”
Resident voices led the way
New Hope Missionary Baptist Church has been a staple of the east Greensboro community since 1968.
But even though it was a walk up the road from Avalon Trace, Reverend Walter Richmond, Jr., said he and others at church struggled to communicate with residents about their health and housing conditions.
In addition to his work helping Avalon Trace residents, Minister Walter Richmond has spent time canvassing the neighborhoods of Haitian immigrants to help them transition, and he has worked on community violence issues. Talis Shelbourne/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Some residents were suspicious and didn’t want to talk. Some were refugees who were happy to have a home in their new country and didn’t speak the language. And some simply didn’t live there long enough to complain; only one-third of the residents remained from when the church started conducting outreach eight years ago, Richmond said.
Hoping to reach deeper into the community, Richmond formed the New Hope Community Development Group and used space adjacent to the church to hold events where residents could voice their concerns.
That’s where Richmond and Jamilla Pinder, the assistant director of healthy communities at Cone Health, started to hear stories like Smoot’s.
Percy Dickerson, an 80-year-old Vietnam veteran and deacon at the church, was present at some of those meetings.
“The community would be there raising holy hell,” he said, chuckling at the memory.
Jamilla Pinder, assistant director for healthy communities at Cone Health, is also trained as a community health worker and community engagement specialist. Talis Shelbourne/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Dickerson, an Avalon Trace resident, witnessed for years how previous ownership would refuse to spend any money on the building despite obvious signs of deterioration.
“They wouldn’t fix nothing,” he said. “They was just collecting rent.”
With a wealth of anecdotes and data, the coalition reached out to the property's owner — an out-of-state Georgia-based landlord — hoping they could work together to improve the complex.
They got no results.
So coalition members next went to city council members and local media to expose conditions in the building.
Percy Dickerson, 80, is a Vietnam veteran who has lived in the apartments since 1999. He said the previous owner never made repairs. Since the new owner took over, however, his bathroom has been revamped and several kitchen appliances were installed. Talis Shelbourne/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The coalition also encouraged tenants to file code violation complaints with the city’s Minimum Housing Standards Commission. Eventually, the number of complaints involved at least 50 units, Sills recalled, a threshold that allowed the commission to put a lien on the mortgage.
“If they didn’t fix these properties, the city would fix these properties and charge the owner,” he explained.
In response, the owner put the complex up for sale.
The coalition worked with Collaborative Cottage Grove to find new financing and a new developer. It applied for a grant from the BUILD Health Challenge, a national coalition of health insurers, philanthropists and community organizations that award local agencies money for health equity initiatives. After securing the grant, Cone Health matched it. The parties worked to obtain additional private funding and a committment from the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro to provide $1,500 per unit for renovations.
“That (was) enough for the new owner to rehab the property,” Sills said. “It allowed for a new metal roof. Tearing out old carpeting and putting in laminate floors. Painting interior and exterior, landscaping, digging up the old sewer lines and replacing them. Rehabbing bathrooms and kitchens. So many units were improved.”
Coalition brings system changes, but work remains
Since Cottage Gardens’ rehabilitation, groups in the area have continued to advocate for improvements in health and housing.
For example, Williams said, she wants to see funding for remediation set aside in the Guilford County School system.
“We appreciate the behavioral education you’re doing (in the school system), but if your plan doesn’t have a remedial component, all you’re doing is educating people and putting them back in an environment that’s literally making them sick,” she said.
The coalition still maintains a relationship with Cone Health to pinpoint asthma hotspots.
Greensboro’s Collaborative Cottage Grove was the recipient of a Build Health Challenge 3.0 grant. The collaborative is working with the coalition to target 15 families struggling with asthma.
Tiarra Brown, the director of community engagement at the Greensboro Housing Coalition
With those funds, we can say, 'We fixed this in the home, versus giving you a medical diagnosis but not changing anything in the environment that was triggering your asthma.'
“We set aside funding to make sure we can do remedial efforts,” said Tiarra Brown, the director of community engagement at the Greensboro Housing Coalition. "With those funds, we can say, 'We fixed this in the home, versus giving you a medical diagnosis but not changing anything in the environment that was triggering your asthma,'” Brown said.
The coalition also made gains in policy.
After Avalon Trace was rehabilitated, the city hired a new code enforcement director, who has hired more staff and created a searchable database of addresses with code violations.
“He has been a champion and a person who really gets it at a different level,” Williams said. "He started changing how his staff communicates out to the public. He made it better.”
She also said the coalition, which has its own certified housing inspectors, works closely with code enforcement to increase capacity.
Williams said the relationship with Cottage Gardens' new owner is much better. She has her phone number, and they stay in regular contact to address residents’ concerns and ensure conditions are steadily improving.
Ultimately, Williams said residents are much more informed and engaged.
Stephen Smoot, 69, said when he first moved to Avalon Trace, the place was “trash.” Although he is grateful the new owner has made some repairs, he hopes existing tenants are the first to receive upgrades over vacant units or new tenants. Talis Shelbourne/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“When we started Cottage Grove, there were four partners and two community members at meeting(s),” she said. “Within 30 days, we had 10 community members, and in the first six months, we had 10 partners. We’re roughly at about 15 organizations (now).”
Smoot was one of the residents who benefitted from those meetings. He calls Williams an angel for helping educate tenants like him on their rights.
Since the new owner has come in, Smoot said, the majority of his bathroom was replaced, with a new toilet, sink, vanity and new flooring. The apartment has hardwood floors now, and he scrubs them with Pine Sol and disinfectants at least twice a week to keep things clean. When we interviewed him in June, Smoot was waiting on a new stove and refrigerator.
He said he’s grateful some repairs have been made. However, he said, work remains.
When he turns the tub on, the initial gush of water still comes out red. He has managed to keep the roach problem “tolerable,” though he said they’re still in the walls. And he’s hoping the place will finally receive a fresh coat of paint.
He said he plans to buy a co-op once he saves up enough money.
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2022-09-08T16:01:56Z
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www.jsonline.com
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North Carolina community models how to change an asthma attack source
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https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/health/2022/09/08/north-carolina-community-models-how-change-asthma-attack-source/7940629001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/health/2022/09/08/north-carolina-community-models-how-change-asthma-attack-source/7940629001/
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JACKSON, Miss. - Waving a yardstick in the air to get everyone's attention, Sophelia Sykes began a review with her kindergarten students.
“Letters and sounds now,” Sykes said, adding with a smile, “I’m looking to see if your lips are moving.”
A chorus of singsong voices responded.
“Q, queen, quh,” the Spann Elementary students chanted. “R, rat, ruh. S, snake, suh.”
Pairing letters and sounds with words might seem basic. But when Sykes first started at Spann 15 years ago, such drills were not a part of the lesson plan.
“Children can sing the alphabet by the time they’re two or three years old, but it has no meaning if they can’t associate the letters they’re saying with an actual word,” Sykes said.
This greater emphasis on phonics-based instruction — using the sounds of letters, and combinations of letters, to figure out words — is part of statewide reforms that have dramatically improved reading levels in Mississippi. The reforms, especially coming from a state typically not seen as an innovator, have captured the attention of educators and politicians across the country.
For the first time, Mississippi led the nation for gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Known as the Nation's Report Card, it measures how students perform in mathematics and reading.
In Mississippi, the percentage of students who performed at or above the proficient level in reading was 32% in 2019. That's higher than the previous testing period — 27% in 2017 — and much higher than a generation ago, in 1998, when it was 17%. The state met the national average, something it had never done before, boosting its ranking to 29th. Not that long ago, in 2013, it had been nearly dead last — 49th.
Wisconsin, on the other hand, has barely moved the needle on NAEP scores in 30 years. The percentage of students who performed at or above the proficient level in reading was 36% in 2019, 35% in 2017 and 34% in 1998. While Wisconsin's numbers remain higher than Mississippi's, the trend line is flat.
Further, Black fourth-graders in Mississippi are outperforming Black fourth-graders in Wisconsin in reading, portending what's to come in other academic measurements as the students age. And while Black students in Mississippi averaged a reading score 21 percentage points lower than White students — nothing to be content with — the performance gap was 39 points in Wisconsin, a chasm that is both shocking and familiar.
“We have done virtually nothing to close the Black-white gap,” said state Rep. LaKeshia Myers, a Milwaukee Democrat.
Nationally, a just-released NAEP report, the first to gauge the impact of the COVID pandemic, shows a national drop in scores. State by state results will come later. Still, while far from perfect, Mississippi appears to offer lessons on how reading improvements can be achieved.
Its jump in reading scores has been attributed largely to the passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013. The Act emphasized grade-level reading skills, particularly as students' progress from kindergarten through 3rd grade. It included statewide training for teachers based on the science of reading; literacy coaches to provide support for teachers in the classroom; and specific intervention services for students who struggle.
The Act also made a promise: Students at the lowest achievement level in reading on the statewide assessment for 3rd grade would not be moved on to 4th grade. It got even more teeth in 2016, when it was amended to include individual reading plans for those who need them, and increased expectations for all 3rd graders.
Katie Kasubaski, the state leader of Decoding Dyslexia Wisconsin, said she considers Mississippi a model of how key leaders can come together around a shared vision to improve reading.
“They were all on the same page ready to make those big changes,” Kasubaski said.
Lingering effect of the 'reading wars'
Wisconsin has not had such a united front.
Efforts to enact some of the same reforms as those in Mississippi have met considerable opposition, particularly from the Wisconsin Education Association Council — the teachers union.
In November, Gov. Tony Evers — a former educator who draws political support from the union — vetoed a Senate bill that would have tripled the number of literacy tests young children take in school, citing insufficient funding and lack of evidence that it would work.
In April, the governor vetoed a bill that would have mandated personal literacy plans for students with low reading assessment scores, for the same reasons.
“Every time the word ‘education’ comes up, it’s like spidey senses go off,” said Myers, the state representative from Milwaukee. “It conjures up all these bad memories of debates.”
Those debates, sometimes called the “reading wars,” raged long before Evers came into office, and extended far beyond Wisconsin.
Broadly, phonics involves sounding out words, whereas what's known as the "whole language" approach emphasizes reading for meaning and figuring out words by their context. Advocates of phonics contend it helps students who aren't exposed to much reading at home, and those who are dyslexic; opponents suggest it is too drill-oriented and doesn't develop comprehension and a love of reading.
Today, phonics is generally accepted as necessary — it's the degree of "necessary" that continues to be contentious.
More than a decade ago in Wisconsin, a nominally bipartisan “Read to Lead" task force was convened to address best practices in educating schoolchildren. It was perhaps the most prominent of multiple efforts to bridge the entrenched divides over reading. The task force included educators, reading experts, elected officials from both parties, and philanthropic and nonprofit representatives.
Among the recommendations: require teachers to undergo rigorous reading testing before they are licensed, and screen kindergarteners to catch problems early on and provide them needed support.
To this day, almost none of the recommendations of the task force have materialized.
Teachers receive training, mentoring
In Mississippi, providing support for teachers under the literacy law has involved complementary efforts: professional development and literacy coaches.
“These were two components of the law that went into effect pretty much immediately,” said Kelly Butler, CEO of the Barksdale Reading Institute, which works to improve reading in Mississippi’s public schools.
Every school district in Mississippi enrolled their teachers in the Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling (LETRS) — an online program that provides K-12 educators and administrators with the skills they need to teach phonics. Funding came directly from the Literacy-Based Promotion Act.
But if teachers simply soak up the content, only about 15% of the material is ever implemented in the classroom, Butler said. That is where coaching comes in.
“When you introduce coaching, (the material implemented) goes up to about 95 percent,” Butler said.
In Mississippi, finding qualified literacy coaches was challenging.
“We had to train all the coaches, too,” Butler said. “In the first year we passed the law, we had 500 applicants for what we were hoping were 75 spots, and we barely filled 25 spots. That’s how thin the pool of people was.”
Today, there are about 80 trained coaches that work across the state, about half in Jackson Public Schools, the second largest and only urban district in the state, serving more than 12,000 students.
“When we provide professional learning development, our coaches are in schools the very next day or week to … see what that looks like in classrooms,” Crain said.
Teamwork is crucial, especially for veteran teachers who may have learned a different way of teaching reading, said Delane Lesh, assistant principal of Spann Elementary.
“To be a good teacher, you have to read, research and see the best practices out there that others are using and you can implement,” Lesh said.
One teacher who has been at Spann for nine years said that when she started, if kindergarteners "just knew their alphabets and some sounds, it was good enough.”
Now, it is as though kindergarten is first grade.
“They’re requiring more of the students and of us,” she said.
Building the plane 'as we're flying it'
On a warm Friday at Baker Elementary School in Jackson, a gaggle of pre-kindergarten students read out morning announcements, their voices filling the red-and-white halls.
They close the announcements with the Baker creed: “I will listen. I will think. I will read. I will write.”
Camesha Hatchett has led the school of about 250 pre-kindergarten-through-5th grade students since 2019. All are economically disadvantaged; 97% are children of color. Lifting them up to their full potential is the driving idea behind the Literacy-Based Promotion Act.
“It’s been a lot of work,” said Kelly Crain, assistant state literacy coordinator. Even with the parameters set down by the literacy act, “We say we’re building the plane as we’re flying it.”
After the act passed, Jackson Public Schools bought two English language arts curriculums: “Wit & Wisdom” and “Wilson Fundations.” Both teaching programs were created with science behind them, specifically research from linguists and psychologists on how the brain processes language.
The curriculums are reliant on using phonics both in texts and group discussions to improve reading fluency. For example, during a 30-minute Fundations lesson in a kindergarten class at Baker, the students were going through a lesson with a story about Fred the Frog.
First came decoding — the process of reading words in the text.
“There’s an adjective here, which describes something,” the teacher said. “How did he jump?”
“Quick!” responded the children.
“So Fred jumped over the twig, on the grass and over the moon,” the teacher continued, as the students repeated after her. “And now we have a trick word: dogs. What’s tricky about that?”
“It has the suffix 's’ at the end,” one girl said. “That means we’re talking about two or more!”
Next came encoding — the process of using letter-sound knowledge to write words.
Students tapped out sounds with their fingers, then wrote on their whiteboards to identify the long vowel sound in the word “go,” a digraph “ch” in the word “chunk,” and a blend “st” in the word “stop.”
“This is the application of the science of reading,” Crain said. “She’s not asking them to guess or skip a word. When they get to a word they don’t know, they use the skills learned in Fundations to say the sounds and get the word.”
As more states make the science of reading a policy priority, many are designed with these methods in mind.
Former Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi, who himself is dyslexic, was a key player in the 2013 changes. A Republican, he had the support of the conservative majority of the state Legislature.
“The concern was that too many kids were getting well into middle and high school, and still struggling to read,” said Butler, of the Barksdale Reading Institute.
Intervening with struggling students
Despite Mississippi's improvements, the rising tide does not lift all boats. Some students still struggle to read.
So with the 2013 literacy act, there is also a focus on intervening with struggling students immediately, or holding back those who could not pass the third-grade assessment. Labeled a “retention law,” it was some time before this part of the act gained bipartisan support. It gave the impression students would be held back en masse, or that particular communities of children would be singled out. By including a “good cause exemption” to ensure that special education students were not unjustly penalized by benchmark testing standards, it gained support.
“Many of my colleagues and allies who associate themselves with the Democratic Party were in favor of this, provided it did not put the burden totally on nine-year-olds,” Butler said.
Kindergarten-through-3rd grade students are now screened for reading proficiency three times a year. There are six approved screening tests in the state of Mississippi, down from a mishmash of 117 tests when the act was first passed.
When students test poorly, parents or guardians are notified and individual reading plans can be created. Specialized instruction is then provided.
At Spann, "intervention time" was implemented to help struggling third-grade students get ready for testing. The idea is not to single them out, but to give them needed time to get one-on-one assistance with so-called "interventionists," who may be retired teachers or other support specialists.
During one recent "intervention time," students were given a passage to read and then a list of questions about it. They were instructed to highlight any textual evidence they found to support their answer.
“You’ve got your thinking cap on?” the interventionist asked. “I left it at home,” one boy responded.
Barksdale is working with the state to develop a pathway to get intervention that follows the students into higher grades.
“We’ve so long been the underdogs, the impetus was on us to change,” one interventionist said. “There’s nowhere to go but up.”
Not on the same page
Wisconsin has had little success getting off the ground, much less going up.
The state has a dire need for teachers; the University of Wisconsin-Madison even pays for tuition and fees for teacher education students who agree to work in the state for several years. But there's little agreement on what qualifies a teacher to impart reading to youngsters.
In 2014, a Fundamentals of Reading Test was created for people applying for teaching licenses in Wisconsin — one of the key recommendations from the old Read to Lead task force. The premise: It's impossible to teach reading if someone isn't particularly good at it themselves.
But the test has skeptics.
“One high-stakes test does not determine competency,” said Myers, who is a proponent of allowing educators to submit a portfolio rather than one be-all and end-all exam.
Further, a loophole makes the exam not nearly as high-stakes as it seems, said Chan Stroman, an attorney and phonics-based instruction advocate based in Madison.
“As soon as the (FoRT) was enacted in 2014, there was immediate and successful activity (by the teachers union) to undercut that requirement,” Stroman said. “Now any teacher can become licensed on an emergency license — the equivalent of a temporary license that gets renewed every year.”
Even with the loophole, the shortage of qualified teachers remains.
“There simply aren't enough expert teachers to meet the needs of all of the kids who have difficulty with learning to read,” said Debra Zarling, president of the Wisconsin State Reading Association.
What gets taught to teachers even before they try for a license is another issue. In schools of education — where future teachers are trained — some instructors fully support explicit phonics instruction, others still lean toward the whole language approach, or treat them equally.
“Teaching more phonics, which is one of the things that's often being promoted, doesn’t result in better readers,” Zarling contends. “I believe it definitely needs to be taught. But the teacher also needs to be able to adjust it based on the needs of their kids.”
That's anathema to educators who are all-in on phonics. And in fact, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction endorsed “explicit and systematic phonics instruction” in 2020.
Beyond that, once in the classroom, Wisconsin requires teachers to have access to a qualified literacy specialist to help them. But although it is in the books, that does not mean it is being followed, Zarling said.
“Many districts just put a name on the line when they're asked if that person has the qualifications, but they don't necessarily act in that capacity,” Zarling said.
It's the law, but is it followed?
Another proposal from the Read to Lead task force was screening for reading readiness.
Under current law, schools must assess students annually from pre-kindergarten to second grade using a three-tiered early literacy screening program. Typical of the schism in Wisconsin, the state branches of Decoding Dyslexia and the International Dyslexia Association were in favor of the law; the state reading association was against it.
“We don't have a problem identifying kids who have struggles, what we have is a problem providing the support that they need,” Zarling said.
It is unclear how many school districts follow the law and intervene with students who need it.
“It is certainly clear that the DPI has no interest in monitoring it,” Stroman said. “DPI is not catching students who are at risk of reading failure and basically telling parents to wait to fail.”
Wisconsin is in the minority of states that still does not require screening or intervention for dyslexia. There is also no requirement in Wisconsin that parents be notified about such intervention.
“My daughter was getting actual intervention and we were told she was just getting extra help,” said Katie Kasubaski, leader of Decoding Dyslexia Wisconsin. The family was not part of the process.
Even in Mississippi, doubts linger
For all the progress in Mississippi, there are still challenges — and people who wonder if the gains are a mirage.
Spann Elementary went from an "F" to a "B" on the state's report card since the literacy act went into effect. But it's not the norm.
“Going from an F to a B (is uncommon) in Jackson,” one interventionist said. “Jackson is really struggling.”
That's true for schools and students. Despite trying to catch lagging students early, Mississippi has a higher retention rate — not advancing kids to the next grade — than any other state, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.
In 2018-19, 8% of all K-3 students in Mississippi were held back, up from just over 6% the previous year. The pandemic put a pause on this, meaning that third graders in Mississippi during 2020-21 that failed the benchmark test would not be held back.
The retention rate is a point of contention in Mississippi — even though it was a key promise of the literacy act legislation. Parents are concerned because grade retention is correlated with negative outcomes of education, such as dropping out as they age through the system. And with a high rate of turnover among Mississippi’s teachers and students, there are still not enough trained staff to work with the children who need help.
Ginny Strauf from Meridian, Miss., whose daughter is dyslexic, chose to homeschool rather than leave her daughter without a path forward.
“They said there was nothing they could do with her,” Strauf said. “At that point, I pulled her out. I don’t see the schools getting any better.”
After a few months, she thought about re-enrolling her daughter in school, and during that time, teachers told Strauf that because her student had an individualized education plan, she would not need to take the third grade benchmark test.
In other words, due to a "good cause" exemption, her daughter would not be counted in the state's data. Strauf now believes that Mississippi's celebrated gains may lack context.
“Only good readers take the test,” Strauf said.
Lelah Byron produced this story while serving as a research assistant to Sarah Carr during Carr's 2021-22 O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University’s Diederich College of Communication. Marquette University and administrators of the program played no role in the reporting, editing or presentation of this story. Carr, a former Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter who is now an independent journalist, contributed to this report.
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2022-09-08T16:02:08Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Could Wisconsin educators learn from Mississippi's reading reforms?
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/08/could-wisconsin-educators-learn-mississippis-reading-reforms/10027917002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/08/could-wisconsin-educators-learn-mississippis-reading-reforms/10027917002/
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MADISON – A federal judge has ruled that a Canadian oil company can continue to operate a contested pipeline through the tribal lands of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa while the company works to reroute the line through nearby properties.
Citing damage that could be caused to consumers, markets and international relations by a disruption of operations, Judge William Conley ruled late Wednesday that Enbridge can continue to operate the nearly 70-year-old pipeline, but must work to assuage concerns that erosion could cause a spill in the Bad River.
The ruling comes three years after the band filed a lawsuit to remove the pipeline, after right-of-way easements between the tribe and the company expired in 2013. The pipeline operates on about 12 miles of reservation lands.
Tribal officials no longer wanted Enbridge to operate the pipeline on tribal lands and feared that a rupture would pose grave environmental damage.
More: Oil contaminated soil found near Enbridge's Line 5, one mile outside Bad River Band reservation
In particular, the largest concern raised in court documents is a meandering channel of the Bad River that has gotten steadily closer to the buried pipeline. The tribe argued that if the erosion were to reach the pipe, the footing could be washed away and cause the pipeline to rupture and oil to enter the Bad River and other waters that flow into Lake Superior.
Those concerns were bolstered by a spill on another of Enbridge's pipelines in 2010 on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, which took years and more than $1 billion to clean up.
In response to the lawsuit, Enbridge proposed a 41.2-mile reroute of the 645-mile-long pipeline. If approved, construction for the new line would occur in Ashland and Iron counties.
More:Hours of testimony highlight tensions over potential reroute of Canadian-owned Enbridge oil pipeline in northern Wisconsin
The environmental impact statement for the reroute is under review by the DNR, with no date yet projected for when it will be completed. The statement will be one of many documents that will be used to determine whether to issue a permit to Enbridge to allow the project to move forward.
The reroute proposal has been met with criticism and concern over oil spills or pipe leaks, as well as the potential impacts to the environment when the company disrupts forests and digs underneath streams and rivers.
Conley, of the Western District federal court in Madison, said Enbridge is being permitted to continue the operation of the pipeline because of concerns over the impact to consumers, refineries, regional economics and the international energy supply if operations were disrupted, in addition to the potential for the impact to foreign relations with Canada.
"There is little question that an immediate shutdown of the pipeline would have significant public policy implication on the trade relationship between the United States and Canada," Conley wrote.
More: 'It could rise to the level of Standing Rock': Wisconsinites push back against oil pipeline reroute
But Conley also noted that Enbridge's continued use of the pipeline through tribal lands after the expiration of the easements also impacts the tribe's sovereign rights to control its own lands. To remedy that issue, Enbridge will be required to pay a yet to be determined fee for the easement in the interim, which could double if the construction is not finished in time.
Juli Kellner, a communications specialist for Enbridge, said in a statement Thursday morning that the company is pleased with the court's decision.
"The importance of Line 5 was affirmed today by the federal court judge’s decision ensuring the pipeline will continue to provide energy to millions of people in the Upper Midwest while Enbridge moves forward with the relocation of Line 5 around the Bad River Reservation," she said.
"Enbridge remains open to resolving issues amicably with the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians as we also continue to focus on providing consumers and industry in the region with safe, reliable energy."
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2022-09-08T16:02:20Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Federal judge rules that Enbridge's Line 5 can remain in operation
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2022/09/08/federal-judge-rules-enbridges-line-5-can-remain-operation/8020701001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2022/09/08/federal-judge-rules-enbridges-line-5-can-remain-operation/8020701001/
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Blain's Farm & Fleet to open new facility in Grafton this October in former Shopko building
Blain's Farm & Fleet is planning an October opening for its new facility in the former Shopko building, 1771 Wisconsin Ave., Grafton.
The 94,500-square-foot store is celebrating its grand opening from Oct. 20-22; the event will feature demonstrations from vendor partners and more than $25,000 in prizes. A winner on Thursday and Friday will each receive a $1,000 prize; on Saturday, a $3,000 shopping spree will be awarded.
The store features an automotive center and tire shop with a selection of tires, car batteries, motor oil change supplies and a small engine repair department. The store also carries big and tall clothing, work wear, hunting gear and pet food and supply center.
RELATED:Jagler: Blain’s Farm & Fleet meets its customers where they live
Customers can pick up orders at the drive-thru in two hours or less. Customers can purchase items from pet food, softener, salt and mulch without an advance order.
Blain's Farm & Fleet of Grafton is bringing more than 100 jobs to the local community. A three-day hiring event was scheduled for Sept. 7-9 at the Ozaukee County Fairgrounds Pavilion. The hiring event will be open until 7 p.m. Sept. 8 and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 9.
A one-day hiring event is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sept. 14 at the Hampton Inn & Suites, 1385 Gateway Drive, Grafton.
Blain's Farm & Fleet owns 43 locations throughout Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan. For more information, visit www.farmandfleet.com/grafton.
RELATED:Harbor Freight Tools plans to open a new store in Grafton this fall
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2022-09-08T18:24:15Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Blain's Farm & Fleet to open in Grafton in October
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northshore/2022/09/08/blains-farm-fleet-open-grafton-october/8020849001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northshore/2022/09/08/blains-farm-fleet-open-grafton-october/8020849001/
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MADISON – March could be an enjoyable month for Wisconsin men's basketball coach Greg Gard and his players – if the Badgers can survive January.
After opening Big Ten play with two games in December – Dec. 6 against visiting Maryland and Dec. 11 at Iowa – the Badgers face a grueling eight-game slate in January.
How grueling?
According to UW's full schedule released Thursday:
They open the month on Jan. 3 against visiting Minnesota, one of their more bitter rivals. Four days later is a road test against Illinois, which shared the regular-season title with UW last season and is expected to be solid again in 2022-23.
Michigan State and Tom Izzo visit the Kohl Center on Jan. 10 and four days later the Badgers are at Indiana, which is expected to be the preseason favorite to win the league title.
BTN analyst Robbie Hummel said Thursday the Hoosiers will be favored to win the league title, followed by Illinois, Michigan State, Purdue and Ohio State.
“When you’re talking about the best teams in the Big Ten this year,” Hummel said during the BTN's schedule reveal, “we’re going to have to start with the Indiana Hoosiers … There is just a lack of turnover.
"Outside of Parker Stewart and Rob Phinisee, you’ve got everybody back. And, most importantly, you bring back Trayce Jackson-Davis. Your point guard Xavier Johnson is back. Race Thompson is an elite role player in this league …
"On top of all those things, you throw in one of the better recruiting classes in the Big Ten and I think Indiana is really positioned well with their roster.
"The question with them is always going to be: Can they make enough jump shots?"
Three days after facing the Hoosiers, the Badgers host a Penn State team that lost by just two points in Madison last season and should be improved under second-year coach Micah Shrewsberry.
Road tests follow against Northwestern on Jan. 21 and Maryland on Jan. 25. The Terrapins finished just 7-13 in the league last season but should be improved under new coach Kevin Willard.
UW then closes out the month at home on Jan. 28 against the Illini.
February doesn’t start off any easier as UW plays on Feb. 2 at Ohio State, which finished 12-8 in the Big Ten last season. The Buckeyes routed UW last season in Columbus, 73-55.
After hosting Northwestern three days later, UW has back-to-back road tests in a span of four days. The Badgers travel east to play Penn State on Feb. 8 and then make a 180-degree turn to face Nebraska on Feb. 11.
The schedule maker gives UW three consecutive home games – Michigan on Feb. 14, Rutgers on Feb. 18 and Iowa on Feb. 22.
That will be a critical stretch for UW, which closes out the month Feb. 26 at Michigan.
The trip to Ann Arbor no doubt will stir the emotions of Michigan fans who believe Gard should have been punished in the wake of the postgame brawl after the teams met last season in Madison.
The Badgers host Purdue on March 2 in their next-to-last regular-season game. UW recorded a 70-67 victory over the Boilermakers on March 1 of last season to secure a share of the league title.
UW closes the regular season March 5 at Minnesota.
The Badgers hope to win at least a share of the league title for the third time in four seasons. If they are to have a chance to achieve that, they’ll have to survive what could be a demanding run in January.
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2022-09-08T18:24:21Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Wisconsin Badgers Big Ten basketball schedule has tough January tests
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/08/wisconsin-badgers-big-ten-basketball-schedule-has-tough-january-tests/7974933001/
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District attorney's office to begin reviewing bridge death investigation this week
Local prosecutors expect to begin reviewing the investigation into a man’s death on the Kilbourn Avenue bridge this week, while city officials look into possible safety upgrades for bridge openings.
Kent Lovern, the chief deputy district attorney for Milwaukee County, said Wednesday the investigation relating to the death of Richard C. Dujardin, 77, of Providence, R.I., is being presented to his office this week. He did not provide a timeline for when a charging decision may be made.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s interim commissioner of the Department of Public Works, Jerrel Kruschke, said at a hearing Thursday his department is considering a number of new safety precautions for the opening and closing of bridges. That includes new signage and cameras or bringing back the old model of on-site bridge operators, rather than some working remotely.
On Aug. 15, Dujardin was walking across the Kilbourn Avenue bridge when it began opening for a watercraft to pass through underneath.
An alarm system with lights and bells did go off, but Dujardin, who walked slowly and was hard of hearing, was unable to get off the bridge in time, according to a report from the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office. He clung onto a railing as the bridge rose to a 90-degree angle and fell 71 feet.
The bridge operator, who controls the bridge remotely using a camera system, remains on administrative leave. Kruschke said he has yet to personally speak to the operator, although the noted the department's "safety team" made contact with him in the aftermath of the incident.
During a 15-minute hearing in front of the city’s Public Works Committee on Thursday, Kruschke said he and his staff have not been briefed on the findings of the Milwaukee Police Department’s investigation. But he did confirm to Common Council members that the camera feed operated correctly that day.
Nick Goodwin of the Public Works Department said the bridge has two cameras on each side that make the deck fully visible, including the gates that drop down to block cars and pedestrians.
But those cameras merely provide a live feed with no audio, and do not record and store any footage. Kruschke said bridge operations over the river have been conducted remotely for at least 25 years. The cameras have never recorded the footage before out of storage concerns.
When Kruschke said the department is looking into installing cameras that do record footage, Ald. Robert Bauman, the chair of the Public Works Committee, was surprised they hadn’t already been installed.
“I would’ve started that process the next day,” Bauman said. “Why didn’t you? It’s a problem for the guilty and for the incident. Video would prove you didn’t make a mistake versus proving you did. Now it’s all speculation and guesswork.”
Kruschke said Milwaukee’s movable bridges can still be operated on site manually, but his department was still studying the financial impact of returning to that model. He said some bridges would need upgrades, such as installing a bathroom for workers.
Of the 20 movable bridges in Milwaukee, 10 are operated remotely, according to the Department of Public Works. The Kilbourn Avenue bridge is controlled remotely out of the Water Street bridge tower, which also controls bridges over the Menomonee River.
Five movable bridges in Milwaukee are staffed at least 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Four are staffed around the clock every day.
In 2021, the city recorded more than 27,700 openings at its movable bridges, up 19% from 2017, according to the Department of Public Works.
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2022-09-08T20:42:56Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee prosecutors to begin reviewing bridge death this week
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/08/milwaukee-prosecutors-begin-reviewing-bridge-death-week/8020919001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/08/milwaukee-prosecutors-begin-reviewing-bridge-death-week/8020919001/
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Legislators pass Republican-drawn plan for deploying $31 million in opioid settlement funds that directs more funds to law enforcement
MADISON – Wisconsin Republicans passed their own plan Thursday for $31 million in opioid settlement funds, rejecting the Evers administration's proposal and instead directing more money to law enforcement.
The new plan was passed unanimously by the Joint Committee on Finance.
During a news conference before the committee meeting, finance co-chair state Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, said the plan received by the state Department of Health Services in August was "unilateral."
"Unfortunately, once again we saw the Evers administration, particularly the Department of Health, fail with a half-baked plan," Born said. "There was a lack of details, there was a lack of clear working with stakeholders."
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said the finance committee's passage of a plan for the opioid money allows the state to begin using $31 million in settlement funds.
"While we shouldn’t have had to spur Republicans on the Joint Finance
Committee into action to address this vital issue, it is a positive development that
these funds will be available to address the opioid crisis without further unnecessary
delay," Kaul said in a statement.
The Republican plan still included about 85% of the Department of Health Services proposals. Those include:
$10 million for capital projects that will expand treatment and recovery services.
$6 million for tribal nations to address the dramatic increase in opioid overdose deaths.
$3 million for harm reduction by increasing the availability of Narcan, a drug that counteracts opioids.
$2 million to distribute fentanyl test strips around the state.
Republicans removed $2 million for family support programs and instead allocated $3 million to law enforcement agencies, under a competitive grant program.
Related:After the deaths of 2 UWM students, UW campuses make Narcan more widely available
Related:As overdose deaths hit record highs, this nasal spray can help save lives. Here's how to get it and use it.
The grant money will be used for medication-assisted treatment education and awareness training, a community drug disposal program, treatment of jail inmates with opioid use disorder, and supporting pre-arrest and pre-arraignment diversion strategies.
State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, asked the finance committee to reconsider removing funding for family support programs.
Erpenbach talked about his own family's long struggle with drug addiction. His 27-year-old daughter is homeless and addicted to drugs.
"I'm at a point now where I'm driving around town looking for her in the diviest motels out there," Erpenbach said. "There are a million places to turn to, but there aren't any places to turn to. Families don't know where to go. I don't know what questions to ask."
The $31 million was awarded from a legal settlement with pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors.
The National Prescription Opiate Litigation (NPOL) settlement was reached as part of agreements that Attorney General Josh Kaul entered into settling the state’s legal claims.
DHS received its first $6 million payment on July 29 to begin using immediately, while the remaining $25 million is expected by the end of the calendar year.
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2022-09-08T20:42:59Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Republican plan for opioid settlement directs funds to law enforcement
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/08/republican-plan-opioid-settlement-directs-funds-law-enforcement/8015974001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/08/republican-plan-opioid-settlement-directs-funds-law-enforcement/8015974001/
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Queen Elizabeth II, who died Thursday at age 96 after 70 years as Britain's royal monarch, never visited Milwaukee.
But she did do a drive-by. Make that a sail-by.
In June 1959, Queen Elizabeth came to North America to join U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in ceremonies formally opening the St. Lawrence Seaway, the massive project linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes — with the royal yacht, the Britannia, sailing through, accompanied by several destroyers.
The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, then embarked on a 15,000-mile, 45-day tour of Canada and the Great Lakes, including Lake Michigan.
The only royal visit on U.S. soil during the tour was a stop in Chicago, on July 6, 1959. But Milwaukee did its best to get in on the action.
Not that the royals needed any reminder of what Milwaukee was about.
At a reception with Midwestern governors and mayors in Chicago July 6, Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler and his wife, Agnes, met the queen and Prince Philip, and invited the royal couple to visit Milwaukee, The Milwaukee Journal reported.
"Where did you say you were from?" Philip asked the mayor.
"Milwaukee," Zeidler replied.
"Ah, that's where they make the beer," the prince said.
