American Notes MILWAUKEE

The trouble started last month, when Milwaukee's premature spring temperatures gave way to a brief snowfall. Jeff Barnett, 33, and Roommate Bill Hackbarth, 30, built a life-size snow sculpture of a family at the beach: kids playing, Dad holding a beer can, Mom in a light blue bikini spray-painted on her shapely form. Enter Kathleen Zanio, 43, a former Franciscan nun, who drove by the sculpture one afternoon. "Here was this woman with large, protruding breasts and abdomen," says Zanio frostily. "It was obnoxious and repulsive."

Zanio, who works as a carpenter, took a hatchet from her car trunk and started to smash the snowwoman, but fled when Barnett rushed out of his house. "We had her arrested to let people know they can't go hacking things down," says Barnett. Last week Zanio was charged with disorderly conduct; she could face a $200 fine.