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City Cast Madison

The badger has been UW-Madison’s namesake mascot since 1889, but Wisconsin was actually dubbed the “Badger State” decades prior, and not because of animals in the region.

In the 1820s, prospectors came to Wisconsin in search of minerals. These lead miners were 

 in tunnels burrowed into hillsides in order to make it through the state’s harsh winters.

When the university first adopted the badger as its official mascot, it used a live animal at football games. But 

according to the University Athletics Department

, the original badger was “too vicious to control.”

More than once, the live badger escaped its handlers and had to be recaptured “with a flying tackle.” Eventually, the university decided it was in the best interest of fan and player safety to retire the mascot to Henry Vilas Zoo.

In 1948, the Badger Yearbook offered up a replacement for the badger: a small raccoon named 

 (badger backwards) passed off as a “badger in a raccoon coat.” While the fluffy replacement was adorable, he couldn’t quite fill the badger shoes and was retired shortly after.

The badger that most Wisconsinites are familiar with today was initially conceptualized by a California-based illustrator in 1940. But the UW-Madison mascot didn’t fully come to life until 1949 when art student Connie Conrad designed a 

 for one of the cheerleaders to wear during the homecoming game. Since that game, UW-Madison athletic events were forever changed.

That same year, the badger was officially named Buckingham U. Badger, or Bucky for short. (

In 1973, Assistant Attorney General Howard Koop attempted to dethrone Bucky as UW-Madison’s mascot and replace him with a cow named Henrietta Holstein.

Thankfully, Bucky survived the attempted coup and celebrated his 83rd birthday this year. Go Badgers!

How Madison Became the Home of the Badgers

Madison, Explained

If you’ve paid any attention to local news in recent years — and since you’re reading this newsletter, I’d say those odds are pretty high — you’ve likely encountered the term “Vision Zero” on several occasions.

data-informed strategy with the lofty goal

 of eliminating all traffic fatalities and severe injuries that occur on city streets by 2035. Vision Zero was 

 in the 1990s and quickly proved successful across Europe. These days, there are 

 with their own Vision Zero projects, including Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles. Madison is the 

 launched in 2020 and has been the driving force behind many transportation-related changes like speed limit reductions and street re-designs. Have you noticed the speed limits dropping to 25 mph on a number of Madison streets? That’s because the city believes that lowering the speed limit will save lives. The project is led by a steering team whose members come from the mayor’s office, Madison Police Department, Public Health, Metro Transit, and 

Some Vision Zero construction-related projects around town include the 

More than just traffic adjustments, Vision Zero relies on community engagement for success. The city has 

 since the project’s launch, with more to come.

Vision Zero relies heavily on data for its success — so, what do the numbers say?

We’re still a ways from meeting Vision Zero’s ambitious but admiral goal. So far, its results have 

. In its first year, total crashes decreased significantly but since then have plateaued.

According to the city, 44 people died in crashes on Madison streets between 2015 and 2019, and hundreds more were injured. In 2020, there were 15 

, 17 in 2021, and 14 in 2022. The estimated economic loss to the city from crashes totaled more than $103 million in 2021.

You can dig into the full action plan here

Vision Zero, Explained

Nothing pairs better with a beer at a Madison bar than pull-tabs, the small cardboard game pieces ubiquitous across the state. We asked freelance author and journalist Tea Krulos to help us uncover the bizarre backstory of this unofficial — 

Feed a dollar into a machine and out comes a Wisconsin Souvenir Milkcap — that’s the full government name. Pull on the tabs to reveal a collection of slot-machine-like icons that could win you up to $250. Krulos says the most he’s won is $2.

“The story is really convoluted and strange, and kind of a rabbit hole,” says Krulos, who recently wrote about pull-tabs for Milwaukee Magazine and says he’s still unsure if he fully understands it.

The game was invented in 1955 by Walter Bohrer, who was in the business of providing bars with coin-operated machines like jukeboxes and pinball — it was his “retirement hobby business.”

The sale of gambling devices is illegal in Wisconsin, so how are pull-tabs allowed? 

