A walk through Milwaukee’s history via the Grand Avenue mall

Having worked downtown and explored much of the area between Water Street, 794, and Marquette, I know that West Wisconsin Avenue, the street formerly known as Grand Avenue, has a great amount of potential as a new place for people to shop and enjoy life. The fine blog UrbanMilwaukee.com has taken a good hard look at the Shops of Grand Avenue and dares to imagine what that mall may look like.

Prior to moving back to Milwaukee, the last time I was in Grand Avenue was the spring of 1988. The whole center of the mall was open then, not walled off as it is now, and the first floor shops had not been expanded to fill much of the first floor as the now do. It had more life to it then. From what I understand, a bad sort of life once inhabited the mall, necessitating the changes to the structure and flow, but I fear they may have only further dampened it. (Right-wing talk radio also did its share, convincing all the suburbanite listeners not to go somewhere they probably wouldn’t have anyway.)

Labelscar: The Retail History Blog has an interesting account of the mall’s history, a welcomely different take from what I had to say. While I would not think that I would find a blog about retail stores interesting, Labelscar is actually a really good read.  And it turns out that one of the blog’s authors is both University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate andan employee of the State of Wisconsin. (Hi from Milwaukee, Ross!)

Looking back in history, the area once was a part of the Alexander Mitchell estate.  He’s not the Mitchell who General Mitchell International Airport is named after — that’s his grandson, Gen. Wm. “Billy” Mitchell, a hero of the First World War, and also the man considered in many regards to be the father of the concept of the modern air force, and the very same Billy Mitchell who was court-martialed and found guilty of insubordination in 1926.

Alexander Mitchell was one of Milwaukee’s original big boys, a railroad tycoon with a sense for grandeur of the highest form, building a lush horticultural conservatory, which existed a full century before the Mitchell Park Domes existed. (They are named for Alexander, not Bobby Mitchell.) The magnificent but now under-appreciated Mitchell Building that Alexander Mitchell built still stands on the corner of East Michigan Street in downtown Milwaukee, on the spot that once was the site of Milwaukee co-founder Solomon Juneau’s second home. (Credit for that last detail and the history of teh Mitchell Family must go to Milwaukee’s fine historian John Gurda, and his treasure of a book The Making of Milwaukee.)

I give a final tip of the hat to UrbanMilwaukee.com for inspiring this post. With the help of people such as the folks at UrbanMilwaukee.com, we’ll have lot a more interesting history to write about in the decades to come.

Happy Earth Hour…

It’s 8:30. Do you know where your lights are?

At least we can have the laptops on.

Awesome Depression deepens; legal jobs dry up

Word has it that a major local law firm has laid off a bunch of staff and has frozen or reduced its hiring of this batch of new law school graduates. Thankfully, we are not effected, but many of my almost-wife’s classmates are not so lucky. Wisconsin Law Journal has a story citing similar and broader trends in the state legal industry.

Interest in gardening continues to grow in Milwaukee

As the Awesome Depression deepens, the Journal Sentinel and JSOnline have picked up a strong and consistent stream of stories on gardening. In print, we have seen columns on making compost, a much better form of fertilizer than any artificial product ever could be. Online, they offer a series of podcasts with tips for growing vegetables among other topics.

While this is good, a better pursuit is to meet up with local gardeners who can share their experience with growing food. My little group meets on Tuesdays around 8:30AM onward at Anodyne Coffee Roasting on S. KK in Bay View. It’s well worth it if you can make it.

Also, check out Milwaukee Urban Gardens and the Milwaukee Urban Agriculture Network. Both of these groups can help you find more people who garden in and around Milwaukee. There are many more than you might think, and even more than that who want to do it. Now is the time — join us! It will only benefit you.

Bay View Compass: “We Energies 90 acres no longer part of Cardinal Stritch University expansion plan in St. Francis”

This is pretty big news. And it might just mean that the last natural grassland in Milwaukee County has been preserved from development — for now.

From the Bay View Compass:

In July 2008, Cardinal Stritch University began negotiations with the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to purchase the Cousins Center at 3501 S. Lake Drive in St. Francis. The 415,000 square foot building has been underutilized for years and the Archdiocese wanted to sell the property. The purchase agreement under negotiation was contingent upon also buying approximately 90 acres to the south of the Cousins Center owned by We Energies, for use as athletic fields on the new campus.

As it gathered more information about the We Energies land, the University decided against purchasing the property because of the current downturn in the economy. The Board believes that this is the time to be prudent and develop the best fiscal plan for the new campus.

I will use this opportunity to call for the State of Wisconsin to purchase the land and permanently preserve it in its natural state. And I will be speaking to my state senator and representative about this.

Why buy canned tomatoes when you can grow your own?

The Journal Sentinel has spoiled one company’s “tease and reveal” advertising strategy by revealing just what will be unveiled on the billboard along I-94 that currently has some giant red tomatoes on it. It’s for a company that sells canned tomatoes, which is a legitimate undertaking. And there is something to be said for the convenience of having canned tomatoes, even if the flavor is rather lacking compared to home-grown tomatoes.

So then, why not plant, grow, and can them yourself?