The royal visit to Chicago lasted 14 hours, a whirlwind that included a stop at Navy Pier for the International Trade Show, a motorcade ride through the city, a visit to the Museum of Science & Industry and several big receptions. According to the Chicago Tribune, the royal entourage was back on the Britannia by 12:50 a.m.
Related:What happens to the other royals under King Charles III and his new slimmed-down monarchy?
Related:King Charles III expresses 'greatest sadness' over mother Queen Elizabeth II's death, world reacts
The next morning, the Britannia and its floating entourage set sail for Canada, with plans for a nautical version of an air kiss for Milwaukee along the way. The ship's route took it about one mile off the breakwater off Milwaukee's outer harbor.
That was good enough for Milwaukee, apparently. The city had already scheduled a week of events celebrating the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway — expected to be a boon for Milwaukee's shippers and manufacturers, as well as the growing Port of Milwaukee — so the royal "sail-by" was added to the program.
Even though the Britannia was scheduled to pass by the city at 8:30 a.m. on July 7, 1959, thousands of people turned out for the royal sort-of visit.
Scores of people boarded the Milwaukee Clipper, a Great Lakes ferry, to try to get a closer look at the queen and her entourage. People watched from their cars on Jones Island, The Journal reported in a front-page story that day, and from benches in Juneau and Lincoln parks.
One boy, watching from a bluff in Lake Park, told his older sister, "Look, there's the queen's ship coming out of the trees."
The Milwaukee Sentinel reported that a bus, with its driver trying to get a glimpse of the yacht, was driving slowly along the lake route. When passengers questioned his speed, the driver replied: "What if you are a little late for work? You're looking at history!"
An estimated 60 boats escorted the Britannia along the run past Milwaukee. Harbor Escort, the city's harbor launch, traveled along as far as St. Mary's Hospital, then blasted an air-horn salute.
The Journal noted that, technically, Elizabeth and Philip were within Milwaukee city limits for about 45 minutes.
While onlookers hoped to see the royals, it was unlikely. Sir Harold Caccia, Britain's ambassador to the United States, told The Journal that Queen Elizabeth was asleep, worn out from all the doings in Chicago the day before. (The queen might have had another reason for needing her rest. Although it hadn't been announced yet, she was pregnant; Prince Andrew, her third child, would be born seven months later.)
Despite the once-removed nature of the royal "visit," Elizabeth and Philip sent a message of thanks to Milwaukee for the reception.
"Queen and Duke of Edinburgh much appreciate the cordial greetings sent to them this morning on behalf of the citizens of Milwaukee," read the message sent from the Britannia to Milwaukee's City Hall. "Please convey the sincere thanks of her majesty and his royal highness to them."
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2022-09-08T22:48:53Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Queen Elizabeth II visited Milwaukee as royal yacht sailed by in 1959
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/green-sheet/2022/09/08/queen-elizabeth-ii-visited-milwaukee-royal-yacht-sailed-1959/8021558001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/green-sheet/2022/09/08/queen-elizabeth-ii-visited-milwaukee-royal-yacht-sailed-1959/8021558001/
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MADISON - Former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly is seeking a new term in a race for control of the state's highest court ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Kelly, a conservative attorney who was appointed to the court in 2016 by then-Gov. Scott Walker, lost his seat on the court in 2020 to Jill Karofsky, a member of the court's liberal minority.
He now joins liberal candidates, Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, in a competition to replace conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, who is not seeking reelection in April 2023.
The court is currently controlled by conservative 4-3 and the 2023 race could flip control to liberals depending on the outcome.
“I am incredibly grateful to those all over the state who have encouraged me to run. They know the importance of electing a justice with a track record of protecting our Constitution, faithfully applying the law as written, and respecting the people of Wisconsin as his bosses," Kelly said in a statement.
"If an activist were to win next April, Wisconsin’s public policy would be imposed by four lawyers sitting in Madison instead of being adopted through our constitutional processes. I won’t let that happen on my watch."
The next Supreme Court election is likely to draw heavy outside spending and national scrutiny as it will determine how lawsuits over the outcome of the 2024 presidential election are likely to be handled.
In 2020, the state's highest court blocked a slate of legal challenges from former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 21,000-vote victory by Joe Biden.
Trump is, for now, expected to run for president again in 2024. Since his 2020 loss, Trump has waged a baseless campaign against Wisconsin's election system, attempting to sow doubt in how votes are cast and tabulated in this battleground state he would likely need to win to earn another term as president.
Conservative justice Brian Hagedorn joined the court's three liberal justices in rulings that denied Trump's effort to change the outcome of the election and on some high-profile cases, including ones that kept a Green Party candidate off the 2020 presidential ballot and upheld Biden’s victory over Trump. Since then, Republicans have turned on Hagedorn.
In April, Kelly went after his former colleague and branded Hagedorn a half-hearted conservative who doesn’t consistently apply the law. Hagedorn said he’s fulfilled his promise to follow the law regardless of his political beliefs.
More:Bice: Trump endorsed Tim Michels after ranting about 2019 tweets of Kleefisch and Brian Hagedorn's teens
Though the race is called nonpartisan, candidates often align with a political ideology.
Also in the race is Mitchell, who is a former prosecutor and the presiding judge of the juvenile division in Dane County. Protasiewicz, a third candidate, was a longtime assistant prosecutor who was elected to the bench in 2013 and re-elected in 2020.
Protasiewicz's campaign manager Alejandro Verdin in a statement said Kelly is a "right-wing extremist with views about the law far out of the mainstream, and he is running to serve a partisan political agenda rather than provide equal justice under the law."
Sean Elliott, campaign manager for Mitchell, called Kelly "a reckless and failed Trump-Walker politician who would use the Court for conservative activism, ignoring the will of Wisconsin voters to turn back the clock on our state.”
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2022-09-08T22:48:59Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Conservative Daniel Kelly running again for Wisconsin Supreme Court
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/09/08/conservative-daniel-kelly-running-again-wisconsin-supreme-court/8026622001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/09/08/conservative-daniel-kelly-running-again-wisconsin-supreme-court/8026622001/
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Jason and Scott Alexander never shared a field for an organized baseball game through the first 29 years and 160 days that they were brothers.
That all changed Thursday afternoon – on day 161 in year 29 – at American Family Field.
Scott Alexander was the starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants in the opening game of the doubleheader as Jason looked on from the Milwaukee Brewers dugout. The Alexanders joined the Rogers twins – Taylor on the Brewers and Tyler on the Giants – as the twin bill broke out into something of a sibling reunion.
When the Alexanders met on the field three hours prior to first pitch, it was a cherished moment a long time in the making. But when the game began, Jason left no question as to where his allegiances lied.
“I hope he does alright, but I want us to win,” said Jason, the younger brother by four years. “I want the Brewers to win. These are important games so we gotta make sure that we go out there and do our job. It’ll be nice to see him. I’m excited to see him out there. This is the first time we’ve shared a field together, but we’re on opposite sides of the field right now.”
Because of the age difference, the Alexanders had never played in the same game at any level. Not little league. Not high school. Not college, the minors or even a spring training contest.
“It’s funny,” Jason said, “that the first time playing together is up here in the big leagues. That’s really special.”
While his younger brother took much more of a journeyman’s trek to the majors, going undrafted and spending five years in the minors before making his MLB debut with Milwaukee in June, Scott is now in his eighth big-league season. The 33-year-old lefthander was a part of World Series championship teams in 2015 with the Royals and 2020 with the Dodgers and has appeared in 216 games with a 3.12 earned run average.
As Jason grinded through the minor leagues, he leaned heavily on Scott’s experience in the majors.
“With everything, tremendously,” he said of how Scott has helped his career. “He’s given me tons of insight and things to work on and practice when you’re grinding through the minor leagues it’s hard to understand things you need to be working on or things that you’re getting away with and he was able to be that other pitching coach in my head to help me get through the tough times.”
The Alexanders throw from different sides but their styles mirror one another.
“He’s got a similar style as I do where he’s gonna attack guys with sinkers,” Jason said. “If he thinks they’re on it, he’s gonna throw a wrinkle in there. But for the most part, he’s going to come at guys with sinkers.”
Unlike the Alexanders, Tyler and Taylor Rogers have experience facing each other before, appearing in a game earlier this year when Taylor was still with the San Diego Padres. As identical twins, they also spent significantly more time growing up playing together (and doing just about everything else with each other, for that matters).
“We shared a vehicle in high school,” Taylor Rogers said on the Journal Sentinel’s Microbrew podcast earlier this year. “We shared a cell phone. We had the same classes. So, it was good for us to branch out and good for me to get to Kentucky and just be Taylor and not be, 'Which one are you?'”
According to Elias, 1977 was the last time that two different sets of brothers played in the same game. With Jason set to start over the weekend, though, it was unlikely that both sibling pairs would appear during the one-day series between the two teams.
Brewers activate Mike Brosseau
Infielder Mike Brosseau's two-day rehab assignment came to an end and he was activated Thursday.
Outfielder Esteury Ruiz was optioned to Class AAA Nashville in a corresponding move.
Brosseau had been sidelined since suffering a right oblique injury on August 22 in Los Angeles.
The Brewers also called up reliever Justin Topa to serve as the designated 29th man for the duration of the doubleheader. Topa spent much of this season on the 60-day injured list with a right forearm flexor strain suffered last September. The righthander made 15 appearances with Nashville, pitching to a 3.71 ERA.
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2022-09-08T22:49:11Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Rogers twins, Alexander brothers face off in same MLB game
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/08/rogers-twins-alexander-brothers-face-off-same-mlb-game/8020691001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/08/rogers-twins-alexander-brothers-face-off-same-mlb-game/8020691001/
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The Milwaukee Brewers said Thursday that they plan to scrap the Restaurant To Be Named Later concept at American Family Field.
The ballclub said in a statement that "major renovation plans are underway" for the space where the restaurant is located in left field.
The team didn't say exactly what it plans to do with the space.
“This initiative involves a complete reimagination of the facility with a new concept that will be a great fit for the space and fan expectations,” said Rick Schlesinger, Brewers president – business operations, said in the statement.
"Additional details on the new concept and timeline for grand opening will be announced at a later date," according to the statement.
The restaurant will remain open only on home game days for the remainder of the 2022 season. There are just under 20 home dates remaining in the regular season.
The restaurant "will remain closed all days throughout the off-season as the design and construction team focus solely on renovations," according to the statement.
The space occupied by the restaurant "is set to undergo major changes in the offseason that require initial work to begin this month," the team said.
The Restaurant To Be Named Later — which replaced a TGI Friday's — originally opened in March 2020, but was shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
At the start of the 2021 season, the restaurant reopened during home games to fans with tickets. Then, in May of 2021, the restaurant resumed operating on game days as well as non-game days.
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2022-09-09T00:49:30Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers plan 'new concept' for Restaurant to be Named Later space
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2022/09/08/brewers-plan-new-concept-restaurant-named-later-space/8028013001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2022/09/08/brewers-plan-new-concept-restaurant-named-later-space/8028013001/
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Corbin Burnes flirts with Milwaukee Brewers strikeout record; here are the top performances in club history
Corbin Burnes posted 14 strikeouts on Sept. 8 in a dazzling eight-inning performance, and he had that strikeout total with just one out in the seventh, no less. It meant he was threatening Ben Sheets' single-game strikeout record, set in 2004 when he punched out 18 Atlanta Braves.
Burnes came into the night with 200 strikeouts, one shy of San Francisco's Carlos Rodón for the National League lead. Even though Burnes won't figure into the National League Cy Young Award conversation after winning the award last year, he remains one of the game's best pitchers.
The thing is, 14 isn't even his best — he had a whopping 15 last year against the Chicago Cubs. In that game, he became the third player in Major League Baseball history to strike out 10 straight batters.
Here's the list of top strikeout performances by Brewers pitchers.
18 — Ben Sheets (May 16, 2004 vs. Atlanta)
In a legendary afternoon game against the Braves, Sheets allowed one earned run on three hits in a 4-1 win at Miller Park. The 25-year-old also walked one batter and was on the cusp of his best season.
15 — Corbin Burnes (Aug. 11, 2021 at Chicago Cubs)
Part of a Cy Young season, the Brewers won easily, 10-0, and Burnes threw eight glorious innings at Wrigley Field, with four hits, no walks and the aforementioned 10 consecutive batters struck out.
14 — Corbin Burnes (Sept. 11, 2021 at Cleveland)
You surely remember this one. Burnes worked eight innings and did not allow a hit, with one walk, and Josh Hader closed the ninth for the second no-hitter in franchise history.
14 — Mike Fiers (Aug. 14, 2014 at Chicago Cubs)
What's amazing is that Fiers turned the feat in six innings — not even Burnes had reached that threshold against the Giants. Fiers allowed three hits and one walk but struck out 14 of the 22 batters he faced, and the Brewers went on to win, 6-2.
14 — Yovani Gallardo (July 15, 2012 vs. Pittsburgh)
Working seven frames, Gallardo allowed a home run and four hits but no walks and 14 punchouts as the Brewers handled Pittsburgh, 4-1.
14 — Moose Haas (April 12, 1978 vs. New York Yankees)
Mike Caldwell has the reputation as the Yankee Killer that season, but Haas had his day too, logging 14 punchouts at County Stadium in a 5-3 win with what was then a club record (that stood for more than a quarter century). Haas went all nine innings and allowed three walks, two home runs and five hits total, but it was good enough.
14 — Corbin Burnes (Sept. 8, 2022 vs. San Francisco)
Burnes allowed consecutive hits to yield a run in the third but only faced one more batter over the minimum in eight excellent innings, needing only 100 pitches to record 14 punchouts.
The club has seen a 13-strikeout performance 11 times, including once from Burnes on June 6, 2021, against Arizona.
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2022-09-09T00:49:36Z
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Best Brewers single-game strikeout performances in team history
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/08/best-milwaukee-brewers-single-game-strikeout-performances-team-history-ben-sheets-corbin-burnes/8028252001/
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Corbin Burnes returned to his Cy Young form with 14 strikeouts, keeping the San Francisco Giants locked down through eight innings and helping the Brewers record a 2-1 victory in the first half of a doubleheader Thursday at American Family Field.
Burnes hit 14 strikeouts with the first out of the sixth, then faced the minimum over the final five batters, including a double play and slick sliding catch by shortstop Willy Adames to end the eighth. He threw an even 100 pitches.
"That's the approach we've seen a lot of teams take against me; wait me out, take a lot of pitches early and try to get me out of the game," Burnes said. "Today we were able to command it early and get ahead in counts so by the second and third time through, they were swinging early. That's when you really get rolling, get some quick outs and the swings and misses you're looking for."
The Brewers didn't muster much on offense in support but did enough with back-to-back run scoring doubles in the fourth from Christian Yelich and Hunter Renfroe. Jace Peterson singled leading off the inning with the first hit of the game for Milwaukee, which went 1-2-3 in six of the other seven offensive innings.
Box score:Brewers 2, Giants 1 (Game 1)
More:Two sets of brothers on opposite sides meeting in the same MLB game? It's rare, but happening as the Brewers play the Giants
Burnes tied Ben Sheets for the most 10-strikeout games in a season with nine. But he'd struggled in his last four outings, allowing 17 earned runs over 21 innings for a 7.29 ERA, with 19 strikeouts in that stretch.
"I just did a better job of commanding it early and forcing them to swing, making some pitches out of the zone and getting them to swing and miss," Burnes said. "As far as the last couple outings, this one was just getting ahead and commanding the strike zone a little better, but as far as stuff and feeling wise, it was the same."
On Thursday, with Milwaukee's playoff hopes teetering, Burnes induced 26 swing-and-misses, tying the second-best performance of his career. The 14 strikeouts are one shy of his personal best, set last August against the Cubs, when he recorded 30 swings and misses.
Devin Williams worked a 1-2-3 ninth for his 11th save.
"There was no question I was going back out there for the eighth but after I was done and at 100 pitches; they told me there were giving the ball to Devin," Burnes said when asked if he could have taken the ninth, too. "He's got great stuff, he came in and he did his job.
"I want to go nine innings every single time but I with the top of the order coming up again and at 100 pitches, they felt like Devin could get the job done."
After Mike Yastrzemski doubled in a run in the third to give the Giants a brief 1-0 lead, the Brewers faced the minimum over the final 19 batters.
Milwaukee was in the midst of the first true doubleheader in stadium history, a circumstance necessitated by the late start to the 2022 season.
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2022-09-09T00:49:48Z
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Corbin Burnes returns to Cy Young form in 2-1 win over Giants
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/08/corbin-burnes-returns-cy-young-form-2-1-win-over-giants-september-8-2022/8023411001/
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Two semi-trailer truck drivers died Thursday night in a fiery crash that shut down Interstate 43 in both directions in Ozaukee County.
A northbound truck driver entered the southbound lanes and struck another truck, according to a news release from the Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office.
The crash occurred about 6:30 p.m. just south of Sandy Beach Road in the town of Belgium, according to the sheriff's office.
The interstate was closed Thursday night from State Highway 23 to County Highway D and would remain closed until further notice, the sheriff's office said.
Videos from those at the scene shows large black clouds of smoke and tall flames.
The drivers' identities were not immediately released.
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2022-09-09T02:46:06Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Ozaukee County sheriff says 2 dead in crash on I-43 in town of Belgium
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2022/09/08/ozaukee-county-sheriff-says-2-dead-crash-43-town-belgium/8029394001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2022/09/08/ozaukee-county-sheriff-says-2-dead-crash-43-town-belgium/8029394001/
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A painting auction, print sales and naming rights are all part of fundraising $1.5M for the new Rockwell Park in Oconomowoc
After raising $1.3 million to purchase the land for the future Rockwell Park in 2021, residents are once again fundraising — this time to build the park they envisioned for the community.
Chris and Frank Both, who both initially led the charge for the park project in 2020 and 2021, have announced plans to raise even more now to help the park get built.
To kick off the latest effort, the community has called on one of its own: lifelong resident and artist Tim Spransy. When he heard the project would be fundraising again, he offered to create a painting that could be auctioned off. He spent three months painting a scenic depiction of the park looking out over Lac La Belle.
The painting was unveiled Aug. 21 at the conclusion of the Light Up the Lake Boat Parade & Fireworks. Bidding for the painting starts at $20,000, and the auction is active until Oct. 15. Additionally, 25 giclée prints that Spransy used for the painting are also being sold for $1,000 each.
"It truly shows what makes this park amazing," Chris Both said. "You have great sunrises and sunsets, and Tim created that for us and also donated the prints he used for park fundraising. He is a great example of someone from the community doing what they do best to help this project."
The latest fundraising effort mirrors the effort of the previous campaign to obtain the land. More than 1,000 donors contributed over six months. The $1.3 million raised went toward purchasing the land at 517 N. Lake Road from a developer that planned to put a condominium there. The neighboring property, 525 N. Lake Road, was donated to the city after being purchased for $600,000 by the Chuck and Pat Herro family.
Now, the leaders of the Rockwell Park project are hoping to raise a bit more.
"After reviewing a design by an engineering firm for the park, we know what it will take to fully realize the vision for what we'd like, and that's $1.5 million," Chris Both said. "We really think this is going to be the jewel of Oconomowoc."
Fundraising is well underway. Chris Both said that they have already raised $400,000, and there are even more verbal commitments.
In addition to the painting auction, selling naming rights will also be used for fundraising. As part of the current designs, Chris Both said plans for the park include restoring the shoreline, building two handicap-accessible kayak launches, a boardwalk below Peacock Dam, restrooms, walking paths, a "front porch" with swings, a shaded terrace garden and benches.
"We're off to a great start," he said. "We are actively soliciting donations for the park, and the plan is to have some of the grading done late this fall to get the work on the park started."
To bid on the painting, purchase a print or donate to the park fund, visit www.oconparksandtrails.org/.
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2022-09-09T12:54:10Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Rockwell Park fundraising begins again in Oconomowoc
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/09/rockwell-park-fundraising-begins-again-in-oconomowoc/8021595001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/09/rockwell-park-fundraising-begins-again-in-oconomowoc/8021595001/
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This Menomonee Falls woman is honored as an Unsung Hero after years of giving to her community
Welcome to the Valentine house, or, as Cecelia Valentine calls it, “the Geekdom.” A Lego castle accompanied by a fire-breathing dragon sits in the window, decor chosen when her youngest son was in elementary school and asked for a "forest of dragons" theme for the living room.
Dungeons and Dragons manuals and fantasy board games lay out, and the hutch and coat closet are filled with more games the family challenges each other to.
Star Wars’ “The Empire Strikes Back” is just one of the vintage movie posters on the wall behind the kitchen table. What can be seen right away, though, is “muted,” Valentine said. The bathroom is “Doctor Who” themed.
So, who is the “geek” of the family?
“All of us,” Valentine said.
Valentine is this year's Greater Menomonee Falls Foundation's Unsung Hero award-winner. From where she lives to how she decorates her home, family is everything to her — and so is her community.
She works with Homes for Our Troops through Lippert Flooring and Tile, serves on the Menomonee Falls Chamber of Commerce Board, volunteers for Milwaukee Riverkeeper and more.
"(Volunteering) just seems like a part of who you are, a part of your soul,” Valentine said.
Menomonee Falls is right where she needed to be
Kenosha-native Valentine, married to husband, Rich, and mother of two sons, Sam, 18, and Nate, 22, has lived in Menomonee Falls since 2006.
When Cecelia and Rich lived in Evansville, Indiana, they had their first son. They couldn’t shake the feeling that they had to move closer to family.
Without solid plans for the future, they moved to Wisconsin. Her parents had an RV, so they made it work.
“We lived in their RV in their driveway for a summer,” Valentine said.
Their job search took them to Mauston, but still, it wasn’t the right fit. That’s when they decided on Menomonee Falls, where a peaceful trail and foliage can be found right in their backyard, but downtown happenings are only walking distance away.
The new city was closer to Kenosha and her parents, which became imperative. A year after the Valentines moved to Menomonee Falls, Cecelia's mother was diagnosed with leukemia.
“We landed exactly where we needed to be at the time,” she said. “We needed to be there.”
When her mother died in 2008, Valentine moved her father into her home until his death in 2019. She realized how much her mother had done for him.
“We realized after she passed, like, holy cow, she was an amazingly strong woman,” Valentine said.
Her mother is her biggest role model. She always said to put yourself in others’ shoes, and that’s shaped Valentine into who she is today.
“Try to understand what they're thinking and where they're coming from, so you don't get so trapped in just the one-sided view of things,” she said, explaining her mother’s lesson.
She also urged her in-laws from Red Wing, Minnesota, to move closer. Now, they’ve lived right across the street for about two years, or at least long enough to where their landscaping is already better than hers, Valentine joked.
“It's nice to be able to care for them,” she said.
Finding the joy in selflessness
Common courtesy and empathy were instilled in Valentine as she grew up, and she's passed down those same values to her children. The family has participated in Milwaukee Riverkeeper's annual spring cleanup since 2010, filling trash bags with litter.
Going off the trail into the woods added an element of discovery as she brought her children out to clean up what would otherwise end up in the water.
"That's what I love about Riverkeepers, because it's a way for us to get our kids engaged in the concept of helping out and doing something, not necessarily for a reward, other than the way it makes you feel," Valentine said.
She's watched Menomonee Falls' trails become cleaner, which adds to the joy in helping out. At first, they'd fill 10 to 15 bags with trash. Now, they fill just one.
"There were car doors the first year," she said of the kinds of trash they would remove. Now, it's getting harder to find huge items like that.
Whenever someone needs a helping hand in the community, Valentine is ready to help. She's volunteered for Tosa Fest, Fall Fest and Memorial Fest, and Operation Finally Home 5K.
"My husband and I just signed up for two new (volunteer opportunities) in the last week," she said. "Usually if there's somebody that's a friend in need, we'll be like, 'Yeah, let's do it.'"
Her family jokes that sometimes they are "voluntold" for opportunities she tells them about, but the truth is, she's never made them join her if they don't want to.
"I don't know why we do it," she said. "It's just because I know no other way."
A job that changes veterans' lives
Valentine has worked for Lippert for 14 years. She is the vice president of operations and represents the company on the Menomonee Falls Chamber of Commerce's board of directors.
Twelve years ago, Lippert began supporting Homes for Our Troops, a nonprofit that builds and donates homes for veterans. What Valentine loves about the nonprofit is that it doesn't stop at housing veterans; Homes for Our Troops also helps them find new careers and provide financial stability for their families.
"They don't walk away," she said.
Lippert raises money through its annual charity golf outing and clay shoot, but raising awareness is one of the most important aspects of what the company has done for Homes For Our Troops, Valentine said.
Valentine knows the organization doesn't have the expendable income to purchase advertising, so she helps spread the word whenever she's asked to.
"I think the biggest thing that we've done for Homes For Our Troops is talking about them, so everybody around here now knows who they are because they're part of who Lippert is," she said.
She's run Lippert's charitable golf outings for 13 years. While she does a great job spreading Homes For Our Troops' mission and collecting money for charity, she admits she still doesn't know how to golf.
"I can golf on the Wii," she said.
Her goal to help women in business
Valentine hopes to create a roundtable through the Chamber of Commerce specifically geared toward women in business.
As a woman in business herself, she's experienced what it's like to be outnumbered by men.
"When you're outnumbered or you're singled out, it can be overwhelming," she said. "So to have other people that you can relate to, that help promote you, that's huge."
The idea for the group came from when the women on the chamber board began getting together once a month to get to know each other. They realized they wanted to create an official group where women in business can vent, make connections and share ideas.
The official roundtable is still in its infancy stage, but she hopes it can be a goal for the near future.
Her advice is twofold: Everyone is a leader. Only produce work that you're proud of.
"Everyone can be a leader at any point in time because you can set an example for those around you," she said. "The word 'leader' is not reserved for an elite few developing that piece of the puzzle."
The Greater Menomonee Falls Foundation will honor its award winners, including its Unsung Hero, Valentine, at the annual Ovation Event on Sept. 22 at North Hills Country Club in Menomonee Falls.
Others recognized will be Jerry Mislang; Lifetime Achievement Award, Jill Schmidt; Shining Star Award and Wally Kangas; Patriotism Award.
RSVP for the event by Sept. 12 at https://www.fallsfoundation.org/events.
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2022-09-09T12:54:16Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Menomonee Falls woman named Unsung Hero for her work in the community
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/menomonee-falls/2022/09/09/menomonee-falls-woman-named-unsung-hero-her-work-community/8013686001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/menomonee-falls/2022/09/09/menomonee-falls-woman-named-unsung-hero-her-work-community/8013686001/
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The Bread Pedalers bakery and cafe in West Allis plans to open in the final week of September
A West Allis bakery and cafe run by professional bike racing sisters plans to open its doors to the public in the final week in September.
It's contingent on final inspections and permit approvals, but The Bread Pedalers, 1436 S. 92nd St., is planning a three-day soft opening for Sept. 27-29 and a grand opening Sept. 30, co-owner Skylar Schneider said in a phone interview.
Schneider is opening the business with her sister Sam Schneider.
The pair originally planned to open the business in 2021, but permit approvals and other delays pushed it back.
Then sights were set on spring 2022, but that proved to be a bit optimistic.
Now, the finish line to an extensive renovation project is in sight.
A key piece to the renovation — the oven — was installed Sept. 6, and Skylar said they tested it out by baking some cinnamon rolls.
"They turned out really great, so we're very, very excited," she said. "We've been getting a lot of messages from people just driving by and taking a peek and waiting for us to open."
The business will open, but first, the world championships
There was a chance the opening could have been scheduled for earlier in the month, but in a way, Skylar's success on the bike precluded that.
She was selected to the U.S. team that will compete at the 2022 UCI Road World Championships in Australia this month.
The event will include 11 races over eight days and feature more than 1,000 top international cyclists from more than 70 countries.
Her race, the Women Elite Road Race, is Sept. 24.
"I almost decided not to go so that we could open the bakery (earlier), but then Sam made me realize we've been trying to open for two years, what will another week do," Skylar said. "This is kind of a huge opportunity because making this team kind of makes Olympic goals more realistic."
Menu will feature coffee, tea, breads and baked goods
The Bread Pedalers will have a full coffee and tea menu, breads and baked goods — some staples but a lot of daily specials.
"We plan to expand our menu to include breakfast, lunch, and hopefully we can get our liquor license to have evening hours in the future," Skylar said.
She said a few local restaurants have requested that The Bread Pedalers make bread and desserts for them, so that's also on their plate.
The bakery also plans to introduce a bread club, which is how Skylar's passion for baking started.
There will be seating both inside and outside, on the rooftop
The bakery will have seating for about 15 inside. A rooftop area, which needs final city approval, will provide additional seating.
Bike parking — of course there's bike parking — will be behind the building.
The Bread Pedalers' color scheme of black, white and gold with "tasteful touches of pink" guided the sisters through most of their design choices for the bakery, and they've implemented a lot of unique elements, according to an Aug. 28 email update.
Tentative hours are 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. during the week, or something similar, and a bit longer on the weekends, Skylar said.
She said the hours will be adjusted after they get an idea of what time of day customers visit the bakery.
Plans are also in the works to have a mural painted on an outside wall.
Artist Will Bryant of Texas will do the artwork, Skylar said. It'll feature a bike, coffee, bread and flowers, along with references to The Bread Pedalers and West Allis.
"It'll actually say 'West Allis,' because we're hoping that people visiting from around the world, when they take a picture, it'll kind of help put our city on the map," she said.
Bakery looking to hire a full-time barista
Skylar will head up the baking side of things; Sam will be in charge of finances, insurance and administrative-type work.
The sisters' mother, Connie Schneider, will leave her retail job of 30 years to join the business; she'll mostly help Skylar in the kitchen. Their friend Devin Bahr has been hired as manager.
The bakery is also looking to hire a full-time barista.
The Bread Pedalers' online store opened earlier this year
The Bread Pedalers opened an online store in February, at www.thebreadpedalers.com/store-2.
There, customers have been able to purchase the bakery's own custom blend of Anodyne coffee, The Bread Pedalers merchandise, as well as products from various small businesses.
Soon, real people will be entering a physical building to purchase things.
Skylar said that's exciting, but a little overwhelming because there will be so many things they'll be learning pretty much every day.
"But it's been a long time coming, and I think having all the time that we've had, we've been able to make really intentional choices and make this so that hopefully we're in business for a very long time," she said.
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2022-09-09T17:08:49Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Pro cycling sisters plan late September opening for West Allis bakery
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/southwest/news/west-allis/2022/09/09/pro-cycling-sisters-plan-late-september-opening-west-allis-bakery/10271687002/
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2022 Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon canceled after organizers can't create a suitable alternate route
Bill Glauber Mary Spicuzza
The 2022 Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon has been canceled, according to a Facebook post Friday from the event's organizers, the Badgerland Striders Running Club.
The event, including a half marathon and 5K race, was scheduled to be held Oct. 2.
The group said it had been trying to reroute the race that traditionally runs from Grafton to Milwaukee but which wasn't an option "due to a multi-year construction."
The group said it designed "over a dozen course routes before we found one the City (of Milwaukee) verbally approved and still met our high standards for our runners' experience."
"Unfortunately, we faced hurdles that we simply could not overcome including ongoing changes and demands to route safety and security measures, governmental procedures and timelines, and City vendor staffing shortages."
This would have been the 41st Lakefront Marathon. According to the event's website, the proposed marathon race route would have started near the Italian Community Center and included crossing the Hoan Bridge.
Months of planning went into creating a new southern route for the event, which in 2021 drew runners from 46 states and seven foreign countries.
Entries for the half marathon were sold out.
The note from the Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon staff said, "No decision like this comes easy and it would not have been made if there was a possibility that we could resolve our differences with more time.
More:Running a solo marathon past the landmarks of my life, I learned that no one ever really runs alone
"While we cannot replace the experience, nor make you feel whole, we will be offering full refunds within the next couple weeks and have reached out to some other events and asked if they would be willing to assist you with a price concession."
The organizers also said, "we would love for you to consider running your event virtually. Whether you are doing a half or a full marathon, we would be pleased to present you with your bib, shirt, finisher medal and even a Lakefront Marathon gift
"We will mail it to your residence prior to October 2nd at a discounted cost of $35 and can be deducted directly from the refund we plan to offer."
Karen Berenson, the owner of RunFit MKE, said the news came as a huge disappointment to runners who have spent months training for the event.
Berenson added that RunFit MKE has been working with about 10 people who were scheduled to run the race, and had been coaching "them on a day in day out basis for about 18 weeks, and even prior to that."
"I feel horrible," she said. "I have a lot of clients who have really been training this entire year and to have the marathon canceled just four weeks out, and not having had any transparency so to speak about the fact that there was no formal commitment on behalf of the city.
"It's just a really sad thing, especially in a time when we're finally returning to in-person races after being in a pandemic situation for so long."
Berenson said that because there was no "transparency that the city may not approve the course," runners are now unable to "sign up for other marathons that are now closed."
"I just think it's unfortunate for the city. I think that we really could use a break, especially given the fact that the Milwaukee Marathon had so many stumbles, and then cancellations," Berenson said. "For the Lakefront Marathon, which is so iconic, and such a sought after race for avid runners in the Milwaukee area, it's just a really disappointing thing to see happen."
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2022-09-09T17:08:57Z
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www.jsonline.com
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2022 Milwaukee Lakefront Marathon canceled due to rerouting issues
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/09/2022-milwaukee-lakefront-marathon-canceled/8034201001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/09/2022-milwaukee-lakefront-marathon-canceled/8034201001/
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The Varsity Collective promises new model of NIL support for University of Wisconsin athletes. Here are the key points.
MADISON – With a promise to help develop the whole person of the student athlete, The Varsity Collective launched operations Thursday as the first donor-led name, image and likeness organization for University of Wisconsin athletes.
The Varsity Collective will serve as a conduit through which businesses, donors and fans can support Badgers athletes. Its philosophy is based on helping UW athletes maximize their NIL opportunities while branding support and mentoring relationships that will go beyond an athlete’s time in college.
The nine-person leadership team of the collective includes UW hall of fame football player Brooks Bollinger, UW athletics donor Ted Kellner and Milwaukee Bucks president Peter Feigin. Former All-American football player Joe Thomas is also supporting the group.
“While a student-athlete’s time in a uniform is temporary, we want to create a lifelong experience of impact,” Rob Master, the executive chair of the collective, said during a press conference to announce the launch Thursday at the Hilton Garden Inn near campus. “The Varsity Collective experience is just that.
"That is why we’re committed to leveraging every bit of resource of human capital to help them develop a network that serves as a springboard to a lifetime of success.”
When the NCAA enacted NIL legislation in July 2021 it gave athletes the opportunity to earn money off endorsements as well as use their name in support of causes important to them. The legislation, however, didn’t provide a clear means for making that happen.
Enter collectives. Across the country groups have been created in support of athletic departments or teams to help donors, businesses and other groups interested in supporting a particular athlete or team to connect with that individual or group.
To bring this idea to life at Wisconsin, The Varsity Collective will be guided by what it calls a Four Pillar Playbook:
* NIL Support: Facilitating opportunities for student-athletes to support charitable partnerships as part of an effort to support community 501(c)(3) organizations.
* NIL Branding Support: Training through the program, Rep Yourself, to help student-athletes navigate the NIL landscape, develop their brand, unlock new earnings opportunities and build a profile for life after college.
* Life Currency™: This platform connects student-athletes to an extensive group of alumni athletes, business people and professionals for the purpose of mentorships during college and after.
* Future funding: Establishing a sustainable base of donors, businesses and charitable partnerships to support a growing need for NIL opportunities.
“I’ve always viewed the NIL financial component as just supplementary to your college experience,” said men's basketball coach Greg Gard, who attended the press conference. “To be able to package in all these other things … attributes that can add to the student athlete’s experience I think is going to kick this thing over the top."
While many of the NIL opportunities are star driven, the mentorship opportunities that are part of the collective will be open to all UW athletes.
“Wisconsin has something it can offer to the student athletes that money can’t buy,” Thomas said. “Networking and connecting those student athletes with people that are in the fields professionally that these student athletes are interested in, whatever that looks like, can be the most important thing the varsity collective does.”
In addition to Gard, UW coaches Paul Chryst (football), Marisa Moseley (women’s basketball), Kelly Sheffield (volleyball), Mark Johnson (women’s hockey) and Tony Granato (men’s hockey) attended the launch press conference at the Hilton Garden Inn near campus.