, a gambling piece is legal if it is attached to an item of value in addition to a potential prize — like the fries you got with McDonald’s Monopoly game. Walter Bohrer remembered that when he was a child, delivered milk bottles had a tab underneath the cap that you could pull and potentially win a free dairy product. This gave him an idea.

Fellow 90s kids will remember Pogs, decorated 

circular cardboard pieces that you could collect

  — and collect, I did. Enter the Wisconsin Souvenir Milkcap, a collectible item that just so happens to come with the opportunity to win some money.

This might be my favorite instance of utilizing nostalgia to exploit a loophole.

You can click (not pull) the button below to hear more about pull-tabs.

Why Madison Bars Have Pull-tab Machines

WTF are Pull-Tabs?

When you say “Madison,” are you talking about the 

There are in fact two Madisons in Dane County — but there won’t be for much longer.

Soon, the town will be formally "attached" to the city. Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced she 

would allocate more than $1 million of the city’s 2022 operating budget

 to ensure a smooth transition. But the question lingers — what the hell is the difference between the Town of Madison and the City of Madison? And how did it get this way?

This story dates back to the early nineteenth century when approximately 36 square miles was organized into the Town of Madison on Feb. 2, 1846. At the time, 

, “the town spanned across six miles north and south between County Trunk Highway K and just south of what is now the West Beltline Highway, and six miles east and west between Sherman Avenue and west of Whitney Way.”

the Wisconsin State Legislature chartered the City of Madison

, absorbing most of the eponymous town but leaving a fraction of unincorporated land to exist as a separate entity — the Town of Madison. Throughout the next century, more and more of the town’s land was annexed or incorporated into the City of Madison, Village of Shorewood Hills, and Village of Maple Bluff.

Town of Madison covers less than four square miles

. It’s not a geographically contiguous place, either: It exists in 

 dotting the south and east sides of the city. It has its share of bragging rights — technically the Alliant Energy Center is in the Town of Madison. It’s also obscure enough that some Town of Madison residents don’t always realize they are not City of Madison residents, including, awkwardly, 

people who’ve tried to run for City of Madison elected offices

. The town operates its own police, fire, and paramedic services, as well as sewer, public works department and municipal court. But by Oct. 31, 2022, it will be gone.

Cities of Madison and Fitchburg signed an agreement with the town

 to gradually absorb its remaining land and services. On Nov. 1, 2020, the City of Madison began providing fire, emergency medical, and building inspection services to the town under the terms of the intergovernmental agreement. Officially, dissolving the town and wrapping up its business is called the “Final Attachment” (a bit ominous, but sure).

When the town is officially dissolved, all current town government employees have been assured a job with either the City of Madison or Fitchburg. In addition to new employees, the City of Madison stands to 

gain 5,000 new residents from the attachment.

 This group of incoming City of Madisonians is much 

 than the city’s current population. According to census data, more than 27% of the town of Madison’s population is Hispanic compared to 7% in the city; And the town’s Black population is 13% compared to 7.3% in Madison.

A public hearing on the attachment process was held Sept. 15 and 

several more informational sessions are planned

 before the Final Attachment occurs and the Town of Madison ceases to exist.

When you say “Madison,” are you talking about the Town of Madison or the City of Madison? Because there’s a difference. 

The Difference Between the Town and the City of Madison

Every year at the start of August, the streets of Madison fill with treasures and trash alike as residents participate in the annual housing shuffle.

” IKEA couches, cracked coffee tables, someone’s-grandma’s recliner, and more flood the city’s sidewalks from Aug. 1 through 15.

When it comes to moving season on the isthmus, there are plenty of written — 

 — rules to abide by. Here’s what you need to know about moving season in Madison.

At the beginning of August, residents in 

 can place trash and recycling items out for pickup. Crews will come by every day between Aug. 7 and 17 to pick up items and empty out the beige collection carts in that area.

The city encourages residents to fill up their trash bins over and over during this time and not pile loose trash at the curb. Trash that can’t fit in the carts should be put in plastic bags

All recyclables should be put into your green recycling cart. Make sure you empty, flatten, and bundle cardboard.

