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(04/10/17 12:00pm)
I found an article the other day about a situation in Melbourne last year on how the city had identified all trees with a different number and email address, so that citizens could send emails to city officials about complaints, a way to improve the city life. It turned into people of the city sending love letters to their favorite trees:To: Golden Elm, Tree ID 103714821 May 2015I’m so sorry you’re going to die soon. It makes me sad when trucks damage your low hanging branches. Are you as tired of all this construction work as we are?To: Green Leaf Elm, Tree ID 1022165 29 May 2015Dear Green Leaf Elm,I hope you like living at St. Mary’s. Most of the time I like it too. I have exams coming up and I should be busy studying. You do not have exams because you are a tree. I don’t think that there is much more to talk about as we don’t have a lot in common, you being a tree and such. But I’m glad we’re in this together.“The email interactions reveal the love Melburnians have for our trees,” the article said. Why then, did the article make me want to cry? I’m sorry you’re going to die soon, are you tired? I’m glad we’re in this together. Something about these professions strikes me as lonely, and the lonely life of a city tree, their myth contained in a square of wood chips at the base, their fate marked with orange spray paint. I think about my mom desperately trying to raise the trees in our previously barren backyard, disappointed when, as the seasons pass, she sees they’re not going to make it. Something about the fickle Minnesotan weather and our soil not being conducive to life. A city is no place for trees, I think, but it’s where they’re needed most. There is a tree on the lake my parents live near, Lake Harriet, that hosts a small wooden door at its base. The door is about four inches tall, painted wood, covering a hole in the tree through which people stuff notes. I can’t remember if it was supposed to be for fairies or for goblins or whatever mythical creature, but whatever it was, children (and some adults) would address it letters and leave them there. According to my parents, someone who lived on the lake would answer them. I don’t remember if I ever left a note in the tree, or how anyone would be able to answer the notes, or how old I was when my parents told me that it was a human who answered the notes and not fairies. I just remember walking around the lake, leaves ripely green in the belly of summer, noting the unassuming door in the tree at that point in our walk.The birch tree in my front yard also had a magical quality to it. Tall and withered, it hung over the front porch like a benevolent giant watching the house. I got sad when my parents expressed fear that a branch would fall off during a storm and damage the house—my tree wouldn’t do that. The birch, massive and looming in shady lemonade days of summer and spindly in the snow-capped winter, had an enormous rut in the base. A large circle, the shape of an oval, that looked like someone has burned it there sacrificially. I made fairy houses in the rut, setting sticks into a tiny fort, adding feathers and nice rocks, a little piece of fruit. The birch was a constant growing up, a calming presence. My mom and I would sit in the porch, reading together, or playing gin rummy, as it stood sturdily overhead. I never had a sense of what would become of the both of them when I left for college, but you don’t notice these things until you’re gone.I had a relationship with the trees surrounding my family’s cabin as a child, but there it was even more magical. I would build fairy houses in the wilderness of northern Minnesota, placing springy moss beds in rock crevices on the stream outside the cabin, collecting forest trinkets, shells, flowers, leaves, forming a perfect haven for some unseen creature. Lake Superior is one of the places I’m overcome by trees, and where I feel they’re meant to be; there’s no threat they’ll be felled, since the forest is protected. If city trees have lives and emails, the trees of the North Shore of Lake Superior have a mythology to them. Their myth is captured in the construction of the cabin itself: fallen lumber stacked sturdily, the cracks stuffed with fur and other grimy materials, makeshift glue. It was built generations ago, by an ancestor who helped found the forest and died there, in a chair the cabin still has, an enormous wooden frame covered in scratchy red wool cushions. There are old tobacco pipes on the walls, hidden canes and leather bags in the closets. I am imbued with the scent of pine when I go there. It overwhelms me, hiking up up up to where we can see the massive lake through breaks in the trees. I don’t realize that I’m starved for trees until I’m around them again after being away from them for so long. I returned from my first semester at college to find an embarrassingly bare front yard: the birch tree had been cut down. My parents had told me that they were going to cut it down, but in person, the emptiness was palpable. “It was sick,” my mom told me. That’s what the burnt-out rut in the tree was, a sickness. Still, it’s hard to watch something go when you’ve grown so accustomed to its presence. I see this on her face as I board the Megabus again, promising to call. “‘Dear 1037148,’ wrote one admirer to a golden elm in May. “You deserve to be known by more than a number. I love you. Always and forever.”
(04/10/17 3:00pm)
Sometimes, facts defy our optimistic expectations. Something that did just that for me was learning about the alarming maternal mortality rates in some developed nations with advanced medical technology, even in the United States. I had presumed that maternal and infant mortalities only really occurred in developing nations where resources are lacking, but it still remains a very crucial problem in the U.S.
(04/03/17 11:00am)
Alexander disease is a rare neurological disorder that carries a grim prognosis. It involves a dangerous accumulation of the glial fibrillary acidic protein, GFAP, in the brain that causes destruction of white matter, leading to serious cognitive and motor function deficits. There is limited research surrounding this fatal disease and no known cure.
(04/01/17 12:57pm)
Advocating for organ donation registration hits home for UW-Madison sophomore Curtiss Engstrom, who received a kidney from his mother when he was 18 years old.
(03/30/17 11:00am)
Surely you’ve seen, or at least heard of, David Zucker’s movies. The 1971 UW-Madison alumnus is a giant in the film industry. He directed “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” and helped start the careers of South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker as well as “Dumb and Dumber” directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly. In town for a campus tour with his son, I sat down with Zucker to talk about his time at UW-Madison and everything that followed.
