Tuesday 6/23/26: Wisconsin teachers apprentice, Wisconsin Cartoonist Laureate, 'Summertime' origins

Lauri Jones: Support for WUWM podcasts comes from University School of Milwaukee, fulfilling a values-based mission of developing learners, fostering leaders, and preparing citizens for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. More information at usm.org/mission.

Audrey Nowakowski: From 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR, this is Lake Effect. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. Today, we'll learn about Wisconsin's teacher's apprenticeship program and why it may not be able to continue. Then we'll speak with Wisconsin's first cartoonist laureate.

Paul Noth: I see it as an art form, and there's a lot of cartoonists whose work I think absolutely should be in museums. There's also something that is a little disposable about it and kind of disreputable about it, you know, at the same time. And I like it like that.

Audrey Nowakowski: Plus, we'll talk about the origins and evolution of the iconic jazz song, "Summertime."

Jason McKinney: It's very approachable to people, and thus, sometimes singers don't want to sing it because it seems too simplistic. But sometimes I feel like the simple songs are the ones that take a lot of care.

Audrey Nowakowski: All that's coming up on Lake Effect. This is Lake Effect from 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. Thanks for joining us. Most teachers go through a grueling and often unpaid student teaching period before they get their degree. It's a critical time where they learn about classroom management and figure out whether teaching is for them. But working for free is obviously tough. A pilot program in Wisconsin is testing out paid apprenticeships for education students. 45 states have apprenticeship programs like it. In Tennessee, the program churns out 600 teachers a year. But right now, the program in Wisconsin is stalling out with just eight participants. Miranda Dunlap is a reporter covering education at Wisconsin Watch. She joins WUWM education reporter, Katherine Kokal, to talk about her recent reporting on the apprenticeship program and whether it will be able to continue at all.

Katherine Kokal: So when people hear the word "apprenticeship," I think a lot of them will picture an apprentice learning a trade, like electrical or plumbing. Can you explain a little bit about how this teaching apprenticeship program works in Wisconsin as it stands right now?

Miranda Dunlap: Yes, and that totally makes sense because, historically speaking, when we talk about apprenticeships, we have talked about skilled trades moreso than any other careers. So the way that it works is that a school district has an apprentice. They pay that apprentice for the time that they spend inside the classroom working as an employee, and also for some hours a week that they spend in college, getting the proper training to become a teacher. And for the apprentice, it's kind of a win-win because they're getting both their schooling done, and also they have a full-time job, and they're getting experience in their field.

Katherine Kokal: And that's kind of in contrast, obviously, to traditional teaching pathways where you're student teaching, and you're doing that unpaid, right?

Miranda Dunlap: Correct. And I think that's a major part of why this program exists is it gets apprentices into the classroom sooner. So they might find out sooner that they're not into it, that they don't like being in the classroom. They get to apply the things that they learn right away. They get you earn money while they're in school, whereas typically you go through schooling and then at the tail end of it, you do this sort of unpaid training work. Now you're finally entering the classroom after you've spent, you know, three or four years in college.

Katherine Kokal: Excellent. Yeah, that's really helpful, I think, for people to be able to picture this. There is a lot of money, obviously, necessary to pay these apprentices while they're working in schools. Where does it come from?

Miranda Dunlap: The funding piece of this gets a little complicated because there's a lot of moving parts here. But for starters, the program, the teacher apprenticeship program, which is in its pilot phase right now, is funded by federal appropriations. So Congress said we're going to set aside $500,000 to go towards teacher training in Wisconsin. And that funding goes to starting up the program, building it out, hiring the people, the Wisconsin state staffers who are going to build this, and also reimbursing students for half of their tuition costs to make it less of a burden on them. And then the actual, you know, who is paying the student for the time that they're spending in the classroom, that is up to the school districts. They're paying these people like any other employee.

Katherine Kokal: So your reporting found that there were just eight apprentices working in four school districts. Why isn't this program more popular? What did people tell you when you talk to them for this story?

