In summertime Milwaukee is six-packs in parks, listening to free jazz, festival everything, gastropubs with the young and hip foaming out of them, home repairs, grilling out. All neighborliness, sweet like a laugh. The city is a clenched hand as it grows colder, its people chapped and flaking. Hunkered down. Shoulders stooped against the freeze rolling out from the north, barely tempered by Lake Michigan.