NIL deals can’t be used as a recruiting inducement. Coaches, however, can explain how their players are using the NIL and the tools available to help them navigate the process.
“It’s not just this quick money grab, but it’s really about the holistic approach,” Moseley said. “For me and my program in particular, that is how I coach. I talk to my current students about the whole person.”
The UW athletic department launched an NIL marketplace, YouDub, earlier this year that allows, among other things, athletes to use Wisconsin logos in NIL activities that involve existing corporate sponsors and receive royalties for football jerseys featuring players’ names and numbers.
Brian Mason, who was recently named UW’s director of Name, Image, Likeness Strategy, sees The Varsity Collective’s plan as one that builds on what the athletic department has in place.
“They’re going about things differently here, which should be no surprise to anybody who sees how things operate here,” Sheffield said. “These things are popping up all over the place ...."(They're) very transactional. It’s deeper here. It’s something that is talked about a lot. We care about the people here, so it’s more than just raising money.”
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2022-09-09T17:09:15Z
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www.jsonline.com
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The Varsity Collective offers new model of NIL support for UW athletes
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/09/varsity-collective-offers-new-model-nil-support-university-wisconsin-athletes/8020707001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/09/varsity-collective-offers-new-model-nil-support-university-wisconsin-athletes/8020707001/
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The weather has always played a role in the lore of Lambeau Field in Green Bay. But where, exactly, does the stadium rank in terms of weather in the NFL?
Meteorologist Kevin Roth, commissioned by sports betting app/site The Action Network decided to take a look at the weather conditions at NFL stadiums and came up with a set of rankings for such things as the coldest, hottest, snowiest and windiest stadiums.
"With the regular season spanning from September to January, NFL teams (and players) are subject to an array of weather conditions," Action Network said in a statement.
"To determine which NFL franchises are most affected by the weather, we recorded temperature, snowfall, rainfall, and wind speed data for each U.S. location where there’s an NFL stadium," according to the statement. "Data was collected for the period September 2021 – January 2022 (the duration of the NFL regular season)."
More:Why the Green Bay Packers don't have a mascot, and answers to 5 other questions about the team
The organization then produced a series of rankings by different weather categories.
Stadiums with fixed or retractable roofs were not included.
Spoiler alert: Lambeau Field in Green Bay made more than one of the lists.
Here's a look at what the analysis came up with:
Coldest NFL stadiums
Lambeau Field's reputation as the coldest place in the NFL remains intact. Anyone who has attended a game at Lambeau in December or January certainly isn't shocked with this finding. Here are the top five coldest NFL locations based on monthly averages in degrees Fahrenheit during the 2021-22 regular season:
1. Green Bay, Lambeau Field, 38 degrees
2. Orchard Park, NY, (Buffalo) Highmark Stadium, 42
3. Foxborough, Mass., Gillette Stadium, 42.8
4. Denver, Empower Field at Mile High 44.6
5 Chicago, Soldier Field, 44.8
Windiest stadiums in the NFL
Not only is is cold at Lambeau, it's also windy. It isn't the windiest, though. That distinction belongs — barely — to Green Bay's archrival to the south. Here's the ranking of the top five windiest stadiums based on monthly average wind speeds in miles per hour during the 2021 regular season. Of note: Three of the five windiest stadiums are on or near one of the Great Lakes.
1. Chicago, Soldier Field, 12.9 mph
2. Green Bay, Lambeau Field, 12.4 mph
3. Cleveland, FirstEnergy Stadium, 12.1 mph
4. Miami Gardens, Fla., Hard Rock Stadium, 11.7 mph
5. Kansas City, Mo., Arrowhead Stadium, 11.2 mph
Snowiest stadiums in the NFL
Lambeau made this list, too, but wasn't at the top last season. Still, on any given day late in the season, Mother Nature can dump a lot of snow on Lambeau. Here are the top five snowiest NFL locations based on monthly averages during the most recent regular season:
1. Orchard Park, NY, Highmark Stadium, 23.7 inches
2. Cleveland, FirstEnergy Stadium, 7 inches
3. Foxborough, Mass., Gillette Stadium, 5.3 inches
4. Green Bay, Lambeau Field, 5.1 inches
5. Denver, Empower Field at Mile High, 3.6 inches
Hottest stadiums in the NFL
Lambeau failed to make the list of the warmest stadiums in the NFL. If you want to stay warm during a game, you'll want to check out the stadiums on this list. (Wisconsin-to-Florida snowbirds who happen to be NFL fans might be interested in this category.) Three of the warmest stadiums during the 2021 regular season were in the Sunshine State:
1. Miami Gardens, Fla., Hard Rock Stadium 74.4°F
2. Tampa, Raymond James Stadium, 69.2°F
3. Jacksonville, TIAA Bank Field, 64.6°F
4. Santa Clara, Calif., Levi's Stadium, 57.6°F
5. Charlotte, Bank of America Stadium, 54°F
Rainiest stadiums in NFL
Lambeau, thankfully, did not make the list of the rainiest stadiums in the NFL. Hint: if you're going to a Seahawks game in Seattle, pack rain gear. Here are the top five rainiest NFL locations based on monthly averages during the 2021 regular season:
1. Seattle, Lumen Field, 5.26 inches
2. Nashville, Nissan Stadium, 3.54 inches
3. East Rutherford, NJ, MetLife Stadium, 3.18 inches
4. Foxborough, Mass., Gillette Stadium, 3.16 inches
5. Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Field, 3.08 inches
Meanwhile, the Packers open their season on Sunday with a road game at Minnesota. We'd offer a weather forecast for the Packers game at the Vikings on Sunday, but there's no need: Pro football in Minnesota is played indoors.
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2022-09-09T19:02:42Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Green Bay Packers' Lambeau Field is coldest stadium in NFL
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/weather/2022/09/09/green-bay-packers-lambeau-field-coldest-stadium-nfl-among-windiest-snowiest/8022249001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/weather/2022/09/09/green-bay-packers-lambeau-field-coldest-stadium-nfl-among-windiest-snowiest/8022249001/
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Oconomowoc pickleball courts to open Sept. 10
The city of Oconomowoc pickleball courts will open to the public Saturday.
The Lake Country Pickleball Club, which spearheaded and fundraised $400,000 for the project, plans to have an opening ceremony Saturday morning with pickup games and food that is open to members and the public.
Ten courts will be available, behind Meadowview Elementary School on Highways P and K.
"It's finally happening," said Paul Barbour, the club treasurer. "The community is so excited for this. The other night, we had three generations of a family, about 20 people, all out playing pickleball. It's a sport for everyone, and we can't wait to introduce more to it."
The 10 courts add to the existing six courts, which also double as tennis courts, at Westover Park, which the club has called home since it formed in April 2021. In 18 months, the group has expanded from 120 members to 515 alongside growing popularity of the sport nationwide.
"You don't have to be super good to play," Barbour said. "You can get out and play if you're young or old, man or woman, red or blue. Anyone can play, and I'm excited for people to come out and meet each other because we need more things that bring people together in the community."
Barbour said there will be a 50-50 split of public-use availability and club-reserved times. Schedules will be posted online and at the courts. He added that if courts are available during club-reserved times, anyone can claim them.
"The non-club times will include most of the weekend," he said. "The club is the only one that can reserve time right now. Otherwise, it's first come, first serve."
Work on the courts is not completely finished. Barbour said the club is fundraising to put in lights so the courts can be open before and after daylight hours. The estimated cost for these is at least $50,000.
Pickleball is a sport played with paddles that combines elements of tennis, badminton and pingpong.
The 10 new courts might not be the end of pickleball's footprint in the city. At the groundbreaking for the courts in June, Mayor Bob Magnus, who has picked up the sport himself, touted the idea of building an additional 10 courts next to the new ones in the future.
Barbour said that he hopes to bring those courts to the area, as well as inspire other clubs and courts to be considered in neighboring municipalities in the future.
"We have a lot of plans, but most of all, we hope this inspires other groups to form in places like Delafield and Hartland," Barbour said. "It would be great to see more groups and courts around Lake Country. We're not trying to build an empire here; we just want people to have a place to play."
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2022-09-09T20:56:03Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Oconomowoc pickleball courts to open Sept. 10
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/09/oconomowoc-pickleball-courts-open-sept-10/8022180001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/09/oconomowoc-pickleball-courts-open-sept-10/8022180001/
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U.S. Mid-Amateur championship set to begin at Erin Hills and Blue Mound Golf and Country Club. Here's what you need to know.
TOWN OF ERIN – The United States Golf Association is back in Wisconsin and at Erin Hills, as the 2022 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship begins Saturday and runs through Sept. 15. It marks the third amateur championship the course has hosted and the fourth national championship. The course will host the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open.
The Mid-Amateur also rekindles the USGA’s partnership with Blue Mound Golf and Country Club in Wauwatosa. The two courses were co-hosts for the 2011 U.S. Amateur, which saw Kelly Kraft outduel Patrick Cantlay in the final match.
The courses: A look at Erin Hills and Blue Mound Golf and Country Club
Erin Hills will play at roughly 7,358 yards and to a par of 71. Blue Mound Golf and Country Club will play at roughly 6,726 yards and to a par of 70.
The schedule: The U.S. Mid-Amateur championship takes place Sept. 10-15
The full field of 264 players in the Mid-Amateur will begin with 36 holes of stroke play on Sept. 10-11 with one round on each course. The top 64 low scorers advance to the match play bracket on Sept. 12 at Erin Hills.
Tuesday, Sept. 13: Round of 32 and Round of 16, match play.
Wednesday, Sept. 14: Quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, match play.
Thursday, Sept. 15: Championship match (36 holes).
What does the winner of the U.S. Mid-Amateur championship get?
Along with a gold medal and possession of the Robert T. Jones Jr. Memorial Trophy for a year, the tournament champion will earn four USGA exemptions:
An exemption from final qualifying for the 2023 U.S. Open Championship (if still an amateur).
An exemption from qualifying for the 2023 and 2024 U.S. Amateur Championships.
An exemption from qualifying for the next 10 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championships.
An exemption from qualifying for the 2023 Amateur Championship.
They will also likely receive an invitation to the 2023 Masters Tournament.
Spectator information: Admission for the U.S. Mid-Amateur championship is free
Admission for the tournament is free. Tickets are not needed and fans are welcome to attend.
Notable local tee times on Sept. 10
Blue Mound Golf and Country Club
6:50 a.m. No. 1
Jack Schultz (Milwaukee), Mark Schiebach (Bermuda Dunes, Calif.)*, Dillon Humphery (Lynn Haven, Fla.).
6:50 a.m. No. 10
Sam Van Galder (Janesville), Jack Minnick (Lincoln, Neb.), Ryan Eibner (San Diego, Calif.).
Nathan Colson (Mequon), Brett McIntosh (Canada), Jeff Lindo (Swansa, Mass.)
Ryan Zikeli (Hartland), Seiji Liu (Beverly Hills, Calif.), Wade Boteler, Burlington, N.C.
*Scheibach plays out of Bermuda Dunes, Calif., and is the general manager of The Thermal Club in Indio, Calif., but he was a three-time all-state selection at Fond du Lac High School and helped the University of Wisconsin win the Big Ten 1993 and 1994. He also was All-Big Ten three times. This is his fifth Mid-Amateur tournament.
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2022-09-09T20:56:15Z
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www.jsonline.com
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The U.S. Mid-Amateur championship set for Erin Hills, Blue Mound G&CC
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/2022/09/09/u-s-mid-amateur-championship-set-erin-hills-blue-mound-g-cc/8035883001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/2022/09/09/u-s-mid-amateur-championship-set-erin-hills-blue-mound-g-cc/8035883001/
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UW-Madison denounces antisemitic chalk messages that appeared around campus on first day of classes
Antisemitic messages were written at various spots across the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on the first day of classes this week, prompting an apology from frustrated administrators at the school, which has a significant Jewish population.
The chalk messages targeted student Jewish groups by labeling them "racist," "genocidal" and "having blood on their hands."
The messages appeared in front of several buildings on Wednesday, the first day of classes. This school year marks the first under new Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who is Jewish.
"To those Jewish students and others affected, we are sorry for the impact this had on your first day of class at UW," a university statement said. "We truly strive to create a campus where every student feels they belong, and this kind of messaging harms that goal and aspiration."
The statement — signed by Lori Reesor, the vice chancellor for student affairs, and chief diversity officer LaVar Charleston — went on to say that while the messages weren't illegal or in violation of campus policy, they actively work against a culture of belonging.
“Just because something isn’t prohibited doesn’t make it a good idea,” they wrote. "Our expectation is that we engage across differences and discuss varying views and ideas with civility and respect, and that did not happen here."
About 5,200 of UW-Madison students are Jewish, according to Hillel International. That puts the school sixth among public universities in terms of its Jewish population.
The messages are the latest in a series of antisemitic acts across campus.
UW-Madison last spring reported a swastika etched into a dorm bathroom stall, slurs yelled at a student and someone who said they were harassed for “looking Jewish.”
In 2020, vandals spray-painted “Free Palestine” on an entry sign for UW Hillel, the center for Jewish student life on campus.
Nationally, a recent report from the Anti-Defamation League found antisemitism on the rise, with 2021 marking an all-time high in the number of reported antisemitic incidents since the Jewish organization began tracking in 1979.
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2022-09-09T22:42:44Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Antisemitic messages written across University of Wisconsin campus
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2022/09/09/antisemitic-messages-written-across-university-wisconsin-campus/8034949001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2022/09/09/antisemitic-messages-written-across-university-wisconsin-campus/8034949001/
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After rallying behind a slate of self-described "moms on a mission" who swept their school board race this spring, Menomonee Falls Republicans are now drumming up support to change the way school board members are elected.
Menomonee Falls School Board members are proposing a rare change to a "numbered-seat" system, which experts say can make it easier to oust certain members, polarize races and potentially lead to a majority party's full control of a board.
While board members voted to move forward with the process of changing the system in July, the change must be approved by residents in a vote at the school board's annual meeting Monday.
The Facebook page "Menomonee Falls Republicans" urged their supporters to turn out and vote for the change.
"It is imperative that conservatives take the time necessary to attend this meeting and cast their vote!" a post on the page reads.
The proposal comes as both political parties have become heavily involved in school board races nationwide, pumping over $80,000 into Wisconsin's 2022 spring school board races, including at least $4,000 in the Menomonee Falls race, according to campaign finance reports.
How would school board elections change?
Under Wisconsin law, there are three ways school board members can be elected in the state's more than 400 school districts.
Most school districts, including Menomonee Falls, use an "at-large" system. Each school board candidate runs against all other candidates, and the top vote-getters take the open seats.
Less common, about 100 school districts use an apportionment system where candidates run representing a specific geographic area of the district, according to Dan Rossmiller, director of government relations for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. This can help ensure diverse representation on the board for minority populations that are in concentrated geographic areas.
Least common, Rossmiller said: About seven school districts use a numbered seat system where candidates run for a specific seat number, which doesn't align with a specific geographic area but represents the full district.
With the numbered system, all Menomonee Falls residents would still get to vote for every seat, according to Menomonee Falls Superintendent James Heiden.
The difference: Each current board member would be assigned a seat number, and any future challengers would choose to face off against a specific incumbent or open seat.
More:Wisconsin Republicans celebrate 'flipping' school boards
Why was this proposed?
School Board President Eric Pelzer introduced the proposed change at a July 12 meeting. Board members voted, 5-2, the same night to move ahead with the process.
Pelzer said he'd been thinking about it for "a number of years" as a voter, noting the change would "align" the board with the Village Board, which already uses a numbered seats system.
Pelzer also said it would allow popular candidates to avoid campaigning if they go unchallenged, while making it easer for residents to target members they are unhappy with.
“It allows the community to, if they don’t like what a particular board member is doing, to try to unseat them," Pelzer said at the July meeting. He and other board members did not reply Friday to interview requests the same day.
The three "moms on a mission" — Nina Christensen, Chris Stueland and Shelley Holzman — voted in support of proposing the change at the annual meeting, along with Jennifer Grant. Two members, Melinda McShane and Keri Duce, voted against it.
Stueland agreed with Pelzer: "The strongest board member might run unopposed. I think it helps challenge possibly board members that aren't meeting expectations; people might want to run against them."
Duce asked Pelzer why he wasn't considering a system in which each candidate would represent a geographic area.
"Ultimately, when you look at fair elections, oftentimes people are held most accountable by their neighbors," she said.
Pelzer said it would be "complicated and confusing." He said his goal was to make the process less confusing, noting that voters in the last election had a "large piece of research" to sift through six candidates for three positions.
The numbered seat system Pelzer supports would not change the number of seats or candidates that each voter would choose from.
Will it lead to more party control?
Amy Ignasiak, a resident and parent speaking at the July 12 meeting, said she worried the change would lead to "targeting" certain board members.
"We're already divided enough here," she said.
The reasons for changing to a numbered seat system are generally "largely political," said Rossmiller, from the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Interest groups or individuals are able to focus on running against certain candidates they want to boot, he said.
"In a number system, I think you could end up with a group targeting all the people they don't like, and not broad representation of all facets of the community," Rossmiller said. "But that's really up to the voters."
David Canon, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said head-to-head races also provide more incentive for candidates to directly attack their opponents.
In an at-large race, candidates might hope voters will choose them alongside a variety of other candidates, so attacking other candidates could hurt their own odds.
"If you're competing across all the candidates, it's not as likely you're going to be singling out one person for an attack; rather you're more likely to be making a positive appeal to your voters about why you should vote for me," Canon said.
Head-to-head races could also call more attention to partisan differences, he said, which could possibly benefit the majority political party.
Widening the lens, Hong Min Park, associate professor of political science at UW-Milwaukee, said numbered-seat systems are often associated with authoritarian regimes, as they tend to lead to "winner-take-all" outcomes where the majority political party wins each match-up.
"If the winner takes all, it is possible that one political party can completely control the entire electoral result," Park said. "If the population in that specific school district is more likely to be conservative, then the conservative people can control the entire school board."
Was the process rushed?
Some residents raised concerns at the July 12 School Board meeting that the board was rushing the item and asked that the board hold off its vote until its next meeting to allow for more discussion.
"The way they did it is not how they should have done it and not in the best interest of our community," said Kathy McBride, a resident who is part of the Grassroots Menomonee Falls group.
McShane, the board's communications chair, asked at the July 12 meeting about how the district should notify residents of the discussion and whether there should be community forums on the topic.
"How are we going to sell this to the community in a way that we are not 'pushing this through,' considering it's a discussion item tonight and we're going to be asked to move it forward or not in a couple minutes?" McShane said.
Pelzer said he thought the information could "just be a couple lines" in the regular monthly information release but said it should be "at the top of that."
Leia Scoptur, human resources director for the district, said "technically," the board's July 12 meeting met the statutory requirement for public input on the topic by having it on the agenda and having an open meeting.
Residents then had to submit a petition with at least 100 signatures to get the item on the agenda for the upcoming annual meeting Monday.
The annual meeting is scheduled for 6:05 p.m. Monday at the auditorium at Menomonee Falls High School, N80 W14350 Titan Drive
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2022-09-09T22:42:50Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Menomonee Falls Republicans want new school board election process
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2022/09/09/menomonee-falls-republicans-seek-change-school-board-election-process-numbered-seat/8034877001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2022/09/09/menomonee-falls-republicans-seek-change-school-board-election-process-numbered-seat/8034877001/
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Jason Alexander (2-2, 5.03 ERA) takes the mound for the Brewers in the first of a three-game series with the Reds. The first pitch is set for 7:10 p.m.
Tyrone Taylor, CF---
More:Corbin Burnes sheds poor three-start stretch with his best outing of 2022. Here's how he did it.
More:Freddy Peralta headed to injured list again after being removed during Thursday's start with right shoulder fatigue
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2022-09-09T22:43:02Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers vs. Reds at American Family Field: lineup, score, updates
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/09/brewers-vs-reds-american-family-field-lineup-score-updates-september-9-2022/8029706001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/09/brewers-vs-reds-american-family-field-lineup-score-updates-september-9-2022/8029706001/
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Milwaukee Lutheran High School went into lockdown Friday for a report of a person carrying a weapon outside the campus, the school's principal said.
"This afternoon, Milwaukee Lutheran had an eyewitness report that an individual with a weapon was spotted on the perimeter of the campus," Adam Kirsch said in a statement.
Kirsch said campus security received the report at 3:18 p.m. and immediately instituted a building lockout and Milwaukee Police were called.
Police assessed the situation and deemed that there was no credible threat, Kirsch said.
"All students were held in their classrooms during this time. ... Students were released from school with a Building All-Clear around 4:00 pm," the statement reads.
"Milwaukee Lutheran is committed to doing everything possible to ensuring the safety of all students on our campus, which is why swift action had to be taken. We are appreciative of the members of our Campus Security who handled the procedure as it is outlined in our plans and for the assistance of the Milwaukee Police for their response in this matter.
"We will continue to be vigilant and have an increased safety presence on campus in the coming days."
The school is located at 9700 W. Grantosa Drive, near Wauwatosa.
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2022-09-10T00:27:32Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee Lutheran High School ends lockdown after weapon report
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/09/milwaukee-lutheran-high-school-ends-lockdown-after-weapon-report/8039033001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/09/milwaukee-lutheran-high-school-ends-lockdown-after-weapon-report/8039033001/
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Whatever starting pitching depth the Milwaukee Brewers once had is now gone.
Freddy Peralta was placed on the 15-day injured list on Friday with right shoulder inflammation, a day after completing just two-plus innings ina 4-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants at American Family Field.
The placement means the right-hander will miss at least two starts — terrible news for a team that lost left-hander Eric Lauer to elbow tightness in the midst of his start Wednesday at Colorado.
Additionally, left-hander Aaron Ashby has been on the IL since Aug. 20 with a left shoulder issue.
That leaves Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Adrian Houser as the only original members of the six-man rotation the Brewers opened the season with (Ashby was utilized as something of a swing man initially).
Jason Alexander, who's been a steady fill-in, makes his 10th start of the season Friday against the Cincinnati Reds.
Freddy Peralta spent more than two months on injured list this season
Peralta missed more than two months with a right shoulder strain before returning on Aug. 3. He was given three extra days of rest between starts, with Houser taking his place Monday against the Rockies, heading into the Giants game.
But an early drop in velocity caused manager Craig Counsell to give him the quick hook. Now it's back to Square 1, but with only 22 games remaining in the season and Milwaukee currently on the outside of the third wild-card spot in the National League looking in.
"It's rest and treatment," Counsell said of Peralta, who's 4-3 with a 3.45 earned run average in 15 starts. "It's the same concept — he has to get symptom-free and then he'll start throwing again."
Lauer, meanwhile, has checked out OK medically but there is no timetable for when he might return to the rotation.
"Everything is good. Everything structurally is fine. There's no issues or concerns there," Counsell said. "We just have to get him symptom-free, and he'll go play catch."
Justin Topa returns to Brewers more than a year after last pitching
Replacing Peralta on the 26-man roster is right-hander Justin Topa, who was recalled from Class AAA Nashville and will pitch out of the bullpen.
It's been a long road back to the Brewers for Topa, who last pitched in the majors last Sept. 3. He suffered a forearm flexor strain in that appearance, ultimately underwent surgery and worked his way back over a long period of rehab in the minor leagues.
Topa, who was designated as the 29th man for Thursday's doubleheader, went 2-0 with a 3.71 ERA and 15 strikeouts in 17 innings with Nashville (15 appearances).
"Justin's whole career, he hasn't taken the road most people take," Counsell said. "He's had to work very hard to get here. He's had to stick to it. He's been told no a lot, he's been injured a lot but he's stuck to it and that's why he's still around.
"Frankly, that's why he's in the big leagues period. He made it to the big leagues because he goes about his business with that mentality."
Also on Friday, outfielder Jonathan Davis began a minor-league rehab assignment at advanced Class A Wisconsin. He's been on the IL since Aug. 27 with swelling in his right elbow.
Best strikeout games:Corbin Burnes flirts with Milwaukee Brewers strikeout record; here are the top performances in club history
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2022-09-10T00:27:34Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers pitcher Freddy Peralta returns to IL with shoulder injury
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/09/milwaukee-brewers-pitcher-freddy-peralta-injured-list-shoulder-inflammation/8029732001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/09/milwaukee-brewers-pitcher-freddy-peralta-injured-list-shoulder-inflammation/8029732001/
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A woman was struck and killed in a hit-and-run crash, Milwaukee police say
A 36-year-old Milwaukee woman died early Saturday after she was struck in a hit-and-run crash on the city's northwest side.
Police said the crash happened about 1:40 a.m. in the 6200 block of West Fond Du Lac Avenue. The driver did not stop after colliding with the woman; police are continuing to search for suspects in the incident.
The victim, who was not identified, was rushed to the hospital and later died of her injuries, police said.
Through Thursday, Milwaukee had recorded 43 fatal crashes that took the lives of 44 people, according to statistics from the city's Traffic Safety Unit. Those totals do not include Saturday's hit-and-run. There were 62 fatal crashes in all of 2021.
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2022-09-10T17:29:49Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee woman struck, killed in hit-and-run crash, police say
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/10/milwaukee-woman-struck-killed-hit-and-run-crash-police-say/8048719001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/10/milwaukee-woman-struck-killed-hit-and-run-crash-police-say/8048719001/
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The 2022 season will mark the 12th with at least one Watt brother in the National Football League — though it's the baby of the family, T.J., who has emerged as one of the best players in the NFL while playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
T.J. is the reigning league Defensive Player of the Year, an award older brother J.J. has won a record-tying three times. After signing a four-year contract extension before last season, Watt tied the NFL sack record and now comes into the year regarded as the No. 6 player in NFL.com's annual survey of the top 100 players in the league (fellow University of Wisconsin star Jonathan Taylor at No. 5 and Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers at No. 3).
J.J., meanwhile, is trying to stay healthy in his second year with the Arizona Cardinals. The trio of brothers from Pewaukee High School and UW also includes fullback Derek Watt, in his third season as T.J.'s teammate with the Steelers.
Could T.J. Watt match his brother's haul of Defensive Player of the Year awards?
T.J. has been a tour de force in his five years in the NFL, with four Pro Bowl selections and three first-team All-Pro selections each of the past three years. He posted a league-best 15 sacks in 2021 and then 22 ½ last year, matching the NFL record (infamously) set by Michael Strahan of the Giants in 2001.
In 2021, T.J. finished second behind Rams star Aaron Donald in the league's defensive player of the year voting after taking third the year before that. Donald's third Defensive Player of the Year award matched J.J. and Lawrence Taylor for the most in history.
But last year was T.J.'s turn, winning the award in a landslide over runner-up Micah Parsons of Dallas. In addition to his sacks over 15 games played, he led the league with 21 tackles for loss.
J.J. Watt looking to get healthy for 12th NFL season
Packers fans were eager to see if J.J. would come home following his departure last offseason from the Houston Texans, the franchise that drafted J.J. 11th overall in 2011 and with whom he became a three-time defensive player of the year.
It didn't happen of course, with J.J. landing in Arizona instead.
J.J. heads into the season with a calf injury and is a question mark for the season opener against the Chiefs. Last year, a shoulder injury sidelined him for most of the season, limiting him to seven games and forcing him to miss a high-profile clash with the Packers.
Watt was designated for return off injured reserve and was able to make it back for Arizona's playoff loss to the Rams, finishing with one tackle for loss and playing 24 snaps.
Significant injuries have hampered Watt in recent seasons; he's now played eight or fewer games in four of the past six seasons. But he did play in every game of those other two, including a first-team All-Pro showing in 2018 that landed him second in the league's Comeback Player of the Year voting. After 16 sacks that season, he's been held to a combined 10 sacks in the next three campaigns.
More quietly than his brothers, Steelers fullback Derek Watt has put together a stellar NFL career, now entering its seventh season and third in Pittsburgh.
For a second straight year, the Steelers won't meet the Cardinals. The brothers did share a field in 2020 when J.J.'s Houston Texans met Pittsburgh, though parents John and Connie were relegated to watching from afar because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Big life changes for the Watts: T.J. gets married and J.J. about to become a dad
It's been a big offseason for the brothers beyond simply prepping for another season. T.J. married his longtime girlfriend, Dani Rhodes, in July during a resort wedding in Mexico. Rhodes, a former multi-sport star at Waukesha West High School, was an All-American soccer player at Wisconsin.
In June, J.J. and wife, Kealia Ohai Watt, announced that they were expecting their first child. The couple married in 2020 in the Bahamas.
J.J. enters the season at 33 years old; Derek is 29 and T.J. 27 (though he'll turn 28 on Oct. 11).
T.J. is making $15 million base salary this year as part of a four-year, $112 million deal signed before the 2021 season. Of that money, $80 million is guaranteed. Counting this season, he's made more than $69 million in six seasons.
J.J. enters the final year of his two-year, $28 million deal that he signed with Arizona before last season. In 12 seasons, he's made $128,748,000.
Derek signed a three-year, $9.7 million deal before the 2020 season with Pittsburgh. In seven seasons, he's made more than $12 million.
J.J. was taken 11th overall by the Houston Texans in the 2011 draft and spent a decade with that franchise.
T.J. was taken with the 30th overall pick in the 2017 draft by the Steelers. He enters his sixth year with the franchise.
Who are the Watt brothers' parents?
More:Pewaukee's Connie Watt discusses how she raised three NFL players on NBC's 'Today'
How close is T.J. to J.J.'s sack totals?
T.J. has a career 72 sacks, including the NFL record-tying 22 ½ in 2021. That puts him closer than you might think to J.J.'s career total of 102 sacks coming into the year.
J.J. has 177 tackles for loss, while T.J. has 80.
In his career, J.J. also has two interceptions (both returned for touchdowns) in the regular season, 26 forced fumbles, 16 fumble recoveries and 63 passes defended — he didn't get the nickname "J.J. Swat" for nothing. He returned another interception for a touchdown in his rookie year during the playoffs for Houston, and he's also registered six playoff sacks and 10 tackles for loss, plus six more passes defended.
T.J. thus far has 22 forced fumbles, seven recoveries, 32 passes defended and four interceptions. In the postseason, he's got one more recovery (returned for a 26-yard touchdown) and three passes defended, plus three tackles for losses.
What are the Watt brothers' height and weight?
According to Football Reference...
T.J. stands 6-4 and 252 pounds.
J.J. stands 6-5 and 288 pounds.
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2022-09-10T17:30:07Z
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J.J. Watt, T.J. Watt and Derek Watt prep for big 2022 NFL season
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Daphne Chen
At 9 a.m. on a sunny Saturday morning in Milwaukee, two prayers went up.
One was led by Zulfiqar Ali Shah, imam at the Islamic Society of Milwaukee.
The other was led by Chris Nussbaum, president of the Milwaukee North Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The two faith leaders had a singular message: gratitude for the opportunity to give back to their community.
They were among nearly 200 people of both faiths — from college students to elderly men to parents pushing babies in strollers — gathered in the parking lot of the largest mosque in the state for the second annual Interfaith Neighborhood Clean-up.
For two hours on Saturday, members of the two religious organizations spread out across the neighborhoods near South 13th Street and Layton Avenue and along Interstate 94, picking up cigarette butts, candy wrappers and water bottles.
Othman Atta, director of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, said the idea was born at Aurora St. Luke's Medical Center, where his daughter, a nurse, works alongside Nussbaum, an emergency medicine doctor. The two began talking about how their religious communities should collaborate.
Atta's daughter put the two faith leaders in touch, and soon they got the nonprofit Keep Greater Milwaukee Beautiful involved.
Two faith communities come together in Milwaukee
Both faith communities are quite large. The Muslim community in Milwaukee is estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 people, while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints counts about 5,000 members split across two Milwaukee stakes, according to Nussbaum.
This marks the first time the two religious organizations have worked together. The Mormon church, which organized the first interfaith cleanup last year, worked with the Episcopal Church and the Ahmadiyya Muslim community and focused on cleaning up northwest Milwaukee.
This year, Atta said the Islamic Society suggested cleaning up the area around the mosque, a diverse neighborhood close to the airport where many longtime homeowners live alongside immigrants and refugees, especially Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority who have faced decades of repression in Myanmar.
Cleanup coincides with National Day of Service
The organizations also chose to do the cleanup around the National Day of Service, an annual community service event in remembrance of 9/11.
"A lot of the Muslim community, during the time of 9/11, can feel secluded or stereotyped or like they have to be extra careful about what they do or say," said Lena Abukhamireh, a recent Marquette University graduate. That makes it particularly meaningful that LDS and Muslim communities are showing up hand in hand to "shed positive light," she said.
Although the cleanup is the first collaboration between the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and the LDS church, some of their members have already been longtime friends.
Walking beside clotheslines hung with sarongs and houses flying American flags, Sheri Bohl and Muna Mousa filled up their second bucket of the day and told the story of how they became friends.
Lasting friendships can be formed
When Mousa, who is Muslim, first moved to the area nine years ago, she said she was slightly nervous about how her neighbors would treat her.
But she said she instantly clicked with next door neighbor Bohl, who is LDS. Now, they spend hours at each other's homes eating sweets and talking about similarities in their faiths.
"She is so nice. She has a big heart. And she looks exactly like me," Mousa joked. "Not on the outside, but on the inside."
When Bohl found out that the LDS and the Islamic Society were holding a joint event, she said she told Mousa, "We can do this together!"
Mousa had only one question: "You want me to wake up early?" she said with a laugh.
Contact Daphne Chen at dchen@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @daphnechen_.
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2022-09-10T20:11:11Z
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Milwaukee faith groups clean streets for National Day of Service 2022
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WAUWATOSA – Amateur golfers from around the state have a Sam Van Galder in their home, somewhere, as the art teacher at Parker High School in Janesville has crafted artwork for the Wisconsin state men’s and women’s amateur tournaments which is handed out to players.
And after Van Galder qualified for the United States Golf Association’s Mid-Amateur Championship, the country’s governing body for the sport commissioned him to do something for the 41st playing of the championship. The tournament runs from Saturday through Thursday at Erin Hills in the Town of Erin and Blue Mound Golf and Country Club in Wauwatosa.
The USGA shared a time lapse video of his creation, which was shared with its 394,000 followers on Instagram and 377,000 followers on Twitter.
“They called me and said know it’s last minute but would you want to throw something fun together,” Van Galder said Saturday after he finished his first round at Blue Mound. “I said sure so I went for it and they blew it up for me, which was kind of nice. So it turned out kind of cool.”
The 26-year-old has qualified for the state amateur 10 times and owns nine Janesville city titles, but the Mid-Amateur is his first national championship. He had a small gallery following his play and said he left home with some good luck messages from his players on the high school team.
“Oh, it’s awesome,” he said of the experience of competing in the tournament. “There’s ropes. There’s (Titleist) Pro V1x’s for range balls. There’s a scorekeeper in your group. It’s pretty cool. It’s been awesome. Whatever I shoot (Sunday) it is what it is and I’m having fun.”
Unfortunately for Van Galder, he fell out of contention for a spot in the 64-person match play field after posting an opening round 9-over 79. The day was marred by an eight on the 215-yard, par 3 third hole (his 12th).
“My score sucks but it was mostly on one hole – I played pretty good,” he said. “Otherwise I would’ve been 74, 4-over without the eight on a par-3, which is brutal. But I just couldn’t get the ball to stay on the green.”
He did bounce back with consecutive birdies on Nos. 4 and 5. Van Galder will head to Erin Hills to finish up the stroke play portion of the championship.
“I had fun out there,” he said. “I hit some good shots and had some good holes, but I just didn’t know what to do on some of those shots on that one hole and it is what it is.”
Bad weather forecast Sunday could alter the USGA Mid-Am schedule
Heavy rains are forecast in the Milwaukee area Sunday and may threaten play at Erin Hills and Blue Mound Golf and Country Club. If 18 holes cannot be completed, the stroke play portion of the tournament will conclude Monday. The 64-person match play field can also begin Monday, if possible.
Saturday’s local roundup
West Bend native Preston Dembowiak put himself inside the top 20 finishers following a 2-under 68 at Blue Mound Golf and Country Club. Dembowiak played collegiately at Liberty University in Virginia and was a 2009 all-Big South Conference selection and helped the Flames win the 2011 Big South Conference title by earning medalist honors in the conference tournament.