Miranda Dunlap: Yes, I think this was probably the most fascinating part of reporting out this story is that everyone I talked to, both apprentices themselves, to the colleges that are offering the instruction, to the school districts that are paying the apprentices, they agree that this is a great method and a really accessible way for people to get on their way to becoming a teacher. The problem is, like everything else, it comes down to money, and school districts cannot afford to pay these people for the time that they're not in the classroom and are receiving their training at the college. You know, that's a non-negotiable part of the apprenticeship. You spend about 32 hours working as an employee and then about eight as a student yourself. And they're having a really hard time coming up with the cash to pay for those eight hours where their employee is not working. And so it really comes down to that. And the apprentices that I talked to, they found this to be an extremely valuable program that one student told me that it changed their life around. They thought that they were never going to be able to become a teacher because they couldn't afford to step away from their job in order to go back to school, and this program meant that they didn't have to.

Katherine Kokal: Oh, that's so interesting. We should also mention here that there are four school districts that are participating in this pilot, a couple locally: Wauwatosa, Elmbrook, Greendale, and then up in Appleton. Those are the districts that are involved. There are a lot of states that have programs like these that are far more successful. Can you tell me about some of those? You mentioned them in your reporting, but it's worth kind of comparing what's happening elsewhere to what's happened here in Wisconsin.

Miranda Dunlap: Yeah. Every state kind of has their own sort of approach to how they're doing this. It is worth noting that Wisconsin's is in its pilot stage, right? So like we are not talking about a fully-scaled program. We are talking about the question of whether it will continue in future years after this sort of startup phase. But Tennessee is a really good example to look at, because it is a state that a lot of others were looking towards in building their program. It was the first federally recognized program in the country. And they're just churning out teachers at a pretty crazy rate. They pay fully for 600 new teachers to go through the apprenticeship program every year at no cost to them. So there is state funding going towards these students' tuition, the money that they're receiving to work. And that is in full contrast with Wisconsin's program, where the issue that you're seeing here is that there's no flow of state funding to help these school districts pay these apprentices. There's no flow of state finding to help these people afford their tuition. So that was a major contrast to me when I was researching other states that were doing this better.

Katherine Kokal: I want to take a moment here to reintroduce you. Today we're talking to Miranda Dunlap, a reporter covering education and workforce at Wisconsin Watch. She wrote a piece on Wisconsin Watch about the teacher apprenticeship program in Wisconsin. So Miranda, this program was set up to address the teacher workforce shortage. We've been hearing a lot about this in recent years. Where does that stand now? Obviously this program is not making a major dent in that, but as a state, do we have enough teachers for what we need?

Miranda Dunlap: Yeah, this is a really important topic, and you're very correct in that eight teachers going through the pilot program has not made a significant dent in the teacher shortage in our state. The question is whether it could down the line if it were to continue. But Wisconsin has a problem with retention of teachers. We have a really big issue with keeping teachers on past that seven or eight year mark. A lot of people leave the profession. We also have an issue with people, new educators, who are going through school in Wisconsin deciding that they're gonna go teach in other states. So it's a pipeline issue, but there's also a workforce issue at play here.

Katherine Kokal: Yeah, no doubt. I found this reporting especially interesting. I mean, the whole piece is excellent. It starts with a really, really great example. Matthew Jacobson, the apprentice that you featured in the story, said that he was actually able to take what he was learning while working and immediately apply it. That's often a barrier, right? Education students spend a lot of time in school, and then they graduate years later and things have changed. His experience is very different. Were there any examples of him immediately being able to apply that knowledge to his classroom skills that stood out in this reporting?

Miranda Dunlap: Yeah, Matthew was just over the moon to be able to tell me all of the ways that he gets to apply what he's learned in class the very next day. Word for word, he told me that there is no better way to learn this job than to do this job. And I think probably a lot of people would agree with him. But one example of what he was talking about here, being able to apply that knowledge right away, is he runs a reading intervention group at his school. He got to use the skills that he learned from the semester before in his phonological awareness class, which is basically the foundations of reading. And he got take that class, and then the next semester go and help kids who are not reading at the level that they should be get to where they are. And so that just was so fruitful for him to be able to take exactly what he'd learned and use it in his real life, in his job. And like you said, that does seem to be a big barrier for education students. Things are always changing and it's a long time until those students are getting into the classroom typically, but not in this case.

Katherine Kokal: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna just share a little bit more of Matthew's story too. Can you tell us where he's at in the program and where he is teaching right now?

Miranda Dunlap: Yes. Matthew is about halfway through, just like the other seven apprentices, so he's transitioning into the Bachelor's portion of the apprenticeship this year. He's completed an Associate's Degree and has two years of classroom experience under his belt, and now he has two more to go. Currently, he is teaching at Brookfield Elementary School, which is sort of near you in Milwaukee.