In Wisconsin, many small electronics can’t be tossed in the trash because 

. Instead, items like TVs, computers, monitors, and laptops can be brought to the 

. Most electronics will require a recycling fee.

The city allows residents to take one load of recyclables to a drop-off site per day. To use the sites, 

Items like couches, desks, and chairs don’t require any fees for pick up and should be put out neatly onto curbs. Try to keep items together if possible and make sure they don’t obstruct fire hydrants or street signs.

Keep your stuff out from under low-hanging wires and trees, too. Remember,

 there are real people coming to pick these items up for you

, don’t make their lives harder by making a mess.

From Aug. 8 to 19, if you live in the downtown moving area you will 

 for large items that normally don't require a collection fee.

Large items that do require fees, like refrigerators and air conditioners, will still require work orders.

The city reports August moving days create more than 1 million pounds of extra garbage every year.

Rather than dumping your old items into landfills, consider donating them to one of Madison’s many resale stores.

 that will take your unused items for donation. Websites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace are always good options as well. Just make sure to take the proper 

Everything you need to know about moving days in Madison

The Ins and Outs of Moving in Madison

The call to 911 came in a little after 11 p.m. A man said a small boy on his dairy farm had severe head injuries. He said he thought the boy had been trampled by a cow.

Ann Ingolia, a deputy for the Dane County Sheriff’s Office, was in the middle of her shift when she heard the dispatch on this warm summer night in 2019. She turned on her siren and headed over, down winding roads and rolling hills, past the farms and fields that mark the landscape of this part of south-central Wisconsin.

Lights from an ambulance and other emergency vehicles flickered over the property. When she arrived, Ingolia could see paramedics attending to a boy on the ground near the milking parlor. His head was split open.

Ingolia approached the owners of the farm. Daniel and Kay Breunig pointed out a slender man wearing jeans covered in manure and blood who was walking in circles near a windmill — the boy’s father. Daniel Breunig said workers had told him that the child had been injured. But Breunig didn’t know more because he couldn’t speak Spanish and his three workers on duty that night, including the boy’s father, didn’t speak English.

Ingolia wasn’t fluent in Spanish, but she considered herself proficient enough to do her job. She walked up to the boy’s father, José María Rodríguez Uriarte, and tried to talk with him.

Rodríguez was screaming for his son, Jefferson, 8. He sat on the grass and rocked back and forth. “He was literally trying to dig a hole in the ground and bury himself,” Ingolia later said. At one point, she said, Rodríguez’s “demeanor went from frantic to catatonic to back to hysterical to back to catatonic to the point where I was afraid that if a milk tanker drove by, he would run out in front of it.”

In her report, she noted that it was difficult to extract information. Rodríguez told her that he “had not seen exactly what had happened.” He took her to an area near some corrals on the property and pointed to a skid steer, a 6,700-pound machine used on the farm to scrape up manure. Ingolia tried to ask about how the boy was injured and, eventually, this is what she understood: Rodríguez had been driving the skid steer, didn’t see the boy behind him and ran him over when he put the machine in reverse.

Ingolia’s interview with Rodríguez, as halting and incoherent as it was, became the foundation of the official account of the night of July 26, 2019 — Rodríguez accidentally killed his son.

That account would be repeated by other agencies, publicized by local media outlets and remembered by farmers in the area and residents who speak only English.

It is an account that torments Rodríguez because, he said, it isn’t true.

He and the other workers who were at the farm that night, along with the friends who arrived in the hours after the boy died to console an inconsolable father, know another version of what happened. To this day, theirs is the only version that many in this community of Nicaraguans and other immigrant dairy workers have heard.

What happened to Jefferson and his father is a story of an accumulation of failures: a broken immigration system that makes it difficult for people to come here even as entire industries depend on their labor, small farms that largely go unexamined by safety inspectors, and a law enforcement system that’s ill equipped to serve people who don’t speak English.

The night Jefferson died, two people in addition to Rodríguez were working on the farm. One worker told Ingolia she didn’t see what happened.

