Wisconsin People & Ideas – Fall 2013

wisc

people & ideas

nsin the magazine of the wisconsin academy of sciences, arts and letters

Signs of Life in the Dead Zone Tracy Valenta from NEW Water and a team of Wisconsin researchers work to address the oxygen-poor dead zone growing in the waters of Green Bay

Inhabited Landscapes

Seven artists reimagine the Wisconsin landscape at a pioneering James Watrous Gallery exhibition

$5.00 Vol. 59, No. 3

Fall 2013

Mean Enough To...

Colorful folk descriptions of the meanies that walk among us, courtesy of the Dictionary of American Regional English

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Contents

fall 2013 FEATURES 4 FROM THE DIRECTOR At the Intersection

6 EDitor’s NOTES What We Talk About When We Talk About the Arts

Wisconsin People & Ideas (ISSN 1558-9633) is published quarterly by the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters and is distributed free of charge to Wisconsin Academy members. For information about joining the Wisconsin Academy to receive this magazine, visit wisconsinacademy.org/join.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Copyright © 2013 by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters. All rights reserved. Postage is paid at Madison. Postmaster: Send address changes to mailing address below.

Wisconsin People & Ideas Jason A. Smith, editor Jody Clowes, arts editor Meg Domroese, science editor Jean Lang, copy editor Augusta Scescke, editorial assistant Designed by Huston Design, Madison Cover photo: Tracy Valenta, NEW Water Photo by Eric Miller/UW–Green Bay

Jane Elder, executive director Randall Berndt, James Watrous Gallery Jody Clowes, exhibitions manager, James Watrous Gallery Meg Domroese, Initiatives Program director Aaron Fai, project coordinator Martha Glowacki, director, James Watrous Gallery Don Meyer, business operations manager Amanda E. Shilling, development director Jason A. Smith, director of communications and editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas Stephanie Smith, development and program associate administrative offices/steenbock gallery 1922 university ave. | madison, WI 53726 tel. 608-263-1692 www.wisconsinacademy.org

7 Upfront 7 Unexpected collaborations support the Wisconsin Poet Laureate 8 Wisconsin Life prepares for its television debut 9 Can plants carry the prions that cause chronic wasting disease?

10 A new nonprofit brings basic legal services to small family farms 12 FEllows Forum Wisconsin Academy Fellow and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird shares a moving salute to Wisconsin veterans.

16 REPORT Erik Ness reports from the front line of the battle against a growing, hypoxic dead zone threatening aquatic life in the waters of Green Bay.

22 PHOTO ESSAY What can a deer blind tell us about family and legacy? Jason Vaughn shares images from new photography series, hide.

30 ESSAY Drawing on Dictionary of American Regional English fieldwork, Roland Berns finds the best words to describe the worst people.

34 GALLERIA Randall Berndt provides a guided tour of the James Watrous Gallery’s Inhabited Landscapes exhibition and introduces us to seven Wisconsin artists whose work imbues the natural world with meaning.

Image credit: Eric Miller/UW–Green Bay

The Steenbock Center, offices of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

ABOVE: On board the Bay Guardian, UW–Green Bay scientist Kevin Fermanich (left) and NEW Water’s Tracy Valenta (right) are leading the fight against phosphorus pollution in the waters of Green Bay. Phosphorus pollution is contributing to a dead zone that can at times cover up to 40% of the bay, from about eight miles northeast of the City of Green Bay and stretching thirty miles toward Lake Michigan. See page 16 for more on the dead zone.

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Contents

fall 2013 READ WISCONSIN 44 READ WISCONSIN

Get to know the lead judges for our 2014 fiction and poetry contests: author Susanna Daniel and Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland.

45 Local Bookshop Spotlight

Nancy Rafal checks in on her local neighborhood bookshop, Novel Ideas, in Baileys Harbor.