Katherine Kokal: Kind of in our neck of the woods, yeah. I think it's also worth mentioning that he grew up in Brookfield. He went to St. John Vianney Catholic School, so kind of staying local through this apprenticeship program. I just wanna close by saying that this is really interesting, because you and I know as education reporters that colleges are always trying to find new ways to help people get into career pathways and get rid of some of those barriers. Especially right now, I think it's pretty well known that when the economy makes people feel uncertain, they often go back to school and they choose to go back to school as a way to kind of guard against future economic stress. What did your reporting find about how and whether this program is going to continue at all?

Miranda Dunlap: It is kind of up in the air in the sense that the program really does start and end with school districts. The school districts have to be willing to make the investment to hire apprentices, and if no more are going to do that, then the program is effectively discontinued. But if more do, then it can continue on. And so we're kind of at the point of: will they or won't they?

Katherine Kokal: Thank you so much for sharing this reporting with me. It's really, really great. You can read this story at wisconsinwatch.org. Thanks again for joining me.

Miranda Dunlap: Thank you so much for having me.

Audrey Nowakowski: Miranda Dunlap is a reporter covering education and workforce issues at Wisconsin Watch. She spoke with WUWM education reporter Katherine Kokal about Wisconsin's Teacher Apprenticeship Program. Lake Effect is available as a podcast so you can listen when you like. Find it wherever you get your podcasts, then subscribe, download, and listen on demand. In about 15 minutes, we're going to kick off the official start of summer with an exploration of the classic jazz song, "Summertime." But first, we'll learn about a new Cartoonist Laureate Program from the Museum of Wisconsin Art. And we'll speak with Paul Noth, who's the first to hold the title. Keep listening to Lake Effect on WUWM. You're listening to Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. Wisconsin has an important place in the history of comics, going back to the early 20th century. Today, the Museum of Wisconsin Art continues to celebrate our state's creative legacy by launching the Wisconsin Cartoonist Laureate Program. The Cartoonist Laureate will promote comics literacy and highlight the art form as a powerful tool for personal expression and social commentary. Paul Noth is a Milwaukee native who has published over 400 cartoons in The New Yorker. He won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in Cartoon Art in 2025, and now he's the first to hold the title of Cartoonist Laureate of Wisconsin. To share more about the program, I'm joined by cartoonist Paul Noth and the Museum of Wisconsin Art's Executive Director, Laurie Winters. Winters begins by explaining why they wanted to establish this new position.

Laurie Winters: It was an evolution of thinking. In 2020, just in the days of waning pandemic, we did an exhibition called "Wisconsin Funnies," and it featured a number of artists who worked in the orbit of Denis Kitchen. Denis Kitchen had done a tremendous amount of work to kind of create a culture of cartooning and humor in the state, which has a long history going back to the 19th and especially in the early 20th century. So around that exhibition during the pandemic, we started to think about the cartoons as not only something we could appreciate for their quick, raw humor, but something that... They seem to me to have a more poignant significance, and that was that they, you know, over the evolution, at whatever period they were done in time, they connect to us as human beings in a way that is sort of deep and profound. And they're about the human condition, foibles and all. And whether that's for good or bad, it's there. And I thought that was so significant and so powerful. I really thought the Museum of Wisconsin Art should be behind that and supporting that and bringing that to our audiences. That's the story. It started in 2020.

Audrey Nowakowski: Well, and you mentioned that exhibit that kind of kicked off thinking a bit deeper into cartoons and our own state's history with cartooning. Can you go into a bit more detail about Wisconsin's place with cartoons?

Laurie Winters: I can. We published this amazing book, which we're going to republish because it's actually sold out, called Wisconsin Funnies. And it tells the history of Wisconsin art and just an amazing number of nationally and internationally recognized cartoonists who are from Wisconsin, who got their roots here or who worked here and did national publications. And so that's there and it kind of makes you wonder, like, what is it about like, you know, Wisconsin that spawns this kind of interest in humor? But it's there. And I've been told that Wisconsin is second only to California, specifically Los Angeles, in terms of, you now, cartoon production. There is a cartoon laureate position in Vermont, which is a little bit different than what we do, but you know. So we're number two, and I think we have a significant body of cartoonists who are working at this time, and, you know, we are kind of a powerhouse. We have great cartoonists, whether it's Asher Perlman or Lynda Barry or Paul Noth, who after living in Brooklyn for 20 years and working for the New Yorker, decided to return to Wisconsin and make it his permanent home. So, the timing just seemed right, and having the museum's connection with Paul just seemed right for him to take on more of an ambassadorial role and really help us and lead us as an institution in creating a kind of center for cartoon arts.

