Madison chocolatiers employ inspiration from all over the world in their sweet, savory creations
By Anna Speaker
Deep in the Mesoamerican rainforest, the ancient Mayans uncovered an obsession that would come to dominate the dessert topping tirades, the flavor feuds and the candy crusades. Somewhere in the wars of which confection reigns king, chocolate came out on top (only surpassed by the cherry on your ice cream). Mesoamerica (now known as Central America and parts of Mexico) is thousands of miles away from Madison—and yet chocolate has surely traveled from the heart of the rainforest to the heart of the Midwest. Our city is home to a handful of skilled chocolatiers from a variety of backgrounds. These cocoa connoisseurs take their divine inspiration from everyday life and have picked up their recipes from the countries that chocolate passes through on its voyage to Wisconsin.
Chocolatier: Gail Ambrosius, Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier
Background: Gail was designated chef in a family of ten children, but first fell in love with chocolate on a high school trip to Paris. After ending her career as a cartographer, she returned to her passion by studying with several French families back in Paris, and opened up her own store in Madison in 2004.
Inspiration: Witnessing the pride and care that goes into artisan chocolate creations. In Paris, Ambrosius saw people taking time out of the middle of the day to stop and have a cup of coffee or a nice piece of chocolate. She wanted to bring some of that happiness home to Madison.
Favorite piece: Ambrosius’ specialty is dark chocolate. “It’s better for you, it has much better flavor, and the depths are just incredible. It’ll make your head swim.”
Average price: $4.25 (2-piece box) to $40 (24-piece box)
Find it: 2086 Atwood Ave. 249-3500. gailambrosius.com
Chocolatier: Cherie Diamond, Maurie’s Fine Chocolates of Madison
Background: Diamond says she loves that chocolate is such a responsive medium. Having studied food science and fine arts in college, making chocolate allows her to combine her love of both subjects, using chocolate from exotic locales like Oucumare, Machu Picchu and Belgium.
Inspiration: As a second generation chocolatier, she believes in “taking the ordinary and elevating it to the extraordinary.” Her inspiration comes from “touching people’s lives with appreciation, expertise and whimsy in every piece and in every box.”
Favorite piece: Diamond’s newest creation, Lucy, is a lemon cardamom leaf truffle. Others include Aztec Gold, a Mayan spice infused dark chocolate truffle, and the Avalon, a Bergamo essence-infused dark chocolate truffle.
Average price: $1.65 (1 piece) or $15–37 for multiple piece boxes.
Find it: 1637 Monroe St. 255-9092. mauriesfinechocolates.com
Chocolatier: David Bacco, David Bacco Chocolats
Background: Though largely self-taught, Bacco has studied in Kentucky and Madison under the guidance of prominent local chefs and then went on to the French Pastry School in Chicago to study with a Belgian chocolatier. He’s also worked with professionals from France, Switzerland, Spain and Las Vegas.
Inspiration: The world around him—both near and far. Inspiration for a chocolate flavor or design may come from nature, minerals, crystals, photos of the Milky Way, a simple walk, an alchemy book, from practicing tai chi and yoga; and certainly, from food. Favorite piece: Bacco has a favorite from each of the five elemental categories and can’t choose just one. Earth—Honey Lavender (the violet floral flavor adds dimension to the chocolate) Air—Hazelnut Praline (he enjoys the texture and aroma of hazelnut) Fire—Saffron Truffle (he enjoys the subtle orange zest) Water—Pomegranate-Malbec (Bacco likes the health properties of this chocolate, with high-antioxidant bittersweet chocolate and pomegranate) Spirit—Yin + Yang
Average Price: $28 (Sweet 16 & heart chocolate box). Gifts range from $4.25 (2-piece box) to $65 (24-piece bento box).
Find it: 550 N. Midvale Blvd., 233-1600. davidbacco.com
Chocolatier: Nilda Molina, Nilda Chocolates Toffee and Chocolate House
Background: The shop is named after a common family name, “Nilda,” which originates from Puerto Rico, but her chocolates are inspired by various foods she’s tasted from different cultures. Inspiration: Molina is inspired by flavors that remind her of her childhood and her love of sweets. The contentment people express in trying her chocolates for the first time makes her want to continue creating new and exciting chocolate flavors.
Favorite piece: Though she says that toffee is her best-selling item and represents her as a chocolatier, Molina says naming a favorite is “like asking to name your favorite child. I love them all!”
Average price: $3 (2-piece box) to $18 (toffee gift tin).
Find it: 2611 E. Johnson St., 819-0414
Chocolatier: Josie Pradella TerraSource Gourmet Chocolates
Background: Another self-taught chocolatier, Pradella uses local, organic and fair trade fruits that are rarely found in chocolate, including rhubarb, blackberry, blueberry, cranberry walnut and brandied pear. All of her chocolate is vegan with few additional flavorings.
Inspiration: Pradella is inspired by the flavors from nature and green packaging for a sustainable planet.
Favorite piece: “The Aronia is the most interesting and intriguing flavor—kind of tart, hard to nail down, yet very satisfying. And it’s very healthy with three times the antioxidant benefit of blueberries—and that’s an added benefit beyond memorable taste.”
Average Price: $4.95 to $21.60 for hand-crafted and eco-friendly boxes.
Find it: No storefront. terrasourcechocolates.com
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
From Cheese to Soap: A Tour of Scotch Hill Farm
"Oh, that's the dog soap," Dela Ends says from behind the refrigerator. The mottled bars are drying in the factory off the family's machine shed and have been imprinted with the likenesses of English Bulldogs and Great Danes. Today, she's searching for a bar of soap (they make soap for people, too) as she rifles past the translucent brown bottles labeled sandalwood vanilla and lavender. She tells me the tea tree with comfrey bar will be "just the thing" for my sensitive skin.
Ends and her husband, Tony, make the soap from the milk of the goats that can be heard bleating on the other end of Scotch Hill Farm. The lip balm, lotion butter and bar soap business is one of the ways that the Ends supplement their income at their community supported agriculture (CSA) farm on the outskirts of Brodhead, Wisconsin.
Prior to their life in the country, Tony worked as a journalist and Dela went to school to become a teacher. Their shared passion for healthy living brought them to Scotch Hill Farm, where the two work from sunup to sundown delivering produce, farming, making soap and keeping books for the business.
"CSA farming is very hard manual physical work. It is long hours, and it's a lot more than the twenty weeks that you get vegetables for," Tony says. "It's a good forty weeks of planning and preparing and building and repairing and getting land rented and financed and cared for and tended, then tending all these crops and delivering them for twenty weeks. It's a year-round job."
Over one hundred different varieties of vegetables are grown at Scotch Hill Farm each year, which are then distributed to customers through the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC). The Ends have been members of the coalition for fifteen years, and Dela serves on the board. As part of the program, the couple delivers boxes of assorted produce to drop-off sites both in their area and in Chicago where subscribers pick up the produce.
The Real Cost
The incalculable number of hours worked each week does not affect what many consumers consider a "fair price" when shopping for fruits and vegetables. Trips to the grocery store involve vast food choices at low costs. CSA subscribers, on the other hand, don't get to choose their vegetables. Instead, they receive boxes of produce each week that reflect what is in season at a realistic, sustainable cost.
A full season of produce at Scotch Hill Farm costs $465, a price that Tony says mirrors the hard work that goes into farming without the support of large corporations or government subsidies. Yet people resist buying CSA foods because of higher costs, lack of choice and the inconvenience of picking up food at a drop-off point instead of a neighborhood store. The price tags on conventional foods, however, don't show their whole cost.
"If you get it more cheaply from Florida or California or a foreign country, how cheap is it for the environment?" Tony says. "Every mile that the food travels, a pound of carbon goes up into the atmosphere. How cheap really is it?"
Local Food, Local Friends
Buying local is a driving concept behind CSA farms. The most important thing, Tony says, is the relationship that the consumers have with the farmers. The "S" in CSA comes from the support of the community by paying a fair price for produce to farmers, while the farmers support a healthy lifestyle for consumers.
