"Wisconsin isn't actually the center of the universe. A convergence of events has just made it seem that way."

Writes the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This week alone, President Barack Obama visited the state, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) gave the Republican response to the State of the Union address, and the Green Bay Packers were on the fast track to becoming America's sweethearts.

Wednesday night's "American Idol," spotlighting auditions it conducted in Milwaukee in the summer and fall of 2010, was just icing on the cake....

Performers stood in front of a blue scrim with the "Idol" logo, judges sat at the prow-like front of the [Windhover Hall of the Milwaukee Art Museum] and interviews were conducted in the museum's whalebone white hallways.

A stormy Lake Michigan was a feature throughout and could be seen dramatically changing colors and textures behind the judges....

Jennifer Lopez referred to it as "the ocean."

Hey, we were already planning to go to the Milwaukee Art Museum this weekend. So don't think, when you see my photographs, that we only went there because of "American Idol." We're going there because we're excited about seeing Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware:

The exhibition explores, among others, work... by Moravian immigrant potters who...  found a home in the North Carolina Moravian missionary settlement. Superior in quality to the pottery the early American colonists were creating, the slip-decorated earthenware, though utilitarian, represented the religious beliefs for which their makers had once been persecuted, and allowed the settlers to maintain a sense of cultural identity in the new world.

I'm a descendant of Moravian refugees from persecution, and maybe the mysterious Meade will tell you why he's interested in the show too.