He is enjoying a solid summer with a tie for third in the North Carolina Amateur and a tie for the seventh in the Carolinas Amateur. He was the medalist in Mid-Amateur qualifying at The Patriot Golf Club in South Carolina on Aug. 18 with a 6-under 66.
He also competed in the 2011 U.S. Amateur, which was held at Erin Hills and Blue Mound Golf and Country Club.
Jack Schultz of Milwaukee put himself in solid position to make the match play field of 64 by shooting a an even-par 70 Saturday at Blue Mound Golf and Country Club. He is playing on a high ankle sprain on his right foot, but he made three birdies against three bogeys.
Schultz also hit the opening tee shot of the tournament, going off No. 1 at 6:50 a.m.
“This is my 10th USGA and it’s like every time in the past I’d get so nervous because it’s super important,” he said with a smile. “I remember the junior I played in in 2005 was kind of the same thing – it was a country club, out of bounds left and I smoked it left. I’ve gotten better this year at mentality and not getting nervous and so I didn’t feel anything.”
Mequon’s Nathan Colson shot a 4-over 75 at Erin Hills. The Marquette University alumnus opened with a 5-over 40 on the front nine but poured in three straight birdies to start his back nine. He bogeyed No. 13 and 14, however, before finishing with four straight pars.
Fond du Lac native and University of Wisconsin alumnus Mark Scheibach shot 7-over 77 at Blue Mound.
Hartland’s Ryan Zikeli shot a 7-over 78 at Erin Hills.
South African Brandon Cloete, a Marquette University alumnus who lives in Madison, shot a 3-over 74 at Erin Hills.
River Falls native Sammy Schmitz shot a 5-over 75 at Blue Mound Golf and Country Club and carded a birdie on the 331-yard par-4 sixth hole.
A look at the first-round leaders
Defending Mid-Amateur champion Stewart Hagestand started strongly at Blue Mound Golf and Country Club and flirted with the championship scoring record before finishing with a 6-under 64.
The championship record is 63 (the USGA counts the score as the record, not its relation to par). Jim Wilson set the mark in the opening round of the 2000 Mid-Amateur at The Homestead (Lower Course) in Hot Springs, Virginia.
Dalton Melnyk tied Hagestand for top scoring honors by also going 6-under with a 65 at Erin Hills.
Hagestand did not have a blemish on his scorecard with six birdies through 16 holes, before he bogeyed the par-3 17th. He finished with a birdie on the par-5 18th to finish his day.
“I thought about it actually on 18 after I hit the green in two, like shoot, I think the record is 7 (under),” he said. “But no, I don’t know, I did a nice job of kind of staying present and just didn’t hit a great iron shot on 17. Hit a good chip and hit a good putt and missed it.”
James Leow shot a 5-under 65 and Hugh Foley fired a 4-under 66 at Blue Mound.
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2022-09-10T22:47:12Z
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Janesville teacher Sam Van Galder enjoys U.S. Mid-Amateur experience
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Milwaukee police asking for help in finding a 10-year-old girl who has been missing for more than 48 hours
Milwaukee police are asking the public's assistance in finding 10-year-old critical missing De'Ondra J. Hanford.
Hanford has been missing since Thursday at 8:45 p.m. on the 2600 block of North 28th Street.
Hanford is Black and approximately 4 feet 9 inches tall and weighs around 100 pounds. She has brown eyes and black shoulder length hair in box braids. She was last seen wearing a white short sleeved shirt, grey jogging pants, and white Nike tennis shoes.
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2022-09-11T05:12:25Z
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Milwaukee police asking for help in finding a 10-year-old girl
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Chinook salmon provide late summer prizes for fishermen in Lake Michigan harbors
In some circles, the full moon in September is called the harvest moon.
Anglers on McKinley Pier in Milwaukee this week were treated to a succession of evenings with the bright orb rising through clear skies over Lake Michigan.
"That's a sight, for sure," said Keith Miller, 61, of Milwaukee. "Now will (the moon) trigger the fish? That's what I want to know."
Miller was among a half-dozen anglers gathered about 7 p.m. Wednesday on the pier.
The "harvest" part is always uncertain in fishing. As it's often said, that's why they don't call it "catching."
But this time of year the possibilities of catching for shore, pier and small boat anglers is increased in harbors along the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan.
Late summer and early fall are marked by the return of certain salmon and trout species stocked in the lake.
More:Smith: A new bird flu rule is a 'disturbing development' that threatens to take down a tradition for American waterfowl hunters
The fish are responding to genetic impulses to reproduce, or spawn.
They first stage off the river mouths in the areas they were stocked years before. The fish imprint on the water of the local area and in a miracle of fisheries science and nature are able to find it as adults.
When conditions are right, they will swim up tributaries to lay eggs and milt.
But that is yet to come.
Last week the fish were still in holding patterns in near shore areas such as the Milwaukee harbor.
Several species could be present at any time, including brown trout, coho salmon, lake trout, steelhead (rainbow trout) and chinook salmon.
But it's the chinook, also known as kings, that are often the first to show up in the largest numbers. They also get the largest, many topping 20 pounds, some even heavier than 30.
The Wisconsin state record chinook was a 44.92-pounder was caught near Sturgeon Bay in 1994.
It was the hope of catching one of these fish, a mature king, that drew me and most of the other anglers on the pier and in boats in the harbor last week.
Marco Momich, 31, of Milwaukee was tossing a glow-in-the-dark lure into the calm lake Wednesday evening.
Sail boats drifted in after races. Couples strolled down the pier to take in the sights.
"This is one of the last great natural resources we have left," Momich said. "We have to take advantage of it."
Momich is an avid angler but had come to McKinley on Wednesday to try for a sequel.
His Facebook account reminded him that on Sept. 7, 2018, he caught a 15-pound chinook on the pier.
That fish was in excellent shape and provided great eating, he said.
"Time for a repeat," Momich said, charging his lure with the flashlight on his phone.
Fifty yards away Leo Zignego, 22, of Clyman also was casting. He arranged to meet Miller, his co-worker, for a couple hours of fishing at the end of the day.
"Very relaxing," Zignego said. "It's my first time out in a while but I'm hoping to catch one of those chinook."
Lake Michigan historically had two top predator fish, the lake trout and the burbot. But after invasive sea lampreys entered the lake in the 1930s, the native fishery was upended.
The alewife, another invasive species, then overpopulated the lake and spoiled beaches in massive die-offs through the 1950s and 60s.
A solution was at hand, however. In the 1960s fisheries managers began introducing Pacific Ocean-strain salmon and trout to feed on the abundant alewife population.
It worked on two fronts. The stocked predator fish reduced the excessive numbers of alewife and created a thriving sport fishery.
Since the 1970s Lake Michigan has been attracting anglers from far and wide to enjoy some of the best salmon and trout fishing on the planet.
Although there have been ups and downs, including disease challenges and concerning drops in prey fish numbers, the fishery had endured.
Over the last two years the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources worked with anglers to develop the 2020-22 Lake Michigan stocking plan to enhance fisheries management in the lake. As part of that plan, in 2021 the DNR stocked 1.2 million chinook salmon, 514,657 coho salmon, 430,313 steelhead, 411,229 brown trout and 50,077 brook trout.
In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stocked 45,000 lake trout into Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan last year.
The 2022 stocking goals were similar.
And this year is shaping up as one to remember for big fish.
A 40.40-pound chinook was caught July 31 off Algoma, the first trout or salmon caught in Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan to crack the 40-pound mark since July 12, 2010, when Roger Hellen of Franksville caught a 41.5-pound brown trout off Wind Point in Racine County.
It appears there is a good balance of predator to prey fish in the lake this year, resulting in heavy catches of salmon and trout.
The late summer return of kings to harbors up and down the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan provides one of the best chances for the "little guy" to tangle with the lake's biggest fish.
In addition to casting from piers and shore, anglers can launch relatively small boats and fish in the protected areas of harbors.
The action proved to be slow on McKinley on Wednesday night until 10:30, when I landed a 17-pound chinook on skein fished beneath a slip bobber. The fish was colored like tarnished silver and had firm flesh; it will make fine eating.
The next night I returned in similar conditions. Catching on the pier was sparse, but several boats returned with impressive kings.
In fact, Blake Jarrett of Elkhorn caught two chinook that weighed more than 30 pounds while jigging near the harbor gap.
One of them was 43.5 inches long and had a girth of 25.25 inches. It was estimated at 38 pounds and was the biggest king I had seen in person this year.
For reference, the 40.40-pound chinook caught in July in Algoma was 44 inches long and had a 28.5 inch girth.
Jarrett was fishing from a boat similar to what most people would use on inland lakes to fish for bass or walleye.
"It's time to get out and you don't need a huge boat," Jarrett said. "The harbors are where it's at right now."
Rain and cooler water temperatures will help draw more kings into harbors in the coming days. The September moon, then, will increasingly lay claim to its "harvest" name.
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2022-09-11T14:16:40Z
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Milwaukee fishermen drawn to salmon in Lake Michigan harbors
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/2022/09/11/milwaukee-fishermen-drawn-salmon-lake-michigan-harbors/8036428001/
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Brandon Woodruff takes the mound for the Brewers in the finale of a three-game series with the Reds. The first pitch is set for 1:10 p.m.
More:For the second straight day, Brewers place a starting pitcher on the IL
More:Brewers place Freddy Peralta on the injured list with right shoulder inflammation
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2022-09-11T18:00:03Z
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Brewers vs. Reds at American Family Field: lineup, score, updates
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Parts of southeastern Wisconsin could get seven inches of rain Sunday into Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
"The greatest concern we're looking at right now is in the far southeast Wisconsin," said J.J. Wood, meteorologist for the NWS in Sullivan.
Localized areas in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Kenosha, Racine and possibly Walworth counties could see seven inches of rainfall, Wood said.
"That's due to this low-pressure system that's moving very slowly across the region," he explained. "Essentially, the rain is kind of just pivoting over the area as that low kind of spins just to the southeast of the region. And that rain is just going to pivot right around that low as we go through tonight and into tomorrow."
There is also heavy rain along and east of Madison, up to Fond du Lac, over to Manitowoc, and east of there, Wood said. This area could get between two and five inches of rain.
The rain is expected to continue into Monday across south central, southeast and east central Wisconsin, according to Wood.
It's going to be moderate to heavy rainfall through Sunday night. Monday could see pockets of moderate-to-heavy rain. Then, the rain will steadily wind down as Monday night approaches.
'Turn around, don't drown'
The weather service uses the saying: "Turn around, don't drown," Wood said. If a driver encounters a flooded road, they should turn around and not drive through it.
"You don't know how deep it is," Wood said. "It's best just to turn around and not drive through it ... You could get into deeper water, and get into a real bad situation real quickly."
Since moderate-to-heavy rain can reduce visibility, Wood also recommends that drivers slow down.
The rest of the week looks pretty dry, according to Wood. There's a small chance of showers in northern Wisconsin Thursday night into Friday.
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2022-09-12T00:17:25Z
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Parts of southeastern Wisconsin could get seven inches of rain
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2022/09/11/parts-southeastern-wisconsin-could-get-seven-inches-rain/8059877001/
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ONEIDA - The sound of car engines slowly slipped away as Tony Kuchma walked alongside canary-colored blooms of green-headed coneflowers that lined the trail. Stalks of prairie dock towered above.
The colors of the prairie signaled that summer was coming to an end: faded green, bright yellow with touches of purple peeking through.
Kuchma stopped suddenly, pointing toward the ground at a leopard frog that swiftly leaped into the dense grass.
“We’ve got everybody that should be here… it’s just coming alive,” said Kuchma, a project manager with Oneida Nation.
Leopard frogs. Mayflies. Bumblebees. Waterfowl. They’ve all found their way back here to the headwaters of Trout Creek on the Oneida Reservation thanks to Kuchma and his team, which starting in 2018 restored more than 400 acres of native habitat: prairie, wetland and forest.
Now, the mosaic landscape offers a refuge for grassland birds to breed and fledge their young as well as a stopover for migratory shorebirds and waterfowl. But it’s more than just a restoration project, the revived habitats are a cross-pollination of cultures, blending science and community.
RELATED:Feathered jewels on a spinning chandelier: White pelicans have made an astonishing recovery in Wisconsin
RELATED:It's make-or-break time for prairie chickens in Wisconsin. They'll need help to keep booming on state grasslands.
Grassland birds are one of the most imperiled groups of birds in the country as their native habitat continues to be converted to farmland. In Wisconsin, less than 1 percent of original native grasslands remain.
“There's no grassland of this size or this quality within an hour and a half drive of this particular spot,” said Erin Giese, a partner on the project who studies birds at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
The next closest native grassland is the Buena Vista Grasslands, nearly 90 miles away.
Giese leads a bird monitoring project on the restored habitats, a collaboration between Oneida Nation, Great Lakes Audubon and Northeastern Wisconsin Audubon. The project is in its second year. Expert volunteers who are birders go out three times per summer to see what birds are using the habitat. They also do a set of migration surveys twice a week during the summer to capture all the kinds of birds that come by. The roster varies based on the time of year, species, gender and age.
After only two years, Giese can’t believe how quickly the birds have come back. Over 50 volunteers have participated, counting over 40,000 birds from nearly 120 species.
More:Report for America is helping the Journal Sentinel expand environmental coverage. But we need your help, too.
Signs of a healthy habitat
Later that morning, Kuchma slowly took one step at a time down the trail toward the wetland, vigilant that with each step closer to the wetland the ground came alive with green and leopard frogs.
He handed his spotting scope to Giese so she could take a look at what kinds of birds were in the water that day. After a few moments of peering through, she saw an adult pied-billed grebe, a small water bird, with its young. She couldn’t hide her excitement.
The return of the pied-billed grebe is the sign that the wetland is healthy and can support marsh birds, she said, as she pointed out the other kinds of waterfowl hanging out in the water.
Giese said this was a “quiet time” of the year, in between nesting and breeding in early summer and just before the migration south. But you wouldn’t know it by the number of birds in the water and sky.
This summer the volunteers also spotted Eastern and Western meadowlarks, bobolinks, clay-colored sparrows and dickcissel.
But the real “brag bird,” Giese said, is the Henslow’s sparrow — an uncommon bird for the area that they’ve seen at a few of their monitoring points.
“Do I love this place for birds? Yeah, it's great,” said Giese. “But it also has this dual purpose,” she said, expressing that the project is breaking down barriers and elevating the voices of Indigenous people in the area.
Where science meets tradition
After losing millions of acres in their ancestral homeland in New York State, the Oneida Nation was forced to relocate to what is now Wisconsin two hundred years ago. In 1822 they signed a treaty with the Menominee tribe to jointly use millions of acres of land, which were also lost when their 65,000-acre reservation was established. Much of this reservation land has also been lost.
Slowly the Oneida Nation has been buying back their land and restoring it, helping to bring back their identity and traditions.
The restoration project blends Western science with traditional ecological knowledge — the relationships between all living things and the land, knowledge which Indigenous peoples have accumulated for thousands of years. It was important to Kuchma for tribal members to be able to use the land to collect resources and support their traditions.
“We’re seeing all these bugs, birds, animals coming back home,” said Randy Cornelius, an Oneida tribal elder and cultural educator, noting that when he grew up there were hardly any woods at all on the reservation.
“There are all these relationships that our Creator intended for us to have with the natural world and look at the natural world as an extended family,” he said.
Part of their teachings is to only take what is needed and not over-harvest, said Cornelius.
In the nearby reforested area, the team planted fruit and nut-bearing trees so tribal members have more opportunities to gather. They also planted hickory trees, which are used to make lacrosse sticks, an important tradition to the Oneida people.
Bergamot, also known as Number Six, is a medicine used for colds and now grows in the prairie. But it’s also filling another role: attracting rare pollinators.
Earlier this summer, Kuchma and his team found rusty patched bumblebees, a federally endangered species, hovering over the purple blooms. In fact, they’ve seen almost every kind of bee found in Wisconsin in the restored habitats.
“This land was ready for change,” said Kuchma.
Voices coming back
The Oneida Nation now manages the entire headwaters of Trout Creek, which drains into Duck Creek before making its way to the lower bay of Green Bay. Every summer, harmful algae blooms plague the bay, namely from agricultural pollution.
Restoring the headwaters is critical to maintaining water quality in the watershed, said Kuchma. Now, brook trout once again spawn at the Trout Creek headwaters.
A few weeks ago, Kuchma, Giese and Cornelius held a camp for kids in the tribe, letting them explore the prairie and learn about the plants and animals that live there. And every day Cornelius shared traditional stories about their creation.
In the fall, Kuchma wants to plant wild rice in the wetland, which also grows in another successfully restored wetland nearby. Later this winter the Oneida Nation will go through a formal process to name the restored prairie and wetland.
Another big goal of the project is to get the land recognized as an Important Bird Area, a designation as a critical habitat for birds from the Audubon Society, said Giese. This would help them get grants to fund more restoration work.
All of the birds, frogs, insects and plants that now call this place home are voices that they haven’t heard in generations coming back, said Cornelius.
“The Earth is healing,” he said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Caitlin Looby is a Report for America corps member who writes about the environment and the Great Lakes. Email her at clooby@gannett.com.
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2022-09-12T13:58:30Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Restored Wisconsin habitat brings back birds on Oneida Reservation
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/12/restored-wisconsin-habitat-brings-back-birds-on-oneida-reservation/7844024001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/12/restored-wisconsin-habitat-brings-back-birds-on-oneida-reservation/7844024001/
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Bayside's new police chief, Tom Liebenthal, looks forward to building positive relationship with the community, special needs residents
Ask Tom Liebenthal, the new Bayside village police chief, about his top priority and he'll say it's to build a positive relationship with Bayside community members.
"In my first week, I had multiple people coming here just to meet me. And it's unlike anything I've ever experienced," he said.
Liebenthal has worked in law enforcement for 26 years, first joining the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office. He left that agency in 2014 and joined the Shorewood Police Department where later he held the interim chief position after Peter Nimmer stepped down as Shorewood police chief.
Liebenthal joined the village of Bayside Police Department earlier this summer and was promoted Aug. 15 to chief. He was brought in with the intention of working with the former chief, Doug Larsson, before his retirement.
Expanding the myBlue program
As chief, Liebenthal said he hopes to expand the myBlue program, a policing initiative that pairs an officer with a section of the village. Started in 2019, the myBlue program facilitates communication between police officers and residents for nonemergency issues.
"It's a different twist on community policing. It's almost like everything that's old is new again," he said.
"We already have a really good connection with the community, and one of the things I'd like to try to do is just find more creative ways to have the officers interact and connect with the community," he said.
The department divides the village into eight geographical sectors and assigns an officer to serve each area. Liebenthal's said he wants to expand the program to include more interactions between residents and their assigned officer.
Additionally, as an extension of the myBlue program, the department recognized that some residents with special needs may react differently when coming in contact with officers or firefighters during an emergency situation.
In response, the department created the Special Needs Registry in June, which is available to all residents requiring special needs from conditions like dementia, among others. Residents can provide optional information to a database to help emergency responders provide a more informed response in the case of an emergency.
"This may alter how we approach a situation, which makes it safer for everyone," said Liebenthal.
Hiring and retaining officers
As chief, another priority is hiring and retaining officers, which he said is more challenging than it used to be a couple years ago.
"Where we'd used to have an opening ad and get 100 people applying, now you're lucky if you get give to 10," he said.
RELATED:Lack of diversity, racism and bias training: What Ozaukee County law enforcement officials addressed during a recent Q&A
"It's a real competitive area right now when it comes to job openings with law enforcement. You're having a lot more people moving from agency to agency because they could improve pay," he added.
Including the chief, the department currently has 12 staff members and and are in the process of hiring one officer and anticipating another opening soon, said Liebenthal.
To attract and retain officers, Liebenthal is advocating for his officers to have opportunities to develop specialties within the department. Specialties could include firearms or taser instructor, or in professional communications, among others.
"As we go through our normal day-to-day activities they can help their fellow officers develop skills. And I think overall it helps us do a better delivery of all the services we provide."
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2022-09-12T16:38:05Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Bayside's new police chief, Tom Liebenthal, talks myBlue, staffing
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northshore/2022/09/12/baysides-new-police-chief-tom-liebenthal-talks-myblue-staffing/10336642002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northshore/2022/09/12/baysides-new-police-chief-tom-liebenthal-talks-myblue-staffing/10336642002/
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Southeastern Wisconsin native Angelica Ross to make history as first trans actor to lead Broadway show
NEW YORK — The fictional character Roxie Hart has many awful attributes — she’s adulterous, narcissistic, scheming, manipulating and murderous. This week, she’ll also be something unexpected: Inspirational.
Ross’ journey to the Ambassador Theatre seems almost fated, starting as a youngster who loved musical theater in Racine, Wisconsin. “I’ve been in musical theater since probably first grade,” says Ross, who was born in Kenosha and grew up in Racine.
Ross, who worked with a vocal coach, an acting coach and the dance captain at “Chicago” ahead of her Broadway debut, has even surprised herself at what she’s capable of doing.
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2022-09-12T16:38:17Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Racine's Ross will make history as lead in Broadway's 'Chicago'
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/2022/09/12/racines-ross-make-history-lead-broadways-chicago/8062662001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/2022/09/12/racines-ross-make-history-lead-broadways-chicago/8062662001/
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A new bar, along with quick-service dining and a coffee shop, are coming to a downtown Milwaukee office tower operated by Associated Banc-Corp.
Those changes are part of a series of renovations at Associated Bank River Center, 111 E. Kilbourn Ave. That's the former Milwaukee Center office tower adjacent to Saint Kate — The Arts Hotel.
The food and drink establishments will be operated by F Street Hospitality.
The bar, named Vault, will be on the second floor of new space overlooking the Milwaukee River and the public river walk.
Vault will feature floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the river and outdoor seating. It will include cocktails, as well as an upscale wine list, according to the Monday announcement.
Also, the first-floor River Center Market, accessible from the office tower's lobby, will have Toro Tacos & Bowls, an Asian-Latin inspired taqueria with a focus on tacos and bowls, including ramen bowls and cauliflower tacos, and On Rye, offering soups and sandwiches, including pastrami and corn beef.
River Center also is adding KnockBox Coffee & Market, with Stone Creek Coffee, pastries and breakfast sandwiches.
Toro Tacos & Bowls is already operating a temporary taco stand in River Center’s atrium on Tuesdays and Wednesdays over the lunch hour.
The full slate of River Center dining options is to open in spring 2023.
Related:A food hall in Milwaukee's Uptown neighborhood one block east of Wauwatosa is now open. North Avenue Market is home to local food providers.
Related:A future downtown Milwaukee apartment high-rise site has been sold for $6 million. Site work has started at Water St. and St. Paul Ave.
An Associated affiliate bought the 28-story, 373,000-square-foot office tower in 2016 for $60.5 million.
The new dining outlets are a big part of the building's ongoing redevelopment, said David Knight, senior vice president and director of real estate at Green Bay-based Associated.
“Not only are we offering new options for workers returning to the office, but our work at the River Center is also helping to revitalize use of a key piece of Milwaukee’s beautiful riverfront," Knight said in a statement.
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2022-09-12T16:38:23Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Bar, quick-service dining coming to Milwaukee's Associated Bank tower
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/12/bar-quick-service-dining-coming-milwaukees-associated-bank-tower/8063490001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/12/bar-quick-service-dining-coming-milwaukees-associated-bank-tower/8063490001/
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Heavy rains throughout Milwaukee area lead to first sewer overflow of 2022
Some areas of the MMSD service area had received nearly 7.5 inches of rainfall over the course of Sunday and Monday, prompting the Jones Island facility to release water after reaching its capacity.
More:Climate change exposes growing gap between weather we've planned for – and what's coming
This is the first overflow of the year for MMSD, one of six allowed yearly by the Department of Natural Resources under the district's state discharge permit. In 2021 there were two overflows — one in August that released nearly 400 million gallons of water, and another in October which released about 10,000 gallons, according to MMSD.
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2022-09-12T16:38:29Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Rainfall totals of over 7 inches in Milwaukee leads to sewer overflow
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/weather/2022/09/12/milwaukee-metro-sewerage-district-reports-first-sewer-overflow-2022-heavy-rain-milwaukee/8062378001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/weather/2022/09/12/milwaukee-metro-sewerage-district-reports-first-sewer-overflow-2022-heavy-rain-milwaukee/8062378001/
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Lands' End CEO Jerome Griffith to retire; company taps American Eagle Outfitters exec as new leader
DODGEVILLE – Jerome Griffith will retire as CEO of Lands' End Inc. in January.
The Dodgeville casual clothing, accessories and footwear company on Monday announced a succession plan in which Andrew McLean, president of American Eagle Outfitters, will join the company as CEO designate and a member of Lands' End's board of directors on Nov.1.
Griffith joined the company in 2017. He previously was CEO and president of Tumi Holdings Inc., a publicly traded manufacturer of high-end suitcases and travel bags that was bought by Samsonite in 2016.
As CEO, Griffith led the company in a period of significant e-commerce growth, Lands' End board chair Josephine Linden said in a news release.
He also led the expansion of Lands' End's distribution network to include Kohl’s, Amazon, QVC and Target, Linden said.
Under his leadership, Lands' End's annual revenue grew from $510 million in 2017 to $1.6 billion in 2022, according to the company's annual reports. Despite the sales growth, net income fell during that time, from $39.8 million to $33.4 million.
Griffith, 64, called his time as CEO an era of new growth and success for Lands' End that was "professionally and personally rewarding."
"I am confident that our digitally driven business model and highly loyal customer base has positioned Lands’ End well for long-term growth and success," he said.
McLean, 54, joined American Eagle Outfitters in 2016 and was promoted to president, international in 2020.
"He has an acute understanding of the evolving retail landscape, having successfully scaled several iconic retail brands that, like Lands’ End, have strong connections with their customers," Linden said.
Griffith, 64, will continue as a director after his retirement and is expected to be nominated for reelection to the board at the company's 2023 annual meeting.
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2022-09-12T21:20:27Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Lands' End CEO Jerome Griffith retiring, American Eagle exec gets post
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2022/09/12/lands-end-ceo-jerome-griffith-retiring-american-eagle-exec-gets-post/10358691002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2022/09/12/lands-end-ceo-jerome-griffith-retiring-american-eagle-exec-gets-post/10358691002/
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Miles Michaelis, 5, who joined brother Clayton, 8, as a "Play Ball" kid before Saturday's Milwaukee Brewers game against the Cincinnati Reds, wasn't too sure about the big first baseman headed his way. But the boys and Rowdy Tellez had something in common.
In a touching moment captured on video, Miles and Clayton's dad, Eric, mentioned to Tellez that the boys were mourning the loss of their mother, Elizabeth, who lost her battle with cancer in April at age 40. What Eric and the boys didn't know is that Tellez also lost his mother, Lori, to brain cancer just more than four years ago.
The interaction was brief as Tellez tried to comfort Miles, who turns 6 later this month, and shared that he also lost his own mother. Eric tweeted out video of the interaction and the bats Tellez later signed for the boys, with the message, "She will always be with you!"
Milwaukee won the game, 5-1. One day later, Tellez went on to have a monster game, slugging two homers and driving in four runs as the Brewers held on to win game, 7-6.
The Sussex brothers won tickets through Festival Foods to stand on the field before the game and officially kick off the proceedings with a shout of "play ball" into the stadium microphone.
According to the GoFundMe chronicling Elizabeth's cancer diagnosis, her condition was classified as stage 4 lung cancer in summer of 2019. She died April 19.
Correction: The initial version of this story indicated the interaction took place Sunday instead of Saturday.
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2022-09-12T21:20:57Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers Rowdy Tellez comforts play ball kids whose mom died of cancer
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/12/touching-moment-between-brewers-rowdy-tellez-and-two-young-fans/10359487002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/12/touching-moment-between-brewers-rowdy-tellez-and-two-young-fans/10359487002/
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The Whitefish Bay house that TikTok star Sophia Zang's bought and remodeled sold for $1,089,900, according to the Metro Multiple Listing Service.
Zang, 25, bought the house on 5462 N. Santa Monica Blvd. for $340,000 in April 2021, when she was just 23 years old. She invested an additional $645,000 on her renovation project, which included a major addition, which she documented on social media.
Zang has 475,000 TikTok followers, 86,800 Instagram followers and 117,000 YouTube subscribers.
Many internet fans followed the journey, watching as Yang transformed the 1920s Tudor house into a five-bedroom 2.5-bathroom luxury home. The renovation was the first project by Zang's new design firm, BSL Studios.
Zang is looking to flip more properties in the Milwaukee area and plans to expand her design consulting services.
More:25 year-old Sophia Zang hopes to flip a $340,000 home in Whitefish Bay for $1.14 million
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2022-09-12T23:26:32Z
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www.jsonline.com
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TikTok star Sophia Zang flips Whitefish Bay house for $1,089,900
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2022/09/12/tiktoker-influencers-whitefish-bay-house-flip-sold-for-more-than-one-million-dollars/8063614001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2022/09/12/tiktoker-influencers-whitefish-bay-house-flip-sold-for-more-than-one-million-dollars/8063614001/
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Jack Schultz hopes home course advantage counts for something at rain-delayed Mid-Amateur championship
TOWN OF ERIN – A few hours before Jack Schultz teed off for his second round of the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Erin Hills on Monday afternoon, water droplets still clung to the tops of grass blades and edges of the landscaping around the clubhouse.
The championship golf course was eventually playable after torrential rains, but it offered a damp reminder of the long slog ahead.
Everyone knew the rain was coming Sunday, and the 32-year-old Schultz said after his Saturday opening round at tournament co-host Blue Mound Golf and Country Club that at least he was going to be able to go home to Milwaukee and spend the night in his own bed. And, he wasn’t going to have to go shopping for rain gear.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens – it’s who can deal with it the best,” said Schultz, who was the 2007 Wisconsin Player of the Year and state champ at Whitefish Bay High School before playing at the University of Michigan.
If there was another advantage for Schultz in the postponement, it was literally getting off his feet. He took up indoor rock climbing and bouldering this year as a hobby and found the exercise really benefitted his golf game – until he took a tumble off the wall and heard a pop in his right ankle on Aug. 30.
“The afternoon before I rolled the ankle, I don’t think I’ve ever hit it better,” he said.
It wasn’t broken, but the high ankle sprain did force him off his feet for five days shortly before the tournament featuring the nation’s top amateurs aged 25 or older.
It didn’t appear to overly affect Schultz’s game during his opening round Saturday when he carded an even-par 70 with three birdies against three bogeys at Blue Mound.
“With irons and wedges I do a step-through,” the right-hander said. “Because it’s a downward attack angle I can lift it up and step through and those are fine. I still hit my irons and wedges really great.”
As for the longer clubs? He smiled.
“With my 5-wood I kind of get rid of the back foot and on the downswing just pick it up and one-leg (it) on the through swing, which works pretty well,” he added.
As for the biggest club in the bag heading into a soggy, 7,300-yard Erin Hills?
“I have nothing for the driver yet,” he chuckled.
Schultz admitted his mentality toward the tournament changed a little bit because he knows that he doesn’t have the advantage he usually has with the driver in his hand – and a wrap on his ankle reminds him the injury is there – but otherwise he felt he was in a good place after one round.
Schultz’s second round began at 4:30 p.m. at Erin Hills on Monday, so he’ll finish it Tuesday to try and play his way into the match-play format. But while the delays may be less than ideal, he said he’s going to apply lessons learned at the U.S. Amateur at Ridgewood Country Club in August.
Schultz opened with an impressive opening round 69 at the co-host site Arcola Country Club before missing match play with an 80 at Ridgewood.
“I don’t know if I had the right mindset for that, so I’ll try and take what I learned from there playing well at the alternate course and then going to the main one,” Schultz said. “The weather is the weather. Everyone has to deal with it.
“It’s trying to learn from what had happened at the Am. And really, out there, it’ll just be keep it in play.”
Second round delayed hours
The two courses were going to present enough of a challenge for the 264-person field to begin with, but Sunday was totally washed out by torrential rain.
Erin Hills director of course maintenance Zach Reineking’s crew got out onto the course at 2 a.m. Monday, only to be delayed again with morning precipitation. The course absorbed 4.2 inches of rain before play resumed in the late morning after a 4-hour, 40-minute delay.
Blue Mound superintendent Alex Beson-Crone had to manage a 5.3-inch rainfall, which included pumping out bunkers that had ankle-high waters. Superintendents from other Milwaukee-area courses volunteered their crews to help make the course playable, and the field resumed action after a delay of just over five hours.
The additional morning rain and drying out process made completing the stroke play portion of the tournament impossible Monday, with the last groups of the day teeing off about 20 minutes before sunset.
Stroke play will conclude Tuesday at both courses, and there will likely be a playoff for the final spots in the 64-person match play field at Erin Hills. Once that is decided, the first matches of the tournament will begin.
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2022-09-12T23:26:50Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Jack Schultz seeks edge at rain-delayed U.S. Mid-Amateur championship
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/golf/2022/09/12/jack-schultz-seeks-home-edge-rain-delayed-mid-amateur-championship/8062219001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/golf/2022/09/12/jack-schultz-seeks-home-edge-rain-delayed-mid-amateur-championship/8062219001/
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Jackson Chourio was already the youngest player in the entire minor-league level of Class High A. Now he will be the youngest player at Class AA.
The Milwaukee Brewers top prospect was promoted from the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers to the Biloxi Shuckers for the final week of the AA regular season, marking the fourth level at which Chourio will appear in 2022.
"Just an outstanding first full season, and at that age to go from extended spring training to finishing the year at High A and putting up numbers at each stop was more than we could have asked for," Brewers farm director Tom Flanagan said. "Our scouts were very high on him, the development staff that worked with him were very high on him and to see it come to fruition in the early going has been very gratifying."
Chourio is ranked as the No. 2 prospect leaguewide by Baseball America and No. 11 by MLB Pipeline.
In 93 games between Class A Carolina and the Timber Rattlers, Chourio has hit .300/.354/.562 with 20 home runs. He cut down on his strikeout rate by a notable margin from 28% with Carolina to 21.8% with Wisconsin.
"We kept challenging him throughout the year, and he answered every one of those challenges, whether it be staying back in extended (spring) for a bit, starting out in Carolina as the youngest player in that league and putting up big numbers," Flanagan said.
The Timber Rattlers' season ended over the weekend with a pair of rainouts. With another week of at-bats, not only does Chourio get the chance to continue his development but the Brewers also get the opportunity to see how he responds to Double-A pitching before deciding what level to send him to begin 2023.
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2022-09-12T23:27:02Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers promote top prospect Jackson Chourio to Class AA Biloxi
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/12/brewers-promote-top-prospect-jackson-chourio-double-biloxi/10360583002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/12/brewers-promote-top-prospect-jackson-chourio-double-biloxi/10360583002/
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Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV is reshuffling its digital subchannel lineup again. Out: Court TV. In: 2 shopping channels.
WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) is reshuffling its digital subchannel lineup again in October, adding two shopping channels and dropping Court TV.
Starting Oct. 3, here's how the over-the-air roster will shake out for the Scripps-owned television station:
Laff, which had been airing on Channel 4.6 since March 2021, will move to Channel 4.4. Court TV, which has been on Channel 4.4 since December, drops from Channel 4's lineup.
QVC2, a home shopping channel, will air on Channel 4.6
ShopLC, a second home shopping channel, will air on Channel 4.7. Until now, the channel has been dark.
WTMJ's other channels will remain the same: The NBC affiliate is still on Channel 4 (or 4.1), Bounce on 4.2, Grit on 4.3 and ION Mystery on 4.5.
None of the channels changing programming lineups is available locally on Spectrum cable, the area's biggest cable/satellite provider.
If you're still yearning for gavel-to-gavel coverage: Court TV will still be available to Milwaukee-area viewers of over-the-air television on Channel 55.3.
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2022-09-13T13:14:14Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee's WTMJ-TV reshuffling subchannel lineup, dropping Court TV
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/television-radio/2022/09/13/milwaukees-wtmj-tv-reshuffling-subchannel-lineup-dropping-court-tv/8034261001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/television-radio/2022/09/13/milwaukees-wtmj-tv-reshuffling-subchannel-lineup-dropping-court-tv/8034261001/
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MADISON – Clay Cundiff understood what he would be asked to do as he walked into the McClain Center late Saturday.
