Random Round Up

Slightly unorganized and random . . . but of interest.

JANET PIRAINO GETS A JOB WITH . . .

I am very pleased to announce to the Overture team the appointment of Janet Piraino to the post of Interim Vice President of Advancement, effective today, Monday, August 1st. Janet is a familiar face around Overture, serving the last eight years in the City mayor’s office and being instrumental in the successful legislation moving Overture to its current transition to private operations.

With our needs for raising revenue in the next several months to meet the financial demands of the transition and fundraising goals for the 2011-12 budget, Janet will be a welcome addition to the development efforts of the board and staff. Janet’s experience as Chief of Staff for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, State Director for Senator Russ Feingold, and experience representing UW at the State Capitol, exemplifies an impressive record of success and a vast network of local, regional, state and national connections.

Please join me in welcoming Janet to Overture as we count down the next five months to operations through the new Overture Center Foundation.

Sincerely,
Tom

TOM CARTO
PRESIDENT & CEO
OVERTURE CENTER FOR THE ARTS / MADISON CULTURAL ARTS DISTRICT
OVERTURE CENTER FOUNDATION

HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT MEETING

6pm-8pm
Thursday, August 4th
2300 S. Park
Villager Mall
Atrium

This is a meeting to bring together people and groups interested in passing a Housing is a Human Right Resolution. To see the resolution visit operationwelcomehome.wordp​ress.com

The draft of the resolution has been put together by Operation Welcome Home, Affordable Housing Action Alliance, Take Back the Land Madison and Freedom Inc. This meeting will be to get feedback on the draft, build support for the resolution, make plans for passing it, and make plans for next steps beyond passage of the resolution.

Hope you can make it!

CENTRAL LIBRARY UPDATE

In late November 2011, Madison’s Central Library will temporarily relocate to 126 S. Hamilton St. to accommodate the construction of the new Central Library.

The Central Library, currently at 201 W. Mifflin St., will relocate for approximately two years until the new Central Library is complete. Construction is expected to begin on the new Central Library in January 2012 and the new library will open in 2013. The library will be closed for a brief period while moving from the Mifflin Street location to the Hamilton Street location.

The temporary Central Library at 126 S. Hamilton St. will house a smaller collection consisting mostly of new and popular materials. The smaller space will accommodate 22 public computers and the library will continue to offer reference and checkout services during all open hours. The temporary library will be open Monday-Thursday 9 a.m – 9 p.m., Friday 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. but will not have Sunday hours October-April. The temporary library will have limited seating and no meeting room availability to the public.

The majority of the Central Library’s collection will be housed off-site but available through the library’s online catalog and reserves system during the temporary relocation. Reserved items from the Central Library’s collection will be transferred for pickup at any Madison Public Library location or any library in the South Central Library System.

Building designs and project updates are available on the library’s web site. Exact closing dates will be announced in the fall of 2011.

DANE DANCES ARE BACK IN AUGUST

Dear Neighbors & Friends,
August has arrived and it’s time again for Dane Dances! Dane Dances! is a FREE community concert Friday nights in August (8/5, 8/12, 8/19, 8/26) on the Monona Terrace Rooftop from 5:30-9:30 pm. You can find all the details about this family friendly FREE community event on our new website at www.danedances.org.

This Friday, August 5th marks the beginning of the music & magic with Grupo Candela as the headliner. You will find them featured in the August Issue of Madison Magazine, as is Dane Dances! This past Sunday, Mario Mendoza, of Grupo Candela was featured in a live interview on 27 WKOW discussing the amazing energy of Dane Dances! (links below).

Dane Dances! has been providing FREE concert events for our community for 12 years! In order to continue the music and magic, we need the support of the Dane County community! Please consider showing you support for the celebration of diversity by joining our 1000 donations of $10 campaign.

The specific objective of Dane Dances! Inc, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit, is to provide a diverse environment and to grow relationships among people in Dane County. Through music, dance, and food, this quality program has successfully brought people from all racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds together. Understanding the important of this mission, our long-term sponsors have been the backbone of Dane Dances!, but they alone cannot, and should not, be expected to ensure this FREE community service project survives and continues. Dane Dances! is all about celebrating community, and we need the community’s help this August to ensure we can carry-on our mission of breaking down social barriers and celebrating diversity in our amazing Dane County community.

By showing your support through a $10 donation you are not only ensuring that Dane Dances! can afford the 2011 season, you will show our major sponsors and future potential sponsors the importance of their support for 2012 and beyond. Times are tough, but if only 1000 people in 500,000 in the Dane County community donate $10 Dane Dances! will reach our goal financially, but more importantly we’re showing that the celebration of diversity IS important to this community. Keeping Dane Dances! FREE to the community ensures that ALL are able to come and enjoy the celebration. Please consider donating $10 on our website, www.danedances.org. It’s fast and easy; we’ve already received $1,260 in donations, and with your help we can reach our $10,000 goal!

