Curb: Fusion

CURB VINTAGE VETERAN Curates community

CUTTING EDGE

Barbershop bridges divides ALL GOOD

CUTTING EDGE Barbershop bridges divides

Curate community

WHEY FORWARD Waste to wonder

FUSIO N PROST! Celebrate heritage

2023

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®

The Wisconsin Alumni Association ON, is a special BADGER ON, LEARN DISCOVER ON, community that keeps alumni connected to the UW ACHIEVE ON, CHEER ON, SUPPORT ON, and to each other through spirited celebrations, informative and entertaining programs, and much CELEBRATE ON, ON, CONNECT more. This is where BadgersTRAVEL belong.

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CURB: FUSION 2023

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CATALYZE Embrace the change

It’s all good Harvest the sun The sounds of Wisconsin Sip on sustainability Q&A with Garth Beyer Bronzeville bounces back

6 8 12 14 17 18

CULTIVATE Celebrate the past

Sanctuary in the city Sovereignty and synergy Mind over matter Beyond the bar Down to earth Set in stone Prost to Wisconsin

20 23 26 28 29 32 36

CONNECT Unite as one

Buzzer-beater Home away from home Lead the way out Connect the unconnected Stand in solidarity Front of house

42 46 48 50 53 56

On the cover: Ali Acevedo is a vintage reseller in West Allis.

He owns and operates All Goods.

On this page: Each Curb staffer selected an item to represent their stories and placed it in a kaleidoscope — melding together each voice in Curb: Fusion.

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Dear readers, The state of Wisconsin is regularly explored through a black and white lens; liberals versus conservatives, the heartland versus the city and innovation versus tradition.

However, the most impactful stories come from the fusions found across our state, its people and their ideas.

Nearly 6 million people call Wisconsin home — molding together a rich, diverse culture and environment that cultivates both innovation and progress. Sometimes we come together and collaborate; other times we collide and clash.

Some partnerships and collaborations are synergetic. They provoke innovation, growth and development anchored in our state’s progressive spirit. Other fusions across our state come at a cost. Often, involuntary and coercive encounters expose longstanding injustices and inequities in Wisconsin’s social fabric.

But there is much to be learned from these interactions and how they propel our state and its people forward.

Many of us have grown up in a cultural, social and political landscape where our leaders, mentors and elders have told us our state and world have never been so divided, so broken, so antagonistic. Curb: Fusion does not ignore these fissions.

Instead, we highlight this richness in perspective and what can happen when we come together.

We invite you to celebrate and scrutinize the diversity in experience found across our state. This issue of Curb finds unity in the shared and differing experiences of Wisconsinites, examining not how our differences divide us, but create the energy to fuse our path forward.

Onward and upward,

Sophia Vento Editor In Chief

Editorial Sophia Vento, Editor in chief Abigail Leavins, Managing editor Jane Houseal, Lead writer Omar Waheed, Lead writer Ava Wojnowski, Lead writer Rachel Hale, Copy editor Isabella Ruder, Copy editor Sara Stanislawski, Copy editor

Business Emma Goshin, Marketing director Isabel Fernandez, PR director Katherine Reed, Events director Eric Herbst, Marketing representative Alison Stecker, Marketing representative Taylor Smith, Engagement director

Design Yifan Cui, Art director Natalie Pricer, Production editor Claire Biegalski, Production associate Nicole Cederberg, Production associate Rachel Schultz, Production associate Hannah Ritvo, Photo editor

Online

There’s more to read!

Visit us at curbonline.com

Emma Conway, Online editor Maria Brunetta, Online associate Meisi Li, Online associate Wanruo Zhao, Online associate Alexis Bakken, Multimedia producer

Curb is published through generous alumni donations administered by the UW Foundation and in partnership with Royle Printing in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. © Copyright 2023 Curb Magazine

Stacy Forster, Publisher Unless otherwise noted, all photos are attributed to Hannah Ritvo

CURB: FUSION’S

FAVORITES

BY SOPHIA VENTO

VISIT

Villa Decorative Arts Museum

villaterrace.org

This Mediterranean home tucked on the urban bluffs of Lake Michigan on Milwaukee’s east side boasts local, regional, and international visual and decorative arts collections, as well as a sprawling garden and curated courtyard.

LISTEN 33 ‘GOD’

Wherever you get your music Bon Iver is an indie folk band founded by Eau Claire native Justin Vernon. This track is exemplary of the fusions found across the band’s discography, blending folk, gospel and electronic with both acoustic and electric instrumentation.

WATCH The Go-Go’s

Available to rent on Amazon Prime An in-depth documentary that dives into the trials and tribulations of one the most successful all-female rock bands, harmonizing candid interviews with archival footage. Oconomowoc native and co-founder of the band, Jane Wiedlin, along with her four bandmates, are spotlighted in this sincere and spunky film.

READ

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

Wherever you get your books

This novel weaves together the experiences of three Black Americans’ moves to Northern cities, including Milwaukee, from the South.

Author Isabel Wilkerson ties together the migration stories into a compelling, poignant narrative of the Great Migration.

3

ADVENTURE AWAITS

BY JANE HOUSEAL

Take this quiz to find out which Wisconsin museum is calling your name

1. What is your favorite memory from grade school?

A. Collecting and trading whatever niche toy was trending at the time.

B. Running around and playing tag with all my friends at recess.

C. Geeking out on history books in the library.

BY CLAIRE BIEGALSKI

2. Where are you making a dinner reservation?

A. A new, kitschy

restaurant that used to be a home.

B. I am showing off my

grilling skills at my place.

MOM’S HEARTHSTONE SOUP

C. Wherever, as long as I can see the lake from where I’m eating.

From the meats, vegetables and spices to the loving hands that fill your bowl, this soup embodies a rich blend of ingredients and family connections.

3. If you’re not responding to texts, it is probably because you’re...

A. Digging through a local antique store to find new, quirky home decor.

B. Taking a joy ride and listening to my favorite album on full blast.

C. Learning something new! I always have my nose in a book.

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4. How would you describe your personal style?

A. Eclectic yet

comfortable, I am always making DIYs with my clothes.

B. Casual and cool, I

throw on a statement piece with a trusty pair of jeans.

C. It’s always

changing! I dress differently depending on my mood that day.

5. Your friends would probably describe you as...

A. Genuine

B. Adventurous

C. Curious

If you got mostly As: National Mustard Museum

Stop in to enjoy an overflowing collection of mustard memorabilia. mustardmuseum.com

If you got mostly Bs: Harley-Davidson Museum

Gear up to explore the lifestyle surrounding the motorcycle community. harley-davidson.com/us/en/museum.html

If you got mostly Cs: Wisconsin Maritime Museum

Visit the Wisconsin Maritime Museum to dive deep into maritime history. wisconsinmaritime.org

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Serves 8

1 hour and 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS 1.5 pounds ground venison* 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 medium onion, chopped 1 cup celery, chopped 1 cup carrots, chopped 1 cup zucchini, diced 1 cup mushrooms, sliced 1 cup green beans 1 cup small soup noodles 16 ounces diced tomatoes, drained 16 ounces bag of shredded cabbage 16 ounces white beans 2 6-ounce cans of tomato paste 4 beef bullion cubes 1/4 cup olive oil 8 cups water 3 teaspoons salt Pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS In a large pot, brown the venison, onion, celery and garlic in oil. Add water, beef broth and all other ingredients except white beans and small soup noodles.

Simmer for one hour. Add white beans and small soup noodles. Cook for 20 minutes and serve. *Can substitute or exclude meat

BOOK TALK TikTok videos that review books may not be the best way to find the most critically acclaimed novels, but they are certainly worth checking out. Viral videos can send writers into fame. So what’s next for BookTok? We think these Wisconsin authors could have the next viral hit.

“Shotgun Lovesongs” by Nickolas Butler Butler, who lives in Eau Claire, published “Shotgun Lovesongs” in 2014. The novel follows four friends, all raised in the same Wisconsin town, who come back home and are confronted with how much has changed. A story about friendship, conflict and healing, “Shotgun Lovesongs” asks “the age-old question of whether or not you can ever truly come home again,” according to its description.

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“Homeland Elegies” by Ayad Akhtar Akhtar is the son of Pakistani immigrants who grew up in the Milwaukee suburb of Elm Grove. His book “Homeland Elegies” follows an immigrant family living in the United States and grappling with the impact of the India-Pakistan partition and the Sept. 11 attacks.

FUSION FOOD FIND In the heart of America’s Dairyland lies an exciting world of fusion food.

Wisconsin’s culinary landscape is dynamic and ever-evolving.

— By Emma Goshin

MIX AND MATCH Wisconsin is filled with many unique things to do, eat and see, especially if you want to do it in one day. Here is Curb’s recommendation to mix and match your ideal day in the La Crosse area.

Rudy’s Drive-In Restaurant A classic American drive-in known for its burgers, hot dogs, root beer and roller-skating carhops.

Grub Fusion Diner 100 E. Menomonie St., Elk Mound, Nestled in the heart of Elk Mound, near Eau Claire in western Wisconsin, you’ll uncover a familyfriendly diner serving a fusion of American cuisine with an Asian twist. Grub Fusion Diner is owned

by Elk Mound native Ge Yang, who returned to his hometown 20 years after leaving to bring a blend of culinary traditions to the community. The menu showcases timeless favorites from both culinary worlds, delivering a diverse range of tastes and plates to Wisconsinites.

Visit curbonline.com to learn more.

— By Alison Stecker

Grandad Bluff With a beautiful view at any time of the year, the top of Grandad Bluff is a must see.

Relic Road Junk & Vintage One man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Full of unexpected finds, Relic Road Junk & Vintage offers a wide array of antique and vintage “junk.”

— By Taylor Smith

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IT’S ALL GOOD

Vintage veteran redefines Milwaukee resale community

BY TAYLOR SMITH

A

rainbow of graphic T-shirts. A rack of 1990s-style crewneck sweaters and windbreaker jackets from the early 2000s. Walls lined with authentic snapbacks and just about every color of Air Jordans one could imagine.

It’s easy to see why the vintage store where you can find these items — and more — is called “All Goods.”

Ali Acevedo is the curator behind this accumulation of gems, tucked away on a side street of downtown West Allis in suburban Milwaukee. Buying and reselling items have been a part of Acevedo’s life for more than 20 years.

“I was working at U.S. Bank for seven years, then I left that bank because I wanted to fulltime resell,” says Acevedo, a Milwaukee native and well-known leader in the Wisconsin vintage community. “I would be at work and I would get a sale for like $100, just selling something random on eBay. And I was like, ‘Well, what if I did this full time,’ and then I mentally checked out of work.”

The reselling of vintage clothing and accessories has become increasingly popular in recent years, and more secondhand stores are popping up as sustainability becomes a priority for many shoppers. Acevedo and All Goods stand out from the others. With groundbreaking events and strong values, he is not only reinventing what it means to sell vintage wear but creating a unique network of resellers across Milwaukee in the process.

Cultivating community Each summer, shoppers come to West Allis to experience All Goods’ biggest event of the year, All Goods Fest. The event, which was held for the third time this past July, features more than 60 vendors specializing in vintage wear and sneakers.

“We’re already planning,” Acevedo says. “As

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soon as this last one was over, I already in my mind had a plan for next year.”

Though All Goods is the namesake of the event, a variety of vintage sellers from across the region are given a platform to showcase and sell their collections. Vendors come together to support one another in a way that might not be possible without All Goods Fest.

“I’m going to be supportive of everybody, allow them to come in and do events with me,” Acevedo says. “We all can win off of that.”

Acevedo finds that resellers can benefit and learn from one another. Sure, a lot of resellers are competing for the same product and

customers, but at the end of the day, a positive relationship with one another is important.

The vintage veteran finds it crucial to welcome in and support new resellers as well.

Acevedo says he was once that “new guy,” so he encourages those new to the business, allowing him to forge a deeper connection with fellow resellers.

Paige Riese is one of those resellers. She owns Paige Hearts U, an online vintage shop that specializes in clothing from the 1940s through the 1990s. Riese and her partner do a combined booth at All Goods Fest and have known Acevedo for a few years.

Perfectly placed Nike sneakers sit along a wall at the back of All Goods, a vintage and streetwear store in West Allis, owned by Ali Acevedo.

She speaks highly of the vintage community in Milwaukee.

“It feels less competitive when you start to get to know everyone and you can show each other what you find,” Riese says. “Everyone’s really kind.”

Not only has Acevedo created a family of Wisconsin vintage sellers but a community of support for his business as well.

“Through the marketing of social media and other things like that, I’ve been able to draw customers in over here,” Acevedo says.

“It draws people in from all parts of Wisconsin to come here, and from other states and other cities.”

However, with more than 15,000 followers on Instagram, Acevedo has curated a unique target market for All Goods that spans well outside of the Milwaukee area, with customers even coming from Japan.

Once he’s drawn customers into West Allis, Acevedo recommends local restaurants and businesses, as he enjoys seeing his neighbors succeed.

Pushing forward Owning a business is not without its hardships. Acevedo says there are challenges that arise each day, both big and small. One of the most difficult times of his reselling career came just days before All Goods Fest this past July, when he lost a close family member.

Without allowing time for emotion or grief, the event went on as planned. It wasn’t an easy decision for Acevedo and his family.

“We still don’t even know how we did it,” Acevedo says. “But we pushed through it.”

He also credits the family member’s love for All Goods Fest, which allowed him to go on with the event.

“We wanted to just continue that because she came to every single one,” Acevedo says.

Building a future “What comes next?” is a loaded yet exciting question for Acevedo and his business.

It’s no secret All Goods is already ahead of the game, and it doesn’t look as though Acevedo is ready to stop any time soon.

“Ali has so many huge goals and things that he wants to do,” says Alma Acevedo, his wife. “He’s always staying on top of things.”

Acevedo has his eye on expanding the online store, continuing to develop the social media presence of the business and breaking into the world of designing clothes himself.

Acevedo describes himself as an entrepreneur who is always looking for ways to grow and expand. He has already collaborated with UW–Milwaukee and Marquette University to create vintage-style campus wear, and he has more partnerships on the way.

He also hopes that one day his two daughters can take over the business and make it their own. Acevedo’s oldest daughter, 14, already helps out around the store.

“My daughters definitely inspire me to be a better business person and make sure that my reputation is good, and make sure that I’m doing good business, because that’s important,” he says. “I think what I’m building here, hopefully one day, some aspect of this business they can benefit from or take over.”

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Ali Acevedo combs through a rack of carefully curated vintage T-shirts at his store, All Goods, in West Allis. Acevedo has run the store since November 2019.

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Before moving to another field to harvest additional acres of soy beans, Larry Nelson (right) discusses what must be moved with his brother Scott.

8

HARVEST THE SUN

Fourth-generation farmer embraces change for his family, farm and the future

BY EMMA CONWAY

Farming’s decline Family farms continue decreasing nationwide. In the past two decades, the U.S. has lost 11 million acres of farmland due to development and increasing land rates.

Young people aren’t easing the situation either. The next generation of farmers is leaving rural communities and opting for

other jobs, making the average Wisconsin farmer 58 years old.

At 58 himself, Nelson faced a similar dilemma: two kids disinterested in farming with semi-retirement fast approaching.

Nelson viewed solar as a path forward.

“It’s a new way of farming to assist farms and make them more stable,” Nelson says.

“For us … it’s a way to keep the family farm in the family.”

Solar skeptics Nelson wasn’t all in from the get-go — first, he was skeptical. But Invenergy debunked common misconceptions.

While many people believe solar only produces energy when the sun is shining, solar energy can be leveraged in many conditions, performing best in sunny, cold climates. This takes a majority of weather’s unpredictability out of farming, allowing farmers like Nelson to rely on the sun’s rays as a sustainable income source.

Johnson says Invenergy often receives questions about solar panels altering the topography, too. Community concerns surrounding the sight, height and sound of solar panels prevail, but Johnson says, “Solar is a good, quiet neighbor.”

Vegetative buffers and fences can also make panels less visible.

These solutions gave Nelson what he needed to commit. Still, Nelson acknowledges the project faced pushback within the community, where locals feared tax revenue loss and voiced land preservation concerns.

Nevertheless, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission approved the High Noon Solar Project in May with a 2-1 vote. Once completed, the project will provide enough

clean energy for 58,000 typical homes, create more than 600 construction jobs in the wake of the county’s coal plant shutting down in 2026, and invest $239 million in tax revenues, landowner payments and worker benefits, according to Johnson.

Including Nelson, 30 landowners in Columbia County are currently leasing portions of their property for the project.

“People always fight change,” Nelson says. “But this is our choice; this works for our family.”

Even former generations of Nelsons support the change. Nelson’s mom, Norma Nelson, has watched the farm evolve from cattle to grain and now solar.

“Everything seems to be being pulled in that direction,” she says. “We want clean energy.”

