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by folkbum To all the mothers out there, and anyone who has a mother, I hope you enjoyed this gray and chilly day. But please keep Rick Esenberg and his family in your thoughts, as he lost his mother this week.

America's Dairyland will remains tops in the ever popular cheese competition the media has invented between Wisconsin and California, according to a national story that ran today by Associated Press reporter M.L. Johnson.

Here's the article -- or go here to read the full story that ran in today's San Jose Mercury News.

Cheeseheads don't need to be bleu: Experts say predictions that California will soon overtake Wisconsin as the nation's top cheese producer are unlikely to come true. The Golden State and its happy cows gained quickly on Wisconsin in the past decade, but plants in California are maxing out, while efforts to boost production in Wisconsin are paying off, said Dick Groves, longtime owner of the Madison-based trade publication, Cheese Reporter.

Groves helped spark the friendly competition between the states 10 years ago with an editorial predicting California would overtake Wisconsin in cheese production by 2005. He later amended it to 2010 and then, last month, to "not anytime soon."

New numbers showing a growing gap between Wisconsin and California prompted Groves to abandon his earlier prediction.

"Cheese production in the two states moved in opposite directions—Wisconsin's went up and California's went down," he said.

About half of the 9.7 billion pounds of cheese made in the U.S. comes from the two states, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Production has grown much more rapidly in California in the past decade as large plants opened there year after year.

Wisconsin's lead in annual production shrank to about 164 million pounds in 2007, according to NASS. Last July, California came within less than 6 million pounds of Wisconsin in monthly production.

But then the gap started growing again, reaching 30 million pounds in March. The quick shift is partly due to two plants closing in California in 2007, while two opened in Wisconsin this year.

California now has 61 cheese plants compared to Wisconsin's 124. The Golden State's plants are larger, but they're pretty much operating at full capacity while Wisconsin's could probably make a bit more, federal and state agricultural officials said.

That means California would have to add plants to move ahead in the race for the title of Big Cheese. But more new plants are opening now in places such as Idaho and the Texas panhandle, which have growing dairy farms and lower costs, said economist Don Blayney, of the Economic Research Service in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Companies have struggled in recent years to build new plants in California, where the permit process can take four to six years, said Michael Marsh, chief executive officer of the Western United Dairymen, which represents milk producers there.

Cheesemakers also contend with opposition from environmental groups and, if they get a plant open, high workers compensation costs, Marsh said.

"It is a challenge for us," he said. "The state of California really has to make our state attractive to businesses to locate here."

Wisconsin has worked to increase the state's milk supply after cheesemakers said they needed about 15 percent more milk than they had, said Will Hughes, agricultural development administrator. The state has recruited farmers, encouraged them to add cows and provided incentives for them to install newer, more efficient equipment.

The effort has paid off with renewed investment from companies such as BelGioioso.

The company based in Denmark, a village about 100 miles north of Milwaukee, has chosen to expand here because there's an ample milk supply and it's equally easy to ship from the Midwest to both coasts, marketing manager Jamie Wichlacz said. The plant in Freedom is the second new one the company has opened in about five years.

"I think the milk supply is there, I think the farmers grow as the companies grow, as the cheese producers grow," Wichlacz said.

Wisconsin cheesemakers and agricultural officials also emphasized they weren't looking to make more cheese but better cheese. While California's plants tend to make large quantities of a few kinds of cheese, Wisconsin companies have focused on developing a wide range of specialty cheeses, such as pesto Jack or Asiago, that command higher prices.

The state recently announced that specialty cheeses now account for 16 percent of Wisconsin's production and two more specialty cheese plants will open in the next few weeks.

"I always say this is not a race with California to be No. 1 in producing cheese," Hughes said, "although not anyone in Wisconsin is going to want to give that up."

via a useful Doonesbury strip.

Happy Sunday! What a weekend. Yesterday I went to the Farmer's Market, where an Art Bike rally was making its way around the capitol square as part of the kick-off for Bike to Work Week. Classic Cars on State stretched from the capitol down until construction truncated the scene, and a small contingent of Anonymous were parading around in their V masks, telling people the truth about

Chloë came at me with a knife once. I ran into the bathroom, said, “God fucking help me!” into the mirror, and began to cry. “I can smell your fear,” she triumphed. “It’s leaking out from under the door.” “I’m not afraid for myself,” I answered. “I’m afraid for you.” “Well, you shouldn’t be. It’s not me I’m [...]

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk sent a letter of apology to the family of 21-year-Brittany Zimmermann and her fiance early last week after an investigation concluded that the dispatcher who answered a 911 call from Zimmermann's cell phone around the time she was murdered on April 2, failed to call back after being disconnected. Police have also said there were sounds in the call that should've prompted a police response. Falk, who has heard a recording of the call, said she doubts even had they been dispatched, police wouldn't have been able to save Zimmermann.

