What can you find in this week's Isthmus? Highlights from the latest issue follow:
- Giving: The United Way's Wish List for local charities, how to pick a green Christmas tree, entertaining, books for cooks, a holiday event calendar, and more.
- Rich Albertoni shares his picks for the best Madison albums of 2010.
- Madison.gov: What the loss of high-speed rail means to Madison.
- Jay Rath asks whether the city is diminishing the clout of neighborhood associations.
- Fran Zell explores the difficulty of finding individual health insurance.
- Bill Lueders stupid tries to find stupid a good word to describe stupid the results of the stupid Nov. 2 election stupid.
- Jessica Steinhoff profiles Jose R. Morales y los Gavilanes, who serenade diners at Las Cazuelas.
- Rich Albertoni talks to prolific songwriter Ezra Furman about his music's emotional contrasts.
- Dean Robbins says Masterpiece Contemporary's Lennon Naked is one of the best Beatles dramatizations he's seen, while PBS has still more compelling Lennon in the American Masters documentary LENNONYC.
- Kenneth Burns is moved by the Swedish thriller The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which brings the Dragon Tattoo trilogy into focus, while Kimberley Jones says Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is the finest Potter so far.
- Erin Hanusa finds that Nostrano delivers a fine treatment of local flavors.
- Close to Home: Andy Moore considers the end of The Fruit Stand on Library Mall.
- Tell All wades in a domestic dispute about a big-screen TV.