Wisconsin’s redshirt junior tight end would have to rehash his final play in the Badgers’ 17-14 loss to Washington State, a lost fumble at the Cougars’ 12 with 5 minutes 14 seconds remaining.
“I felt like I let the team down, coaches down,” he said. “Ball security is something that is a huge, huge deal here. We practice it every day.”
The hit that dislodged the ball came from the backside, after a 24-yard reception.
"On that one," head coach Paul Chryst said, "the most dangerous (place) is always going to be from behind."
Cundiff and the rest of UW’s offense never got the ball back.
“You’ve got to look at your teammates and own up to that,” Cundiff explained. “But every single one of my teammates was very supportive of me. A play like that, that happens to the best of them. You’ve got to put it behind you and look forward to next week.”
Cundiff had touchdown catches of 17 and 10 yards in the first half to help UW build a 14-7 lead. But he will remember his last play of the loss.
“Yeah, I had a good first half, but none of that will matter,” he said.
More:Wisconsin tight ends Clay Cundiff, Jack Eschenbach are back from injuries and ready to bolster the tight end position
More:'We’ve just got to clean it up': Wisconsin's failure on a third-and-short run against Washington State is reminiscent of 2021
More:Logan Brown is ready to man right tackle again for Wisconsin if Riley Mahlman remains out because of a leg injury
Quarterback Graham Mertz knew immediately how Cundiff was feeling. Mertz struggled protecting the ball last season, beginning with throwing two interceptions and losing a fumble in UW’s 16-10 loss to Penn State in the opener.
“I’ve lived that,” Mertz said. “He is going to lean on me and I’m going to lean on him. I know what he has been through. He is a fighter. He is going to learn from it. He’s going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“I’m blessed to have gone through what I’ve been through. I can share that with him.”
Mertz’s play has been solid in UW’s first two games and he enters Week 3 against New Mexico State completing 68.1% of his passes (32 of 47) for 446 yards, with three touchdowns and one interception.
Cundiff is second on the team in catches (six) and receiving yards (82). His per-catch average is 13.7 yards.
“He had a great game and then you have that one play,” Mertz said. “Obviously, for him all you think about is that one play. I’ve lived that and that’s what I told him. ‘Dude, we’re going to work through this and learn from it.’”
Cundiff’s fumble conjured memories of a play in UW’s 17-12 loss at Cincinnati in 1999. Tight end John Sigmund was called for a false start late in that game, wiping out a touchdown pass that would have given UW the lead.
Sigmund, then a junior, was devastated after the mistake. Although he was considered primarily a blocking tight end, Sigmund had a solid season. He capped it with two crucial catches on UW’s clinching drive against Stanford in the 2000 Rose Bowl.
UW hosts New Mexico State at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and it will be interesting to see how Cundiff responds.
“That is part of the process,” Mertz continued when asked about Cundiff. “When something doesn’t go your way, people can say whatever they want about you. And you’ve got to do a little self-reflection and (ask): ‘Can I handle that?’
“I know he can. He is one of the strongest dudes I know. He is going to keep fighting. He is going to be a hell of a tight end this year. He is going to keep making a ton of plays. He’s not going to stop.”
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2022-09-13T13:14:38Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Wisconsin's Clay Cundiff must overcome fumble vs. Washington State
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/13/wisconsins-clay-cundiff-must-overcome-fumble-vs-washington-state/10360506002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/13/wisconsins-clay-cundiff-must-overcome-fumble-vs-washington-state/10360506002/
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South Milwaukee is hosting an 'open doors' event as part of its 125th anniversary celebration
South Milwaukee is hosting its own Open Doors event as part of the city’s 125th anniversary celebration.
Over 20 buildings and businesses, several of them usually closed to the public, will be open Sept. 17 for people to peruse and learn about the history of the city.
The event will last from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and all but one location are free.
The Bucyrus Museum, 1919 12th Ave., is home to many displays showing the history of Bucyrus through the years in South Milwaukee. The Bucyrus Museum is on the second floor of the Bucyrus Club building. A special admission rate of $5 will be charged for this location.
The Frederick C. Wulff Lodge, 215 Lake Drive, which was built in 1917 as the former home of Frederick Wulff, the first Milwaukee County Parks superintendent, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. The building has been used by youth groups for overnight stays.
The Benkowski Builders Train Station, 1111 Milwaukee Ave., is near Da Crusher statue in downtown South Milwaukee. The building was designed by architect Charles Sumner Frost and erected in 1893 for the Chicago & Northwestern Railway.
The South Milwaukee Library, 1907 10th Ave., will offer a guided tour along with a look at various digitization projects ongoing at the library. Historical documents, yearbooks and more will be scanned, according to Melissa Ellis, chairperson of 125th anniversary celebration committee.
Some other buildings set to be open to the public include the South Milwaukee Historical Society, 717 Milwaukee Ave., American Legion Post 27, 920 Monroe Ave., the South Milwaukee Water Utlility, 100 Marshall Ave., South Milwaukee Street Department, 910 Marshall Ave., and South Milwaukee Human Concerns, 1029 Milwaukee Ave.
The South Milwaukee Fire Department, 929 Marshall Court, and Police Department, 2424 15th Ave., will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Local businesses are also opening their doors for residents including Military Connection, 723 Milwaukee Ave., Molthen-Bell & Son Funeral Home, 700 Milwaukee Ave., and Schlaraffia Milwaukia, 500 Marquette Ave., home to the knights of the Schlaraffia, a German men’s club focused on “art, humor and friendship,” according to South Milwaukee’s website. The group’s site boasts a membership if 10,000 in over 280 countries.
Some places of worship that will be open include the city’s oldest church and cemetery at First Congregational Church, 1111 N. Chicago Ave., a Muslim mosque, Masjid Al-Huda, 1800 16th Ave., the first Armenian church in Wisconsin, Holy Resurrection Armenian Church, 909 Michigan Ave., which will feature raffles, games, music, food starting at 2 p.m. and followed by a 4 p.m. Mass.
Residents who visit 12 or more participating locations earn a free 125th anniversary commemorative coin from the city. A completed map (available on the city website before the event or at each stop) must be turned in to the fire department by 3:15 p.m., Sept. 17.
The city is hosting various events in celebration of the milestone and celebrate what makes the city special. On Oct. 2 South Milwaukee is hosting a historical trolley tour presented by Molthen-Bell & Son Funeral Home.
On Oct. 27 a gala will be held at the Bucyrus Club. The Radio Rosies will also perform at the South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center. Tickets are required and on sale now.
A veterans celebration will take place Nov. 11 in partnership with South Milwaukee American Legion Post 27.
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2022-09-13T16:34:55Z
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www.jsonline.com
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South Milwaukee to host 'open doors' event for 125th anniversary
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/south/news/south-milwaukee/2022/09/13/south-milwaukee-host-open-doors-event-125th-anniversary/10363783002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/south/news/south-milwaukee/2022/09/13/south-milwaukee-host-open-doors-event-125th-anniversary/10363783002/
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A window into Argentina now exists in Brookfield as El Gaucho Grill is bringing the country’s cuisine to the plates of Wisconsinites at 17800 W. Bluemound Road.
A family-run business, the restaurant opened in June and is run by Antonio Paez, his sister Claudia Paez and his wife, Arlenne Escamilla.
Antonio Paez said making patrons feel as if they had been transported to Argentina was his goal when he designed the restaurant's space, which includes Argentine artifacts, posters and a custom mural featuring a gaucho riding a horse. This is all paired with Latin music and, of course, authentic Argentinian food.
“I want people to know that when they come here they will be eating food that they would get in the streets of Argentina,” said Paez. “These are the recipes I grew up with, and we didn’t change them at all.”
Some of the staples of Argentinian cuisine that the restaurant offers include a variety of empanadas, multiple styles of milanesa sandwiches and the choripan, which is a sausage sandwich and a common street food item in Argentina. The drink menu offers wines and cocktails common to Argentina.
The restaurant's menu also has a Mexican and Uruguayan influence as Paez, born in Argentina, was raised in Uruguay, and his wife is from Mexico. Diners will know which country their dish is coming from because it will be topped with a mini flag from the corresponding country.
Already a community cornerstone
Before opening the restaurant in Brookfield, Paez said, he had to travel to enjoy his Argentinian cuisine.
“I said why not open one here? There is no competition, and we can make the same things for others that we are having to drive so far for,” he explained.
The response to the restaurant has been unprecedented. Paez said he has seen Argentinians from all over Wisconsin flock to his restaurant.
“Before opening, I thought I was the only Argentinian around, but every day I am meeting new Argentinians that are excited to be able to eat here,” he said. "They come in with their families and for parties, and it is such a joy."
The feeling seems to be mutual. Paez recalled one customer who said they felt they were back in Buenos Aires while eating the food and hearing the music in the restaurant.
Hearing comments like that is priceless for Paez, who takes pride in being able to offer a slice of his culture to those who might miss it as he does, and to introduce others who might not have experienced it before.
“Food is something more. It is culture, and words cannot describe how much pride I feel when I see people connecting with my culture,” he said. “For me, it is not about the money; for me it is about providing that experience to people who miss Argentina and to those who might want to try it.”
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2022-09-13T16:35:01Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Argentinian immigrant brings culture and cuisine to Brookfield
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/west/news/2022/09/13/argentinian-immigrant-brings-culture-and-cuisine-brookfield/10360529002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/west/news/2022/09/13/argentinian-immigrant-brings-culture-and-cuisine-brookfield/10360529002/
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MADISON - Josh Kaul, the state's current top law enforcement official, is hoping to win a second term as Wisconsin's attorney general after running unopposed in the Aug. 9 Democratic primary.
Kaul, 41, is asking for a second term in the office and facing a challenge from Republican Eric Toney, who is currently the Fond du Lac County District Attorney.
Here is what to know about Kaul, a Democrat, as voters head into the general election.
Kaul prosecuted federal crimes in another state before returning to Wisconsin
From 2010 to 2014, Kaul worked as a federal prosecutor in Baltimore, handling cases dealing with murderers, gang members and drug traffickers.
After moving back to Wisconsin, he also worked at the Perkins Coie law firm, focusing on voting rights and other election-related litigation, according to his LinkedIn profile. He tried cases in federal courts in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia challenging restrictive voting measures.
Kaul is the son of a former AG
Kaul is the son of former attorney general Peg Lautenschlager.
Until early 2017, when Kaul first announced his bid for AG, his mother also served on the state's Ethics Commission, but she stepped down to help clear the way for her son's path to the AG's office.
What Kaul counts as accomplishments
Kaul has overseen a number of actions as attorney general, including speeding up the process of testing sexual assault evidence. His agency completed testing for 300 evidence kits and reviewed all cases where there was a DNA match
"That's led to criminal investigations and in some cases prosecutions," Kaul said.
His office also advocated for a statewide tracking system, as well as worked on legislation to prevent another backlog in the future.
Kaul also withdrew Wisconsin from a lawsuit seeking the end of the Affordable Care Act and worked to go after pharmaceutical companies for their role in the opioid epidemic, securing over $400 million for the state from settlements.
During his term, Kaul also launched an inquiry into abuse perpetrated by faith leaders, which has garnered over 200 reports of abuse, and resulted in the charges being filed against two individuals.
More:Facing criticism from survivors, AG Josh Kaul vows to use 'whatever legal processes' he can in faith leader review
Kaul's stance on Wisconsin's abortion law
Kaul has also posed a legal challenge to the state's 1849 abortion ban, calling it unenforceable. He said he believes the challenge will be successful, despite the conservative makeup of the state's Supreme Court, because it is "right on the law."
He has also pledged to not assist with the enforcement of any abortion ban enacted by the state.
"I believe that our investigative and prosecutorial resources in Wisconsin should investigate and prosecute things like violent crime and drug trafficking and not be diverted from those investigative and prosecutorial needs to be used to go after people for abortions," Kaul said in a previous interview.
Toney criticized that stance.
Kaul has faced criticisms
Kaul has also faced criticisms, including internally as his Department of Justice faced a claim of race and sex discrimination from a top official who says she was underpaid and mistreated. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering the complaint, but separate outside investigators could not corroborate claims that administrators discriminated against racial minorities.
The claim was settled in May, with the Department agreeing to pay $46,276.
Also, while Kaul counts improvements in the pace of processing sexual assault kits as an accomplishment, Republicans have criticized him over a slowdown in processing times during the pandemic. Kaul had criticized then-Attorney General Brad Schimel over the same issue in the 2018 election.
The crime labs on average processed DNA samples in 128 days in 2021, up from 94 days in 2020 and 97 days in 2019, according to the labs' annual report. The median processing time last year was 115 days, up from 79 days in 2020 and 65 days in 2019, according to a Justice Department report released earlier this year.
The report showed the number of cases DOJ handled came down significantly after Kaul was elected but began to creep up in late 2019 and accelerated during the pandemic before starting to trend down.
Kaul said the pandemic was a main reason for increased processing times with fewer analysts working in the lab.
At the time of the report Toney described Kaul's handling of the crime labs an "abysmal failure."
"Kaul is testing significantly less items than former AG Brad Schimel and is still taking longer to test many categories of key items in comparison to Schimel, including DNA," he said in a statement.
Kaul has emphasized environmental protection
Kaul said he has emphasized upholding Wisconsin's environmental laws, pursuing and settling cases with polluting farms. Last year, the state Supreme Court agreed with his decision that the Department of Natural Resources has broad authority to regulate dairy farms and high-capacity wells that have the potential to impact water levels.
Kaul also filed a suit against Tyco Fire Products in Marinette earlier this year, saying the company for years violated the state's spills law when it did not notify the DNR about discharges of toxic forever chemicals into the environment.
"Fighting to make sure that we are protecting clean air and clean water is about protecting the safety and the health of Wisconsinites and the strength of our economy," Kaul said in a recent interview. "I believe that the cleanup should be paid for by the companies that polluted our water and not by the taxpayers. And by holding polluters accountable, we can do a lot to make sure that that's the way those cases are resolved."
Such prosecutions declined under Schimel.
How to contact Kaul
Kaul can be reached at the attorney general's office by calling 608-266-1221.
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2022-09-13T16:35:25Z
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www.jsonline.com
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What to know about Josh Kaul, Wisconsin Democratic attorney general
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/09/13/what-know-josh-kaul-wisconsin-democratic-attorney-general/8004389001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2022/09/13/what-know-josh-kaul-wisconsin-democratic-attorney-general/8004389001/
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Born in New York, living in Los Angeles and owning a Major League Baseball franchise on the shores of Lake Michigan, Mark Attanasio is familiar with the coasts. He's adding another.
The principal owner of the Milwaukee Brewers will become the second-biggest shareholder in the Norwich City soccer club, currently belonging to the English Football Championship League one notch below the Premier League.
The club is based in the county of Norfolk, on the east side of England next to the North Sea. Norwich has been on a yo-yo path between the Premier League and EFL over the past decade-plus, most recently winning the 2020-21 EFL championship to earn promotion back into the Premier League but taking last place in the EPL to get kicked back down a level. The club has been promoted three times since 2014 and relegated four times.
Norwich City's record is 5-2-1, in second place in the league standings.
Attanasio's investment of 10 million pounds (more than $11.5 million) was approved by the club's other stakeholders Sept. 12, paving the way for him to purchase nearly 16% of the franchise, a segment previously owned by Michael Foulger. Attanasio, who turns 65 later this month, will become the first overseas owner in club history.
His appointment to the board is pending one final sign-off from the English Football League.
"It is clear from our many meetings with him, along with his approach to running his sports team in the U.S., that we share the same values and ethos,” Norwich City executive director Zoe Ward said.
Attanasio purchased the Brewers before the 2005 season for $223 million, and Forbes' most recent valuation of the franchise puts the Brewers' worth at $1.28 billion.
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2022-09-13T16:35:31Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Brewers owner Mark Attanasio approved to buy stake in Norwich City
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/13/brewers-owner-mark-attanasio-approved-buy-stake-norwich-city/10364929002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2022/09/13/brewers-owner-mark-attanasio-approved-buy-stake-norwich-city/10364929002/
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Menomonee Falls School District residents vote down proposal to change school board election process at annual meeting
A proposal to change the way Menomonee Falls School District residents vote for school board members was soundly rejected by a majority of residents at the school board's annual meeting Monday.
Residents voted, 312-157, against a "numbered-seat" system in which each current board member would have been assigned a seat number and future challengers would choose which specific seat to run for. .
There were 469 district residents who voted during the meeting, which was held inside a packed and animated Menomonee Falls High School auditorium.
The numbered-seat system would have replaced the district's current at-large system in which each school board candidate runs against all other candidates, with the open seats going to the top vote-getters. The "at-large" system is used by a large majority of school districts in the state.
The Facebook page "Menomonee Falls Republicans," which had encouraged its supporters to attend the meeting and vote for the numbered-seat system, posted its disappointment with the result.
"Unfortunately 312 left leaning voters showed for the vote to our 157 in favor. The numbered seat system has failed. In April we will do our best to ensure the voters have a crystal clear view of the candidates at hand," the group said in its post.
Some residents said before the annual meeting that the process was being rushed. Some experts the Journal Sentinel spoke with before the meeting said a numbered-seat system could lead to certain board members being targeted, polarize races and potentially lead to a majority party's full control of the board.
Residents on both sides of the issue spoke before the vote for about 30 minutes.
Resident Nathan Greenleaf opposed the proposal, saying the numbered-seat system would take choice away from voters.
"So let me tell you, if you're looking for accountability, the at-large (system) requires the candidates to present what they have done properly, what they plan on doing in the future, what good they have to offer, as opposed to a false choice between one person or another. That's not how you build diversity of thought in a board. That's not how you build diversity of thought within an educational system. So this change is not in the best interest of students," Greenleaf said.
Resident Joe Helm, who is an area attorney and a former Menomonee Falls village president and trustee, favored the proposal. He said he had experience with both the at-large and numbered-seat voting systems while serving the village and said the numbered-seat system was most effective.
"Each elected official needs to stand on their own merit and their own performance and not ride on the coattails of some other popular candidate," he said. "Two candidates running for one numbered seat requiring that each candidate proclaim what they stand for, explain how they will govern and defend their actions, giving the citizens a definitive choice who will be elected to that seat. There is no greater way to ensure that the will of the voter and the accountability of the elected official (are met)."
Former Menomonee Falls School Board members who lost seats on the board also spoke.
Cathy Olig, who lost in last spring's election, opposed the proposal. Olig said the board did not need to align with the Menomonee Falls Village Board, which uses a numbered-seat system, and should stick with its current at-large system. She also cited points made by a political science professor in a Journal Sentinel article about how head-to-head races could call more attention to partisan differences.
"We don't need any more attack. We don't need any more division in our community. We should be united behind our students," Olig said.
But Michele Divelbiss, who also lost her board seat in last spring's election, supported the numbered-seat proposal. She said she would have preferred one direct challenger running against her, but said she didn't get that chance when three of the candidates ran as a block.
"I would have loved to have had a numbered seat. They would have had to choose me to come against. Come against my service, my records, my votes for the last nine years," Divelbiss said.
Background behind the proposal
The proposed change came after school board elections last spring in which both political parties spent more than $80,000 on races across the state. According to campaign finance reports, at least $4,000 was spent in the Menomonee Falls School Board election.
Menomonee Falls School Board President Eric Pelzer brought up the idea at the board's July 12 meeting. The board voted 5-2 to send it to the board's annual meeting for a vote by residents.
Pelzer said at the Sept. 12 meeting that his purpose in making the proposal was to get people to come to the meeting to voice their opinions on the idea.
Pelzer also said he thought a numbered-seat system was a better system. He denied allegations he received through email and social media accusing him of wanting to maintain power and make a career out of sitting on the school board.
"The reason I wanted numbered seats is because I felt like it would create a stable board, and here's why. It disincentivizes people from running as groups and as blocks and actually compels every candidate to run as an individual for an individual seat. That was my reasoning behind it. That was my logic behind it. Some agree. Some disagree.
"I think we need to keep the debate civil. I'm happy with the conversation that we've had. Everyone should just vote their conscience. I think that's what this is all about. I think that's what this country is all about," Pelzer said.
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2022-09-13T19:35:03Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Falls residents vote down proposal to change school board election process
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/menomonee-falls/2022/09/13/falls-residents-vote-down-proposal-change-school-board-election-process/10360700002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/menomonee-falls/2022/09/13/falls-residents-vote-down-proposal-change-school-board-election-process/10360700002/
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Milwaukee Public Museum seeks community feedback on new museum exhibits, events, experience
The Milwaukee Public Museum wants community feedback about the future museum's exhibits, events and the larger experience.
Along with the exhibit design group Thinc Design, the museum has launched a survey at MPM.edu/future-museum-survey. It seeks input from people across the state and will be open through Oct. 14.
"The results of this survey will influence how we bring ideas to life as we enter the next phase of our design process — focused on the interior of the building and its exhibits," MPM Chief Planning Officer Katie Sanders said in a statement.
The new museum at West McKinley Avenue and North Sixth Street is expected to open in 2026 and its exterior will be reminiscent of the geological formations in Mill Bluff State Park, which overlooks Interstate 90 near Camp Douglas, in central Wisconsin.
Groundbreaking is slated for late 2023.
More:Milwaukee Public Museum has been reaccredited. That's a key win in its efforts to raise money for a new building north of Fiserv Forum.
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2022-09-13T19:35:09Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee Public Museum seeks feedback on new museum exhibits, events
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/13/milwaukee-public-museum-seeks-feedback-new-museum-exhibits-events/10365712002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/13/milwaukee-public-museum-seeks-feedback-new-museum-exhibits-events/10365712002/
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Milwaukee County housing voucher recipients will get an increase in subsidies next month
The average Housing Choice Voucher (formerly known as Section 8) will increase next month, following the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s attempt to address the impacts of inflation on rents.
Nationally, vouchers are expected to increase an average of 10%, a significant jump from the typical average of 4%. In Wisconsin, the average increase is expected to range from 8.9% to 19.9%.
RELATED:The future of public housing in Milwaukee is vouchers, not buildings — and that could improve housing security
Voucher recipients have a portion of their rent, typically around 30%, paid by a local housing authority, which is federally managed by HUD. However, there are caps on how much rent the voucher will cover. The caps are known “fair market rents” and are set by calculating the rent and utility costs of 40% of housing units in an area.
However, the department was unable to use public data to make the estimates due to the pandemic. The new fair market rent averages were calculated using a rare combination of public and private sector data. The result was a considerable increase.
Small area fair market rents, which are based on ZIP codes as opposed to metros, are expected to increase even more.
Milwaukee has adopted small area fair market rents for 16 of its ZIP codes, according to Kori Schneider Peragine, the senior administrator of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council’s Inclusive Communities Program.
In some ZIP codes, the cap increased more than $100 between 2022 and 2023 compared to an increase of just $40 one year prior.
However, the rates set by HUD are minimums.
In response to inflation, the department increased the percentage that local housing agencies can go above the minimum.
In 2022, that meant a $1,500 federal small area fair market rent in the 53217 ZIP code was increased to $1,800 by the public housing agency.
Housing advocates have long advocated for an increase in rent caps, so vouchers can keep up with inflation.
“What has been set as the payment standard is not reflective of the rents in neighborhoods that have safe neighborhoods and high-performing schools,” Peragine said in an interview last year. “What we’re seeing is that when we look at these trend ZIP codes defined as the opportunity areas that indicate where children would go on to have better life outcomes, there’s almost no people with vouchers in those communities and that’s because there are no units at that rent levels in those communities.”
Philip Teleger, executive director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council, said the increases will likely help families access lower-poverty areas. That has traditionally been difficult with many rents in the suburbs exceeding what the voucher is able to subsidize.
“I hope we’re not going to continue to see this rapid inflation of rents going forward in the coming years, but this increase going forward in 2023 will help families be able to use their vouchers,” he said.
“We’re hoping for a real positive impact,” he added.
The updated rents will go into effect Oct. 1.
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2022-09-13T19:35:15Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Section 8 recipients are expected to get an increase in vouchers Oct 1
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/13/section-8-recipients-expected-get-increase-vouchers-oct-1/10358290002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/13/section-8-recipients-expected-get-increase-vouchers-oct-1/10358290002/
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A four-story, 55-unit east side apartment building that inspired a lawsuit is being recommended for approval by a Common Council committee
A four-story, 55-unit apartment building that inspired a lawsuit from unhappy neighbors is being recommended for approval by a Common Council panel.
The Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee voted 5-0 Tuesday to endorse a zoning change for the project. It is to be built at 2604-2644 N. Hackett Ave., just east of the Downer Avenue business district.
That site now includes a vacant lot as well as St. Mark's Episcopal Church. That empty site north of the church parish hall is where the apartments would be constructed.
The zoning committee's recommendation is to be reviewed by the council at its Sept. 20 meeting. It follows a unanimous Plan Commission recommendation.
Nearby residents oppose the project, saying it would be too large for the site, increase traffic congestion and make it more difficult to find on-street parking spaces.
It amounts to a "gargantuan" project using a zoning change that "will destroy the neighborhood," said former Ald. Larraine McNamara-McGraw.
McNamara-McGraw and four other opponents, in a lawsuit they later dropped, said the city should conduct a study of the apartment building's impact on traffic, safety and parking before making a decision on rezoning the site.
More:Milwaukee east side historic designation on proposed apartment site creates a potential barrier to development at Summit and North.
More:A court ruling which cleared the way for razing Milwaukee's historic Columbia Hospital is being appealed. That could stall demolition.
The city's Department of Public Works reviewed those concerns and concluded such a study isn't needed — in part because a large, underused parking structure is located one-half block from the development site.
The development itself would have 69 underground parking spaces — more than required by city code.
The Plan Commission approval was granted on the condition the developers provide a traffic study before the zoning committee hearing.
That study's findings matched the Department of Public Works' conclusions that the development would have little impact on traffic, said Dawn Schmidt, a DPW civil engineer.
Developers Michael DeMichele and Three Leaf Development LLC, led by Milwaukee Bucks guard Pat Connaughton, hope to have the building completed by March 2024.
The monthly rents would be around $2.10 per square foot. That translates to rents starting at around $1,050 for a studio unit.
Its height would be slightly lower than Church In The City, which is just north of the proposed development site at 2648 N. Hackett Ave.
The proposed building meets the current zoning's height limit and is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan for the northeast side, said Sam Leichtling, city planning manager.
The developers are buying the lot from St. Mark's, which would use the sale proceeds to help finance a new parish hall.
Supporters, including State Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, the only candidate on the November ballot for the east side's open aldermanic district, say the apartments would blend well with the neighborhood and generate property tax revenue as well as more customers for Downer Avenue businesses.
Opponents also said the developers and the church should have consulted with nearby residents when they began working on their project plans
Along with the Plan Commission and zoning committee hearings, the Historic Preservation Commission on July 11 approved the building's siting, scale, form and materials.
The preservation commission held a hearing on the development because the site is within the Downer Avenue Commercial Historic District.
Also, the developers in June hosted a meeting with neighborhood residents about the project, which was publicly disclosed on June 15.
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2022-09-13T22:19:06Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Disputed Milwaukee apartment building endorsed by zoning committee
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/13/disputed-milwaukee-east-side-apartment-building-endorsed-zoning-committee/10365739002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/13/disputed-milwaukee-east-side-apartment-building-endorsed-zoning-committee/10365739002/
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Nonviable fetus found abandoned on south side Milwaukee street
Milwaukee police are investigating after a dead and nonviable fetus was left on the street of a south side neighborhood Sunday.
Police were called to the 3400 block of South 84th Street, near the Highwood Estates and Euclid Park neighborhoods, sometime after 11:45 a.m. after the fetus was discovered, according to a news release. Police are searching for the mother.
The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office said the incident is not being investigated as a homicide. The fetus was 18 weeks old and nonviable, meaning it had no chance of survival, the office said.
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2022-09-13T22:19:12Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Nonviable fetus found in street on Milwaukee's south side
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/13/nonviable-fetus-found-street-milwaukees-south-side/10369576002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/13/nonviable-fetus-found-street-milwaukees-south-side/10369576002/
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WASHINGTON – Wisconsin Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson on Tuesday signaled they weren't on board with a GOP proposal that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy — with Johnson claiming the issue should be left to the states and Baldwin decrying the effort.
When asked if he would support the bill from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham that would place federal restrictions on abortion, Johnson said those decisions should be decided by “we the people” in the 50 states, according to CNN.
Baldwin, a supporter of abortion rights, was more direct.
"No one wants Lindsey Graham making personal, health care decisions for women in America," Baldwin tweeted Tuesday.
Graham's legislation comes weeks after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights and would leave untouched laws in states with stricter provisions. The proposal includes exceptions for rape and incest, as well as for abortions necessary to save the life of the mother.
The measure stands no chance of passing in a Democrat-controlled Congress.
In a statement, Johnson spokeswoman Alexa Henning did not say whether Johnson definitively opposed Graham's bill.
"As the senator has said many times he believes this is a profound moral issue and agrees with the Dobbs decision to allow the democratic process to unfold in each state to determine at what point does society have a responsibility to protect life," Henning said.
Johnson has previously supported legislation from Graham that would ban abortions nationwide 20 weeks after fertilization. He has maintained that states should make decisions when it comes to the issue of abortion and has suggested women can cross state lines to get medical care if they live in a state where abortion is illegal.
He also signed on to an amicus brief last year urging the Supreme Court to uphold a Mississippi law limiting abortions after 15 weeks.
In Wisconsin, doctors stopped providing abortions in June following the overturning of Roe v. Wade because of a state law passed in 1849 that outlaws all abortions except in situations where the mother’s life is in danger.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit in June challenging the 1849 law, claiming it is unenforceable because it conflicts with abortion measures state lawmakers have passed since.
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortions were legal in Wisconsin until 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Johnson earlier this year said he doesn't think the 1849 ban would remain in place for long. It's unclear whether he supports the measure.
“I don’t think that will stand for long,” Johnson said in May. "I think the democratic process in Wisconsin will have something other than the 1849 law."
Still, Republican lawmakers who control the state Legislature have signaled they will not pursue bills that expand access to abortions beyond the parameters of the 1849 law that is back in effect.
Republican candidate for governor Tim Michels, who is essentially tied with Evers in recent state polling, has said he does not support changing the 1849 law or adding exceptions for women who become pregnant after being raped or involved in incest.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Molly Beck contributed.
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2022-09-13T22:19:18Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Johnson, Baldwin react to proposed 15-week abortion ban
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/13/johnson-baldwin-react-proposed-15-week-abortion-ban/10368703002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/13/johnson-baldwin-react-proposed-15-week-abortion-ban/10368703002/
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Massachusetts 3D printer company Formlabs launches Milwaukee office, its first location in the Midwest
A Massachusetts 3D printing company has opened a sales and service office in the Third Ward that is expected to grow to 150 employees in the next three years.
Formlabs, launched in 2011, has grown to become the largest maker of benchtop 3D printers. Its printers are used by businesses that include manufacturers, health care systems, entertainment companies and others who use the printers for prototyping parts and concepts, rapid manufacturing and other applications.
In addition to its headquarters in Somerville, Massachusetts, Formlabs has offices in North Carolina, Berlin, Paris and Budapest. It employs about 800 people.
Luke Winston, the company's chief business officer, said a Milwaukee office wasn't foremost in the company's mind when it began a nationwide search for a location that would put it closer to customers in the Midwest and beyond.
"Honestly, Milwaukee wasn't even at the top of that list originally," Winston said. "But after visiting it the first time and learning about it being the original 'machine shop of the world,' of having this awesome set of companies that make things and also having a bunch of schools like Milwaukee School of Engineering ... it just seemed like an awesome place that connects well with our mission."
Attracted by Milwaukee talent pool
In Milwaukee, he said, the company believes it has found more than a customer-friendly location — it has landed in a place where there's a growing pool of technical, engineering sales and marketing employees not just from MSOE, where the company has already hosted events, but also students coming out of Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The floor and a half of open concept office space with a rooftop deck that the company found on the top floors of 220 E. Buffalo St. also made a difference, he said.
"We have this really industrial kind of old industrial space in Boston that's been turned into our office and it's been kind of cool to see that in the Third Ward," he said. "I like that whole area and I'm very excited about the office. I think I'm slightly jealous of it as well. It's a really, really sweet build-out that I think combines both old industrial with modern."
The space, a glass and steel addition that fronts South Water Street, was built in 2017 for Digital Measures, a higher-education software company that left after it was acquired by New York-based Watermark.
RELATED:Milwaukee education software company Digital Measures acquired by Watermark
More:A software maker is relocating from Waukesha to downtown Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward with 135 jobs.
About 20 people have been working in the 20,000-square-foot space since early August.
3D printing starts with a prototype
3D printing is a subset of what's known as additive manufacturing. The basic principle is to build an object, say a prototype for a new climbing helmet, by printing layer after layer of material to build the helmet from the base up.
Creating prototypes for new products has been the industry's bread and butter since its inception. That at one time required large, complicated machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Formlabs, as a leading manufacturer of professional benchtop printers and printing material, sees itself as a "disruptor" focused on making 3D printing affordable, easy to use and widely accessible, Winston said.
The company's printers start at under $4,000. More than 100,000 have been sold to date, according to a news release.
Founded by a handful of MIT grads, Formlabs introduced its first professional-grade desktop printer in 2012 and brought it to market with a Kickstarter campaign that raised almost $3 million. Since then it has rolled out larger and more specialized printers, including one that prints permanent dental crowns and dentures.
The printers can be used individually or in "print farms," banks of printers that can crank out large numbers of parts or products.
Novel and cutting-edge uses include:
When COVID-19 test swabs were in short supply at the height of the pandemic, hospitals and health systems, government agencies, and a medical device manufacturer worked with the company to print millions of swabs.
New Balance uses Formlabs printers to make a springy insole cushion using a new material developed by Formlabs for a line of running shoes.
Hasbro and Formlabs recently announced a partnership to create Hasbro's "Selfie Series" of customizable action figures that allow customers to put their own faces on 3D models of superheroes.
Gilette is partnering with Formlabs to produce custom-designed razor handles.
The company last year raised $150 million in Series E funding led by SoftBank, bringing Formabs' valuation to $2 billion. Series E funding is often a precursor to becoming a publicly traded company.
State funds helping with move
Formlabs is receiving state assistance in setting up the Milwaukee office in the form of up to $675,000 in state income tax credits. The credits are tied to the company bringing its Wisconsin workforce to more than 100 people within three years.
“This is a perfect match: Wisconsin is recognized around the world as a leader in advanced manufacturing and technological innovation, and Formlabs is recognized as the leader in 3D printing,” said Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Deputy Secretary Sam Rikkers.
Jeff Fleming, spokesman for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, said Formlabs' decision to open a Milwaukee office taps into the "Milwaukee tradition" of manufacturing innovation, while also pointing to the city's success in positioning itself to attract next-generation tech companies.
"This is precisely that kind of economic development, economic commitment that Milwaukee needs to go forward," Fleming said
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2022-09-14T11:45:54Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Formlabs, global maker of benchtop 3D printers, opens Milwaukee office
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2022/09/14/formlabs-global-maker-benchtop-3-d-printers-opens-milwaukee-historic-third-ward/7955740001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2022/09/14/formlabs-global-maker-benchtop-3-d-printers-opens-milwaukee-historic-third-ward/7955740001/
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Consolidating North Shore police departments could save money and provide better services, a report says
Seven municipalities on Milwaukee County's North Shore could save money and improve quality of law enforcement services by combining their police departments, according to a new report.
The nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum reported Tuesday that the amount saved from consolidation would vary depending on several factors, including whether participating communities would decide to maintain existing police patrol levels.
The report presented two options for consolidation:
If consolidated, municipalities could maintain patrol staffing, but adjust command staff, sergeants and non-sworn staff. This model yields an annual estimated personnel cost of slightly under $22 million, an estimated annual savings of $677,000.
Alternatively, the second model suggests a consolidation that includes cutting 20 patrol officers but adding a handful of other positions that could improve police response, such as crime analysts or behavioral health specialists. This model costs an annual estimated personnel cost of $18.6 million, a savings of $3.75 million.
The report noted that its models did not include cost estimates for elements beyond personnel, such as vehicles, facilities and more "because of the highly speculative nature of such estimates."