To learn more please go to our website www.danedances.org and you can also check out the recent articles about Dane Dances! in the Wisconsin State Journal, The Madison Times and The Capitol City Hues (links below).

Join us Friday nights in August! You can also sign-up to volunteer for Dane Dances! on our website. It takes 50 volunteers a night to run the events, so new volunteers are always welcome!

Thank you in advance for your support and consideration! No matter where you are in the world, I hope your love for this community and this event in the heart of Madison will inspire you to help continue the celebration of all the everyday people that make it so great.

WYOU VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

I am recruiting WYOU volunteers to be regular crew members of a new program called “WYOU News”. This show will feature interviews with local newsmakers and news analysts and perhaps local feature stories. To start, the show will consist of one five-to-fifteen minute video each week that will be distributed on the Web, through Facebook and Google+, on the WYOU News website (www.wyounews.org), and perhaps to a mailing list also.

We will strive for high quality in every aspect of the production. We need videographers, editors, and other skills to help with the set (physical set and/or green screen), theme music, intro, credits, video compression, et cet. And if anyone wants to help solicit underwriting and advertising, let’s talk.

I’m looking for people with good technical skills and/or the ability to learn quickly, creativity, conscientiousness, positive attitudes, and the ability to work well on a team.
We are going to explore underwriting and advertising support for the program. If we are able to work through some issues and find such support, we hope to bring in some money for both the station and the crew. But revenue is only an idea right now; we cannot count on it, and certainly not right away.

I would like to meet individually with interested volunteers, select crew members, and bring them together so we can start forming ourselves into a team. We need to start preparing some things now, but we won’t start production until at least October.
This program should be fun and interesting. I’m hoping that we can create a team of people who work well together and who can make our shared experience even more fun and satisfying.

If you are interested or if you have any questions or suggestions, please write to me at rick@onesharedplanet.org or call me at 608 251-8419.

Rick

BREASTFEEDING FRIENDLY BUSINESSES BENEFIT

Breastfeeding Friendly Businesses Matter
World Breastfeeding Week August 1-7 Highlights Workplace Accommodations

Madison WI – August 1, 2011 – If there were a new technology that could successfully provide infants and children protection from a host of diseases, with a reduced risk of obesity throughout their life span, while providing their mothers with a reduced risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes, it would be a big story. The good news is that all of these benefits are available, technology free, via one of the most fundamental biological functions of human beings – breastfeeding.

Wisconsin has made great strides over the last 30 years in increasing the percentage of women who breastfeed their babies in the first few months to about 75 percent. However, many women stop breastfeeding earlier than they planned.

Many women find it difficult to continue to provide breast milk while working. This is particularly true for lower income wage earners who often have less flexible work rules and schedules.

Fortunately, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act amended in 2010 states that employers need to provide a nursing mother with reasonable break time and space to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after her child’s birth

Throughout the country many employers, including Home Depot, CIGNA, Pizza Hut and others have already begun accommodating nursing mothers and have found such significant benefits as increased employee recruitment, retention, productivity and engagement along with reduced employee absenteeism and health care/insurance costs.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that nationally $13 billion of direct health care costs would be saved each year if 90% of women were able to breastfeed according to medical recommendations (at least 6 months).

Public Health Madison and Dane County (PHMDC) has been working with and learning from several area businesses as they try to accommodate employees who are nursing mothers. Two excellent examples are the Hy-Vee grocery store on East Washington Avenue in Madison and Promega Corporation, in Fitchburg.

Hy-Vee has made substantial efforts to establish breastfeeding friendly places for both customers and employees. According to Deanna Foster, Registered Dietician with Hy-Vee, “we recognize the many benefits to breastfeeding and try to support our employees by informing them that there is space and time available for pumping. We also have rooms available for customers who may want privacy for breastfeeding while shopping.”

According to Jan Zimmerman, a Nurse Practitioner with Promega, “Promega has long realized supporting our breastfeeding employees benefits us as a company. Mothers who are committed to breastfeeding are happier and more productive employees when they are able to continue providing their babies breast milk after returning to work.”

Supporting the needs of breastfeeding employees in our workplaces will result in healthier families, improved businesses and save us all money.

