Category: The Madison Scene
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An apology, Senator!
Shouldn’t everyone get one? Nino Amato wants an apology. So do Betty Mitchell Banks, a children’s TV producer; Richard Harris, author of Growing up Black in S. Madison; and M. Kinney James, Madison’s first black woman police officer. The last three want mea culpas, on behalf of black people uprooted from Madison’s old Greenbush neighborhood.…
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Put up a statue of Chris Farley
down by the river! We interrupt our regular programming to help spread the most wonderful idea. You know it’s a great idea because Blaska didn’t think of it — so don’t blame the Head Groundskeeper. It’s time for a Chris Farley statue in Madison. Milwaukee has the Bronze Fonz, Minneapolis has Mary Tyler Moore throwing…
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Signs of the times
We believe we are royally screwed. In a few weeks political yard signs will sprout like dandelions on a No Mow lawn in progressive Madison — alongside the ubiquitous “In This House We Believe …” signs. (Notice? God is never among the listed.) Candidates who take Blaska’s advice do so at their own peril but…
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Bob Keller
R.I.P to a kind and generous man, age 98. A really wonderful man and valued friend passed away Saturday 09-27-25 at the great age of 98 years. Bob Keller raised a family of four sons in the Orchard Ridge neighborhood here on the SW side of Madison WI. Three of them worked alongside in the…
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Madison kowtows to UW’s keffiyeh kids
The WI State Journal is struck dumb! Day 5 of the UW-Gaza encampment here in Madison WI. (Where is Ted Koppel when we need him?) Tents went up Monday morning 04-29-24 on Library Mall in a nationwide, (and we think) organized, well financed college campus show of support for the Hamas-led Palestinians. Police swept through…
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Goodbye, Rick Berg
He wrote some history here. If Rick Berg had died 25 years ago — even without the drama of a hostage situation — it would have been Page One news here in Madison WI. As it was, only a paid obituary in Sunday’s WI State Journal announced his death 11-11-23 in hospital, with family at…