Farming during a climate crisis Beyond their immediate family’s choice, Larry Nelson sees solar as the path forward for farmers adjusting to climate change.

Wisconsin has faced a “weather whiplash” this year, according to Wisconsin State Climatologist Steve Vavrus, with the wettest start to a calendar year, followed by one of the driest periods on record.

To reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, Vavrus says we must mitigate and adapt to climate change in unprecedented ways. One way is by embracing renewable energy sources like solar power.

Although the swaps will reduce carbon emissions, Vavrus says “a change of that scale can’t be seamless.” Climate-friendly transitions within a farming community can lead to finger-pointing, where politicians and farmers often become a scapegoat. Nevertheless, Vavrus views the farm-

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O

ff a paved road about 40 minutes northwest of Madison, there’s a tract of farmland the Nelson family has farmed since 1894.

In the 1950s, it was a dairy farm with one main barn. A decade later, the Nelsons added three large silos, built new outdoor shelters and raised cattle. In the 1980s, expansion began with the now grain farm reaching 2,000 acres at its peak. Today, the farm sits at about 1,400 acres.

Now the family has selected its next main crop: solar energy.

As family farms shrink, solar skeptics grow and the effects of climate change emerge, fourth-generation farmer Larry Nelson decided after 129 years to switch to solar and promote the state’s green efforts.

With initial construction set to begin in 2024 and a completion goal of December 2026, the High Noon Solar Project in south central Wisconsin is one of the largest solar projects approved in state history, according to Cooper Johnson, the renewable energy director at Invenergy.

Nelson’s commitment to the High Noon Solar Project didn’t come easy, however.

While the utility-scale project faced pushback within his community, Nelson has emerged as a central figure fusing farming and solar together — all while fighting for his family, farm and future.

9

ing community as potential cultivators.

“Farmers are a big part of the land solution … both in terms of reducing carbon emissions in the first place and improving land management practices that benefit them and the rest of us,” Vavrus says.

Pioneers in farming When changes to our climate can feel catastrophic, farmers like Nelson provide hope.

In Wisconsin alone, Invenergy has two renewable energy projects in operation, four in construction and two contracted, with three being solar focused. Once completed, these projects will provide Wisconsinites with more than 1,000 jobs and add $4 million in local taxes.

These projects would not be possible without community support. Throughout the High Noon Solar Project, Nelson has remained an advocate, according to Johnson.

“It’s hard being a farmer, and I’ve learned a

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lot from Larry specifically about what’s happening locally in Columbia County,” Johnson says.

Challenges aside, Nelson sees solar as farming’s future.

“We are pioneers in farming now, in making this transition,” Nelson says. “I think it’s a golden opportunity for a farmer.”

When looking back on his family’s history of adaptation, Nelson sees solar as something greater than himself. On an external level, converting from grain farming to solar reduces carbon emissions, which will contribute to the globe’s net zero goal by 2050.

On a personal level, the change allows Nelson to keep the farm in the family for future generations and eases him into semi-retirement come 2026. This new chapter of the family farm considers not only the Nelson family’s legacy but the industry’s path moving forward — a path where Nelson says, “Solar is here to stay.”

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During harvest season, Scott (right) and Larry Nelson’s combines are essential for operations and require special care on the family’s grain farm.

STEAL THE SHOW Performers explore identity through the art of drag

BY KATHERINE REED

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Malaiya Marvel performs at FIVE Nightclub, located in Madison. She sports many colorful costumes.

“I had to learn that it’s not just about physicality — it’s about emotion,” Winfrey says. “It’s about femininity. It’s about knowing yourself. It’s about actually invoking what it is you’re trying to display.”

Looking forward to the future, Winfrey’s goal remains unwavering — to inspire with his art. He wants to bridge the gap in representation he’s observed in the world of drag, making room for new and innovative ideas.

“I want to inspire that next person who comes after me, who’s a million times better than me, to feel like they can reach for the stars,” he says.

On a different night at FIVE Nightclub, it’s Dee Dee Purr who captures the audience’s attention.

With a stage presence as distinct as Malaiya’s, Dee Dee boasts a repertoire of performances that range from funny to dazzling to, in her own words, “concerning.”

“Whatever I’m doing is to make sure that the audience is having fun,” she says.

“That’s what drag is.”

Drag for Dee Dee is a means of breaking boundaries, defying societal norms and

embracing the spectrum of human experience. It’s about pushing the envelope of creativity, sparking conversations about the art of self-expression and inspiring others to be unapologetically themselves.

Out of drag, Dee Dee is Bryce Wilson, a 30-year-old from Whitewater, a city in southeastern Wisconsin.

“Drag has really helped in my mental health by allowing me to express myself,” they say.

Wilson’s journey is a striking example of how the power of drag extends far beyond the stage.

“We’re just trying to promote love,” Wilson says. “We’re trying to promote acceptance.”

One thing that becomes abundantly clear about drag is that it’s not just about the art — it’s about the assertion of identity. Drag queens challenge the status quo and redefine what it means to be human in a world where the lines of gender and identity blur.

Whether it’s the hilarious Dee Dee Purr or the enchanting Malaiya Marvel, drag queens are artists whose canvases are as diverse as the spectrum of humanity.

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ou hear it before you see it — the unmistakable thumping of bass and the rhythmic melody that make hearts race and feet move.

Welcome to FIVE Nightclub in Madison, a place where the ordinary fades into the background, and the extraordinary takes center stage.

Here, drag is more than a show. It’s an art that allows the legacy of drag to flourish, serving as a powerful symbol of empowerment and pride.

Beneath the extravagant wigs, rhinestones and feathers, drag emerges as an art form that transcends limitations. From its roots in ancient theater and folkloric festivals to its evolution into a vibrant LGBTQ+ subculture, drag has always been about breaking barriers and combining the expression of one’s identity with performance art.

Every layer of glitter that’s peeled away reveals two artists who not only give dazzling performances but also work to pave the way for a new era of empowerment and progress.

A regular at FIVE, drag queen Malaiya Marvel is a fan favorite in the Madison drag scene.

Behind Malaiya’s makeup, body padding and colorful wigs is Devon Winfrey.

Winfrey’s transformation into the dazzling figure who commands the stage today is a testament to the power of drag as an art form that transcends entertainment.

Winfrey’s journey wasn’t easy, though.

“I never really wanted to be in tune with my femininity,” Winfrey says. “I was, for lack of better words, a mess. I just felt like I had internalized a lot of homophobia.”

With a background in gymnastics, it wasn’t the intricate performances he struggled with.

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THE SOUNDS OF WISCONSIN Five genre-defying musicians based in Wisconsin

BY KATHERINE REED Within the heart of a state known for its rich musical tapestry, these Wisconsin musicians fearlessly transcend conventional boundaries, crafting unique sounds that challenge and redefine traditional genres.

SEASAW Seasaw is a Madison-based indie pop rock duo consisting of Eve Wilczewski and Meg Golz. “We have some songs that are more pop-leaning and synth heavy, but we’ve also written a lot of songs that are just full-blown rock and roll chaos,” Golz says. Their unique blend of folk, pop, rock and synth elements creates a sound that’s both dreamy and evocative.

IMMORTAL GIRLFRIEND

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Immortal Girlfriend, consisting of Milwaukee-based brothers Kevin and William Bush, is an innovative alternative, electronic, retrofuture band and production duo. The brothers are best known for their distinct blend of synthwave, pop and R&B genres, creating dreamy electronic music with their signature intricate melodies and silky vocals.

CRYSTAL KNIVES Crystal Knives, the dynamic music project headed by Milwaukee-based producer Spencer Mutsch, is a captivating blend of electronic, pop and future bass styles.

With a knack for crafting innovative beats and melodies, Mutsch has garnered recognition for pushing the boundaries of electronic music.

J.P. Not many artists can sing as well as they can rap, but J.P., hailing from Milwaukee, is one of those exceptional talents whose multifaceted abilities defy musical boundaries. J.P., also known as Josiah Gillie, brings his diverse musical background, spanning rock, R&B, hiphop and country, to the forefront in his discography. Gillie is behind many viral sounds and videos on TikTok.

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FEED THE DOG

Hailing from Appleton, Feed the Dog is a dynamic and experimental jam-grass band formed in 2015. The lively four piece — composed of singer and violinist Tim McIlree, drummer Erik Juvonen, guitarist Jon Miller and bassist Nick Spielman — has a style that is a “unique blend of genres, including jam, bluegrass, soul, funk and Americana,” McIllree says. “[We have] different types of music getting melded together.”

SYNTHESIS OF ART AND SCIENCE Medical College of Wisconsin program connects the artist and the scientist

BY MEISI LI lay audiences to motivate them to learn more,” Li says.

Anomaly stumbled upon Project Wonder while trying to find a buyer in the medical field for “The Cell.”

Boyes saw the sculpture, and though they did not discuss a sale, he had the idea to connect the artist with Vera Tarakanova, a professor in the microbiology and immunology department at the college.

“Here’s a sculptor who’s already shown an affinity for sculpting, and here’s a researcher who is great with metaphors,” Boyes says about setting up a conversation between Anomaly and Tarakanova.

This was how Anomaly and Tarakanova began a collaboration to depict the Epstein-Barr virus — one of the most common viruses in humans.

“It wasn’t until I spoke with Dr. Tarakano-

va herself that I felt like I was moving leaps and bounds to understanding it at the level that I needed to,” Anomaly says. “She’s so kind and patient with my questions, and she’s a great teacher.”

The Epstein-Barr virus resides in approximately 95% of individuals, and it has the ability to establish a long-term refuge within specific cells of the human immune system that are known as B cells. However, for some, this seemingly dormant virus can cause serious health issues.

In Anomaly’s art, a Sasquatch symbolizing the Epstein-Barr virus occupies a glass house in the form of a memory B cell. The rusty nails representing its fur allude to the spike proteins on the virus’s surface.

The Sasquatch, initially appearing harmless, is shown to potentially inflict damage upon the glass house.

Wearing protective gear, Michelle Anomaly wields a torch in her studio as she assembles the “Oops!” sculpture, a collaborative creation with the Medical College of Wisconsin.

This in-progress art piece takes the form of a Sasquatch crafted from nails.

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D

uring the COVID-19 pandemic, Michelle Anomaly, a Wisconsin-based artist and the owner of Anomaly Sculptures, found herself frustrated with the forced disconnect between people. As a way of working through her emotions, Anomaly searched for a way to express them through art.

Anomaly found it in framing, roofing and finishing nails, which she turned into the spikes of a basketball-sized version of a coronavirus cell in a sculpture called “The Cell” in 2022.

“I had never thought of the medical field as being a client, but I really liked the idea because I’ve also always had a strong curiosity about how our bodies work,” Anomaly wrote in an email.

Anomaly didn’t realize that the chance encounter with scientific knowledge in “The Cell” would lead to more possibilities for her artwork to fuse with science through Project Wonder, an initiative of the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Launched in March 2022, Project Wonder unites medical researchers with local artists, reshaping the landscape of scientific discovery through creative expression.

Scientists, like artists, need to tap into immense creativity and think outside the box, says Alex Boyes, the senior creative consultant and project lead for Project Wonder at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Nan Li, an assistant professor in the life sciences communication department at UW–Madison, recognizes the importance of visuals in science communication.

“Seeing this science through the artistic eye will really give a fresh perspective to

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Bottles of Copper Crow spirits for sale line the wall upon entering the distillery.

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SIP ON SUSTAINABILITY The nation’s first Native American-owned distillery shakes up the spirits industry

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he cloud-coated sky melts into an ethereal mist rolling off the Lake Superior waters and hangs low over a coastal fishing town in northern Wisconsin. Nature seems to breathe deeply with the rhythmic lapping of waves and the ancestral whispers of the Red Cliff region.

On the northeast shoreline of what is now known as the Bayfield Peninsula, a small yet unique distillery is nestled among strong emerald pines and autumn-kissed sugar maple trees.

Outside, a couple sits at a picnic table sipping on apple brandy, eyes aglow from the twinkling fairy lights, warm spirits and friendly atmosphere. The soft hum of lively conversation and easy laughter fills the distillery inside. I lift my drink and sip slowly on strawberry basil-garnished gin, sharing in high spirits and smiles.

Past Bayfield, Wisconsin’s smallest yet enchanting city, the Copper Crow Distillery on the Red Cliff Reservation stands at the intersection of cutting-edge distillation techniques that use a cheese byproduct and the rich heritage of Ojibwe culture.

This distillery blazes the path toward a more environmentally responsible and socially aware future.

This future blends Ojibwe ethos and innovation with a product for mainstream consumption — ultimately rewriting the narrative of what it means to be a distillery with a conscience.

Mixology and fermentation In 2017, Curt Basina and his wife, Linda, opened Copper Crow as the nation’s first Native American-owned distillery. Both are enrolled members of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, also known by the name Ojibwe. Ojibwe is a woodland culture that celebrates the world around them — the land, waters, forests, heavens and life within — this is reflected in the blend of scientific and artistic endeavors the couple infuse into Copper Crow.

The Basinas acknowledge while alcohol dependency spans across all cultures, it is particularly stereotyped in the Native culture. For that reason, they are careful in how they operate and have declined to sponsor certain tribal events so as not to offend the tribe, members or the culture.

“This is a craft distillery where we have no intentions of being really big,” Linda says. “We hope to keep it that way — just knowing that we’re making a quality, good, and in some cases sustainable spirit, and complementing that with what is fresh and available during the season.”

Linda Basina, who was a high school special education paraeducator for 24 years, now works in the tasting room, managing the bartenders and mixologists, many of whom have worked with Copper Crow from the beginning.

“They’re great people, great bartenders.

They do an amazing job. They are Copper Crow to people that walk in the door,” Linda

says. “The vibe that they bring is what has brought us to where we are today.”

Copper Crow’s team of mixologists unleash their creativity on recipe nights where they experiment with flavors to create unique and delicious drinks. Linda says she pairs flavors like basil, mint and thyme with cucumbers, raspberries or blackberries harvested fresh from her own garden.

In autumn, she looks at in-season flavors like apples and caramel, complementing them with the warmth of cinnamon and nutmeg.

Curt Basina’s passion lies on the distillation side, among gold liquid-filled fermentation vats that bubble to the brim with milk sugars and glucose-consuming yeast. With three vats full of fermenting whey, a waste product from cheese making, Curt continuously refines his distillation methods to create high-quality vodka and gin that is smooth, mellow and sweet around the edges. Copper Crow uses locally sourced whey from Burnett Dairy, located a few hours south in Grantsburg.

Curt’s plunge into the spirits industry began after a career in highway patrol. He spent some time learning from other small local distilleries and through coursework.

It wasn’t until he attended a course in Seattle, led by Berle “Rusty” Figgins, a master distiller and spirits educator, that he decided to dive into whey distillation.

“Rusty just immediately grabbed me and said, ‘You’re from Wisconsin, which is the

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BY CLAIRE BIEGALSKI

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Dairy State, you need to look at doing something with dairy,’” Curt says, explaining that Figgins was referring to whey, which is generally considered scraps in dairy. “So if you can take a waste product, and turn it into a value-added product, you’re gonna have a brand for your distillery.”

billion pounds of cheese whey … and we haven’t figured out a good thing to do with it.”

Without sustainable practices, cheese whey is considered one of the biggest environmental pollutants in the dairy industry. Large industrial dairies often dispose of whey as wastewater, which is difficult and expensive

“If you can take a waste product, and turn it into a valueadded product, you’re gonna have a brand for your distillery.”

Copper Crow turned to UW–Stout to learn more about whey distillations and refine its process. Curt worked with Steve Nold, a microbiology professor at the university, whose research team aimed to solve the problem cheese whey waste creates. Across 10 semesters, Nold and his students investigated every aspect of cheese whey fermentations to help refine Copper Crow’s process, but Curt nearly nailed it from the start.

Liquid gold Whey is the cloudy, yellow-tinged liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained in the cheese-making process.

“Wisconsin alone creates 3.2 billion pounds of cheese annually,” Nold says. “And for every pound of cheese that is made, there are 9 pounds of cheese whey created — that is 27

to treat. Smaller dairies that can’t process their whey spray it on farm fields or put it in cess-lagoons or cesspits, which pose serious environmental hazards. Whey and other biowastes are a largely untapped, nutrient-rich source of sugars and protein.

Victor Ujor, an assistant professor of food science at UW–Madison, works in metabolic engineering and fermentation science to extract underutilized sugars in biowaste — like forest residues, corn stover and whey — to use as renewable sources.

“Coming up with very creative ideas on how to treat waste, to make something valuable out of waste, and hopefully to generate less waste … I hope we all as a society can begin to think along those lines as we go forward,” Ujor says.

More industries are realizing untapped potential resides among bits of grass, leftover

Curt Basina proudly stands by the largest distillation column inside his distillery on the Red Cliff Reservation in northern Wisconsin.