Our gallery, the James Watrous Gallery in Overture Center for the Arts, Madison

46 FIctiON Our second-place 2013 fiction contest prizewinning story, Fallen Magi,

by Rudy Koshar The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

47 Book Reviews 47 Susan Day reviews Sea Creatures, by Susanna Daniel 49 Terri Schlichenmeyer reviews Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love

Officers of the Council President: Millard Susman President-elect: Thomas Pleger Treasurer: Howard Marklein Secretary: James W. Perry Vice President of Sciences: Richard Burgess Vice President of Arts: Marianne Lubar Vice President of Letters: Linda Ware

and Tragedy at the Circus, by Dean Jensen

51 Linda Aschbrenner reviews Whale of Stars, by Michael Kriesel 53 NEW & REcent Releases Selected titles by Wisconsin authors

Statewide Councilors-at-Large Les Alldritt, Washburn John Ashley, Sauk City Mark Bradley, Wausau Patricia Brady, Madison Joseph Heim, La Crosse Jesse Ishikawa, Madison Tim Riley, La Crosse Tim Size, Sauk City Marty Wood, Eau Claire

54 Poetry

Honorable mention poems from our 2013 poetry contest

Photo courtesy of the author

Officers of the Academy Foundation President: Jack Kussmaul Vice President: Andrew Richards Treasurer: Howard Marklein Secretary: David J. Ward Founder: Ira Baldwin

ABOVE: Our 2014 fiction contest lead judge is Susanna Daniel, author of Stiltsville (2010) and Sea Creatures (2013). Daniel also runs (along with author Michelle Wildgen) Madison Writer’s Studio, which hosts intimate, high-quality writing classes for local writers. We review Daniel’s critically acclaimed Sea Creatures on page 47.

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Foundation Directors Marian Bolz Greg Dombrowski Jane Elder Terry Haller Douglas J. Hoerr Millard Susman

Contents

NEWS for MEMBERS Mark your calendars! Wisconsin Academy members are invited to join us on December 18th from 4–6:00 pm for an open house at our Madison office, 1922 University Avenue. Celebrate the holidays with staff, Fellows, Councilors, and other members like you. To attend, register online at wisconsinacademy. org/openhouse or call 608-263-1692.

Don’t miss the opportunity to try our WASAL wassail (our own hot cider)!

Looking for the perfect holiday gift?

Share the gift of membership in the Wisconsin Academy for only $30.

Your gift, which includes a year of Wisconsin People & Ideas, is perfect for friends, family, and colleagues— anyone who loves Wisconsin. E-mail members@wisconsinacademy.org to purchase a gift membership or call Stephanie Smith at 608-263-1692 ext.

14 To stay connected in between issues, visit us at wisconsinacademy. org and become our Facebook friend at facebook.com/wisconsinacademy.

Sign up for our e-mail updates at wisconsinacademy.org/signup.

The Wisconsin Academy thanks the following institutional members for their continued support: Carroll University UW Colleges UW–Baraboo/Sauk County UW–Barron County UW–Eau Claire UW–Fond du Lac UW–Fox Valley UW–Madison UW–Manitowoc UW–Marathon County UW–Marinette UW–Marshfield/Wood County UW–Milwaukee UW–Richland UW–Rock County UW–Sheboygan UW–Washington County UW–Waukesha

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Linda Aschbrenner is a poet and editor/publisher of Marsh River Editions. She created and published for eleven years the poetry journal Free Verse, which now continues as Verse Wisconsin with editors Wendy Vardaman and Sarah Busse. Aschbrenner is working on a family memoir in poetry and prose with her two sisters.

Randall Berndt is an assistant curator at the James Watrous Gallery.

He received an MFA in painting from UW–Madison in 1969 and has pursued the life of the artist ever since. Some career highlights include a 1996 Wisconsin Arts Board Visual Arts Fellowship and participation in the Madison Art Center’s 1987 Triennial Exhibition.

Kate Bausch’s artwork ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime.

When she isn’t creating her “Creepers”—odd, black and white crotchety characters—she is busy painting colorful, expressionistic trees or writing sacred, religious icons. Bausch lives in Darlington with her husband, John, and their orange tabby, Ernie. To see more of Bausch’s work, visit katebausch.net.

Roland Berns is the science editor at the Dictionary of American Regional English, where he has worked since 1987. (He says that among the editors he is the new guy.) His article on DARE’s natural science entries, “Colloquial Science,” appeared in Wisconsin People & Ideas, Fall, 2006, as the first in our series “The Public Scholar.”

Susan Day started as communications coordinator at the UW– Madison Arboretum in July, 2013, after over six years as editor at the Chazen Museum of Art. She has nearly twenty years publishing and communications experience that includes editing, design, illustrated print and website project management, marketing, and social media.

Erik Ness has been writing about science, health, and the environment for more than two decades for publications as diverse as Discover, OnEarth, Prevention, and The Progressive. He lives in Madison.

Terri Schlichenmeyer, better known as The Bookworm, has been reading since she was three years old and she never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 14,000 books.

