Wisconsin People & Ideas – Summer 2022 by Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters

A Spirit of Innovation and Civic Pride: Monumental Mosaics as Architectural Art

Rogue Corn • Melody for Glaciers • Dining Together

The Climate Fast Forward 2022 conference brings together changemakers, including seasoned professionals, new voices, and diverse audiences representative of the Wisconsin people who are and will continue to be most impacted by the effects of climate change in our state.

OCTOBER 17, 2022

MONONA TERRACE

MADISON

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CONFERENCE » Talks featuring statewide experts and leaders in clean energy and climate fields » Networking sessions geared towards particular fields, industries, and interest groups » Integration of artists, poets, and journalists » FACILITATED WORKING GROUPS along five climate change-related tracks designed to crowdsource solutions to the climate emergency: AC TR K

AC TR K

The Built Environment

Natural & Working Landscapes

Climate Justice & Community Resilience

Green Jobs & the New Economy

Traditional Perspectives on the Environment

Your Participation Directly Effects Climate Change Action in Wisconsin

WISCONSIN ACADEMY STAFF Christopher Chambers • Interim Editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas Jody Clowes • Director, James Watrous Gallery Lizzie Condon • Director, Environmental Initiatives Jessica James • Program Coordinator, Climate Initiatives Isley Kim • Marketing Intern Katalina Lee • Editorial Intern Chris J. Lopez-Henriquez • Editorial Intern Joe Lyons • Coordinator, Donor Relations Erika Monroe-Kane • Executive Director Matt Rezin • Operations Manager Zack Robbins • Director of Development Yutika Sharma • Climate & Energy Initiative Intern Sallie Anna Steiner • Events and Communications Manager Lidia Villazaez • Administrative Coordinator ACADEMY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Tom Luljak • President Chan Stroman • President-elect Patricia Brady • Immediate Past President Richard Donkle • Treasurer Vacant • Secretary Roberta Filicky-Peneski • Vice President for Arts Vacant • Vice President for Sciences L. Jane Hamblen • Vice President for Letters Andrew Richards • Foundation President Kimberly M. Blaeser, Burlington Patricia Brady, Madison Frank D. Byrne, Monona Joseph Heim, La Crosse B.J. Hollars, Eau Claire Robert D. Mathieu, Madison Michael Morgan, Milwaukee Kevin Reilly, Verona Rafael Francisco Salas, Ripon Tim Size, Madison Thomas W. Still, Madison ACADEMY FOUNDATION Ira Baldwin (1895–1999) • Foundation Founder Andrew Richards • Foundation President Kristen Carreira • Foundation Vice President Richard Donkle • Foundation Treasurer Arjun Sanga • Foundation Secretary Mark J. Bradley Patricia Brady Jack Kussmaul Tom Luljak Chan Stroman Steve Wildeck

Editor’s Note

Laura Camille Tuley

WISCONSIN ACADEMY

OF SCIENCES, ARTS & LETTERS

Summer means different things in different places, and in Wisconsin the season is celebrated with a little more intensity and appreciation than in southern climes, no doubt because the winters here are colder, longer, and darker. Summer here is a fugitive time, a time to seize the days and get outdoors, a time for fairs and festivals and refreshment. Do you like rock and roll, walleye, rhubarb, butter, strawberries, blueberries, cranberries, cheese, cheese curds, brats, burgers, bluegrass, the blues, the circus, kites, polkas, fiestas, old cars, old trucks, tractors, or hodags? If so, there's a festival somewhere in Wisconsin this summer for you. This year the winter seemed unusually long, and so the summer has been more welcome than ever. I admit I like the heat, and have been savoring even the days when the temperature climbs into the unseasonable. I like the long days and the cool nights and waking to birdsong just before dawn. Summer still finds me on the softball diamond among the other old timers playing our version of the national pastime, perhaps a step slower than last year but still stepping up to the plate. By the time this issue hits your mailbox, we will be late into a summer that I hope has been a respite for us all after another long winter battling a pandemic and all the related and unrelated challenges facing our state, our country, and our world. I hope this issue is a welcome diversion, an oasis of civil discourse grounded in truth and reality. In this issue we look at the role researchers in Wisconsin are playing in the fight against COVID-19, and the National Indian Carbon Coalition’s efforts to combat climate change. We visit one of the many small farms across the state that are giving new meaning to farm-to-table. We discover monumental murals in Milwaukee and the three artists whose work at mid-century helped establish this as a place of international significance in the world of art and architecture. And if you’re looking for some good summer beach or cabin or back porch reading, there’s new fiction and poetry by three up-and-coming Wisconsin writers. I hope you’re enjoying these fleeting summer months, and that you’ll bring us along, wherever you go. Let’s celebrate the summer riches of our state together—the natural world, the culture, the food, the animals, the people—those things upon which we can all agree.

On the cover: Marjorie Kreilick in 2018 in front of Forward, the largest mosaic of her suite of ten murals created for the Milwaukee State Office Building. Photo credit: Mike De Sisti, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel–USA TODAY NETWORK.

SUMMER 2022

CONTENTS 01 Editor’s Note 04 From the Director at V Imagery & D e

sig

06 Happenings Wisconsin Table

08 Farm and Table: Bringing People Together,

awn

One Burger At A Time

B.J. Hollars

Essay

14 Milwaukee’s Monumental Modernist Mosaics Lillian Sizemore and Eric Vogel

Report

30 Melody for Melting Glaciers Chris J. Lopez-Henriquez

Watrous Gallery @ 34 A Conversation with Kyoung Ae Cho Jody Clowes

Essay

40 Realities and Silver Linings: COVID-19 Two Years On Elizabeth Gamillo

Anya Kubilus

Mr. Chair, left to right: Mike Koszewski, Mark Hetzler, Jason Kutz, Ben Ferris

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

VOLUME 68 · NUMBER 3 SUMMER • 2022

David Erickson, AIAP

14 Detail from Merritt W. Yearsley’s monumental mosaic mural for the Marine Exchange Bank, completed in 1962.

Fiction

48 Hunting, Late Season, Bow Roland Jackson

Poetry

56 New Poems from Wisconsin Poets Pete Koz, Nikki Wallschlaeger

Book Reviews

60 Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz Reviewed by Bella Bravo

61 Brood by Jackie Polzin Reviewed by Marja Mills

62 The Geography of Wisconsin by

John A. Cross and Kazimierz Zaniewski Reviewed by Rudy Molinek

63 Once Upon a Tar Creek by Maryann Hurtt Reviewed by Sylvia Cavanaugh

Wisconsin People & Ideas is the quarterly magazine of the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Wisconsin Academy members receive an annual subscription to this magazine. Since 1954, the Wisconsin Academy has published a magazine for people who are curious about our world and proud of Wisconsin ideas. Wisconsin People & Ideas features thoughtful stories about our people and culture, original creative writing and artwork, and informative ar ticles about Wisconsin innovation. The magazine also hosts annual fiction and poetry contests that provide opportunity and encouragement for Wisconsin writers. Copyright © 2022 by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. All rights reser ved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Postage is paid in Madison, Wisconsin.

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS interim editor JEAN LANG copy editor CHARLOTTE FRASCONA cold reader JODY CLOWES arts editor HUSTON DESIGN design & layout ISSN 1558-9633

Climate & Energy Spotlight

64 Protecting Tribal Land, Preserving Natural Resources Grant McGinnis

facebook.com/WisconsinAcademy twitter.com/WASAL instagram.com/WatrousGallery

Ideas that move the world forward Join the Wisconsin Academy and help us create a brighter future inspired by Wisconsin people and ideas. Visit wisconsinacademy.org/brighter to learn how.

Wisconsin Academy Offices 1922 University Avenue • Madison, WI 53726 ph 608-733-6633 • wisconsinacademy.org

SUMMER 2022

Sharon Vanorny

From the Director

Recently, I have been hearing a lot about resilience, the invaluable quality that is essential to maintaining daily life during times of crisis and which is also the underpinning of great achievements. While I agree that resilience is highly valuable, I think there is another quality we’ve developed over the pandemic which, while less celebrated, holds important power. In the past few years, we have had to learn new things, become familiar with new technologies, new ways of doing our work and accomplishing our domestic tasks. We have often done this with an audience. We have had to learn and fumble in front of one another— our peers, our bosses, even people such as our doctors. And along the way, we’ve helped others, who like us, may have been clumsy or embarrassed or confused when trying to do something a new way. This has helped create an environment conducive to adapting, experimenting, and learning.

Becoming more comfortable with uncertainty, with learning in public, with helping one another navigate the challenges facing us—these qualities should be recognized and lauded. We should continue experimenting and being a little uncomfortable. This is the space for innovation and growth. As I think about the mosaic artists featured in our cover article, their achievements show their skill, vision, and confidence. Yet, I am also grateful for their vulnerability and courage, so essential in taking risks. Their willingness to explore materials and take new approaches has given us work that is truly monumental.

Erika Monroe-Kane, Executive Director

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Letters

News for Members JAMES WATROUS GALLERY We’re pleased to announce paired solo exhibitions of work by Kyoung Ae Cho and Dakota Mace at the James Watrous Gallery in Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, September 9–October 30, 2022. wisconsinacademy.org/gallery for details. CLIMATE & ENERGY CONFERENCE Climate Fast Forward 2022, on October 17, 2022, is an opportunity to take stock of the progress Wisconsin has made towards mitigating and adapting to climate change since our 2019 Climate & Energy Conference, and to confront the challenges we still face. Register now to save your place! environment@wisconsinacademy.org. FICTION AND POETRY CONTESTS Thank you to all the Wisconsin writers who entered the 2022 Fiction and Poetry Contests, and congratulations to the finalists. The 2023 Writing Contests open January 15, 2023. Guidelines and this year’s finalists at wisconsinacademy.org/content/writing-contest. NEW STAFF The Academy is pleased to introduce two additions to the staff: Zack Robbins, new Director of Development, has held development roles in leading science and arts nonprofits; Lidia Villazaez, new Administrative Coordinator, brings experience in project management and community outreach, and fluency in Spanish. FULL CIRCLE LEGACY PROGRAM Consider adding the Wisconsin Academy to your will or estate plans. Legacy gifts provide a foundation for building a better world inspired by Wisconsin ideas. Learn how you can help at wisconsinacademy.org/legacy. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR We want to hear from you. Please send feedback and comments about Academy programs and publications to cchambers@wisconsinacademy.org.

2022

2022 Fiction and Poetry Contest Finalists Congratulations to this year’s writing contest finalists. The overall quality of the submissions was exceptional. The winners will be announced soon, and will be published in upcoming issues of Wisconsin People & Ideas.

FICTION FINALISTS “Simeon and the Bad Kid” by Margaret Benbow, Madison “The Evolution of Marvin Skellig” by Peg Cadigan, Thiensville “Feldstein’s Dog” by Gene James Gilbert, Baraboo “Seasons of Love” by Walker Guzowski, Milwaukee “Sadie in Love” by Nancy Jesse, Madison “Bread and Butter” by Andrew McDonnell, Beaver Dam “ In Rock Springs When the Angel Trumpets Sound” by Tom Pamperin, Chippewa Falls “No Other Dog” by Jerry Peterson, Janesville “Snow Door” by Janie Wilberg, Milwaukee “Down in the Valley” by Richie Zaborowske, Appleton

POETRY FINALISTS “ A Couple Months After My Father’s Death I Read About Songbirds Mysteriously Dying in Pennsylvania” by Alecia Beymer, Madison “Sun Black” by Bruce Dethlefsen, Westfield “Effigy Mound” by John Freiburger, Fitchburg “Of Genesis” and “Amor Fati” by Nicholas Gulig, Fort Atkinson “It is, It’s Not” by Jim Landwehr, Waukesha “Memorial Days” by Claire Lewandowski, Madison “Home in the Borderland” by Curt Meine, Sauk City “Neptune” by Jess L. Parker, Fitchburg “Warm Socks” by Alejandro Puig, Viola “Rose Convictions” Georgia Ressmeyer, Sheboygan “This is First Son / Second Son” by Nick Sengstock, Madison “Survival Skills for the Anthropocene” by Lailah Dainin Shima, Madison “Letter to My Mother in Winter” by R. B. Simon, Madison “Full Disclosure” by Bruce Taylor, Chippewa Falls

SUMMER 2022

HAPPENINGS

FELLOW I N TH E N EWS I continue to be fascinated by water and streams. Moving water, and the idea of movement… because there has to be continual movement and evaluation in life to solve all the things we’re concerned about. —Truman Lowe

The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse announced in February their plans to rename its Center for the Arts in honor of the late Truman Lowe, an alumni and a world-renowned artist. Lowe, who was of Ho-Chunk ancestry, will be the first person of color with a UW–La Crosse building named after them. Water was a central theme of his art. He was known for sculptures that used natural and scavenged materials, and often expressed the power and beauty of moving water. His art reflects his Ho-Chunk ancestry and culture. His aluminum Bird Effigy was showcased in the White House Sculpture Garden, and he received the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement award, as well as a Distinguished Alumni Award—among many other accomplishments throughout his lifetime. Lowe was born in Black River Falls and pursued his undergraduate degree at UW–La Crosse in 1969 and then his graduate degree at UW–Madison in 1973. He studied sculpture, glassblowing, ceramics, and more, integrating each art to his own vision. According to UW–LaCrosse Chancellor Joe Gow, Lowe “fully embodied the UW–La Crosse spirit— striving for excellence, honoring one’s culture and heritage, and leaving the world a better place than we found it.” Not only did he leave his mark at his alma mater, but also at UW– Madison, where was a professor in the Art Department. According to the Chair of the UW–Madison Art Department Douglass Rosenberg, “[Lowe] taught us what an artist could be in the world and how we can, through art, help make the world a more inclusive and thoughtful place.” Lowe, a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy, passed away in 2019 at the age of 75. His dedication and perseverance in creating indigenous representation in art, in professions, and in education, continues to inspire others who will continue his legacy. Katalina Lee

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

The Wisconsin Sea Grant, a program of UW–Madison, using public health strategies to target environmental injustices pertaining to the Great Lakes, launched a podcast called, “The Water We Swim In.” The title refers to water literally and metaphorically, while addressing racism in our society. The podcast illustrates that we swim in racism out of harmless fun, while those impacted by injustices, ultimately, drown in it. Podcast hosts Bonnie Willison and Hali Jama integrate marginalized community activists to highlight issues concerning water, whether it is for drinking or simply recreational purposes. Bonnie Willison, a Beloit College graduate, works as a video producer for the Wisconsin Sea Grant, and Hali Jama, a UW– Madison student who co-produces the podcast, adds her own personal stories with social justice. There are only a few episodes of the podcast, which began in May of this year, currently available, but they are significant and educational. In one episode, titled “Hidden Currents,” Milwaukee activist Brendy Coley joins Willison and Jama to discuss factors contributing to the alarming number of Black children who drown each year, far more than children of other races. “It was very striking to me that it was part of their (white people) culture to recreate during the holidays on the water,” says Coley in the podcast. “It becomes a cultural thing—a normal, natural thing—and that’s not the case among poor people and people of color. So, how do we make that part of their culture too?” The episode explores the lack of accessibility to swimming, safe waters, and education specifically in Milwaukee’s black community and at McKinley Beach. To learn more about people of color’s relationship with Wisconsin waters, keep up with future episodes of the Wisconsin Sea Grant’s podcast which is available on Google Podcasts, Spotify, and iTunes, as well as through their website (seagrant.wisc.edu). Katalina Lee

Briona Baker

Courtesy of UW–La Crosse

T H E W AT E R W E S W I M I N

Sarah Maughan, courtesy of MMoCA.