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corn cobs and the milky liquid gold that is whey. Recently, Curt was invited to be the keynote speaker at American Distilling Institute’s 2023 Sustainability Summit to discuss the net positive effects of using a waste stream as a raw material. He embodies the mission of blending sustainability practices with the spirits industry to address nationwide environmental concerns.

“What I think is motivating Curt and what certainly motivates me is the idea that we could not create waste streams out of the leftover cheese whey. But instead, turn that cheese whey into a high-value product,” Nold says.

A whey forward Nold envisions every cheese-producing dairy in Wisconsin setting up whey fermentations, while Ujor wants to see all Wisconsin dairy farms band together to store and use their whey in renewable ways. And the small but mighty Copper Crow tackles the waste problem one bottle of gin at a time.

All are working toward a future that values environmental sustainability.

Curt recently shared his whey distillation recipe with a craft distilling magazine for the entire spirits industry. Distillation is tightly held knowledge and intellectual property, but Curt hopes in sharing these details more distillers will use unconventional sugars to make spirits.

“All of us small craft distillers, we’re very willing to share information. We realize we’re not necessarily competitors; we’re in this for the betterment of the industry,” Curt says. “I think with whey, it’s just the fact there’s so much whey that just gets thrown out. If people understand there’s a fermentable sugar there but really don’t know how to go about doing it, I’m willing to share the information.”

From whey-based spirits crafted with locally sourced apple peels and hand-picked wild sumac to the Basinas who will join your table with warm and friendly conversation, Copper Crow stands as a testament to how a distillery can operate with a social and environmental conscience.

“It’s also part of that Ojibwe way, that you do things in a good way,” Linda says. “Do it in a good way so that you’re not offending people, that you attract the right people to the business. We’ve been lucky.”

Q& A

THE FUSION OF BEER THROUGH GARTH’S BREW BAR

Garth Beyer explains how beer has become a point of bonding for communities

BY AVA WOJNOWSKI

Sampling beers is a favorite activity for many in Wisconsin, but nobody is doing it quite like UW–Madison alumnus Garth Beyer. Garth’s Brew Bar brings in beers from all over the U.S., so one is assured to have something of their liking when they come in. This beer hotspot, located on Monroe Street in Madison, offers a fusion of flavors for all to enjoy.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO FINALLY OPEN GARTH’S BREW BAR?

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE BEER THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT ON?

WHAT IS YOUR DREAM BEER FLAVOR CREATION?

I’ll give you two. One because it is top of mind, Tiny Bomb from Wiseacre. They are out of Tennessee. I love pilsners because this world has become so dynamic with them. Super delicious and refreshing. The other favorite beer of mine is called Hooey. It is brewed by Lupulin Brewing Company in Big Lake, Minnesota. It is the keg that we sold a half barrel of the fastest, too, so I’m not the only one who loves it.

I have yet to find a mango IPA that I really love. I think that flavor profile is incredible, and most brewers either add too much or too little mango.

I don’t want it to be puree-forward and thick, but I don’t want it to feel so subtle that you might think that a drop of mango extract was added to it.

WHAT IS IN THE FUTURE FOR GARTH’S BREW BAR? We are gonna push the limits of a beer brand. I think it is a sure thing in the next year, year and a half, that we will launch our own beverage brand. My name is on enough stuff, so we’re thinking of calling it Marvin’s Brew [after the moose statue named Marvin in Garth’s Brew Bar]. It will be his style of beers that we will sell here and sell in other places.

Visit Garth’s Brew Bar at 1726 Monroe St. in Madison

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I was a beer writer and asked the question: What can I do to help these breweries thrive beyond just writing for them? I found the answer when I took a trip to Belgium and Budapest with a buddy of mine. There was a bar called Hops in Budapest. We go in there, the bar owner is there, he is behind the bar and they have like 150 different beers. Then there was the space … it was multidimensional. There was the classic ‘at the bar’ seating, and then upstairs were some long tables for communal spots. There were some corners that felt more private, and it was just super dynamic. I was drinking beers with my buddy there and it was in that moment I said, “We need something like this in Madison.”

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Top: Honeybee Sage is one of the businesses in the new Bronzeville.

Angela Mallett moved her business to Bronzeville to better serve Black folk, and she celebrated the store’s one year anniversary in the district in November.

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Bottom: Murals of historical figure Vel Phillips on the side of Bronzeville Collective MKE’s building pay tribute to the attorney, politician and civil rights activist.

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BRONZEVILLE BOUNCES BACK Milwaukee’s Black historic district paves a path forward

BY OMAR WAHEED

T

he heart of Milwaukee was ripped out of its chest — but it is finally on its way back.

Milwaukee’s historic Bronzeville District has seen its share of ups and downs since its inception in the early 1900s. But after decades of attempts to get the area revitalized, the neighborhood has found solid footing.

Co-founders of the Bronzeville Collective MKE, Lilo Allen and Tiffany Miller, bring the first effort of its kind to revitalize the area. Allen, who is from the newer Bronzeville District, has seen its better points and some of its lows.

“When I was younger, there was always something to do out there … That changed a lot in the early 2000s,” Allen says. “Since our arrival on North Avenue, we’ve seen all these businesses sprout up, and I think it has to do with the Black women in leadership within the community.”

Allen is one of the driving forces in Bronzeville’s revitalization. The Bronzeville Collective is a central part of the community that allows local entrepreneurs without a storefront to bring in their goods.

Her shop is decked out with art from her own business, Papyrus & Charms, her partner’s business, FlyBlooms, and over 30 local brands.

Now, Allen is on the forefront to bring the historic district back to its former glory. Additionally, Gov. Tony Evers has invested $5 million into the Bronzeville Center for the Arts. The investment will help transform the site of the former Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources into a facility for exhibitions and more.

“Bringing that name back — Bronzeville used to mean something,” Allen says.

The historic Bronzeville District was known as the heart of Milwaukee and in the mid-20th century was one of the nation’s largest booming Black communities.

The district was heralded for its advancement of the Black community with its businesses and entertainment — but it was a forced location due to segregation.

Milwaukee’s Black population was stuck in the historic Bronzeville District and decided to make the most of it, according to Kitonga Alexander, a historian responsible for Milwaukee Bronzeville Histories.

Bronzeville started to see its systematic collapse in 1949 when Congress passed the Housing Act, also known as urban renewal, with the intention of revitalizing areas with higher population density housing with fewer, more expensive homes. Urban renewal did accomplish just that, but the result saw the start of the collapse to Bronzeville.

The complete end of Bronzeville came with the building of the Interstate 43 freeway, which cut through most of the businesses on Walnut Street. Homes and businesses that would later be regarded for their historical importance were demolished in the name of developing Milwaukee.

Places like Malcolm X’s childhood home and Milwaukee’s oldest African American church, St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church, were torn down to make room for the freeway and urban renewal.

As a result, Bronzeville’s history was lost in a “structural sense” at least, as Alexander describes it.

“The reality is that the majority of Black history in Milwaukee has been erased or destroyed,” Alexander says.

Attempts were made for years to try to get the district back to its former glory but rarely did any effort bear fruit. The first successful venture to bring people back to Bronzeville was in 1988 with the America’s Black Holocaust Museum.

The new Bronzeville, where current efforts lie, is meant to capture the spirit of the old historic district, but the location is different. The new Bronzeville is primarily on North Avenue and North Doctor M.L.K. Jr. Drive on Milwaukee’s near north side.

HoneyBee Sage & Wellness Apothecary, at 1819 N. Doctor M.L.K. Jr. Dr., has been at its Bronzeville location for almost a year now.

Angela Mallett, owner of HoneyBee Sage & Wellness Apothecary, dreamed of having her business in Bronzeville.

“To be on King Drive was centered around the fact that it’s kind of right at the edge of the proverbial railroad tracks, if you will,” Mallett says. “We always have a focus as a business to be accessible to Black and brown communities with ease.”

Allen, along with the Bronzeville Collective, has been pushing community-involved wellness initiatives to make a physical difference past businesses coming back.

“I wanted to create a sort of third space for folks. So not just this physical space, but a community that is almost tangible,” Allen says. “And folks know when you walk into this space — welcome home. I want that to translate online and for when folks think of Bronzeville, they think community.”

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SANCTUARY IN THE

Volunteers revitalize Milwaukee County Grounds’ history addressing community well-being through nature

BY SARA STANISLAWSKI

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A volunteer with the Friends of County Grounds Park group prepares to remove invasive buckthorn in the Milwaukee County park in September.

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corns hit the forest floor, squirrels rustle in the leaves and traffic from Interstate 41 blends into a constant hum. An occasional siren wails from an ambulance at the nearby Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa, a suburb west of Milwaukee.

The ruins of what was once the Milwaukee County Insane Asylum, first established in 1878, the old-growth forest and nearby prairie of County Grounds Park offer a sanctuary from the surrounding city.

The Friends of County Grounds Park volunteer group works with the county parks department to protect the park’s natural areas and support wildlife and community health.

The group formed in January 2020 after Wauwatosa rezoned a section of county land, including a forested area known as Sanctuary Woods. Giving it conservation status helped to curb potential development there.

After the rezoning and years of development debate, the group’s volunteers are working to revitalize the grounds’ history of fusion between its natural areas and use for community well-being.

“In the middle of urban Wauwatosa, to have this old-growth woods as a sanctuary for people to go to, it means as much today as it did 140 years ago,” says Jonathan Piel, president of Friends of County Grounds Park.

On a Saturday morning in September, a group of Milwaukee-area residents practice Asahi, a Finnish health exercise that uses slow movements and coordinated breathing. They stand on the remaining foundation of a pavilion built by patients of the former hospital in an area of Sanctuary Woods called the Men’s Grove.

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Mental health care history unearthed When Piel first discovered Sanctuary Woods while walking his dog in 2016, he came across the remaining foundation of a structure covered with leaves, graffiti, trash, broken glass and a fire pit — a place he now knows as the Men’s Pavilion.

Piel started researching the land’s history. He came across an online version of a book from 1916 with about seven pages describing the “Milwaukee Hospital for Insane” in Wauwatosa, first called the Milwaukee County Insane Asylum when it was established in 1878.

The hospital made efforts to beautify its grounds by adding a 1.5 acre artificial lake, according to the book.

The grounds included sunken gardens, the Men’s Pavilion, stone steps leading down to a ravine in an area called the Women’s Grove and other features, which the group’s volunteers have cared for after decades of neglect.

When Piel gives history tours, he encourages participants to reflect on the site’s history of use related to mental health. They have a few minutes of quiet as they make their way through the Women’s Ravine.

“We have these citations from 1916 about women using this space, which was a safe space in the Women’s Grove [where] they could be in communion with nature and be in sufficient quiet to be in touch with themselves and how they feel,” Piel says. “We’re going to do the same thing on that tour today.”

connect with nature and restore their health away from the pressures of urban America, McBride says.

Findings in current psychiatric literature reflect this — as people have more exposure to greenery, they tend to have better mental health outcomes, McBride says.

“A lot of us know that intuitively, but those studies are just coming out now,” McBride says. “Well, this was done [nearly] 150 years ago through the grounds that were designed for these patients.”

Woods protected from development The Wauwatosa Common Council voted to rezone 58 acres of county land, including Sanctuary Woods, from medical use to conservation status in December 2019, adding the land to the existing 55 acres of County Grounds Park.

Though developing the land became increasingly attractive as a source of tax revenue and because of its proximity to the regional medical center, Piel says citizens volunteered their time and effort to convince elected officials to protect the land.

“It was over 20 years that people continued to go to meetings and talk with the aldermen and try to convince them that it was better off for people to keep it a natural area, that the doctors who ran the mental health hospital knew that that type of environment was good for their patients,” says Sheila Nolte, who grew up in and lived near Wauwatosa while the hospital was still open.

“We need this green space for the mental health of the community.”

Dr. Michael McBride, a psychiatrist at Before the rezoning vote at a common the Veterans’ Administration Medical Cen- council meeting in December 2019, Piel said ter in Milwaukee, first explored the area that if this land became parkland, citizens with a classmate from the nearby Medical would be ready to steward it.

College of Wisconsin in 1989.

“There was some lament that there just “Being a psychiatrist who had worked wasn’t enough inertia around this and who at the county mental health complex and was going to take care of it,” Piel says. “We trained there, it became near and dear to have taken care of the park in the four years me to learn about that history of how we since then.” cared for the mentally ill throughout our Though the land’s current zoning protects history,” McBride says. it from development, it could be rezoned again.

One of the hospital superintendents, Dr. “We need this green space for the mental Moses White, recognized patients should health of the community,” McBride says

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.

Revitalized role in well-being Volunteers have removed decades of dirt, leaves, broken glass and fire pits from the remaining structures of the hospital that closed in the 1970s.

The volunteers, including many middle and high school students, also remove invasive buckthorn to support the old-growth forest and make its spaces less hidden. The group also installed signs describing the space’s history.

“It really made this space much more usable and approachable for anybody who wants to use it for a mental health experience,” Piel says.

Volunteers have also planted 200 trees in recent years in a field on the park’s south side to extend the forest. Nearby developments, including the Watertown Apartments, Ronald McDonald House and Milwaukee Regional Medical Center, matched funds the group raised for the planting in fall 2022. Hoppe Tree Service, a local company, also volunteered its time and equipment to help remove dead ash trees before the planting.

“We lean right back into [our neighbors] to find ways to be able to be collaborative, win together and feel like we all have an invested stake in the park,” Piel says.

The Friends of County Grounds Park group also hosts events aimed at enhancing health, like the Asahi sessions.

Nolte, a volunteer member of the group and a certified forest therapy and nature connection guide, also leads Shinrin-Yoku walks, a term that first emerged in Japan in the 1980s. Often called forest bathing in the U.S., the practice helps people connect with nature, open their senses, and slow their bodies and minds, Nolte says.

When participants go to the Men’s Pavilion, Nolte says she often reflects on how many people, including patients, must have sought shelter from rain or met friends there — it’s a spot where people continue to gather today.

“Every time I’m out there, I can’t not be in the history and have respect for the people who were there and the people who helped create that sanctuary for them,” Nolte says.

SOVEREIGNTY AND SYNERGY Collaborative initiatives shape Wisconsin’s tribal-state relations

BY EMMA GOSHIN

T

he walls of the Wisconsin Supreme Court are decorated with murals marking important moments in legal history: the reign of Caesar Augustus Octavius, the granting of the Magna Carta and the signing of the U.S. Constitution.

The fourth depicts a smaller moment in world history, but an important one for Wisconsin. The right wall displays the 1830 murder trial of Chief Oshkosh of the Menominees. Judge James Doty ruled Oshkosh followed the rules that applied in tribal traditions and law, setting a precedent recognizing the importance of tribal sovereignty.

Today, Judge Gwendolyn Topping is an associate judge for the Red Cliff Band Tribal Court in northwestern Bayfield County. In her first year on the bench in 2016, Topping, a member of the Red Cliff Band, became involved with the Wisconsin Tribal Judges Association.

As current president of the association, Topping began work with the State Tribal Justice Forum, which is made up of officials from both the tribes and the state who work to promote communication and cooperation between the two legal systems.

While this balance and understanding between Wisconsin’s Indigenous people and the state is strong today, it hasn’t always been this way.

When Wisconsin became a state in 1848, it began “to extend its law over Indian people” in violation of federal treaties. Following an over 100-year period of Native American suffering under that state regime, Public Law 280 was passed by the U.S. Congress to transfer legal authority from the state to tribes.

There are 11 federally recognized American Indian tribes and bands in Wisconsin today. Each one has a justice system, most of which function as tribal courts with different rules and judicial terms.

Over the last several decades, tribal courts have partially maintained their sovereignty by presiding over cases they didn’t always have the right to rule over.

“The tribes are doing more and more of the justice that used to be done by the state,” says Larry Nesper, a retired emeritus professor of anthropology and American Indian & Indigenous Studies at UW– Madison.

In her role as co-chair of the tribal justice forum, Topping has strengthened an existing relationship with her co-chair,

Judge John Anderson of the Bayfield County Circuit Court. Anderson and Topping were the first pair to serve as co-chairs of the forum. They have now been working together for four years.

“He was the first county court judge to hold hearings in a tribal court. Once every six weeks, he was coming to the tribal court to hold court,” Topping says. “Things like that were the things that opened the door for that state-tribal connection.”

Red Cliff tribal members make up about 15% of Bayfield County’s population. In 2010, Bayfield County became the first county in Wisconsin to fly the tribal flag in their courtroom, according to Topping.

“It’s just a symbol of cooperation and respect,” Anderson says.

One of four works painted by Albert Herter, this painting of the 1830 murder trial of Chief Oshkosh of the Menominees is located in the Supreme Court room in the Capitol.

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AN UNLIKELY CONNECTION Brazilians keep their roots alive in Wisconsin

BY ISABELLA RUDER

K

ilsa Dremsa flips through her scrapbooks: colorful toucans, whimsical waterfalls and lush green pastures.