Audrey Nowakowski: Yeah, Paul, you're the first person to take on this role and will hold this title for three years. So, as Lori mentioned, an ambassador of cartoons is a big part of this job, but what else is going to be involved in your work as Cartoonist Laureate?

Paul Noth: Well, I'm going to try and promote and celebrate the art form for the next three years, and I think, hopefully establish what it means to be a cartoonist laureate, you know? And I think it's a great thing to have out there already to show that this art form really is sort of celebrated and honored in this state. And so I think that, you know, I am going to be doing some workshops with students and things like that, and I'd like to, you know, reach out to the various cartooning and comics communities in the state and just sort of get a read on, you know, what's going on, which is something I kind of want to do anyway. I'm a big cartoon and comics nerd. And so I, you know, it's fun for me to sort of look into not only the history of it, but also what's on in contemporary comics and cartooning in Wisconsin. So I was thrilled to be asked, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Audrey Nowakowski: And what's exciting about being the first is that you can shape this position, right? So for both you, Paul and Laurie, have you worked together to shape the duties and goals of this new position? And also, like, what are you looking forward to figuring out together and see what works best?

Paul Noth: Yeah, I think we've started to. We've started to shape it, and we sort of started the conversation about what it's going to be and what it is going to look like. And, as she mentioned, it is sort of different than the only other one that they have, which is in Vermont. And I think one of the biggest things about it is, you know, this is a museum, a major museum that has already done two big cartoon shows, you know, even before this. And I they're planning an exhibition of my work, which I'm absolutely thrilled about. And I think that alone sort of shows that this is an art form that's taken seriously, or as seriously as comics can be taken. And so it's an ongoing conversation. And so we've just sort of started to get the ball rolling on it.

Audrey Nowakowski: Laurie, you know, Paul's talking about how comics and cartoons are viewed. Do you feel like it was a medium not fully represented at art museums themselves?

Laurie Winters: Oh sure, absolutely. Yeah. In part because I think it's their history, you know? They were in throw away daily papers, and you know, it's not something you think about preserving or collecting, and so it was gone, even though the original drawings are still there. You know, as someone who is kind of nerdy about like how artists work, I've realized that in making the cartoon, they are deceptively simple. They look like they're quickly drawn. They look like they would have been done in a half hour. And it's just like the flash of an idea and it's out there. And Paul would probably be the first one to tell you like that's so far from the truth. But they they truly are in themselves, you know, works of art and the tradition of sketching a work in the arts industry. So I think this is an opportunity to disabuse people of some false notions about cartooning. And the complexity and the thought that goes into it. And it's never just one simple idea. And this is one of the things we talked about with Paul is we wanna make people clear, through his exhibition, that the ideas can be expansive and in multi-form over an extended period of time before The New Yorker picks that final work to publish. And so, just that evolution of how the artist works I think will be a really interesting part of the story to tell.

Audrey Nowakowski: For sure. Paul, I'd love to learn about your work style and process, because I imagine a lot of this work is doing a lot submissions, and maybe getting a small percentage of them being published. So how have you built your artist's resiliency in your mindset, and how do you like to approach or, you know, so to say, throw all the spaghetti at the wall until you land on an idea that you wanna flesh out more?

Paul Noth: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. Like, there's a lot of spaghetti on my wall. It's not, you know, it's not a clean wall. There are tons and tons of submissions, you know? Even though I've been doing it for 20 years, if I submit a batch, the most realistic expectation is that, of the 10, I will sell none, you know? And during a very good week, I sell one. But that's how it's kind of designed. They're supposed to kind of be fast. I remember during my first batch, another cartoonist told me that my paper was too nice, like, "These are roughs, and shouldn't look like you're being precious about these." And so what that really did is it created an artistic practice. That's not really how I saw it at the time. But when I look back at my work, which I'm really doing a lot now as I prepare for an exhibition, I can see that, wow, these ideas, they've been sort of gestating for a decade before they find their final form. And so I see it as an art form and there's a lot of cartoonists whose work I think absolutely should be in museums. There's also something that is a little disposable about it and kind of disreputable about it, you know, at the same time. And I like it like that. I think it's very interesting. Those things make it interesting.