The Brodhead Chamber of Commerce currently organizes farm tours so that people can connect with the farmers and see where their food comes from. The Ends also organize "Weed, Wine and Cheese" parties so that people can visit the farm, help weed the fields and socialize with everyone involved in the farming process. Dela even makes a batch of cheese to snack on, courtesy of the goats across the yard. The real goal of the visits is for people to become involved in the place where their food comes from and see the toll their consumption takes on the world.
"They walk into the walk-in cooler, and they think about that expense. And they hear the refrigeration running and they can look right through the door in the machine shed into the new greenhouse and the hoop house that cost $10,000," Tony says. If people visit the farm and see the hard work, they may realize what the business is really worth.
The Ends are part of a movement to revolutionize the way Americans think about food consumption. Many consumers overlook the health effects of the cheapest, most plentiful and most convenient goods.
"We are brainwashed into thinking that way instead of thinking, 'I've gotta care for the earth, I've gotta care for my children, I've gotta protect what we have. It's my responsibility,'" Tony says.
Organic Farming
But CSA farms are not just about local business and they're not just about eating healthy. The fertilizer used in nonorganic farming takes a toll on the environment. Chemicals such as anhydrous ammonia require tremendous pressure and energy intensive processes to produce.
"Regardless of what it does to the soil, it's a reason that our natural gas reserves are disappearing so fast," Tony says.
For the past three years, the Ends have worked toward an organic certification from Nature's International Certification Services in Viroqua. The fields will become certified this year, meaning that the Ends practice crop rotation and do not use chemical fertilizer, genetically modified seeds, pesticides or herbicides in their crops. Instead, the soap-making herd of goats naturally fertilizes the fields.
"We really wanted to make livestock work because then it's an on-site means of naturally producing nitrogen rather than a chemical process and a factory process and a mass scale process," Tony says.
The goats are expensive, but the Ends mitigate the cost by using them for more than fertilizer.
The Goat Soap
Ten years ago, the Ends received a bar of goats' milk soap from Dela's mother as a souvenir from a trip to North Carolina. The Ends were still looking for a means to justify the time and expense of having livestock, and the novelty gift was enough to inspire the Ends.
"Tony goes, 'Wow this is a great idea, so figure out how to do it.' So I went to the library and researched and figured it out," Dela said. The soap business was born.
After the first year's out-of-the-kitchen soap business totaled $800, Tony applied for a small business innovation research grant that helped improve the production process. The soap business jumped to $10,000 that year. When they received a second grant, Dela formed a soap makers' guild and taught ten other farms how to make the soap. The resulting increase in sales funded the construction of a new soap factory off of the machine shed. Twenty-five thousand dollars in soap each year became a bit much for the kitchen.
Now, the soap accounts for nearly a third of the family's yearly income. Last year, they sold nearly eight thousand bars at farmers' markets, to CSA subscribers and through mail orders. Despite the escalating success of Scotch Hill soap, the Ends do not sell their line at the Dane County Farmers' Market due to a three-year waiting list and because the market requires vendors to use their own oil in production. The oil is one of the few ingredients that the do-it-yourself couple doesn't produce at Scotch Hill.
Tony's ambition to change that can be seen in the glint in his eyes as he remembers a farmer he once met that produced his own oil.
"He had an old silo where he augured his sunflowers into big hoppers. He just turned the press on in the morning, and it would draw the sunflowers down and a machine would press the oil and he collected the oil every night." He adds that the farmer heated his house and sold the leftover protein mash to a nearby farmer as feed supplement.
Tony has it all planned out. Sell the sunflower seeds to bird food maker and feed the leftovers to those goats. Then the Ends will have their own oil for soap making.
"Oh, we have so much time," Dela says jokingly of the plan. She looks at Tony as if he's crazy, but the same ambition that led the couple here can be seen sparkling in her own eyes as she contemplates the idea.
Scotch Hill Farm
scotchhillfarm.com
Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition
macsac.org
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tom Wolfe: 1960’s Realism Surpassing “Old” Journalism
The 1960’s in the United States was an era in American history that was unbridled by existing societal norms. 1950’s conservatism was masked by a new light that comprised bright colors and war protesting by teenage baby boomers. Everything was changing. Hair grew while clothing shrank. Women turned from long dresses to miniskirts and hot pants, and men experimented with patterns and color in their suits as the 60’s culture unfurled.
But while business men maintained their professional appearance and followed all the rules, one man donned his alabaster jacket and contributed to all of the commotion. Tom Wolfe not only shook things up with his signature white suits, but the young journalist expelled the static template that was journalism before the 1960s.
Along with Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, among others, Wolfe fashioned a new way to delve into the time period in a way that, as he states it, gave “people news they didn’t know was news.”1 By focusing on less prevalent subjects in his articles and writing in less formal structures, Wolfe’s “new journalism” technique captured 1960’s culture in the United States in a realism that other reporting could not.
Wolfe wrote in a decade that was thwarted with the Vietnam War, where history and new culture were unfolding rapidly. Starting with the Bay of Pigs invasion and the construction of the Berlin Wall, then surging through Vietnam, the 1960’s fostered globalization and the press was hot on the wire to report it. With television, journalists were able to bring home a new view of the war, and the press filled the public with such fodder that sparked the cultural revolution of the decade.
But while the press was focusing on the war, Wolfe was focusing on social status in a book called “The Pump House Gang.”2 First published in 1968, “The Pump House Gang” was written in a time that was fleshed out with ideas of war and change. Wolfe, however, chose to instead focus on a variety of lifestyles in that era. Wolfe starts off by introducing a group of surfers from California, the title characters, and moves on to visit Carol Doda, the exotic dancer, Larry Lynch, a participant in the noonday underground scene, and Hugh Hefner, the business mogul behind Playboy clubs and the magazine.
These subjects, along with the other that Wolfe chooses to detail, encompass much of what was going on in the 60’s. Yet, Wolfe does not go on about the specific events that they were involved in as a journalist in this time period would. Instead, he goes to great lengths to describe his subjects and their personalities, detailing every movement and sound. When writing a story on a subject, Wolfe says he can spend anywhere from two hours to four trips with someone to get all essential information.3 He then uses his experience and information to create something that is completely different than any other person would have written.
The crucial element to Wolfe’s “New Journalism” is the subjectivity that emerges from the excessive information gathered by spending time with a subject. While some journalists value objectivity in writing, Wolfe says he values subjectivity because it “enables the writer to get inside the subjective reality—not his own, but of the characters he’s writing about.”4 Wolfe doesn’t use the details of his research to answer the “who, what, when, where and why” of a particular event like a typical journalist in the 1960’s. He spends time with the subject to get into their brains to attack the event from a perspective, a technique that was, and still can be, controversial in non-fiction.
Controversial journalism was not unique in the ‘60’s. Along with this new style of creative nonfiction came advocacy journalism and precision journalism.5 Advocacy journalism was a style that responded to the social turmoil of the decade.6 Advocacy journalists’ main goal was to inform the public about such things as lynching, mobs, and assassinations, but they did so by formally declaring a bias for or against certain issues. While advocacy journalists were successful informants to the public, they only presented one side of the story.
Precision journalists of the time, like advocacy journalists, sought to inform the public but did so by delving deep into the investigation of an issue. They were often more objective than other journalists of the time because they surveyed, interviewed, researched and probed into all sides of the story.7 With such tactics, however, precision journalists did not dive into the perspective of one specific subject as Wolfe did. They presented all fact while resisting emotion. By avoiding the true perspective inside the story, precision journalists lacked the roundedness that new journalism provided.
New journalism, on the other hand, strained the raw emotion from advocacy journalism and added the pure fact from precision journalism. While new journalists strove to create a story that was completely factual, they aimed at a report that read like a novel.8 To do so, they used techniques, such as using dialogue instead of quotations to “give insight into the motivations behind actions instead of simple descriptions of them.”9 Wolfe called these writing styles “techniques of realism.”10 (Critic 65).
