The Art of Vacation

When you’re on vacation, even the mundane daily chores don’t feel quite as taxing. Whoever piles the last piece of laundry on the top of the basket throws a load in the washer. If you hear the dryer buzz you fold the clothes while you catch the tail end of the movie. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches take twice the time—and twice the fun—to assemble, and dishes get done in an assembly line formation. Save for the family member who volunteered to cook that night, everybody pitches in until the last pan is dry and the stove is clean enough for pancakes and eggs the next morning.

In our northwoods cottage, the kitchen is command central. It’s the first room you enter, where the crowds gather and disperse. It’s where you’ll always find a bottle of sun block or bug spray, where you stack the books, magazines and movies you’ll enjoy, and where you make the grocery list (Don’t forget the marshmallows!). On a top shelf next to the pantry is where the cookbooks live. Some come and go with the vacationer—a favorite recipe you didn’t have time to copy before you left home. The rest are donated to the cottage because the recipes inside have summer vacation written all over them.

The first one that found a permanent home up north is appropriately titled, The Northwoods Cottage Cookbook, by Isthmus food critic Jerry Minnich. Fine writer and friend John Motoviloff reviewed it in Madison Magazine a few years back, and when I saw it at the Wisconsin Historical Museum a short time later, I bought it for our cottage. Imagine my surprise when I turned to the page that dedicated the book to friends of mine on Plum Lake. Turns out many of Minnich’s fondest northwoods memories—and well-worn recipes—were from time spent in Sayner, Wisconsin, my family’s summer home for the last six generations. Now that I know Jerry and I have shared some of the very same breathtaking lake views and calls of the loons, I have to say he’s spot on when he insists that cooking at the cottage be hearty and tasty but shouldn’t turn into a production. Why? Because a northwoods sunset waits for no one, not even the cook.

Another reason the recipes should be short and straightforward is that when you stay at a summer cottage, the person who starts the meal isn’t necessarily the same person who finishes it. This happened just the other day and provides the perfect example.

Husband and brother-in-law bring home a basket full of perch for dinner. Husband cleans and filets them and then excitedly heads back out to the boat muttering something about needing a few more fish to feed the whole family. Since time apparently flies when you’re fishing (always seems to me like it stands still), dinnertime rolls around and husband hasn’t returned with the rest of the day’s catch, not to mention his mother's fish-fry recipe he keeps tucked inside his noggin.

As luck would have it, I’d brought a new cookbook to add to the kitchen shelf called Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe, a delightful collection of childhood stories and recipes by four sisters who grew up in Oshkosh and vacationed in the northwoods. The book was out on the kitchen counter because I was in charge of the potato dish and found a simple recipe for the mashed variety: butter, hot milk, salt, done. By the time I’d changed out of my bathing suit and headed downstairs my sister had already scrubbed and dropped a dozen red potatoes into the pot to boil. I’d finish the dish while she tended to the kids. Meanwhile the bro-in-law steps in to fry the fish with another breezy recipe from Apple Betty for pan-fried trout. Flour, salt, pepper, beaten eggs (his addition), done.

By the time husband comes in off the water (without anything more to fry, I should add), a delicious dinner is on the table and the sun is just setting behind the pine trees across the lake. A toast to Apple Betty and the Sanvidge sisters on a meal well done.

I tried one other recipe during my week’s vacation, this one from another fun new book called Wisconsin Cheese: A Cookbook and Guide to the Cheeses of Wisconsin, by Martin Hintz and Pam Percy. Admittedly, I’m a lousy cook, so I chose an appetizer I knew would be hard to screw up—and one the kids could help with if they weren’t off reading in the hammock or learning to water ski. Cube as many pieces of cheddar, brick, Colby, and Muenster as you like, drown them in beaten eggs, then roll them in breadcrumbs and fry. Turns out French-fried Wisconsin Cheese tastes a lot like a bite-size grilled cheese sandwich—greasy and good. The book is definitely a keeper—there's lots more simple recipes I’m dying to try, like the “Inside Out” Grilled Cheese with Red Onion Jam. Be still (quite literally) my heart.

Whatever I decide to cook up, it’ll have to wait ’til next year. My new cottage cookbooks are resting on the kitchen shelf at the lake—sigh—waiting for my northwoods summer vacation to come around again.

The Media March

When circulation director (and blogger) Kent Palmer plops the latest issue of Madison Magazine down on my desk one Thursday a month, I’m often so engrossed in the production of the next issue that I hardly even notice. We publish as early as we can so distributors have time to make the switch at newsstands, and to give our advertisers time for their ads to soak into the local consumers’ consciousness. (Our ads sure are pretty—and they get results.)

The July issue dropped onto my desk and into subscribers’ mailboxes June 19. The Best of Madison cover is drop-dead gorgeous. We used what we call a “type attack,” where words instead of pictures visualize the cover story. The typeset is an Arts and Crafts style closely associated with Frank Lloyd Wright, whose architectural footprints are all over Madison and its surroundings.

The man responsible for such an appealing look is art director Tim Burton, who has taken home enough design awards in the last few years that national magazine industry professionals and experts are taking notice (You can’t have him! He’s happy here!). Yet even with a beautiful cover and—if I do say so myself—great content that I’m excited to share with readers, when the magazine went thunk! on my desk yesterday I stopped typing and stared at it wistfully. No. Wait. Stop! There’s eleven more days in June!

I’ve been at the magazine for eight years. That’s damn-near a hundred magazines I’ve helped produce. And while I love each and every one of them like one of my kids (the birthing process is often as painful), I have to admit that June 2008 is my favorite. Despite the daunting economic challenges, our incredibly talented and hardworking sales staff sold enough ad space so that we could spread our wings and take flight as a city magazine.

Like we do every month we covered every topic our readers expect, from politics to food to home, from health to travel to arts and entertainment. We also elbowed enough white space to publish a long-form narrative on the decades-old controversy over primate research at our world-class university. It was the longest and meatiest article I’ve ever edited, and I loved every second of it. As difficult as the topic is to digest—monkeys are dying in our attempts to save human lives—it’s critical that we think about these issues. Madisonians are smart but it doesn’t mean we’re always an enlightened bunch. We need this kind of journalism—and more, not less of it.

That’s why I’m so happy the magazine is spilling out onto the Internet these days, joining our dailies and weeklies in the fight—and it is a scrappy, ugly fight—to keep journalism alive and relevant. Just imagine what it would be like if Isthmus wasn’t watchdogging city government? What if the State Journal lost the strength and the will to take the state legislature to the mat on its excessive use of power? What if The Cap Times could no longer represent the progressive voice our city is both revered and reviled for?

John Roach exercises this privileged freedom of expression in the blogosphere for the first time this week, talking about these very issues and how the digital age might affect us. All I can say is, Watch out, Paul Soglin and Waxing America, our candid, passionate back-page columnist is now wielding his own mighty keyboard and will be waxing the heck out of Madison and beyond. I’m kidding. It’s remarkably important that our former mayor is blogging to the issues. These are heady times.

I know the media will persevere. I’ll get another chance to publish the kind of journalism that drills down into people’s psyches. And since we archive all of our content online I no longer have to worry about losing a story as good as primate research to the march of time.

Likewise, my incredibly talented colleagues will find their footing in the digital age. We’re journalists because we like to challenge authority, to hold people and institutions accountable, and to do it with accuracy, integrity and often, good humor. If we continue to do our jobs and do them well, citizens will continue to value what we do. They’ll keep consuming our products, and the marketplace will follow.

Onward. Or is it … Onlineward.

The New American Girl

For Christmas in 1979, my parents gave me the best present in the whole world, My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss and Roy McKie. The big, yellow hardback—a veritable tome by my childlike standards—contained the most complete and unabridged encyclopedia of my eight-year-old life.

Page after page of meticulously filled in blanks confessed my love for Oscar Mayer wieners, and reported the number of steps from my door to the first tree. Judging from the sketch of a bird I named “George” on page 45, I was wise not to choose “artist” from the exhaustive list of future occupations a few pages later. There are lots of ways to boost a kids’ self-confidence—sports, drama, praise of a job well done. And for generations Dr. Seuss has been doing his part, too—in my case giving the youngest of three girls permission to explore her surroundings on her own terms.

A few years ago, I was browsing in a Madison bookstore and stumbled upon a copy of My Book About Me. The idea that I could watch my daughter examine the carefree days of her youthful existence in the exact same way I had done thirty years earlier sent shivers of joy up my spine. I snatched up three copies (I was a little overzealous) and hid them away in a closet.

My seven-year-old’s last day of first grade is today, and I’m hoping My Book About Me will be the perfect graduation present. Chloe has finally reached the age of self-examination (I had no idea it happened so soon), drawing contrasts and comparisons to the world around her. She has discovered that when she’s annoyed she rolls her eyes just like her dad, and just like her mom she hates going to bed for fear she’ll miss out on all the action. While I find myself amused by a lot it, some of it’s starting to terrify me. She’s slowly beginning to wonder how others perceive her, like whether Braeden thinks she’s “girl-cute,” or what the school kids will say if they see her underwear while she’s hanging from the monkey bars in a skirt.

The self-examination that will soon develop into self-consciousness is the reason My Book About Me will be but one of several books on my young one’s summer reading list. There’s a new generation of reading material, much of it divided by gender, which builds on Dr. Seuss’s genius. The American Girl series has grown into a wonderful treasury of advice and activity-driven learning that celebrates girls with books that encourage them to “follow your inner star.”

If you don’t hang around little girls much, here’s a brief bio on American Girl. The Middleton-based company is famous for its line of historical dolls with accompanying biographies. They make Barbie and Lil’ Bratz look downright barbaric. Founded in 1986, Madison educator and entrepreneur Pleasant Rowland made a fortune when she sold the operation to Mattel in 1998. (The $205 million her husband Jerry Frautschi earned from the sale of the stock in the company paid for Overture Center).

One of several American Girl titles due out this September is Food & You. It teaches girls the building blocks of good health and nutrition in a fun and engaging way, promoting independent thinking and exploration as opposed to boring information overload. The book uses thought-provoking quizzes, Q&As and easy-to-digest language to tackle everything from the food pyramid to feeling fat.

Because we now know we establish our relationships with food from the day we latch on to breastfeed or take our first bottle, Food & You teaches girls to think about the kind of eaters they are. If you horse down more Happy Meals than dad’s home cooking, you need to make some changes in your eating style. “Whew! You’re a busy girl,” the book declares. “Try to make time for at least one sit-down meal a day.” A “Special Diets” chapter takes a Dear Abby approach to problem solving by dishing out advice on living with food allergies, being a vegetarian or being just plain picky.

I’m thinking the book might come in handy for Chloe and me during the vulnerable times in her life when there’ll be as much “acting out” as “acting in,” where feelings of low self-esteem and negative body image can so easily manifest themselves in eating disorders, from obesity or dieting to—Lord help me—starving herself or binging and purging.

I think Chloe’s really going to like My Book About Me. I hope she’ll spend less time in front of the computer and more time counting the steps from her mailbox to the first store. Meanwhile, I’m on a mission to spoon-feed her American Girl books like Food & You, Dance! (also due out this fall)—even Coconut’s Letter-Writing Kit (maybe encourage her to take up writing like her mom!). We’re already making our way through Just Mom & Me, with fun activities like guessing each other’s favorite things and coupons for spending time together.

I know books alone won’t save her from a lot of the hardships that lie ahead. I just hope they’ll reinforce the words of wisdom she hears a lot from me these days, the same words her grandma said to me: “Head up, shoulders back, and remember who you are.”

Winners & Losers

I read in next month’s Mad Mag that gardening is “relaxing,” but I bet uber-gardener Karen Johannsen wasn’t busy fighting back a dandelion insurgency when she made the observation. I just came in from the backyard, where I wielded this AMAZING hook-shaped, ax-like tool in last year’s vegetable garden called the Cobrahead. I bought the handy-dandy weed weapon at the magazine’s Green Expo last month, where I can attest to you that I was relaxing.

No, the ten-minute exercise in futility on this dusky Thursday evening, alone in my backyard jungle, was anything but relaxing. It was more like a mass murder. I must’ve ripped up and yanked out the tenacious roots of two-dozen dandelions, easily a foot-high and aiming to take over my garden and my yard like a tumor on the brain.

Relaxing. Right.

Inside, I wash my dirty hands, check on the kid sawing remarkably large logs in her bedroom, and toss my muddy flip-flops in the corner. That’s when I notice my toes—the coiffed, pedicured peds I spent fifty-five dollars on three days ago and hours before the big awards dinner at The Peabody in Memphis. At thirty-seven years old, this was my first indulgence in affairs of the feet.

After the pedicure, I spent a few more hours in seminars, soaking up the web-saturated conversations and resolving to take home the hints, tips, and words of wisdom to justify the expense of a business trip in these heady economic times. Then I threw on my fancy new dress, slipped my swanky red pumps onto my pedicured feet, and marched downstairs to win an award.

We took third—bronze—for general excellence in city-regional magazines with a circulation of 30,000 or less. We took gold for multimedia, a nod to the work we do with sister station WISC-TV and web wonder Channel 3000. Both are stellar honors. Both put Madison Magazine head and shoulders above our peers in the industry, as well as our local competitors, who couldn’t qualify for a prestigious award like this because they aren’t audited or opt not to abide by the basic guidelines of journalistic integrity. That’s another story.

Thanks to the City Regional Magazine Association for judging us worthy. Thanks to my incredible staff of writers, editors and designers. Thanks to Neil, my compass-slash-navigator in this fascinating and complex city. Thanks to my family for being my biggest fans. Most of all, thanks to Madison, Wisconsin for making a Harrisonburg, Virginia girl feel right at home these last fourteen years—without a fancy-dancy pedicure.