Below are the full letters sent to Zimmermann's parents and fiance. You can enlarge by clicking on the images.

Fred for Fred’s sake…

A lot of good stuff from the past few days:
Even SNL admits Hillary is cooked.Frank Rich explains how Obama is the only one truly running like it's 2008.This is from a few weeks ago, but it's a really interesting NYT magazine article about young gay marriage. It makes me wonder what the gay community will look like in 30 or 40 years (assuming by then we finally allow them to marry), and how our stereotypes will change as well.Conservatives are happier than liberals because they rationalize social and economic inequalities. I'll gladly trade some happiness for empathy. HT: Althouse.This sounds like a cool, albeit boring, job and it's a major factor in Obama's victory in the primary race.A CBS sports columnist gives tips for picking the right law school? It's actually a really fun and interesting read. Makes me reconsider Vanderbilt...He also wrote about how each U.S. Supreme Court justice would rule in a fantasy sports case. Weird, but fun.

From The Crowd shares some our favorite past concert moments captured in video (albeit sometimes shakey and out of focus). Unlike some of our other scheduled features, these videos will be posted sporadically. Chances are you may have been in the audience, if so, please feel free to leave your remembrances in the [...]

Kevin Carey: Charter schools allowed Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin to create the burgeoning and phenomenally successful KIPP network of middle schools serving almost exclusively poor, minority, and previously low-achieving children. Charter schools allowed veteran labor organizer Steve Barr to create Green Dot Public Schools as an alternative to the terrible high schools in Los Angeles. Charter schools gave a couple of young management consultants the ability to create the nation's first, and very successful, urban public boarding school in impoverished Southeast DC. And so on. Given the opportunity, the best charter schools (and to be clear, there are certainly bad ones) haven't tried to reinvent the wheel. They've just balanced the wheel, fine-tuned it, reinforced the parts that were weak, and made sure it was in maximum working order. Charter school laws opened a conduit for talent, energy, and philanthropic money directed toward public education, resources that previously had no way to break into a bureaucratized monopoly state school system. Even if that's all they did, that's way more than enough.Carey is spot on. Cracking the legacy public school governance monolith is essential to progress. "Progress requires conflict".

This is awful news for those of us who love Dottie Rambo and her music.  She was a wonderful part of the large Southern Gospel music family, and has brightened our home with her music for years.  Her songwriting was nothing short of incredible.  Rambo has had more than 2,500 published songs, including gospel classics such as “He Looked [...]

The entire westside of Madison seemed to be in Trader Joe's Sunday morning. Whole families of overscheduled westsiders, caught by surprise by the holiday, seemed to flock to the store with Mom in tow for a one-stop shopping experience -- flowers, food and beverages for Mom, lured by the nice selection of flowers at a good price.

If you're a Madison music scene insider, and you've attended the MAMAs more than once, no one needed to explain host John Urban's opening joke Saturday night. 'quot;I have to keep the show rolling because I've got plans at midnight,'quot; said Urban. The annual Madison Area Music Awards show has never been known for its brevity. This year's gig began at 7:30 and was finished a little more than three hours later. But much of the crowd of more than 500 was energized right until the end.

My goodness what a looker she was. Eighteen years old, sun red hair, big green eyes, a perfect figure that photos show she wasn’t ashamed of and a steely will built by hard times and a daily struggle to survive.

By now, it was 1944, and it looked like she, her family and all of London were going to survive the war. Annette can describe in detail the faces and the feelings and the sounds of spending endless nights in bomb shelters while air raid sirens wailed and German buzz bombs screamed overhead.

She’ll describe to you in detail just how her soon-to-be husband looked in his snappy U.S. Air Force uniform the first night they met at a dance in East London (she was dating the drummer in the band at the time, a Tony Cromby ...nice enough fellow, but he was no American).

She can paint a picture of 60 years back in time and fill in every stroke and then, this morning, she forgot that she’d moved to Buffalo City six weeks ago.

'quot;Get out of your car, and get onto your bike'quot; was the primary refrain at this year's Madison Art Bikes Rally, which returned once again to the Dane County Farmers' Market on Saturday morning. Dozens of participants brought modified bicycles both simple and fantastical for a parade around Capitol Square, both to share their creations and to advocate the oppotunities of self-propelled transportation.

Good word

"What Posey brings to this sequence is something I've often felt while watching her movies, even the incomprehensible ones like 'Fay Grim.' She stands poised between serene beauty and throwing a shampoo bottle at the mirror. She always looks great, and she always seems dubious and insecure. She can make half her mouth curl into a reluctant smile. But when she fully smiles, she's radiant."

-- Roger Ebert on Parker Posey