Along with writing with his subject’s perspective, Tom Wolfe also strayed from typical journalism of the 1960’s by illustrating his writing with local tongue. To use dialogue instead of quotations, Wolfe tossed in hyphens and exclamation points to make speech more realistic. Techniques like onomatopoeia and inappropriate punctuation were also used to add to the realism. All of the words Wolfe quoted were actually spoken, but they were pieced together to aid in the narration of the piece. Wolfe spelled the words just as they sounded, throwing in capitalizations, ellipses and italics to emphasize certain points. Reading his writing becomes an experience, as if the reader were there with the subject.
The differences between journalism styles during the 1960’s become apparent when two articles on the same subject, one by Wolfe and one by another journalist of that time, are compared. Specifically, an article on Hugh Hefner published in the New York Times in 1964 and the chapter titled “King of the Status Dropouts” in Wolfe’s “The Pump House Gang” illustrate the different realities portrayed by Wolfe and other writers.
In “The Pump House Gang,” Wolfe dedicates an entire chapter to Hugh Hefner. The journalist describes the genius behind the Playboy empire as a recluse, starting off the chapter titled “King of the Status Dropouts” by explaining that Hefner “Doesn’t go out, doesn’t see the light of day, doesn’t put his hide out in God’s own unconditioned Chicago air for months on end; years.”11 He continues by composing and illustration of Hefner as 150 pounds, like the “tender-tympany green heart of an artichoke.” Within the first paragraph, Wolfe also rambles off nearly twenty adjectives that describe of the room in which Hefner sits upon meeting the journalist. The list not only describes the room, but it also reflects the loneliness of the business mogul.
The list of words is beyond the journalistic style of other writers in the 1960’s such as Peter Bart, who also wrote an expose on Hefner, published in The New York Times in 1964. Bart’s article focuses entirely on Hefner, but it uses a different style from Wolfe. Bart, like Wolfe, uses the first paragraph to describe Hefner’s physical appearance, calling him “a gaunt and rather somber young man of 37 who in the last 10 years has built an imposing if unorthodox empire.”12 Both paragraphs focus on the same subject, yet Bart’s does so with one complete sentence, avoiding journalistic faux paus of that time.
Wolfe, on the other hand, uses exclamation points and sentence fragments all in the first paragraph of his chapter. He flowers his text with similes and active description that create the obscure realism in Wolfe’s writing. When describing the way that Hefner moves, Wolfe uses the word “heeewack,” but Bart does not touch on Hefner’s movement at all.13 Wolfe even describes the sound of the rotating bed in Hefner’s residence with “…rrr…rrr…rrr…”14
While it seems that Wolfe’s focus in his chapter is the specific description of Hefner’s nimble and isolated persona, Bart chooses to focus mainly on the subjects accomplishments. He outlines the setbacks that Hefner encountered up until that point in his business career and describes the mogul’s current success and future goals. Bart uses direct quotes from the subject in a way that feels censored, unlike Wolfe’s dramatic wordplay.
The New York Times writer also underplays Hefner’s personal life and isolationism, yet touches on it briefly by saying Hefner was “by nature a remote man—friends and family describe him as a ‘loner’” and states that Hefner spends most of his time working on his magazine.15 This is nearly the only similarity between the two writers, but Bart so severely downplays his seclusion when compared to Wolfe. The reader feels informed after reading Bart’s article, yet they feel as if they have met Hefner himself upon finishing the chapter in “The Pump House Gang.”
Though it may be appealing for a reader to sense such realism in Wolfe’s writing, writers of that time criticized Wolfe for the techniques he used in gathering information. Journalists in the 1960’s were writing down quotes while Wolfe was taking in masses of details, making sure to get exact dialogue. He then would take the dialogue and rearrange it in order to tell a more effective story. Some journalists called this method deceitful.16 Alan Trachtenberg from The Partisan Review wrote that Wolfe’s apparent spontaneity was actual the result of “most arch manipulation and manufacture,” claiming that the resulting illusion is a “calculated product that disguises what it is we are actually reading.”17
It would be easy for Wolfe to lose credibility from peers such as Trachtenberg after two of his articles in 1965 were found to be completely false. Wolfe wrote articles for the Herald-Tribune that criticized the New Yorker, questioning the magazine’s editorial behavior.18 When people confronted Wolfe about the “stupefyingly false” reporting, Wolfe just laughed about it. 19 Other journalists who wrote on NASA’s space program said that Wolfe’s account in “The Right Stuff” also included “outright lies.”20
It is this false reporting that would categorize Wolfe’s new journalism into fiction over non-fiction. Wolfe, however, deems it necessary to use this technique when creating a piece of non-fiction. He defends his style by saying, “what I try to do is re-create a scene from a triple point of view: the subject’s point of view, my own, and that of the other people watching.”21
The collaboration of three perspectives requires manipulation of order to make a story logically flow. He claims that his technique is similar to how people write their autobiographies. The new journalist says that readers put trust into the writer of an autobiography to recall his life stories factually and therefore should do the same with non-fiction writers.22 According to Wolfe, accurate information is crucial because falsities could lead to lost trust, which could ultimately lead to the destruction of non-fiction as a genre.
Still, some critics shame Wolfe for such attention to mundane detail. Emile Capouya from the Saturday Review in 1965 wrote that Wolfe’s focused mannerisms made his writing less effective. He said, “The notion that every fact, activity, mannerism, detail of costume is significant, is a vulgar error.”23 Capouya’s view as a fellow journalist in that time period illustrates the difference of journalism in the 1960’s and new journalism. While some found all-encompassing detail to add to the realism, others like Capouya found this to be a waste of time and altogether uninteresting.
The differences between Wolfe and other journalists in the ‘60’s were vast, but Wolfe still fell into the category of new journalism in the 1960’s. There were other new journalists in this time period that were capturing the attention of the baby boomers, yet Wolfe separated himself even further from the rest by distinguishing himself from new journalists like Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, and Norman Mailer. Thompson used the character, “Duke” to play his part in his stories, while Mailer inserted himself directly into the story of “The Armies of the Night” in 1967.24, 25 (CNN 1,2).
Wolfe, on the other hand, avoided emphasizing himself into the story when others injected themselves directly into the narrative.26 With Wolfe out of the mental picture, the reader falls into a realistic voyeurism, as if they were the ones observing the scene from across a table.
Though Wolfe was sometimes criticized by his peers and readers for his “new” way of writing, the redeeming qualities are what make him still popular today. Starting with “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” and after publishing “The Pump House Gang” and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” on the same day, Wolfe is still in the public eye. His most recent book, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” a novel, was published in 2004, and his flashy white suits still make him recognizable to not only the baby boomers, but to their children as well.27
In the midst of the Vietnam War and a frenzy of motivated television reporters, Wolfe still stood out as a popular journalist of the 1960’s. His uncharacteristic writing techniques brought realism to the decade without detailing specific events, while other reporters of that time could not inform their audience with as much entertainment or flair. These differences become ever more obvious when comparing a Wolfe article to any other journalist of that time’s writing on the same subject. Though Wolfe has been criticized throughout the years for these questionable methods and apparent fact errors, he still captured the decade in a way that rocketed Wolfe to the forefront of creative non-fiction.
Notes:
1. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, editor, Conversations with Tom Wolfe (Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), 9.
2. Doug Shomette, editor, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992), 15
3. Prenshaw, Conversations with Tom Wolfe, 13.
4. ibid., 45.
5. Yale-New Havens Teachers Institute, “The Revolution in Journalism with an Emphasis on the 1960’s and 1970’s.” Yale University. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1983/4/83.04.05.x.html (accessed April 10 , 2008).
6. Grassroots Editor, “Who was Gene Cervi?” Missouri Southern State University. http://www.mssu.edu/iswne/grpdfs/summer00.pdf (accessed April 10, 2008).
7. Yale-New Havens Teachers Institute, “The Revolution in Journalism with an Emphasis on the 1960’s and 1970’s.” Yale University. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1983/4/83.04.05.x.html (accessed April 10 , 2008).
8. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 65.
9. ibid., 65.
10. ibid., 65.