Ron Seely joined the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism as a part-time reporter, editor, and student mentor after nearly 35 years at the Wisconsin State Journal. Seely is also a senior lecturer on the faculty of the Life Sciences Communication Department at UW–Madison, where he has taught science writing for 20 years. A three-time winner of the Wisconsin Press Association’s award for environmental reporting, Seely has won numerous awards for his newspaper work.

Jason Vaughn is a fine art documentary photographer who focuses on Middle America, showcasing everyday people and scenes suggestive of melancholy and permanence. His process includes cross-country road trips, which often find him sleeping in his car, losing himself on service roads, and exploring the corners of the Midwest. Photographs from his series hide were recently shown at the MMoCA Triennial exhibition. See more of his work at jasonvaughnart.com.

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F R O M T H E D I R E C TO R

At the Intersection JANE ELDER WISCONSIN ACADEMY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR I’m pleased to share with readers news that the Wisconsin Academy recently completed a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Now, I know that strategic planning is one of those phrases that can put people to sleep or induce the flight response. But a thoughtful process really can help an organization better pursue its mission—and make the tough choices about where resources will have the greatest impact.

When our founders got together in 1870, they saw the Academy’s mission as “the gathering, sharing, and acting upon knowledge in the sciences, arts, and letters for the benefit of the people of Wisconsin.” While the Academy continues this good work more than 143 years later, we have freshened the mission statement to reflect the organization as it is today: The Wisconsin Academy brings people together at the intersection of the sciences, arts, and letters to inspire discovery, illuminate creative work, and foster civil dialogue on important issues. In this way, we connect Wisconsin people and ideas for a better world.

A key word in this statement is intersection. In a world where so much information is micro-targeted and where fields have sub-sub-specialties, it is easy to lose sight of connections. Unexpected insights often appear only when disciplines and fields mix and mingle, when ideas collide and new connections are made. These connections are at the heart of narrative, and intersections are where raw information transforms from data into meaning.

In many ways the ampersand—the “&” part of “Sciences, Arts & Letters”—is emblematic of our renewed mission. There are myriad scientific associations, organizations presenting and advocating for the arts, as well as literature and poetry groups both professional and amateur. But an organization dedicated to exploring the intersections between these entities is entirely unique.

I had the pleasure of hearing Beloit College president Scott Bierman address the families of incoming freshmen students this last August. In Bierman’s address, he asked how does one take the elements of “a liberal arts education—reasoning with evidence; communicating clearly, compellingly, persuasively; synthesizing creatively; taking risks intelligently and confidently; finding humor and substance in all that is worthy of your time—and bring them to life, animate them, give them meaning, explore their power, and appreciate their nuances?”

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It’s a question that is central to living our own lives, and living with others. And I like to think our work at the Wisconsin Academy is very much about bringing ideas to life by imbuing them with meaning and power. The Academy’s multi-disciplinary roots are planted in the fertile soil of the liberal arts. As such, it isn’t surprising that the guiding values that emerged from our strategic plan revolve around critical thinking, curiosity, excellence, aesthetic quality, and inclusive community engagement.

Indeed, certain phrases from our planning sessions stick in my mind. In response to the question of measuring the success of our work over the course of ten years—or even twenty-five years—a staff member responded that “we will have helped articulate the value of creative work as an antidote to ugliness and indifference.” A long-time member of our Council (essentially, our Board of Directors), noted that Academy programs will be seen as ways to address “the defeatism that shrouds the discussion of climate change, politics, and other complex topics that crowd today’s popular discourse.”

Through these conversations we eventually distilled a statement of how we want to serve Wisconsin: As a resource for informed and engaged citizens who appreciate the value of discovery and learning. Our work is designed to foster a rich and lively creative culture that enhances our quality of life so that Wisconsin is thriving and resilient, economically, socially, and environmentally.

It seems like a lot to do. But, we are also heeding the succinct and practical advice of one of our seasoned Council members: “We must chose, and move on.”

And, we are doing so.

Our programs, including this magazine, will relentlessly seek out the intersections that spark creativity and foster resilience. We know an organization with a 143-year legacy can’t be all things to all people. But after examining our strengths—a brilliant staff, captivating programs, and an engaged and thoughtful community of participants—we’re expanding our commitment to making not only Wisconsin, but the world, a better place.