Audrey Nowakowski: And with your work in this field, and now being back in Wisconsin, too, I imagine there's a big difference between East Coast and Midwest. How have you seen the level of appreciation for this medium shift in different eras? I mean, obviously with the decline of print journalism, I know not as many people are just physically holding up a funnies section of a paper every week.

Paul Noth: Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, my dad worked for the newspaper here in Milwaukee growing up. He worked for The Milwaukee Journal as a feature editor and a film and theater critic. So he was encouraging of my art, but he kind of said, you know, "Stay out of this print journalism business," you know. "It gets harder and harder to make a living at it." And so I didn't think that it would work out, the cartooning would work out. It's just something I sort of did for myself. And I think living in New York, or in the New York area, and being in The New Yorker, there was a lot of appreciation for it. You know, I would get invited to talk about it and things like that. And I think, since I moved here, I'm surprised to find that there's a lot of appreciation for it too. And just the response I've gotten from people is very gratifying to see, that, despite what's happened to print journalism, people really love cartoons.

Audrey Nowakowski: Laurie, how do you hope this position of cartoonist laureate not only elevates the art form and the Museum of Wisconsin Art, but helps preserve this art form? Because art museums are also, in my opinion, like an important archival source for so many people.

Laurie Winters: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's something that Paul and I have talked about, as well, is sort of building that range of context that will help us make smart decisions about exhibitions and promoting and supporting young cartoonists who are coming up in the ranks, and how do we do that? So there are so many questions that we have at the beginning stages here, and we'd like to do all of it, of course, but I'm sure it will happen piecemeal as most things do. So over time, we'll build on success. But I think, in addition to Paul's show, which will open in early 2027, he has a major publication coming out. That's exciting. And then the museum will be doing what I believe will be a kind of national symposium on cartooning and its connection to, or lack of connection to museums, and how can we think about the role of cartoons in museums and how that can be expanded? So I'm really excited about that opportunity as well, because it will reflect our history as a state, our role and evolution. But it also gives us the opportunity to help shape what comes forward.

Audrey Nowakowski: Yeah, Paul, what does it mean to you as a Milwaukee native to be the first to lead this role?

Paul Noth: It means a lot. It was very humbling to hear about it. When Lori began telling me they were creating this position, I was very happy they were. And I immediately thought of several names of who they would pick, and mine was not among them. And so it kind of blew me away a little bit to be chosen for this. And as she mentioned, it also is coming at a time where I have my first collection of cartoons coming out. That represents about 20 years of work. And so, it seems like the right time for something like this. And so, yeah, I'm very honored. Like I said, I hope to do a good job at it.

Audrey Nowakowski: Well, I'm sure you will. And for today, thank you, Paul and Laurie for joining me to talk about the Wisconsin Cartoonist Laureate position, and I look forward to seeing all the work that's to come with it.

Paul Noth: Thanks so much for having us.

Audrey Nowakowski: Paul Noth is the inaugural Wisconsin Cartoonist Laureate, and Laurie Winters is the Executive Director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art, which launched the program. While the Wisconsin Cartoonist Laureate Program is the latest chapter in our history of comic art, other projects have been safeguarding some lesser-known comics history, like the Queer Zine Archive Project, or QZAP. It's run from a duplex in the middle of Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood with the purple trim and Cream City brick. While the house itself is interesting, the basement is even more compelling, with a collection of over 2,500 zines. Zines are generally self-published magazines and pamphlets, and they're primary source materials that document histories that usually have no other home. The Queer Zine Archive Project is run by co-founders Milo Miller and Chris Wilde. WUWM's Maayan Silver descended the stairs back in 2019 to find out more.

Milo Miller: At QZAP, one of the things that we think about a lot is the vast array of queer stories that get told and that get told exclusively in this subRosa print format that don't get picked up in other media formats. And we think this a lot. We talk about it a lot. But when you have access to more traditional forms of publishing or sort of mainstream media outlets, what you see when you see queer stories is you see, I would say, a fairly narrow view of what it means to be gay and lesbian, without a whole lot of talking about what it mean to be bisexual, to be transgender. And a lot of that is sort of based in capitalism. It's based in hegemony. And zines bust that wide open. And so we have all of these amazing stories that you don't see anywhere else. It's not in "Girlfriends." It's not on the Logo Channel. And, you know, it's, zines are kind of like StoryCorps, like what NPR plays on Fridays, you know. But it's in print format. And so that's what our collection really has become a lot about.