11. Tom Wolfe, The Pump House Gang (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968), 49.
12. Peter Bart, “Playboy of the Magazine World,” New York Times, May 7, 1964, Advertising section.
13. Wolfe, The Pump House Gang, 52.
14. ibid., 61.
15. Bart, “Playboy of the Magazine World.”
16. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 71.
17. ibid., 71.
18. ibid., 128.
19. ibid., 128-129.
20. ibid., 129.
21. Prenshaw, Conversations with Tom Wolfe, 10.
22. ibid., 163.
23. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 8.
24. CNN Entertainment, “Literary Lion Norman Mailer Dies.” Todd Leopold. “http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/11/10/mailer.obit/index.html. (accessed April 14, 2008).
25. CNN Entertainment, “Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67.” http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/21/thompson.obit. (accessed April 14, 2008).
26. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 71.
27. Tom Wolfe, “About Tom Wolfe.” Bio. http://www.tomwolfe.com/bio.html (accessed April 14, 2008).
But while business men maintained their professional appearance and followed all the rules, one man donned his alabaster jacket and contributed to all of the commotion. Tom Wolfe not only shook things up with his signature white suits, but the young journalist expelled the static template that was journalism before the 1960s.
Along with Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, among others, Wolfe fashioned a new way to delve into the time period in a way that, as he states it, gave “people news they didn’t know was news.”1 By focusing on less prevalent subjects in his articles and writing in less formal structures, Wolfe’s “new journalism” technique captured 1960’s culture in the United States in a realism that other reporting could not.
Wolfe wrote in a decade that was thwarted with the Vietnam War, where history and new culture were unfolding rapidly. Starting with the Bay of Pigs invasion and the construction of the Berlin Wall, then surging through Vietnam, the 1960’s fostered globalization and the press was hot on the wire to report it. With television, journalists were able to bring home a new view of the war, and the press filled the public with such fodder that sparked the cultural revolution of the decade.
But while the press was focusing on the war, Wolfe was focusing on social status in a book called “The Pump House Gang.”2 First published in 1968, “The Pump House Gang” was written in a time that was fleshed out with ideas of war and change. Wolfe, however, chose to instead focus on a variety of lifestyles in that era. Wolfe starts off by introducing a group of surfers from California, the title characters, and moves on to visit Carol Doda, the exotic dancer, Larry Lynch, a participant in the noonday underground scene, and Hugh Hefner, the business mogul behind Playboy clubs and the magazine.
These subjects, along with the other that Wolfe chooses to detail, encompass much of what was going on in the 60’s. Yet, Wolfe does not go on about the specific events that they were involved in as a journalist in this time period would. Instead, he goes to great lengths to describe his subjects and their personalities, detailing every movement and sound. When writing a story on a subject, Wolfe says he can spend anywhere from two hours to four trips with someone to get all essential information.3 He then uses his experience and information to create something that is completely different than any other person would have written.
The crucial element to Wolfe’s “New Journalism” is the subjectivity that emerges from the excessive information gathered by spending time with a subject. While some journalists value objectivity in writing, Wolfe says he values subjectivity because it “enables the writer to get inside the subjective reality—not his own, but of the characters he’s writing about.”4 Wolfe doesn’t use the details of his research to answer the “who, what, when, where and why” of a particular event like a typical journalist in the 1960’s. He spends time with the subject to get into their brains to attack the event from a perspective, a technique that was, and still can be, controversial in non-fiction.
Controversial journalism was not unique in the ‘60’s. Along with this new style of creative nonfiction came advocacy journalism and precision journalism.5 Advocacy journalism was a style that responded to the social turmoil of the decade.6 Advocacy journalists’ main goal was to inform the public about such things as lynching, mobs, and assassinations, but they did so by formally declaring a bias for or against certain issues. While advocacy journalists were successful informants to the public, they only presented one side of the story.
Precision journalists of the time, like advocacy journalists, sought to inform the public but did so by delving deep into the investigation of an issue. They were often more objective than other journalists of the time because they surveyed, interviewed, researched and probed into all sides of the story.7 With such tactics, however, precision journalists did not dive into the perspective of one specific subject as Wolfe did. They presented all fact while resisting emotion. By avoiding the true perspective inside the story, precision journalists lacked the roundedness that new journalism provided.
New journalism, on the other hand, strained the raw emotion from advocacy journalism and added the pure fact from precision journalism. While new journalists strove to create a story that was completely factual, they aimed at a report that read like a novel.8 To do so, they used techniques, such as using dialogue instead of quotations to “give insight into the motivations behind actions instead of simple descriptions of them.”9 Wolfe called these writing styles “techniques of realism.”10 (Critic 65).
Along with writing with his subject’s perspective, Tom Wolfe also strayed from typical journalism of the 1960’s by illustrating his writing with local tongue. To use dialogue instead of quotations, Wolfe tossed in hyphens and exclamation points to make speech more realistic. Techniques like onomatopoeia and inappropriate punctuation were also used to add to the realism. All of the words Wolfe quoted were actually spoken, but they were pieced together to aid in the narration of the piece. Wolfe spelled the words just as they sounded, throwing in capitalizations, ellipses and italics to emphasize certain points. Reading his writing becomes an experience, as if the reader were there with the subject.
The differences between journalism styles during the 1960’s become apparent when two articles on the same subject, one by Wolfe and one by another journalist of that time, are compared. Specifically, an article on Hugh Hefner published in the New York Times in 1964 and the chapter titled “King of the Status Dropouts” in Wolfe’s “The Pump House Gang” illustrate the different realities portrayed by Wolfe and other writers.
In “The Pump House Gang,” Wolfe dedicates an entire chapter to Hugh Hefner. The journalist describes the genius behind the Playboy empire as a recluse, starting off the chapter titled “King of the Status Dropouts” by explaining that Hefner “Doesn’t go out, doesn’t see the light of day, doesn’t put his hide out in God’s own unconditioned Chicago air for months on end; years.”11 He continues by composing and illustration of Hefner as 150 pounds, like the “tender-tympany green heart of an artichoke.” Within the first paragraph, Wolfe also rambles off nearly twenty adjectives that describe of the room in which Hefner sits upon meeting the journalist. The list not only describes the room, but it also reflects the loneliness of the business mogul.
The list of words is beyond the journalistic style of other writers in the 1960’s such as Peter Bart, who also wrote an expose on Hefner, published in The New York Times in 1964. Bart’s article focuses entirely on Hefner, but it uses a different style from Wolfe. Bart, like Wolfe, uses the first paragraph to describe Hefner’s physical appearance, calling him “a gaunt and rather somber young man of 37 who in the last 10 years has built an imposing if unorthodox empire.”12 Both paragraphs focus on the same subject, yet Bart’s does so with one complete sentence, avoiding journalistic faux paus of that time.
Wolfe, on the other hand, uses exclamation points and sentence fragments all in the first paragraph of his chapter. He flowers his text with similes and active description that create the obscure realism in Wolfe’s writing. When describing the way that Hefner moves, Wolfe uses the word “heeewack,” but Bart does not touch on Hefner’s movement at all.13 Wolfe even describes the sound of the rotating bed in Hefner’s residence with “…rrr…rrr…rrr…”14
While it seems that Wolfe’s focus in his chapter is the specific description of Hefner’s nimble and isolated persona, Bart chooses to focus mainly on the subjects accomplishments. He outlines the setbacks that Hefner encountered up until that point in his business career and describes the mogul’s current success and future goals. Bart uses direct quotes from the subject in a way that feels censored, unlike Wolfe’s dramatic wordplay.
The New York Times writer also underplays Hefner’s personal life and isolationism, yet touches on it briefly by saying Hefner was “by nature a remote man—friends and family describe him as a ‘loner’” and states that Hefner spends most of his time working on his magazine.15 This is nearly the only similarity between the two writers, but Bart so severely downplays his seclusion when compared to Wolfe. The reader feels informed after reading Bart’s article, yet they feel as if they have met Hefner himself upon finishing the chapter in “The Pump House Gang.”