Questions or comments? E-mail jelder@wisconsinacademy.org

Do you want to be better informed about—and more engaged in shaping—

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the issues of our times

discovery, learning, and critical thinking?

through civil discussion?

Wiissccoon nssiin n Soo ddoo W S M y M e y e mbbeerrss!! m m m e e d d a a c c A A Since 1870, the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy has brought people together at the intersection of the sciences, arts, and letters to inspire discovery, illuminate creative work, and foster civil dialogue on important issues. We’re a membership organization open to any and every one interested in fostering a more creative and resilient Wisconsin.

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EDIt TO or R ’ sS N NOTES otes

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Arts Jason A. smith Editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas “Now ... I should note that the point of the arts is obviously not to create economic impact or jobs; the point is to help us communicate in new ways about what it is like to be human, the good, the painful, the ugly, and the sublime. But isn’t it great to know that the arts are also a robust industry that helps fuel America’s economy and sustain U.S. jobs?”

—Robert L. Lynch, President, Americans for the Arts

Lately when I get together with friends and colleagues who work in the arts—or, as some people say, the “arts industry”—I hear a whole lot about the ways in which the arts can drive local economies, build tourism revenue, and add value and vibrancy to communities.

Certainly revenue is one way of measuring growth and overall success of an industry. And while every industry needs a lingua franca with which it can describe and justify its work, by repeatedly invoking the arts as an engine for economic growth, we seem to be placing unrealistic demands upon the arts and the people who create and share them with the public. Even worse, by broadcasting this “engine” narrative, we’re inculcating an expectation of economic return—good jobs, higher property values, increased tourism—on public arts funding.

Now, I’m sure my arts advocate and administrator friends will say, Whoa, there. Economic impact is a very useful tool for justifying funding for the arts. I absolutely agree. However, if economic impact is but a singular note in a whole symphony of justification for the arts, why do I keep hearing only that one note again and again?

While a loud and crowded media landscape, sagging U.S. economy, and pitched battle for dwindling state and federal dollars have made this engine narrative all too attractive, it wasn’t always what we talked about when we talked about the arts.

This narrative linking arts to economic development seems to have coalesced around the time Richard Florida released his 2002 manifesto, The Rise of the Creative Class. In it, Florida describes his take on the transformative power of art (hint: it’s not the kind of transformation artists usually talk about). Establish a colony of bohemian-types who are fully engaged in the creative process, writes Florida, and culturally bereft areas will transform into safe and beautiful zones for commerce.

Now, it’s important to note that Florida is an economist and sociologist. In his theory of a socioeconomic “creative class,” the artist is interchangeable with the computer programmer. That is to say, their contributions to the creative community have equivalent transformative capacity. Still, the arts community embraced Florida’s ideas and began to transform their own communities through creative work. A deluge of studies examining “The Economic Impact of the Arts” soon followed.

By the mid-2000s Florida’s seminal work had spawned a new industry of authors and lecturers like Sir Ken Robinson and Jonah Lehrer whose breathless observations on the power of creativity were in demand across classroom and boardroom alike. Through stories of artistic inspiration and scientific 6

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discovery, these creativity gurus (as well as TED Talks and the ubiquitous phenomenon known as the Creativity Summit), told us how creativity is the seed from which the highest forms of artistic expression and scientific innovation grow and bear fruit.

However, in telling (and re-tweeting) these stories, we began to shift the cultural conversation about art from one of expression to one of production. The arts community, for whom the reasons for pursuing and funding the arts are self-evident, soon adopted this narrative as shibboleth without stopping to consider that the business world didn’t care as much for creativity (seeds) as for what creativity could produce (fruits).

By 2009, the economic narrative was so pervasive that we received with little surprise the news that the arts were going to save America from the recession. In an interview for the New York Times, incoming National Endowment for the Arts chairman Rocco Landesman channeled the transformative power of Florida’s creative class, saying that “when you bring artists into a town, it changes the character, attracts economic development, makes it more attractive to live in and renews the economics of that town.”

Landesman was not wrong. The arts industry annually generates over a $130 billion of economic activity and supports more than four million full-time jobs, according to Americans for the Arts. But you could easily replace “artists/art” with “a biotech firm” in his statement and that wouldn’t be wrong, either.

That’s because Landesman is talking about the fiscal fruits of creativity rather than the fruits for which lovers of art hunger: personal expression, sensual elevation, a glimpse of the sublime.

And by repeatedly conflating the fiscal and the sensual, we relegate the arts to a portfolio of community investment, where they become just another commodity to be acquired or shed according to potential for profit or loss.