Maayan Silver: I want to know, specifically, queer zines. Queer, punk self-published zines. What is that all about?

Milo Miller: We have a pretty comprehensive list on our website of what makes a zine queer or how we identify something that is a queer zine, versus a non-queer zine. And for us, it kind of breaks down in two ways. One is that it can be just about any zine made by somebody who self-identifies as being LGBTQ+. Because of that, we sort of have this broad scope of things.

Maayan Silver: What is the range of subjects? Like, you know, does it go from love stories to environmental activism to, you know, AIDS epidemics?

Milo Miller: All of that. We have stuff on reproductive health. We have a zine that is one of my favorites called "Interview With a Zombie" that is an interview with a zombie. We have stuff that is music-oriented. We have stuffs that is pop culture-oriented, stuff that punk or DIY. You know, zines about how to fix your bicycle tires, or we've got a bunch of cook zines, which are basically like cookbooks, but they're in zine format. You know, so, "how to make vegan mac and cheese," or whatever, you know. So, really all over the place. But then, on the other hand, we have the idea that zines can have queer content and be made by non-queer people. And so sometimes we'll have folks who are more straight identified or heterosexual identified or however they want to do that, but they'll deal with content that we would consider to be queer in some way. So maybe they're talking about HIV/AIDS or sexual health. Maybe they're talking about mental illness and wellness in a way that is particularly queer. Maybe they are talking about queer politics. Maybe they talking about broader sexual politics. So in that way, those are sort of the two ways that we approach queer zines.

Maayan Silver: Okay, so have there been any zines that have just hit you lately, that you just look at them? I mean, what do they look like? What do they feel like? That kind of thing.

Milo Miller: There's so many zines that we get, and there's so much that I love. I started to pull some just to sort of show you, a bunch of different stuff. So, "Queers Read," this was a manifesto that was created for the 1990 New York City Pride March. And it's this really sort of angry polemic that happened right in the middle of the AIDS crisis and at the end of the first Bush administration. And it tears into Jesse Helms. It talks about how terrible healthcare was at the time, how terrible the anti-gay bigotry was and sort of ramping up, especially coming from the Catholic Church and from Cardinal John O'Connor in New York City. And it's probably one of my favorite queer texts ever, so much so that I blew it up into a big art piece that we have hanging up here.

Maayan Silver: I mean, it's about as simple of a layout and a like platform.

Milo Miller: This is a reprint that was done in 2009. So somebody took the original text and reset it. Somewhere we have a copy of the original document or a copy the original documents. And this was just created anonymously and handed out during the big New York City Pride March. So you have half a million people in New York at Gay Pride, and there's a whole bunch of angry queers going through passing this out and it's just this really, really intense document. So this is one of our favorites down here, for sure. This is another one of ours. It's about making do-it-yourself sex toys. And because there's a real big crossover in the zine community with do-it-yourself communities, and this real desire to sidestep capitalism and consumerism in a lot of different ways. And so I feel like this is a really good representation of that. Like, it's super queer. It's sex positive. It's about do-it-yourself, and so it really is something that we sort of cherish and we talk about a lot.

Maayan Silver: And I see that this is kind of a funky, neon green with some cool lettering. And it says... The title is basically not able to be read on the radio, but I'm sure the content is interesting, and it looks like there's some illustrations and text here.

Milo Miller: Yeah, how to create harnesses and straps and...

Maayan Silver: Anything you could need.

Milo Miller: Basically tools. So the next one that I pulled is kind of one of my personal, I don't want to say obsessions, but I'm super, super curious about it, because it's... "GMS Headbanger" is the title. And it's the newsletter for the Chicago Gay Metal society. And from the best that I can tell, at some point in the 1990s, there was this group of gay men who would get together, and they were metalheads, and like that was of their subculture, which is sidestep or askew from sort of the queer punk culture that a lot of zines come out of. And so this is a newsletter of guys who are super into metal and they talk about going to big concerts and hanging out in the parking lot and smoking pot and, you know, picking up guys, and like just as much as a straight metalhead would do. And so I'm super interested in sort of the juxtoposition of those two.

Maayan Silver: They're kind of defying stereotypes, defining a box that some people put them in.