These aren’t vacation memories, however. They’re snapshots of Dremsa’s homeland of Brazil. Even though she’s lived in Wisconsin for 25 years, these photos transport her back. With each turn of the page, her adventures in her homeland and in her adopted one tell the story of how both cultures have blended to create something beautiful. “[The pictures] take me back to a very special time,” Dremsa says.

Wisconsin and Brazil make an unlikely combination — Rio de Janeiro is nearly 5,500 miles from Madison, and Brazilians account for about 3,117 of Wisconsin’s almost 5.9 million residents. But Brazil’s vibrant culture extends beyond its South American borders, leaving its mark on major cities and local towns across the state.

Brazilian influences are woven into Wisconsin’s culture, adding to the state’s rich and diverse cultural landscape. Through their shared experiences and deeply rooted love for their native food, language and traditions, generations of Brazilian Wisconsinites have blended their cultures in unique ways.

Fusion creates a subculture When Dremsa moved from Brazil to Wisconsin, she lived in a cabin on five acres of land with her late husband, Francisco, and dove right into the Wisconsin agricultural scene. Her garden consisted of jalapeños, cabbage and okra. Okra, known for its unique grassy taste, is a popular fruit in Brazil, though it is often eaten as a vegetable. Already, Dremsa had begun to fuse both cultures by growing a Brazilian fruit among other vegetables on her farm.

Using ingredients from her garden, she

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made a variety of Brazilian dishes that allowed her to connect with her culture. The smell alone transported her home.

For some, like Dremsa, this was a conscious effort. She decided to grow Brazilian plants on her Wisconsin farm and cook Brazilian dishes for her husband. But for younger generations who have grown up in Wisconsin, they simultaneously blend cultures through their natural progression of growing up. Just because they grow up with Wisconsin culture does not mean cultural differences go unnoticed.

In first grade, Maria Brunetta, now 21 years old and a member of the Curb staff, experienced this firsthand as the only Brazilian student at her school in Brookfield, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Brunetta didn’t necessarily feel singled out for her culture after being born in Brazil but felt she lacked a connection with both groups of white and other underrepresented students in her class.

Brunetta hugged a classmate and was met with an unexpected response. She vividly remembers her classmate’s surprised words of “What are you doing?” when she greeted the

Kilsa Dremsa flips through her scrapbook, filled with memories of her native country, Brazil, and her current home of Wisconsin, in her Madison apartment.

Maria Brunetta (left) and Larissa Pasquini cook Brazilian hotdogs in their Madison home. This dish is commonly served at birthday parties in Brazil.

ian because I don’t really know their slang, I’m really bad at grammar and I’m behind on their culture. But it’s still part of me.”

“It’s a meeting of two worlds.”

The heart and soul of Brazilian culture For many Brazilians, food is central to their culture. The art of cooking meals for oneself and their family is highly valued by all ages in the culture. The kitchen is a hub for creating unforgettable memories between family members — a place where meals become a vessel to carry on traditions from generation to generation.

Pasquini’s parents moved from Brazil to Miami, then to Utah, where Pasquini was born, and eventually to Wisconsin for her father’s work. In between visits from her grandparents and her parents’ trips to Brazil, all they had was each other and, of course, some homemade Brazilian recipes like feijoada, a popular black bean and pork stew.

Pasquini’s mother would often call family members back home using her paid international minutes to write down family recipes from her mother and mother-inlaw, creating a one-of-a-kind recipe book.

Transporting new recipes enhances Wisconsin’s food scene and provides another avenue for Brazilians to connect with their culture. But sitting down and sharing a meal in and of itself is just as culturally significant.

With lunch being the main meal in Brazil, it’s common for colleagues and friends to leave the office to indulge in a substantial meal and good conversation.

Brazil’s meal time ritually veers far from the U.S.’s traditional corporate, on-the-go lunch typically eaten while sitting at a cubicle or desk.

Flavia Mildenberg moved to Wisconsin at 26 years old and still remembers the Sun-

days when her mother would prepare food for the traditionally large lunch.

She reminisces about the early Sunday mornings when the pressure cooker’s hissing echoed throughout the kitchen as it slowly cooked the afternoon meal. Conversation and laughter filled the room as the family enjoyed each other’s company.

Even after 19 years of living in Wisconsin, Mildenberg still finds comfort in the familiar sound of a pressure cooker.

“It makes me happy,” Mildenberg says.

A bond formed through language The familiarity of the Portuguese language also drives the Brazilian community closer together. Some feel a degree closer to Portuguese speakers because there is a mutual understanding of each other’s culture.

Susana Antunes, an associate professor of Portuguese and the Portuguese program coordinator at UW–Milwaukee, understands the importance of language.

She has created events at the university for Portuguese students to gather and for the Brazilian community to connect through the Portuguese language.

“For people that came from a different country, this is something extremely important for us to feel that we are at home,” Antunes says. “And to be at home in a different country, I think the best way is to connect with other people — to talk about the culture and the language.”

Mildenberg agrees — language connects the community.

“If you hear somebody at the grocery store, and they are speaking Portuguese, your instinct is to go talk to that person,” Mildenberg says.

With Wisconsin’s small population of Brazilians, Portuguese isn’t regularly heard. In the rare case there is an opportunity to interact with another member of the Brazilian community, they are eager to meet one another and communicate in their native tongue.

“It makes me feel Brazilian again,” Dremsa says.

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friend with a hug — a common greeting in Brazil normally accompanied by a kiss on the cheek. After what Brunetta refers to as the “assimilation” of Wisconsin culture at school, she would go back home where she was immersed in Brazilian culture once again.

For some, it’s hard to put into words how they’ve meshed the cultures because of its natural progression, Brunetta says.

“It’s just a creation of a subculture of both American and Brazilian culture,” says Larissa Pasquini, a member of the Brazilian community from Brookfield. “It’s a meeting of two worlds.”

This subculture stems from a feeling of separation from Brazilian culture due to their constant exposure to life in Wisconsin. Their Brazilian roots remain the same, but there are significant differences between the two groups of people — those who live in Brazil and those who live in Wisconsin.

For Pasquini, the “white culture” ingrained in Brazilian Wisconsinites from years of living here can create a degree of separation from the community in Brazil.

Pasquini says this is neither a good nor bad thing, but others might not understand the unique experiences of struggling to fit completely into one culture or the other.

“When I’m immersed in American culture, I’m not truly American because I have this Brazilian identity within me,” Pasquini says. “But I’m never fully Brazil-

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MIND OVER MATTER An ancient Japanese religion finds it way to Wisconsin

BY NATALIE PRICER

Meido Moore walks through greenery at Korinji monastery.

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n a crisp autumn morning, a clementine-sized bird flew into my car window opening and, in a partially concussed daze, trapped itself.

Without hesitation, Meido Moore, the abbot of a Rinzai Zen monastery called Korinji, near the Wisconsin Dells in the central part of the state, made his way over to my car. He cupped his hands and used them to gently encircle the stunned creature. The bird contentedly plopped into his palms.

In one swift motion, Moore swept his hands upward and let the bird go flying into the sky, just as Wisconsinites are opening up to ideologies like Zen to free their minds.

The more than 800-year-old Rinzai Zen tradition, one of two major sects of Japanese Buddhism, has found its way to Wisconsin.

Now, Wisconsin-based Zen masters are looking to conserve this ancient tradition while figuring out how to fulfill the modern American’s unique hunger for spirituality in a culture smitten with science.

A 2014 Pew Research Center study found a growing percentage of Wisconsin adults are gravitating toward a lack of general religious affiliation, with 25% of adults identifying as unaffiliated with a religion.

That doesn’t mean people aren’t craving some sort of spiritual relief.

“There is a deep spiritual hunger which is not being met,” Moore says. “There is a basic nihilism that people have fallen into hopelessness with the killing of the old worldviews.”

In order to fill this hole left by a decline in traditional religion, spirituality is taking on a new shape; the secular mindfulness movement and fascination with meditation, yoga and other ideas stemming from centuries-old Eastern philosophies have entered the mainstream of American life.

Cortland Dahl, the chief contemplative officer of Healthy Minds Innovation at UW–Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds,

Meido Moore extends his hands to allow the once trapped bird to soar freely.

Zen enters Wisconsin Korinji is a 17-acre Rinzai Zen monastery around 50 miles from Madison. It has two buildings, a garden, an orchard and long, serpentine trails used for walking meditation.

Moore founded Korinji in 2017 with his former teacher, Tenzan Toyoda Rokoji, a Rinzai Zen master and martial arts teacher.

Moore says it was Toyoda’s dream to open a more traditional monastery in the West, but he died young, so Moore stepped in to finish what his teacher started. The pair settled on Wisconsin’s Driftless region.

A typical day at a Rinzai Zen monastery can include rigorous meditation and breathing methods, physical culture such as manual labor to maintain the grounds or various forms of martial arts, and different artistic disciplines such as tea ceremonies, flower arranging and calligraphy.

Kenneth Kushner founded the Chosei Zen organization in 1982, which was first called the International Zen Dojo of Wisconsin. Its main center, called Daikozen-ji, is on Madison’s east side.

Both Moore and Kushner say preserving the authentic traditions of Zen passed

down and shared across generations is vital to them. Yet a wide range of Buddhist-influenced spirituality trends are already spreading across the Western landscape, Dahl says.

Kushner says learning about Buddhism Zen meets mindfulness only in the context of mental health can Zen is adapting to the existing Western make people lose sight of what Zen is meant culture. Particularly notable is the overlap to address. between Buddhism and research on mind“I think there’s somewhat of a misconcepfulness and its benefits for mental health. tion about Zen in the West that it’s for stress The extensive psychological and psy- management [and] relaxation,” Kushner says. chiatric research in mindfulness has soared “Zen and any form of Buddhism was set up to exponentially since 2006, according to the address deep existential issues.”

Mindfulness Journal.

UW–Madison’s Center for Healthy Wisconsin Rinzai pushes forward Minds is considered one of the leading orMoore says he aims to pass down the ganizations in the field of mindfulness in Rinzai Zen traditions taught to him by trainthe scientific community. ing the next generation of Zen masters in Dahl says he aims to bridge the worlds of Wisconsin, but both Kushner and Moore Buddhism and modern research. say they are open to incorporating Zen into While Kushner and Moore both say they some aspects of contemporary Western culture.

Korinji and Chosei Zen have come to embrace digital outreach by maintaining active social media accounts across several platforms.

“Finding out about the place should be easy,” Moore says. “Getting involved should be easy. Information should be easy, but the support anything derived from Buddhism practice itself should remain with integrity that offers benefits to people, they stress and rigor.” there are important distinctions between the When Wisconsinites feel trapped and secular mindfulness movement and tradi- confused, the hope is with the guidance tional Zen Buddhism. of Buddhism they can be set free, allowing “There’s this mixture of Buddhist teach- them to stretch their wings and reach new ing with psychotherapy, with New Age stuff, heights of expanded consciousness, just a lot of things that maybe don’t fit or, from as the bird once trapped in my car is now free to soar through Wisconsin’s mystical my standpoint, maybe shouldn’t be mixed Driftless region. with it,” Moore says.

“There is a deep spiritual hunger which is not being met.”

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says when it comes to Western Buddhism, there are two sides of it — traditional Buddhism and Buddhism in pop culture.

Liam Hutchison, a 27-year-old student of Moore, says he started his own spiritual path when he was in college at UW–Madison in his early 20s. He grew up surrounded by Christianity, but he did not find it helpful, so he started experimenting with different meditation techniques.

Eventually, he discovered one of Korinji’s practice groups on Madison’s west side. The energy of the teachers and the vitality and vibrancy of the group resonated with him, Hutchison says. He’s been studying at Korinji ever since.

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BEYOND THE BAR

Wisconsinites revive the state’s lesbian bar scene

BY JANE HOUSEAL

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The decline of lesbian bars in Wisconsin reflects a larger national trend. In the 1980s, there were around 200 across the country, but now there are fewer than 30.

“I definitely have noticed the void of lesbian bars,” Witte says. “When I came out, it was like, ‘Well, where do I go hang out?’”

Attendance at the Madison Lesbian Pop Up Bar events has grown over the last year since it was taken over by three new organizers: Alissa Gauger, Jen Smith and Heather Long.

When Kat Kosmaule, the original organizer, announced she would no longer be running the events, Gauger, Smith and Long wasted no time setting up a meeting with Kosmaule to discuss their shared vision to provide a safe

space for queer people in Madison.

“We think it is vital that we continue to carry the torch and carry on with this very important community resource for queer women and allies,” Gauger says.

Even though the events only take place once a month, they have a lasting impact.

People come up to Gauger at events and tell her stories that give her the chills.

“I’m getting goosebumps right now,” Gauger says while sharing that pop-up attendees have met friends, lovers and life partners.

“These are vital events in our community that are helping form important connections for women that probably wouldn’t otherwise happen.”

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ack in the 1980s when Patty Witte was realizing her sexuality, it wasn’t a safe time to be out.

But when she did come out a few years ago, at age 53, Witte, a retired physician born and raised in Madison, went looking for community in her hometown.

She found it in the Lesbian Pop Up Bar, or LPUB, a monthly pop-up bar for lesbians, other queer people and allies. Witte attended one of the pop-up events around two years ago and has been going ever since.

At first, Witte was nervous about what people would think of her, especially because she came out later in life. However, everyone at the pop-up bar was welcoming and made her feel comfortable.

“I love how Lesbian Pop Up Bar is so open and inclusive,” Witte says. “I feel welcome.

It’s inspiring.”

At one point, Wisconsin was home to a handful of lesbian bars. Today, there is just one in Wisconsin, located in Milwaukee.

Queer people across the state have noticed the lack of lesbian bars, and they are addressing the gap with lesbian pop-up events. The pop-up bars offer a unique opportunity for queer and transgender Wisconsinites to come together, enjoy a night out and build a community that can be hard to find.

“We don’t have to justify claiming space,” says Timothia Stinnett, one of the organizers behind Sappho’s Secret, another lesbian pop-up event in Madison. “We’re lesbians.

We want to hang out with lesbians. And if we have to create it to do it, that’s what we’ll do.”

DOWN TO EARTH

A conservation coach from the partner organization Wisconsin Farmer Union provides guidance to women farmers.

The strength of Wisconsin women in agriculture

BY WANRUO ZHAO

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J

ennifer Nelson started to learn about conservation when she was a child in her mom’s garden.

When she grew up, Nelson and her partner bought farmland where trees, flowers, perennials, veggies and native grasses grew, and she spent nearly 15 years as an organic vegetable and cut flower grower.

But health problems kept Nelson from expanding her farm, so she turned to grazing — the practice of letting animals wander to eat grass and other vegetation — as a way to enjoy the nature and great views of her farm.

Now, she’s sharing what she’s learned with other women farmers through Wisconsin Women in Conservation, where Nelson is a conservation coach. She invites other women landowners to learning circles at her farm so they can help each other by sharing practices and ideas.

While women landowners rarely have a community to connect with, they could benefit from sharing their knowledge and experiences of conservation

practices with one another. Wisconsin Women in Conservation provides an opportunity for women farmers, landowners and conservation professionals to connect in different regions of Wisconsin.

“The goal of Wisconsin Women in Conservation is to help landowners, women landowners specifically, put conservation practices into place on their land,” says Elena Gutierrez Byrne, southwest coordinator for the group.

Wisconsin Women in Conservation was launched in 2020 and is led by the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in partnership with Renewing the Countryside, Marbleseed and Wisconsin Farmers Union, according to their website.

Women account for about 35% of all producers in the state of Wisconsin, according to the Wisconsin Women in Conservation website. These women receive implicit and explicit messages about their role in farming from education and experiences with government

programs that affect their choice to farm, satisfaction in the job and their chances of success.

At learning circles, like the ones held at Nelson’s farm, conservation coaches share their stories and help build a network of women landowners. The group also offers summer field tours at farms where conservation work has been done.

In one learning circle this June, a group of women landowners came to Nelson’s Humble Pie Farm in western Plum City, and Nelson sat with them in a circle under her maple tree and shared the story of the farmland setup.

Nelson shares other important advice from her farming experience — taking care of oneself and monitoring mental health. Nelson experienced burnout after working throughout her Lyme disease journey and stopped working for Marbleseed. She came back last year as a conservation coach.

“I really try to share that experience and how important it is that we are our greatest resource,” Nelson says.

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Every year, the Sharon Stark Investigative Journalism Internship Fund supports two UW–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication students’ summer internships at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

TYLER KATZENBERGER

SOPHIA VENTO

ADDISON LATHERS

HOPE KARNOPP

Graduates in May 2024

Graduates in May 2024

Growth and Development Reporter, The Des Moines Register, Des Moines, Iowa

Pulitzer Center Fellow Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Madison, Wis.

DANA BRANDT

LAWRENCE ANDREA

Graduated in May 2023

Washington Correspondent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Washington, D.C.