Now, I realize that there isn’t always enough time, characters, or column inches to explain all the ways in which the arts transport us to other realms of understanding or help us find beauty in a world that can be indifferent and at times downright ugly.

But it is up to the arts community to reclaim our narrative of justification, our raison d’être. If not now, we’ll be asked to do it later when the public demands answers for why chamber music or yarn bombing or spoken-word poetry hasn’t yet saved the national economy.

Questions or comments? E-mail jsmith@wisconsinacademy.org

UPFRONT

From Blindside to Broadside Collaborations yield unexpected support for the Wisconsin Poet Laureate It took about fifteen passes through a Chandler and Price 10x15 Old Style press before Daniel Goscha realized that something was wrong. Small sections of hand-set type—14 point Bodoni to be exact—weren’t printing, making Max Garland’s poem almost unreadable.

Goscha knew it wasn’t the antique press, which had been a fixture at his Mill Paper and Book Arts Center in Rhinelander since it opened in 2012. Perhaps it was the paper. Peppered with barely legible letters and numbers, it was hand made by The Mill’s resident paper maker, Debra Jircik, and artists-inresidence Drew Matott and Margaret Mahan. They’d pulped a bunch of recycled junk mail for this special broadside in homage to Garland’s years working as a mail carrier before becoming a poet, and, eventually, Wisconsin’s Poet Laureate.

Goscha and poet Brent Goodman came up with the idea for the broadside while brainstorming about low-cost ways to support the poet laureate program. Goscha said he could volunteer paper resources and staff time to create a handmade, letterpressed broadside to celebrate Garland’s term as Wisconsin Poet Laureate; Goodman (who is on the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission) pointed out that they could sell the broadsides to generate much-needed revenue to support the program.

As Goscha started printing Garland’s poem, “Lessons from a Fifties Childhood,”, the first few sheets came out flawless, retaining the beautiful bite of letterpress. However, as the printing continued, some letters began to drop out of the prints. Goscha immediately spotted the problem: Little flecks of hard, brightly colored plastic embedded in the paper. A credit card had snuck into the pulping process and ruined all of the handmade paper.

Goscha could make some new paper, of course, but that could take several days. Considering that Goscha had promised the Wisconsin Poet Laureate Commission 150 of these handprinted broadsides the following week, he was in trouble.

After a bit of thought, Goscha remembered a small sample of RiverPoint art paper he received from a colleague from Wausau on a visit a few weeks earlier; the 100% cotton paper was ideal for printing. Made at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, RiverPoint art paper was developed in response to requests from students and faculty in the visual arts for affordable yet high-quality, archival art paper. In 2012, members of the school’s Department of Art and Design, Department of Paper Science and Engineering, and the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology (WIST) began experimenting with UWSP’s pilot paper machine (a smaller version of the behemoths in Wisconsin’s commercial paper mills) to create what became RiverPoint art paper. The best part about it was that because the paper was in such demand by the public, UWSP could supply the paper to art faculty and students for free.

“I knew it was a long shot,” says Goscha, recalling his late-Friday evening call to WIST. “I needed enough paper to make 150 sheets over the weekend. What were the chances they would support the project and be able to meet over a weekend—no less to provide me with this beautiful paper?”

Everyone except the receptionist had left for the day. But when Goscha explained the project and its urgency, the receptionist said she would try to help.

“I was completely floored when thirty minutes later I got a call from WIST executive director Paul Fowler,” say Goscha. “I explained to him what our organization was, the idea behind

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the project, and how we wanted to keep it 100% produced in Wisconsin. I must have said something right because he said he would see what he could do.”

Fowler asked WIST laboratory project specialist Casey Konopacky to meet Goscha that Sunday. Goscha drove down to Stevens Point on Sunday and, in addition to receiving enough sheets of River Point art paper, got an impromptu tour of the papermaking facility.

“I was impressed with the willingness of WIST to just jump headlong into this project,” says Goscha, “I could tell that these were people who understood the value—and sometimes frantic process—of collaboration.”

In the end, this informal coalition of printers, poets, and papermakers created what will go down in state history as the first commemorative broadside for the Wisconsin Poet Laureate.

For more information on the Mill Paper and Book Arts Center visit themillbookarts.org. For more information on RiverPoint art paper visit the Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Technology at uwsp.edu/wist.

Wisconsin Poet Laureate broadsides featuring “Lessons from a Fifties Childhood,” by Max Garland, can be purchased online through the Wisconsin Academy website at wisconsinacademy.org/broadside.

—Jason A. Smith

A NEW LEASE ON LIFE Did you know that Kewaunee is home to the world’s largest grandfather clock? Or that Elvis Presley (a black belt in Karate) broke up a fist fight in 1977 at the intersection of East Washington Avenue and Highway 51 in Madison? How about that there are almost thirty supper clubs within a thirty-mile radius of Minocqua?

If you listen to Wisconsin Life, those wonderful yet brief audio essays aired on Wisconsin Public Radio, you probably know about these and other hidden cultural gems unique to our state.

Editor and program producer Erika Janik says that the Wisconsin Life series began in 2010 as “an effort to bring more Wisconsin people and stories to the airwaves—to make Wisconsin Public Radio sound more like Wisconsin by sharing the voices and stories of its people.”

It’s this same philosophy that drives a new partnership between WPR and Wisconsin Public Television to bring these voices and stories to television.

Janik explains that in looking to do a new Wisconsin-based program, WPT producers realized that “many of the values they hoped to bring to a TV show were already part of the Wisconsin Life project.”

In early 2014, Wisconsin Life will make the leap to TV, with thirty-minute

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segments—each featuring four or five stories—airing weekly.

Janik notes that video will enhance the series, as “a lot of things that we can’t do on the radio will make a fantastic visual story.”

Plus, the partnership with WPT will extend the series’ reach, placing the stories “upfront and center” for a larger audience, Janik says.

WPR and WPT are also working together to revamp the Wisconsin Life website, which will showcase the project’s multimedia content and feature an interactive component that encourages people to share their own stories and photos on the site.

Janik reports that the nascent partnership benefits from WPR’s and WPT’s shared goals by providing a new space for community engagement and acting as a cultural and civic resource.

“Wisconsin Life producers from radio and TV are actively working together to generate ideas and produce stories from start to finish,” she says. “It’s a true collaboration.”

Until the televised version is ready, you can catch WPR’s Wisconsin Life on Wednesday and Friday mornings during Morning Edition and Monday and Wednesday afternoons during Central Time or online at wilife.tumblr.com.

—Augusta Scescke

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Photo credits (top to bottom): jbjas42/Flickr.com ,Ron Porter, Anthony Bredahl

Wisconsin Life prepares for its television debut

UPFRONT

Prions in Plants?

A new concern for chronic wasting disease Infectious, deformed proteins called prions, known to cause chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer, can be taken up by plants such as alfalfa, corn, and tomatoes, according to new research from the National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) in Madison.

The NWHC’s prion research further demonstrates that stems and leaves from tainted plants are infectious when injected into laboratory mice. Christopher Johnson, the research biologist who conducted the study, writes in the abstract: “Our results suggest that prions are taken up by plants and that contaminated plants may represent a previously unrecognized risk of human, domestic species, and wildlife exposure to CWD.” One of a class of neurological, prion-caused diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, CWD affects deer by causing progressive loss of body condition, behavioral changes, excessive salivation, and death. Other prion-caused diseases include scrapie in sheep and goats, bovine spongiform encephalopathy—or mad cow disease—in cattle, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

While it is thought that CWD is spread through the saliva and feces of deer infected with the fatal brain disease, according to NWHC researchers and other experts these new findings are significant because they reveal a previously unknown potential route of exposure.

The disease has also become a pressing issue nationwide: The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified chronic wasting disease in seventeen states and predicts it will spread to other states. CWD was discovered in Wisconsin’s deer herd in 2002 and has been found since Courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Wildlife Management

the mid-1990s in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.

Soon after the discovery of CWD in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources embarked on an aggressive effort to halt spread of the disease by putting in place additional and longer hunting seasons, requiring hunters to shoot a female deer before taking a buck, and hiring sharpshooters to kill deer.

But the ambitious program grew unpopular with hunters and landowners, and the number of hunters participating in the state’s annual deer hunt declined. Meanwhile, the disease spread.

Current reports by the DNR show that the prevalence of the disease has increased in all sex and age classes of deer. During the past eleven years, for example, agency data estimates the prevalence of CWD in adult males has risen from 8–10% to more than 20%. And in adult females, the prevalence has grown from about 3–4% to about 9%. In a disease hot spot in southwestern Wisconsin, CWD prevalence has increased to 27% among deer two-and-a-half years or older.