Milo Miller: Yeah, absolutely. It's like any other social group, except that they're metalheads, and that's what brings them together, and they're, you know, they're gay dudes. It's just this super, super interesting artifact. And this is not a story that you would see in music press. Like, if you looked at music press at the time, Rolling Stone or Spin, they are not going to talk about a group of gay metalheads. And if you were to read Out Magazine or The Advocate, you know, they're not gonna necessarily talk about a whole bunch of metal, especially if most of their base of people who are buying their magazines are interested in house music or disco or EDM or whatever. So it's these stories that I feel like QZAP is really, really good at seeking out and preserving and trying to give a little bit of lift or voice to.

Maayan Silver: How much of this archive and of the zines that you have is connection to the past, to important things that have happened in history?

Chris Wilde: So zines are primary documents, and oftentimes, I think that zines are made to process what's going on around you. I, like Milo, got my start in zines in the early 1990s. And for me, it was definitely about... I wanted to talk about things that I wasn't seeing in the world, or things that I was seeing that were problematic is probably much more accurate. And we respond, I think, to historical events, whether they're things that we participate in or self-produce. Some of my favorite zines in the collection end up documenting events that I attended or that I heard about but couldn't afford to get to. And the idea that there's a record of that, that we can go back and kind of touch that, and also too, to share that. So zines have this cross-generational power that a lot of other, I think, sort of subcultures don't. There really is, there's no age limit. I've known zinesters who are in their '70s. And what I'm helping to do, especially through my role at QZAP, is to interpret what zines documented from that time, and making it accessible to people today who didn't live through that time. In fact, a lot of the people who look at our collections, or are coming to do research in zines probably weren't part of any of the the movements or the events or anything from the the '80s or '90s. And it's a great place for them to sort of have kind of an unvarnished look at what people felt in the moment about those events. And that's one of the, I think, most powerful... I'm a historian by my education. And to me, the primary documents and the things that people create themselves to mark their own time in the world are the most powerful historical documents of all. And that's, again, what zines represent to me at least.

Audrey Nowakowski: Chris Wilde and Milo Miller are the co-founders of the Queer Zine Archive Project. They spoke with WUWM's Mayon Silver in 2019. We'll take one more break, and when we come back, we'll talk about the history and evolution of "Summertime," an iconic jazz song composed by George Gershwin. That's next on Lake Effect on Milwaukee's NPR. This is Lake Effect on WUWM. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. This past Sunday marked the official start of summer. To mark the occasion, WUWM's Maayan Silver is looking into the origins of the beloved and unmistakable jazz melody, "Summertime." She's joined by Jason McKinney, an opera singer, educator, and music director with Milwaukee Roots.

Maayan Silver: This is Jason McKinney. He's an opera singer, if you can't tell. He is describing the electric music from the orchestra and the dancing, right before the song's summertime debuts in the opera "Porgy and Bess."

Jason McKinney: [Vocalizing]. You know, very, very, you know, bombastic and loud.

Maayan Silver: He continues to set the scene.

Jason McKinney: And then all of a sudden, it all just falls away. [Vocalizing]. You know, and then this aria comes up and it's a lovely little lullaby that just soothes all that angst that Gershwin just put into the overture and into the dancing and the the piano and the loud sounds. The big orchestra falls away to a single voice with tremolo strings with just a beautiful, beautiful melody that just sticks with you.

Maayan Silver: Summertime is from the English language opera, "Porgy and Bess," written in 1934 by Russian Jewish immigrant George Gershwin for an all-black cast. It's set in Charleston, South Carolina, on the fictional Catfish Row, long after the abolition of slavery. The story is a slice of life about those who descended from enslaved people. Clara is a supporting character. She is married to a fisherman and is the mother of an infant. As the men of Catfish Row play craps, Clara sings summertime as a lullaby to her child.

Jason McKinney: It's only sung three times during the show, once by Clara to her baby. And then, immediately afterwards, the women of the choir have a little backup song. For the second verse, thet's just this wee, beautiful lullaby that's going on.

Jason McKinney: And a few minutes later, she keeps singing the song to the baby, but in the background you have all these crapshooters doing their thing. And they're playing, and have a little [vocalizing] "Summertime, seven comes seven, come to Pappy, throw that beautiful number..."

Jason McKinney: This beautiful aria's going on, but they're singing this. They're with it, but they doing their own thing that's sort of a sneaky hour playing dice.