It was the other worker’s first day. Video from patrol car cameras show him standing off to the side while Daniel Breunig and then a deputy and then paramedics took turns pumping the lifeless boy’s chest. He remained there after a white sheet was draped over the body.

At some point that night, another deputy identified him as a farmhand who “did not speak very good English.” That deputy handed him a notepad, and the man wrote his name.

Nobody interviewed him, though his account could have changed the course of everything that was to come.

about 300 acres in the rural town of Dane, about a half hour north of Madison, the state capital. Daniel and Kay Breunig both grew up on farms, and in 1991, a couple of years after they married, they bought their own.

They lived on the property with their two adult sons in a large white farmhouse with an American flag out front. Like many farming families, they worked there, too, though they left jobs such as milking cows and cleaning stalls to their employees.

At any given time, the farm had about six immigrant workers who alternated shifts to meet the needs of an operation that milked hundreds of cows three times a day. Those who could speak some English also took on some of the farm’s day-to-day management, such as hiring and scheduling.

“I would have to say I left all of that up to the lead fellow after he was trained to oversee all the rest of the employees,” Daniel Breunig said in a deposition tied to an ongoing lawsuit over Jefferson’s death. “Just because of the language barrier.”

Workers appreciated the Breunigs’ hands-off approach, unlike some more overbearing farmers they’d previously worked for. But workers complained of cow manure and cat feces in places that were supposed to be kept clean. So many cats roamed the property that it was known to Spanish-speaking residents as “El Rancho de los Gatos,” the Cat Farm.

State officials who inspected the milking parlor in the months before Jefferson’s death noted manure on the walls and cows with dirty flanks and udders, signs that the milk was at risk of becoming contaminated. D&K’s violations of sanitary standards put it in the bottom 20% of dairy farms in the state, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

D&K Dairy also had a reputation for frequent turnover, which meant it was often hiring.

Over the decades, Wisconsin’s small farms have struggled to compete with larger, more efficient operations and to stay afloat amid fluctuating milk prices. When the Breunigs bought their farm, there were more than 32,000 dairy producers in the state. By the time Jefferson and his father arrived in 2019, about 7,900 remained. Today, some 6,100 dairy farms are left.

Farms got bigger to survive, adding more cows, more automation and more workers.

But the work is dangerous and dirty and it pays poorly. Few Americans are willing to do it. And so farm operators across the country have been turning to immigrants to scrape the manure off barn floors, herd the heavy animals from corrals to milking parlors, and attach cows’ teats to machines that pump the milk that fills gallon jugs in supermarket refrigerators.

It is an open secret in the dairy industry that many workers lack authorization to work in the U.S. They get jobs using fake papers that employers, knowingly or not, accept. “The less I know the better,” one farmer in Dane County told ProPublica.

Over the years, the workforce at Wisconsin dairies has shifted; where it was once mainly immigrants from Mexico, it now includes asylum-seekers and other immigrants from Central America. Around Dane County, many are Nicaraguan.

Until recently, Nicaraguans had migrated to the U.S. in much lower numbers than people from neighboring countries. But in 2019, as their government slid into authoritarianism and the economy faltered, thousands of people fled. More Nicaraguans were intercepted at the border that fiscal year than at any other time in the previous decade.

For some, the Breunigs’ farm was a first stop.

 in poverty, one of 16 children of farmworkers who moved from one rural community to another to work other people’s land. Eventually his parents bought a few acres of their own where they planted beans, corn and rice, and raised a few cows. He said he stopped going to school after the first grade.

He wanted something better for his sons, Jefferson, the oldest, and Yefari, who was four years younger.

For several years, Rodríguez traveled back and forth from Nicaragua to Costa Rica for work, a common migration pattern among Nicaraguans. While he was away working, his sons grew up with their mother, María Sayra Vargas, in Murra, a remote community in a coffee-growing region of Nicaragua’s Nueva Segovia state.

But Rodríguez said he was finding it harder to get a job in Costa Rica. In late 2018, he started reaching out to friends who had migrated north to ask about their experiences working in Wisconsin.

Rodríguez had been hearing from other Nicaraguans that adults traveling with children were more likely to get into the U.S. after making an asylum claim at the border.