A friend of mine here in Milwaukee has started a good number of tomato seedlings. The transplant-ready plants available for purchase in late May. It’s a cinch to transplant them, be it into a bucket or the ground or a raised bed. And with regular watering, they should do fine.

Canning them is something that I don’t yet know how to do, but I will certainly be on the lookout for food canning and preservation classes. Even if the Awesome Depression draws to a close, the hard lesson in frugality should not be quickly forgotten. Food growing and preservation not only saves money, but it can strengthen your family, your neighborhood, and your community.

I’ll post details on the tomatoes and canning classes as soon as I have ‘em.

Do you believe in coincidence?

Quoting an email from myself to a few other folks in and around Bay View and Shorewood:

Just a little earlier today, I was over in dear brother Godsil’s
kitchen, and broached the possibility of a neighborhood farm. With
that idea spoken and out in the air, the day went on.

Meanwhile, Dana and Gretchen both were composing emails.

Dana wrote Godsil and I asking if there was a neighborhood farm in Bay
View, or if work on such a thing was being planned. She has in mind a
volunteer-run community farm, home to “food, chickens, and maybe even
goats!”

Bearing this in mind, I clicked on the next email in my inbox, which
was from Gretchen. She wrote with this information:

> …someone in [Bay View] sent me a photos of the the empty lot he is
> willing to have farmed. Are you looking for more land to farm right now?

So, do you believe in coincidence?

I propose that we put our minds and means together to do something with this!

What say?

Let’s go!

best,
Jason.

Please make it so! State applies for Madison-Milwaukee rail connector money

Some years ago, I wrote to the Journal Sentinel telling them that I knew five people who commuted back and forth between Madison and Milwaukee on a daily basis, and more that did it a few times a week. While I can’t find that letter online, the point still stands. Five people were driving at least 180 miles each day, using 35 to 40 gallons of gasoline each day, and wearing out their cars that much faster, all of which is to speak nothing of the sheer amount of time consumed by driving each day.

As someone who still has regular business in Madison and Johnson Creek, I would be grateful if there were a faster, easier way to go about getting over there.

The good news is that Gov. Doyle and his administration “are seeking federal stimulus money to pay the full $519 million cost of a proposed 110-mph Milwaukee-to-Madison passenger train line, not just part of it…” [JSOnline]

A dream would come true were this to unfold!

Breaking ground for the White House garden has occurred

Earlier today First Lady Michelle Obama led the groundbreaking for the new White House vegetable garden. The new 1,000 square foot garden is the first garden in at least eight years.

(The Clintons had a rooftop garden on the White House many years before rooftop gardens became a rapidly spreading (and very good) trend.)

FarmFed also has a larger photo gallery of the event, showing more than the “official” pictures on the above-linked White House web site.

It appears that they’re planting right in the ground; a “flat garden” in other words. It’s easier and more productive to grow food in a raised bed. Given that the planting season is almost under way, they may want to plan ahead to build the beds next year.

Extra Links:

• Texas A&M Extension document on planning and building raised beds.

• University of Wisconsin Horticulture Dept. has good pictures of raised beds and other gardening approaches.

• WikiHow also provides good instructions on how to construct a raised planting bed.

(h/t Milwaukee Renaissance)

Gardening returns to the White House lawn

Shortly after Barack Obama won election to the presidency, a movement spread across the ‘net calling on the Obama White House to have a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. That idea has been accepted and will soon become reality, according to ABC News.

Quoting that story:

“In an effort to promote healthy eating, the first family will be planting a vegetable garden right on the White House grounds.

ABC News’ Ann Compton and Sunlen Miller report that the new White House vegetable garden will be dug up and planted on the South grounds of the White House — near the fountain but out of view of the main house.

This is terrific news! It’s too bad the Obamas won’t be able to see the garden from the main house. It’s very calming to watch your garden to see how it progresses; about the only thing better is actually working in the garden and doing planting yourself. There’s really nothing like it. You get a sense of connection to something greater, e.g. life, the universe, and — yes — everything. It’s very spiritual, in other words. I’m going to have quite an adventure with a large garden in the near future, which will doubtlessly become the source of many posts on here.

Back to the ABC News story for a moment: the comments are in a way even more interesting than the story itself. Most are congrulatory and adjulate the Obamas for having the garden. A few are the token cranks, but they’re quickly piled on by the other commenters. One slightly better worded but still cranky commenter speculated that the decades of chemicals applied to make the lawn appear greener would eventually poison the Obama children. I would counter that any soil used in the garden will most likely be organic (chemical-free) soil brought in from off-site.

Update: Washington Post has a story on this:

The 1,100 square foot garden will include 55 kinds of vegetables, including peppers, spinach, and, yes, arugula. (The list of vegetables is a wishlist put together by White House chefs.) There will also be berries, herbs and two hives for honey that will be tended by a White House carpenter who is also a beekeeper. The chefs will use the produce to feed the first family and for state dinners and other official events.

The White House will be using organic seedlings, as well as organic fertilizers and organic insect repellents. The garden will be located near the tennis courts and visible to passerbys on the street. The whole Obama family will be involved in tending the garden, White House spokeswoman Katie McCormick Lelyveld said.

Nice!