“Sharon Stark’s partnership with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is one of the best opportunities for a young journalist in Madison.” – Lawrence Andrea

TAMIA FOWKLES

ALLISON GARFIELD

Public Investigator Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee

Local Government Reporter The Capital Times, Madison, Wis.

NINA BERTELSEN

TAYLOR PALMBY

Enterprise Risk & Reslience Associate (Manager) Booz Allen, Washington, D.C.

Director of Communication HeartSupport, New York

The internship’s reporting and networking experiences served a key role in launching my 15-year career in journalism. During the internship, I produced impactful investigative journalism serving Milwaukee and Wisconsin. After the internship, my work continued to spark reform, conversation and change in numerous communities.

— Keegan Kyle

Nothing compares to the education of being plopped into a buzzing newsroom and handed a stack of juicy tips. Working alongside the heavy-hitter investigative reporters there, I learned how to speak to people, gather documents, conceive of stories, and present findings ethically and fairly.

– Cara Lombardo MAX BAYER

LILLIAN PRICE

Staff Writer Fierce Biotech, New York

Breaking News Reporter The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore

“My summer in Milwaukee with the Stark Internship lit a fire in my belly for investigative journalism. It marked a crucial point in my career trajectory that exposed me to hardnosed watchdog journalism, and I haven’t looked back.” – Nick Penzenstadler

CARA LOMBARDO

ANDREW HAHN

Senior Reporter The Wall Street Journal, New York

Newsroom Developer Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee

EMILY TONER

AMY KARON

DEVON WAUGH

MARIO KORAN

Communications Manager and Community of Practice Developer, ISRIC/Freelance Journalist, Netherlands

Owner and Principal Arrowhead Communications, Camas, Wash.

Instruction Librarian NC Live/NCSU Libraries, Raleigh, N.C.

Local Investigations Fellow The New York Times, Milwaukee

“This opportunity not only made me a better reporter and writer, but cemented my sincere love and passion for storytelling.”

– Sophia Vento ALEX MORELL

NICK PENZENSTADLER

KEEGAN KYLE

Senior Correspondent Insider, New York

Investigative Reporter USA Today, Milwaukee

Interim Executive Producer, “The Morning Show,” Wisconsin Public Radio, Madison, Wis.

SET IN STONE

Lumberjack-turned-artist Fred Smith’s lasting impact in the Northwoods

BY RACHEL SCHULTZ

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Fred Smith smiles in front of one of his concrete sculptures in a Northwoods concrete park.

the visions of his artistry. That makeshift strategy brought his art to life by connecting his lifestyle with innovation.

Now, years after his death, his legacy lives on through the appreciation of artists from all over. This place is no longer an eyesore or a waste of money but an expression of sustainable living and creating.

Lumberjack Fred The secluded environment of Price County is made for logging, not for people.

The communities in this area are supported by labor workers and farmers, and they have a type of magical solitude that is appreciated by living in the area for quite some time or even just visiting for a weekend.

Although Smith’s severe arthritis may have caused him to leave the lumber camps, he worked through the pain, driven by his love for crafting with his hands. Smith’s 15year project took over his life and left him little time for his wife, his children or his community.

The unwieldy sculptures began to jeopardize his image in the area, where physical labor was king. Many in the community had a negative view of Smith’s artistic endeavors in his lifetime and likely for a while after. Even his immediate family resented his absence and felt embarrassed about the attention the sculptures brought to the family’s home landscape. After his death, they even called for the removal and destruction of the park.

“People just thought it was just a tremendous waste of money, because he’s spending all this money to make what didn’t look like art to them,” Stone says.

Smith suffered a stroke in 1964, which left him in a rest home and unable to work at the park.

“People say that even when he was in the nursing home, he would be having ideas of things that he wished he could continue to create,” Grzywnowicz says.

Smith’s boundless creativity would be cut short when he passed away on Feb. 21, 1976, at the age of 89. However, the Wisconsin Concrete Park is still standing today due to the Kohler Foundation acquiring the park shortly after Smith’s death with the help of Price County and the Friends of Fred Smith, who work to preserve this space.

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ake a drive northward on Wisconsin’s Highway 13, and you will come upon something unusual.

Phillips, a small city in the Northwoods, is home to the Wisconsin Concrete Park, a wonder of the rural Midwest. Its 237 concrete sculptures honoring Native Americans, animals, and local myths and legends, all sparkling with broken beer bottle embellishments, represent the unbounded creativity — and frustrations — of Fred Smith, the artist who created them in the latter part of his life.

Smith was somewhat of a marvel. Working as a lumberjack in the Northwoods of Wisconsin since the age of 12, he was familiar with the dangerous and demanding yet respectable realities of the lumber industry.

After retiring due to arthritis in around 1948, he began creating larger-than-life sculptures and used his home and the land around him as inspiration and material for bringing these visions to life.

“He doesn’t even know why he did it,” says Ann Grzywnowicz, operations manager of the Wisconsin Concrete Park. “It was just in him.”

These creations emerged from his love of working with his hands and using the environment as inspiration, fueling his determination and unparalleled work ethic. Smith’s passion for art created opposition from his community, family and friends as they found it to be a strange waste of time and money.

Instead of getting discouraged by these challenges, he found a way to persevere, learn the land, dumpster dive for materials and befriend the few creatives in town.

The fleeting nature of his past in hard labor pushed him to manufacture something more long-lasting — art. He unlocked his creative passion and crafted a legacy that would serve as an influence for artists in Wisconsin and beyond. What Smith provided to his community physically has manifested into a meaningful amalgamation of inspiration and purpose.

Smith challenged the norms of traditional gallery models and utilized sustainability, working off the land his creations would inhabit. Sculpture material was difficult for him to obtain, so he used what he had learned in his past, combining the materials of his lumber experience with

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Detailed shot of one of Smith’s “Paul Bunyan’s Lumberjacks” sculptures, embellished with glass from recycled beer bottles.

Discovering Phillips, Wisconsin Living in Price County, Grzywnowicz is witness to the constant preservation of the statues and the inner workings of the land that keep Smith’s statues standing.

“I would drive through Phillips a lot and see this place on the side of the road and was like, ‘What the heck is that? That is bizarre,’” Grzywnowicz says, reflecting on her journeys from Oshkosh to Hayward for family vacations.

Her work consists of overseeing the former tavern, which is now a community space for bridal showers, graduation parties and other events, along with assisting with the Airbnb rental property in Smith’s old home.

The conversion of these spaces has allowed the community to be more involved with the park, which was a hard-fought battle.

“Some of the members of the local community are very unaware of how special the concrete park is,” she says.

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Typically, it is hard to get the rest of the world to recognize a small, outsider artist, but here the opposite occurs.

“Most of the people in town would say they have never been there,” Stone says. “You know, it’s just the classic thing that you’ve never gone to — the thing that’s right in your backyard.”

Grzywnowicz is hoping to boost community involvement, knowing how much Smith enjoyed visitors.

The art of preserving concrete Keeping a park alive isn’t easy, and there is no blueprint. While Smith was incredibly inventive, he was still working off what the land and his community provided him, whether that be the leftover scraps of wood or broken beer bottles.

Unfortunately, this created obstacles down the line.

Sustaining the Smith legacy and impact While there was no telling at the time whether this vision would last, Smith’s ideas proved to sustain throughout the years and push past any boundaries.

“I think it is a very human practice that’s been going on for a really long time to use what we have in our hands and transform it into something magical,” says Marianne Fairbanks, associate professor of design studies at UW–Madison.

Reusing materials he found in dumpsters and on the side of the road is impactful, as he transformed the ordinary to become extraordinary.

“While Fred was alive and doing his work, he was driven by his own personal motivation. It wasn’t like he was trying to make a lot of money or get accolades or anything,” Grzywnowicz says. “It’s amazing how many people have been inspired by his work.”

Curb is sponsored by the Cripescast Podcast by Charlie Berens

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“There was a huge storm that came through that was actually a blessing in disguise, because the statues fell and came apart, and the preservationists … were able to identify compromises in the frames,” Grzywnowicz says.

The group of dedicated individuals who work on preserving the beauty of these statues patch up the holes in the concrete caused by the long Wisconsin winters, reattach the fallen pieces of broken glass and mirrors that adorn the sculptures, and fill in cracks with special caulk.

The Kohler Foundation has also played a large part in keeping the memory of Smith alive. Its purchase of the Wisconsin Concrete Park in 1976 allowed for Smith’s work to continue living in the Northwoods.

Madison-based food doula integrates historical medicine with modern practices

BY MARIA BRUNETTA

F

ood is medicine, Qwantese Dourese Winters believes. The Madison-based agriculturalist and food doula uses natural medicine and eats a healthy diet with lots of vegetables. But that doesn’t mean she’s not immune from craving processed foods every once in a while. “If I get a craving for Hot Cheetos, I’m gonna eat Hot Cheetos,” Winters says.

Over time, humans have evolved drastically, advancing technologies that improved medicine but health care became more transactional rather than transformational, forgetting the importance of healing practices passed through generations, often discrediting people’s experiences, espe-

cially those of Black and Brown people.

But Wisconsinites like Winters are finding ways to fuse modern medicine and historical medicine rather than seeing them as parallels in somebody’s healing journey.

Winters, a 29-year-old Black woman and Madison native, has found ways to blend her love of nature, agriculture and childbirth together.

In her doula work, she provides care for people who are giving birth, supporting them throughout their pregnancies specifically cooking recipes with medicinal benefits. Because of this, a doula mentor dubbed Winters a “food doula” — and it stuck.

She learned firsthand about the medic-

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YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

inal power of food after battling her own sickness, which led to a three-day hospitalization.

“At that time, I was like a size 0. I couldn’t keep down food and couldn’t keep down water,” Winters says. “And one day my mom was just like, I’m gonna cook for you.”

In her mind, the meal was nothing nutritious. It was collard greens and cornbread they would typically eat during a holiday.

After she ate that for a month, her appetite came back and she started feeling better.

“I think that there’s also something to be said, too, about just the fact this is a traditional African American dish. And I think it just goes to show that our ancestors, whatever culture you may come from, knew this stuff. They knew that food was medicine,” Winters says.

According to Dr. David Rakel, the chair of the department of family medicine and community health at the UW School of Medicine & Public Health, and family medicine doctor at UW Health there are, “less invasive, less harmful, foundational ingredients that every human being needs to be healthy.”

“People don’t want to take a handful of pills every day,” Rakel says. “They want to use their native traditions that have worked for them and their family for centuries.”

Through her food doula work, Winters also recognizes just how foundational food can be to health.

“A lot of other cultures have those rituals and processes that people go through after they give birth and things like that, to help them to heal better,” Winters says. “But in America, we don’t and it’s more so focused on how quickly can you, snap back and how quickly can you get back to work, and so there’s really not an emphasis on nourishing and nurturing your body.”

But it’s all about finding a balance between trusting nature and eating food that’s medicinal — and trusting that modern medicine can also do a lot of good.

“The first thing to do is just to focus on loving yourself and focus on doing inventory about how what you’re eating and how what you’re taking into your body is actually making you feel,” Winters says.

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The mural outside of Essen Haus depicts a variety of people drinking, eating and enjoying the atmosphere of the establishment.

PROST TO WISCONSIN German traditions echo across generations

BY ISABEL FERNANDEZ

I

n October, Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, described his experience trying a brat for the first time in an interview with sports broadcaster Stephen Watson.

Antetokounmpo shared this momentous occasion on the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), with the caption, “How come no one ever told me about brats?”

Despite already living in Milwaukee for 10 years, a city with major German influence, it’s hard to believe Antetokounmpo had no idea about the Wisconsin classic.

German practices in Wisconsin have transformed into more traditional portrayals focused on beer, bratwurst, dirndls and lederhosen, and Oktoberfest.

Although many Wisconsinites have begun to lose sight of the connection, they have intertwined Old World traditions with modern day practices to keep the unique cultural blend alive — one that’s felt in every corner of the state.

Since the first wave of German immigration to Wisconsin in the 1850s through the third wave in the 1890s, traditional German practices have spread throughout the state,

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according to the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, a research institute at UW–Madison dedicated to researching, preserving and sharing the history of German immigration to America.

Today, authentic German establishments are tasked with remaining relevant so that German influence and history continue on across the state.

Where it lives Beyond classic Oktoberfest celebrations, Milwaukeeans flock each summer to German Fest, a festival with music, dance, foods, and other interactive games and experiences.

The festival was started in 1981 by a group of German Americans who wanted to maintain culture and history, says Eric Radue, festival president.

Many of the founders of German Fest had come to Wisconsin after World War II, which allowed them to integrate real, familiar traditions into the festival, Radue says. The “old” Germans, who had been in Wisconsin for a few generations, were intertwined with the “new,” bringing traditional practices together to curate an authentic and traditional festival

in the heart of Milwaukee, Radue says.

“It’s a balancing act of trying to maintain traditions, while also modernizing them,” Radue says. “Either through use of multimedia or embracing other traditions that come over from Germany as we continue to mix.”

Even so, German Fest follows strict guidelines to ensure its events, dishes and performances accurately reflect traditional German cultural practices.

For the past 10 years the festival has had races featuring dachshunds, a traditional German breed, folk dancing and a lumberjack championship called timber sports in partnership with the equipment manufacturer STIHL, Radue says.

German Fest isn’t alone in working to preserve German heritage in Wisconsin. Historical dining establishments, such as 40-yearold Essen Haus in Madison and Mader’s in Milwaukee, a mainstay for over 120 years, turn back time for customers by curating traditional experiences reminiscent of German practices from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

These institutions are instrumental in reminding Wisconsinites where their favorite

foods and drinks came from — and of another era.

Menus include a range of traditional cuisine from potato pancakes and applesauce, jägerschnitzel, to giant pretzels with mustard and Wiener schnitzel with spaetzle. Servers dress in traditional dirndls and lederhosen.

At Essen Haus, the Madison Maennerchor, the oldest German men’s choir in Wisconsin, played lively polka music during Essen Haus’ Oktoberfest celebration.

Viktorija Bilic, an associate professor at UW–Milwaukee, says Germany today is more than polka music, bratwurst, beer, and traditional dirndls and lederhosen. However, these practices stand as landmarks for what was brought over when Germans first largely immigrated to Wisconsin.

“These restaurants were founded in the mid-19th century. They have been here for 100 years or longer. I really see it as going back in time,” Bilic says.

How to spot it Traditional German practices have become focused on beer, bratwurst, dirndls, lederhosen and Oktoberfests, because these have been the cultural aspects Americans associate with Germany, primarily southern Germany.

“It’s natural these types of cultural traditions change,” Coury says. “For better or for worse, it gets distilled down to some of these clichés and stereotypes where people can have fun and enjoy it.”

However, German influence is preserved in other ways.

For instance, Coury noticed people using the phrase, “Are you coming with?” While confused at first, he soon realized it was a direct translation of a German phrase, “Kommst du mit.” Another common phrase

is, “I’m here yet,” which Coury says is another passed down translation.

While German roots in Wisconsin are still alive, their prevalence is dwindling.

There used to be 300 German clubs in Milwaukee, but now only 25 remain, Bilic says.

“I feel like a lot of Americans are always interested in where, because it’s a nation of immigrants, their family came from,” Bilic says. “So it’s definitely important to preserve that history. And it’s still here, even though it’s been 100 years since the last major German emigration happened.”

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Where we are today Today, German Fest struggles with how to connect with and attract younger generations to its events, Radue says.

“It is probably the issue that all the ethnic groups have in front of them,” Radue says.

David Coury, a professor of humanities and German at UW–Green Bay, says that over time, these “traditional” German connections will become more stereotypical and less authentic.

“It’ll become more historical markers, monuments, festivities. And that’s OK, too,” Coury says. “The country changes, and there are new groups of people and new things that people are interested in. I do think it’s important that it not be forgotten.”

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THE TIDE TURNS Madison seeks to better connect Lake Monona with downtown

BY YIFAN CUI

U

nder the golden hues of a Wisconsin sunset, Lake Monona stretches out, its serene waters an integral part of Madison’s identity.

These beloved waters, cherished over thousands of years by the Ho-Chunk people, have stood the test of time. In many ways, they’ve been the same for hundreds of years.

Now, a transformative endeavor is underway to unite the people of Madison with the lake, an ecologically vibrant area often separated by a bustling traffic artery. The new project has the potential to create a thriving civic space, bridging the east and south side communities to the water.

“It’ll just be a place that everybody can enjoy and one of the really special places in Madison,” says Allen Arntsen, chair of the Lake Monona Waterfront Ad Hoc Committee.

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A tapestry of nature and life Lake Monona plays a pivotal role in the lives of Madison residents. Each day, as the sun rises over the wooded edge of the lakeshore, the shores come alive. Traffic rushes along John Nolen Drive while cyclists and joggers weave through lakeside paths. Residents gather along the water’s edge to enjoy fishing, boating and moments of respite.

However, a palpable separation persists, one that hinders the complete connection between the city and the lake.

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Madison Common Council District 4 Alder Michael Verveer hopes to change that.

“I live only a couple of blocks from Lake Monona … It’s a tremendous resource,” Verveer says. “But, frankly sometimes, especially during rush hour traffic, you have to take your life into your own hands to cross or bike across the roadway.”

Verveer collaborated with Friends of Nolen Waterfront, a group founded with the aim of enhancing community access to the lake, to initiate the Lake Monona Waterfront Project.

In February 2022, Madison’s Common Council approved a design competition to create a master plan. Co-sponsored by the City of Madison and Friends of Nolen Waterfront, the three selected finalists received $75,000 to develop a conceptual master plan.

The committee then picked Sasaki, an interdisciplinary planning and design firm, to create the master plan with an initial budget of $200,000.

Verveer says the plan aims to craft areas for people to come together, offering a vibrant hub for community engagement.

“You can bring your kids and stick your feet in the water, walk in the lake, sit along the lake, and coupled with the educational stuff along there,” Arntsen says.

At the beginning of the new year, Verveer will present the master plan to the city council and various committees, aiming for

adoption by early 2024. The initial phase of construction is scheduled for 2025 and 2026, coinciding with federal funding for the John Nolen Drive causeway bridge reconstruction “No longer will motor vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, runners and walkers be literally within a few feet of moving vehicles on the bridge that connects south Madison to downtown Madison across Lake Monona,” Verveer says. “They will be segregated in a very safe and green way.”

Needs and challenges During the competition phase, an open survey yielded more than 8,000 comments.

Project planners found themes emerging and began reintegrating the community’s ideas into the evolving design.

“They really put the environment, the lake, and the water quality front and center,” Arnsten says. “They also had a very strong emphasis on the cultural history of the site, especially the Ho-Chunk Nation.”

However, the grand vision is not without its share of challenges and community needs. Residents have expressed concerns, including potential obstructions to views from homes and safety issues at an intersection. Efforts are underway to address these concerns, such as proposing an underpass instead of a bridge to alleviate conflicts.

The biggest challenge in the later phases of implementation will be funding the project, Verveer says.

“The actual implementing, building the park is a challenge,” Arnsten says. “It’s a big lift, but it’s worth figuring out how to build and pay for it.”

The master plan offers a long-term vision for lakeshore improvements, but there isn’t immediate funding for construction. Implementation will likely be phased over decades, contingent on funding availability from federal, state and local private sources.

However, designers and advocates remain optimistic.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity. It will be a real jewel for the city,” Verveer says.

Lake Winnebago project revives wild rice traditions

BY HANNAH RITVO

S

kip Blanc grew up in Gladstone, Michigan, where he was taught the importance of wild rice from a young age. As a member of the Brothertown Indian Nation, Blanc experienced firsthand the relationship between tribal nations and wild rice.

“Rice is very important to most of the tribes around here,” Blanc says. “It not only sustains your life — it’s got healing properties to it.”

Members of the Brothertown Nation have long relied on wild rice as an essential food source and a symbol of identity.

“As a family, we used to gather it and then most of the time my dad processed it,” Blanc says. “These traditions were passed down through families.”

Wisconsin’s tribal nations have longstanding historical and cultural relationships with wild rice. Hundreds of years ago, wild rice fields in Lake Winnebago, located in central Wisconsin, and across the Midwest were thriving, serving as ideal nesting, feeding and migration grounds for waterfowl and other mammals. But local rice populations have declined due to an influx in pollution and boat wake disruption, the introduction of exotic species and water level fluctuations caused by dams — a form of ecological colonization.

The InterTribal Lake Winnebago Connectivity Project is working to change this.

The collaborative project between Native Nations, UW–Madison students, and agency and nonprofit partners prioritizes traditional ecological knowledge while increasing tribal voices in water, wetlands and wild rice governance.

A 2012 UW–Madison study found that

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SEEDS OF HOPE

watersheds studied in Wisconsin and Minnesota with wild rice have declined by 32% since the early 1900s.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve gone out onto the river that my dad and I used to go on,” Blanc says. “The last couple of years the rice hasn’t been there.”

Jessie Conaway, who works in Native Nations partnerships with the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW– Madison, and Jessica Ryan, the vice chair of the Brothertown Indian Nation, helped host the first UW Native Nations Summit on Environment and Health in 2015.

At the summit, wild rice restoration was noted as a top priority for the Brothertown Nation, and the project was born.

“Wild rice is excellent to organize around for tribes and universities because it’s an important plant culturally and nutritionally to many tribes,” Conaway says. “It’s an important indicator species for ecological health of fisheries, wildlife, your health in general.”

Tribes use their historical knowledge and experience stewarding and harvesting wild rice to serve as advisers, while nonprofits and agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service share data, methods and guidance.

The project began with the documentation of Midwestern tribes’ historical relationships with wild rice. The team used community collaboration, interviews and elder advice to form an action plan with historical and social context before they began taking water samples and collecting data to pinpoint where in the Winnebago watershed water quality was high enough to support wild rice fields.

The team created a 30-year sustainability plan for the InterTribal Lake Winnebago Connectivity Project and is currently seeking funding for phase two.

“I would like to see us get wild rice back in Lake Winnebago,” Blanc says. “I would like to be able to take people out and teach them how to harvest wild rice the way that I was taught.”

CULTIVATE

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THE POWER OF PLAY American Girl dolls spark creativity and connection

BY AVA WOJNOWSKI

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I

remember the Christmas I got my favorite toy like it was yesterday.

My family was gathered in my grandma’s basement, and it was my turn to open a present. At age 6, I was the second youngest, so I had been sitting patiently next to the Christmas tree while I waited for my younger brother to open his gift first. It was a rule in our family to let the youngest go first — I was never a fan of this rule.

When it felt like ages had passed, it was finally my turn, and I was handed a box. I knew exactly what it was before I even opened it.

The rectangular box had such a distinct shape. The wrapping paper had little snowmen dancing around, but I tore past them to be greeted by the face of an American Girl doll smiling back at me. I decided to name her Katie.

I was lucky to get one — they are expensive toys (these days, they start at $115). But many women, both young and old, have memories of a similar experience, and the dolls became our companions, confidantes and best friends. The diffusion of this doll throughout generations is what makes it stand out. The connection of who I was as a young girl to who I am now can be attributed to the influence of my American Girl doll.

American Girl, started by Pleasant Rowland in the 1980s in the Madison suburb of Middleton, now nets more than $100 million per year for its parent company, Mattel. According to the company’s story, Rowland believes “great stories with aspirational characters could inspire girls to make their own positive mark on the world — and she was right.”

The original line of historical dolls, which were accompanied by stories about the characters’ experiences growing up in different time periods, expanded to include more modernized dolls and merchandise that re-

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flect the varied interests of today’s girls, from hockey to cheerleading or even a veterinarian if that is what you wanted. They have accessories for jobs from a doctor to a journalist — a girl can allow their doll to be whoever they want to be.

Much like the movie “Barbie” released this year, American Girl is part of the conversation around dolls and the effect they have on girls — and who they ultimately are as women.

“Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been dolls,” says the narrator in the introduction of the “Barbie” movie. “But the dolls were always

and forever baby dolls… Barbie changed everything … All of these women are Barbie, and Barbie is all of these women.”

Just as Barbie was different when she was introduced because she wasn’t a baby doll, American Girl dolls are contemporaries and peers of the girls who play with them.

“I never really considered that with baby dolls,” says Andrea Behling, the 31-year-old editor of Madison Magazine. “You know, that being a really popular girls toy and how it actually kind of reinforces some of those gender stereotypes.”

The product is about more than just the

Ava Wojnowski holds her American Girl doll up for a photo after she got her hair done and ears pierced in Chicago. Katie was a lookalike doll, and Wojnowski loved having a doll version of herself.

dolls, says Julie Parks, senior director of public relations for American Girl.

“I believe American Girl’s greatest differentiator — and a main reason for the brand’s continued success — is that nearly everything we do is rooted in story,” Parks wrote in an email. “As a longtime children’s publisher, stories have always been at the heart of American Girl, and it’s what has given our products, particularly our character dolls, such deep meaning and purpose.”

Behling got one for Christmas in 2000 when she was 8 years old.

“I think there is great power in boredom.

It lets your mind wander.”

“American Girl was a fairly expensive toy,” she says. “I remember my mom saying, ‘Well, we’ll wait till Christmas, maybe Santa will bring you one.’”

Although the doll was quite pricey, fans say the quality of an American Girl doll is what made it worth the price.

“Even though American Girl was expensive, you were getting good quality,” says Patricia Shechter, member of the Madison Area Doll Club. “It was all very well made and well

worth the price that people paid for it.”

The history of an American Girl doll is a characteristic that draws many people to the toy in the first place.

“It mattered in a historical context, which you don’t often hear history from a woman’s point of view. You hear it from a man’s point of view,” Behling says. “That was really revolutionary, at least from my childhood experience, to see those stories.”

The dolls have impacted generations of girls, who may have had their own American Girl friends growing up. Parks points to the connection that American Girl works to keep alive with the next group of doll owners.

“The creativity and imagination (not to forget the love of reading and history) American Girl has sparked in a generation of kids for nearly four decades is truly phenomenal and something we are enormously proud of,” Parks wrote in an email.

Shechter is originally from Fairbanks, Alaska, a town of about 33,000 near the center of the state. This made access to American Girl dolls difficult for her and her daughter. However, it made the dolls more special when they were able to get one. She felt that this toy was a point of bonding for them.

Shechter’s favorite doll is Molly, one of the historical dolls in the BeForever collection.

“My daughter loved [Molly] the best,”

Shechter says. “And she had round glasses.

My daughter got round glasses at 9 years old, so she could look like Molly. And I think I just liked Molly.”

Getting to have a mini-me to take care of was always something I enjoyed. I was always thrilled to bring her on all of my adventures. Being able to use my imagination by putting her into scenarios that I aspired to achieve was something that shaped me into who I am today. Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to see the world. With Katie, I could use my imagination to achieve this dream. In my mind, Katie has traveled to cities from London to Japan.

“I think there is great power in boredom,” Behling says. “It lets your mind wander and especially playing with dolls.

I remember creating all of these fantastical scenarios of what my doll would do.”

Behling’s desire to become a journalist stemmed from a variety of reasons. One of these facets was being an avid reader. Many of these books included the American Girl doll books that were offered. When she reflects on hobbies that appealed to her as a child, she sees the value in creativity and the role it has played throughout her life.

“Being able to create these scenarios with dolls did help me think more creatively and gave some agency to me and how I even think about creating stories,” Behling says.

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Andrea Behling gleams with joy as she presents her American Girl doll for a photo. This photo was taken shortly after she recieved her doll.

CONNECT

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BUZZER-BEATER Milwaukee barbershop bridges health care gaps

BY RACHEL HALE

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W

alking into Gee’s Clippers, it’s not surprising the space is built for more than haircuts.

Atop a replica of the Milwaukee Bucks’ Fiserv Forum court flooring, 72 chairs from the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, also known as the MECCA, and the BMO Harris Bradley Center split the room’s waiting area. A steel vault door stands at the end of the court — a remnant of the building’s original structure as a 1930s savings bank — and ceiling trim outlines the room’s nearly 25-foot ceilings like icing on a wedding cake.

In the shop’s vending machine, travel-sized Mane ‘n Tail shampoo bottles and 360 Style Wave Control Pomade fill slots you’d expect to be packed with chocolate bars or soda.

Tucked behind the vault’s entrance is a new addition to the historic Black barbershop: Gee’s MKE Wellness Clinic, a weekly service open to all intended to address health disparities in Milwaukee’s Black community.

“For Black guys, a barber is definitely a trusted individual,” says founder Gaulien Smith. “Most times a guy is not going to go to a barber to get his haircut if he doesn’t really trust him. … It’s a very intimate type of relationship.”

infections as well as assistance with employment, housing, food insecurity and GED completion, Smith says. The clinic’s team plans to offer these services again starting in the summer of 2024.

Currently open every Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., their future goal is to provide services three to four days a week, says Jasmine Johnikin, the clinic’s main coordinator.

Smith became passionate about early illness detection after his father died at age 62 following a stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis.

At the time of his father’s death in 2006, he didn’t think he would later have a clinic at the shop.

Wendy Collins, a friend working for a health insurance company, gave him the idea. The clinic opened in 2020 and has since served more than 2,000 patients. The clinic relaunched at the end of September after its partnership with Network Health and Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin started at the end of June.

Johnikin, a community outreach nurse with Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, says it’s important for clients to see someone who looks like them. Just 5% of physicians identify as Black, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Barbers cut clients’ hair the morning of the clinic’s reopening.

Turning a trusted neighborhood institution — the local barbershop — into a trusted source of health and wellness information is helping Milwaukee’s north side community bridge the divide between health and social services in communities of color. Black people in Wisconsin have some of the poorest health outcomes, and Smith’s shop blends community with awareness to change the futures of customers while also addressing long-standing inequities.

Working in partnership with Network Health and Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin, the clinic currently offers services including blood pressure checks, glucose monitoring, flu shots and screenings for body mass index. The clinic has also offered COVID-19 vaccines and screenings for cholesterol, memory, hearing, vision, cardiovascular issues, HIV and sexually transmitted

Her main concerns in the community are high blood pressure and diabetes. More than half of Black adults ages 20 and over have hypertension, and Black people are 1.26 times more likely to be diagnosed with hypertension than white adults, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Black adults are twice as likely as non-Hispanic whites to die from diabetes and have a diagnosis rate 60% higher than white adults, according to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health.

“We’ve lost so much trust in the medical field in general, because there’s not a lot of us that look like us,” Johnikin says. “My biggest goal is to help people not be so scared.”

Johnikin hopes to create a safe space for community members to meet people where they are, detect preventable diseases early on

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“We’ve lost so much trust in the medical field in general, because there’s not a lot of us that look like us.”

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Gaulien Smith finishes client Myron Smith’s cut with a pair of clippers.

and fill in the gap for health disparities, she says.

Network Health’s Chief Medical Officer Mushir Hassan says conversations about the partnership started in March between Smith and CEO of Network Health Coreen Dicus-Johnson.

Hassan says Smith brings a “secret sauce” by connecting marginalized communities to health care access through the trust he’s built with his clientele.

“Folks can feel comfortable and have trust in what he’s been doing, so being able to partner with someone like him who’s got that trust in the community allows us to be able to be seen as a trusted adviser when it comes to delivering health care information,” Hassan says.

The 8,000-square-foot shop stands at 2200 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the heart of Bronzeville, the historic core of Milwaukee’s north side Black community. Jazz clubs in Bronzeville once hosted Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. The shop orig-

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Jasmine Johnikin poses by a Network Health sign in front of the Wellness Clinic.

inally opened in 1995 on Fond du Lac Avenue and Sherman Boulevard but moved to its current location in 2017.

“It’s the Vatican of barbershops,” says Antonio Perkins, who has worked at Gee’s for three years.

Perkins, who goes by Tone, says the systemic medical mistreatment Black people have experienced — such as in the Tuskegee study, in which Black men weren’t treated for syphilis, or the case of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells have been used for medical research for decades without her family’s consent — means “a lot of Black people are not very comfortable with going and getting health care from doctors.”

This systemic medical mistreatment contributes to a lack of trust, Perkins says.

“Black people have had very negative experiences in the health care field, whether it’s been being tampered with, or poorly treated, or even tortured and things of that nature.…We grew up listening to these stories,” Perkins says, add-

ing that bringing a wellness clinic to the space is “the dopest combination that a barbershop could ever have.”

The shelves lining Smith’s office at the shop hold a 26.2 sign in reference to his marathon training — he’s run five in as many years and is running the Tokyo Marathon next March — and a Kentucky Wildcats baseball hat signed by the Miami Heat’s Tyler Herro, whose hair Smith has cut since Herro’s freshman year of high school.

He’s cut the hair of more than 200 NBA players, including Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Reggie Miller and Ray Allen. But he still recalls the neighborhood clientele he had out of his parents’ north side house, where he started to cut hair at 12 years old. “[Milwaukee] has always been a blue-collar town,” Smith says. “This is where cars were made, where beer was brewed, where cheese was manufactured. To see now, we’ve been on a na-

tion of disease is the reason he found out he had late-stage prostate cancer.

During a haircut in 2020, Jones told Smith that his annual physical showed high levels of the prostate-specific antigen in his bloodstream. After the haircut, he agreed to get a cancer screening, which showed he would need immediate treatment.

“The barber is the one who is the encyclopedia — the person who knows all the happenings of the community and has a lot of experience that he loves to share with his audience.”

“You gotta understand. I’m 52 years old.

We hadn’t won the championship since I was a year old. So, I mean, that was really, really huge,” says Smith, who is a season ticket holder, about the Bucks’ 2021 championship win.