HAPPENINGS

A P R E L U D E T O D A R K M AT T E R A statue of and by UW–Madison art professor Faisal Abdu’Allah was installed on the corner of Henry and State streets, in front of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) as a prelude to “Dark Matter,” his upcoming exhibition, opening in September. Rather than traditional materials like marble and granite, Abdu’Allah, gravitated toward the Indiana Limestone, which has imperfections that for him “made it very conversant.” The sculpture, portraying Abdu’Allah sitting in a barbershop chair, is titled “Blu³eprint,” the “u” to the power of three, reflecting the three “u’s” in the Zulu word ubuntu, which translates as “I am because we are,” an African concept referring to the interconnected nature of humanity. Abdu’Allah conceived of Blu³eprint as a counter-monument to the Lincoln sculpture—a contemporary work erected as a counterpoint to an existing monument intending to create a conversation. The statue features Abdu’Allah in the same pose as the iconic statues of Abraham Lincoln housed in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D. C. and atop Bascom Hill at UW–Madison. Workers at Quarra Stone, a Madison company that has done architectural and artistic stone work worldwide, scanned the artist’s body and six-axis robots were programmed to carve the image in limestone slabs. Abdu’Allah then posed beside the sculpture-in-progress while Martin Foot, a renowned sculptor who lives in Italy, finished carving the stone by hand. The barbershop chair reflects Abdu’Allah’s own experience working as a barber. While pursuing his Bachelor’s degree in London, where he was born and raised, he took a job cutting hair, and years later, he opened his own barber shop there. The barbershop has been a place of physical renewal and social solidarity for generations of Black men. The symbolism of hair often appears in his artwork, and the barber’s chair represents allowing people to reposition themselves. “Getting a haircut is a shared human experience,” Abdu’Allah says, “a ceremony of losing the old and breaking into the new.” Chris J. Lopez-Henriquez

Oct. 13–16, 2022 WISCONSINBOOKFESTIVAL.ORG

#wibookfest

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SUMMER 2022

Wisconsin Table

B.J. Hollars

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Wisconsin Table

FARM AND TABLE: Bringing People Together, One Burger At A Time BY B.J. H O LLARS

e strike out for Together Farms one evening in mid-May. The minivan is packed tight: every

bench and bucket seat claimed by one family member or another. My father sits shotgun, my mom is in the back, with my wife and our three children in the remaining seats. We are a loud, enthusiastic, and hungry bunch.

SUMMER 2022

Wisconsin Table

Heading south from our home in Eau Claire, we careen around the winding roads for 20 miles or so, into western Wisconsin’s Buffalo County. For my parents—recent transplants to Wisconsin— every red barn, bald eagle, and sandhill crane along the way maintains some novelty. And none of these are in short supply. Cresting the final hill, we spot Together Farms tucked into a treelined valley off to our left. We park in a grassy lot alongside a few dozen vehicles while a flock of disinterested sheep grazes nearby. Ahead of us: a dirt path leading toward the food truck where we’ll soon place our orders. Situated on 160 acres amid rolling hills, the small family farm is owned and operated by Stephanie and Andy Schneider, with the help of their two daughters. When the Schneiders purchased the property in 2010, they hoped to turn it into a hobby farm. Stephanie tells me about the process as we chat between the food pavilion and the pigs later that night. “We bought some cattle and pigs just for ourselves. But then we thought, ‘You know, we could raise a couple more and sell them. It’s not any more work. We’re already feeding and watering them anyway.’” While the additional animals may not have added to work on the production side, they created plenty more work in terms of sales and marketing. The Schneiders began selling their 100% grass-fed beef, and pasture-raised pork and lamb at farmers’ markets throughout the region, while holding down full-time jobs beyond the farm— Andy as a woodworker and Stephanie as a nutrient management specialist for Dairyland Labs. The Schneiders had moved to their rural home to spend more time together as a family; yet their many responsibilities had the opposite effect: propelling them beyond the farm just to keep the farm viable. The Schneiders also faced a second problem: thanks to their pigs, they had a never-ending supply of lard filling their freezer, with no end in sight. One night, Stephanie came across a post by PBS Wisconsin’s Wisconsin Foodie TV show. The host, Kyle Cherek, asked people to name their favorite place for a burger. On a whim, Stephanie added Together Farms to the comments thread. In theory, it seemed the perfect plan to solve both their problems. Rather than bring the farm to people via endless trips to farmers’ markets, why not simply bring people to their farm? And what better way to get rid of their surplus of lard than by frying up fries and cheese curds? “We had zero restaurant experience. But then again, we also had zero farming experience,” Stephanie laughs. “I like to joke that since we weren’t losing money fast enough with the farm, we thought, ‘Why not open a restaurant, too?’” Yet when Stephanie’s comment caught the attention of the Wisconsin Foodie team, the Schneiders were given a chance to test the profitability of their burger farm idea. In 2017, Wisconsin Foodie filmed an episode at Together Farms. Shortly after it aired, the influx of guests from all over the state confirmed for Stephanie that they’d struck upon something special. While the farm-to-table movement had been fashionable for years, the Schneiders took it further by creating a “farm-and-table” experience. Rather than ship farm fresh food to restaurants, the farm became the restaurant. Like Wisconsin’s many pizza farms,

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Together Farms relied upon the produce in their own backyard to fill their tables. But since Together Farms is meat-focused—and has no shortage of lard—Stephanie wanted to create a menu that played to the farm’s strengths. Today, patrons are treated to the usual fare— cheeseburgers, cheese curds, and ice cream floats—in addition to more creative options like the yodeling burger (grass-fed beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, Thousand Island on a pretzel bun) and mouth-watering poutine (fries topped with Ellsworth curds and specially made gravy.) Although Together Farm’s livestock supply can’t fully keep up with demand, Stephanie is proud that most of the beef comes from their herd just beyond the tree line. She explains that all their food is made locally from the freshest, cleanest ingredients available. In its early years, the farm was supported by local restaurants buying their beef, pork, and lamb. Now Together Farms is purchasing produce and additional meat from like-minded farms throughout the region. In doing so, they’ve created their own ecosystem—one that prioritizes healthy living, eating, and sustainability. “It’s been cool,” Stephanie says, “watching the rising tide lift all boats.”

rom 6 pm until sundown, my family and I enjoy most everything Together Farms has to offer. And not just in the culinary sense. After sampling an array of burgers, the kids tear off toward the swings and slide, then off to the gaga pit. They take their turn at the miniature climbing wall, tour a playhouse, and then—when my back is turned—sprint toward a pile of dirt and begin hurling dirt clods into a muddy stream. My 10-year-old son and a couple of his buddies head for a hiking trail that leads to the farm’s highest point. From that vantage, they can see a gathering of a hundred or so people playing cornhole, enjoying locally brewed beer and feeding the pigs their table scraps. My parents—who, before moving to Wisconsin, had never even heard of a burger farm, let alone visited one—marvel at the convergence of good food and great people amid a picturesque backdrop. Where has this place been all their lives? Adding to the ambiance is Together Farm’s unofficial mascot, Mr. Fluffypants—a Great Pyrenees/Newfoundland/Great Dane mix who casually roams the ground in search of abandoned plates. “Mr. Fluffypants is the real reason we do burger night,” Stephanie joked, “so people can help us feed him.” Adjacent to the open-air pavilion, a guitarist performs songs by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and John Prine. Gripping her hands, I send my two-year-old daughter airborne as we spin circles across the makeshift dance floor, stirring up dust with every step. Beneath the music, I hear the lull of laughter and chatter at the end of a long week, at the end of a long winter. Though I’m 20 miles from home, quite unexpectedly Together Farms reunites me with a former student, a couple of colleagues, and half a dozen friends—all of whom have made the drive for a burger, a beer, and a little live music. Maskless and in the fresh air, it occurs to me that I haven’t seen some of these folks since before the pandemic. That this place has brought us together confirms the farm has the right name.

Nick Meyer

Shawn at V Imagery & Design

B.J. Hollars

Wisconsin Table

SUMMER 2022

B.J. Hollars

Wisconsin Table

hortly after dusk, I pry the last dirt clod from my children’s fingers and prepare to make the walk back toward the van. “Everyone have fun?” I call. I receive a rousing “Yeah!” Satisfied smiles grace our faces as we wave good-bye to the pigs, and Mr. Fluffypants, and place a few dollars into the musician’s tip jar. It’s been a perfect night—fine food amid a friendly vibe. Earlier, when I’d asked Stephanie what an ideal night on the farm looked like for her, she’d paused to consider the question. “Well, there are a lot of those nights,” she admitted. “When it happens, we have perfect weather, great live music, a good turnout. And,” she laughed, “I have enough staff in the kitchen.” Then she turned serious. “It’s hard to see all the good stuff because when I’m here working, I’m just scanning for problems. But when I stand back, and I see that everyone’s happy, and that all the pieces are working together, that’s magic.” For farm-to-table enthusiasts, that magic provides a true local food experience, and a new source of revenue for the farmers. Together Farm’s Burger Night is a variation on the recent Wisconsin phenomenon of the pizza farm, where working farms function as restaurants during the warmer months, mostly serving pizza made with fresh ingredients sourced from the farm and the local area, and often with live music as well. Other Wisconsin farms that offer an on-the-farm dining experience, some with live music, include Taliesin Preservation (Spring Green), Holy Hill Art Barn (Hubertus), A to Z Produce and Bakery (Stockholm), Stoney Acres Farm (Athens), Suncrest Gardens Farm (Cochrane), The Stone Barn (Nelson) The Borner Farm Project (Prescott) Dancing Yarrow’s Farm to Fork Retreat (Mondovi), and LaClare Creamery (Malone). The Milwaukee restaurant Braise occasionally hosts summer dinners on the farm with some of their suppliers.

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

At the end of the evening, Together Farms grants us one last gift. Just beyond the cars, our eyes return to the once-disinterested sheep whose bleating now beckons us. The sheep are joined by a cow and a donkey. The latter mesmerizes my two-year-old daughter, who insists we say hello. We make our way toward the fence, and the donkey grants my daughter’s request for an up close and personal appearance. Sidling up to the fence, he presses his body within petting distance. “It’s okay, donkey,” our daughter assures him, stroking his ears. “It’s okay.” The swiftly fading sun folds beneath the trees as my daughter bids the donkey farewell. “Okay, see ya next time, donkey,” she calls. I smile, already thinking about the next time.

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, including Go West Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America, Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country, and The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders. He is a columnist for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, and an associate professor of English at UW–Eau Claire.

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SUMMER 2022

ESSAY

Dusk falls on the western façade of the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center at 750 N Lincoln Memorial Drive. Designed by Eero Saarinen, it was opened in 1957 with the mosaic by Edmund Lewandowski dedicated in 1959.

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

ESSAY

MILWAUKEE’S MONUMENTAL MODERNIST MOSAICS BY LI LLIAN SIZEM O RE AN D ERI C VO G EL

I’ve accepted the idea that art and architecture are one and the same…anything you call separately as art, whether it be sculpture, or painting, or mosaic, or any other form of expression, it must be an integrated part of the whole. Therefore, it must begin to show up in the Architect’s thinking. —Karel Yasko, Wisconsin State Architect, 1960-1963

David Schalliol

SUMMER 2022

ESSAY

How did Milwaukee, in the middle of the country, in the middle of the 20th-century, come to have some of the nation’s most inspiring and monumental mosaic murals? How is it that many churches, libraries, schools, government buildings and public spaces across Wisconsin have mural-sized mosaics fully integrated into the architectural surroundings? Monumental mosaics are a critical part of architecture and they convey an important public message on the role of art in expressing shared values. A close look at four mosaics commissioned in Milwaukee at a time when modern art and architecture were capturing a new spirit of innovation and civic pride, reveals different approaches to using mosaic as an architectural art form and presents a unique perspective on the history of arts in Wisconsin. In historic preservation terms, a monumental mosaic is both large enough and striking enough to be considered a "character defining feature" of the building. Mosaics have traditionally been made by hand-setting small pieces of stone, ceramic, or glass (known as tesserae) in a decorative pattern onto a mortar base. Among the many techniques of working mosaic are Opus musivum (associated with the glass mosaic for walls) and lithostrotum (mosaic used for floors).

or thousands of years, mosaics have played a critical role in cultural storytelling, illustrating religious, political, and mythological traditions throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. At the turn of the 20th-century in the United States, a large Italian immigrant population arrived from Europe, which included skilled craftsmen and artist entrepreneurs. The mosaic and terrazzo workers from Northern Italy were regarded as ‘the aristocracy of the Italian work force’ because their work was so highly specialized. The aesthetic value of the works done by these craftsmen satisfied the American desire for architectural embellishment using mosaics, from Beaux Arts projects at the turn of the century through the Art Deco period of the 1920s. During the Depression, between 1930 to 1942, the Works Progress Administration hired American artists, who were often trained by Italian craftsmen, to execute hundreds of murals, in both fresco and mosaic around the country. Many American soldiers who fought in the European theater and artists who traveled to Italy after the war became enchanted with traditional Italian art forms. The post-war American mindset was infused with romantic notions of Italy that percolated into public consciousness through television, film, music, food, and fashion. As trade restrictions eased between Italy and the U.S., commercial activity took a significant step forward with the 1959 opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway which connected the Great Lakes region to Europe and other parts of the world. For Milwaukee, the new seaway brought crates of mosaic fabricated in Italy directly into the city’s port. Another significant initiative occurred in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy signed a directive titled “Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.” The three-point policy encouraged the finest architectural thought, the elimination of an ‘official style’ with encouragement of professional creative competitions, and the integration of landscape into site-specific development. Karel Yasko, former Wisconsin State Architect, was responsible for

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

commissioning both emerging and established artists on behalf of the U. S. General Services Administration through the Commission of Fine Arts. The GSA directed the largest building program in the Federal government, one which assigned a half-percent of any construction budget over $200,000 to be reserved for fine arts. Murals, sculpture, stained glass, and fountains, were commissioned by architects as character-defining features of new public buildings receiving federal funding. Commercial builders followed suit. Soon shopping malls, grocery stores, and banks, public and civic buildings such as libraries, universities, as well as Federal buildings, integrated public artworks that were considered as essential to the construction as plumbing or air conditioning. Mid-century artists and architects reintroduced mosaic art, known for its visual effectiveness at monumental scales, as a striking new feature of the American built environment.

merican industrial prowess emerged as an important public theme in the post-war years and businesses like the AllenBradley Company in Milwaukee had important stories to tell. In 1955, Harry Bradley, one of the founding family members of the Allen-Bradley Company (now Rockwell Automation), along with architect Fitzhugh Scott, and Vice-President Robert Whitmore, wanted to create a mural in celebration of the company’s long history of engineering innovation. The artist they chose, Edmund Lewandowski, was born in Milwaukee in 1914 and had his first exposure to the awe-inspiring, mosaic-filled cathedrals of Europe when he served in the U. S. Air Force during World War II. This

Photo Courtesy Rockwell Automation

Lillian Sizemore

David Erickson, AIAP

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Top: Measuring 40 feet long, the mosaic timeline features the AllenBradley company’s electrical control products from 1893 thru 1952. The mural was never covered over, and served as an important teaching tool during visits with major customers. Company executives walked through every product pictured in the wall during tours of the building. Above: Seen here in 1955, Edmund Lewandowski (right) reviews his preparatory paintings with Giulio Padoan, a master mosaicist in Venice, to check progress, select the colors and treatment for the mosaic sections pictured on the floor. Right: Allen-Bradley mural detail showing the unique texture and detailed cuts of the glass smalti mosaic material.