But he and Vargas weren’t sure whether he should take Jefferson. Vargas feared something might happen to their son on the long, sometimes dangerous trek through Central America and Mexico. Rodríguez worried about how he would care for his son while working. But a friend eased his worries, explaining that while she worked, her children went to school.

Jefferson was eager to go to the U.S. A skinny, dark-haired boy, he liked to play with toy cars with his brother and exhausted his mother by running down the hallway in their small home. He was a second grader with a deep, personal sense of faith and a closeness to God that surprised even his parents. “He spoke about creation, sin, things I had never taught him,” Vargas said. “He asked so many questions I didn’t even know the answers to, or have the words to explain.”

Jefferson told his father he wanted to learn English so that, one day, he could share the word of God with the children he met in the U.S.

In late February 2019, they left Murra. Rodríguez was 29; his son, 8. There were times on the journey when they went without food or water. “It breaks your soul to know a child is going through that,” Rodríguez said. “Jefferson was braver than me. He would always tell me, ‘We will get there. We will get there.’”

A little over two weeks after leaving Nicaragua, Rodríguez said, they entered the U.S. late one night by crossing the Rio Grande in Texas, a few miles from a port of entry. He said they walked for about two hours before reaching a road, where a Border Patrol agent eventually picked them up. They spent several days in detention, he said, but were able to make an asylum claim and get released with a date to go to court, a common immigration path at the time. Soon they were heading to Wisconsin.

While his immigration case was making its way through court, Rodríguez couldn’t get a work permit. He got the job at D&K Dairy the way so many dairy workers do: using fake papers he’d purchased that showed somebody else’s name and Social Security number.

He earned $9.50 an hour and was paid by check with taxes withheld. Some days he worked six hours; others, 12. Agricultural work is excluded from many of America’s labor protections, so he didn’t receive overtime pay when he worked more than 40 hours a week. In a typical two-week period, Rodríguez and his coworkers clocked 150 hours, according to interviews and records.

The job came with free housing, a major draw for new immigrants desperate to pay down debts to smugglers who’d helped them cross the border. Rodríguez owed more than $10,000 to the man who loaned him money to get to the U.S.-Mexico border. For undocumented immigrants, who are barred from obtaining driver’s licenses in Wisconsin, there’s another benefit to living where they work: they can avoid getting behind the wheel and risking run-ins with law enforcement officers on traffic duty.

Rodríguez and Jefferson moved into one of two bedrooms in an apartment above the milking parlor, the barn where cows were milked day and night. The floors vibrated from the motor that powered the loud machinery, while the smell of manure penetrated the apartment they shared with two other workers. Rodríguez and his son shared the top bunk in one of the rooms.

“It was not a place for children,” said a worker who slept in the bottom bunk and grew fond of his young roommate.

No data exists on how many children live on the dairy farms where their parents work. But stories are plentiful: A worker on a small farm about an hour from D&K Dairy set up a crib in an unheated parlor so she could watch her infant as she milked cows because she could not afford child care. An interpreter in the area knows of several parents who leave their children alone in farm housing while they work overnight shifts. And with some regularity, records show, law enforcement officials encounter the children of workers when they respond to incidents at dairy farms across the state.

In a court deposition, Daniel Breunig pushed back against the notion that Rodríguez and his son lived above the parlor, saying workers only stayed there between shifts or when the weather was bad. “I wouldn’t say lived,” he said. “I would say — I mean, the property that they’re speaking of is built as a break room and a rest area.”

When an 8-year-old Nicaraguan boy was run over on a Wisconsin dairy farm, authorities blamed his father and closed the case. Meanwhile, the community of immigrant workers knows a completely different story. 

Death on a Wisconsin Dairy Farm

It may be a snow-free 2023, or maybe we’ll get six feet next week. It’s hard to say, but one thing’s for certain: it’s still winter. Stave off that cabin fever and those cold-weather blues with the below list of winter activities — from the great outdoors to great food to gratefully giving back, there’s lots to explore.