The black and white referee-striped shirt he is wearing is one of 60 provided by the shop’s partnership with the Milwaukee Brewers.

To get a sense of Milwaukee’s sports heritage, one only has to look at the shop’s court-inspired design. Fourteen jerseys from players like Damon Jones, George Koonce and Ray Allen — who got his hair cut at Gee’s for his entire tenure on the Bucks — are framed. Felt pennants, basketball hoops and signed vintage memorabilia fill the shop, and a flag split into sections corresponding to the Green Bay Packers, Bucks, Brewers and Wisconsin Badgers hangs from the northern wall.

Smith says it takes community members born and raised in Milwaukee to “change the narrative” of the city.

However, that effort extends beyond a wellness clinic. In 2016, it became the first barbershop in the country to charter a Boy Scout troop, Smith says. Ahead of the 2020 Presidential election, the shop offered free haircuts to people who registered to vote there, and this June, it hosted an event to foster dialogue between Milwaukee police and youth residents.

Smith “lives, eats and breathes community,” Johnikin says. “He comes as his full self.

He really has a heart and passion for servicing others in the community.”

Curtis Jones, a client of Gee’s Clippers for 23 years and a retired U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, says Smith’s advocacy for early detec-

“The expression on his face totally changed, ‘Man, what’s wrong with you, you know that can kill you,’” Jones says. “I owe it to him. He won’t take the credit. But if it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where I would be.”

Twenty-eight rounds of radiation later, Jones is in remission. He called Smith a “visionary” and says his commitment to the clinic is “a blessing” that has broken down barriers for Black men seeking health services.

Part of what makes the wellness clinic successful is that Smith’s staff stands behind its message of community. Gee’s barber Ceree Huley, a recovered addict following 27 years of struggle with substances, has used his role as a barber to mentor the clients that sit in his chair. A 1999 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel front-page feature about his journey, peppered with dots from thumbtack wear, is hung next to the price list on his wall.

Like many others in the community, Huley has experienced the personal impact of health disparities; his brother Gerald passed away from diabetes. Every Friday, he goes to the wellness clinic to get his blood pressure checked.

“The barbershop is the hub. I got a captive audience when you’re in my chair and I’m cutting your hair,” Huley says. “The barber is the one who is the encyclopedia — the person who knows all the happenings of the community and has a lot of experience that he loves to share with his audience.”

Smith echoed the sentiment, saying, “We don’t [always] talk about hair.” Instead, the conversation might turn to businesses, religion, kids and relationships.

And, of course, the Milwaukee Bucks.

Racial health disparities

5%

of physicians identify as Black Black adults are

60%

more likely to recieve a diabetes diagnosis compared to white adults

3 in 4

Black adults have developed hypertension by age 55

Black people have a

20%

higher likelihood of developing cancer and a

40%

increased risk of mortality compared to other racial groups

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tional stage as we are, it speaks volumes.”

Part of that pride extends to the success of the Milwaukee Bucks. As he uses a trimmer to shave the lining of a client’s beard, the conversation naturally turns to Giannis Antetokounmpo, who Smith says has “that winning DNA,” and the Bucks’ recent acquisition of Damian Lillard.

CONNECT

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HOME AWAY FROM HOME

A Reedsburg summer camp transforms lives through adventure and spirituality

BY ALEXIS BAKKEN

I

t was a warm and sunny summer afternoon as the camper approached the sleek, red canoe. Excited and a little nervous, I watched as he jumped into the boat for the first time. He cradled the wooden paddle in his hands.

His counselor pushed him and his new friend off from the shore. The boat rocked as he put his paddle into the murky lake and used it to swirl the water behind him. He paddled again, alternating back and forth from each side of the canoe.

Once they reached the center of the small lake, he closed his eyes, tilted his head up toward the sky and smiled.

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“We don’t want camp to be the best week of the year.

Camp should be a week that affects how you live the other 51 weeks of the year.”

I witnessed these kinds of moments often as I worked as a photographer at Camp Gray, located in Reedsburg, just 16 miles southwest of the Wisconsin Dells. Over the past 70 years, Camp Gray has presented thousands of campers with the opportunity to experience reality through Christ-centered community and the thrill of outdoor adventure.

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According to Camp Gray Executive Director Tim Chaptman, this is just one of the many “formative” and “tangible experiences of reality” that campers encounter when they come to Camp Gray.

Surrounded by the camp’s expansive 225 acres, campers not only engage with nature’s beauty but also experience the profound impact of the Catholic faith through the lived experience of their counselors.

This fosters an environment where campers are active participants in a faith-driven exploration of life’s adventures.

Becoming a camp director Jeff Hoeben, who was the executive director prior to Chaptman, originally found out about Camp Gray from a water bottle at a young adult conference. He did a quick Google search. There, he discovered that Camp Gray’s environmental stewardship program was hiring missionaries to lead outdoor adventures.

During that year of leading outdoor trips, Hoeben met his now-wife, Rebecca, who was also working on staff. In 2005, they got married and eventually stepped into the role of co-executive directors in 2008. After serving together for 10 years, Rebecca decided to step down from the position to spend more time with their three kids.

Shortly after that, Chaptman joined as summer camp director, and together, he and Hoeben strengthened the mission of the camp, continuing to make it a place for

Camp Gray campers and counselors cheer during a game of tug-of-war, determined to bring their blue team to victory during the camp’s Olympics-style Cassidy Games.

growing in spirituality through the great outdoors.

To Hoeben, this combination of the Catholic faith and the outdoors is “the most natural fusion.”

After living at camp for 20 years, Hoeben and his family transitioned away from Camp Gray in May 2023 to pursue other opportunities.

Chaptman hopes to continue the legacy of Camp Gray as he steps into his new role as executive director. Like Hoeben, Chaptman was also introduced to camp at a young age.

“It had a really profound effect on me. It was the first time that I had really seen the faith lived with great joy,” says Chaptman, who came as a camper in high school in 2001.

Chaptman started as assistant director and became summer camp director nine months later.

Throughout a day at Camp Gray, campers rotate through different outdoor activities with their counselors. They have the opportunity to do all sorts of adventures such as archery, fishing and rock climbing. They also take part in several traditions, such as capture the flag and the Olympics-style Cassidy Games, which combine activities like tug-of-war and a canoe race across Lake Jake.

Because these fun-filled activities take up the majority of the week, faith at camp is “more often caught than taught,” Chaptman says. “Kids have the opportunity to see the lived faith experiences of their counselors and other staff members.”

Hoeben hopes for a seamless integration of campers’ spiritual lives and daily routines.

“We don’t want camp to be the best week of the year,” Hoeben says. “Camp should be a week that affects how you live the other 51 weeks of the year.”

CONNECT

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LEAD THE WAY OUT

Two formerly incarcerated Wisconsinites help other justiceimpacted individuals find success

BY ALISON STECKER

The Way Out co-founders, Ruben Gaona (left) and Eli Rivera (right), share a bond that transcends mere business partnership.

A

t Toast in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point, fresh coffee mingled with the scent of possibility.

The restaurant was closed to everyone but two previously incarcerated Latino men. Both wanted to help justice-impacted individuals, or folks who’ve been directly or indirectly impacted by the legal system.

They each tossed $5 on the table, planting the foundation for The Way Out, a fair chance employment platform.

“Mistakes don’t define who we are but what we do afterward,” says Ruben Gaona, co-founder of The Way Out. Gaona and co-founder Eli Rivera understand the realities of reentry and securing employment.

“It’s often hard for individuals who have criminal records to find employment because of the biases against justice-involved individuals,” Gaona says. “When getting assistance to find employment, they are often forgotten once they are employed, and we don’t know what happens on that 91st or 100th day.”

Wisconsin has one of the highest incarceration rates in the U.S. Support systems for justice-impacted individuals,

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such as The Way Out, work to provide additional resources for those coming out of prison, bridging the gap between release and successful reentry.

As of September 2023, there were 21,683 incarcerated people in Wisconsin, with 21.8% having less than one year left to serve before release. The risk of reoffending increases when individuals lack employment resources because job security is essential for obtaining health care and housing, according to Tawandra Rowell-Cunsolo, assistant professor in the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at UW–Madison.

However, previously incarcerated individuals are unemployed at a rate exceeding 27% — surpassing even the Great Depression.

“If they don’t have an income coming in…they are unable to support themselves,” Rowell-Cunsolo says.

This is where people like Rivera and Gaona come in.

The Way Out connects justice-impacted job seekers with support and employers to facilitate a successful transition from reentry to society, aiming to end the incarceration cycle through technology

and fair wages, according to its website.

“You can’t just give somebody a job and expect everything to be OK after incarceration,” Rivera says.

Life behind bars Rivera, a first-generation Puerto Rican, was born and raised in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Milwaukee. He entered federal prison in his late 20s due to involvement in marijuana manufacturing.

After serving two years, Rivera transitioned to a halfway house. He says the facility’s administration told individuals if they couldn’t find work within two weeks, they had to return to prison.

Although Rivera found a job, not everyone was as lucky as him. He reflects on his halfway house experience, remembering the cries of grown men who couldn’t secure employment.

“The frustration and the direness of those situations, especially when people were actually getting revoked and being told, ‘Well, you’re going back tomorrow,’ …

It always stuck with me,” he says.

This prompted Rivera, 51, to shift from hospitality to support those with similar

“Mistakes don’t define who we are but what we do afterward.”

At that point, Gaona had five kids to support. He went into survival mode and started selling drugs again.

“In the blink of an eye, my whole life changed,” he says.

In March 2010, Gaona was arrested and sentenced to a decade in federal prison. Five years in, a man asked him, “What do you have to show for?”

That question changed his journey.

“I went back to my cubicle, and for

the first time, I cried for being arrested,” he says. “I [told myself] I would no longer allow people to dictate which direction I go. I’m going to take control of my own life.”

Gaona, 42, was released in 2017 and was told by probation and parole he had to settle for a bare minimum-paying job.

Gaona initially worked as a talent development specialist for the FoodShare Employment Training program.

Later, he transitioned to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, where he assisted with the reentry program. Within two years of working with justice-involved individuals, Gaona realized how difficult the job search was.

“It’s like the system is set up for people to be released and then being told to go get any job even if it pays bare minimum at $7.25 where eventually, with that amount of pay, you can’t sustain yourself or your family, and you end up going into a survival mode that lands you back into prison,” he says.

Eli Rivera, one of the co-founders, emphasizes that the ongoing impact of The Way Out on individuals’ lives and the community serves as a constant source of motivation.

Finding “The Way Out” The Way Out is an anti-bias employment software platform for justice-impacted job seekers. It focuses on three components of the job hunt: the justice-impacted job seeker, the employer and the supportive service providers.

Rivera explains that the platform generates an anonymous profile, removing personal identifiers to mitigate potential biases from employers.

Employers utilizing the platform must commit to hiring a minimum of 10 justice-impacted job seekers, Rivera says.

The platform also aggregates the supportive services needs of the job seeker and matches them with a primary supportive service provider. The Way Out currently offers around 30 support services, including their nonprofit called My Way Out, which has served 262 clients as of 2022.

“One of the beauties of our nonprofit is the fact there is no limitation when we stop working with you,” Gaona says.

After his release, co-founder Ruben Gaona wanted to help previously incarcerated individuals secure employment and take control of their lives.

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life experiences, leading him to Gaona.

Gaona was born in El Paso, Texas, but he considers Milwaukee home. At 15, he moved to the city’s south side, delving into drug sales by 17. He joined the Navy at 19 but was honorably discharged after six and a half years.

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CONNECT THE UNCONNECTED Door County fights for fast, reliable internet

BY SOPHIA VENTO

F

or Kurt Kiefer, the optimal retirement from a decades-long career in information technology in Wisconsin public schools consisted of buying a condo in either downtown Madison or in its bustling Dudgeon-Monroe neighborhood.

However, his wife had other plans.

“And that was to move to Door County,” Kiefer says.

To a plot of land with zero available internet service providers.

“That’s immediately what lit my fire,” he says. “It’s the 21st century utility that everyone needs that a whole bunch of people still don’t have.”

Kiefer, who served as an assistant state superintendent for Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction, and his wife later built a home in Baileys Harbor, a picturesque town of cottages and vacation rentals with thousands of acres of preserved wilderness along the northeastern shores of Lake Michigan.

He would eventually spearhead a municipal-level committee with the primary goal of getting Baileys Harbor residents online.

“There’s a very real impact whether it’s for a kid, family or elder trying to connect with a doctor and avoid a 45-minute drive to Sturgeon Bay, or a business turning away patrons because they can’t process their cards,” Kief-

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er says. “You can’t live without the internet anymore.”

The fight to boost digital equity across the region is ongoing, however. Partnerships across sectors, including local governments, economic development corporations and non profit organizations, are propelling forward to connect all of Door County to highspeed internet.

“All 72 counties have locations, homes and businesses that don’t have either any service or don’t have good enough service to move into the future,” says Alyssa Kenney, the state broadband and digital equity director at the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

In Wisconsin, nearly 246,000 locations have no broadband internet, while an additional 218,000 have unreliable or slow connections, according to a report from Gov. Tony Evers’ Task Force on Broadband Access.

In Door County, 808 locations are considered unserved, which means areas lacking internet with 25 megabits per second download and three megabits per second upload service — the bare minimum required to work remotely as a student or employee.

Meanwhile, 236 locations are underserved, meaning these locations lack 100 megabits per second download and 20 megabits per second upload speeds, according to a county

map last updated in October. A speed of more than 100 megabits is best for multiple users and devices.

“By 2030, we’re going to be very close to universal service,” Kenney says. “I don’t think it will be like tap water, but it will be pretty close.”

Collaboration is key In August 2020, Kiefer formed the Baileys Harbor Broadband Ad Hoc Committee. By March 2021, the group had selected an internet service provider partner and submitted grant applications to the state Public Service Commission. It was funded that June.

“Baileys Harbor set the tone,” says Jessica Hatch, the county’s broadband coordinator hired in 2022.

Today, almost all of the municipalities in Door County are actively fighting to boost access to high-speed and reliable broadband internet.

“It requires people from 15 townships, four villages and one city to actually talk with each other about what they’re learning and doing,” Kiefer says.

Right now, however, there is more money than ever coming into the state to boost broadband access.

The Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment Program, funded by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, is a $42.45 billion initiative to help get all Americans online. Wisconsin is set to receive a little over $1 billion from this bill.

“There’s an emphasis on long-term sustainability,” Kenney says about the funding. “There’s not going to be a billion dollars for the state to connect everybody again. There’s a strong emphasis on doing it fast but also doing it right.”

Data drives progress In recent years, mapping unserved and underserved locations has kicked into high gear, as the state has challenged connectivity maps from the Federal Communications Commission.

“Once you have data, it’s hard to refute it,” Kiefer says.

This is no small task, though. Hatch likened the process of measuring internet service in Door County to “nailing Jell-O to a wall.”

Door County partnered with the Public Service Commission to deploy an internet survey. Hatch says this is the best decision the county could have ever made. She emphasized a huge response rate — 4,166

— on surveys, making up nearly half of respondents to the statewide survey.

“They’ve been so willing to collaborate,” Kiefer says about Door County residents.

For Hatch, it remains important to prove to the state that Door County needs fast, reliable internet as the state prepares to divvy up federal funding for broadband expansion.

“We have had the time to have the conversations,” Hatch says. “I just hope we have enough data and narrative to show the want and need.”

In Baileys Harbor, specifically, Kiefer and broadband advocates continue to chug along.

“Our goal continues to be to have every one of the roughly 1,500 address locations accessible to fiber by the end of next year,” Kiefer says. “It can be done. It’s not impossible. It’s not easy.”

Curb is sponsored by

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Located in northeastern Wisconsin, Door County is known for its scenic landscapes, rugged coastline and small-town charm.

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GAME CHANGER UW–Madison graduate runs city’s first arcade bar

BY ERIC HERBST

T

he idea for an arcade bar began to form when Mitchell Turino was 22.

At the time, Turino was a recent graduate of UW–Madison. He was working as a local bartender, trying to figure out his next step.

Inspiration soon struck but in an unlikely place — outside Madison, in the bustling city of Columbus, Ohio.

In 2013, Turino ventured from one state capital to another to view a “Dota 2” tournament, an online multiplayer game he has played for countless hours. Yet it wasn’t what he saw at the tournament that stuck with him.

“We met some people from Columbus who went, ‘Oh man, this is your first time here?

You gotta come to this bar,’” Turino says. “So we went to a place called 16 Bit Arcade, and that was when I went, ‘Oh my god, Madison needs something like this.’”

Now in its fifth year, Madison’s I/O Arcade Bar remains a top local attraction, blending different elements together to create an enjoyable experience for everyone. Turino’s journey wasn’t easy, but worth all the blood, sweat and quarters operating the city’s first arcade bar requires.