Right now, each North Shore municipality — Bayside, Brown Deer, Fox Point, Glendale, River Hills, Shorewood and Whitefish Bay — operates with a police department that is headquartered within its boundaries. The combined seven departments currently employ 162 full-time employees, ranging from 11 in River Hills to 41 in Glendale, according to the report.
In late 2021, Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy asked for the report; the city paid $19,350 to complete the analysis.
"There are so many things that we just can't do any one of the seven of us that I believe by consolidating we will be able to offer far greater services to the 68,000 North Shore residents," Kennedy told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The report said it found no clear-cut answers as to whether the departments should combine. A concern for smaller communities is that the much higher call volume in larger communities would leave them with a reduced patrol presence, the report noted.
"From a village board perspective, it’s our role to keep an open mind, listen to residents, and give police consolidation proper analysis. No one would disagree that consolidation is a steep hill to climb and resistance may be high," said Whitefish Bay Village President Kevin Buckley in a statement.
"Personally, I’m very satisfied with our current police department and its command staff," he added.
North Shore police chiefs have not responded to requests by the Journal Sentinel to discuss the study.
Additional model details
Under the first model, the report said it envisioned increasing the number of patrol officers, but reducing the number of sergeants and command staff.
Under that model, the study envisioned dividing the North Shore into two patrol bureaus, one covering Bayside, Fox Point and River Hills and the other covering the remaining communities. Officers assigned to one bureau would not respond to incidents in the other bureau, except in an emergency.
The savings achieved by the first model "are somewhat modest, however, and it is questionable whether they would overcome the perceived negative elements associated with loss of local control over police services," the report said.
Under the second model, the report envisioned reallocating patrol capacity and fortifying specialized areas. A commonly used standard has officers spending up to 60% of their time on community-generated calls and 40% on officer-initiated activities. But this model suggests spending about 33% of patrol officer time on community-generated calls and 67% on officer-initiated activities. Under that plan, the model would reduce the number of patrol officers.
The plan would "bulk up" services like parking enforcement and would add four "specialist" positions such as a public information officer, crime analyst or behavioral health specialist/social worker.
"This model would reduce the number of patrol officers on the street at any one time in the North Shore but it would add other capabilities that do not exist currently in most departments," the report said.
Wisconsin Policy Forum does not endorse any plan or model. Its report said the decision whether to consolidate could come down to two questions: How will each community be affected, and how important is local control?
If the seven municipalities move forward with consolidation, Kennedy said he would not support terminating any existing positions, and instead would focus "right sizing over time as people retire or leave the force."
The forum plans to give a presentation to each municipality to answer any questions about the report. Kennedy said he hopes to reach an agreement by 2023, and if the municipalities support the consolidation to phase the plan in by 2025 or 2026.
The seven municipalities previously consolidated their fire, public health and dispatch services. Policing remains one of the large areas that has not been consolidated.
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2022-09-14T14:21:57Z
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www.jsonline.com
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North Shore police could consolidate, says Wisconsin Policy Forum
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northshore/2022/09/14/north-shore-police-could-consolidate-says-wisconsin-policy-forum/8064030001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northshore/2022/09/14/north-shore-police-could-consolidate-says-wisconsin-policy-forum/8064030001/
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Strokes can happen to people at any age. The American Heart Association reports that some research indicates the rate of strokes is increasing among people 49 and younger, especially in the Midwest and South.
Racine fantasy and science-fiction novelist Bradley P. Beaulieu had his stroke in November. He was 53 at the time.
After dropping his daughter off at school, Beaulieu had settled down to work in his home office. He felt a headache, not unusual for him. But when he tried to hit the ALT plus TAB keys on his computer, he couldn't make his left hand complete the motions. Feeling out of sorts, but having some awareness of what might be going on, the lefthanded Beaulieu struggled to search for stroke symptoms. He went to the bathroom mirror to look at his face, and saw its left side was "a little droopy."
Due to a quirk in the voice-over-internet-protocol app he was using, Beaulieu couldn't call 911. He also couldn't reach his wife at her workplace, a school. He drove himself to the hospital (though he realizes now he should probably have gone to a neighbor and asked for help).
MORE:Recovering from a stroke, Milwaukee Symphony's Mark Niehaus encourages people to do 'simple things' to reduce risk
After a battery of tests, a doctor confirmed his stroke, which was brought by a carotid dissection, or tear, in one of his carotid arteries. He spent two nights in the hospital for treatment and observation. At that time, his symptoms were fairly strong, he said, including poor control of his left hand and slurred speech.
Before this incident, Beaulieu had been taking "a lower dose" of blood pressure medication, but ran out during the pandemic and hadn't had his prescription refilled. He was now prescribed a higher dose and other medications, including a statin and baby aspirin. After three months, his medical team determined the carotid dissection had resolved itself and surgery wasn't necessary.
He continues his medication today. While he exercised before, he's more conscious about it now, even enjoying the "tiny bit of incentive" he gets from his Apple Watch. He also lost 10 to 15 pounds.
As a writer, Beaulieu worried about his left hand. Because he uses many non-standard words, dictation programs don't work well for him. But his manual functionality has largely returned; he can even inscribe his "The Song of the Shattered Sands" novels again with his beautiful calligraphic signature. He still has a bit of numbness in his left cheek and mouth, and his hand is a little clumsy. "It just takes a bit longer to type, you know, so not bad, all in all," he said.
Beaulieu saw during his recovery how important rest and sleep were in helping his brain heal. When he was tired, his stroke symptoms could be more pronounced.
He also learned to keep exercising the affected parts of his body. "That's how you're going to train your brain to create the new pathways to get motion back, to get speech back."
Beaulieu urges everyone to educate themselves about the symptoms of strokes. That can be as easy as watching a two-minute video on YouTube, he said. If you or a loved one have stroke symptoms, get to the hospital immediately.
"Don't sit around and think, oh, this might get better. You just get to the hospital," he said.
Stroke signs and symptoms
According to the Centers for Disease Control, signs of stroke include sudden numbness or weakness in the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body; confusion, trouble speaking, or difficulty understanding speech; sudden vision problems in one or both eyes; loss of balance or coordination; sudden severe headache.
The CDC urges people to remember F.A.S.T.:
Face: Ask the person to smile. Does one side of the face droop?
Arms: Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
Speech: Ask the person to repeat a simple phrase. Is the speech slurred or strange?
Time: If you see any of these signs, call 9-1-1 right away.
Watch a short video about recognizing signs of stroke at youtu.be/mkpbbWZvYmw.
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2022-09-14T14:22:15Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Take 2 minutes to learn stroke symptoms, Racine survivor urges people
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/09/14/take-2-minutes-learn-stroke-symptoms-racine-survivor-urges-people/8048145001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/09/14/take-2-minutes-learn-stroke-symptoms-racine-survivor-urges-people/8048145001/
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5 things to do in Milwaukee this weekend, including China Lights
1. China Lights 2022
The popular China Lights festival returns to Boerner Botanical Gardens Sept. 16, taking its inspiration from Lewis Carroll. "Adventures in Lantern Wonderland" promises nearly all new lantern displays (although that 200-foot dragon will still be there to greet you), an expanded interactive play zone and, at the end, a tea party. China Lights starts Sept. 16, and runs Tuesdays through Sundays through Oct. 30 at Boerner, 9400 Boerner Drive, Hales Corners. Timed-entry tickets are for 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Weekend general admission is $25, $16 for kids ages 3 to 11; family four-packs, early-entry tickets and season passes are also available. (Admission Tuesday through Thursday is $22, $14 for kids ages 3 to 11.) See website for details; note that weekend time slots in the past have sold out quickly. Info: chinalights.org.
2. Jurassic Quest at Wisconsin State Fair Park
The first of Milwaukee's dinosaur incursions this fall, Jurassic Quest stomps into State Fair Park's Wisconsin Exposition Center Sept. 16-18. Life-size animatronic dinosaurs are the main attraction, but there's also interactive activities, dinosaur rides, a play area and more. The show goes on from 1 to 8 p.m. Sept. 16, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sept. 17, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 18. Timed-entry tickets are $22, $19 for seniors. Info: jurassicquest.com.
3. Uncorked: Milwaukee Wine Fest in Deer District
Uncorked: Milwaukee Wine Fest promises more than 200 wines and "outside the bottle" beverages when it sets up shop in the Deer District outside Fiserv Forum Sept. 17. In addition to the wine-tasting, there'll also be food trucks, a DJ and more. The fest, from 3 to 6 p.m., is for people 21 and older. Tickets are $65 ($80 for early admission, getting you in at 2 p.m.) Info: uncorkedwinefestivals.com/milwaukee.
RELATED:Uncorked Wine Fest is coming back to Milwaukee, this time in Deer District
4. Bayshore Art Festival
About 75 artists will show (and sell) their wares at the Bayshore Art Festival at the Glendale retail complex from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 17 and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 18. Kids' activities, live music and food trucks are also on the menu. Admission is free. Info: amdurproductions.com/event/2022-fall-bayshore-art-festival.
5. Wild Space Dance Company at The Warehouse
Wild Space Dance Company is turning a new outdoor space into a stage for "Dances: At the Edge of Understanding." The performance in the parking lot of the Warehouse Art Museum, 1635 W. St. Paul Ave., is inspired by the ideas of South African visual artist William Kentridge, whose work is showing in a career-spanning exhibition at the museum. Performances are at 6 and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 15 and 16. Tickets are $20 and $25, $15 for students. Info: wildspacedance.org.
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2022-09-14T14:22:21Z
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www.jsonline.com
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5 things to do in Milwaukee this weekend include China Lights festival
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Bret Schafer
In response to a recent poll showing that roughly 40% of Americans believe a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next 10 years — a figure that jumps to more than half among those who identify as “strong Republicans” — one Chinese diplomat tweeted that the survey suggests that “the day has come when the United States, which has been disguised as a fake democracy, will be stripped of its mask by its own people.”
Extreme polarization in the United States has long served as fodder for our foreign adversaries, but, despite their best efforts, foreign propagandists can take little credit for our internal divisions. I should know. For the past five years, I’ve run a program that monitors and exposes Russian, Chinese and Iranian disinformation campaigns whose implicit if not explicit goal is to weaken the United States.
In that time, what has become painfully obvious is that those most responsible for convincing Americans that our partisanship is so entrenched that it may eventually devolve into bloodshed are not those tasked with destroying America but, in many cases, those who were elected to defend it.
Take Wisconsin’s senior senator, Ron Johnson, a fixture on conservative cable news outlets who continues to cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election and has framed the upcoming midterms as a choice between “radical left socialism” and “freedom.” In years past, it would be easy to dismiss such language as political hyperbole — politicians have always attached outsized stakes to elections — but in the aftermath of Jan 6, 2021, it is irresponsible not to consider the response of supporters who interpret those words quite literally.
Johnson’s rhetoric is hardly isolated — in Wisconsin or nationwide. According to data collected by our newly launched Midterm Monitor, which tracks the social media posts of political candidates and influential media outlets, in the past two months alone, more than 25 congressional candidates have referenced the potential for a civil war or secession in the United States.
But lest anyone think this is only a “MAGA-Republican” problem, as President Joe Biden recently framed it, our research shows that Democrats are nearly twice as likely as their Republican counterparts to mention the possibility of a civil conflict or political violence on Twitter. This includes Democratic candidates who have promoted content suggesting Republicans are “fascists” who are “willing to kill people who disagree with them” or those who have claimed that their election is required to help “stop a civil war.”
With leaders like these, there’s not much work left to be done by our adversaries.
In fairness, some of those candidates have appealed to our better angels, like Jerry Hilliard, the Democratic nominee from Michigan’s 2nd District, who implored his Twitter followers to reflect on Abraham Lincoln’s warnings and reject hostilities. But that post is in the minority, and, as of this writing, has generated exactly zero retweets and likes.
And therein lies the problem: The voices of moderation in politics are relegated to the wilderness of our media ecosystem while the more extreme voices are either algorithmically or selectively amplified. This has created not only a perverse incentive structure that rewards toxicity over civility, but it also colors America’s perception of our elected leaders — and one another.
It would be easy to blame social media companies or cable news outlets for elevating the most divisive voices in our body politic. But that is an intellectually lazy argument that falls into the trap of thinking that media corporations are driven by political “agendas” rather than our preferences as media consumers. Because the reality is that if Fox and Facebook found that we were more apt to stay glued to substantive policy discussions than partisan punditry, that’s what we’d get.
To be clear, I don’t mean to absolve the media, politicians and Big Tech of responsibility by suggesting that they are merely reflections of our own human shortcomings. Rather, I mean to suggest that we are not passive and unwitting victims of a polarization that has been foisted upon us by others, and, precisely because of that, we have the power to change it.
The question is, how? Individual actions like boycotting social media or tuning out the rage-filled primetime cable lineup may be personally cathartic, but it can also feel futile — like fighting climate change by turning the thermostat down a few degrees. What we need instead is large-scale collective action — the kind that fights the system, not the other party.
This will require the type of energy and investment more typically reserved for public health crises or social welfare issues, which, coincidentally, can’t be solved without first addressing our fragmented information environment. But this will first require us to have the courage to break free from our tribalism and groupthink to focus on what our side did to contribute to this mess, instead of railing against the real and perceived faults of others.
Because the one thing that all Americans should be able to agree on is that it won’t matter which party is at the wheel if we continue driving ourselves towards a cliff.
Bret Schafer is a senior fellow and head of the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy's information manipulation team. Bret is the creator and manager of Hamilton 2.0, an online open-source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russian, Chinese and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats and government officials.
Disinformation and Democracy: How the information environment impacts our elections
UWM Edith S. Hefter Center, 3271 N. Lake Drive, Milwaukee
Greg Borowski, deputy editor, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Bret Schafer, senior fellow, Alliance for Securing Democracy
Maria Haigh, associate professor, UW-Milwaukee’s School of Information Studies
Limited in-person seating is available. The program will also be streamed live. There is no cost to participate but pre-registration is required.
Visit www.iwa.uwm to register
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2022-09-14T14:22:51Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Extreme partisanship threatens democracy. We can solve this problem.
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/2022/09/14/extreme-partisanship-threatens-democracy-we-can-solve-problem/10358870002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/2022/09/14/extreme-partisanship-threatens-democracy-we-can-solve-problem/10358870002/
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As a Black man, I have experienced numerous incidents of racial profiling and hate based on my skin color. From traffic stops where I was never issued a ticket to hate mail sent to my home and office calling me the N-word.
Many of my Black friends and family members have experienced the same sort of ugly mistreatment.
Simply because we’re black.
African Americans talk about race more than whites because the acts of hate are often directed at us by white people. These talks help us to cope with living in America.
But what happens when a hateful act is so big that talking to friends and family is not enough?
In Maryland, officials just launched a new way to combat hate. Called the Emmett Till Alert system, the goal is to bring attention to acts of hate and racism that may otherwise fly under the radar.
Launched in mid-August, the alert is named for the 14-year-old Black child who was kidnapped, beaten, lynched, and shot in the head before his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River in 1955. His alleged crime — whistling at a white woman.
After his body was discovered three days later, it was returned to Chicago where his mother held an open casket funeral to show what was done to her son. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.
The alert system will serve as a type of warning system to sound an alarm about acts of hate committed against Black people. Such an alert system would be perfect for Milwaukee — a city sometimes regarded as one of the worst places for African Americans to live.
A rising tide of hate
Hateful incidents against people of color — especially African Americans — have been rising across the country. Blacks are often victimized simply by trying to live their lives.
Here are a few recent incidents we know about:
In May, a Black pastor was detained and handcuffed in Childersburg, Ala., for watering his neighbor’s flowers, which they asked him to do.
Several Black, Duke University volleyball players were subjected to racial slurs and threats by a fan in Utah. The heckling lasted the entire match.
In Minneapolis, a 23-year-old Black man was arrested while trying to cash a paycheck at U.S. Bank because the bank believed his check was fake. The check was real.
Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed while he was jogging through a suburban Georgia neighborhood. The three white men responsible said they believed Arbery was responsible for break-ins. Two months passed before anyone was arrested.
In New York, a white woman called the police terrified because a Black birdwatcher told her that her dog needed to be on a leash. In her frantic call to NYPD, Amy Cooper said “There is an African American man threatening my life.”
There are dozens of other incidents in which police were called on Black people for laughing on the train, taking a nap between classes, waiting for people in Starbucks, or barbecuing in the park. And I'm sure there are hundreds more that we will never know about because they weren’t reported.
The Emmett Till Alert system could give people insight into flagrant incidents of hate and microaggressions that often are overlooked.
“Bringing the Emmett Till Alert system to Milwaukee would be an excellent idea,” said Reggie Jackson, co-owner of Nurturing Diversity Partners and head griot of America’s Black Holocaust Museum.
Hate has been growing across the country, and more tools are needed to make sure it doesn’t continue to spread, Jackson said.
The new system works much like an Amber Alert. When there is a credible report of a hate crime, an alert will be sent out to Black elected officials, civil rights organizations, and community activists.
The goal is to get a rapid response to an incident because too many incidents go unsolved.
The system will have three levels: low, medium, and high.
A low-level event might involve a racial slur painted on the side of a building, while a high-level alert would like the mass shooting at the Buffalo grocery store on May 14, when a white man killed 10 Black people and injured three others.
Black leaders and law enforcement will decide how to rank the incidents.
So far, Maryland is the only place with an Emmett Till Alert system, but other areas may soon follow.
“I really don’t see any downside to Milwaukee and other cities following suit,” Jackson said. “Why wouldn’t they?”
More from James Causey:Breaking the stigma of suicide requires honest conversation and loving care. I am living proof of that.
More from James Causey:The smoking rate for Black adults in Wisconsin is nearly three times higher than for white people — the worst disparity in the nation
The impact of Obama's election, then Trump
According to FBI Crime Statistics, there were 8,263 hate crimes reported in the United States in 2020, a 13.39% increase over 2019.
A majority of the hate crimes — 35% — were committed against African Americans, statistics show.
Nationally, hate crimes have increased 25% since 2012, and in 2020, the most hate crime incidents were reported since 2008. Hate crimes in Wisconsin have spiked as well. Hate crimes increased 44%, to 72 in 2020. Since 2000, hate crimes in the state have increased 53%, FBI statistics show.
In 2020, 41 of the 72 hate crimes committed in Wisconsin were against Blacks, Jewish people and gay men, the report shows. The number of hate crimes has not been tallied for 2021 or 2022.
The election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president, caused a number of hate groups to emerge, Jackson said. And then "(President) Trump was elected and gave voice to these groups.”
When white supremacists incited violence in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, Jackson called Trump’s failure to condemn them a flashpoint. Instead of denouncing the violence unequivocally, Trump claimed there "were very fine people, on both sides.”
Around the same time, some in conservative media were peddling the story that white people were being replaced because they have a lower birth rate, Jackson said.
“There has been progress, but the violence has also increased against people of color in this country and that worries me. It’s the main reason we are even talking about the Emmett Till Alert in the first place,” he said.
Many questions remain to be answered about how the system would work. Who will get the alerts? Will this reduce hate crimes? How will regular people receive the information? How will people be educated to stop hate?
We don’t know the answer to these questions yet, but we do know hate crimes are on the rise and Black people remain in the crosshairs. Much like Emmett Till was in 1955.
The alert system could help. Milwaukee should adopt it.
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2022-09-14T14:22:57Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee should adopt Emmett Till Alert system for acts of racism
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/2022/09/14/milwaukee-should-adopt-emmett-till-alert-system-acts-racism/8000785001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/2022/09/14/milwaukee-should-adopt-emmett-till-alert-system-acts-racism/8000785001/
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McGillick's Herbs reopens in Hartland
McGillick's Herbs has reopened in a new location in Hartland.
The natural herbs and remedies business had been evicted from its previous location in April, ending more than two decades at its 418 Merton Ave. location.
At the time, owner Rose McGillick said she was unsure whether the business would reopen elsewhere. She had taken over the business from her husband, Terrence, who had died 15 years earlier. The business had been open since 2000.
“When we closed, I had everything left over from the store at my house,” McGillick said. “I kept looking for a place, and most places were either too big or never got back to me. But I didn't give up.”
After searching for months, a landlady responded and had two spaces available on North Avenue. McGillick said she was hesitant going in, but quickly found her new home after one visit.
“There were two spots, and I didn’t even look at the other one,” she said. “It was a smaller space than my last place, but I didn’t need that much space. It just fell into place perfectly, and it’s kind of unbelievable to think it would work out.”
It took a few weeks to move all her products and shelving units into the new location at 138 North Ave. She also contacted her previous vendors to resupply the store before reopening Sept. 6.
“It’s so heartwarming," McGillick said. "I’ve gotten flowers and gifts, and it just feels good to be open again. Everything just fell together, and our new landlords have been so tremendous to us.”
Customers have already found their way there, McGillick added. Her plans are to operate the store the same way with the same products as before.
“After all the turmoil I went through, it all worked out for the best,” McGillick said.
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2022-09-14T16:41:58Z
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www.jsonline.com
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McGillick's Herbs reopens in Hartland
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/14/mcgillicks-herbs-reopens-hartland/10370703002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/14/mcgillicks-herbs-reopens-hartland/10370703002/
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An effort to redevelop a site in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley is getting a big boost with a $3.2 million federal grant. It is beneath I-43.
An effort to redevelop a site in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley is getting a big boost with a $3.2 million federal grant.
It will be used to build streets and other public improvements tied to the Kneeland Properties site, according to the Wednesday announcement from the Department of City Development.
That 15-acre site is between West Mt. Vernon Avenue and the Menomonee River, east of Standard Electric Supply Co., 222 N. Emmber Lane.
About 10 acres are owned by the city, with 5 acres beneath I-43's High Rise Bridge owned by the state Department of Transportation.
The Kneeland Properties site, which is isolated from the city's streets, was used as a coal storage yard for nearly a century and is now dormant.
More:Downtown's Park East Freeway was replaced with a boulevard and new development. Some now want to take down I-794 as DOT considers repairs.
The city Redevelopment Authority and others have been preparing the sites for redevelopment by removing environmental contamination, planning for roads and other infrastructure, and recruiting prospects for light industrial development, according to DCD.
The federal grant is funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act and U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration.
It will be matched with $798,540 in local funds, and is expected to help create a development with 140 jobs and $10.5 million in private investment, the DCD statement said.
“For years, the Menomonee Valley has witnessed new industrial development and robust economic growth," said Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
"The Kneeland Properties site is one of the remaining parcels in the valley that will boost this positive momentum," Johnson said in a statement.
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2022-09-14T16:42:05Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Effort to redevelop Menomonee Valley site lands $3.2 million grant
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/14/effort-redevelop-menomonee-valley-site-lands-3-2-million-grant/10376879002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/14/effort-redevelop-menomonee-valley-site-lands-3-2-million-grant/10376879002/
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Developer looks to transform Spring Mall in Greenfield into apartments, townhomes and a possible beer garden/tap room
A Milwaukee-based developer is looking to transform the nearly vacant Spring Mall in Greenfield into an area with apartments, townhomes, restaurants and retail, ultimately resulting in a development worth $80 million to $100 million.
Cobalt Partners envisions building about 375 residential units on the 23.8-acre site at 4200 S. 76th St., according to company President and CEO Scott Yauck said. The units would be a mix of both townhomes and more traditional apartment buildings.
Yauck said the location also would likely include some retail.
Keeping Meyer's Restaurant and Bar, 4260 S. 76th St. — the only remaining business on the property — would be a priority, he said.
"We would anticipate some limited/small scale retail and an emphasis on retaining the Meyer’s Restaurant, and perhaps another concept or two, in a new building, provided that we can make the economics work," Yauck said in an email.
The parcel lies on the east side of 76th Street, north of Cold Spring Road. The new Powerline Trail, now under construction, will run along the north side of the property.
A Metro Market grocery store and 76th Street retail businesses are nearby.
The space would feature amenities such as a clubhouse, pool, grilling stations, fitness center and significant green space, Yauck said. A possible beer garden/tap room, food truck area and connections to the Powerline Trail are also envisioned.
By unanimous vote, the Greenfield Plan Commission on Tuesday recommended rezoning the parcel from C-4 Regional Business District to Planned Unit Development District, a necessary step for the project to proceed.
The city's common council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposed zoning change Oct. 18.
If all goes as planned, Yauck said demolition could occur in spring 2023, with construction starting later that year.
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2022-09-14T18:54:38Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Apartments and townhomes eyed for Spring Mall site in Greenfield
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/southwest/news/greenfield/2022/09/14/apartments-and-townhomes-eyed-spring-mall-site-greenfield/10377201002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/southwest/news/greenfield/2022/09/14/apartments-and-townhomes-eyed-spring-mall-site-greenfield/10377201002/
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Milwaukee Art Museum's 2001 addition broadened architect Santiago Calatrava's career. He's back in the city with a transforming lakefront.
Milwaukee Art Museum architect Santiago Calatrava returned Wednesday to the city that helped broaden his career internationally — and saw a lakefront that has been transforming since the museum addition opened over 20 years ago.
His return was marked by a mayoral proclamation of Friday, Sept. 16, as a day to honor Calatrava. It will include a day of free admission to the museum.
It also saw Calatrava reflecting on the changes to the area near the museum over the past several years.
"It's beautiful, very well done," Calatrava said. "The museum is an anchor."
Calatrava designed the museum's Quadracci Pavilion — the nautical-inspired addition that created a new Milwaukee landmark.
"It has helped redefine Milwaukee," said Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
Said County Executive David Crowley: "It has inspired us."
The pavilion, with its cathedral-like Windhover Hall, prow-like feature jutting toward Lake Michigan, and movable wings that serve as a sunscreen, known as the Burke Brise Soleil, has attracted global attention to both the museum and the city.
"It has elevated the stature of Milwaukee and our community writ large," said Marcelle Polednik, Donna and Donald Baumgartner director of the museum.
New developments near art museum
And, since the addition opened in fall 2001, several new developments have emerged near the museum.
Just to its south, Discovery World Science and Technology Museum opened in 2006 at 500 N. Harbor Drive — with a design that pays homage to the Quadracci Pavilion.
To the museum's southwest, an underused Milwaukee County Transit System facility was demolished to make room for The Couture, a 44-story apartment tower at 909 E. Michigan St. It was proposed in 2012, with construction finally beginning last year.
Just west of The Couture is the 18-story 833 East office building, 833 E. Michigan St., which opened in 2016 and is anchored by the Godfrey & Kahn law firm.
Also, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s 32-floor Tower and Commons opened in 2017 near East Wisconsin and North Prospect avenues. And Maier Festival Park has undergone a series of renovations in recent years, including the upgraded American Family Insurance Amphitheater that opened in 2021.
More:Milwaukee Public Museum offers a first look at the design of the new downtown museum. It is inspired by a well-known Wisconsin state park.
More:These Milwaukee high school students use their art exhibition at Charles Allis Art Museum to send a message
Meanwhile, more new development could be coming near the lakefront.
The improvements to the Hoan Bridge and portions of I-794 from 2013 to 2016 included reconfiguring ramps near North Lincoln Memorial Drive.
The removed ramps opened up 2.66 acres south of East Clybourn Street for new development. That state-owned site is being marketed by Colliers/Wisconsin commercial real estate brokerage.
I-794 remake gains steam
Also, there is an emerging campaign to demolish portions of I-794 running west of the Hoan and replacing them with a surface boulevard. That would open additional land between downtown and the Historic Third Ward for new construction.
For Calatrava, whose visit Wednesday marked the end of the museum's yearlong celebration of the addition's 20-year anniversary, those changes show the power of art and design.
The Quadracci Pavilion has "opened more, in my opinion, Wisconsin Avenue and Michigan (Street), the city to the lake," Calatrava said.
"I mean, after 20 years, it's nice to see that more things are happening," he said.
The art museum project also helped boost Calatrava's name throughout the world.
"When Calatrava was selected to design a new addition for the Milwaukee Art Museum in 1994, he was still largely unknown in this part of the world," wrote then-Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art and architectural critic Mary Louise Schumacher in a 2011 column.
"The Milwaukee Art Museum would be his big break, his opportunity to soar. Completed a decade ago, it was more than his American debut, it was his entry into a celebrity class of architects," Schumacher wrote.
The Quadracci Pavilion "quickly captured worldwide attention and a torrent of accolades. It was Time magazine's "Design of the Year" and a "wonder of the world" according to Condé Nast Traveler," she wrote.
Calatrava, a 71-year-old Spanish native, praised the United States as a welcoming nation to others — including he and his wife, Robertina, who lived here for several years.
During his remarks to an audience at the museum's Lubar Auditorium, he praised the museum's board members for their vision and work on the Quadracci Pavilion, as well as Milwaukee architect David Kahler, of Kahler Slater, whom he called the project's co-architect.
He also was moved by the mayoral proclamation.
"I'm speechless," Calatrava said. "This is something really unexpected."
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2022-09-14T18:54:50Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee Art Museum architect Calatrava sees transforming lakefront
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/14/milwaukee-art-museum-architect-calatrava-sees-transforming-lakefront-burke-brise-soleil/10375835002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/14/milwaukee-art-museum-architect-calatrava-sees-transforming-lakefront-burke-brise-soleil/10375835002/
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Bill Glauber Lawrence Andrea
With less than two months to go before the midterms, Wisconsin's two big political races are where you would expect them to be: awfully close.
Wednesday's Marquette University Law School Poll showed the race for U.S. Senate as a toss-up, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers held a narrow lead in his re-election effort.
In the Senate race, Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was at 49% among likely voters, compared to his challenger, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who was at 48%.
Johnson made up a lot of ground after the August primary, as independent voters shifted from a strong Barnes advantage in August to a narrow lead for Johnson in the September survey.
In the run for governor, Evers held a narrow advantage over Republican businessman Tim Michels.
Evers was at 47% among likely voters while Michels was at 44%. Independent Joan Beglinger, who has dropped out of the race, was at 5%.
Both races were well within the poll's margin of error.
Poll director Charles Franklin called the results "an utterly predictable tightening of the races."
More:Mandela Barnes proclaims Ron Johnson says 'wacky stuff' while the U.S. senator accuses his challenger of having a short résumé
In Marquette's August survey, Barnes was at 51% while Johnson was at 44% among registered voters. The governor's race was closer, with Evers leading Michels, 45% to 43%.
A barrage of negative attack ads unleashed on Barnes after his primary victory may be moving numbers in the Senate race.
Among registered voters, Barnes was viewed favorably by 33% and unfavorably by 33%, a shift from August when it was it was 37% favorable and 22% unfavorable.
Johnson continued to remain under water with voters, with 39% favorable and 47% unfavorable ratings, close to the August numbers.
Asked which candidate better understands the problems faced by ordinary Wisconsinites, 44% said Barnes and 40% said Johnson.
Speaking in Washington, D.C, Johnson reacted to the poll and said: “I just assume it’s a dead-even race. That’s the way I’m going to run this campaign.”
“To the extent there has been a shift, Wisconsinites are finally beginning to understand who Mandela is and what he truly believes," he added.
“Not that he’s telling them. He’s hiding from the press," Johnson continued. "I hope the mainstream media in Wisconsin starts demanding that he start answering their questions and be honest with them, which I don’t think he’s been. He’s been running away from his past positions, which he realizes are out of the mainstream thought of Wisconsinites, incredibly unpopular.”
In the governor's race, 45% viewed Evers favorably and 55% unfavorably, while 34% had a favorable opinion of Michels and 39% an unfavorable view.
On the question of which candidate for governor better understands the problems faced by ordinary Wisconsinites, 47% said Evers and 41% said Michels.
On the issues, 70% said they were concerned with inflation. Other issues of concern included crime (61%); an accurate vote count (56%); public schools (56%); gun violence (55%); abortion policy (53%); taxes (51%); climate change (44%); illegal immigration (38%); coronavirus (22%).
On abortion, 30% favored the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the Roe v. Wade, while 63% opposed that decision.
More specifically, 83% favor allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest, while 10% opposed such exceptions.
Opinion was mixed on President Joe Biden's move to forgive up to $20,000 of federal student loan debt, with 46% approving the push and 50% disapproving.
Biden's job approval remained unchanged at 40% approval and 55% disapproval.
The survey of 801 Wisconsin registered voters was conducted Sept. 6-11 with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3%. The sample of 602 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9%.
The makeup was 30% Republicans, 29% Democratic and 41% independent.
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2022-09-14T18:54:56Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Evers leads Michels in Marquette poll; Johnson, Barnes in toss-up
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/14/evers-leads-michels-johnson-and-barnes-toss-up-race-marquette-poll-wisconsin-governor-senate/10371432002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/14/evers-leads-michels-johnson-and-barnes-toss-up-race-marquette-poll-wisconsin-governor-senate/10371432002/
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Here's what you should know about the game between the Badgers (1-1) and the Aggies (0-3).
What's the TV channel for Wisconsin vs. New Mexico State?
What's the radio station for Wisconsin vs. New Mexico State?
More:'He made it OK to dream': Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin football standout Tyler Adam remembered
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2022-09-14T18:55:02Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Wisconsin vs. New Mexico State football game: TV, livestream, radio
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/14/how-to-watch-wisconsin-badgers-vs-new-mexico-state-football-game-at-camp-randall-stadium-in-madison/10378122002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/college/uw/2022/09/14/how-to-watch-wisconsin-badgers-vs-new-mexico-state-football-game-at-camp-randall-stadium-in-madison/10378122002/
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The Milwaukee Mile is back in the NASCAR business.
The truck series will race at the track Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023, according to a schedule reported by The Athletic ahead of a Wednesday afternoon announcement.
The race is among the biggest surprises on the schedule.
The Mile has not hosted a national-level NASCAR race since 2009, when nonpayment of a sanction fee led to what has become the Xfinity Series racing at Road America in Elkhart Lake beginning in 2010.
Wisconsin fans will have two NASCAR weekends, with Road America retaining the Xfinity Series after its successful two-year run with the Cup Series was not renewed. That will be Saturday, July 29, 2023, The Athletic reported.
Two weeks after this year’s July 3 Cup race at Road America, NASCAR announced a plan for a Fourth of July weekend Chicago street race from 2023-25. At the time, Road America President Mike Kertscher said respondents to a fan survey said they would support a NASCAR weekend even without Cup so the track remained interested.
As for the Mile, Track Enterprises has promoted ARCA Menards Series and Midwest Tour and other grassroots races at the track, and its owner Bob Sargent has been bullish even as those lower-level events have had modest attendance.
The Mile has not had a race on the level of the truck series or higher since 2015, the last of three IndyCar Series events promoted by Michael Andretti. Andretti, who enjoyed great success at the Mile as a driver, had hoped to rebuild the racing tradition there but grew frustrated as attendance lagged — despite fans’ expressed interest in the track — and the weekend lost money year after year.
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2022-09-14T18:55:14Z
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www.jsonline.com
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NASCAR trucks at Milwaukee Mile, Xfinity at Road America in 2023
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/motor/2022/09/14/nascar-trucks-milwaukee-mile-xfinity-road-america-2023/10375849002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/motor/2022/09/14/nascar-trucks-milwaukee-mile-xfinity-road-america-2023/10375849002/
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Kohl's Corp. to hire nearly 1,000 seasonal workers in greater Milwaukee area; company hosting two nationwide hiring events
As the weather starts to get cooler, it sends a signal to consumers that the holiday season is near, and Kohl's Corp. is preparing for shoppers at all of its locations.
The company is hosting two nationwide hiring events this Thursday through Saturday and October 13-15, at all of its stores, distribution and e-commerce fulfillment centers. Candidates are encouraged to apply ahead of time and schedule a phone interview but can also walk-in to any store location between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the event for an on the spot interview.
In the greater Milwaukee area, Kohl's is hoping to hire nearly 1,000 seasonal employees for both full-time and part-time positions.
Interested candidates can view open positions in their area and apply today at Careers.Kohls.com/Seasonal or by texting APPLY to 24508 to schedule a phone interview. Most candidates will receive a response within 24 hours of their interview.
The company offers competitive wages and benefits, along with flexible scheduling and an immediate 15% employee discount.
In recent years Kohl's has added as many as 90,000 seasonal workers nationwide to its facilities during the holiday season.