For more information on breastfeeding, see the PHMDC web page at http://www.publichealthmdc.com/family/breastfeeding/

For specific information on workplace accommodations for breastfeeding see the following:

· http://www.usbreastfeeding.org/Workplace/WorkplaceSupport/WorkplaceSupportinHealthCareReform/tabid/175/Default.aspx

· http://www.cvworkingfamilies.org/lactation

The Business case for Breastfeeding
· http://www.womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding/government-in-action/business-case-for-breastfeeding/business-case-for-breastfeeding-for-business-managers.pdf

· http://www.flbreastfeeding.org/HTMLobj-964/Employer_Spotlights.pdf

POVERTY TOUR COMES TO MADISON

NOTED BROADCASTER TAVIS SMILEY AND PRINCETON PROFESSOR IN MADISON FOR 18-CITY POVERTY TOUR
WHEN: Saturday, August 6, 2011; 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.; 6:30 p.m.
WHERE: Foreclosed Duplex, 6304 Hammersley, Madison, WI
L’Etoile Restaurant, 1 South Pinckney Street #107, Madison, WI 53703
Buraka

WHO: Noted broadcaster Tavis Smiley
Renowned Princeton Scholar, Dr. Cornel West

WHAT: Co-hosts of Public Radio’s Smiley & West are in town for their Poverty Tour that is highlighting the plight of the poor of all races, colors, and creeds so they will not be forgotten, ignored or rendered invisible during this difficult and dangerous time of economic deprivation and political cowardice.

TIME: 4pm – Meet with homeless Take Back the Land activists
6:30pm – Dinner with graduates of the University of Wisconsin – Madison Odyssey Project

ADDED INFO: As part of their Poverty Tour, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West will be taking UW Odyssey students out to dinner at Buraka on State St. on Saturday, August 6, from 6:30-8 PM, to hear their life stories and learn about the Odyssey Project’s transformative power (www.odyssey.wisc.edu). Students in this life-changing humanities project have journeyed from homelessness to UW degrees, from incarceration to meaningful work in the community.

NORTHSIDERS – FREE LUNCH

Then Savor The Flavors of the Northside Farmers Market

Sunday, Aug. 7, the Northside Farmers Market (NFM) will host Savor the Flavors, a free community brunch from 9am-noon at the Market, located in the parking lot of the Northside TownCenter.

Volunteers are needed to prepare a variety of dishes from fresh ingredients donated by the vendors of the NFM, (volunteer @ 217-9631) and serve cafeteria-style under a long tent down the center of the bustling Sunday Market. There is no charge, and all are welcome.

Savor the Flavors, by volunteers of the Northside Farmers Market, is our thanks to the community for their support. “We wanted to create a community meal that really showcases the great food available at the Northside Farmers Market, we wanted it to be free, to show appreciation to our customers and celebrate the Northside—but we also hope you’ll enjoy the food so much you’ll buy from our vendors when you’re finished!” www.northsidefarmersmarket.org or nfmmanager@yahoo.com

TRAPPING IN DANE COUNTY PARKS

Should you have to worry about your child or your pets getting trapped while you are in a Dane County Park? Most everyone I speak to about this proposal to expand trapping in our county parks had no idea that it was already occurring, let alone now expanding it 10 times, and have expressed real concerns about the indiscriminate nature of traps. Besides the cruelty, there is a real safety hazard to any other being running or flying in these parks, where we go to enjoy nature.

Thank you to all of you who have signed our petition opposing trapping in our Dane County Parks and natural resource areas. But we still need your help to get word out and also to forward the on-line petition http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/notrapping/ to others. Please ask others to sign this and share it with others, as well as posting it on Facebook. We’re trying to get as many signatures as possible by August 8th, when the Dane County Parks Commission will meet again to discuss this, so we’d like to get as many signatures as possible by then.

Please plan to attend the very important August 8th, 7pm meeting at the Lussier Center and tell the commissioners why you are against trapping. (Directions to the Lussier Center, 3101 Lake Farm Rd, take exit 264 south at Southtowne Drive: http://www.countyofdane.com/lwrd/parks/heritage/location.aspx )

MADISON’S WILD SIDE

Exploring Madison’s Wild Side – 2011
Madison Parks is hosting free monthly tours of Madison Conservation Parks. The tours are led by a Madison Parks staff member and co-sponsored by the Madison Audubon Society. Each tour will focus on a different park and unique natural feature of that park. Madison Parks has 14 conservation parks comprising over 1600 acres. Each conservation park focuses on the restoration of native plant and animal communities while providing educational areas and opportunities for all. For more information on Madison’s Wild Side – visit: http://www.cityofmadison.com/parks/parks/conservation/

Saturday, August 6, 8:00a.m.
Cherokee Marsh, Upper Yahara River Tour
Bring your own canoe or kayak and meet at the School Road boat landing.
Partnering with the Friends of Cherokee Marsh, the tour will focus on the restoration work on Cherokee Marsh

MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR UPCOMING TOURS:
September 7, 6:30p.m.
Strickers Pond, 7214 Longmeadow Road
Explore another glacial kettle pond and the lessons learned from this restoration project

October 12, 5:30p.m.
Knollwood Conservation Park, 3334 Westview Lane
Enjoy the fall colors, hike on the new “Cannonball Trail” and see the only sand prairie in the Madison Park system.