. Skip the sparrows on State Street and head to Nine Springs, Cherokee Marsh, Pheasant Branch Conservancy, Owen Conservation Park, or the Arboretum. For beginner birders, winter is a great learning opportunity — there are fewer species in town, making identification that much easier. Need gear? Head to the Madison Public Library and check out one of their 

. If the white stuff falls, snowshoe on the marked trails at Indian Lake County Park, Door Creek Park, and Yahara Hills, to name a few — frozen creeks are fun, too. Rent snowshoes at the 

 ($8/hr if you stay on Lake Mendota); the 

 rents out snowshoes at Vilas and Elver parks Wednesday through Sunday ($5/hr).

 can thru-hike all 1,200 miles, you can handle one afternoon. The Indian Lake, Cross Plains, Table Bluff, and Brooklyn Wildlife segments are all stand-outs.

 — when there’s snow — are groomed weekly at Cherokee Marsh South, Owen, Turville Point, and Yahara Hills. There’s also cross-country opportunities at 

, both in Middleton. And, of course, skiing and tubing at 

. From snowshoeing and fat-tire biking to ice-fishing to ice-boating (yep, that’s a thing), when the lakes are frozen, somehow, there’s more to do. Fat-tire bikes can be rented at 

 (all are free to use, with no reservation required), only a handful are open as of mid-January, so check in advance. Rentals are available ($6/hr), plus concession stands. The 

 is also open to the public. One-hour tickets are $7 and skate rentals are $3.

. What’s there to explain? Beer and cheese, Jan. 21 at Alliant Energy Center.

. Family-friendly events at The Edgewater and Lake Mendota — think pond hockey, kite-flying, and free s’mores — are on the calendar for Feb. 4 and 5.

 in person, your chance arrives Feb. 6–11.

. Browse 70+ vendors with a drink in hand, Feb. 18.

 runs this two-month festival on Sundays through mid-March. Festivities kick off Jan. 22. The theme? Cheese.

. A statewide festival celebrating new plays and musicals — with multiple Madison venues — begins March 1.

‘Tis the season to hunker down — and eat up.

 Back as of Jan. 7, Garver Feed Mill’s Late Winter Market — produce, meats, cheeses, bakery goods, handicrafts, and more — pops up every Saturday through April 8.

, participating restaurants offer a three-course prix-fixe menu starting at $30, Jan. 22–27.

 has a list of spherical suggestions for those bored with cubes.

Eat Xpress — run by the folks from east-side-faveGlobal Market and Food Hall — will soon be serving up home-cooked Chinese fare at 203 W. Gorham.

— a Wisconsin premiere — runs through mid-February.

Resource & Ruin: Wisconsin's Enduring Landscapes 

ouvenirs of Service: The Things They Kept, 

 play at Bob Suter's Capitol Ice Arena through April — tickets range from $11-$33. Catch Badger games for $5/GA ticket (both women’s and men’s).

. Chalk your hands at one of Madison’s two 

 will happily let you practice that drive.

 may let you in. Then there’s everybody’s indoor favorite: 

If you're looking to spend your hours giving back.



Here are just a few local spots that regularly need volunteers:

Stave off that cabin fever and those cold-weather blues with this list of winter activities.

Surviving and Thriving in a Madison Winter — the Fun Edition

Landlords are required to keep the indoor temperature at a minimum of 67 degrees, according to the Tenant Resource Center. If this isn’t happening, the 

 to contact their landlords in writing. If that doesn’t work, the center recommends contacting the

If the heat in your unit isn’t working, the Tenant Resource Center recommends following the repair process. See 

Your landlord has to meet certain expectations in the winter. Here's what you need to know. 

Madison, Explained

How Madison Became the Home of the Badgers

Vision Zero, Explained

WTF are Pull-Tabs?

Latest articles

The Difference Between the Town and the City of Madison

The Ins and Outs of Moving in Madison

Death on a Wisconsin Dairy Farm

Surviving and Thriving in a Madison Winter — the Fun Edition

Know Your Rights: Rental Issues in Winter Months

About Snow Days in Madison

Trash Time in Madison's Winter