Tami Ryan, who heads the DNR’s Wildlife Health Section, says the agency is interested in learning more about Johnson’s study. Ryan would like to see more data, especially on whether lab animals can become infected by eating tainted plant material rather than just via injection.

“I’m also interested in the contamination level,” says Ryan.

“What is the concentration and frequency of exposure that would result in infection? Is this as great a risk as coming into contact with another infected animal? A level of risk assessment is necessary.” For the moment, she concludes, “I don’t hear alarm bells.”

While more than 800 Wisconsin hunters who have consumed CWDtainted venison show no signs of prion brain disease, Wisconsin Department of Health Services veterinarian James Kazmierczak says that a littleunderstood molecular species barrier prevents CWD prions from making people and cattle sick.

But research on how prions affect humans is still ongoing. In 2004, for example, a CDC study published in the scientific journal Emerging Infectious Diseases concluded that the transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) to W isc o nsin

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humans indicates that “the species barrier may not completely protect humans from animal protein diseases.”

The article also cited lab studies in which CWD prions were found to infect human prion proteins. Still, the article concluded, “limited investigations have not identified strong evidence for CWD transmission to humans.”

Another study, led by Marcelo Barria from the Mitchell Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Brain Disorders at the University of Texas and published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in 2011, showed that CWD prions in the laboratory can be manipulated over generations to change and become more infectious to humans.

“Our findings lead to a new view that the species barrier should not be seen as a static process but rather a dynamic

biological phenomenon that can change over time when prion strains mature and evolve,” researchers concluded.

NWHC researcher Christopher Johnson says he is testing whether animals can become infected by eating CWD-laden plant tissues, noting that his work will address Tami Ryan’s questions about the prion concentrations in plants necessary to cause infection.

“We’re just scratching the surface here,” says Johnson.

—Ron Seely/WCIJ The nonprofit W isconsin Ce nte r for Inv e stigativ e J ou r n a lis m (www.wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, other news media and the UW–Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

A NONPROFIT TO WATCH

Nonprofit legal services to help Wisconsin´s small family farms Buying produce, milk, and eggs from your local farmer is a great way to eat sustainably and support Wisconsin’s 66,600 small family farms. Like most small businesses, family farms operate with a very thin profit margin. When bad things happen on a farm, it can be catastrophic to both the business and the family that runs it.

According to Rachel Armstrong, director of Farm Commons, small-scale farmers are much less likely to meet with an attorney than typical small business owners.

“If farmers don’t understand their legal obligations, they are taking unacknowledged risks. They may also be missing opportunities that they don’t know about,” says Armstrong. “An attorney can help make the farm a more stable and resilient business.”

Farm Commons, a nonprofit legal organization based in Madison, was founded in 2012 by Armstrong to help farmers navigate basic legal issues surrounding organic production and local- and direct-market sales.

Armstrong says she often advises farmers on how to address fundamental business concerns like managing risks and liabilities, understanding product regulations, negotiating land lease terms, separating personal and business assets, 10

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and writing employment agreements. Farm Commons also helps farmers to establish ABOVE: A healthy share from Driftless Organics, one of a limited liability company, set the over 260 community supported agriculture operaup a community-supported tions in Wisconsin. CSA subscribers share risk and benefit alike with farmers, making equitable purchase agreeagriculture (CSA) program, or ments an essential part of the process. get organic certification.

Armstrong says her ideas about nars on myriad topics like hosting on-farm supporting local food systems crystalevents, adding value to farm products, and lized during her time at UW–Madison as food safety regulations. a wildlife ecology student, after which she In addition to sharing materials for became very involved in the sustainable free online, Armstrong also provides agriculture community. As she transitioned guidance to other attorneys as well as into law, Armstrong recognized that the organizations like the Midwest Organic business of sustainable agriculture was & Sustainable Education Service and the a largely unexplored realm of risk and Practical Farmers of Iowa. regulation.

Armstrong notes that the majority of her “Innovation is good, but it needs to work consists of education and outreach, be informed by the broader context,” as there is very little demand for legal help she says. “When we’re developing really among small-scale farmers. innovative business models like commu“A lot of farmers think that attorneys nity supported agriculture, we need to don’t understand farm business and aren’t make sure we’re still following regulahelpful. Sometimes attorneys get called tions, calculating our risks, and protecting The Department of No because they advise ourselves legally.” against risks and see innovation as too Informed by her time spent on farms risky. But we can help farmers manage and working with CSAs, Armstrong develrisks, instead of taking uninformed risks or oped a set of clear, plain-language legal simply avoiding risk altogether.” guides that describe what the regulations For more information on Farm Commons, are and how they affect farmers. Farm visit farmcommons.org.