(03/30/17 11:00am)
In a stunning move that has gained overwhelming bipartisan support, Gov. Scott Walker has confirmed his intent to move the state’s southernmost “Welcome to Wisconsin” signs gradually south until Illinois becomes aware of it. The signs, used by commuters and tourists to mark the border between the two states, will be moved south by one yard every day, under the cover of darkness, so that Wisconsin will appear to start further south than it actually does.“Think of it like when you were a kid trying to steal your friend’s milk carton,” Walker said as the applause died down. “If you just take it, he’ll probably notice. However, if you inch it over, little by little, he won’t notice the subtle changes. We hope to enact this method with our signs. Our goal is to eventually move them south of Chicago, maybe even south of Illinois altogether!”State representatives enthusiastically drew up and passed a bill.“This is really refreshing,” state Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, said. “In a time when we are so divided as a nation, bamboozilin’ Illinois will be something to bind us together. I have high hopes not only for the future of our politics, but for the state of Wisconsin itself.”Despite the frenzy of excitement, Walker urged discretion, stating that in order to truly succeed in a prank, the prankee must remain unaware.“I know we all want to talk about this, but it is your civic duty to remain silent until we have succeeded. If Illinois finds out before we get started, it won’t be any fun,” Walker said. However, he flashed a grin and reassured the listeners: “There will be plenty of time to talk about it after the state issues its official ‘GOT EM’.”The timetables were undetermined at the time of the press conference, but both the governor and representatives assured the media that plans are swinging into motion.“Rest assured,” declared Walker, “that this is to be perhaps the sickest prank in the history of the great state of Wisconsin.”At press time, Capitol workers were seen sneaking toward Springfield with rolls of toilet paper in hand.
(03/27/17 11:00am)
You could argue that a Gemini has multiple personalities all in one hour. It makes for an exciting conversation on the brink of anticipation. Compton rapper, Kendrick Lamar, proves this as evident in “The Heart Part 4,” his latest single release since his untitled unmastered LP last March. Lamar reflects on his time away from the industry, the fulfillment that rappers have on the charts instead of in the studio and the brief meditation that his music will speak for itself.
(03/27/17 11:00am)
Picture that cliché feeling of driving with your windows down, scream-singing on a summer day. Now take that feeling and multiply it by 100 and you have yourself a Lumineers concert. The Lumineers played a nearly sold-out show at the BMO Harris Bradley Center in Milwaukee Saturday night, marking the second time in less than a year the folk-rock band has graced the city with its boisterous energy.
(03/17/17 4:00pm)
BUFFALO, N.Y. — After missing the final two games of the Big Ten Tournament due to multiple deaths in his family, sophomore swingman Khalil Iverson returned to the floor in style Thursday night.
(03/16/17 5:12am)
From left: Ari Graynor and Melissa Leo share their upcoming Showtime series, "I'm Dying Up Here."
(03/23/17 5:04pm)
On Wednesday, Showtime’s newest series, “I’m Dying Up Here,” premiered its pilot episode with South by Southwest. The show takes place in 1973, revolving around the stand-up comedy scene in Los Angeles. Melissa Leo leads the cast as Goldie, the feisty owner of the stand-up comedy club, “Goldie’s,” which is where our oddball characters congregate and perform their acts. After the screening, the cast graced the stage and joined the audience for a Q & A about their new project and what should be expected in future episodes.
(03/15/17 9:17pm)
With the music section of SXSW officially underway, musicians have already started bringing their A-game across the gorgeous city of Austin, Texas.
(03/13/17 3:53pm)
“American Gods” was the first screening I attended at SXSW and may have even been the best of the events so far. Based on the densely-paged Neil Gaiman novel, the new Starz television series faces extremely high expectations. With rich, deeply inventive literary material to excavate, Starz made the correct call to invest in potentially the next high-budget, high-spectacle television series on its hands. After viewing the world premiere of the pilot episode, my expectations were beyond fulfilled.
(03/13/17 11:00am)
Film festivals are useful venues for independent filmmaking. Among the lineup was “Small Town Crime,” directed by brothers Eshom and Ian Nelms. The film stars John Hawkes as Mike, a former cop-turned-alcoholic struggling to find employment. When Mike discovers a brutally beaten girl laying on the side of the road, dying moments after he takes her to the hospital, he finds himself drawn back into his former life to figure out who was responsible for the murder.
(03/12/17 11:32pm)
A Dane County Jail inmate died last July after overdosing on heroin. Now, court documents show he received the drugs from another inmate.
(03/09/17 12:00pm)
South By Southwest officially begins this weekend down in Austin, Texas. With a stacked lineup of artists, keynote speakers, films and television shows, SXSW is gearing up to be an amazing festival. The Daily Cardinal Arts staff will be flying down to cover the event, and here’s what they are most looking forward to:
(03/08/17 4:12am)
Men’s Hockey
(03/07/17 5:38am)
Grief and anger were palpable as hundreds of friends, family and community members held a demonstration Monday night to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the death of Tony Robinson, a teenager shot and killed in 2015 by Madison Police Department Officer Matt Kenny.
(03/06/17 2:27am)
Republican legislators introduced a bill Friday that may result in UW System employees no longer being able to perform abortions or train others at Madison Planned Parenthood clinics.
(03/02/17 2:00pm)
The most common argument I hear when discussing immigration is that if immigrants—specifically Mexican immigrants—want to come to the U.S. so badly, why don’t they do it legally?
