Every family has a history worth chronicling, and John Schissler Jr., a self-published author and retired Milwaukee Public Schools teacher, has spent decades researching his clan's narrative during and after World War II, culminating in the autobiography Passage: The Making of an American Family...

Theodore Roosevelt, the columnist Walter Lippmann wrote, was the only president in American history “who could truthfully be described as lovable.” He was our nation’s 26th president, there have been 18 more since then, and Lippmann’s statement still holds true...

Stonefly Brewery’s lineup Friday night brought to mind the old “Seasame Street” segment “One of These Things is Not Like the Other.” Headlining was Crappy Dracula, a Milwaukee lo-fi punk three-piece, joined...

Disney and animals have been inseparable since Uncle Walt built an empire around animated ducks and mice. In 1948 the Disney studio expanded its scope with a series of "True Life Adventures" that brought drama and comedy to beautifully photographed, full-color travelogues of nature. Earth, a BBC/Disney co-production, updates those old nature pictures, with the resonant voice of James Earl Jones narrating a thematically linked...

Spike Lee has been fighting World War II long before the release of his latest film, Miracle at St. Anna. His campaign began with a salvo at Clint Eastwood for excluding black faces from Flags of Our Fathers and perpetuating the assumption that blacks contributed little to the U.S. victory. It was not the movie Eastwood wanted to make and the sniping between the two directors probably served to harden Lee's resolve.

"That mix CD I left on your doorstep…" says Nick at the climax of a long and rambling cell phone message to his ex-girlfriend, "…will be the last one I make for you." He's trying to mean business but the desperation is clear. Nick is an awkwardly sensitive teenager, a bit of a schlump.

Were it not for memory and the visible onset of age, man might easily infer that he lives an infinite and unvarying existence. After all, isn't each day more or less indistinguishable from the last, bearing the fruit of yesterday and the seed of tomorrow? Perhaps, as Delacroix said, the role of art is to give value and substance to the passing of time, to interrupt the terrifying monotony of our days with glimmers of understanding. A new exhibit at Milwaukee Art Museum titled "Act/React" reveals the weightlessness that art engenders by erasing all memory of itself...

"New Intersections: Form and Meaning in Design," the current exhibit in the Brooks Stevens Gallery at MIAD is, as it intends to be, completely fun and very provocative. As consumers, we may not always understand the aim of product design when we're shopping for everyday objects like toothbrushes and potato peelers, but on some level we do understand what attracts us to a product.

A few years ago, I had occasion to discuss the early development of The Letters of Allen Ginsberg (Da Capo) with its editor, Bill Morgan. We were having dinner in Manhattan's East Village, and I was curious about how Morgan was faring in the yeoman task of sorting through the mountains of Ginsberg's correspondence. As the poet's bibliographer, Morgan had spent more than a decade sorting through and cataloging Ginsberg's correspondence...

   Stephen Schwartz isn't exactly a household name around these parts. But mention some of the songwriter's credits, including Godspell, Pippin and the current box office smash Wicked, and people start paying attention. The Grammy-winning Schwartz has a smooth, self-deprecating onstage manner that played well Sept. 26 at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center. Dressed all in black, perhaps as a nod to his New York roots, Schwartz played piano as he led the audience through many of his hits. His boyish, animated face...