Bringing the idea for an arcade bar back home with him, Turino’s vision was nurtured by friends and family.

With a business loan secured, Turino found a space on Madison’s Williamson Street and began construction on what would eventually become I/O Arcade Bar. I/O Arcade Bar officially opened in November 2018. Almost immediately, I/O became a success. This success was largely fueled by adults who grew up playing classic arcade games now looking for a hit of nostalgia while drinking their favorite tap beer.

But its success came to a screeching halt in 2020. COVID-19 hit Turino’s bar hard.

As the pandemic dragged on, Turino de-

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cided a change was needed. He found a new home for his business in the old Prism nightclub building, located a few blocks down Williamson Street.

“When it was open and available, we moved everything over here in one day,” Turino says.

Turino’s big move paid off. The move nearly doubled I/O’s space, allowing ample room for the 55 arcade games and 21 pinball machines that now line its walls.

Upon entering I/O, customers are first met with a modern rendition of “Pong” before moving on to such arcade gems like “Space Invaders,” “Ms. Pac-Man” and “Street Fighter

II” in the main area, traversing through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s with every step.

Yet Turino doesn’t skimp on the “bar” side of his arcade bar, either. In addition to the typical drinks available, he and his staff enjoy coming up with themed cocktails based on the games in I/O’s collection.

It’s hard not to be swept up in the electric fever dream I/O offers customers. For some, this atmosphere is even more addicting than trying to net a new high score.

“There’s moments of clarity when there’s 200 people in here and you get to go, ‘We built this,’” Turino says.

A row of pinball machines based on classic icons can be found in I/O’s arcade. The bar features machines inspired by Godzilla, James Bond, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Midway’s “Cactus Canyon.”

STAND IN STAND IN SOLIDARITY SOLIDARITY Wisconsin advocates unite against injustice

BY ABIGAIL LEAVINS

Wisconsin advocates unite against injustice

BY ABIGAIL LEAVINS Workers from MGE, OPEIU Local 39 and Starbucks Workers Workers from MGE, OPEIU Local 39 and Starbucks Workers United march in a joint rally in early November.

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S

tephanie Salgado came to the U.S. from Honduras when they were 14 years old.

They say it didn’t take them long to realize that not everyone was treated the same.

As a queer woman, Salgado realized they were treated differently based on their gender, which led them to realize systemic issues of gender inequality.

“The second thing I learned was that there’s no people like me in the conversation,” Salgado says about their time in climate advocacy.

Since then, Salgado has pushed for the importance of advocacy. They see why it’s important to stand up for oneself and never to forget to stand up for others in the process.

And Salgado is not the only one.

Unions and advocacy groups have joined together around Madison and Wisconsin to support one another and fight for change, knowing they are stronger together. Immigrant rights organizations have attended unfair labor practice strikes for insurance workers, and labor unions are organizing joint rallies to show support for each other.

Union organization is not a new phenomenon, but despite the ongoing decline in membership — about 7% of Wisconsin wage and salary workers are part of a union — it makes up a bigger part of the conversation in Wisconsin in 2023.

“I’ve seen activism and advocacy as something intersectional,” Salgado says.

Salgado, now 22, is the Madison representative for Voces de la Frontera, an organiza-

tion led by low-wage workers, immigrants and youth who fight for civil rights and workers’ rights.

Salgado started as an advocate for climate justice, joining Gov. Tony Evers’ Task Force on Climate Change as a college student. At first, Salgado doubted themselves because they were the youngest person in the room at 18 years old. However, they also noticed few women and people of color in the room.

“That’s when I knew I was like, ‘Oh s---, I really need to be here,’” Salgado says. “And I need to be the voice to call [for] urgency.”

Workers from TruStage, formerly known as CUNA Mutual Group, were on strike for a little more than two weeks in May and June 2023 over accusations of unfair labor

practices. Wisconsin auto workers joined the United Auto Workers strike in September, seeking higher wages, cost of living benefits and a more even playing field for new hires.

Additionally, nurses, Starbucks employees, UPS workers and several other groups have organized this year.

Joe Evica, the chief steward of OPEIU, a union made up of workers from the insurance company TruStage, also values advocacy that is interconnected — specifically tuned to the rights of immigrant workers.

He points out that immigrants make up a lot of the laborers, and fighting for one group is fighting for another.

“Ultimately, the forces that we’re opposed to are pretty well overlapping,” Evica says.

Top: Workers march around the Capitol in a joint rally in early November.

Bottom: Union workers hold up solidarity signs at a joint rally at the Wisconsin Capitol.

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“There’s going to be no liberation unless we lift up everyone on the bottom.”

Stephanie Salgado is the Madison representative for Voces de la Frontera, a community organization led by youth and immigrant workers.

Salgado says they noticed a system of oppression against many groups of people when they moved to the U.S. in 2015.

They had heard of civil disobedience and activism against unjust powers but didn’t think they could be an advocate. As an immigrant, Salgado feared they would be deported if they questioned authority in any way.

But Salgado was passionate about the injustices they noticed and started organizing with the people around them anyway. They now advocate on several platforms, including racial justice, immigration justice, climate justice and gender justice. Salgado says it is important to work on these simultaneously to break away from capitalism and lift marginalized voices.

“There’s going to be no liberation unless we lift up everyone on the bottom,” Salgado says.

Evica says community support from groups like Voces de la Frontera was huge for TruStage workers this summer.

It might seem strange to some that a labor union and immigrant rights organization even care about supporting each other, Evica says. But he argues both groups experience injustice — and the unjust treatment often overlaps.

and a producer for WORT Labor Radio, says unions that unite typically have more success.

“You can play one off against the other and you come out ahead from the worker’s point of view,” Emspak says. “And if two unions can cooperate, they usually come out better.”

Emspak adds that cooperation between labor unions and immigrants has happened for years. He points to garment workers’ unions in New York in the 1920s and 1930s made up of mostly immigrants.

Nindik Figueredo, the Madison essential workers organizer for Voces de la Frontera, agrees community solidarity is important.

“It is important that the unions — the alliances — continue to strengthen themselves, because workers are able to receive protection more easily, as opposed to

walking alone,” Figueredo says through her husband Luis Velasquez, who translated from Spanish to English.

Figueredo says advocacy is important to her because many immigrants don’t understand their rights. They might be exploited at work and don’t realize they deserve to be treated better.

Additionally, Salgado believes society has not normalized the idea of young people advocating for themselves. Instead, society might “tokenize” young people by not taking them seriously.

While advocating for climate justice in college, Salgado realized the importance of all kinds of advocacy. They say it made them more aware of their Latina, queer and immigrant identities. Because Salgado sees all of these identities in themself, they say they have to see all activism as interconnected.

To Salgado, this means that advocating for others is huge.

“How can we collect our dreams towards liberation together to work towards something that we’re both passionate about?”

Salgado asks.

Salgado says all groups are fighting for liberation. Everyone wants their cause to succeed, but achieving that requires unity.

“When we don’t act in solidarity with one another and understand what’s almost the common good between us, it’s very hard because you’re fighting for the scraps, you’re fighting for one piece of the pie,” Salgado says.

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“It’s kind of the broader issue of an injury to one is an injury to all,” Evica says. “So when you see that immigrant workers are under attack, you have to understand that it’s a divide-and-conquer strategy that’s meant to really affect all workers.”

Frank Emspak, a professor emeritus in the School for Workers at UW–Madison

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FRONT OF HOUSE Dane County food workers change industry together

BY NICOLE CEDERBERG

W

ander into Short Stack Eatery just off Madison’s State Street, and you’ll find friends hunched over plates of pancakes, servers bustling to tables with eggs and coffee, and bussers whisking away the remains.

But what patrons don’t see is the sometimes darker side of the food industry — one where workers routinely experience burnout, struggle with their mental health or battle substance abuse issues.

Alex Lindenmeyer, co-owner of Short Stack Eatery, saw her workers struggling firsthand. She explains that although Short Stack may not have the bar culture, other restaurants in the Madison food industry have a long-standing mentality that the only way to bond after a shift is by getting postwork drinks and then going out. This creates a cycle of working, getting drunk and doing it again.

“We’ve built this culture around drugs and alcohol. And I think that was a big showstopper in terms of ‘Hey, let’s get together and talk about this,’” Lindenmeyer says.

And that’s exactly what they did. The industry had many conversations about what was going on, and in 2022, Chef Evan Dannells invited a group of leaders in the food industry to come together and have conversations as a community rather than as individuals or restaurants. The group realized

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Noah Bloedorn (left) and Alex Lindenmeyer helped start group workouts at Pat’s Gym to improve well-being in the food industry.

their experiences weren’t happening in a vacuum, and many establishments needed a place to come together.

Among the group invited was Noah Bloedorn. While completing his graduate degree in urban planning at UW–Madison, he was inspired and energized to organize more meetings to talk about what was happening in the food industry in Madison as a part of his graduate project.

“The big takeaway from the meeting was that we need to be organized,” Bloedorn says.

“We need to be working together to have a political voice and start making that change that we want to see in this community.”

After this meeting, they decided to give it a name: The Dane County Food Collective.

Since 2022, this group has changed the way their restaurants in the Madison community operate. It started with a few leaders like Lindenmeyer and Bloedorn and grew into an organization that wants everyone in the community to come and learn how to change their own restaurants and, hopefully,

the Madison food industry as a whole.

The collective opens itself to anyone in the food industry. The group sees everyone in the collective as equals; Bloedorn even says he is hesitant to call himself the leader because of its collective approach. The mission from the start was to make the collective a place anyone in the community could join.

“The diversity within the organization [exists] both in traditional ways like making sure that the organization itself reflects the diversity within our community but also in making sure that all areas of the food system are represented,” says member Christy McKenzie.

After their first meeting, the group began to meet on the first Tuesday of each month, where they would organize what the collective needed to plan. On top of their Tuesday meetings, they started “Sunday Meets,” when people come together and talk about what they are going through. Sometimes, they talk about work; other times they just talk about mental health. According to Bloedorn, Sunday Meets are mostly used as a support group

for the collective. This space gives the members an opportunity to be open and talk to someone who has been in a similar situation before.

As the community continued to grow, they added to their health and wellness programming. The first addition was weekly gym sessions at Pat’s Gym in downtown Madison. This program is what the collective calls “industry wellness classes,” where anyone in the industry can come to free group workouts twice a week.

counseling. After the course, she said it changed her life.

“In any counseling position, you don’t share personal information. You’re working on advising and working on where we are going next and how you are going to get there,” Stern says. “In this specific situation, you are the passenger in their car, and the point of it is you say, ‘I’ve been in this car, I know what it feels like’ — you would never say that in a counseling situation.”

“We need to be working together to have a political voice and start making that change we that we want to see in this community.”

“There’s a level of confidence that has come from a lot of people just continuing to show up and lift heavy weights and get their heart rate up,” Lindenmeyer says.

“And that’s been really cool, too, that camaraderie of instead of us all talking about ‘Oh, we raged last night, and I’m so hungover,’ it’s more so like, ‘I’m sore, and I’ll see you at Thursday’s workout.’”

The second program was brought to the collective by Lindenmeyer. In 2017, she went through a training through Wisconsin Peer Specialists, which trains people how to offer mental health and substance use support by establishing commonality through their own experiences.

Lindenmeyer came back to Short Stack with a new human resource approach that would give workers the space to tell her what they were struggling with and how it could affect their job or availability. She learned about the actions she can take to support her workers like making sure their schedule works with their parole meetings or being a court advocate for them.

“The more I know about it, the more I can help,” Lindenmeyer says.

A few years after seeing her workers become more open with her, Lindenmeyer brought the training to the Dane County Food Collective.

Meghan Stern, an executive committee member of the collective, went through the training this year. When Stern first heard about it, she didn’t think she would need it because she has a background in

Stern and the 15 other trainees are now able to be there for their own communities and help them through hard times. The approach is about showing how people have more in common than they think, which is exactly what the collective is all about.

The distant future of the Dane County Food Collective isn’t set in stone to have room to shift into whatever the community needs. In the near future, however, the members of the collective just want it to continue to grow so that everyone in the industry knows they can join.

“Just show up,” Stern says. “There’s no expectation.”

Noah Bloedorn (top) and Roman Lazowski use the squat racks at Pat’s Gym during a group workout to improve wellness among food industry workers.

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Dine with a purpose

BY NICOLE CEDERBERG

Wisconsin takes pride in its close-knit communities. Local restaurants follow suit by donating their time and money to nonprofits, putting their own neighborhoods first.

We picked six businesses that explore the fusion of Wisconsin’s culinary scene and commitment to community. Check out Curb’s picks for delicious food and money well spent.

1

First up is an early morning coffee at The Hub’s Social Good Brews. The Hub is run by the Volunteer Center of Washington County in suburban Milwaukee. You’ll notice its community tip jar, where every dollar goes directly to around 50 local nonprofits.

Coffee at The Hub 303 Water St., West Bend

For breakfast, check out the Madison staple Short Stack Eatery. It chose four “root partners” to support. All organizations are led by Black women and men. By eating at Short Stack, you are donating to organizations that strive to boost equity and inclusion in Wisconsin.

3 5

301 W. Johnson St., Madison

Lunch at Harbor House

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550 N. Harbor Dr., Milwaukee

This seafood restaurant is one of the Bartolotta restaurants. All restaurants owned by Bartolotta are a part of a philanthropy called “Care-a-Lotta,” where the chain donates portions of its money back into the community.

When you get a sweet tooth, head over to Just Bakery in Madison. This bakery is a JustDane initiative that focuses on helping individuals who are experiencing homelessness, lack education, lack work and more. All of Just Bakery sales go directly back into the program.

Treat at Just Bakery

Dinner at Plae Bistro

At Plae Bistro, you get a welcoming environment, good food and philanthropy all in one. The restaurant has worked with more than 40 different organizations by donating a percentage of its sales.

1671 Hoffman Road Suite #10, Green Bay

Enjoy a drink at Al. Ringling Brewing, which emphasizes the importance of the history and connectedness of Wisconsin communities.

Each month, the brewery hosts an event called “Give Back Sunday,” where it donates 10% of sales to different local charities.

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2 4 6

Breakfast at Short Stack Eatery

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1708 Thierer Road, Madison

Drinks at Al. Ringling Brewing 623 Broadway St., Baraboo

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Awarded A merica’s Best workp lace

! " # FUSION: THE ‘HOLY GRAIL’ OF ENERGY Miss America explains why nuclear fusion will change the energy landscape

BY ABIGAIL LEAVINS The most obvious example of fusion is nuclear, where two nuclei literally merge and combine to form a larger nucleus.

Grace Stanke, Miss America 2023 and a UW–Madison student graduating after the Fall 2023 semester, explains why she believes nuclear fusion is the future of clean and sustainable energy.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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CAN YOU TELL ME MORE ABOUT NUCLEAR FUSION AND EXPLAIN HOW IT WORKS? Nuclear fusion happens every day. It’s what is happening within the sun. You’ve got two atoms — atoms are the building blocks of the universe. Now when you smash two atoms together, either at really high speeds or at really hot temperatures, like the sun, those two atoms can combine to form a new atom, and that is the process of fusion. However, in that process of colliding, atoms can have little pieces break off, and we as a human race can utilize those little pieces to create electricity for our benefit and for our survival as well. Fusion is often seen as the Holy Grail of all energy where we can create a functioning commercial power plant using fusion. We can use water as a fuel source, and there are no harmful outputs.

YOUR PLATFORM IS CLEAN, NUCLEAR ENERGY. COULD YOU TELL ME MORE ABOUT WHY THAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU? I’m part of the generation that grew up familiar with the term climate change. It is in every piece of our news; it is all around us. And with that means this transition to zero-carbon energy is desired. However, it also means we need to be focusing on a transition to reliable energy. I got into nuclear engineering, and nuclear is one that fulfills both of those things. It’s important to ensure that our energy transition is going to include zero carbon to help fight climate change. But it will also include affordable and reliable energy.

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COULD YOU TELL ME WHAT SOME COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ARE ABOUT NUCLEAR ENERGY? One of the biggest misconceptions about nuclear energy is that waste is a big problem. And realistically, the amount of waste that’s produced is not as much as people think. Over 60 years of creating 20% of America’s electricity, all of the spent nuclear fuel fits inside of a Walmart.

ARE YOU PLANNING TO WORK IN NUCLEAR ENERGY AFTER MISS AMERICA? I am going to be working with a utility company based out of both Illinois and Pennsylvania. So I’ll be working on the nation’s largest nuclear fleet with 12 different nuclear power plants and continuing the advocacy work that I do.

Beets: UW Carrot, Onion, and Table Beet Breeding Lab, Department of Horticulture. Beats: UW Dancers, Dance Department.

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BOTH

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CAN’T STOP A BADGER

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CURB 5115 Vilas Hall 821 University Ave. Madison, Wisconsin 53706

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