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2022-09-14T20:56:35Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Kohl's Corp. to hire nearly 1,000 seasonal workers in Milwaukee area
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2022/09/14/kohls-corp-hire-nearly-1-000-seasonal-workers-milwaukee-area/10376966002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2022/09/14/kohls-corp-hire-nearly-1-000-seasonal-workers-milwaukee-area/10376966002/
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A lawyer for the family of the man killed on a downtown bridge asked on Wednesday for witnesses and those with video footage to come forward.
The attorney, Jay Urban, said he planned to file a notice of claim against the city ahead of a likely lawsuit and needed to gather as much information as possible.
"The family has retained me to make sure that there is some accountability for this," he said.
Urban also called for an independent investigation of Richard Dujardin's Aug. 15 death.
"If we don't look at the entire system failure, then we're never going to look at it," he said. "Some people called this a freak accident, stuff like that — this is a tragedy waiting to happen."
Dujardin, a 77-year-old retired reporter from Rhode Island, was in Milwaukee for a conference last month. He was walking over the Kilbourn Avenue bridge on his way to church when the bridge started rising.
His wife, Rose-Marie, was walking ahead of him and made it to the other side of the bridge, but Dujardin moved slowly and was hard of hearing.
More:Witness to Kilbourn Avenue Bridge death recalls horror of fall: 'This should not have happened'
More:After man's fatal fall from Kilbourn Avenue Bridge, here's what we know so far about bridges in Milwaukee, how they operate
According to witnesses, Dujardin was already on the bridge when the alarm bells and lights went off and the traffic gates lowered.
It remains unclear how the bridge operator, opening it remotely, missed Dujardin. Department of Public Works policy says he was supposed to be watching two soundless live video feeds of the bridge.
Dujardin clung onto a railing as the bridge deck rose to a 90-degree angle. Then he fell 71 feet to his death, according to witnesses and a report from the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's Office.
The family has said that as out-of-town visitors, Dujardin and his wife, Rose-Marie, didn’t know the bridge under their feet could open.
Urban on Tuesday pointed to the fact that the bridge didn't have any signage denoting it as a drawbridge.
He also questioned Public Works policies in operating the Kilbourn bridge remotely. The bridge is wider and longer than most downtown, he said, and it opens to a full 90 degrees while others don't.
"If you're going to man a bridge, this would be the one that certainly should be manned," Urban said.
Prosecutors last week said they were beginning to review the investigation but did not provide a timeline for when a charging decision may be made.
The investigation should scrutinize the entire process, Urban said, looking further than the error of one bridge operator.
"It's very convenient to maybe blame an operator, but I'm not so sure. A carpenter is only as good as his tools," he said. "Who is the vendor that installed these videos? Who set up this system?"
Public Works officials have defended the remote operation of bridges as a routine industry practice.
The Kilbourn Avenue bridge is controlled remotely out of the Water Street bridge tower, which also controls bridges over the Menomonee River.
Urban is hoping to acquire footage from security cameras on nearby downtown buildings that might have captured the incident.
The cameras that the bridge operator watches do not record and store any footage. Officials say the footage has never been recorded.
Urban asked any witnesses or anyone who has videos of the incident or information about bridge safety issues to contact him at jurban@wisconsininjury.com or 414-704-7207.
He also would like to find the woman in scrubs who helped comfort Rose-Marie Dujardin in the aftermath of the fall.
To bring a lawsuit against the city, notice of claim must be filed within 120 days of the incident. Urban wants to use that time to gather as much information as possible before submitting the notice.
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2022-09-14T20:56:41Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Family of Richard Dujardin, Milwaukee bridge death victim, plans suit
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2022/09/14/family-richard-dujardin-milwaukee-bridge-death-victim-plans-suit/10376996002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/2022/09/14/family-richard-dujardin-milwaukee-bridge-death-victim-plans-suit/10376996002/
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Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo wrapped up a dominant EuroBasket showing from the locker room; he was ejected with 4:56 left in his team's quarterfinal loss to Germany on Tuesday with his second unsportsmanlike conduct foul.
Antetokounmpo was guilty of a hard foul under the basket going for a rebound in which he struck Germany's Johannes Thiemann with an arm across the face.
Antetokounmpo finished with 31 points, seven rebounds and eight assists in just 30 minutes, but Germany won the quarterfinal battle, 107-96, to end Greece's run in Berlin. Greece had gone 5-0 in group play — one of two nations out of 24 to claim that feat — but didn't advance far in the knockout stage. The other 5-0 nation, Serbia — led by Antetokounmpo's fellow two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić lost in the round of 16.
The European Basketball Championships, governed by the international basketball federation (FIBA), take place every four years. Antetokounmpo played in six of Greece's seven games at the showcase and averaged 29.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per contest.
The Bucks play the Atlanta Hawks for two exhibition games in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on Oct. 6 and 8.
Bucks schedule:A Christmas Day game vs. the Boston Celtics and a star-powered opening night matchup highlight the Bucks' 2022-23 schedule
Bucks jerseys:Milwaukee Bucks include an all-black 'statement' jersey as part of their fashion rotation for 2022-23
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2022-09-14T20:56:53Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Giannis Antetokounmpo ejected, Greece loses in EuroBasket to Germany
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/nba/bucks/2022/09/14/giannis-antetokounmpo-ejected-greece-loses-eurobasket-tournament-quarterfinal-germany/10380230002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/nba/bucks/2022/09/14/giannis-antetokounmpo-ejected-greece-loses-eurobasket-tournament-quarterfinal-germany/10380230002/
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Kallmann: Who said the Milwaukee Mile was dead? A bullish promoter has given the old track new life.
There, are you happy?
I know I am.
Thirty-plus summers of watching stops and starts and more failures than successes had me convinced the Milwaukee Mile was done with higher-level racing events.
Like, thanks for your century of service to the sport, but we don’t need you anymore. … You’re a little broken down and high maintenance. … Sure, you’re popular within your clique, but largely people don’t like you, not enough to spend money on you, anyway. Not when there are so many other options. Not at a time when progress means more than history, when moving forward means leaving the familiar behind.
And then along came Bob Sargent.
A true believer in the Mile – in its present and its future, not just its past – Sargent was willing to put the full resources of his racing promotion business where his mouth was.
NASCAR will return to the Mile in 2023. Those are words I never expected to type.
OK, let’s keep this in perspective.
The Craftsman Truck Series that shows up to race Aug. 27 is no longer the curiosity that demanded fans’ attention when it was launched in 1995, the one that allowed numerous regionally known short track stars to show their talent on a national stage to earn a spot in the Cup Series. It’s a division that relies heavily on rent-a-ride drivers and promising youngsters whom the manufacturers, Toyota mostly, hope to develop. It’s the littlest brother, the easiest to push around to make room for its siblings. Crowds are often sparse.
NASCAR trucks have become something of an afterthought over the series’ lifespan. But so has the Mile.
The onetime horse track is the oldest active automobile racetrack in the country, having celebrated the 119th anniversary of its first race just Sunday, if you consider a single tweet from a group of dedicated supporters a celebration.
The track hosted AAA big cars in the 1930s and USAC stockers in the ’60s, the heyday of CART Indy cars in the ’90s and the steppingstone series of a still-growing NASCAR in the 2000s.
But racing’s traveling circus outgrew the popular races during State Fair. Fans’ tastes changed as more entertainment options became available and kids’ activities began to fill family schedules and tax their budgets. Indy-car racing had its split, and NASCAR lost some luster.
The overpriced, underbuilt new grandstand – needed as it was – hamstrung anyone trying to run a promotion business. Tensions between Fair Park management and GO Racing led to Carl Haas taking over promotions; then Haas was succeeded by a series of groups and individuals who tried unsuccessfully with full seasons and one-off events.
Michael Andretti seemed to be the last great hope.
A five-time winner at the Mile in CART and a champion team owner, Andretti thought he could rebuild a tradition, but a name and connections went only so far. Fans thanked him for bringing Indy cars back to Milwaukee but then told him they weren’t going to the race. The last flag of 2015 was his surrender. So much for what seemed to be the Mile’s ninth life.
Grassroots events have come and gone. A midweek super late model race in 2012 was a hit, but by the third year it was an expensive weekend flop.
Sargent was well aware of that history, but he came to town with more than three decades’ experience promoting races of all shapes and sizes. His Track Enterprises organization out of Macon, Illinois, had worked with publicly owned fairgrounds and he saw potential at the Mile where others had found failure.
A super late model race in June 2019 went well enough that it led to an ARCA Menards Series race in 2021, which led to another. All the time Sargent was thinking bigger. He’d love to do an IndyCar race, he said, if the deal were right. And NASCAR was on his mind.
More:Johnny Sauter made a tough, successful climb in NASCAR. Now, he wants to guide his son into a new generation of racing.
More:Wisconsinites have played a huge part in stock car racing history. Here are the 7 most important (and a few more).
“It’s just kind of a progression that we listened to the fans, we listen to the market and we just believe that we can make this work with everybody’s help and community involvement,” Sargent said Wednesday.
“The Milwaukee Mile’s got such great history and the facility is still in such great shape that this is kind of a natural progression. We felt that the Craftsman Truck Series would be a great addition.”
Perhaps what gives Sargent and Track Enterprises the best chance to succeed are attitude and experience.
This is a group that promotes on the local and national levels, with stock cars and open-wheelers, on asphalt and dirt, at facilities both public and private. Obstacles inevitably arise, but there are few left Sargent and his staff haven’t handled. They’re a nimble bunch. Whatever needs to be done – sales, operations, you name it – someone will roll up his sleeves and find a way to get it done.
So work has begun to get the Mile into NASCAR shape, Sargent said, with both Track Enterprises and State Fair Park involved.
Tickets went on sale via the State Fair site as soon as the event was announced, with reserved seats starting at $45. ARCA will share the date with the trucks, and Saturday of the two-day weekend still needs to be fleshed out.
By midafternoon Track had fielded questions about camping and infield access and even a scoreboard, as the Mile’s was removed years ago. Those are all indications of strong interest.
More questions will be asked and answered over the next 49 weeks, not the least of them whether Track can sell sponsorships and about 20,000 tickets to make the event a success. By then we’ll know if Sargent’s bullishness toward the Mile was well founded.
Just to talk about success and the Mile in the same breath is refreshing.
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2022-09-14T22:52:04Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Promoter gives Milwaukee Mile new life with NASCAR trucks in 2023
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/motor/2022/09/14/promoter-gives-milwaukee-mile-new-life-nascar-trucks-2023/10375866002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/motor/2022/09/14/promoter-gives-milwaukee-mile-new-life-nascar-trucks-2023/10375866002/
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Arizona St. graduate James Leow sets the pace as U.S. Mid-Amateur field reaches Sweet 16
TOWN OF ERIN – A heavy fog planted itself above Erin Hills early Wednesday morning, delaying play for the third time during the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship – but the morning matches in the round of 64 were completed and the round of 32 was able to conclude by the end of day.
It was just the second round of the tournament that was started and completed on the same day.
Perhaps the hottest player in the field is Arizona State University graduate James Leow, who steamrolled Evan Beck 8 & 7 to advance to the round of 16. Leow began the tournament shooting a 5-under par 65 at co-host site Blue Mound Golf and Country Club in his first round of stroke play last Saturday and has rarely hit a speedbump since.
“All gas, no brakes,” he said, borrowing a favorite axiom of Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur.
Leow, the 60th ranked amateur in the world, has not lost a hole yet in his two matches and is 9-under par in his 23 holes of play. Leow’s victory over Beck in just 11 holes was tied for the fourth largest margin in Mid-Amateur Championship history.
Leow has rolled in 10 birdies – including six against Beck – against just one bogey in his two matches.
Beck later quipped he couldn’t make that many on Erin Hills if he had played five rounds.
“I mean, just been hitting great (in) all the matches in match play so far,” Leow said. “Fun fact, caddie just told me I haven't lost a hole, so it's great to just build that momentum, just keep going. It's a really good track for match play, and just hit fairway, greens, give yourself good chance, and make those putts. I definitely did that the last two days.”
Defending tournament champion Stewart Hagestad advanced to the round of 16 with a 5 & 3 victory over Stephen Hale. Hagestad, who also won the 2016 championship, was joined by Scott Harvey (2014) as the only past champions remaining in the field.
Harvey held off Chris Thayer 3 & 1 to advance. Harvey will face off with 2021 tournament runner-up Mark Costanza in the round of 16.
Should Hagestad, who will face Josh Persons in the round of 16, go back-to-back as a tournament champion he would join Nathan Smith (four) and Jay Siegel (three) as the only three-time winners of the championship.
“Yeah, it's crossed my mind, but I haven't really given it a lot of thought. Listen, everyone is really good,” Hagestad said. “I talk to Nathan a lot. We're very close. To be one step closer, that would be really cool.
“It's not even that you can get ahead of yourself, it's just like everyone is really good.”
To illustrate that point, stroke play co-medalists Sam Jones and Jake Shuman both bowed out in the round of 32, with Jones falling to Scott Turner 3 & 2 and Shuman losing to Bryce Hanstad 2-up.
Following the round of 16 matches in the morning, the quarterfinal matches will begin at 12:15 p.m. Thursday. The semifinal matches will begin at 7 a.m. on Friday, and the start of the 36-hole championship match will begin at 12:30 p.m. The final holes of the championship match will begin at 7 a.m. on Saturday.
Dembowiak ousted in round of 64
West Bend native Preston Dembowiak never had to sleep on, essentially, a sudden-death single hole of competition. That was the case as he was 1-down to Chad Wilfong when play was suspended on the 18th tee box late Tuesday evening, but Dembowiak was feeling good.
“This way to end it is much better,” he said late Tuesday night. “Having (his son Brayden) out here was awesome. He’s been an awesome cheerleader.”
And, more than that, Dembowiak was ready for some revenge on the 18th. He double-bogeyed the hole to finish his stroke play rounds and was confident he could birdie it to force a playoff with Wilfong. While Dembowiak did par the par 5 last, Wilfong did indeed make birdie to win the match 2-up and send Dembowiak back to his home in North Carolina.
But, the day wasn’t going to be a total wash.
“It’s kind of a heads I win, tails I win situation,” he said with a grin. “If I lose; we’re going to go to Hankerson’s (Country Oven) in West Bend and then hit a flight back.
“It couldn’t have gone any better (Tuesday). I’m content if that’s the way that it ends.”
Dembowiak was the final player with Wisconsin roots in the tournament when matches resumed Wednesday.
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2022-09-15T00:38:27Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Arizona St. graduate James Leow sets the pace as U.S. Mid-Amateur field reaches Sweet 16
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/golf/2022/09/14/arizona-st-graduate-james-leow-sets-pace-u-s-mid-amateur-field-reaches-sweet-16/10375869002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/golf/2022/09/14/arizona-st-graduate-james-leow-sets-pace-u-s-mid-amateur-field-reaches-sweet-16/10375869002/
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They put in a pond, doubled the kitchen and made the most of their 1884 Italianate house
At Home With Bill Hansen and Bob Groth
When Bill Hansen and Bob Groth first saw their 1884 Italianate home, they lived just a block away.
They talked with the owner at a party they hosted, which led to Groth's touring the historic home.
Although they hadn’t been considering moving from their Queen Anne Victorian, he loved the house so much he encouraged Hansen to tour it, too.
“I said to Bill, ‘You have to see this house!’ I said, ‘Go now!' "
Hansen toured the house, and he fell in love, too.
What impressed them were its grand staircase, fireplaces, decorative woodwork, large windows and the widow’s walk.
They also liked the home’s layout, especially on the second floor.
“The second floor has two levels. The lower level was the servant’s quarters, and then one step higher was the area with bedrooms for the homeowners,” Groth said.
“Years ago, the servants were never allowed to sleep on the same level as the homeowners, so that’s why there are two levels. The one is done in an informal style, the other is formal,” Hansen said.
Although some of the home’s decorative woodwork was missing, and the kitchen was tiny, they were confident they could restore the home and build a better kitchen.
So the men, both retired from SC Johnson in Racine, sold their home and bought the 3,300-square-foot Italianate home in the fall of 2000.
They moved in and began making changes to the home’s exterior and the yard.
“When we first moved in, the whole place was covered in carpeting. I tore it all out immediately and redid the floors,” Hansen said.
“We also put a small pond in the backyard right away because we had to have a place for our koi," Groth added.
Other work included adding decorative fencing around the front of the house, a privacy fence in the back for them and their dogs, Rosie and Barney, and landscaping.
“We put in a pond,” Groth said. “It’s very large, and it looks like it comes right under the sunroom at the back of the house. We have very large koi in there. … The pond goes from the back of the house to one corner of our property, and we have a bridge that takes you over the pond to a private little courtyard.”
They also painted the home's exterior.
“When we moved in, the house was burgundy and black,” Hansen said. “Now it’s almost like a barn red with white trim, and I do want to add a third color to the decorative corbels that go all the way around the house, but I can’t decide what color to add. Right now they’re white until we figure this out.”
When they started working on the interior, it was no small project.
They restored a number of rooms, mainly on the first floor. They also made changes to rooms on the second floor, as they had been altered to accommodate renters years ago, and they had an addition for a new kitchen built.
“Through the years, the different owners added their own personal touches. Anything that wasn’t original to the house, we had torn out and redone. They put up walls where they didn’t belong, and they tore out much of home’s fancy woodwork,” Hansen said.
“We replaced woodwork in what is now our first-floor guest room. Before we moved here, it was used as a library, and somebody had taken out the beautiful mopboards and the rest of the decorative trim and they put in built in bookcases. We knew they weren’t original to the house, and we had those torn out and had mopboards fabricated to match the originals.
“In the breakfast room, we had a wood ceiling with beams put in and we rewallpapered that room. Someone also had a wall torn out between the biggest rooms on the first floor, the parlor and the dining room, and they turned those rooms into one big great room. We had that wall put back and had all the woodwork fabricated,” he added.
The kitchen addition came about when their neighbor two doors down bought the home next to them.
“They bought the house in between us, and they tore it down, as it was in terrible shape,” Hansen said. “We told them we wanted to buy a portion of that property.”
They hired architect Tracy Stacy, owner of Absolute Construction Enterprises in Racine, to design the addition. Stacy typically does only commercial work, but she opted into the project because she loves Victorian-era homes, they said.
“When we bought the land next door, we were then able to double the size of the kitchen,” Groth said. “Our architect was fabulous. When you look at the addition, you would never know it wasn’t original to the house.
“We originally had a very small galley kitchen. We added on to the north side of the house. It was a 6-by-16-foot addition with a full basement under it,” he added.
He described it as a kitchen Martha Stewart would love.
“It’s the kitchen of my dreams. It has all hickory cabinets, and I have a butler’s sink and a main sink. They’re both farmhouse sinks. … I also have all Thermador appliances that are built in, with wood fronts to match the cabinets,” he said. The new kitchen also has a large built-in pantry, a pot filler, a baking center and a warming tray.
The kitchen now has a tin ceiling with curved tin crown molding, a hardwood floor done in a distressed look that’s just a bit lighter than their honey-colored cabinets, recessed and under-cabinet lighting, and reproduction pendant lights over the island.
Their island was made from an old bean cabinet.
“Bill was on a mission to find a general store bean cabinet to use as our island,” Groth said. “We found it on eBay and had it shipped from California. The front is all glass sections, and beans were put behind the glass to show customers what was available. The back has huge drawers where the beans were kept. That’s where the store clerk would take the beans out for the customers and bag them. We put different kinds of dried beans inside the front of the cabinet where the glass is. It’s about 3 by 6 feet.”
To finish and accent the piece, they set a slab of granite on top, set bar stools around it, and put an antique scale and a double-wheel coffee grinder on top.
When furniture was added, it was all antiques on the first floor, and pieces that were more casual on the second floor.
“I always say the first floor is dressed appropriately for a Victorian,” Hansen said. “Everything that’s in those rooms is in the time period of when the house was built.”
One of their more unusual pieces is an old cook stove in their breakfast room.
Groth said they first saw the piece many years ago at an antiques store in Boulder Junction while on vacation.
“We had looked at the stove for years. All of a sudden, the owner was going out of business, and she was having a 20%-off sale. We lived in a previous house then. When we moved here and had the breakfast room, it was ideal for that room,” he said.
As it turned out, the stove was made the same year their house was built.
“It was almost like it was meant to be here. This stove cane out of a barn in Upper Michigan. It was rusting out, and she had it redone. It’s a museum-quality piece,” he said.
A collection they have that isn’t from the era when their home was built is their Little Red Riding Hood pottery set, produced in the '40s and '50s, that’s in the breakfast room.
It was a piece Groth was given after a close friend died.
“He brought that cookie jar home, and I said, ‘Oh, my God! It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,' " Hansen said. “Then one thing led to another, and we started looking around in antiques shops for the canisters, sugar bowls, creamers, spice jars and things like that. … Now we have just about all the pieces. … It’s quite a collection.”
They recently talked about their home, which will be featured in this year's Preservation Racine Tour of Historic Places on Sept. 25.
Question: How is your home laid out?
Hansen: On the first floor we have a parlor, dining room, foyer with a grand staircase, a full bathroom, kitchen, breakfast room, guest room and a sunroom. There is also a servant’s staircase that goes from the kitchen to the second floor.
Groth: On the second floor, in the area that was the servant’s quarters, there were originally three bedrooms. Later, one room was changed into a bathroom, and another room into a kitchenette. We gutted and updated the bathroom, we put a laundry room with a small kitchen area in the room that had been the kitchenette, and the third bedroom is my bird room. It’s where I have my two parrots. I have a blue-fronted Amazon and a blue and gold macaw.
The higher level had three bedrooms, too. The main bedroom, which is Bill’s room, is quite a large room, and it has a plaster archway that brings you to a sitting area. It also has 6-foot windows. The second bedroom is mine, and the third bedroom is our den-TV room.
Q: Are any of your antiques family pieces?
Hansen: I have a platform rocker in my bedroom that I got from my grandmother. Before she had it, it was her aunt’s piece. It’s quite old. Then I have a table in the foyer landing that was my grandfather's. I also have some other odds and ends from the family.
Q: Did you want a large gourmet kitchen because you love to cook?
Groth: I do cook a lot, but I’m not a gourmet cook. When Bill and I would have friends and family over, we all always ended up in the kitchen. It’s the heart of the home. I always wanted a bigger kitchen. Our last two houses had big kitchens.
Q: What colors did you use on the first floor when you painted or papered?
Hansen: We tried to get colors that were very close to what they would have used years ago and colors that work for us. We used a lot of burgundy and soft mauves.
The breakfast room has wallpaper with burgundy flowers that blends with the formal rooms. That’s on the top of the walls. We put a coordinating paper on the bottom. We do most of our own painting. We enjoy it. It’s one thing we can do to save a buck.
Q: Any other favorite collections?
Hansen: I love "Gone With the Wind" lamps (aka hurricane lamps). I have quite a few of them.
I’m also a freak when it comes to Christmas. I collect Christmas things, and I do this house up from top to bottom. I put up a dozen Christmas trees and I’ll do the mantels, the staircase and the chandeliers. I do the whole kitchen in a gingerbread theme.
Groth: He does every room from top to bottom in a Victorian style. You name it, he does it. He will start before Halloween.
Q: Any projects yet to do?
Hansen: The main thing we are thinking about doing down the road is to add the third color to the trim of the house, and we want to add all the decorative ironwork back around the front porch, the bay window, and the widow's walk that was taken down. I’m sure they sold it for scrap iron. It needs to go back.
Q: Do you know any of the history of your home?
Hansen: It was built by Erastus C. Peck in 1884 or 1885. We do know the homeowners were the 143rd customers in Racine to get water and plumbing in the house. For the first four years, there was no indoor plumbing here.
Q: What are the biggest challenges in owning a historic home?
Groth: Like any other home, it's just maintenance. If you see a problem, you have to jump on it. It will only get worse.
What: 45th annual Preservation Racine Tour of Historic Places. A tour of three homes, two former manufacturing buildings that have been turned into residences, a bed and breakfast, and tours and displays at St. George Serbian Orthodox Church. Sponsored by Preservation Racine Inc.
Where: In the Racine area.
When: From noon to 5:30 p.m. Sept. 25.
Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 the day of the tour. Proceeds support historic building preservation and education.
For information: Call (262) 634-5748, e-mail info@preservationracine.org, or see preservationracine.org.
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2022-09-15T13:06:52Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Preservation Racine Tour has 19th century Italianate house, with pond
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/home-garden/at-home-with/2022/09/15/preservation-racine-historic-places-tour-has-19th-century-italianate-house-pond/7883981001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/home-garden/at-home-with/2022/09/15/preservation-racine-historic-places-tour-has-19th-century-italianate-house-pond/7883981001/
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Madeline Heim
VIROQUA - When Gail Frie moved to Viroqua in the 1990s, he noticed a divide in the small western Wisconsin city between older residents, many of them farmers, and younger progressives who'd come there seeking a quieter life.
It's not an uncommon split, especially in more rural areas. But in time, Frie noticed the relationship improving — bolstered by a shared value of the land and a desire to protect it.
Still, just a handful of sites in Wisconsin offer the option. In the southwestern part of the state known as the Driftless region, there had been no public place for it, despite the area's deep connection to land stewardship.
After the cemetery association vote, that's soon to change. For Frie, president of the association, it's a tie back to the burials that happened at the cemetery's beginnings.
"What's old is new again," he said.
Though the idea came recently before the cemetery association, it's been percolating in the community for much longer. That's thanks to a group of women who formed an organization called Threshold Care Circle more than a decade ago.
They help advise people on what they call family-directed funerals — transporting, preparing and honoring a person's body after death at home instead of getting a funeral home involved. It reverts to the way deaths were handled hundreds of years ago, and makes the process feel more personal, giving more time for grieving, they say.
Kathy Doerfer, a founding member of Threshold Care Circle, said her mother died just before the group's first meeting. After her mother's time in a hospice facility being cared for by family around the clock, Doerfer remembered that when she died, her body was out the door to a funeral home in 45 minutes.
"It was just so harsh," she said.
RELATED:We can't take it with us, even our bodies, so why try? Green burial offers an alternative
Since the group began to consult and offer workshops, according to Liz Franklin, another founding member, there have been at least 30 family-directed funerals in Viroqua — substantial in a community of about 4,500. The group has also begun to hear of people holding funerals at home without consulting them, which they take as a sign that the practice is spreading as they'd hoped.
But to work so hard at bringing back an age-old process to honor the dead gently and naturally and not be able to see it all the way through burial didn't make sense to them. So they formed the Driftless Green Burial Alliance in the hopes of securing a place for natural burials.
Together, they took a 12-week masterclass on the topic. Frie, who had worked in recycling before retirement, saw the practice as an alternative to burying natural resources in the form of the materials of the casket and vault for a conventional burial — something he'd had a problem with for years. (Americans put 20 million feet of wood, 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluids, 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, 17,000 tons of copper and bronze, and 64,500 tons of steel into the ground annually in conventional burials, according to the Green Burial Council.)
"We really haven't run into anything negative yet," Frie said. "I see this moving forward."
"There’s so much land that this will provide green burial options in this area for hundreds of years," said Kelly Whited-Ford, a member of the Driftless Green Burial Alliance.
Farley has given many talks about green burials, including to the Viroqua group. In time, he said, he's watched it change from a fringe idea to a mainstream one. The national Green Burial Council estimates there are 350 green cemeteries currently operating across the country.
"Now it's not a novelty anymore," Farley said. "Everybody's worried about the environment."
Still, a person's reasons for wanting a green burial may transcend costs.
"A lot of people who want green burial want their final act to reflect how they lived," Whited-Ford said. "To give back to the earth that has nourished them their whole lives."
Now that it's been approved, they're aiming to raise $15,000 to hire a landscape architect to survey the land. Total costs for the site will be more — they eventually want to add a walking trail and a nondenominational chapel, as well as buy the cemetery a lighter piece of equipment to swap out for the heavy backhoe that currently digs graves.
"I think it's helped greatly in our community to make death more natural," Whited-Ford said. "It's part of life. It's the end."
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2022-09-15T13:07:04Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Viroqua Cemetery to open green burial site, helping environment
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/15/viroqua-cemetery-open-green-burial-site-environment/8000825001/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/15/viroqua-cemetery-open-green-burial-site-environment/8000825001/
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Ron Johnson wants Wisconsin residents to decide abortion laws through a referendum. It's unlikely to happen
WASHINGTON - U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson wants to see changes to Wisconsin's 1849 law outlawing nearly all abortions, saying that voters in the state should decide how the law is modified.
Johnson's suggestion came a day after he pushed back on a bill from U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, that would create a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
In Wisconsin, voters cannot introduce statewide initiatives or referendums to be voted on at the ballot box, according to the state's Legislative Reference Bureau.
Republican lawmakers who control the state Legislature have signaled they will not pursue legislation that expands access to abortions beyond the parameters of the 1849 law.
Outside of a constitutional amendment, the state Legislature can submit questions to voters in the form of an advisory amendment, which gauges public opinion but does not change law.
Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who is in a tight race with Johnson, has said abortion is "on the line" in November and has called to protect abortion rights.
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2022-09-15T13:07:10Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Ron Johnson's abortion referendum proposal unlikely to change law
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/15/ron-johnsons-abortion-referendum-proposal-unlikely-to-change-law/10380993002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/09/15/ron-johnsons-abortion-referendum-proposal-unlikely-to-change-law/10380993002/
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The timing was fitting given that Independence Day is when we celebrate and reflect on our nation’s bold experiment in self-governance. To date, more than 1,900 people have completed the survey. There is still time to make your voice heard in the Main Street Agenda questionnaire (https://tinyurl.com/mainstreetagenda).
Consequently, that will be one of the topics at our upcoming town hall meeting in Milwaukee at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 21 in Centennial Hall at the Milwaukee Public Library’s Central branch. The Main Street Agenda is a collaboration of Wisconsin Public Radio, the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison and the Ideas Lab. The event is free and open to the public; get tickets at https://tinyurl.com/milwaukeeagenda.
Concern over the future of democracy isn't unique to Wisconsin. News organizations across the nation today are sounding the alarm and raising awareness in a Democracy Day campaign. Listening and amplifying the voices of voters is a simple, bur powerful way to support democracy.
We’re excited for the first of four town halls we’re holding across Wisconsin (including events in Pewaukee, Green Bay and Wausau) because it provides an opportunity to talk about issues Wisconsinites care most about that often are not reflected in TV ads, campaign events or even a lot of the election coverage in the news.
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2022-09-15T13:07:22Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Wisconsin residents concerned about democracy heading into midterms
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/2022/09/15/wisconsin-residents-concerned-democracy-heading-into-midterms/10360557002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/2022/09/15/wisconsin-residents-concerned-democracy-heading-into-midterms/10360557002/
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This new subdivision in Sussex will be a site for the 2023 Parade of Homes
Sussex will soon get a 45 single-family lot subdivision that will also be a site for the 2023 Milwaukee Builders Association Parade of Homes.
Hartland-based Espire Homes, in partnership with SCI Real Estate of Milwaukee, have started building for the Redford Hills subdivision, which is slated to open in summer 2023. It had a groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 7.
The subdivision will be on the south side of Richmond Road, west of Highway 164 Lots will range from .34 an acre to 2.52 acres, according to the Redford Hills subdivision website. Espire co-owner and president Daryl Prusow said the homes will be priced between $600,000 and $850,000.
It is not the only subdivision under development in the area.
Vista Run subdivision — south of Silver Spring, behind Kohl's — is also under construction. The subdivision will have 200 single-family lots on 176 acres. Homes there are selling for about $490,000 to $550,000. Sussex Village Administrator Jeremy Smith said about 20 homes have been completed in the multi-stage process.
Elsewhere in the area, Pewaukee-based residential real estate developer Neumann Developments Inc. has proposed a subdivision of about 365 housing units on 228 acres at the Silver Spring Golf Club, N56 W21318 Silver Spring Drive, Menomonee Falls. Single-family homes would sell for about $600,000, while townhomes in the development would cost about $450,000.
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2022-09-15T18:41:25Z
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www.jsonline.com
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New Sussex subdivision will be site for 2023 Parade of Homes
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/sussex/2022/09/15/new-sussex-subdivision-site-2023-parade-homes/10360742002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/sussex/2022/09/15/new-sussex-subdivision-site-2023-parade-homes/10360742002/
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Marcus Theatres is reviving its CineLatino Film Festival for Hispanic Heritage Month. Here are some highlights to look for.
Marcus Theatres' CineLatino Film Festival returns after a three-year absence with 15 movies and a slew of events designed to celebrate Hispanic-directed, -written and -focused movies and culture.
Held in April its first three years before the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's festival will run Oct. 5-9, timed to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month, which started Thursday and runs through Oct. 15.
The CineLatino festival is a mix of new releases, Hollywood titles showing in Spanish and some classic movies about the Latino experience. Movies are showing at Marcus Theatres' Majestic, Movie Tavern Brookfield Square, South Shore and Renaissance (Sturtevant) cinemas. A portion of the net proceeds from the festival is donated to local Hispanic health and education initiatives.
For a full schedule, go to marcustheatres.com/CineLatino. Here are some highlights to look out for.
Premiere screening of 'Lyle, Lyle Crocodile' in Spanish
"Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile," the musical adaptation of the beloved children's story starring Javier Bardem with pop star Shawn Mendes as the voice of the title croc, is showing in a fundraising premiere Oct. 5 at the Marcus Majestic in Brookfield. Tickets, including a reception and other activities, are $60, $25 for kids ages 3 to 11, and are available at marcustheatres.com/CineLatinoVIPEvent. The movie opens in wide release, in English and Spanish, on Oct. 7.
Edward James Olmos on hand for a screening of 'Selena'
Olmos, the versatile actor who played the father of Tejano legend Selena in the 1997 movie, will be at the Marcus South Shore for a special screening of "Selena" at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 9.
Documentaries on character actor Pepe Serna, Cuban baseball players
You may not know Mexican character actor Pepe Serna's name, but you've seen him in scores of TV shows and movies, from "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai" to "Scarface." Serna's career, and how he helped pave the way for generations of Mexican American actors, is the focus of the new documentary "Pepe Serna: Life Is Art"; Serna himself will be on hand for a screening at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 7 at Marcus South Shore.
Also showing at Marcus South Shore: "The Last Out," a documentary following Cuban baseball players who risk exile to chase their dream of being major-leaguers. Director Michael Gassert, formerly of Mequon, will be on hand for the screening at 3:30 p.m. Oct. 8.
$5 classic movies, including 'Real Women Have Curves' and 'La Bamba'
The festival has a handful of standout movies celebrating Hispanic life showing for $5. Among them: the Ritchie Valens biopic "La Bamba," the Mexican comedy "Half Brothers" and "Real Women Have Curves," the beautiful coming-of-age movie starring America Ferrera. (There's also a special screening of "Real Women Have Curves" with screenwriter Josefina Lopez, with standard admission, showing at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 6 at Marcus South Shore.)
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2022-09-15T18:41:31Z
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Hispanic Heritage Month: Marcus Theatres' CineLatino Film Festival on
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A dance company is the winner of Near West Side Partners' Rev-Up MKE start-up competition
Rev-Up MKE, a competition aimed at encouraging business startups on the city's near west side, has named Vertical Essence Dance Company its winner for 2022.
The competition culminated Wednesday night with a live pitch event at the Rave/Eagles ballroom where five finalists presented before a panel of judges. Sponsored by the nonprofit Near West Side Partners, along with representatives from Marquette University and Town Bank, it seeks to support entrepreneurs and fill empty storefronts.
"The near west side has been home to some incredible startups," said Keith Stanley, executive director of Near West Side Partners.
"Based on the great ideas and high-quality applications we received for the return of Rev-Up MKE this year, it's clear that there continue to be motivated small business owners that want to call the near west side home."
Vertical Essence Dance Company owner Candanisha Bishop will receive $10,000 in cash and $25,000 of in-kind services such as small business mentoring, advertising, and architectural assistance.
The nonprofit "will join the ranks of some of the world’s greatest start-ups located in the near west side — startups that are now recognized iconic brands like Harley-Davidson and Molson Coors,” Stanley said.
The finalists and other contestants can also receive help from Near West Side Partners in its efforts to revitalize neighborhoods bordered by I-43 on the east, the stadium freeway on the west, Vliet Street and Highland Boulevard on the north, and I-94 on the south.
