Lake Effect

Unless playwrights are already well known, most of them have trouble convincing a theater company to produce their new work. Audiences are often reluctant to see something brand new and most theaters operate on such a tight budget that it's difficult for them to take the financial risk.

In early February, Gov. Tony Evers signed Wisconsin’s first dyslexia law. It requires the Department of Public Instruction to create a guidebook about the common reading disability. 

Food halls have been popping up in neighborhoods and suburbs throughout the Milwaukee Area. These spaces have become popular in cities throughout the country, and generally offer a dining experience uniquely different from a standard restaurant.

"The idea is to have these kind of small format, usually local food and beverage vendors collected into one place with a central bar and also central seating," says Tom Daykin, a reporter covering commercial real estate for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Advertisements are part of our everyday lives – from billboards, to pop up ads and other commercials. But when was the last time you noticed one of Milwaukee’s fading ads on its buildings?

Vintage signs that are hand-painted, manufactured, or done in neon lights can be found all over Milwaukee neighborhoods.

The Wisconsin prison system is facing a lot of challenges for both adults and young people. Wisconsin is second in the country for racial disparity among African Americans and whites who are in prison. The ratio is 11.5 African Americans to one white prisoner in the state, according to census data gathered by the Sentencing Project.

After Scott Walker was elected Wisconsin governor in 2010, Milwaukee County was left without an executive. At the time, Chris Abele was a local philanthropist, whose work led him to a greater understanding of the budget shortfalls facing the county — and he thought he could help. 

Wine contributor Ray Fister has been chatting with Lake Effect about the fruits of the vine for almost a decade. He has always insisted you don’t need a special occasion to open a nice bottle of wine. But if you're looking for something, why not choose wine made in Wisconsin?

“There’s frontenac, there’s st. pepin, there’s st. croix. There are all these different grapes that survive nicely in this weather, making very good reds, very good whites, and in the end a lot of these winemakers blending them to make something they think is very special,” Fister says.

Coming up with the perfect gift is no easy task. But essayist Mel Miskimen thought she'd found just the thing for her husband on their first wedding anniversary. Turns out, it didn't exactly get the reaction she expected.

It was our first anniversary. Paper according to Hallmark. We were in our late 20s, had just bought a fixer upper that had sucked our meagre savings account dry. So, no money. I had come with what I had thought was the perfect gift for my husband. Oh. My. God. He was going to love it!

Pregnancy can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes the hardest part is not knowing what’s really happening to the fetus and whether it’s developing into a healthy human being.

When Dr. Aoy Tomita-Mitchell was pregnant, she was faced with a serious dilemma that could have risked the health and safety of her fetus. She and her husband, Dr. Michael Mitchell, took their problem and created a solution: the Harmony prenatal test.

As part of our Wisconsin 2020 series, we’ve been asking you to tell us what you want to know about voting in Wisconsin. We received a lot of questions about voter suppression tactics and voting in general.

Patrick Marley covers politics and the Wisconsin statehouse for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He's here to help answer some of your voting questions: 

When we're talking about voter suppression efforts, what are some of the things included in that term? 

When Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris in 1913, the audience rioted. The music was angular and dissonant. The dance ritualistic and based on pagan myths. 

A century later, Stravinksy’s orchestral score is considered one of the most influential classical works of the 20th century. The ballet has been restaged innumerable times in more than 60 countries across five continents.

Milwaukee musician John Sieger takes songs seriously. So seriously in fact, he has a regular column about other people’s songs with Urban Milwaukee, and he’s been singing and writing his own for decades. 

Thursday night he’s starting a monthly series at the Jazz Gallery. It’s called Sieger on Songs: Conversations. He stopped by the Lake Effect studio to tell us more:

Since graduating from Boston's Berklee College of Music in 1994, Swedish singer and composer Sophie Dunér has carved out a career composing and performing across the globe. Her music is deeply rooted in jazz and improvisation, but she also draws on contemporary classical and world music influences.

There are loaded words in all languages. From swear words to sacreligious words to simply crass words, most of us know them but refrain from using them — at least in public discourse. Most of them can’t be said at all on the radio. But Jade Solomon Curtis wants all of us to have a conversation about one of the most weighted words in English: the n-word.  

An estimated 900,000 Wisconsin households rely on private wells for drinking water. It seems with every passing day, we learn wells are being impacted by contaminants — from manure to PFAS — putting families’ health at risk. Some people feel there's not enough support when they have to deal with a contaminated well.

READ: PFAS Concern Remains High In Marinette