Though it may be appealing for a reader to sense such realism in Wolfe’s writing, writers of that time criticized Wolfe for the techniques he used in gathering information. Journalists in the 1960’s were writing down quotes while Wolfe was taking in masses of details, making sure to get exact dialogue. He then would take the dialogue and rearrange it in order to tell a more effective story. Some journalists called this method deceitful.16 Alan Trachtenberg from The Partisan Review wrote that Wolfe’s apparent spontaneity was actual the result of “most arch manipulation and manufacture,” claiming that the resulting illusion is a “calculated product that disguises what it is we are actually reading.”17
It would be easy for Wolfe to lose credibility from peers such as Trachtenberg after two of his articles in 1965 were found to be completely false. Wolfe wrote articles for the Herald-Tribune that criticized the New Yorker, questioning the magazine’s editorial behavior.18 When people confronted Wolfe about the “stupefyingly false” reporting, Wolfe just laughed about it. 19 Other journalists who wrote on NASA’s space program said that Wolfe’s account in “The Right Stuff” also included “outright lies.”20
It is this false reporting that would categorize Wolfe’s new journalism into fiction over non-fiction. Wolfe, however, deems it necessary to use this technique when creating a piece of non-fiction. He defends his style by saying, “what I try to do is re-create a scene from a triple point of view: the subject’s point of view, my own, and that of the other people watching.”21
The collaboration of three perspectives requires manipulation of order to make a story logically flow. He claims that his technique is similar to how people write their autobiographies. The new journalist says that readers put trust into the writer of an autobiography to recall his life stories factually and therefore should do the same with non-fiction writers.22 According to Wolfe, accurate information is crucial because falsities could lead to lost trust, which could ultimately lead to the destruction of non-fiction as a genre.
Still, some critics shame Wolfe for such attention to mundane detail. Emile Capouya from the Saturday Review in 1965 wrote that Wolfe’s focused mannerisms made his writing less effective. He said, “The notion that every fact, activity, mannerism, detail of costume is significant, is a vulgar error.”23 Capouya’s view as a fellow journalist in that time period illustrates the difference of journalism in the 1960’s and new journalism. While some found all-encompassing detail to add to the realism, others like Capouya found this to be a waste of time and altogether uninteresting.
The differences between Wolfe and other journalists in the ‘60’s were vast, but Wolfe still fell into the category of new journalism in the 1960’s. There were other new journalists in this time period that were capturing the attention of the baby boomers, yet Wolfe separated himself even further from the rest by distinguishing himself from new journalists like Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, and Norman Mailer. Thompson used the character, “Duke” to play his part in his stories, while Mailer inserted himself directly into the story of “The Armies of the Night” in 1967.24, 25 (CNN 1,2).
Wolfe, on the other hand, avoided emphasizing himself into the story when others injected themselves directly into the narrative.26 With Wolfe out of the mental picture, the reader falls into a realistic voyeurism, as if they were the ones observing the scene from across a table.
Though Wolfe was sometimes criticized by his peers and readers for his “new” way of writing, the redeeming qualities are what make him still popular today. Starting with “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,” and after publishing “The Pump House Gang” and “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” on the same day, Wolfe is still in the public eye. His most recent book, “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” a novel, was published in 2004, and his flashy white suits still make him recognizable to not only the baby boomers, but to their children as well.27
In the midst of the Vietnam War and a frenzy of motivated television reporters, Wolfe still stood out as a popular journalist of the 1960’s. His uncharacteristic writing techniques brought realism to the decade without detailing specific events, while other reporters of that time could not inform their audience with as much entertainment or flair. These differences become ever more obvious when comparing a Wolfe article to any other journalist of that time’s writing on the same subject. Though Wolfe has been criticized throughout the years for these questionable methods and apparent fact errors, he still captured the decade in a way that rocketed Wolfe to the forefront of creative non-fiction.
Notes:
1. Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, editor, Conversations with Tom Wolfe (Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1990), 9.
2. Doug Shomette, editor, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992), 15
3. Prenshaw, Conversations with Tom Wolfe, 13.
4. ibid., 45.
5. Yale-New Havens Teachers Institute, “The Revolution in Journalism with an Emphasis on the 1960’s and 1970’s.” Yale University. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1983/4/83.04.05.x.html (accessed April 10 , 2008).
6. Grassroots Editor, “Who was Gene Cervi?” Missouri Southern State University. http://www.mssu.edu/iswne/grpdfs/summer00.pdf (accessed April 10, 2008).
7. Yale-New Havens Teachers Institute, “The Revolution in Journalism with an Emphasis on the 1960’s and 1970’s.” Yale University. http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1983/4/83.04.05.x.html (accessed April 10 , 2008).
8. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 65.
9. ibid., 65.
10. ibid., 65.
11. Tom Wolfe, The Pump House Gang (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968), 49.
12. Peter Bart, “Playboy of the Magazine World,” New York Times, May 7, 1964, Advertising section.
13. Wolfe, The Pump House Gang, 52.
14. ibid., 61.
15. Bart, “Playboy of the Magazine World.”
16. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 71.
17. ibid., 71.
18. ibid., 128.
19. ibid., 128-129.
20. ibid., 129.
21. Prenshaw, Conversations with Tom Wolfe, 10.
22. ibid., 163.
23. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 8.
24. CNN Entertainment, “Literary Lion Norman Mailer Dies.” Todd Leopold. “http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/11/10/mailer.obit/index.html. (accessed April 14, 2008).
25. CNN Entertainment, “Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67.” http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/02/21/thompson.obit. (accessed April 14, 2008).
26. Shomette, The Critical Response to Tom Wolfe, 71.
27. Tom Wolfe, “About Tom Wolfe.” Bio. http://www.tomwolfe.com/bio.html (accessed April 14, 2008).
Madison swimming blindfolded
Anna Speaker
3/31/08
The view of an unsuspecting pair of bodiless legs treading right below the surface of the water. The accelerating two-toned music as it lurks closer and closer. And in one final moment of noise and suspense, the naïve swimmer discovers what is really prowling beneath the surface. This realization might just keep Madison swimmer’s out of the lakes this year.
But unlike the movie Jaws, the area lakes aren’t teeming with blood-thirsty great white sharks. Instead, they have become increasingly infested with bacteria and toxins from blue-green algae in recent years. The microorganisms in some area beaches on Lake Mendota and Lake Monona reached high enough levels for the past five water sample readings to be proposed to the 2008 Impaired Waters List, a state compilation of beaches with consistently high E.coli readings above Environmental Protection Agency levels. The tentative 2008 list included James Madison Park Beach, Olbrich Park Beach and Olin Park Beach among others.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources limnologist, Dick Lathrop, said that the increase in weed growth and bacteria is the result of manure runoff from local farms. According to Lathrop, the water that flows downstream from the fields when the show melts each spring maintains the high nutrient levels from the fertilizer. The runoff that reaches the lakes contains high phosphorous levels that lead to overflowing weeds and algae, some of which can emit toxins and create a breeding ground for bacteria.
“The one gorilla that hasn’t been tackled yet, I feel, is the manure run-off problem, and we have to stop spreading manure, not just in the winter, but totally,” Lathrop said. If farmers stop spreading manure, the lakes blue-green algae levels will drop making it safer to swim for beachgoers.
UW-Madison students seem to have the same reaction to the smell of manure in lakes as manure on fields. Frequent summer beachgoer and University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate, Molly Stapleton, said that she stopped swimming at the Union Terrace towards the middle of last summer once the warm weather amped the odor of the algae.“Once it started to smell, it’s like, ok, there’s no way I’m diving into this lake,” she said.
Other beachgoers aren’t so cautious. Will Dunlop, a student at MATC, said he would still go swimming even if the DNR issued a beach advisory due to elevated E.coli levels. Dunlop’s concern was focused more on the blue-green algae and he said he would feel less inclined to swim in the algae infested water. “I don’t really like the feeling of all the stuff on the lakes,” he said.
While the microorganisms irritate swimmers’ noses and skin, they can prompt far more unseen damage. The toxins that the blue-green algae emit can lead to gastrointestinal problems, cell damage, and some can cause harm to the kidneys and the nervous system.
The Wisconsin Beach Health Web site advises beachgoers to use common sense while swimming because it is difficult to determine the amount of blue-green algal toxins present. The Web site issues postings of beach closings due to bacteria, but Stapleton and Dunlop both said they would not look online to see if the beach was closed before heading out to the lake.
In order to make the lakes healthier to swim in, the levels of bacteria and toxins must be reduced. Stapleton said, “It’s definitely hard to get a lake that’s this bad up to its normal level that it should be. I mean, it’s going to take a lot.”
Lathrop is more optimistic about the amount of time this will take. Lathrop said, “I don’t think that they have to last 50 years continuing the problem, if we could stop this manure run-off thing, we’re going to see it in the lifetime of some of us.”
As a beachgoer, Stapleton remains skeptical about the farmers’ response to Lathrop’s suggestion. Stapleton said “It’s easy to say, ‘Ok, don’t fertilize farms,’ but really, it’s not at all. You know that’s not going to happen. You know farmers need fertilizers to grow crops. It’s what we should do, but it’s not going to happen.”
Stapleton may be right, but to take care of this beast in the water, it might take more than three men in a boat with harpoons.
3/31/08
The view of an unsuspecting pair of bodiless legs treading right below the surface of the water. The accelerating two-toned music as it lurks closer and closer. And in one final moment of noise and suspense, the naïve swimmer discovers what is really prowling beneath the surface. This realization might just keep Madison swimmer’s out of the lakes this year.
But unlike the movie Jaws, the area lakes aren’t teeming with blood-thirsty great white sharks. Instead, they have become increasingly infested with bacteria and toxins from blue-green algae in recent years. The microorganisms in some area beaches on Lake Mendota and Lake Monona reached high enough levels for the past five water sample readings to be proposed to the 2008 Impaired Waters List, a state compilation of beaches with consistently high E.coli readings above Environmental Protection Agency levels. The tentative 2008 list included James Madison Park Beach, Olbrich Park Beach and Olin Park Beach among others.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources limnologist, Dick Lathrop, said that the increase in weed growth and bacteria is the result of manure runoff from local farms. According to Lathrop, the water that flows downstream from the fields when the show melts each spring maintains the high nutrient levels from the fertilizer. The runoff that reaches the lakes contains high phosphorous levels that lead to overflowing weeds and algae, some of which can emit toxins and create a breeding ground for bacteria.
“The one gorilla that hasn’t been tackled yet, I feel, is the manure run-off problem, and we have to stop spreading manure, not just in the winter, but totally,” Lathrop said. If farmers stop spreading manure, the lakes blue-green algae levels will drop making it safer to swim for beachgoers.
UW-Madison students seem to have the same reaction to the smell of manure in lakes as manure on fields. Frequent summer beachgoer and University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate, Molly Stapleton, said that she stopped swimming at the Union Terrace towards the middle of last summer once the warm weather amped the odor of the algae.“Once it started to smell, it’s like, ok, there’s no way I’m diving into this lake,” she said.
Other beachgoers aren’t so cautious. Will Dunlop, a student at MATC, said he would still go swimming even if the DNR issued a beach advisory due to elevated E.coli levels. Dunlop’s concern was focused more on the blue-green algae and he said he would feel less inclined to swim in the algae infested water. “I don’t really like the feeling of all the stuff on the lakes,” he said.
While the microorganisms irritate swimmers’ noses and skin, they can prompt far more unseen damage. The toxins that the blue-green algae emit can lead to gastrointestinal problems, cell damage, and some can cause harm to the kidneys and the nervous system.
The Wisconsin Beach Health Web site advises beachgoers to use common sense while swimming because it is difficult to determine the amount of blue-green algal toxins present. The Web site issues postings of beach closings due to bacteria, but Stapleton and Dunlop both said they would not look online to see if the beach was closed before heading out to the lake.
In order to make the lakes healthier to swim in, the levels of bacteria and toxins must be reduced. Stapleton said, “It’s definitely hard to get a lake that’s this bad up to its normal level that it should be. I mean, it’s going to take a lot.”
Lathrop is more optimistic about the amount of time this will take. Lathrop said, “I don’t think that they have to last 50 years continuing the problem, if we could stop this manure run-off thing, we’re going to see it in the lifetime of some of us.”
As a beachgoer, Stapleton remains skeptical about the farmers’ response to Lathrop’s suggestion. Stapleton said “It’s easy to say, ‘Ok, don’t fertilize farms,’ but really, it’s not at all. You know that’s not going to happen. You know farmers need fertilizers to grow crops. It’s what we should do, but it’s not going to happen.”
Stapleton may be right, but to take care of this beast in the water, it might take more than three men in a boat with harpoons.
School district to hold referedum info sessions
Anna Speaker
October, 2008
The Madison School District has scheduled four public information sessions throughout October in an effort to raise public awareness about the rapidly approaching referendum.
The district will hold the meetings at four different middle schools across the city. Madison School Board member and communications committee Chairwoman Beth Moss said she hopes that the wide distribution of session locations will generate diverse representation from various attendance areas.
“The formal information sessions try to appeal to more people out in the community,” Moss said. “It’s not just parents. It’s more like people who live in that attendance area. We try to get seniors to come.”
The sessions will feature a brief introduction by a district administration member, followed by an informational DVD presentation. Moss said the DVD uses graphics to help explain details of the referendum that may not be clear to voters.
“It is very important for people to get the facts and understand what we’re asking for. We’re not building a building. We’re trying to just keep going. We’re just trying to keep providing an education and not make really devastating cuts,” Moss said.
The referendum is scheduled for Nov. 4, and proposes that the district raise the revenue limit by $5 million in the 2009-2010 school year, and by $4 million in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. The increased revenue limit will consequently cause taxes to increase in 2009 by about $27.50 for a $250,000 home.
Moss said that while Madison residents suffer yearly from increased tax rates, the city’s schools don’t benefit from that increase.
“There are all of these things showing how the amount of money that schools receive now is so much less than it was in 1978, and people are actually paying less out of their taxes now than they did in 1978,” Moss said. “So it’s kind of like, this is why we’re in the situation we’re in. It’s hard for people to understand because taxes otherwise have gone up, but the amount we get has gone down.”
As of now, Moss said there is no known organized opposition to the proposal, but could not say the same for past referendums.
“I know [at] the last referendum there was no organized opposition but [at] the previous one, there were groups who actually had signs and had literature and they were actively campaigning against it. We haven’t seen that yet, but you never know. There’s still quite a bit of time,” Moss said.
People with an eye for education may have spotted some of the other publicity outlets the district used in recent weeks. District Spokesman Ken Syke said that schools took numerous measures to get the word out about the event.
“We work through our schools in what’s called either backpack mail or just school newsletters. Each school sends out a newsletter to parents about once a month or once every five weeks, and we give them any information that they can use there,” Syke said. “In addition, as far as the sessions, we’ve done a traditional news release to the news media and asked them to promote it.”
He also said that the school district e-mailed the parents about the informational meetings and added a section to the district’s Web site explaining the referendum in detail.
The information sessions will be held Oct. 7 at Sherman Middle School, Oct.16 at Jefferson Middle School, Oct. 22 at Wright Middle School, and Oct. 28 at Sennett Middle School. Each meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. and will feature both Spanish and Hmong interpreters.
October, 2008
The Madison School District has scheduled four public information sessions throughout October in an effort to raise public awareness about the rapidly approaching referendum.
The district will hold the meetings at four different middle schools across the city. Madison School Board member and communications committee Chairwoman Beth Moss said she hopes that the wide distribution of session locations will generate diverse representation from various attendance areas.
“The formal information sessions try to appeal to more people out in the community,” Moss said. “It’s not just parents. It’s more like people who live in that attendance area. We try to get seniors to come.”
The sessions will feature a brief introduction by a district administration member, followed by an informational DVD presentation. Moss said the DVD uses graphics to help explain details of the referendum that may not be clear to voters.