About Vertical Essence Dance Company
Vertical Essence Dance Company engages young people in a positive, creative manner.
Bishop, an English teacher at Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, has an extensive background in dance education, theater, and the performing arts. A graduate of Saint Joan Antida High School in Milwaukee, she's a former actress, singer and dancer in the Black History program, "We are the Drum."
Bishop said one of her goals is to find a permanent location so that she can offer more classes and activities.
"I'd like to have a place where my alumni dancers can come back and share the things they've learned," she said.
Finalist: Jvest Beauty
Briana McQuay was one of the finalists for her business, Jvest Beauty, that specializes in hair, skin and nail products for women of color. Jvest Beauty was named the competition's runner-up and recipient of $4,000 in start-up money.
McQuay is seeking a permanent storefront for the business which had been at a kiosk in Mayfair Mall and currently operates online.
"The traditional shopping experience is still valued in the cosmetic world," she said.
McQuay was a radio show host before starting Jvst Beauty. Growing up in Milwaukee, she realized the need for a store that focused on beauty products for black women.
"I remember feeling like a commodity anytime I went into a local beauty supply store that was owned by someone who was not a person of color and of not being able to ask them about certain products because they wouldn't have them. That left me to feel unseen, unheard," McQuay said.
She hopes to make Jvst Beauty an international brand like the Sephora chain that has hundreds of stores.
"I want this to be a movement for young women across the United States and eventually across the world," she said.
For now, McQuay's focused on Milwaukee's near west side.
"There's so much beauty in those neighborhoods," she said.
Finalist: The Pop Up
Local restaurant owner Mario Diaz Herrera was a finalist for his idea to create a commercial kitchen, called The Pop Up, that would be a platform for food entrepreneurs to sell their products online and would have a drive-up window for order pickups.
Diaz Herrera, known for his Triciclo Peru restaurant in Milwaukee, said he wants The Pop Up to be affordable for food startups.
"There are only a few commercial kitchens in Milwaukee, and they're expensive and hard to get into," he said.
Finalist: Gray Jett Cafe
Vegans Shana Gray and Andren Jett Sr., owners of the Gray Jett Cafe, were also finalists.
They've catered large events, had temporary locations, and are looking for a permanent site.
"We break generational curses by fueling our bodies and legacies with clean eating. If COVID taught us anything, it's that we have to be healthier," Jett said.
Finalist: Pressed Cafe
Finalist Shayvon McCullum's Pressed Cafe aims to be a collaborative coffee hub that provides youth employment opportunities and an 18-month apprenticeship called Fuel Impact.
The business is an outgrowth of Secure Bridges, a nonprofit McCullum founded that's focused on ending sex trafficking. Located at 35 N. 36th St., Pressed Cafe seeks to be a safe place for children and adults.
"We're looking to open our doors toward the end of October," McCullum said.
Pressed Cafe, Gray Jett Cafe, and The Pop Up, were each granted $1,000 provided by Sodexo Marquette, a caterer at the university.
All three participants in the Featured Business portion of Wednesday night's event went home with a cash prize as determined by audience votes. Vibez Creative Arts Space received $3,000. Atomix Logistics, $2,500, and Fruition MKE, $2,000.
It had been three years since the last Rev-Up MKE.
The return of the event was pivotal to Milwaukee's small business community, said Jay Mack, president and chief executive officer of Town Bank.
"After many businesses across the country struggled and were forced to close due to the pandemic, programs like Rev-Up MKE provide a renewed sense of hope for the next generation of entrepreneurs," Mack said.
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2022-09-15T18:41:37Z
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Near West Side Partners names Rev-Up MKE winner in business contest
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'You’re the last line of defense': Wisconsin kicker Jack Van Dyke missed the tackle but shows that he is willing to hit
MADISON – Jack Van Dyke was just a blur.
Wisconsin’s kickoff specialist had just sent the second half kickoff against Washington State to Renard Bell, who caught the ball at the goal line and started upfield. The moment was a rare time when the kicker gets first crack at a return man, and it wasn’t a fair matchup. Bell changed direction at the 20 and Van Dyke lost his footing and whiffed on the attempted tackle.
It took the Badgers 53 more yards to run down Bell.
“You’ve got to be right there,” Van Dyke said. “You’re the last line of defense. You’ve got to be able to stop that returner. It’s a lot of mental practice and physical practice.”
That play was one of the many that weighed heavily Saturday in the Badgers’ 17-14 loss to the Cougars. It also symbolizes the challenge kickers face when trying to make a tackle during one of the most chaotic plays of a football game. It’s difficult for defensive players to make open-field tackles in those circumstances, much less the kicker
“You hope it doesn’t get to that point, but we do ask him to be part of the coverage and do practice that,” Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst said. “There are tackling drills and the whole deal so that when they’re in a position like that you give them a fighter’s chance.”
It's only two games into the season, and for UW it is especially early when it comes to evaluating its kickoff coverage the unit. The Badgers’ 10 kickoffs are the second-fewest in the Big Ten ahead of only offensively-challenged Iowa.
Six of those kicks went for touchbacks. At least one of the kick was intentionally hit short. That, however, was not the case on the aforementioned kickoff.
“I hit under it a little bit,” Van Dyke said.
More:Wisconsin's Maema Njongmeta and Jordan Turner making their mark in heart of the Badgers defense
More:The Wisconsin Badgers want to attack with deep throws from Graham Mertz but also remain vigilant for smarter options
More:Despite two misses in loss, Wisconsin kicker Vito Calvaruso insists 'confidence hasn't gone anywhere'
Before the season Van Dyke said he’d like to hit at least 70% of his kickoffs for touchbacks. He is close to that mark (66.7%) discounting the kickoff against Illinois State that was intentionally hit short. His percentage looks even better if another kickoff against Illinois State that was fair caught inside was the 5 was hit that way on purpose.
Kickers don’t always exude athleticism, but Van Dyke is an exception. Standing 6-foot-5 and 217 pounds, he was an all-conference defensive back for Neenah in one of the state’s best high school conferences, the Fox Valley Association, as well as a strong 400-meter runner in track and field.
The former high school safety still relishes contact. And unlike most kickers, Van Dyke has the footage to prove it. His hit on Rutgers return man Aron Cruickshank last season forced a fumble.
“I love it. It’s fun,” he said.
More:How to watch and listen to Wisconsin Badgers game vs. New Mexico State on TV, livestream and radio
More:Wisconsin's latest nonconference opponent New Mexico State is led by a familiar face, former Minnesota coach Jerry Kill
The kickoff Saturday was just the second deep kickoff the season that was returned. Just before halftime linebacker Jake Chaney and safety Blake Carey teamed up to drop Bell after a 9-yard gain.
At the start of the second half, however, Bell squirted free. Replays showed two blocks that could have been called illegal but weren’t. The play stood, and 3½ minutes later the Cougars hit a 26-yard field goal that cut the UW lead to 14-10.
As for his part in the play, Van Dyke offered no excuses.
“I need to be better with hitting more touchbacks or making the tackle,” he said.
Despite the lack of live work during practice, the Badgers cover kickoffs each day and sometimes the kickers will work with special teams assistant coach Taylor Mehlhaff on tackling and being in the right spot of the coverage at the correct time.
Considering the need to keep those players healthy for their primary jobs, a balance must be found in how much work they put toward tackles.
Van Dyke had surgery in the offseason to repair torn muscles in his groin and abdomen. The injuries nagged him throughout last season.
That, however, won't deter Van Dyke the next time he has a chance to bring down a returner.
“I just got to put myself in the mindset that if the returner does come out with the ball I’ve got to be ready to make a tackle,” he said. “I have a great kickoff coverage team, but every now and then I’ve got to put myself in there. I definitely get hyped up. I always want to hit touchbacks, but it’s not going to happen every time.”
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2022-09-15T18:41:55Z
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Wisconsin Badgers football kicker Jack Van Dyke has willingness to hit
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A popular YouTuber from Japan made a TikTok video about his recent visit to Wisconsin — and it's basically the most epic advertisement for the state. Probably ever.
Three months ago, Takuya George Maeda, aka George Japan, kicked off a two-year world tour to meet his YouTube subscribers in person, he told the Journal Sentinel. He has more than 368,000 of 'em.
Maeda is documenting his journey through short travel vlogs. Hence, the viral Wisconsin video.
"I want my viewers to feel like they are actually traveling the world," said Maeda, who was born in the U.S. and raised in Japan.
Now, let's get into the video. It starts by showing off the dairy state delicacy that is the cheese curd and Maeda saying: "Wisconsin is sooo underrated."
"I'm from Japan, but I like Wisconsin," the 27-year-old said in the intro. "I'll tell you why."
In the video, he declared the state's most popular fast food chain as ... we'll let you guess.
(Yes, obviously Culver's.)
He recommended a ButterBurger. "It's better than McDonald's," he said.
And can't forget those fried cheese curds. "I'm loving it," Maeda said over a clip of him eating one.
No summertime visit is compete without a trip to a fair; Maeda checked out the Walworth County Fair and its monster truck entertainment.
"I've never seen anything like that in Japan, so it was cool," he said.
He also visited an apple orchard — in Poplar Grove ... Illinois. Close.
While at Edwards Apple Orchard, Maeda got apple cider — which was "so refreshing" and a "perfect drink for summer" — and a doughnut. "It's literally worth visiting here just to get this doughnut," he said in the video.
(With the orchard around an hour and 20 minutes south of Milwaukee, here are some others that are a bit closer to home.)
More than once Maeda brought up Wisconsin's beauty, from its lakes to its "peaceful and calm" neighborhoods.
"This is why I love Wisconsin in summer," he concluded.
Maeda's visit was for five days in early September, he said, and he stayed in the Lake Geneva area.
Another landmark he stopped by during his time here was the home of the Green Bay Packers. And yes, he wore a cheesehead.
Maeda's Wisconsin TikTok has been viewed more than 517,800 times and has over 85,200 likes.
Twitter user @EclecticHams shared the video and said: "This guy from Japan visiting Wisconsin and loving everything about it is everything I want in a Tik Tok". That tweet has more than 24,300 retweets, with an additional 4,000 quote tweets, and 325,400 likes.
One TikTok user commented: "Never have I wanted to go to Wisconsin until now". Another said they're American and this is the first time they've wanted to visit the state.
Even the Green Bay Packers thanked Maeda for visiting.
At each location on his 20-country journey, Maeda said, his subscribers take him to their favorite spots.
Maeda said he "definitely" plans to come back to Wisconsin after his tour concludes. He's already crossed the Philippines and Canada off his list, and is currently in Orlando.
"I just feel like, life is only one time," Maeda said. "You only live once."
To keep up with Maeda's adventures, you can follow him on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
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2022-09-15T21:10:07Z
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YouTuber George Japan makes viral Wisconsin TikTok during world tour
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Same-sex marriage legislation won't see a vote until after midterms; Baldwin remains confident of passage
WASHINGTON - The Senate won't vote to protect same-sex marriage until after the November midterm elections. But Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, one of the bill's lead sponsors, remains confident it will garner support.
"It's always been about getting this done," Baldwin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday afternoon. "There's never been any other consideration."
"We started work on this in June, and we're committed to seeing it through," Baldwin added. "When it does come to the floor, I think it's going to have a very healthy bipartisan vote."
Baldwin and a bipartisan group of senators have been working on language for an amendment to address Republican concerns over religious liberties and polygamy. The senators initially expected to publicly release that language Thursday and push the bill to the Senate floor as soon as Monday.
But there are still some senators, according to Baldwin, "who want to digest it further." It is unclear if the measure yet has the necessary 10 Republican votes.
"I'm disappointed that it's not coming earlier," Baldwin said. "But again, the most important thing is passing the legislation."
Negotiators on the bill also ran into a timing issue to get a vote on the bill, as Congress works to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government by the end of the month. "That, I think, is a factor in all of this also," Baldwin noted.
The legislation to codify same-sex marriage was sparked by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion after the high court overturned Roe v. Wade in which he wrote that the court should "reconsider" its previous due process precedents, including the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that gave same-sex couples the right to marry.
The U.S. House passed a version of the measure in July on a bipartisan vote, but Republican senators, including Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, raised concerns over how the bill would impact religious liberties.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who has been involved in negotiating GOP support for the bill, said Thursday most people in his caucus are "pleased... to see more guarantees that this does not discriminate against religious entities."
While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer likely could have put the bill on the floor of the Senate next week, Portman said the delay to try to get more GOP support shows that "Tammy Baldwin and other Democrats want to get a result, which I appreciate."
"It takes a lot of the political sting out of it to say this is not about the midterm election, this is about getting a result," Portman told reporters.
Johnson in recent weeks said he won't support the legislation in its current form and claimed he is working with other Republicans on an amendment of their own to address religious liberties.
When asked Wednesday by the Journal Sentinel about the status of the amendment, Johnson referred the question to Utah Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Lee's office. A spokesperson for Lee did not respond Thursday to questions about the amendment.
Baldwin on Thursday told the Journal Sentinel that the bipartisan group of negotiators made final tweaks to their amendment until "quite late" Wednesday.
"I don't think it will change from here on out," said Baldwin. That language could be released in the coming days.
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2022-09-15T21:10:19Z
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Same-sex marriage bill won't see vote until after election
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'It’s going to be electric': A volleyball attendance record is within reach Friday when Wisconsin plays Florida at the Kohl Center
That is level to which the University of Wisconsin volleyball program has raised itself. The defending national champion has played in the last three Final Fours, won the last four Big Ten titles and in the past decade has more than doubled its average attendance to 7,200-plus.
The Badgers expect to not only blow away that number but also the attendance record for a NCAA regular-season match when it plays Florida at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Kohl Center. This will be the first match played at the Kohl Center since the 1998 NCAA final and with a capacity of more than 17,000 for basketball, there is more than enough room to beat the record of 15,747 set by Nebraska and Creighton in Omaha earlier this month.
While UW-Florida is only one match and a nonconference one at that, the impact of the night can’t be overstated considering the Title IX celebration that will be part of the evening, the numerous youth group and teams that are expected to be on hand and the national audience courtesy of the Big Ten Network.
The first step toward playing a game at the Kohl Center was for Sheffield to give the idea a thumbs up. He had been approached about the idea early during his tenure but felt it better to focus on making the Field House a better home court.
Since then the Field House has undergone a handful of renovations over the past decade and the average attendance has climbed from 3,291 to 7,503 last season. The Badgers reached the pinnacle on the court, too, but when he asked about the idea of a Kohl Center match during this past offseason Sheffield initially declined before having a change of heart.
Deciding to have a game at the Kohl Center was the easy part. The challenge has been how to bring in almost 10,000 more fans their usual to a match.
That is where UW’s marketing and promotions department came into play. Soon after the game was announced, the group contacted coaches and schools across the state and with help from a video Sheffield made explaining the importance of the event generated a strong initial response.
When UW opened sales of single-game tickets, it sold 10,000 tickets during the first 24 hours. There also have been about 3,000 student tickets sold, which will allow for student sections on both ends of the court.
Those in attendance will see Wisconsin, ranked fourth in the nation by the American Volleyball Coaches Assoociation, face a ranked team for the fourth ranked time this season. Florida is ranked 16th and is picked to finish second in the Southeastern Conference.
The Gators, like UW, are no stranger to playing in large venues. The last time the teams played was in a regional final two years ago that UW won in five sets in Omaha.
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2022-09-15T21:10:25Z
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Wisconsin-Florida volleyball at Kohl Center may set attendance record
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A Waukesha Lawrence School staff member has been charged with abusing a child who has special needs
WAUKESHA - A 48-year-old teacher at The Lawrence School will face two felony counts tied to child abuse allegations at the Waukesha day care center.
Heather Miller was charged Thursday with child abuse - intentionally causing bodily harm and second-degree recklessly endangering safety at the Saylesville Road facility, the subject of a police investigation that included an hours-long process Wednesday to vacate the school of children.
Miller was arrested Wednesday and taken to the Waukesha County Jail pending charges. She is being held on $6,000 cash bail, with her first appearance set for Monday in Waukesha County Circuit Court.
According to the criminal complaint filed Thursday:
Miller was employed at the school as a lead teacher in one of the infant rooms when a young child, identified only as Victim A, became the subject of child abuse allegations on Aug. 17.
Teacher reportedly witnessed abuse
Another teacher also working in the room reportedly overheard Miller telling the child, who has special needs that cause feeding problems, how "disgusting" he was.
The teacher was able to witness firsthand what happened later that same day during nap time. After she screened the crib in such a way to keep it out of the line of sight of a ceiling surveillance camera, Miller allegedly slammed the boy, who had been standing in his crib, face first into the bed of the crib, then pushed down on the crying child for about 30 seconds until he began to wheeze.
Fearful for the child's safety, the teacher ran out of the room to report the incident to the facility's director and assistant director.
For the remainder of that day, the teacher took it upon herself to hold the boy, who now seemed unusually lethargic, and ignored the admonishments of Miller, who reportedly told her the child needed to sleep longer and that she shouldn't rub his back. The teacher stayed with the boy until Miller's shift ended.
Administrators did not respond properly, complaint says
Though the complaint did not focus on potential charges against any other Lawrence School staff, it included some serious allegations about the administrators' lack of response.
Neither administrator went to the room to investigate the reporting teacher's claims, instead relying on surveillance images.
After filing a written statement about the incident with the administration, the teacher said nothing was done to change the child's care. Miller remained in the room and the other teacher was excluded from helping care for the boy.
Administrators rebuffed the teacher's concerns and said Miller would remain employed there, the complaint said.
On Aug. 25, the teacher told the boy's mother that her child was not safe. The mother forced administrators to change his room assignment.
A separate unannounced visit by a state licensing specialist on Sept. 2 delved into the allegations. But, according to the complaint, owner Jim Hoeft reportedly told the specialist he had no knowledge of the allegations, and the two administrators denied any teacher had approached them with concerns.
Allegations prompt police investigation
The family noticed problems after the alleged Aug. 17 incident, and the signs — continued lethargic behavior, vomiting, constant crying and general unwellness — were enough for his mother to speak with police on Aug. 29.
That's when the external investigation was launched.
A detective suggested that the boy be examined by a doctor at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. The resulting report indicated that, while there were no current injuries, the child showed signs of previous injuries that had healed, though those injuries were not attributed to Miller.
The doctor also validated concerns that if the child's head had been pushed into the mattress, it would have caused suffocation to the point of death.
As a result of their preliminary investigation, police conducted a search warrant at the school on Sept. 14. Miller denied the allegations, stating that she had comforted the boy in his crib on Aug. 17 after she heard him crying.
If she is convicted, Miller could face substantial prison time. The maximum penalty for second-degree reckless endangerment is 10 years and a $25,000 fine. For child abuse, it's six years and a $10,000 fine.
As part of the investigation Wednesday, Waukesha police indicated that three other staff members at the facility could face charges of failing to protect a child. The status of those charges, which have been referred to the Waukesha County District Attorney's Office, wasn't clear as of Thursday afternoon.
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2022-09-15T23:22:27Z
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Lawrence School teacher charged with child abuse at Waukesha day care
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Should Brady Street be closed to cars? A neighborhood business group is pursuing that idea after a man was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
A Brady Street business group wants to study the idea of closing the street to cars after a pedestrian was struck and killed this week by a hit-and-run driver.
The Brady Street Business Improvement District board has voted to pursue the study for "pedestrianizing" the street — known for its numerous bars and restaurants.
The district, which is funded by assessments on the street's commercial property owners, will work with the Department of Public works and other city officials "to ensure this study reviews all aspects of traffic impact and provides a variety of options," according to a Thursday announcement.
The group will seek input from neighborhood residents and business operators, it said.
Any decision to close the street to cars would need approval from the Common Council and Mayor Cavalier Johnson.
Related:Milwaukee Police have released photos of the car involved in a fatal hit-and-run crash on Brady Street
Related:Four people were shot, one suffering life-threatening injuries, near Brady Street, Milwaukee police say
The district's action comes after 32-year-old Arne J. Bast died after being struck by a driver late Sunday night in 1200 block of East Brady Street, near the intersection with North Franklin Place.
"Arne was an employee, friend and fixture on Brady Street, and he will be very missed," the district statement said.
The statement said the district has invested in traffic cameras and increased security for events in an effort to keep Brady Street safe.
"The events of this week are cause for us to make a plea for a stronger partnership with the City of Milwaukee," it said.
Brady Street is one of two east side streets that are now being pursued as possible pedestrian plazas.
Developer Tim Gokhman has pushed for roughly a half-block of East Ivanhoe Place, east of North Farwell Avenue, to be closed to cars.
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2022-09-15T23:22:33Z
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Closing Brady Street to cars to be studied after hit-and-run death
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/15/closing-brady-street-cars-studied-after-hit-and-run-death/10391118002/
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Joan Kessler has resigned from Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission, the chair of the oversight board announced Thursday.
Kessler, who served on the board for just over a year beginning in July 2021, submitted her resignation Sept. 6 for personal reasons, Chair Ed Fallone said.
Before coming to the commission, Kessler practiced law for more than 35 years and served another 16 as a judge on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. She was part of the initial wave of new appointees to the commission in 2021 after the oversight body was rocked by controversy, dysfunction, allegations of unethical behavior and the legally flawed ouster of former Police Chief Alfonso Morales.
Her “work ethic and leadership served as examples for fellow commissioners,” Fallone said.
Kessler’s resignation drops the commission down to six members and at least temporarily robs the city of the chance to have a full nine-member board – the maximum allowed by state law – for the first time.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson has said he intends to fill out the commission to nine members, and two recent appointees were unanimously recommended for confirmation by a city committee Sept. 9.
Commissioners are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the full Common Council.
Ruben Burgos, a retired 30-year veteran of the Milwaukee Police Department and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Gerard Washington, a former 25-year veteran of the Milwaukee Fire Department who is now the fire chief in Menomonee Falls, have confirmation hearings scheduled with the council Sept. 20.
Despite that maximum, the Fire and Police Commission – one of the oldest and most powerful civilian oversight boards of police and fire departments in the county – has typically had seven members.
If Burgos and Washington are confirmed, it would still be the first time the Fire and Police Commission has had more than seven members at once.
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2022-09-16T03:32:02Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Joan Kessler resigns from Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/15/joan-kessler-resigns-milwaukee-fire-and-police-commission/10392160002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/09/15/joan-kessler-resigns-milwaukee-fire-and-police-commission/10392160002/
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A public river walk coming to Milwaukee's Harbor District now includes a larger outdoor plaza and a higher cost
A public river walk coming to Milwaukee's Harbor District now includes a larger outdoor plaza than initially planned — and a higher cost.
The walkway will run from the end of East Greenfield Avenue up the harbor front and Kinnickinnic River to South Kinnickinnic Avenue. That's next to Komatsu Mining Corp.'s new offices and factory.
The city typically pays around 70% of a river walk's costs, with the rest paid by the adjacent property owner. The public funds for this segment will come largely from property tax revenue generated by the Komatsu development.
The river walk cost was initially estimated at $11.4 million. That's increased to $14.5 million because of some additional items, including a building with restrooms on that outdoor plaza.
That's according to information presented Thursday to the city Redevelopment Authority board.
Harbor View Plaza expansion to feature more amenities
The building planned for the plaza could include space to sell food items, said Tom Rogers, urban design and waterfront studio leader at SmithGroup, a design firm hired by the authority to create plans for the river walk.
"We're really excited about this as a space," Smith told board members.
It will greatly expand Harbor View Plaza, a public space at the end of Greenfield Avenue, with room for up to 150 people, he said.
The new plaza will provide a better connection to Harbor View Plaza's kayak dock, while also adding a dock for boats, including those offering lake and harbor tours.
The plaza also will feature a deck that extends over the water and places to sit.
River walk to include a pedestrian bridge
Other new features for the river walk include a pedestrian bridge in an area dubbed The Node, where the dock wall will be removed to allow the river to create a natural inlet.
The Node will have native plantings, fish and wildlife habitats and a fully accessible way for people to touch the water.
The 3,400-foot walkway also will feature additional fish and wildlife habitats and 250 newly planted trees — creating a park-like atmosphere.
Construction is to begin around April, and will take about a year to complete, said Adam Hammen, a SmithGroup engineer.
The authority board voted unanimously to approve a change in the contract with SmithGroup to increase its fee by $382,000 to cover the additional work added with the plaza's building, The Node's bridge and other new features.
Those new features were added in part as a reaction to feedback from Harbor District residents and other members of the public, Rogers said.
Board members praised the revised plan.
"The design looks great," said board member Bill Schwartz.
It is among five public Harbor District walkways that are to be built over roughly the next two years on the Milwaukee and Kinnickinnic rivers and the harbor itself.
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2022-09-16T13:54:40Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Milwaukee Harbor District walkway includes larger plaza, higher cost
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/16/milwaukee-harbor-district-walkway-includes-larger-plaza-higher-cost/10390488002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2022/09/16/milwaukee-harbor-district-walkway-includes-larger-plaza-higher-cost/10390488002/
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Here's how a $7.5M Wells Fargo grant will help families of color find affordable homes in Milwaukee
Talis Shelbourne La Risa R. Lynch
The house in the 1100th block of West Chambers was a little run down, but as soon as Rae Johnson saw it, she knew it would make the perfect home for her and son, Elijah.
“I’m the first homeowner in my family. It’s fantastic,” said Johnson, 37, said. “My grandmother is 77 and does not own a home.”
She credits participating in a homebuyers’ program with Acts Housing in 2019 for preparing her to purchase her home, a Milwaukee-style bungalow in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood.
The counseling she received helped her pay down her college debt, making her eligible for a mortgage, which she said is less than the $650 she paid for a tiny two-bedroom apartment on the city’s south side.
“I feel so proud and humbled,” she said. "It’s really life-changing. The day we close I don’t want to ever forget. I don’t want him to forget that day.”
Like so many, Johnson thought homeownership was not an option for her. But she wants everyone to know help is available.
With a $7.5 million grant from Wells Fargo Bank, more prospective buyers like Johnson can become first-time homeowners.
Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and officials from Wells Fargo announced the grant Wednesday.
More:ACTS Housing is launching an acquisition fund to combat investor landlord purchases in Milwaukee
More:Despite $37M spent on homeownership programs, Black and Hispanic homeowner rates remain low, report says
The money is part of Wells Fargo's Wealth Opportunity Restored Through Homeownership (WORTH) initiative. Wells Fargo has committed $60 million nationally through the initiative to address systemic barriers to homeownership for people of color. Milwaukee is the second of eight markets across the country to receive the WORTH grant. The first was Houston.
The first $2 million of the WORTH grant will help the Community Development Association to capitalize a housing acquisition fund, in conjunction with ACTS Housing, a nonprofit focused on increasing racially equitable homeownership. The fund will be used to purchase homes and resell them at affordable prices to city residents. The goal is to raise $10 million toward that fund.
RELATED:Milwaukee faces an affordable housing crisis and a racial gap in ownership. These influential groups are working to change that.
The announcement brings the CDA closer to its goal of raising more than $130 million over the next decade for the development and preservation of affordable housing for renters and homeowners.
The effort aims to level the playing field for Black and Latino homebuyers who lose out to out-of-state investors on a chance to own a home, said Teig Whaley-Smith, the Community Development Alliance’s chief alliance executive.
“Right now, we are losing 1,000 homeowners of color every year because of predatory acquisition with outside homeowners coming in and buying up the inventory of single-family homes and turning them into rentals,” Whaley-Smith said.
That coupled with systemic patterns of discrimination has disenfranchised homeownership among people of color. Milwaukee, he said, has the second worst Black homeownership rate in the country. White homeownership in Milwaukee is at about 56%, Latino homeownership is at 38% compared to Black homeownership at 27%, according to U.S. Census data.
“To reach racial equity in Milwaukee, we need to hit 32,000 new Black and Latino homeowners,” Whaley-Smith said. “These problems are centuries in the making. There was a time in our city’s, state’s and country’s history where people of color couldn’t own property up until the 1960s where you could legally restrict properties.”
The CDA's goal is to create 5,000 new homeowners of color by the end of 2025, instead of losing 1,000 homeowners each year, Whaley-Smith said.
“We think there are 17,000 Black and Latino homeowners ready right now to buy a home that is $125,000 or less,” Whaley-Smith said. “But there are only 1,500 of those properties available every year and 40 percent of those are being purchased by investors.”
CDA will also use the $3 million of the grant to help with down payment assistance and scale homebuyer counseling programs. The remainder, Whaley-Smith said, will help create other innovative housing strategies, including turning vacant lots into entry-level homes and expanding partnerships to implement the city's affordable housing plan. The alliance has nearly 100 stakeholders to bridge the city’s homeownership gap among people of color.
Johnson called the grant a unique opportunity to find solutions to housing insecurity – something he has experienced.
“Growing up in Milwaukee, I went to six different elementary schools, plucked out of classrooms midway through the year because of housing insecurity. We moved around so many times,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the grant represented a step forward in “combating racial disparities that are holding back entire generations of Milwaukeeans becoming homeowners.”
RELATED:Milwaukee received $44 million in federal funds for affordable housing. Here's how the city plans to spend it.
“We must do all we can to reverse the trend of segregated communities right here in our own backyard,” Crowley said.
A July report from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Development determined Milwaukee had the second-lowest Black homeownership rate (27.2%) among the nation’s largest metropolitan areas last year.
The current gap in homeownership is often blamed on a confluence of factors, including a history of racially restrictive covenants that prevented Black residents from purchasing in certain areas, the disproportionate number of Black residents hurt by the Great Recession and a lack of generational wealth and high incomes.
This initiative begins to address that history not only with strategies but with dollars, Crowley said.
The groundwork the city of Milwaukee, the alliance and its partners are doing to address the Black homeownership gap aligns with Wells Fargo’s mission to create 40,000 new homeowners of color by the end of 2025.
"They really have an in-depth understanding of what some of the challenges are historically and presently that contribute to the racial homeownership gap,” said Wesley Brooks, Wells Fargo’s homeownership lead for housing affordability philanthropy. “We are really confident that they are the right investment for us to really make a difference in that.”
Historically, the middle class has been built off homeownership in this country, he said. Government initiatives after World War I and II like the New Deal and the GI Bill helped propel this country’s middle class.
“Black families were wholesale left out of that growth,” Brooks said, noting that race played a role in that. Even today, Blacks who have achieved the American Dream still see with their wealth depleted by bad home appraisals or predatory lending.
“The solution has to be race-based,” he said. “By saying this is for households of color, we’re going to address the racial homeownership gap. We are being very intentional about it."
Nationally, Black Americans have been hit hardest by skyrocketing housing prices prompted by the pandemic, according to research from the National Association of Realtors.
Deatra Kemp, of Acts Housing, believes homeownership is attainable. Many can afford a mortgage for less than what they pay in rent. The average mortgage payment for families going through Acts program is $868.
“There are too many dreams deferred in our community because of a lack of financial stability that comes with homeownership,” said Kemp, the organization’s vice president of programs. “We don’t have the collateral. We don’t have the assets to start our own business, or to send our babies to those schools or programs that they want to go to because we are not owners.
"We are generational renters. The system is broken. The system did that to us.”
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2022-09-16T13:54:52Z
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www.jsonline.com
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How a grant helps people of color find affordable homes in Milwaukee
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/16/how-grant-helps-people-color-find-affordable-homes-milwaukee/10370093002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2022/09/16/how-grant-helps-people-color-find-affordable-homes-milwaukee/10370093002/
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Lake Country Fire & Rescue asks municipalities to help address staffing shortages
Lake Country Fire & Rescue is asking the seven communities it covers to consider going to referendum or implementing a fire fee to fund a phased-in approach over the next four years to address severe staffing issues.
If that sounds familiar, it's because the Western Lakes Fire District has been grappling with the same problem in communities to the west of LCFR.
LCFR's move comes as a national crises plagues fire departments struggling to keep up with a failing staffing model alongside increased call volume. For LCFR, a decline in staff and increased number of calls has led to a 28% increase in response times, from 8:04 in 2021 to 10:23 so far in 2022.
That's why LCFR Chief Matthew Fennig asked the LCFR Fire Board on Sept. 8 for the addition of 23 new positions spread out over the next four years. The breakdown looks like seven additional firefighter and medics for 2023, seven more positions in 2024, six in 2025 and three in 2026.
In total after four years, the LCFR budget would increase by $3.357 million, or an average increase of about $840,000 to the LCFR budget for staffing. The 2022 operating budget for LCFR is $2.52 million.
“As word is getting out, people understand the concern and understand the need,” Fennig said. “What it comes down to is ways to fund this process, and the nice part is, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. One community can fund it one way and another can do another way.”
More:Greenfield and West Allis are looking into a plan that would combine the cities' fire departments
Fennig had presented an all-in approach previously to the fire board; however, that was met with “too much, too fast” responses from board members. That is why the department settled on a phased-in approach.
On Sept. 8, the Fire Board approved two budgets for the department. One included meeting the funding needs for the first seven positions for 2023, and the other is a needs-based budget that adds headcount to the system but not necessarily the funds. Both depend on how discussions and actions go in municipalities.
The decision now goes to each municipality to determine if and how they choose to fund the staffing increases. LCFR covers the city of Delafield, town of Delafield, town of Genesee, village of Chenequa, village of Nashotah, village of Oconomowoc Lake and village of Wales.
Options presented to municipalities
Fennig said there are three options: going to referendum to raise the levy limit, a fire fee that would act like a garbage collection fee — which would not need voter approval — and exceeding the levy limit and not taking state aid. The third option is based on the levy limit law laid out by the Department of Revenue that says the penalty for exceeding a levy limit is a loss of state shared revenue. This is a dollar for dollar penalty, so if a municipality exceeds its levy limit by $1,000, its state-shared revenue payment is reduced by $1,000.
The third option is not one Fennig is recommending but technically is an option.
The more popular options — a fire fee or referendum — would also have to be revisited annually to approve each additional year's staffing increases.
As budget season begins for 2023, each municipality is now considering the three options and will act separately on the approach that works best for them.
A community could also choose to do nothing, but Fennig warned that keeping the status quo does not mean the quality of services the department provides will be maintained.
"Doing nothing makes the stations and the department worse. The concern and focus right now is taking some sort of step for next year to bridge the gap while we work on a long-term solution.”
Why the ask
Like many rural departments, recruitment and retention are major issues for LCFR. The department currently has 30 full-time employees, including battalion chiefs, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and interns, as well as 10 part-time staff members that include interns, firefighters and EMTs, and 12 paid-on-call personnel.
But those numbers are constantly changing and include vacancies. Since Jan. 1, 2020, LCFR has lost 49 staff members and hired only 19. Shortages in staffing have led to the department "browning out," or closing, a station multiple times in a month. In July and August, the city of Delafield station was closed 25 days because LCFR only had eight daily staff members across all stations.
Staff burnout is also a concern. At a recent fire board meeting, Fennig detailed that in a single week in July, one firefighter worked more than 100 hours.
“This is something that needs to be addressed and needs a solution,” Fennig said. “We’ve been relying for so long on a low-cost model, and it’s not working anymore. I don’t think we can continue on another year like this. Not doing anything is not a viable option.”
What's happens next
Each municipality is considering its options and holding individual meetings with LCFR. The meetings are open to the public, and Fennig said additional listening sessions will be offered to the community. Information is also available at www.lakecountryfire.com/staffing.
The Western Lakes Fire District went to referendum in August in all seven of the municipalities it covers. The district sought to nearly double its budget with the referendum, which failed in five of seven municipalities, leaving the district and its fire board scrambling to figure out how to move forward.
Fennig said he monitored the Western Lakes situation closely as he created his plan. Watching his department, theirs and many others around the state struggle to staff, he called on state legislators to step in.
"This starts at the state level with the state Legislature to address these problems," he said. "When you’re trying to take a low-cost model such as paid-on-call and cover that with a paid model, it’s expensive and hard to do. We need help from the state level.
"Most would consider police and fire service a basic government service. When you call 9-1-1, you have the general expectation that someone is coming in a timely manner and that is in jeopardy right now. We need help."
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2022-09-16T17:22:42Z
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www.jsonline.com
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Lake Country Fire & Rescue seeks help to address staffing shortages
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/16/lake-country-fire-rescue-seeks-help-address-staffing-shortages/10377887002/
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https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/2022/09/16/lake-country-fire-rescue-seeks-help-address-staffing-shortages/10377887002/
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