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first-hand encounter with the beauty of mosaic, along with later visits to the Murano glass foundries near Venice, stimulated his imagination toward new possibilities with the medium. When selected by Allen-Bradley, Lewandowski was already a well-known Precisionist painter and mosaicist, and president of the Layton School of Art and Design in Milwaukee, and his mural was intended to be a monumental undertaking from the start. Lewandowski spent a year studying the company, its patent drawings, products, and historic artifacts. Collaborating with technical advisors from Allen-Bradley, he developed an impressive plan for a forty-footlong mosaic mural in the company’s cafeteria, where workers and managers could connect their daily labors with the story of the company’s achievements. In a colorful floor-to-ceiling display, a timeline from 1893 to 1952 depicts twenty-six devices and components unique to the company’s history of invention and product development. Three large blueprints of electrical diagrams anchor the mural’s composition and link the chronological survey to the company’s long-term commitment to research and development. Besides relying on compositional methods and graphic techniques that he had employed over the years in his Precisionist paintings, Lewandowski worked closely with the renowned mosaic studio of Giulio Padoan in Venice to combine his many studies into one cohesive schematic composition. Lewandowski and the mosaicists executed the mural using Byzantine-style materials, employing traditional smalti, a thick glass material specifically formulated for mosaic, set in a tightly spaced, brick-like arrangement. The engineering inventions are depicted with astounding realism and detail, using graded colors to suggest volume in three-dimensions; handles, screws, levers, coils, wheels, and wires seem to advance from the surface thanks to the mosaicists’ technique of using contorni tesserae—long, thin pieces of glass (think linguini) used for outlining the object to set it apart from the background. Electrical symbols and linear graphics take on the appearance of an ancient symbolic language. Upon close inspection, we see that the color blocks are flecked with a juxtaposition of both warm and cool colors, an ancient mosaic technique used to add visual vitality. The Allen-Bradley Company mural—completed and installed in 1956—as well as the other mosaic murals discussed here, were produced using the indirect method, a pre-fabrication technique established in the late-1800s as a cost-effective solution for large mosaic works. The artisans glue the tesserae face down on paper sections marked with the design outline in reverse image. Installers position the sections on the mortar base of a prepared wall, taking care to avoid visible seams. The paper backing which faces outward, is then dampened and peeled away, with a final wash and buff to reveal the sparkling surface. With abundant daylight flooding into the cafeteria from long ribbon windows on the opposite wall, the mural is “radiantly reflective, vibrant in color, majestic and beautiful.” Lewandowski described the mosaic as, “a graphic, symbolic portrait of the Allen-Bradley Company” depicting the power of human invention and the joy of communal achievement.

espite the post-war economic boom enjoyed by businesses like Allen-Bradley, America was still recovering from the human losses endured during World War II. Cities around the country were encouraged to build memorials to their fallen soldiers, and in

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1944, three women’s service clubs joined forces to organize for a distinctive victory memorial to commemorate Milwaukee’s participation in the World War. Drawings and proposals were made for a new Milwaukee County War Memorial Center over a period of years, and construction began in 1955. By this time, Eero Saarinen had taken over as design architect after the death of his father and business partner, Eliel Saarinen, with Maynard Meyer serving as associate architect in Milwaukee. The younger Saarinen brought an innovative solution to the problem of how to convey a sense of monumentality and solemnity with a relatively small building situated on a large lakefront site. He positioned the memorial building on the very edge of the bluff facing in all four cardinal directions with a commanding mosaic planned for the west façade looking back towards the city. The bold cantilevers of the modernist structure create a floating cruciform-shape made of cast concrete (béton brut), steel, and glass that seems to hover above, yet be a part of the landscape. The requirements of the building brief presented a challenge given the limited budget, the large number of stakeholders and the many outside opinions. The building had to be designed to accommodate an art center, memorial offices, and large event spaces, while remaining an elegant and meaningful monument. To achieve this, Eero Saarinen decided to create a series of contemporary mosaics covering the entire west façade that would set a somber and dignified tone for the entire building. He selected Edmund Lewandowski for his proven “instinct for monumentality,” which Saarinen considered “outstanding in the country.” Chosen over well-known European artists Fernand Léger and Joan Miró, and considered more experienced with mosaic than the American artist, Stuart Davis, Lewandowski was asked by Saarinen to create five panels measuring 25 feet tall x 16 feet wide to be positioned between the tall windows of the interior event space. As the symbolic gateway to Lincoln Memorial Drive and the lakefront, they are designed to be visually effective from a great distance and are especially magnificent when viewed at night. Stately Roman numerals are aligned in sequential order to commemorate the start and end dates for both World War II and the Korean Conflict. Reading from left to right the mosaic depicts: MCMXLI (1941), MCMXLV (1945), MCML (1950) and MCMLIII (1953). But the sequence is not a literal transcription of the dates. In a shift away from the realistic imagery used in his earlier mural at Allen-Bradley, Lewandowski created a more abstract composition for the War Memorial. The Roman numerals designed at various sizes lend a sense of deep perspective. Like searchlights, prismatic lines run diagonally through a nocturnal field of dark blue-violet. The organic placement of tesserae rise in waves from the bottom of the panels offering an aquatic weightlessness. The numerals float in a dreamlike background, submerged by time and veiled by memory. With their memorial purpose, one senses the impact and pain of the wars and the actual toll of lives lost. Lewandowski and mosaic craftsmen in New York understood each other’s languages. The mosaicist is an artist but also a scientist who understands the intricacies of visual perception, applying both color and light theories. Lewandowski the painter understood that surprising combinations of color, when juxtaposed and seen from a distance, are perceived as one dynamic synthesis. Together, they pioneered a visually powerful work that stands as one of the earliest examples of modern mosaic. The

Lillian Sizemore

Ezra Stoller /Esto

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Top: In 1957 the Milwaukee County War Memorial opened without its mosaic façade which emphasized the importance of architectural mosaic to a building’s overall appeal. Left and above: Mosaic details. An innovative use of prismatic color and shapes stimulates visual perception by using irregularly cut pieces of glass and marble which was a modern take on an ancient technique.

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mural employs an ancient yet innovative method that was just re-emerging at mid-century and had not been used for millennia. With its roots informed by the ancient pavement technique known as opus scutulatum, this work is characterized by irregular pieces of colored stone interspersed with a regular cut background. In the panels, we see a mix of stone and glass in both large and small cuts, interspersed with substantial chunks cut from formed glass disks or pizze. This technique enhances the layered effects of Lewandowski’s painted cartoon, interweaving sky, lake, and architecture through bold color and texture. The sequence of chromatic murals enlivens the Brutalist concrete structure of the memorial to evoke deeply emotive themes of time, memory, and loss, in a monumental achievement that transcends the mundane.

n the mid-twentieth century, it was common for banks to commission grand mosaic installations in their buildings. Following the work by the Millard Sheets Studio for Howard Ahmanson’s Home Savings of America in California, artist-patron collaborations in commercial buildings demonstrated how decorative mosaics could embellish the glass and steel of American architectural modernism. The Bank of Italy, founded in San Francisco in 1904 to serve working-class Italian immigrants and which later became Bank of America, commissioned many monumental mosaics and emblems into their branches. As we see in the fine example for the Marine National Exchange Bank and Plaza, Milwaukee was not to be outdone by other cities. The Marine Bank mosaic by Merritt Yearsley (1920-2010) reveals a merger between the artist and his medium. Yearsley studied at Milwaukee’s Layton School of Art, and in Pietrasanta and Ravenna, Italy, where many of the mosaics he had admired during the war had been created. He was an accomplished welder and he often used copper and piping in his sculptures. The Marine National Exchange Bank (now known as Chase Tower) was constructed to great fanfare in 1961-62, combining a twenty-two-story office tower with green glass curtain walls in the new International Style, and a three-story clear glass cube, serving as the entry pavilion. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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wrote in its "Modern Milwaukee" section published March 25, 1962: "The clean lines and spacious appearance given to the block bring a fresh breeze into a section surrounded by some of the oldest buildings in the city." The building, the second-tallest building in downtown Milwaukee at the time, commanded the skyline. The architects, Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz from New York, were already known for their innovative use of glass at the Corning Museum of Glass, built in 1951. Upon entering the glass cube, visitors are presented with narrow, twin escalators—one going up, the other coming down. Ascending to the second floor, we are greeted by a dramatic 50-foot-wide mosaic mural running the entire length of the room as a backdrop to the teller booths situated below. The mosaic is flanked to the east and west by white Carrara marble walls whose book-match patterns mirror each other, and by double height windows with long, semi-transparent drapes that add to the vertical drama and theatricality of the space. According to the artist, Yearlsey, the mural tells the story of the new St. Lawrence Seaway, inaugurated in 1959 just two years before the Marine Bank building was completed. The mosaic commemorates the bank’s historic interest in transcontinental railways and Great Lakes shipping. The mosaic is cartographic, a symbolic depiction of American natural resources. Yearsley cleverly employs an array of mixed-media in the mural to portray Western mining, Prairie wheat, and Midwestern lakes using modern shapes and distinctive textures set against a warm marble background. It may be the only map of America that showcases the economy and geography of the Great Lakes, our freshwater “third coast,” without reference to the nation’s saltwater shores. In his mosaic for the Marine Bank, Yearsley incorporated unique personal innovations, blending his trade skills in sheet metal and welding with his craftsmanship as a stone mosaicist. The unprecedented and surprising inclusion of metal sculptural pieces, set inches above the surface of the stone, further embellishes the awesome drama of this monumental abstract design. Waves of cut and braised copper or brass, are positioned alongside thin, metal strips textured with what appear to be highly-controlled linear

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel–USA TODAY NETWORK

David Erickson, AIAP

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Top: The Marine Exchange Bank mural by Merritt Yearsley. Above: Marine Exchange Bank opening day June 5, 1962, with Merritt Yearsley’s 50-foot wide mosaic mural featured above the long bank of teller booths.

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bubble welds. The metal portions now bear the verdigris patina of age and are even more beautiful for it. Mr. Yearsley’s son Greg, describes this detail: “I especially like the nubbly mini-popcornlike pieces that add so much texture, color, dimension, and visual interest and contrast so remarkably with the stone. That seems like a creative and unique touch to me. And it is done in just the right amount to be significant and noticeable, but not to be too overblown or distracting.” Yearsley’s masterful handling of his material conveys much of the narrative intent. The careful selection of stone and marbles are laid with attention to the different grain patterns which amplify the vitality of the surface. The long lines that criss-cross dramatically through the composition are made with thick, raised cubes of pure black marble, interrupted with dashes of wavy ondulata gold smalti. In a composition that is primarily abstract, elongated geometric shapes portray abstracted wheat fields of the Prairie region, but at far right, a distinct golden outline clearly depicts the five Great Lakes, with a range of watery blue and teal shapes hovering underneath. The large ochre tesserae used for the background, when seen from a distance, provide a grounded solidity in counterpoint to the reflective quality and scale change of the smaller cuts in the glass areas. In mosaics, a background does not simply serve to “fill in,” but is always carefully considered to accentuate the foreground elements. In 2008, a Chase Bank manager wrote to the Yearsley family: “We receive many comments every day. Most people comment on the detail and the obvious length of time it must have taken to be completed. The most common question we hear is, what’s the meaning…?” Yearsley’s monumental mosaic remains enigmatic. Like a theatre backdrop, it sets the stage for the bank’s commercial activity but it is not grounded in a specific time period or storyline. Without reference to modern day figures or industry, the mosaic map could effectively suggest ancient trading routes active hundreds of years ago. Yearsley’s abstract composition has an enduring quality that rises above the day-to-day comm ercial activity to present a unique contribution to Milwaukee’s modernist survey.

n impressive suite of ten mosaic murals by artist and UW professor, Marjorie Kreilick, who was born in 1925, resides inside Milwaukee’s State Office Building. Located on Wells Street, adjacent to the Milwaukee Public Museum and just down the street from the Milwaukee County Courthouse, the State Office Building houses the Milwaukee office of the Governor, and a number of other state departments and social service agencies. The building was designed by the firm of Grellinger & Rose Associates, and overseen by Karel Yasko, a Yale-trained architect with an undergraduate degree in fine arts, who was Wisconsin’s state architect at the time. In 1961, Yasko selected Kreilick to meet with the team of architects and contractors for an initial planning meeting. Kreilick remembers the men sitting around the table expounding upon their ideas, suggesting themes about the state’s agriculture and industry with montages of dairy cows, breweries, cheese, and wood pulp for the ten large scale mosaics, apparently without considering that the invited artist might have her own ideas for the project. When the conversation came around to Kreilick, she stood up and said, “I’m sorry, gentleman, I’m not interested in that.”

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 1940. Property of Richard Hartman, Gallery of Wisconsin Art.

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ED M U N D LEWAN D OWSKI was born in 1914 in Milwaukee and is best known for paintings that illustrate the beauty and energy of American Industrialism. Educated at the Layton School of Art in the early 1930s, his urban Milwaukee upbringing had a profound impact on his artistic development and he became a standout in the hard-edged Precisionist movement. In the late 1930s, he was invited to be represented by the Downtown Gallery in New York City, but chose to remain in Milwaukee and began painting murals for the WPA Federal Art Project, creating a number of post office murals throughout the Midwest. He served in the U. S. Air Force making maps and concealments during World War II. His teaching career took him to institutions throughout the United States, including Florida State University, Layton School of Art, and Winthrop University in South Carolina. He began to experiment with mosaic murals after his introduction to the medium while on a trip to Italy in 1953. While director of the Layton School of Art, he designed his first mosaic, for Marquette University’s Brooks Memorial Union. He produced eight mosaic murals between 1953 and 1979, including murals for St. Patrick’s Church in Menasha; Allen-Bradley in Milwaukee; two murals for the Flint Institute of Arts in Flint, Michigan; Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina; Employers Mutual of Wausau; and four interior courtyard murals for the War Memorial Center in Milwaukee in the late 1970s.

Photo courtesy Greg Yearsley

Steve Agard, Marjorie Kreilick Legacy Foundation

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M ERRITT YEARSLEY

MARJ O RI E KREI LI CK

was born in Townsend, Delaware in 1920. He served in WWII in Central Europe, where he first saw and became intrigued by Byzantine glass mosaics. After the war, he moved his young family to Milwaukee and began studies at the Layton School of Art while working as a heating and boiler contractor. He met Frank Lloyd Wright during the 1950s, and the renowned architect encouraged and inspired him to pursue his artistic dreams. In Milwaukee, Yearsley created and installed the intricate Marine Exchange Bank mural depicting the growing Great Lakes region. All of the stone was imported from Italy and he took pride in hand cutting and fitting each tile. His mosaic works can also be found in the Sanctuary at United Methodist Church of Whitefish Bay. He had a love for all things Italian: clothes, food, art, automobiles, opera, and history. From the late 1950s into the mid-1980s, he made over 30 trips to Italy, spending a month each summer working with masters of the craft and visiting marble quarries. He befriended the Italian family that founded the quarry in Pietrasanta, Italy, where Michelangelo sourced the marble for his sculptures. He moved to Dallas in the early 1960s and became a protégé of architect George Dahl, creating murals for some of the city's landmark buildings. Over last twenty years of his life, he concentrated on painting, glass, bronze sculpture, and stone water fountains.

was born in 1925 in Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie. She earned degrees in sculpture from Ohio State University and from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, known as the ‘Cradle of American Modernism,’ when Eero Saarinen was its director. In 1953, she joined the art department at UW–Madison. In 1956, she took a year-long sabbatical to Rome for in-depth study and hands-on training in the ancient art of mosaic, and to cast bronze and metal sculptures. She worked with master mosaicist, Giulio Giovanetti, and began a long collaboration with the Meloni brothers, who assisted with fabricating many of her architectural works. She returned to Italy frequently and learned to speak fluent Italian. She taught in the UW–Madison Department of Art for 38 years, where her color theory courses were renowned for their rigor and science-based approach. She undertook years of material and formulary color research and created an artificial blue ‘marble’ for her bespoke mosaic works. Her courses were essential to the UW Art and Graphic Design programs and were requirements for environment, textiles, and design majors. She retired in 1991 as a distinguished professor emerita. She produced numerous sculptures, paintings, and fine art mosaic panels for exhibition and private commission, and her artworks are held in private collections, at the Chazen Museum of Art, the Racine Art Museum and the Museum of Wisconsin Art.

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Photo c.1960-61, photographer unknown. Marjorie Kreilick Legacy Foundation

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Marjorie Kreilick, at 35, works on a mosaic panel in her studio prior to leaving for Italy to create the State Office Building murals.

Each composition...offers the viewer a path into each scene through carefully placed foreground elements—a burst of sunlight reflecting on the water, or an opening in the tree line.