“It is very important for people to get the facts and understand what we’re asking for. We’re not building a building. We’re trying to just keep going. We’re just trying to keep providing an education and not make really devastating cuts,” Moss said.
The referendum is scheduled for Nov. 4, and proposes that the district raise the revenue limit by $5 million in the 2009-2010 school year, and by $4 million in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012. The increased revenue limit will consequently cause taxes to increase in 2009 by about $27.50 for a $250,000 home.
Moss said that while Madison residents suffer yearly from increased tax rates, the city’s schools don’t benefit from that increase.
“There are all of these things showing how the amount of money that schools receive now is so much less than it was in 1978, and people are actually paying less out of their taxes now than they did in 1978,” Moss said. “So it’s kind of like, this is why we’re in the situation we’re in. It’s hard for people to understand because taxes otherwise have gone up, but the amount we get has gone down.”
As of now, Moss said there is no known organized opposition to the proposal, but could not say the same for past referendums.
“I know [at] the last referendum there was no organized opposition but [at] the previous one, there were groups who actually had signs and had literature and they were actively campaigning against it. We haven’t seen that yet, but you never know. There’s still quite a bit of time,” Moss said.
People with an eye for education may have spotted some of the other publicity outlets the district used in recent weeks. District Spokesman Ken Syke said that schools took numerous measures to get the word out about the event.
“We work through our schools in what’s called either backpack mail or just school newsletters. Each school sends out a newsletter to parents about once a month or once every five weeks, and we give them any information that they can use there,” Syke said. “In addition, as far as the sessions, we’ve done a traditional news release to the news media and asked them to promote it.”
He also said that the school district e-mailed the parents about the informational meetings and added a section to the district’s Web site explaining the referendum in detail.
The information sessions will be held Oct. 7 at Sherman Middle School, Oct.16 at Jefferson Middle School, Oct. 22 at Wright Middle School, and Oct. 28 at Sennett Middle School. Each meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. and will feature both Spanish and Hmong interpreters.
Tea culture steeps in Madison
Anna Speaker
5/1/08
Nearly 60 glass jars of different tea line the wall of Dr. Xiping Zhou’s tea room, leaving the scent of indiscernible dried herbs lingering in the air at his Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine clinic on the west side of Madison. That may have seemed like a lot to a Madison resident several years ago, but today, even coffeehouses are stocking more and more varieties of tea, trading in the caffeine-laden coffee and providing a fresher, healthier option.
Madison tea consumption is on the rise. Liz Tymus, General Manager of Espresso Royale, estimated that while tea used to contribute 10 percent of her overall business, in the past few years, tea produced nearly 20 percent of overall sales. Lorie Henn, owner of Fair Trade Coffeehouse on State Street, estimated that her store sells 20 percent more tea than it did several years ago.
Tymus attributes the rise in consumption to residents wanting more than the caffeine boost from what she calls a “crazy explosion” of coffee shops in Madison.
“People are looking for something new and different and tea is absolutely a new sort of off-the-beaten-path direction that people are willing to take,” Tymus said.
Ground Zero and Cargo Coffee owner Lindsey Lee said that Madison tea drinkers are becoming more sophisticated, so his businesses now sell a wider variety of tea. Espresso Royale on State Street currently sells 29 varieties of tea. MaCha teahouse on Monroe Street sells over 40.
But while these coffee shops are providing steaming cups of tea to the growing number of willing consumers, Dr. Zhou, Medical Doctor of Oriental Medicine, warns that too much or too little tea could lead to health consequences.
“The Chinese believe, we said, good health is not perfect heath; good health is called balance health. We keep balance,” Zhou said. He says people should drink an average of two cups a day, but advises drinking less black and red tea due to their high caffeine content.
Julie Foote, an undergraduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that part of the reason she drinks tea is because she likes the taste and because she recognizes that it is good for her health. As a tea drinker, she strays from coffee for several reasons.
“Firstly, I really just don’t like the taste and I really don’t like coffee breath,” said Foote. “Secondly, I’m not big on caffeine. I prefer not to be a caffeine addict if I can help it.”
While Foote is cautious of coffee’s addictive qualities, Dr. Zhou warns that too much of the drug is bad for digestion and the nervous system, and it can cause cardiological problems. He said that females in particular should be wary of their caffeine intake.
“Drink caffeine for female really make worse for female, like for menopause, female dysmenorrheal, and also [cause] high defect for birthrate,” said Zhou. He also said overdosing on caffeine can lead to worse cases of osteoporosis and arthritis.
Zhou recommended that tea replace coffee in everyday diets. While the caffeine in coffee can be debilitating to the body, tea contains polyphenols, which help lower cholesterol and reduce fat. In addition to these benefits, Zhou said the antioxidants in tea can also reduce bacteria in our body. He also commented on how the drink can help fight stress.
“Tea is more [to] help our body relax and make our calm our focus. Coffee makes our [focus] hyper.”
But as exam time rolls around on campus, students will be flocking to the tea-bearing coffee shops to cram for their finals and get their fix of caffeine. Dr. Zhou recommended replacing the caffeine-loaded espresso with herbal, green or white tea. He said to avoid strong black tea because it too contains large amounts of caffeine.
“People wanting to have some stimulant or also have some focus should drink some green tea and or jasmine tea,” said Zhou.
The key to getting the most out of your cup is drinking fresh. In order to get the greatest beneficial impact from tea, Zhou said it is best to drink loose tea. Loose tea consists of free-floating leaves or herbs, unlike tea bags that have been manufactured and packaged. According to Zhou, these store-bought tea bags have less antioxidants than loose teas. Tymus of Espresso Royale says that the loose teas are also different from prepackaged teas in that they allow the consumer to “personalize each experience.”
So whether Madison residents satisfy their taste with 29 tea choices at Espresso Royale, or over 40 at MaCha, they have a steep array of options to choose from when broadening their cultural--and nutritional-- horizons.
5/1/08
Nearly 60 glass jars of different tea line the wall of Dr. Xiping Zhou’s tea room, leaving the scent of indiscernible dried herbs lingering in the air at his Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine clinic on the west side of Madison. That may have seemed like a lot to a Madison resident several years ago, but today, even coffeehouses are stocking more and more varieties of tea, trading in the caffeine-laden coffee and providing a fresher, healthier option.
Madison tea consumption is on the rise. Liz Tymus, General Manager of Espresso Royale, estimated that while tea used to contribute 10 percent of her overall business, in the past few years, tea produced nearly 20 percent of overall sales. Lorie Henn, owner of Fair Trade Coffeehouse on State Street, estimated that her store sells 20 percent more tea than it did several years ago.
Tymus attributes the rise in consumption to residents wanting more than the caffeine boost from what she calls a “crazy explosion” of coffee shops in Madison.
“People are looking for something new and different and tea is absolutely a new sort of off-the-beaten-path direction that people are willing to take,” Tymus said.
Ground Zero and Cargo Coffee owner Lindsey Lee said that Madison tea drinkers are becoming more sophisticated, so his businesses now sell a wider variety of tea. Espresso Royale on State Street currently sells 29 varieties of tea. MaCha teahouse on Monroe Street sells over 40.
But while these coffee shops are providing steaming cups of tea to the growing number of willing consumers, Dr. Zhou, Medical Doctor of Oriental Medicine, warns that too much or too little tea could lead to health consequences.
“The Chinese believe, we said, good health is not perfect heath; good health is called balance health. We keep balance,” Zhou said. He says people should drink an average of two cups a day, but advises drinking less black and red tea due to their high caffeine content.
Julie Foote, an undergraduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that part of the reason she drinks tea is because she likes the taste and because she recognizes that it is good for her health. As a tea drinker, she strays from coffee for several reasons.
“Firstly, I really just don’t like the taste and I really don’t like coffee breath,” said Foote. “Secondly, I’m not big on caffeine. I prefer not to be a caffeine addict if I can help it.”
While Foote is cautious of coffee’s addictive qualities, Dr. Zhou warns that too much of the drug is bad for digestion and the nervous system, and it can cause cardiological problems. He said that females in particular should be wary of their caffeine intake.
“Drink caffeine for female really make worse for female, like for menopause, female dysmenorrheal, and also [cause] high defect for birthrate,” said Zhou. He also said overdosing on caffeine can lead to worse cases of osteoporosis and arthritis.
Zhou recommended that tea replace coffee in everyday diets. While the caffeine in coffee can be debilitating to the body, tea contains polyphenols, which help lower cholesterol and reduce fat. In addition to these benefits, Zhou said the antioxidants in tea can also reduce bacteria in our body. He also commented on how the drink can help fight stress.
“Tea is more [to] help our body relax and make our calm our focus. Coffee makes our [focus] hyper.”
But as exam time rolls around on campus, students will be flocking to the tea-bearing coffee shops to cram for their finals and get their fix of caffeine. Dr. Zhou recommended replacing the caffeine-loaded espresso with herbal, green or white tea. He said to avoid strong black tea because it too contains large amounts of caffeine.
“People wanting to have some stimulant or also have some focus should drink some green tea and or jasmine tea,” said Zhou.
The key to getting the most out of your cup is drinking fresh. In order to get the greatest beneficial impact from tea, Zhou said it is best to drink loose tea. Loose tea consists of free-floating leaves or herbs, unlike tea bags that have been manufactured and packaged. According to Zhou, these store-bought tea bags have less antioxidants than loose teas. Tymus of Espresso Royale says that the loose teas are also different from prepackaged teas in that they allow the consumer to “personalize each experience.”
So whether Madison residents satisfy their taste with 29 tea choices at Espresso Royale, or over 40 at MaCha, they have a steep array of options to choose from when broadening their cultural--and nutritional-- horizons.
"Rent" captures audience enthusiasm
Overture Hall was splitting at its 2,251 person capacity Friday night as the official off-Broadway group brought the heat to a powerless apartment during a sold-out performance of Rent.
Without second thought, as the play began, the audience was immediately immersed in a world circulating with drugs, AIDS and jealousy. The performance lasted three hours and told the tale of the depressing lives of Roger and Mark (Heinz Winckler and Jed Resnick respectively), two starving artists and roommates, who were captivating enough to grasp the attention of musicals lovers and haters alike.
The story closely followed the capricious relationship between Roger and Mimi, a nineteen-year-old songbird dealing with a shameless drug addiction and suffering from AIDS. Jennifer Colby Talton, acting as Mimi, delivered an astounding performance with some tricks but mostly truth. The sincerity of her representation of the character was enigmatic, drawing the viewer closer to the story than thought possible. This was paralleled, if not exceeded, by the crystallized singing voice of Winckler. Every note was pristine as it resonated through the amazing acoustics of Overture Hall. Within fifteen minutes, they performed the song “Light My Candle,” and made their amazing abilities and chemistry shine. This song was closely followed by Winckler’s solo of “One Song Glory,” striking the entire hall silent until the song ended and the audience exploded with applause.
The hall was equally dumb-founded by the hypnotizing physical contortions of Angel, played by Kristen-Alexzander Griffeth. The AIDS-infected homosexual cross dresser was colorfully flamboyant and arguably the most endearing character in Rent, holding the community together with optimism and love.
Though the erotic nature and drug-related content was subtle, this play was not for the young or faint of heart. The audience, however, grew notably closer throughout the performance. The community created between the characters by the end of the play mirrored the gained camaraderie throughout the audience, sharing laughs, tears and excitement. Maureen, Mark’s ex-girlfriend-turned-lesbian, even had the crowd mooing along during her eccentric interpretive dance segment entitled “Over the Moon.” This performance was entertaining and humorous, but limited the vocal talents possessed by Christine Dwyer, the actress portraying Maureen. Fortunately, her skills were exemplified and amplified in the dueling ballad entitled “Take me or Leave me” between Maureen and her contesting new girlfriend, Joanne (Onyie Nwachukwu).
This song took advantage of the intricate set of Rent. An artistic use of three ordinary metal tables set the stage for three separate scenes simultaneously. While there were only a few props, the whole stage was a complicated series of lights and gadgets with an elaborate grunge-factor that gave the sense of New York’s lower eastside. The ironically festive Christmas lights and scrap-metal Christmas tree illuminated the recurring theme of the play; seeing the upside of being down and out of luck, money and time in the city.
Undoubtedly the most impassioned song of the play, “Seasons of Love,” was performed with the entire cast taking on the audience front and face. It was in this song that Mark and Roger’s old roommate, Collins, (Anwar Robinson) belted exceptional and relevant lyrics with his smooth tones resembling the likes of Stevie Wonder.
The only possible downside to this event at the Overture Center would be the fast paced dialogue and lyrics that made it difficult for the first time viewer to follow the plot closely. Despite this minor setback, the exceptional acting, singing and dancing skills, along with a fantastic set and story made Rent a far greater experience than something that could be measured in “midnights and cups of coffee,” but instead something that could be “measured in love.”
Without second thought, as the play began, the audience was immediately immersed in a world circulating with drugs, AIDS and jealousy. The performance lasted three hours and told the tale of the depressing lives of Roger and Mark (Heinz Winckler and Jed Resnick respectively), two starving artists and roommates, who were captivating enough to grasp the attention of musicals lovers and haters alike.
The story closely followed the capricious relationship between Roger and Mimi, a nineteen-year-old songbird dealing with a shameless drug addiction and suffering from AIDS. Jennifer Colby Talton, acting as Mimi, delivered an astounding performance with some tricks but mostly truth. The sincerity of her representation of the character was enigmatic, drawing the viewer closer to the story than thought possible. This was paralleled, if not exceeded, by the crystallized singing voice of Winckler. Every note was pristine as it resonated through the amazing acoustics of Overture Hall. Within fifteen minutes, they performed the song “Light My Candle,” and made their amazing abilities and chemistry shine. This song was closely followed by Winckler’s solo of “One Song Glory,” striking the entire hall silent until the song ended and the audience exploded with applause.
The hall was equally dumb-founded by the hypnotizing physical contortions of Angel, played by Kristen-Alexzander Griffeth. The AIDS-infected homosexual cross dresser was colorfully flamboyant and arguably the most endearing character in Rent, holding the community together with optimism and love.
Though the erotic nature and drug-related content was subtle, this play was not for the young or faint of heart. The audience, however, grew notably closer throughout the performance. The community created between the characters by the end of the play mirrored the gained camaraderie throughout the audience, sharing laughs, tears and excitement. Maureen, Mark’s ex-girlfriend-turned-lesbian, even had the crowd mooing along during her eccentric interpretive dance segment entitled “Over the Moon.” This performance was entertaining and humorous, but limited the vocal talents possessed by Christine Dwyer, the actress portraying Maureen. Fortunately, her skills were exemplified and amplified in the dueling ballad entitled “Take me or Leave me” between Maureen and her contesting new girlfriend, Joanne (Onyie Nwachukwu).
This song took advantage of the intricate set of Rent. An artistic use of three ordinary metal tables set the stage for three separate scenes simultaneously. While there were only a few props, the whole stage was a complicated series of lights and gadgets with an elaborate grunge-factor that gave the sense of New York’s lower eastside. The ironically festive Christmas lights and scrap-metal Christmas tree illuminated the recurring theme of the play; seeing the upside of being down and out of luck, money and time in the city.
Undoubtedly the most impassioned song of the play, “Seasons of Love,” was performed with the entire cast taking on the audience front and face. It was in this song that Mark and Roger’s old roommate, Collins, (Anwar Robinson) belted exceptional and relevant lyrics with his smooth tones resembling the likes of Stevie Wonder.
The only possible downside to this event at the Overture Center would be the fast paced dialogue and lyrics that made it difficult for the first time viewer to follow the plot closely. Despite this minor setback, the exceptional acting, singing and dancing skills, along with a fantastic set and story made Rent a far greater experience than something that could be measured in “midnights and cups of coffee,” but instead something that could be “measured in love.”
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