Maayan Silver: Spoiler alert, Clara and Jake, the baby's parents, both die in a hurricane. And Bess, one of the main characters, takes care of the baby. Later, the song Summertime gets a reprise, with Bess now singing.

Jason McKinney: It's the same song, but it's different. It's got different orchestration. It's a little bit darker. It's got a different key. It's a step lower, so it's no longer in B minor with two sharps. It's now in A minor. So it's no sharps no flats. It's just a little simpler, but also darker. And so, every time that song is sung, somebody dies. So it's a powerful song. I love it. I don't sing it very often, I think because it's set up to be a woman's song and she sings it beautifully and then Gershwin set it beautifully and it has adapted over the years. Ella Fitzgerald, when she started singing it, it took on a new form, it really did establish the the the lead female singer doing her thing, it really did establish it.

Music: Summertime, and the workin' is easy. The fish are jumping and the cotton is high.

Maayan Silver: McKinney is a baritone. He has sung the part of Porgy, the male lead, both abroad and in the United States. And he says "Summertime" is good to have in your back pocket if you're a singer.

Jason McKinney: It's very approachable to people, and thus, sometimes singers don't want to sing it because it seems too simplistic. But sometimes I feel like the simple songs are the ones that take a lot of care.

Maayan Silver: George Gershwin wrote the opera by adapting writer DuBose Hayward's book, "Porgy." Gershwin's brother, Ira, wrote the lyrics to the song, "Summertime." Some say the melody is strikingly similar to the African-American spiritual, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child." Mahalia Jackson even recorded the two songs together.

Music: Summertime and the livin' is easy...

Jason McKinney: I never really thought about those two melodies being the same.

Music: Sometime I feel like a motherless child...

Jason McKinney: Maybe because when I think of some time. The go [vocalizing], "Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child," which is different. "Summertime, and the livin' is easy," which is different.

Jason McKinney: You know, using that pentatonic and then Gershwin spices it up to the cadence, so it definitely has it's own feel.

Maayan Silver: McKinney is Black and Jewish, which gives him a unique perspective on the opera, written by Gershwin, a Russian Jewish immigrant, for an all-Black cast. How does he relate to it?

Jason McKinney: First and foremost, I'm grateful to George, if I can call him George. You know, he didn't have to mandate that the show only be done by Black people. And I think he did that partly because of the insistence of the cast. You know, they wanted to make sure that the lyrics reflected the way they talk and not how people talk to them. You know, we have to talk about sort of the race relations that come about when talking about, "What right did this Jewish immigrant have to write for Black people?" He didn't. But if we only wrote about what we would talk about, then all of the history of American art would just be about the colonial rights of people with power, trampling over people that don't have as much power. That's history, but it's not something that we should only focus on.

Maayan Silver: McKinney says Gershwin spent months trying to get a real flavor of what life was like in the Charleston area.

Jason McKinney: And I think that's all anybody can ever do when they're trying to put their talents to an idea that might not be so close to their own experiences. But that doesn't mean you don't go for it. I mean, if he hadn't done it, okay. Well, you know, maybe he would have written something else. But we're still talking about this. You know, we're closing in on 100 years.

Maayan Silver: McKinney also says if we didn't have economic and racial disparities in this country, there would be no need for a show like this.

Jason McKinney: But, you know, you talk about, "Oh, this is an opera... perhaps it's an opera about race relations." Okay. But it's more than just race relations. It's domestic relations. It's economic relations. It's the society of the forgotten is still thriving in Catfish Row of the story. We can see that through the American history, that even in our darkest periods, the depression, when the show was written, yeah, there were people that were struggling, but they were still thriving in their own communities in the towns, the shantytowns and the Hoover towns, and they were doing whatever they needed to do to survive.

Maayan Silver: McKinney says that's the story of "Porgy and Bess," of "Summertime," the survival of people in difficult situations. For Lake Effect, I'm Maayan Silver.

Audrey Nowakowski: Jason McKinney is an opera singer, educator, and music director. He spoke with WUWM's Mayan Silver. The operatic performances included in this piece were from the Houston Grand Opera. Join us again tomorrow for a listening session of multiple versions of the classic song, "Summertime." And that's Lake Effect for today. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. If you've missed any of Lake Effect this week, you can find all of our conversations at wuwm.com. If you'd like to take the show on the go, you can download the Lake Effect podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Tomorrow on the show, we'll help you plan for the second weekend at "Summerfest." Thank you so much for joining us today right here on listener-supported 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR.