Community

On Monday, May 19, the presence of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) was identified and confirmed in the 6900 block of Cooper Avenue in the City of Middleton.

An employee from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service was conducting pest surveys and notified the WI Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the City of Middleton City Forester.  Officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources made the final confirmation. Middleton now joins a growing list of Wisconsin communities where the insect has been detected.

Gay marriage is a political hot button. For years, the issue has drawn ideological lines between political candidates, families and communities. 

When Facebook users changed their profile pictures in March of 2013 to red-hued versions of an equality logo created by the LGBT-advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign, nearly 3 million internet users demonstrated their support for gay marriage legislation passing through the Supreme Court.

The court declined the case, leaving the populace to return to the debate.

But here in Middleton, it’s a more nuanced issue that one might assume. It isn’t, as many national media outlets have been wont to frame it, a fight between liberal atheists and conservative Christians.

The Good Neighbor City is home to an eclectic mix of faiths, churches and congregations, and they don’t all see eye to eye on the issue of gay rights.

One could focus bitterly on the loss: Caliph Muab-El bounced around Wisconsin’s prison facilities nearly half his life. Or one could focus, as the soft-spoken, eloquent 32-year-old minister does, on the good he can do now.

Yet, the way to the now has been fraught with danger, hardship, and much self-work. When he was nine, his parents moved the family from Chicago to Milwaukee, mistakenly believing they would “escape the infestation of violence, drugs, gangs, and crime,” Muab-El explained.

Ironically, Milwaukee turned out to be worse. The low-income housing available “was so concentrated it made the infestation more intense.” At the same time, his father was not always residing with the family and his mother held down three jobs. As eldest, the responsibility of caring for his siblings fell on Muab-El.

As can so often happen with volunteering, a need arises and someone steps into the void. Then stays. For go-getter Molly Millar, a name once synonymous with Middleton Girl Scouting, make that “needs.” Millar, now 80, has spent her spare time during the previous half-century as a Scout leader, AFS host, and foster parent. To this day, she foster mothers children in emergency situations.

TIF FOR ACS BUILDING

The Middleton Common Council on Jan. 15 approved The Carey Group’s request for $400,000 in developer-financed Tax Increment Financing (TIF). The deal is designed to attract Affiliated Construction Services (ACS) to a yet-to-be-built facility in the Good Neighbor City.

The Madison-based developer’s formal request for TIF, dated Jan. 2, said The Carey Group Real Estate Services, LLC is pursuing a 40,000 square foot build-to-suit development for ACS on Lot 19 within the Middleton Corporate Center. (The parcel is on the northwest corner of Nursery Drive and Deming Way.)

“In an effort to provide ACS with favorable economic terms and a level playing field relative to the competition, we are seeking city assistance through developer-funded TIF financing,” wrote developer Timothy Carey in a letter to city planner Eileen Kelley.

Scott Draves, a nationally known pottery artist, is working to help families in need in Dane County by joining the Creating for Causes benefit for Middleton Outreach Ministry (MOM). 

Draves will be selling his work and donating to MOM at the art fair in the food pantry on Saturday from 1 to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

His pots are treasured by arts and crafts pottery collectors around the country. Draves will be joined by 39 other artists who are creating, donating and collecting donations for the MOM programs.

“The arts and crafts movement was all about changing how people worked and lived through good design, so it makes sense to use my skill to help change the world for people who are hungry, need food, clothing and shelter,” Draves commented. “I am happy to lend my name, and talent to MOM’s efforts to make the world a better place for families in need.”

Lucille Taylor had long intended to leave the bulk of her estate to the City of Middleton for the creation of a new park. There was only one problem: the spry 82 year old – who mows her own lawn, shovels her own snow, and has been known to leap in and out of the cab of a large pickup truck when the need arises – appears to be a daunting foe for the grim reaper.

So Taylor, in a spare moment between volunteering at the senior center, weeding the community garden at city hall, and walking or biking throughout the Good Neighbor City, recently decided people would rather have their park sooner than later. She decided to give the city $100,000 to get the ball rolling.

When city administrator Mike Davis told Taylor she was on the verge of becoming something of a local celebrity, she responded with typical aplomb: “I thought I was just a plain old lady.”

The Middleton Public Lands Department is sponsoring the fifth annual Forestry Field Day on Saturday, November 2 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at John C. Bock Community Forest.

Orchid Heights Park provides parking and wagon rides to the activities. The 19-acre parcel is in its fifth year of restoration to oak savanna, oak woodland, and prairie ecosystems.

The forestry field day is a free public event featuring demonstrations of horse logging, arborist skills (tree climbing and pruning), wood milling, timber stand improvement, and free horse-drawn wagon rides. These demonstrations will highlight how foresters select, harvest, and process trees in a responsible, environmentally sustainable manner. There will also be talks given on wildlife of the area, restoration methods, and historic land use.

Wellington Amaral, Jeff Breunig and John Ertl are sitting in a small but comfortable room not far from Middleton High School. There are chairs, a low couch, and a couple portraits of George Washington on the wall. Sacrificial goats, satanic rituals and clandestine strings that control the world’s power structure are all conspicuously absent.

They are Masons, and they say being in the world’s most famous “secret society” is a little tricky in the digital age.

“We’re on Facebook and everything,” Breunig explains. “We’re not exactly a secret.”

The organization’s website even features an interactive “lodge finder,” as well as listing the names of high ranking members. No secret handshake or password is required to peruse the site.

The inner workings of the twice monthly meetings held at Middleton Ionic Lodge No. 180 are a bit of a secret, at least to non-Masons, but local members say their brotherhood is based on fairly simple, open principles.

A Middleton man who worked at a local elementary school until last month was charged Tuesday with six counts of possessing child pornography on his home computer.