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Kreilick’s proposal separated the state’s geography into nine ecological divisions as the subject matter for the murals, and she was willing to walk away from the commission in order to stay true to her vision. As she observed, “Industries come and go…I wanted to show the state before man got here, to show the ecological areas and recognize some of the contributions that came from the indigenous Indians, the landscape before white man came. I wanted to do something that would be the essence of Wisconsin.” At Yasko’s suggestion, a second meeting took place in which the team unanimously accepted Kreilick’s proposal. In a field dominated by men, it was not the first time Marjorie Kreilick had to step into her agency as a confident artist with something to say. She was only 35 years old when she received the commission for the State Office Building. Shortly after the first meeting, she set sail for Rome on a Prix de Rome Fellowship, where she would work side-by-side with her trusted Italian mosaicists. Kreilick controlled crucial decisions about the color palettes for each mural for which she had made scaled, preparatory cartoons. She visited quarries in Carrara to hand-pick slabs of marble to be used in the fabrication process. She worked at the Monticelli Studio in the mornings, art directing and cutting stone alongside the craftspeople, and returned to her Rome Academy studio to work on her painting, sculpture, and printmaking in the afternoon and evenings. At the State Office Building in Milwaukee, the suite of interior mosaics is positioned in the elevator lobby of each floor and along one large curved wall in the main entry lobby. The ten-story rectangular block of concrete and Cream City brick has a side entry pavilion with glass walls and arched concrete awnings over three pairs of glass and metal doors. The curved first floor awnings span the length of the southern facade, with a rhythmic grid of upper floor windows accented by protruding sunshades, or brise-soleils. These not only create changing patterns of light and shadow over the course of the day but also keep excessive light and heat from the interior. This careful attention to the use of natural daylight was a key consideration for the monumental mosaics inside. Because of the oblique angle of the natural light illuminating each mosaic, the colors and forms of the landscapes seem to shift as the viewer passes by. Each mural measures approximately 15 feet wide x 10 feet tall, and taken together, present nine different landscapes from across the state: the Cultivated Fields of Maize; the River Groves; the Burning Prairies; the Coniferous Forests; the Meadows; the Swamps; the Lakesides; the Deciduous Forests; and the Cranberry Bogs—along with a tenth mural dedicated to Wisconsin's state motto, ‘Forward.’ Kreilick designed each of the State Office Building murals to human scale, encouraging interaction directly with the landscapes. There is a physical immediacy and accessibility different from the Lewandowski and Yearsley works, that are positioned overhead and are meant to be seen from a distance. Kreilick extends each composition to align with the floor and offers the viewer a path into each scene through carefully placed foreground elements—a burst of sunlight reflecting on the water, or an opening in the tree line. Passing through the lobbies during a busy work day, one senses the deep well-being and inspiration that comes from contact with nature. Kreilick purposefully designed the murals with this in mind, well before researchers coined the term ‘Nature Deficit Disorder.’

L. L. Cook Company, courtesy of Shimon and Lindemann

Eric Vogel

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Above: Marjorie Kreilick’s mural, Forward, in the Milwaukee State Office Building. Left: The Milwaukee State Office Building, a 10-story concrete and brick structure with a distinct curtain wall of windows, was constructed 1961-1963 and houses state agency regional offices.

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All Photos: David Erickson AIAP, courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society

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Opposite top: Burning Prairies, on the seventh floor, depicts fires set by indigenous people to the prairie grasses, which grew to the height of 10 feet. The burned ash changed the chemical composition of the soil, encouraging new spring vegetation. The tesserae are set with a checkerboard effect; an ancient way of blending two colors to achieve a third. Above: Maize, originally titled Cultivated Fields, is on the ninth floor. The crisp modern shapes of the corn reflect the history of agriculture. Indigenous peoples in southern Mexico first domesticated corn and Wisconsin is currently one of the top corn-producing states. Left: Maize detail. Reflective 24K gold smalti lights up the tassels of the corn plants. Opposite left: River Groves, is on the eighth floor. The Northern Wisconsin birch groves shimmer with white-gold smalti to highlight the bark used by indigenous people for canoes, drinking cups, and baskets. Kreilick’s suite of ten murals employs over 65 different kinds of marble from quarries in Carrara, Italy.

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David Erickson, AIAP

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At the former Allen-Bradley Company, now Rockwell Automation, the design firm Eppstein Uhen Architects (EUA) used the modern and welcoming palette from the 1956 mural and column mosaics as an integral part of the design for an inviting, multi-use work café.

The strong directional movement of the mural Forward in the lobby conveys the concept of pressing onward, a rhythmic advance. The broad concave surface, with its abundant use of gold smalti adds a warm reflectivity to the picture plane, lifting the mosaic surface into an ethereal realm. “There is a quality about it that you can touch,” Kreilick says. “For me, it is a live material. It reflects and takes the light. This is something paintings can’t do.” The appearance of the surface changes from pale pastels with silvery highlights to deep earth tones with gold accents. As Kreilick explains, “When seen at different times of day or night under various kinds of lighting, it becomes different things, and takes on different facets. It becomes alive, in itself.” Ms. Kreilick describes the mural Forward as a depiction of Wisconsin’s drive to be a national leader, as invoked by drum beats, pistons firing, and the pulsing rhythm of the piece. The geometries that appear so dense and abstract from an angle when entering the lobby, expand and elongate into identifiable topographies as we come to stand in front of the mural. We can discern specific landscape elements as we take in the whole scene: shimmering water, glacial formations, or a dense ancient woodland. It suggests Wisconsin in its process of formation, a panoramic view of deep geological time. Kreilick built upon the state’s pre-history by choosing a dynamic, organic, shape-language that spoke to Wisconsin’s economic thrust at mid-century. Today, Wisconsinites are the fortunate beneficiaries of Marjorie Kreilick’s courageous vision. Ms. Kreilick is nearing 97 years old and her contributions to both the history of Wisconsin art and to the global tradition of mosaic are only beginning to be recognized. Kreilick’s studio papers have been acquired by The Archives of American

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Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C. (through the efforts of mosaic specialist and co-author of this article, Lillian Sizemore). Kreilick’s teaching notes and lectures from her 38 years as a UW professor are now housed at the UW–Madison Faculty Archives. This institutional recognition underscores the national relevance of Kreilick’s work. Many of the themes she introduced through her mosaic murals in the early 1960s are increasingly relevant today. Kreilick gave voice to ecological concerns more than a decade before the first Earth Day. She gave value to marginalized landscapes like wetlands, native prairies, and regional woodlands long before large land conservancies became active in Wisconsin. She embraced a pre-settlement vision of the Wisconsin landscape influenced by Native American ideas and traditions. She insisted upon seeing the Wisconsin landscape from an ecological perspective rather than an economic imperative. Through her creative independence and boundless energy, she continues to be an inspiration, and a thinker who was ahead of her time. Kreilick’s work, especially her monumental mosaics in Milwaukee, hold important lessons for us and for future generations in our state and across the country.

hese outstanding architectural artworks are nearing 70 years old. The mid-century mosaic at Rockwell Automation was recently cleaned and used as inspiration for a redesign of the employee cafeteria. Unfortunately, most of the other works documented here remain at risk. Leaders at the War Memorial Center have long fought historic designation. Chase Tower, like the War Memorial, has not been historically designated, and both the mosaics remain unprotected. In coming years, the State Office

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Building will be retired from active use. Land for a new State Office Building in Milwaukee has already been purchased. Saving monumental mosaics is no easy task—there are no straightforward solutions because each case is unique. That said, the fact remains that successful initiatives to preserve and restore mid-century mosaics are happening all over the world. Saving and re-purposing original buildings with the mosaics in-situ is the best value proposition over the long term, and the most environmentally-sustainable solution in the short term. These buildings are relevant in our historic landscape and it is critical that each of them, with their monumental mosaics, be recognized for the unified vision of architectural art that makes them unique. To protect the legacy of these important modern movement buildings and their visionary, character-defining mosaics, we must move beyond appreciation into action so that future generations will have the opportunity to see and learn from these landmark creations.

Lillian Sizemore is an Italian-trained mosaicist, researcher, and educator with expertise in the twentieth-century mosaic movement. Her articles have been published internationally in Mosaïque, Andamento, Raw Vision, and Society for Commercial Archaeology. She holds a double degree in Fine Arts and Italian from Indiana University. She lives in Madison, and is currently at work on the catalogue raisonné for Marjorie Kreilick.

Get moving for Modernism!

Help support mid-century sites in Wisconsin by joining Docomomo-US/Wisconsin today! www.docomomo-us.org /chapter/wisconsin

Eric Vogel is a designer, educator, architectural historian, and former Chair of the 3D Design Department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. He holds a degree in Art History from Harvard University, a Master’s in Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture and is currently pursuing a mid-career PhD at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UW–Milwaukee. He is Board President of the Wisconsin chapter of Docomomo-US and is working on a book entitled Milwaukee Moderns. ®

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Bruce Crownover, Blackfoot Glacier, 2014. Reductive woodcut, 24 x 36 inches.

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MELODY FOR MELTING GLACIERS BY CH RIS J. LO PEZ-H EN RI Q U EZ

his is a story about creative, unlikely collaborations, and connections between artists, scientists, and musicians. The

Last Glacier project, dedicated to capturing the fading majesty of Earth’s remaining glaciers, was exhibited at the James Watrous Gallery November 12, 2021–January 23, 2022. The project is a collaboration between three artists of international renown—printmakers Bruce Crownover and Todd Anderson and photographer Ian van Coller. They began their work in 2010 in response to the stunningly rapid retreat of glaciers in Montana’s Glacier National Park (in 1850 there were 150 glaciers in the park; today only 25 of these remain, and these are predicted to disappear by the end of the century due to climate change).

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Leslie Damos

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Jason Kutz in concert

Over the years, the three artists have expanded their work to creatively document the impact of our warming planet on glaciers worldwide through larger collaborations with scientists in glacial landscapes in Colorado, Canada, Iceland, Tanzania, and beyond. By engaging directly with climatologists and glaciologists, the artists’ work is grounded in accurate, up-to-date scientific information. They also work closely with writers and curators, and in at least one instance, a musician. In 2020, Jason Kutz, a Wisconsin musician, composer, and a friend of Bruce Crownover, was invited to be the first composerin-residence at the James Watrous Gallery, and to compose a piece inspired by Crownover’s prints in The Last Glacier project. The piece would be composed during his residency at the gallery where he would interact with visitors, and it would premier at the closing reception of the exhibition. Unfortunately, the pandemic interfered, the exhibition was postponed, and the commission had to be re-imagined. When the exhibit went up in late 2021, ongoing restrictions prevented the residency as it had been planned, so Kutz pivoted to creating a video to accompany his composition. Today, that video can be viewed on the Wisconsin Academy website. Jason Kutz grew up in Kiel, a small town in Manitowoc and Calumet counties, where at a young age he began studying piano and percussion. He went on to continue his musical education at UW–Oshkosh, where he earned a Bachelor’s of Music in Recording Technology/Music Industry and at UW–Madison where he studied both classical and jazz, and earned a Master of Music in Piano Performance. He lives in Madison where he works as a pianist, composer, teacher, arranger, artist, graphic designer, producer, and sound engineer, and as a member of the Mr. Chair ensemble. Mr. Chair has been described as a contemporary classical music group that looks like a jazz quartet and sometimes sounds like a rock band. The members of the group—Jason Kutz, Ben Ferris, Mark Hetzler, and Mike Koszewski—are classically-trained musicians who are also well versed in jazz. Mr. Chair is known for its collaborations with singers, dancers, poets, scientists, research labs, visual artists, and more. The group strives to connect with audiences in unexpected ways. Mr. Chair has played with KASA Quartet and the

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Caroga Arts Collective string orchestra. They have worked with Leslie Damaso, a Mineral Point native and Filipina singer, to create a contemporary opera that reimagines kundiman, traditional Filipino art songs, into a personal narrative and modern sound. They are also working with recent UW–Madison grad and First Wave Scholar Dequadray James White to write a concept album that tells Dequadray’s story in an orchestral, hip-hop infused album. Another ongoing collaborator is Stephen Meyers, a professor of Geoscience, who commissioned Mr. Chair twice to collaborate and write science-inspired music for his large-enrollment introductory geoscience course at UW–Madison. The first of these was "Nebulebula," composed by Jason as a centerpiece of a musical-video-poetic-lecture performance exploring the Big Bang, the origin of our solar system and our planet—a composition that became the title track for Mr. Chair's debut album. The second commissioned composition, another by Kutz, "Ground Underground," was based on the concept of a Baroque "ground," exploring earthquakes and how sound waves reveal the nature of Earth’s interior. For both performances, the music and science used concepts from each to inspire the other. Mr. Chair has played a key role in this new approach to teaching science, through collaborations in Professor Meyers' tadada Scientific Lab project for inspiring scientific literacy and cultivating emotional connections to science. The collaboration aims to forge meaningful connections and to discover the ways in which our journeys are interconnected. Which brings us back to The Last Glacier project and Jason Kutz. Kutz’s composition is a response to the beauty and bold nature of Bruce Crownover’s art, and to the dire fact that the glaciers are melting at a rapid pace. He wrote and produced all the music at his home, using synthesizers, piano, keyboards, and various electronic instruments and samples (sampling is the process of incorporating a track from a previously recorded song into a new composition). Madison’s Tony Barba played clarinet and flute in the piece, with a brief solo on his entrance and the closing melody to follow. James Yule, a Chicago-based video editor and motion designer, and Kutz digitally deconstructed Crownover’s prints to allow them to be animated. Yule then did the animation, giving the woodcuts a new life in motion. The result of these interrelated projects involving scientists, artists, and musicians, is a story of melting glaciers and of loss, and a story of hope through creativity, science, and collaboration.

Chris J. Lopez-Henriquez was born in Puerto Rico. At the age of 13 he came to the U. S. to pursue higher education. He went to high school in Green Bay where he was editor of the school newspaper. He is currently studying Philosophy, Political Science, and Creative Writing at UW– Madison. He plans to go to law school and to become an author.

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TOM JONES HERE WE STAND OPENING PARTY July 23|2:00–4:00 ON VIEW July 23–October 9 Working as an “insider” member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, Tom Jones deploys the lens of contemporary photography to explore personal and deeply felt issues of race, identity, and cultural appropriation in more than 120 photographs on view in the exhibition.

West Bend|wisconsinart.org

Exhibition supported in part by

Special Thanks to 2022 Exhibition Sponsors Greater Milwaukee Foundation, James and Karen Hyde, Pick Heaters, and the RDK Foundation.

Tom Jones, Bryson Funmaker (from the Strong Unrelenting Spirits series), 2019 (detail). From the collection of Mike and Linda Schmudlach SUMMER 2022

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Kyoung Ae Cho, Last Place He Stopped By, 2020 (detail). Temporary wooden crematory box, fabric from father’s suit pants, thread, 8 x 8 x 8 inches.

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A CONVERSATION WITH KYOUNG AE CHO BY J O DY CLOWES

ne of the great privileges of working at the Watrous Gallery is getting to know the artists and gaining a fuller understanding of their creative process. In the first few months of the pandemic, not knowing when we’d be able to reopen the gallery, I interviewed Kyoung Ae Cho about the work she had planned to show in fall 2020. Now that her solo exhibition is finally happening (September 9–October 30), we’re pleased to share this interview. Cho works with fiber, wood, and mixed media, and her art reflects a deep reverence for the cycle of birth, growth, and decay. She starts each piece by mindfully gathering and preparing organic matter and objects of little value, attending to the way their physical properties reveal nature’s language of growth and change. Each meditative, repetitive gesture, each cut, stitch, and placement, Cho explains, is part of the experience of merging the natural and the man-made, the physical and the spiritual. A native of South Korea, Cho came to the U. S. to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit, and taught at Kansas City Art Institute before joining the faculty at UW–Milwaukee’s Peck School of the Arts. Her work has been shown internationally and published widely, and she has been a visiting artist at universities, colleges, and art schools throughout the U. S. and South Korea.

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Kyoung Ae Cho, Excess I (reworked), 2014-2019 (detail). Crabapple, cotton thread, burn marks, matte medium on canvas. 24 x 24 inches.

J: Thank you for taking time to talk with me, Kyoung Ae. I’d like to start by focusing on your piece Excess I. The pattern was created with crabapple flowers, which you picked after the petals have dropped, is that right? K: Yes, so after spring, the petals fall down first and the stems start falling down afterwards. J: Can you tell me a little about the experience collecting them? Did you collect them in a single season, or was it over several springs? K: When I collect things, usually I pick one kind of material at a time. I look for something that hasn’t been stepped on, is not squished or out of shape. So I kind of look, pick it up and look around, and like, ‘Okay, you go with me! You stay here.’You know, kind of pick and choose as I go. J: Do you have to wait for the right weather? How much planning goes into the collecting that you do? K: No, I don’t plan. Nature tells me what to do. When things fall, I see and I try to collect. And I don’t have to go anywhere. There’s trees in front of my house. J: Perfect. So the dates that you gave for this work, 20142019, represent a long period. Does that include the gathering? Do you set the blossoms aside for a while? Do you work on several pieces at a time? Tell me why the time period is so long. K: So, Excess I is actually the first one in this series, and when I work on anything new, I spend time to collect the materials first, and then I wash all of them, even though they’re not necessarily dirty or anything. But still, there might be some bugs maybe, so

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I usually wash it and dry it, then put it in a phone book. I have phone books piling up in the corner that I use for pressing. So I press them for a little bit, and when they get nice and kind of flat and stay in one direction—some of them are twisted, so when that happens, I iron them. So that’s kind of the final situation for the preparation. So once I do that, I start playing around on the canvas or paper or any surface and then start working on it. So I worked on this particular piece first, and then I thought I was done. I saw the result and then I ended up doing another piece and another piece. And then after doing two or three pieces, I was like ‘Oh, I don’t like this first one. I need to do something more’. So I actually went back and added more stiches and added more burn marks. So I reworked it. Does that make sense? J: It totally makes sense, yes. K: I even add to the title in some cases, I try to title it like Reworked—I try to be honest. In a way, the whole idea or concept, or the proportion was all finished the first time and the big effort of stitching was in the last year. So I felt like, ‘How do I include this?’ I didn’t mean to say like this was taking forever, but I still don’t want to call it this year or last year only, because I kept going back over the ones that were done before. J: Do you often work in series like that? Does it depend on how much of a particular material you’ve collected? K: I do work on series most of the time, and as long as there’s a tree dropping all those petals all the time, I can always collect more. But usually I move on to other things because I discover something else, not because I’m done with it. There’s always a potential to go back to what I was doing. There are certain things that I teach, like specific mediums and techniques. And

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I stopped using those in my own work for a while because I’m doing something else that excites me more. So I don’t ever think like, ‘You’re done.’ Never. You know, I always go back. But I do have a tendency to work in series. For the first one, you have like a big achievement feeling, but when you start working on the second or third, it doesn’t have that discovery process. But you do find a lot of new ways of working or new ways of looking. So I encourage my students: when you do something you like, try to do it at least three times. Five times is a good number—that way you can say this is working good or not working good. Whether you like it or not, don’t ever make the decision after just doing it once because first time is always not giving the clear answer. The ideal situation is you do something small and you learn and you learn and you’re testing out and then it gradually gets bigger. But sometimes again, a situation happens, like a wooden quilt I made many, many years ago. This brilliant idea came to me, and I had to make this 9 x 9 foot piece without really any prior knowledge. So I had to struggle in making this big one, although it was successful, but I made a small one afterwards to see how much I can improve and discover more. But that was a hard way of learning. You want to do something small to start. J: That sounds like a really ambitious piece. K: Sometimes it happens and you have no choice; you just have to do it. You know? J: For years you’ve used these tiny burn marks on wood and paper and canvas to create pattern. What inspired you to use that technique? Why do you think using these burn marks has had such staying power for you? K: When I started using the burn marks, I was marking on wood directly, following the wood grain and enhancing the wood grain. You end up thinking, What does this mean?’ ‘Why do I keep doing this?’ So, you squeeze your brain in trying to think ‘Okay, what else is behind this?’ ‘Is there anything?’ I think about harmony a lot and extreme opposites, and yin/yang—that kind of eastern philosophy of how opposite forces are not so good when they are in the wrong situation, but when they are harmonized, they are the best match. So like fire and wood as a match. Wood and fire can be totally disastrous when you don’t have a plan, but it also creates an energy and there’s a lot of great things happening when they’re harmonized. So the mark becomes a beauty mark. And then also, [there is] the spiritual level of how something becomes nothing. Physical thing becomes spiritual thing. Like with incense, how it burns and then kind of disappears in the air and how people associate that with the spiritual journey. Maybe I’m stretching it out too far, but I think about that as well. J: I can see correlating that idea of spirituality with this— you’re making this mark by creating an absence, by taking away some of the material by working with the canvas or the wood. But in the end, you’re actually creating a new whole. K: Right. It’s a beautiful mark to begin with, so the whole process is kind of, almost celebrating. This use of leftover or fallen down

parts of natural material, in a way, I see as a kind of finale. They’re at the end of their cycle and they’re on the ground. And I’m just following one more leaf before they become dirt again. So, in a way, the idea of burning incense is part of my thinking as well. J: That’s beautiful. I really like that idea. Tell me a little about the title, Excess I. K: So, my English may not be perfect so whenever I try to title, I cannot go too far because I don’t want to misuse a word. I was thinking about the use [of ] the word excess—like when the apple tree blooms, they bloom beautifully, right? Like so much flowers. And many fell down—they bloom because they tried to make a fruit, right? But not everything survives to become a fruit, and they all fell down. So, I think about how my mom’s generation, the baby doesn’t survive but they make a lot of babies, you know? You learn to make sure some survive. So that kind of idea, excess, you gather, you have so much, just to be on the safe side. I was thinking of that kind of excess, and whatever is left over, whatever is not used. J: I just watched My Octopus Teacher. a beautiful film, and as you were speaking, I remembered how the octopus gave birth to this amazing number of tiny octopi. And most of them will not survive. I mean it’s true for so many species, but it really struck me watching the birth of this cloud of tiny octopi floating through the water and knowing only a few will actually survive. K: Yeah, I think even trees really know when something is wrong, and I mean, they bloom. I remember one year that I planted something that only grew 2-3 inches tall, but the winter was about to come and it was blooming like a full-sized flower. It still made the cycle. I guess they will hurry to make it work, even if not fully grown. So I think nature has that kind of survival instinct. Like all of the maple seeds I weed out when they fall, they come up so fast. And it’s just like survival. They must know we’re pulling those out. J: Absolutely. They would be everywhere if we didn’t do something about it, although I suppose they crowd one another out eventually. K: Well, they’re supposed to be, right? ’Cause we cover with concrete and all those things, and we’re taking their space and claiming it so we make it easy for us to live, but at the same time, nature doesn’t know our rules so they just drop their seeds and make their babies and have their blooms. J: What kind of materials are you working on right now? What are you most excited about? K: Since I constantly collect, I don’t see lacking any natural materials. But there might be a whole different direction by the time of my show. Because of COVID everyone is home a lot, including me. And you start seeing a lot of things that annoy you, more than before, because you end up noticing a lot more. And because I collect so much, I live alone in my house, it’s becoming this old lady that has piled up things in the corridor. I don’t want to be that way, but somehow, I realize ‘Oh, how come my house

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is so small?’ I mean, I live alone—where is all my space? So I’ve been going through my closet and cutting apart all my clothing I didn’t wear for a while and couldn’t fit, and I’ve been making lots of little shapes to do an installation. So it’s different from natural material, it’s a kind of different excess in my house that I’ve been working with now. J: That’s great. I was trying to keep myself from laughing when you started talking about yourself as an old lady hoarding in the house. K: Okay for example, I came to America in 1988. Right now, the tank top that I’m wearing I used to wear in high school. And it was still in good shape and it still fits. I was like ‘Oh, I forgot about this!’ And small articles of yarn that I dyed in college. I brought all over here. It’s not even same country. I don’t know why I dragged it here, and I’ve been using it for samples for my students but, see this is why I’m keeping. This is really bad because it proves to me, I can be hoarding things because I’m using it. J: Right, you’re justifying your own practice. I’m curious to see this installation idea with clothing. That sounds really interesting. K: I’m glad no one’s visiting my house. But I have my own order of things and I’m having fun so it’s okay. Everything has a reason why things are there instead of throwing away. I have object and material—I have all the reasons.

SEE THE EXHI BITI ON On view at the James Watrous Gallery In Overture Center for the Arts 201 State Street Madison

KYOUNG AE CHO PAIRED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

DAKOTA MACE

Interview transcribed by Katalina Lee.

SEPTEMBER 9– OCTOBER 30, 2022 Kyoung Ae Cho is an artist who works with fiber and mixed media in her environmental processing. She is a Professor at the Peck School of the Arts, UW-Milwaukee.

Jody Clowes is the director of the Wisconsin Academy’s James Watrous Gallery.

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Thanks to Wisconsin Academy donors, members, and the following sponsors of this exhibition:

Information. Inspiration. wpr.org

Julia Koblitz

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REALITIES AND SILVER LININGS: COVID-19 TWO YEARS ON BY ELIZABETH GAM I LLO

ince the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11,

2020, approximately 6.3 million people worldwide have died. Experts estimate that 15 million more people died in 2020 and 2021 than normal. Nearly 70 percent of those excess deaths were concentrated in ten countries: Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. The United States alone surpassed one million reported deaths to COVID-19 in May 2022, and the virus is currently the leading cause of death in the U. S. In Wisconsin, there were over 13,000 confirmed deaths from COVID-19 by early June.

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As the pandemic moves into its third year, more variants evolve and change how experts think about how vaccines hold up against new variants and when boosters are needed.

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The pandemic has underscored our need for public health experts and agencies, produced new approaches and insights on vaccine technology, and highlighted the need for accurate information from both health and civic leaders. The pandemic has also put a spotlight on other issues like racial disparities in health care and food access, political divisions, domestic violence, and concerns for children's development under stressful conditions. Three public health experts in Wisconsin provide illuminating insights as they share their experiences working on COVID-related research. From refining the nation's COVID-19 vaccine policies, understanding the epidemiology and pathogenesis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the source of COVID-19), to providing insights on how children will adapt to these challenging times, these experts share their wisdom and give a vision of how life will continue.

r. Jonathan Temte, Associate Dean for Public Health and Community Engagement at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, reflected on the pandemic through the lenses of his experience serving on the U. S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from 2008-2015, being the first family physician to serve as chair of that group, and currently chairing the Wisconsin Council on Immunization Practices. During the first years of the pandemic, Dr. Temte was involved with the COVID-19 response on the UW–Madison campus and at the state and national levels and offered insights on how SARS-CoV-2 spread in Wisconsin. To understand how a virus-like SARS-CoV-2 can spread and how experts can track illness, Dr. Temte takes us to his backyard in Oregon, Wisconsin, which overlooks two schools, Prairie View Elementary and Netherwood Knoll Elementary school. Dr. Temte and his team have been collecting data on children with respiratory infections and their families at these schools and the rest of the Oregon School District (OSD) in Wisconsin as part of a project called the Oregon Child Absenteeism Due to Respiratory Disease Study (ORCHARDS). The study, published in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses in October 2021, was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and used student absenteeism to look at how various respiratory viruses, such as colds and flus, spread in classrooms. The study tracked influenza cases between 2014 and 2020 and was used to detect and recognize outbreaks early on. When students were absent from school, their parents were asked to call the absentee line and report any cold or flu-like symptoms. From there, parents could opt-in for a home visit where researchers would collect a nasal swab of the child and then test for influenza. In mid-March 2020, millions of American students were sent home after orders like Wisconsin's Safer At Home Order were enacted across the nation. “Over the course of one week, 50 million children across the United States were sent home, and schools closed because of this new virus that was emerging and circulating. In the Oregon School District, March 16 was the first day of closure. By the end of that week across the country, virtually all kids were home,” Dr. Temte says. After students were sent home, influenza cases tracked by absenteeism went down because the students were not at school. But using the same absenteeism method, Dr. Temte could track COVID-19 cases and understand how they emerged within the Oregon School District community.

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The first case of COVID-19 was detected in an adult woman in Wisconsin on January 29, 2020, and the first pediatric case was detected on March 8, 2020. One isolated case of a child with SARS-coV-2 was seen on March 13, 2020, in the Oregon School District. While the student was at home, the child's mother came down with symptoms a day after the child tested positive for the virus, and the child's father had symptom onset after ten days. Dr. Temte explains that the mother ran a home daycare and continued to work while she was sick without any personal protective equipment. “So, in a microcosm, this is where the bomb went off. And if you can think of this happening thousands of times across the country with these small-scale episodes, [you can see how] it just accelerated this virus into our communities,” Dr. Temte says. According to Dr. Temte's data, during the 2020-2021 school year, when students went back to face-to-face instruction, absenteeism peaked at 90 daily average absences due to COVID-19. By the 2021-2022 school year, the highest peak in the data was an average of 240 daily absences due to COVID-19. More interestingly, the data saw the highest peak in cases after the holiday break in winter. In December 2021, the B.1.1.529 virus, or Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, became the predominant variant in the United States. Soon after, national COVID-19 cases peaked at their highest recorded levels. After reviewing the data collected over the start of the pandemic, Dr. Temte and his team found that COVID-19 emerged in small Wisconsin communities, that it was easily transmitted at home,

both children and adults were affected by the virus, and school closures had a profound effect on the spread of all respiratory viruses. His team found that while influenza tends to go away during winter and spring school breaks, COVID-19 thrived and accelerated at these times. Their analysis also found that masks and social distancing were effective for preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 but not so much for the more common rhinoviruses. Monitoring systems like Dr. Temte's provide the ability to promptly detect developing health situations so that preventative measures can be taken. His method also enables health experts to assess the timing and intensity of outbreaks.

wo years into the pandemic, experts have seen the rise of SARS-Cov-2 variants, like Delta and Omicron, and its subvariants, which are challenging the recent protective measures taken against the virus. Dr. Nasia Safdar, an infectious disease physician, and researcher at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, walks us through how the epidemiology of the pandemic has evolved over the past two years. “Part of what has been challenging about this pandemic has been keeping up with the variants as they evolve because it's much more than simply knowing what's circulating and how severe it is,” she says. “There are certain treatments that only work for some variants and don't work with others.” As the pandemic moves into its third year, more variants are evolving and changing how experts are thinking about how

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vaccines will hold up against the new strains, and when boosters will be needed. A study published by the CDC in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) in August 2021 studied the effectiveness of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections of frontline workers between December 2020 and August 2021, both before and during the time the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) was predominant. The study found that before the variant was predominant, the vaccine was 91 percent effective at preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection of frontline workers. After the Delta variant became predominant, the number dropped to 66 percent effectiveness, although this may have been due to the passage of time since vaccine. “Now, in the world of vaccination protection, that is still very well worth getting,” Dr. Safdar says. She points out that although more breakthrough infections were reported during this time, few hospitalizations and fatalities were reported. When the Omicron variant appeared, the CDC found in a study that vaccines’ effectiveness against Omicron in symptomatic adults rose to about 68 percent after an mRNA booster. Protection did wane after 2 to 4 months, and the effectiveness dropped to 63 percent. “A vaccine effectiveness of 63 means that 40% of vaccinated people may have some evidence of symptomatic infection, so it's not surprising that we see as many breakthrough infections as we have been. The goal now has really been to prevent hospitalizations and complications,” Dr. Safdar explains. It is essential to compare Delta and Omicron variants because Omicron arose when immunity was increasing in the population due to vaccines and prior infections with COVID-19. With

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subvariants continuing to appear, we can better understand the epidemiology and the best measures to control the spread and protect people. While data has shown vaccines are effective, fewer than half of people in the U.S. who have received the COVID-19 vaccine have also received a booster shot, and more than 20 percent of U.S. residents have not received any COVID-19 vaccine. These numbers are alarming since variation in immunity means SARS-CoV-2 can continue to spread and possibly mutate into more variants. “We are going to need revaccination. There's a waning of immunity from vaccines, and there are escape variants. This is just a fact of life,” says Dr. Temte. “There's going to be vaccine hesitancy and avoidance, and there are going to be people who will never vaccinate, unfortunately, and they may be the venues for creating new variants because of higher transmission.” Currently, a subvariant of Omicron dubbed BA.2 is the most predominant variant, due to its increased transmissibility. Compared to its ancestral strain found in Wuhan, BA.2 has 28 unique genetic changes with four on the spike protein, which is the target for immune cells and vaccines. Compared to two years ago, we have a better understanding of the population’s development of antibodies to COVID-19, a measure of seroprevalence. Between vaccines and infections from COVID-19, very few people have had zero exposure to SARS-CoV-2. CDC found, looking at data from September 2021 to February 2022, that about 60 percent of people in the U.S. have seroprevalence, meaning they caught SARS-CoV-2 at one point, or were vaccinated, and now have antibodies against the virus. “The silver lining is the fact that there are vaccines available and that they have been very effective. At least we're talking about trying to come back to a sense of normalcy,” Dr. Safdar says. While the vaccines against COVID-19 do not have a 100 percent efficacy rate, they have proven to prevent severe illness from COVID-19 and its new variants. The CDC has published data showing that mRNA booster shots provide significant protection against hospitalization from Omicron and reduce the risk of having to go to the emergency room or an urgent care clinic. Promega Corporation, a biotechnology company headquartered in Dane County, is working on conducting and providing products for serological or antibody tests that can reveal when and if an individual had a past SARS-CoV-2 infection and if the person has anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Readily available serology tests can help provide screening of large populations to understand the adaptive immune response to the virus. Sensitive serology tests that detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 are vital to vaccine development efforts and to understanding if someone is safe from reinfection. Promega’s test dubbed Lumit™ has a post-symptom onset sensitivity of 93.5 percent, according to Sara Mann, Promega’s Vice President of Commercial Excellence.

he COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and increased disparities within already struggling communities. In the United States, over 80 million family units, while navigating the pandemic, are also facing challenges such as changes in employment, poverty, homelessness, loss of social support, transitioning to online schooling, juggling work and childcare responsibilities, and

increased anxiety and depression. The U.S. Census Bureau's experimental Household Pulse Survey, a survey that measures household experiences during the coronavirus pandemic, found that about 11.8 million children live in households that missed a mortgage or rent payment or sought a deferment. The survey also found that about 3.9 million children experienced COVID-19-related food shortages in 2020. All these issues have the potential to negatively impact developing children and the interactions they may have in their homes.

r. Dipesh Navsaria, a pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and Public Health and a clinical associate professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains that when parents get the support they need, they can provide the safe, stable, and nurturing relationships that enable their children to develop and thrive despite the added stressors of the pandemic. In the first three years of life, a child's brain architecture is shaped by the engagements, responses, and emotions derived from human relationships formed during this time. Positive, stimulating, and nurturing relationships are needed to ensure the child develops the vital connections for emotional security, social well-being, and resilience. A concept called Early Relational Health (ERH) has emerged recently addressing the importance of foundational relationships in the healthy development of children. This concept is now being linked to fields like public health services, child welfare, family support services, and pediatric health care. If children’s need for positive and nurturing relationships are not met, and they are in an environment of constant stress caused by situations like homelessness, racial discrimination, child abuse, and parental substance abuse, they experience toxic stress. Toxic stress can alter the brain architecture and negatively affect children’s emotional health, behavior, physical health, and academic performance later in life. If children have the support and nurturing they need from adults and learn how to self-regulate their emotions, they are more likely to effectively deal with stress. “One thing that's important about how we think about this pandemic’s impact is that when children are with their families, and their families are able to reasonably attend to their needs, children have this great ability to respond to adversity,” says Dr. Navsaria. He adds that while children need help to cope with toxic stress, parents need support too, steps that will reduce the external sources of stress on their families, and strengthen their core life skills. Families need access to a stable and sufficient income, nutritious food, and policies that address structural factors that systematically disadvantage people of color. The basic needs of families must be met first so adults can nurture their children. “You can't attend to the higher-order stuff about your life and your career and your happiness if you're worried about safety, shelter, food, things like that. So families need to have their basic needs met. And how can we do this? It's through the programs we set up, the policies we enact, and the advice that we might give,” Dr. Navsaria says. In May 2020, a survey published at the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) called the Early Relational Health Survey: What We're Learning From the Field found that when study

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participants, who work in various sectors representing the early childhood field, were asked what policies or practices would change if the importance of forming healthy early relationships were fully recognized in their field, the most frequently noted policy and practice changes included universal paid family leave, a transformation of child healthcare, and expanded parent education. Data has shown that while the pandemic has exacerbated economic disparities, it has also created opportunities for families to engage in healthy relational activities. “Families actually spent more time reading together and having family dinner together because they were cooped up together. So, these relationally positive activities became more possible because no one was traveling, no one was out in the evenings,” Dr. Navsaria says. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020, Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), parents shared more dinners and read to their children more than previous years. Sixty-nine percent of parents reported reading to young children five or more times per week in 2020. In 2018, 65 percent of parents said they read to children five or more times a week, and in 2019, 64 percent was reported. The pandemic raises not only scientific issues, but also social and political ones. When globally, enough people feel comfortable with the numbers of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths per year, the pandemic can be considered an endemic, that is, something that is not out of control but is with us all the time and has become a part of our lives. Although people will continue to get sick from COVID-19, the hope is it won’t be as disruptive or as serious as it is now. Today the average healthy person who gets COVID-19 gets an illness that is disruptive but manageable. For those who are older, immunocompromised, or at more risk, COVID-19 is still a serious illness that can land these individuals in the hospital. “As far back as vertebrates have had lungs, we've had respiratory infections,” Dr. Temte says. “So, these are things that have been around for a long time and will continue to plague all of us.” The end of the pandemic will depend upon closing gaps in vaccination, making treatments for COVID-19 more available, and detecting mutations in the virus before they spread. Wisconsin-based technology companies have been working since the beginning of the pandemic to do just that. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, molecular diagnostics company Exact Sciences, Promega Corporation, and Epic Systems worked to provide key pieces to expand COVID-19 testing in Wisconsin and help limit the virus's impact in the state. The initiative began when the CEOs of these companies reached out to the Wisconsin Department of Human Services secretary-designee Andrea Palm and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers. In March 2020, Evers announced a public-private partnership among industry leaders, the state government, and the Wisconsin National Guard to collaborate to combat the pandemic across the state. The Madison-based Exact Sciences and Promega Corporation made their diagnostic and biochemistry systems available for state scientists' use. While specializing as a cancer diagnostics company, Exact Sciences repurposed its equipment that looks for DNA associated with colorectal cancer to look for SARS-CoV-2 instead. Promega aided this effort by supplying reagents needed to run COVID-19 tests on Exact Sciences machines. And Epic Systems created software to transfer test results from labs to

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

state officials and health care providers fast. Working together, Promega, Exact Sciences, and the Wisconsin-based electronic health records giant, Epic Systems, streamlined a system where accelerated, and reliable COVID-19 testing became possible. Since then, Promega has provided enough reagents and enzymes to test an estimated one billion samples for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, Promega’s Sara Mann explains. In March 2022, the Biden administration announced a Test-toTreat Initiative to give more Americans access to needed COVID-19 treatments. With the initiative, individuals who test positive for COVID-19 can visit hundreds of local pharmacy-based clinics and federally qualified community health systems to receive antiviral medication. The initiative is meant to ensure that those at high risk for developing a severe case of COVID-19 can receive the treatment they need fast. To make this process easier, Epic Systems developed software that allows healthcare providers to search for up-to-date information immediately on which pharmacies have received COVID-19 anti-viral therapies and the amount of inventory each pharmacy has. If a prescription is unavailable, Epic lets providers know before the drug is ordered. Epic also helped set up 100 vaccination sites across the country in early 2021. And clinics and vaccination sites used Epic's software to provide over 500,000 daily vaccinations in clinical settings and mass vaccination sites. Epic also tracks COVID-19 cases and has real-time data on the state's supply of hospital beds and current hospitalization rates. Promega Corporation is also creating snapshots of community-wide infection rates by testing wastewater samples. Those infected with SARS-CoV-2 will shed viral particles before they have any symptoms. Mann says that as a result, levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater can reflect infection trends in a community and possibly predict major outbreaks seven days earlier than clinical tests can. As the pandemic enters its third year, and the virus continues to evolve, experts in Wisconsin continue to enhance our understanding of the virus and help provide the tools we need to fight it.

Elizabeth Gamillo is a science journalist who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian and has written for Science magazine as their 2018 AAAS Diverse Voices in Science Journalism Intern. She will be attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Graduate Program in Science Writing in the fall.

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SUMMER 2022

Fiction

Taylor Wilcox

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Fiction

HUNTING, LATE SEASON, BOW BY RO LAN D JACKSO N

ad and I had each of us shot a buck and back at the truck we shared with quiet abandonment how it all

had gone down. We were leaning against my grandpa’s Ford. Grandpa came up and congratulated me. Patted me on the head, ruffled what he referred to as “the curls.” He clunked his bow down onto the back of the truck like he was done for the night, but I hoped he’d come tracking with us. I needed him. Dad being new to this, he couldn’t say what his deer looked like, how many points. He knew he hit it, he said. Knew it had antlers.

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“You got your arrow?” grandpa said. Dad said no. We were still talking, Dad and I, figuring out where to go in, when I heard grandpa reaching back into the truck, digging around for his bow. “You get one too?” my father asked him. Grandpa shot the tracking light across the length of the marsh, beamed it thick and clear and white. Then turning to me, he said, “You ready, son?”

ours the three of us searched, tracking in the cold with headlamps shining, our shoulders and necks steaming gray and dark like ghosts. I thought on the depths to which a wounded animal will travel, worried for what little blood we had going for us. And happy as I was having dad with me, his first and what would be his only time coming with, it was grandpa I needed. Here, all I had learned I had learned from him, the folded blades of grass and the circling of the blood. I’d turn back to him, longing for him to lead us. But back he stayed, spotlighting. Those days I had the energy for it. Being who I was, how I felt about things. I was a fourteen-year-old kid, a child really, already with two arrowed bucks to my name. If asked who I was, I would have liked to have said a bowhunter. Wisconsin, public land, bowhunter. We searched for dad’s buck, for grandpa’s buck, and finding neither I worried they’d maybe hunted too close to one another. When dad was out of earshot, grandpa said, “Buck fever for your old man is my guess, son, I’m not sure he saw what he said he saw.” Grandpa said nothing about his buck, how it looked, where he’d hit him. I took a detour to recover my own buck. Forty-five yards he went, right where I left him, no blood until the end. I dressed it out, showing dad how. I still kept the mesh stomach lining back then, and cutting it off the deer that night I explained to dad why and how we’d wrap it around the heart. “Worth the effort?” he asked me. Of course, I told him. We dragged my buck to the truck. Then we crossed back into the woods, zig-zagging past dad’s stand, past grandpa’s stand, and were about to start tracking, searching for dad’s buck, for grandpa’s buck, when it began to rain. Frustrated, and with all of us about ready to give up for the night, I did as grandpa had taught me. I returned to first blood. I searched, picking at random clumps of windfall and brush. And there it was. A second buck, in a brush pile. I shouted for them. Out of the darkness came my father. And I caught a glimpse of our growing similarities. His shy big teeth and smile, his complexion darkened in the rain, that much darker than my own, the reserve in his gait, how he held his back, his tall, handsome, broad shoulders. We were close to dad's stand, and we all knew it. This was before cell phones, when the maps were in your head. Excited, I watched my father approach. It was his buck, I knew it, his first buck, and it was a beaut, and to have gotten it done in his first night out. I had no thought of a third buck just then or of anything else. There were coyotes yipping. But they were a ways off. I heard grandpa’s boots sweeping through the marsh, he was behind my father still, but close, suddenly. He stopped and stood quiet in the dark shaking his head, his bow at his side. I saw he’d nocked an arrow. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. I watched and waited. In my mind I jumped to the part where I could tell my mother the story. Dad, grandpa, and me cozying up at the woodstove in that beat-up shitbox of a trailer where we stayed when we hunted. But that isn’t what happened.

The pines for creeping in quiet and the smell after a rain. The edge of a marsh. A funnel. The drama of the snap of a broken branch…

ometimes hunting I would be at the trailer with uncles and visitors grandfather had invited to come with. I was a natural bowhunter, they would say. Sort of special. Different. Late October, early November weekends, or September scouting and contending with ticks and skeeters and the like but seeing sign, I would be met with their surprise and confusion. Remarks on how I was maybe not yet a part of my father, who was black, and where did I therefore come from? These talks I was long familiar with, silenced by at school and elsewhere, not black enough and not white like my mother. It was enough for me to want to be alone. At the trailer, in the woods, I could be alone, and the talk would seamlessly slip into hunting and technique, secrets of where to find’ em and how to track ’em and how big and wild with bears and

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wolves and the like, and all the adventure. I tolerated it all so long as it ended with me in the woods. Hunting. In nature. Who grandfather was, that this hateful, fearfulness was a part of who he was, and that what he held against my father he did not so much hold against me was a thing I’d known all along. I hadn’t wanted to deal with it was all. I was only fourteen.

randpa tapped the buck’s dead, open eye. Laid his bow across the belly of the buck and bent beside it. Raised its head, stroking its neck. He manhandled the antlers, marveling, counting. “Eight. Nine. Ten. And would you look at these brows,” he said. To my father, that is to my father’s boots, he said, “Now, you don’t have your arrow. Is that right?” I realized what was happening. I stayed beside my father, behind him. What had been for me in other circumstances and at other times, kind and nurturing teaching moments—my grandfather kneeling, explaining to me with depth and admiration and a manly kind of joy how arrows take flight and function, and what mass and speed will do to a deer when hit properly and talking about lung blood, the physics of the bow and arrow recurve, lessons in life and death, how things work—these things were shared now with my father, only the tone was off. The purpose different, I sensed. Grandpa opened the buck right quick, dressing it as if it were his own. “No, you’d remember this one,” he was saying, his face towards the deer. He was up to his elbows in the thing, reaching, pulling. He made the final cut and stripped away everything that had been inside. “Sure it wasn’t smaller?” he said. “Sure you even hit it? Because again, without that arrow,” he said, leaning onto the deer, “a lot of this is, well, speculation.” Dad shot a three-blade, 125 grain broadhead. Grandpa, a heavier two-blade. Had dad missed cleanly and found his arrow, we’d of known. Had his arrow passed through the deer and we found it bloodied with hair and heart, that would have been evidence that this was his buck. Grandpa was right. Without the arrow, there was cause for debate. What was available was inside the cavity. A slit or a triangle at the exit hole. The cavity, as I had been taught, would show what was what, and I tried to peer inside it. But grandpa waved me away. “Nothing to see here.” I suppose I can see how he might have seen things. Maybe he felt outnumbered. I watched the whites of his eyes. His knife. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow,” he said. He stood before me and my father. Muttered about the rain and the blood. “Blood is thicker, sure,” he said. He grasped my shoulder. “But it’s gonna wash out.” Then he said, “Alright, son. Time to get these boys home.” And that has stuck with me till this day.

hen you hunt deer in Wisconsin, hunt deer, period, when you bowhunt, whether with the compound where I’d started and Dad started and finished, or the traditional recurve and longbow, you learn things. You gain an intimacy with nature. Before bud break, before the maples leaf-out and catch sail and while the grounds are still frozen, you hunt for sheds. Where their bedding areas are. Whether to hunt back, further and further back, or to hunt closer to the road, the spots right below the proverbial nose of other hunters. How to dress properly, and keep your heart steady and not sweat. Whether to start in half naked so as to not sweat, and how to service your boots, weather them properly, and bow maintenance, and dampening the metal along the tree stands you carried in. Scent management. Wind checks. Waking up, and checking the wind, and only then saying, okay here’s my plan. The pines for creeping in quiet and the smell after a rain. The edge of a marsh. A funnel. The drama of the snap of a broken branch, knowing “Deer!” A sixer, or an eight, ten-pointer, a spike wary in its approach, staggering through oaks and acorns and the rattling fallen leaves. Savannah. Re-gen. The phases of the moon, and which to follow. All of it I had loved and lived for.

did try and talk with grandpa about it. He couldn’t remember what antlers were what, he was saying. This was on the drive up, in his truck. He’d pulled me from school that morning, spoken to the school principal. He met me at my classroom and simply said, “You ready or what?” One of those crisp fall mornings, peak of the rut, and where the oaks had turned, a cold snap in the forecast, and how could I not be? Another year he said outright he didn’t want to talk about it. He

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adjusted the damper on the woodstove, and marched us out that morning with the chamber too wide open instead of shutting it halfway, the way he’d taught me for such-and-such weather and for x amount of hours left for hunting still. As if to spite him I shot a ten-pointer that afternoon, my fifth. Drug it home to a cold grumpy trailer. The last time I talked to him about it, confronted him about it, I was eighteen and a year away from leaving the state. We were on the porch of the trailer, drinking beers when I asked him whether it could have been dad’s buck that we found, and that maybe what he’d taken didn’t belong to him, and would he even consider the possibility of this. The back of his hand shot right up in front of me. Him eyeing me, that familiar look of where I was wrong. Like what I was saying was wrong. Like who I was, was wrong, like I was some thing before him. But after a moment he calmed himself. The red in his face draining away. He chuckled then. And with a sniff said, “You people are something else. Everybody-owes-me-a-living, more like your dad, I guess,” he said as if to himself. Then held out the beer in hand, gestured, and said, “Or maybe more your mom.”

He had otherwise not been a monster. Or so I often told myself.

he night dad, grandpa, and I went hunting I called my mother. I was pained to find how right grandpa was. She was drinking. Drunk. Repetitive in her speech. The child in me didn’t know what her drinking meant or where it came from, or even if I had to bother with it, really, and I opted not to tell her what had happened. I closed that chapter in my life as a thing that was done and over with. But I kept hunting. I hunted Colorado, Montana, lonely white towns in big lonely white states, chasing elk and hunting mule deer, and between college and work I felt no clue as to when or if I’d return to hunt the flat, near driftless lands of my youth. When dad passed, I came home but not to the trailer. And when grandpa passed I did the same. Had my mother not come to visit me out west I’m not sure if anything would have changed. She was sober then, for that visit, and was about to leave for the airport. She asked me then, and I told her. About dad. About the buck. About grandpa. “You’re upset for something that happened, something that you think happened ten years ago?” “Mom, it’s more than that.” “It is what it is, son. You know your father,” she said. “You know your grandfather.” Ten years had passed since grandpa stole dad’s buck, six years had passed since I’d broken free from grandpa. The four years I’d hunted with him still and knowing full well who he was and what he was capable of, that part was past also. Truth of it was I was beginning to feel like I’d never go back there.

week later my phone rang, a call in the night, so I knew it was my mother. I knew better, but I picked up anyway. “You know, when I was younger, he used to make me walk home from school? And there were these five, or six big ugly farm dogs. Used to terrorize me.” “Mom. It’s late.” “Gave me a stick, your grandfather did. And he told me to deal with it. Anywho, I’m calling to let you know that I’m selling the land. Unless you want it. I’m done with it.” Once, before I was old enough to move away, I had tried for the late season bow, what is sometimes called “second rut,” and listening then to my mother still talking and maybe or maybe not drunk, my mind instinctively knew that this was where we were in the Wisconsin archery season and I began plotting. Late season bow is a cold, harsh season. Lonely, isolated. It was a season I had come to on my own, before leaving the state. A season I used to break free from grandpa. He couldn’t hunt it, he told me. Couldn’t believe I was going out for it. Too cold, he said. The deer were too hard to pattern there, and his shoulders were bothering him. He looked confused, and lost. He asked couldn’t I come up and hunt with him. Like old times. I said nothing, and turned away.

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told my mom I’d let her know soon about the land. I said good-bye and I pulled out my old Bear recurve, and set the bag up in the garage, thinking it through. Timing for the late season was challenging. Luck was always a factor. The right place and the right time. Dead center, shot one, and a clean release. Twelve yards. A second shot at twenty, split the shaft of the first, and I called it good. I knew where I was going.

thought it might end there. Black man, early thirties, bowhunter, loner, resolves to go back to where he came from. Shoots a deer. Drags it out himself, and so on. I pulled into the frozen drive and saw the trailer that I remembered somehow still standing. The haunts from the past. I had been thinking about dad, grandpa, thinking about mom, distracted. I still needed tags, a license. Always grandpa and I had gotten the tags together. This was when you got them from a store, proper. I checked the phone. No service. I had to get my bearings. I had to get the fire started. The tags for buck and or doe I would purchase later. In person. Who was going to say otherwise. I knew it was more than deer and hunting. All through the long flat cold drive through Nebraska, into Wisconsin I had remembered. As always, I was here to not think about things, to get a deer, and to not freeze to death while doing so. I was here as well for my mother. Or wanted to be. I wanted to try to understand. How she and my father had managed as a couple. How she’d tolerated grandpa. How could she not have known all along? She hadn’t sold it, the real estate agent told me. But it was going on the market. And yes I would need to make a decision soon, dude told me. Then he shared with me about my grandpa. Kept me on that phone, telling me how great he was. “Many a fond memory of that man, a tall man,” he was saying. “He ever tell you how we used to go hunting together?” he asked me.

ate season was going to be bad. Historically bad. A cold snap of straight, brutal negative-forty-five degrees. I didn’t know if the deer would go into second rut or not. But move they would have to. For food. Fleeting comfort. Winter kill. Their days of hiding all day in a sit were over. I stockpiled firewood. Fired up the woodburner, put the damper on, proper. Then, searching for phone bars outside in the cold, quiet, I called my mother. “Christ, son,” my mother said, “you’re there already?”

o one lived up there, certainly not after the holidays, and the town proper was eight miles south of the woods. What houses were here were cabins. Hunting shacks. There were no parks or water parks, no industry. Just fifty square miles of sparsely managed wilderness. “Just,” my grandfather and I used to joke. As if this were all just nothing. Most of that first day back I drove the roads, backtracking if they were too snowed in. Whenever I got out I felt the winter sun. The quiet, the beauty of it. None of that had changed. I was driving to where dad, grandpa, and I had met at his truck, the place where everything in my life had still felt possible. I somehow got turned around, went too far south. Turning back towards it I reasoned out loud, there wasn’t anything left there anyway. No deer. No resolution. I was still driving, searching for a new block to hunt, staring at rows of dead big ash trees and trying to figure out my next moves. I needed to purchase those damn tags where that good-for-nothing eye-balling son-of-a-bitch behind the counter maybe still worked. When my mother called me, I pulled over. “The first dog I wacked. Right on its snout. And can you believe it,” my mother said, laughing, “it ran off ?!” After a while she stopped laughing. She asked me if I had caught anything yet. “No,” I said, “I haven’t caught anything.” “You should just sell the place, you know. Be done with it. Or keep it, if you like. I don’t care.” “I have to get my tags, Mom,” I said. “Oh, but what about the other farm dogs, I haven’t told you the rest. Okay, next time.”

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was drinking at the trailer, stoking the fire when I began practicing the speech. I had been working on it. It went like this: I call my mom, wait for her to pick up, hoping for sober. Tell her I’m here for a reason. That it’s different now, or can be different now, now that both grandpa and dad are gone. If you could call me sometime when you aren’t drinking, if you felt like you could do that—without the booze?—I’d appreciate it. I’m hoping you can understand, mom. Where I’m coming from, I would say. But I wasn’t going back out into that cold. Not yet. At night when she was drinking, my mother would call me. Forgetting what we’d talked about and how I preferred it if she didn’t call me while in such a state, only now that I was at the trailer and was much closer to home it was different. And sometimes at night me drinking as well, having braved the damn cold all day and seen nothing, who was I to judge? The cell phone service was weak, inconsistent. Out where I split wood, I could pick up service. A buzz from my chest. “PHONE CALL MISSED!” and “VOICEMAIL!” I would not call her back at night. Nor would I accept her calls too far past noon. In the mornings, driving out, north and west towards the refuge, to scout or if chance permitted to hunt, I would call her. An excuse to thaw out, I’d tell her, if she picked up. Always in the mornings.

ay three I drove over close as I could to the block where dad and grandpa and I had hunted. Here as promised was that negative forty-degree temperature. The road was snowed in something horrible and no tracks. A ditch, I knew, lined the perimeter of the block and the last thing I needed was a tow truck driver eyeing me. Asking me what my business was out there. I parked and got out and walked it. At the edge of the block an elevation began. Just 25 feet. Enough to keep me from seeing what was coming. Where dad had hung his stand, where grandfather had hung his stand. Where I’d stood by, just a kid. There would be no tracks other than my own. I could measure the distance. I was cold, curious. What I found, cresting that hill was a clearcut. Saplings blown down with how many feet of snow. No evidence we’d ever been there, hunted there. As if nothing had happened. For a while I walked back over it, thinking. I turned back. Spotted a line of fresh tracks. My heart jumped but my energy was waning. I cut out for the day. In the truck I took my shelter.

knew why grandpa stole my father’s deer—he both hated and feared my father. But I wanted to know what my mother thought. In the truck I called her. The line on the other end went quiet. Eventually mom said, “I know where you’re going with this. And son, I’m just not going to go down that road with you. Understand?” I didn’t need to call her back to know what she was doing. What I was doing.

he wind shifted that next morning. And there was fresh sign beside the tracks from earlier. Further back I found beds. Steaming beds, dead brown grass in the snow. Chasing tracks. I could smell ’em! I climbed up onto a stand and waited. Not ten minutes later a doe came out. Walking slowly in that terrible cold. Head up, searching, weary, head down. Then another doe. A third one after that. No doe tag, but no one to tell me no tag either. But not if I didn’t have to I wasn’t going to do that. Two hours I sat, waiting for a buck. I was where I needed to be. But I also, desperately, needed to come down and warm up. Finally, shivering, quiet as I could, I got myself off the stand, careful not to fall and lose myself. In the truck I blasted the heat. Thought about the tags. Thought I’d do it later. I called my mother to tell her, yeah maybe I would keep the land, but she didn’t pick up. I changed my socks. Ate a sandwich. Called her again, no response. On my way back to the stand I bumped a devil buck but it didn’t blow out. With a commanding view of all the glory below me I waited. Fresh oily scat, a scrape not far off, and the terrible wind in my face. This was it. The buck that came in was different, wounded. From fighting, maybe, a bad shot during rifle, bow, or muzzle.

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An eight on one side, an awkward branch on the other. I had an hour of light to work with, and was shaking for the cold. For a long a time it hobbled towards me, circling me, curious of the one low long roar I’d laid down for it. It came closer and closer. Its curiosity getting the better of it. It presented broadside, twenty yards, and I saw its mouth, awkwardly open, its eyes bulging, the limp in the hind legs. At ten yards I felt confident in my ability to shoot it in the neck and drop it. Maybe it was sick, the meat spoiled, but I could at least saw the rack off, a skull-mount, why not? In any case, put it out of its misery. Grandpa would have wanted me to do it. It felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t have my tags. It was the only deer I’d had in range. I drew back, slowly coming to anchor, steady, I was saying no to myself. No and just maybe, no, and why not. Then I said it out loud. “No!” Loudly, and to the deer. It stopped in its tracks but even then it didn’t pin me. It didn’t know, didn’t want to see the danger, the man in the tree at full draw. I felt anger and wanted to blast it. But I didn’t. Instead I scared it good. I hollered at it to get the hell away from here. With what strength it had left, it turned, limped away, and was gone.

om had a point. “You know your father. You know your grandfather.” As a kid, I wouldn’t have been deterred from grandpa’s woods had they told me not to go there. My parents had let me go because what choice did they have, and maybe dad had come with that one time to show me the hopelessness of it, I don’t know. They had avoided the talk of it because they were incapable of talking about it. That night I sat in the truck, listening to the wolves closing in. That deer was done for. Soon they’d track it down and kill it. I thought on the next day, another grey and too cold to snow day, thought too on the next season, returning to hunt for its remains. Get my skull-mount that way, legal. There would be other deer, other chances. I’d let the trailer go. Too many memories. Too much to fix. The land was a different thing though. It was a changing thing. I’d keep the land. I’d pay for it and it would be mine. I’d have all of the greater parts of this state, far as I wanted, me and the elements, license in hand, within range. In the truck, the cold outside was piercing my neck and shoulders. One of the wolves let out a good one. I was eager to hear ’em once more. To see one. Mom, I would visit. But I understood that for as long as my mother and I failed to communicate, there would be no getting anywhere with any of this. I would be alone with this. I cut the engine and the lights over that stretch of snow and old grey woods went back to what they’d been before me. I was listening for one more cry, their ghostly howls, and for a long time, instead of driving away, I put the window up, and waited.

Roland Jackson is a writer who makes a living as an urban arborist for the City of Milwaukee. His story, “Martial Artists,” received the 2020 Waasnode Fiction Prize. His work can be found online and in-print in Passages North. He lives, works, and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife and kiddo.

AUTH O R’S N OTE Always my interactions with hunters and while hunting public land have been warm, generous, and supportive. But I also know something about resentment, the human heart, and how otherwise good men can fail. The racism of this particular grandfather is familiar to me. So too is the dismissiveness of feelings shown by both the narrator in the beginning, the grandfather throughout, and the mother in the end: our Midwestern “it is what it is; it could be worse.” It might have been easier had I set the story during rifle season, where folks are sometimes “burning a box” just to get the opener started. Here the phenomenon of whose buck is whose and how things can get lost is more common. A hunter makes a poor shot, the deer runs, wounded, and another hunter shoots the same deer, and claims it belongs to them. It can happen with the bow and arrow, though not as easily. And given how intimate bowhunting already is, it’s a far more sinister and deliberate theft. Black people do hunt, though we’re not often shown doing so. I know for me, and for this narrator, there is something both terrifying and thrilling to walk into a wooded area, armed. People have been murdered for far less. There’s an inherent tension to it all, peaceful as it is. Ten years ago I started writing this story and I have gone through innumerable drafts: drafts centering the father of this story, drafts showing more of the grandfather, drafts focusing on the mother and how she tolerated the grandfather, drafts on the narrator and how he came to be. For now, this is where I’ve come to with it.

SUMMER 2022

Poetry

New Wisconsin Poetry Salvation Hill I never knew why you waxed gravestones. I remember you young with pigtails. Then it started raining in the middle of August And everything that could scream was steaming. The wax melts, and looks like tears. You never got around to the Veterans Cemetery, Salvation Hill. They all died with tears in their eyes Thoughts of home in their heads. (I’m not sure of the jurisdiction Regarding graveyards for patriots, But they probably thought of the same fields You drove past to school every day.) Up on Salvation Hill They don’t need your saving. God’s got to do something, After ignoring you in Catholic school All those years. When heroin attacks your brain The eyes bulge and tear ducts are choked. This leads to watering eyes, but it’s not crying. That’s an important distinction. I’ll go down to my firepit, Melt a dozen yankee candles, (Vanilla, something universal, Your preferences have been Evading me, and even your face Has left me it seems.) Paint the tears you were cheated of, After every summer rain.

Pete Koz

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Poetry

German Hatchback In the sediment, years of beaten red granite, submissive to current The broken headlight lies. (The old woman, down off Highway 164, could tell you It comes from a 20th-century German hatchback. Not that it matters much.) Ten feet under water, the wires Have long forgotten what to do with a DC current And a crayfish has overwintered next to the filament, A carcinogen according to California Mill Creek. The memory of the namesake died With the grandfather of that girl you have eyes for Who drinks too little and never says enough. The children swimming here Know this is the place their fourth grade teacher Flipped her car and drowned. (She opted for the creek, over the oak tree. She always loved water, And had fond memories of her youth, Catching dragonflies.) It wasn’t Chappaquiddick, But there are guardrails now. The children swimming here Don’t know what a mill is. They like their Wonderbread With twice as much jam as peanut butter, And the crust cut off.

Pete Koz

Pete Koz is a poet from small town Wisconsin. He spends his time toeing a happy medium with the northwoods. His work has previously been published in Midwest Review and Oracle Bone.

SUMMER 2022

Poetry

The Coyote Killers Howl something you want heard, guaranteed you’ll be hunted. Howl something sweet and it won’t matter either. Someone will start a murder club built for your friends, holding contests for the most killed. They’ll shoot, yell, smoke you out of your own company, take a sharp right when they could’ve made a left turn, leaving the cold meats of a movement quelling in the sun. Gunned-up hides, dogs barking backward. Our growls only get more bountiful from here, honey. A gust through a forest of lowered eternities. When a baby comes, they’re born on behalf of the lost.

Nikki Wallschlaeger

Poetry (October 2019)

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Poetry

Rogue Corn My fav event as harvest season approaches is the rough seed that escaped the plots. If there’s a cornfield adjacent to another bed of vegetables, you can count on imperfection, you can see stalks standing where they’re not supposed to be, the winds have ideas, seeds who choose wildness, here they are, with red potatoes, alfalfa, peas, sunflowers, they look pleased w/ themselves, outfoxing clever farmers, making it to the unplanned ground where nobody is around, recovering where the amiable dirt will welcome them. Seeds are so fun and determined, there’s no concept of liberty, no need for it, guaranteed if I were a seedling I’d abstain, you know I would, I’d find a way to renounce what’s expected of my common name, gliding over the roads until a dream takes root

Nikki Wallschlaeger

Poetry (October 2020)

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work has appreared in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, and Poetry. She is the author of the poetry collections, Houses, Crawlspace, and Waterbaby; a graphic book, I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel; and an artist book, Operation USA, acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. She was recently a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and lives in the Driftless.

SUMMER 2022

Book Review

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz Grove Press, 208 pages, $17.00 Reviewed by Bella Bravo

In her debut story collection Milk Blood Heat, Dantiel W. Moniz handles the concept of human connection as if it were a jewel, inspecting its every facet, glint, and shadow. Milk, blood, and heat are all conduits by which we share a part of ourselves with others. Moniz’s characters share parts of themselves through subtext, and the emotional undercurrents of these eleven stories are as resonant and complex as her prose. Moniz was selected as a 2021 “5 Under 35 Honoree” by the National Book Foundation, and has received a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship, and the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction. A graduate of UW–Madison’s Creative Writing Program, she is now an Assistant Professor there. Though she worked on several of the stories in Milk Blood Heat during her time in the MFA program, the collection is largely set in Moniz’s hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, where environments teem with life: tadpoles, water moccasins, brilliant sunsets. Moniz often marks these settings with the unnatural as well: “crickets whirring in the grass, the highway’s white noise.” In her stories the boundaries are murky, nothing is pure. An aquarium, an artificial natural environment, plays a key role in two of the stories, and in “Necessary Bodies,” a fountain with water dyed blue symbolizes the unease a recently pregnant woman feels as she considers whether to keep the baby. The title story features two adolescent girls—one black, one white—who bond as blood sisters. A retention pond behind one girl’s backyard becomes their shared refuge from rules, the neglect and surveillance of parents, and an unspoken trauma. The small body of water embodies the girls’ grasps at agency, “a place where they—two monsterish girls—had owned the entire world.” Like Lauren Groff in Florida and Danielle Evans in The Office of Historical Corrections, Moniz foregoes conventional linkages

for a story collection such as recurring characters or plot events. Instead, the world of Milk Blood Heat is densely interwoven on the macro level of theme and the micro level of image. A motif or metaphor in one story will reappear in another, twisting through the stories like a snake in St. Augustine grass. In “Milk Blood Heat,” the protagonist describes her friend’s mom in mourning: “her mother’s whole body seemed concave, as if consuming itself.” This simile resurfaces at the end of “Feast” in a visit to an aquarium, where the protagonist goes to escape her day-to-day life—depression unrelenting in the eight months since her miscarriage. In a corner of the tank, she finds an octopus eating its own damaged limb. The act may seem self-destructive and irrational, but she instinctively recognizes the healing, “a truth behind it, muscled and gleaming.” With images like these, Moniz plays within the literary traditions of fabulism and Southern Gothic, but her deft, jewel-like stories flash with a singular, haunting style all her own.

Bella Bravo earned their MFA in fiction at the UW–Madison. They live in Seattle and are at work on their first novel.

Read additional reviews of new and interesting books by Wisconsin authors at wisconsinacademy.org/reviews.

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Book Review

Brood by Jacki Polzin Doubleday, 240 pages, $24.00 Reviewed by Marja Mills

The narrator of Jackie Polzin’s memorable first novel, Brood, pays exquisite attention to the seemingly ordinary world around her. Her husband, an academic, builds a chicken coop behind their home in a deteriorating neighborhood of North Minneapolis. She examines the shades of red in the combs of two of their four backyard chickens. “Gloria’s comb is the exact powdered red of a fresh stick of gum, whereas Darkness’s comb has the waxy pallor of a plastic toy left too long in the sun.” Over the course of a year, the unnamed narrator tries to protect Gloria, Darkness, and the couple’s two other hens—Gam Gam and Miss Hennepin County—from frigid winter nights and hot summer days, from a watchful hawk and a tornado, from disease and from her own incomplete knowledge of how to care for chickens (at one point she discovers she has been giving her brood a diet of grains that is the equivalent of feeding them way too many Twinkies). “Life is the ongoing effort to live,” she says. “Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not. Chickens die suddenly and without explanation.” The narrator, who has suffered infertility and a recent miscarriage, cleans houses for a friend who sells real estate and, often alone, struggles with the loss and the likelihood that the family life she envisioned no longer is possible. “I had hoped to outweigh the risks of pregnancy at my age with sheer desire…All would be well because I wanted it completely.” This is a slender book, spare but by no means slight. Brood, with a perfect title of multiple meanings, is a quiet, powerful reflection on life and death, loss and grief, and the truths to be found in the quotidian. Polzin, a native of Black River Falls, infuses the novel with originality and wry, often dark, humor. We come to feel how fleeting and fragile it all is, even as the day-to-day plods along, familiar and seemingly mundane. For much of this story, which is told in vignettes that aren’t always chronological, the narrator and her husband, Percy, are waiting to see if the prestigious

California college at which he interviewed will hire him. If so, and they move there, will her mother take in the chickens they’ve managed to keep alive? The narrators’ mother is a flinty former home economics teacher who is obsessed with not buying anything she can make herself. The result is a refrigerator that is “always almost bare, whereas the freezer overflows with a historic record of near-spoil.” The idea beats the practice of it. “Like any of Percy’s theoretical models—he cites my mother as proof of voluntary simplicity—it is a lovely lofty idea that shatters completely upon contact with the real world.” The narrator is alert to those ironies. She sees it in her job mopping kitchen floors and wiping down bathrooms. Dust is inevitable, she knows. Its absence is not. “We think of cleanliness as a return to order,” the narrator observes, “when, in fact, it is a new and momentary order.”

Marja Mills was a reporter and feature writer for the Chicago Tribune, where she was a member of the staff that won a Pulitzer Prize for a series about O’Hare Airport. Born and raised in Madison, she graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She lives in Black River Falls with family. Her memoir, The Mockingbird Next Door, was a New York Times bestseller.

SUMMER 2022

Book Review

The Geography of Wisconsin by John A. Cross and Kazimierz J. Zaniewski University of Wisconsin Press, 472 pages, $39.95 Reviewed by Rudy Molinek

More than two billion years of Earth history, and thousands of years of human history, have shaped the physical landscape in Wisconsin and, in turn, influence how we live with the land. In The Geography of Wisconsin, written by John A. Cross and illustrated by Kazimierz J. Zaniewski, readers are taken through the vast physical and cultural landscapes of the state in detail, with a generous complement of photographs and data-rich maps. Some who are unfamiliar with the region assume that the Midwest is one big, flat cornfield. In their first several chapters, Cross and Zaniewski dispel this notion, giving an overview of Wisconsin’s geology and physical landscape. Geologically speaking, the landscape here is one of the most varied in the country. As the authors point out, “The first views of Wisconsin’s physical landscape that a traveler sees when approaching the state vary tremendously, depending upon one’s location.” Quite right: just contrast the rugged, rocky outcrops near Lake Superior with the undulating glacial landscape in the state’s southeast. These landforms shape patterns of vegetation, soil, and climate across the state, which together set the stage for our human stories. Cross and Zaniewski then turn their attention to these stories and the historical record of the state’s settlement, from early fur trading and mining to forestry and logging, and then to farming and dairying, asserting that “One cannot understand the contemporary landscape without considering an area’s historical geography, given that so much of what we see is a legacy of the past.” With the historical scene thus set, the authors move on to contemporary human geography. Agriculture, transportation, industry, urbanization, tourism, and demographics all combine to form our experience of the state, and each get a dedicated chapter in the book. Through this treatment, it becomes clear just how much livelihoods in Wisconsin have changed over the last 200 years, shifting from predominantly extractive industries, agriculture, and manufacturing to tourism and the modern information economy. Interspersed throughout the book are stories of local Indigenous nations both historical and contemporary. We learn about the

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origins of the state’s numerous effigy mounds, the importance of the Menominee Nation’s forestry, and the restoration of the Badger Ordnance Works involving the Ho-Chunk nation, and more. Nonetheless, The Geography of Wisconsin would have benefitted from more thorough and dedicated attention to Wisconsin’s original inhabitants, who played a critical role in shaping much of the landscape before the arrival of the first Europeans and who have since continued to be a vital force in the region. While The Geography of Wisconsin might present itself as a textbook (and it certainly succeeds in filling that role), it also serves as a useful reference volume for any bookshelf in Wisconsin. Wisconsin, like everywhere else, is facing a time of change. Climatic, political, and economic patterns are all in flux. Given the uncertainty of our present moment, looking back at the physical and cultural context of the state can help not only reveal the contemporary landscape, but also help determine the direction of the future. The Geography of Wisconsin is an elegant starting point for that endeavor.

Rudy Molinek is a PhD student in geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When not researching the ancient ice sheets that once swept across the upper Midwest, he’s also a writer and host of the podcast Under Our Feet, where he explores stories of the inextricable links between humans and the earth in Wisconsin.

Book Review

Once Upon a Tar Creek: Mining for Voices by Maryann Hurtt Turning Plow Press, 143 pages, $24.00 Reviewed by Sylvia Cavanaugh

Wisconsin poet Maryann Hurtt’s groundbreaking new book, Once Upon a Tar Creek: Mining for Voices, gives poetic voice to hard truths about Oklahoma’s Tar Creek environmental disaster, truths researched and supported with historical documents and interviews. Lead and zinc mining companies that leased land owned by the Quapaw Tribe in Tar Creek left behind heavily contaminated mining waste from which metals leached into the soil, groundwater, ponds, and lakes. Elevated lead, zinc, and manganese levels in area residents resulted in learning disabilities and serious health problems, including high rates of miscarriage and neurological damage to children. The Environmental Protection Agency declared Tar Creek one of the most toxic areas in the United States. Hurtt’s concise poems address a disaster so massive it is hard to grasp. Once Upon a Tar Creek: Mining for Voices marries poetry to historical research, laying bare the process such that readers feel the tragedy of Tar Creek seeping into their pores. The intimacy of this plainspoken poetry provides a quiet way in, while the heft of her historical sources adds gravity and authenticity. I was surprised to discover how many personalities from American history have wandered across this corner of Oklahoma. The speaker of “Military Road,” remembers “Quantrill, bushwackers / jayhawkers, miners / rebel boys, yankee boys / exiled Indians / looking for safety / revenge / maybe just home / some kind of rest.” Hearing the voice of Bonnie Parker recounting the shootout in Commerce, Oklahoma (in “What Rhymes with Poet”), and that of Pretty Boy Floyd (in “Country Boy Meets the Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills”), it is easy to conclude that there was a darkness lingering in this patch of earth. All great stories contain elements of ambiguity, and the ambiguity of our national story shines in the poem “Me Clark, Son of William Clark,” about the Nez Perce son of the explorer, William Clark. William Clark is foundational to the American story, but not his son, whose people were exiled to the Quapaw Agency. His story “will stick in your craw / set you thinking / right and wrong / how nobody wins / and we are all prisoners of war / when we do to the least of us.” Similarly, the poem, “Incompetent Restricted Quapaw Indian about 50 Years Old,” refers to the practice of having Indians who had title to mineral-rich land declared insane. Even the rocks speak in this remarkable book, as in “An Orange Rock in an Orange Creek.” This poem is but one example of Hurtt’s ability

to tell a big story through a chorus of small voices, even those of rocks and pebbles. Hurtt invites us to venture into this story, to seek a path to healing. Once Upon a Tar Creek: Mining for Voices weaves in and out of what is upstream and what is downstream. The collection concludes with “Old Man at the Quapaw Pow Wow,” who dances “loose and light,” tapping the dirt, the earth. someday the earth will let us go than scudding leaves free-falling clouds maybe fox arteries in the end we become what we love the echo still sings

The poems in this book, linked as they are with historical documents, dig deeply into this tragic, yet captivating, subject. The voices of Once Upon a Tar Creek: Mining for Voices echoed in my heart long after I closed the book, resonating with the knowledge that we all are, indeed, both upstream and downstream.

Sylvia Cavanaugh has an M.S. in Urban Planning and is a National History Day teacher. She and her students are involved in the Sheboygan chapter of 100,000 Poets for Change. She is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual and English language editor for Poetry Hall: A Chinese and English Bilingual Journal. She has published three chapbooks and serves on the board of the Council for Wisconsin Writers.

SUMMER 2022

Climate & Energy Spotlight

PROTECTING TRIBAL LAND, PRESERVING NATURAL RESOURCES BY G RANT M CG I N N IS

Courtesy of the National Indian Carbon Coalition

Climate change is real. That’s not news to elders in Wisconsin’s Native American communities. They see it, they feel it, and they are taking action to deal with it. “Our elders have watched climate change on their tribal lands from when they were young. They have seen the landscape change over their lifetimes,” says Bryan Van Stippen, Program Director for the National Indian Carbon Coalition (NICC). “We can’t go into the forests and find traditional plants and medicines because they are no longer growing in those regions. We need to do something about that.” Based in Minnesota, NICC is an initiative of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF) that provides education, training, and technical assistance to American Indian tribes on the development of carbon credit and renewable energy projects on tribal land. A member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, Van Stippen previously served for seven years as Tribal Attorney for the Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Justice where he was responsible for land acquisition and other land-related issues. Many tribes across Indian Country are actively engaged in the development of carbon projects. NICC’s role is to serve as a trusted advisor to tribes to ensure that they can achieve their goals in the most efficient way possible. “Tribes are actively trying to address climate change with the management practices they are imple-

menting on their lands,” said Van Stippen. “By using the revenue from these carbon sequestration projects, they’ll be able to mitigate some of that change that’s going to happen to their land over the next 15 to 20 years.” In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community is protecting 12,500 acres of tribal forestland by developing a carbon project that is being implemented under the American Carbon Registry’s Improved Forest Management Methodology, which quantifies greenhouse gas emission reductions that exceed current management practices. In Northern Minnesota, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is doing the same with 8,200 acres of tribal forestland. NICC is partnering with socially-responsible organizations who purchase carbon credits on the voluntary market, and Van Stippen is currently working on similar projects with Wisconsin tribes. When carbon projects first appeared in tribal communities there was a great deal of skepticism. Some early projects failed to live up to the promises made by non-Indian project developers who did not have the best interests of tribes in mind. When Van Stippen first approached tribal leaders about these new opportunities, many were wary and some were hostile. That type of resistance shifted when the National Indian Carbon Coalition changed how it framed the opportunity. “Using technical terms and talking about greenhouse gas emissions and carbon offsets and carbon credit creation is just confusing to people,” Van Stippen said. “We focus on communicating in terms that matter to tribal communities—protecting the land, preserving important natural resources for future generations and achieving financial prosperity for tribes today. That message has really resonated. Tribes know they need to take action and we are helping them do that in an environmentally and socially responsible way.” To learn more about the work of the National Indian Carbon Coalition, visit their website at indiancarbon.org.

Grant McGinnis is the Director of Communications at the Indian Land Tenure Foundation (iltf.org), a national, community-based organization serving American Indian Nations and people in the recovery and control of their rightful homelands. Originally from Canada, McGinnis now lives and works in Minneapolis. 64

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Wisconsin People & Ideas – Summer 2022

Articles inside

REALITIES AND SILVER LININGS:COVID-19 TWO YEARS ON

Protecting Tribal Land, Preserving Natural Resources

Once Upon a Tar Creek by Maryann Hurtt

Brood by Jackie Polzin

Hunting, Late Season, Bow

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

A Conversation with Kyoung Ae Cho

The Geography of Wisconsin by

New Poems from Wisconsin Poets

From the Director

Farm and Table: Bringing People Together One Burger At A Time