With just over six months until the mid-term elections, Vice President Mike Pence fired up a crowd of Republican voters in downtown Milwaukee Wednesday. He focused on the GOP tax cuts in particular, in a speech at the Wisconsin Center. The vice president also hosted a fundraiser for Gov. Walker, who faces a potentially tough reelection bid this fall.

While Milwaukee is often cited as the most segregated metropolitan area in the U.S., it’s hardly unusual. In most American cities, people of different races live in different neighborhoods and there’s a general pattern: neighborhoods near the center of a city are home to African-Americans and people of color, while the surrounding suburbs are majority white. But why?

The concept is pretty simple - two wheels, pedals, a chain, and a frame.  But within that basic mix of parts, it turns out there’s a lot of room for art.  Quite a lot of room, actually. Even a basic bike can be a work of art - art that can also take you to work, or down a wooded path.

Milwaukee writer Jenny Benjamin transported readers between 21st Century Milwaukee and 18th Century Italy in her 2013 novel, This Most Amazing.  But Benjamin's latest books take readers on a much more intimate trip, into her heart and her mind.  Benjamin is an award-winning poet and frequent poetry contributor to Lake Effect, and has two new collections that are now on shelves.

Fourteen years before Lewis and Clark crossed the North American continent to "discover" the Pacific Ocean, Scottish fur trader and explorer Alexander Mackenzie did it in what is now northern Canada.

Vice President Mike Pence will be in Milwaukee on Wednesday to help fill Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign coffers.

Pence is scheduled to host a fundraiser for the Republican governor at night. During the day, he will talk about the Republican tax plan at the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee. The group America First Policies is hosting the event.

The Kenosha Common Council recently passed an ordinance that requires homeowners to replace their lead laterals when the city initiates a project. Because this can be expensive, Kenosha aims to set up a grant and loan system to help homeowners.

Water utility manager Ed St. Peter has been working on the idea for a while, saying he wants to expeditiously replace every inch of the city’s 8,800 lead lines that connect homes to water mains.

Kwame Alexander never doubted that there was an audience for his children’s books - sports books written in verse - even though publishers said girls won’t read books about sports and boys wouldn’t read poems.  But eventually, the first of those books, The Crossover, hit the shelves featuring both basketball and poetry.  And it was a smash hit, winning the 2015 Newbery Medal. A soccer book followed, then a book of guiding principles for young lives.