Commons also provides regular webi—Augusta Scescke I D E A S

Photo credit: Buzz Hoffman

Farm Commons

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The Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets is one of the oldest American poetry societies. WFOP sponsors local and regional events, biannual conferences, contests, and the yearly Calendar anthology. antholog WFOP offers Wisconsin poets fellowship and growth. Join us!

Visit wfop.org for more information.

The Clearing is a “folk school” for adults founded in 1935 by renowned landscape architect, Jens Jensen. Classes focus on the arts on the national & state register and fine crafts, of historic places humanities and natural sciences and range from one and two-day workshops to weeklong resident classes held in a secluded wooded setting on the water in northern Door County.

12171 Garrett Bay road n ellison Bay toll free 877-854-3225 n www.theclearinG.orG weekdays: 8 - 4 n weekends: 12 - 4

arts & minds ISTHMUS OF MADISON

Smart, original, timely content in print and online covering news, politics, food, drink, music, theater, movies, shopping, sports and more, all integral to life in the capital region. Isthmus emphasizes journalistic excellence, award-winning writing and high-quality design, along with a sharply honed, curatorial instinct for local happenings, and the best guides in town.

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Photo credit: Courtesy of Marshfield Clinic History Archive, a section of the G.E. Magnin Medical Library. Used with permission.

A Salute to Wisconsin Veterans

By Melvin R. Laird Wisconsin Academy Fellow since 2003

Melvin R. Laird served nine terms in the U.S. Congress representing Wisconsin’s Seventh Congressional District, where he was Chairman, Republican House Minority, member of the House Appropriations Committee, and the Republican Coordinating Council. Prior to this service, he was a member of the Wisconsin Senate from 1946–52 and Chairman, Wisconsin Legislative Council. Laird served in the U.S. Navy from 1942–1946 in the Pacific Fleet. The U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1969–73, Laird challenged the Nixon Administration on issues related to the Vietnam conflict and is largely credited with getting American troops out of the Vietnam War, as well as reducing military spending and changing the draft from a lottery to an “all-volunteer” force.

As a legislator, he championed medical research and co-authored bills to finance construction of the National Library of Medicine and centers for medical research on university campuses, including the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center.

Laird is currently a member of the Director’s Advisory Council of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and has been a director for a number of other companies.

He’s also active with a range of nonprofit organizations such as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Laird Foundation for Historic Preservation. Laird is the recipient of more than 300 awards, most notably the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Man of the Year awards from the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Mental Health, as well as numerous honorary degrees from a large number of colleges and universities.

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am honored to share with Wisconsin Academy members a few remarks in appreciation of Wisconsin veterans and some insight into the formation of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

For nearly seventy years the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs has been serving our veterans in many ways. This department is very special to me and many others, and it is recognized as a model for other state agencies throughout the country.

Two veterans of different wars sponsored the legislation that gave birth to the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs. They were joined by the members of the Wisconsin State Senate and the State Assembly in establishing this deserving tribute to our veterans. Senator Warren Knowles (World War II, US Navy) and my father, Senator Melvin Laird Sr. (World War I, Army Chaplin in the European Theater)—bound by service in two separate wars—began in the closing days of World War II the legislative preparations for creating this important department to provide critical assistance to all Wisconsin veterans.

The judgment of the Legislature was that a permanent Department of Veterans Affairs that provided long-term, lowinterest loans and other counseling support would benefit veterans more than a one-time cash bonus favored by several other states. This assessment over time has certainly proven correct.

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My role in supporting the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs came after I was elected to fill my father’s unfinished term upon his death. The time of my first election to the Wisconsin State Senate, I was just recently home from serving in the Pacific aboard the Destroyer U.S.S. Maddox and still in service on terminal leave. I was elected at the age of 24. My military service certainly helped me in that first election in 1946 but I must admit it was my father’s wonderful reputation that was the determining factor.

I was immediately assigned to the Senate Committee on Veterans and Military Affairs and I became chairman of the committee three years later in 1949.

It was in this role that I joined Senator Art Lenroot of Superior, Wisconsin, in introducing the Laird–Lenroot Veterans Housing legislation. We had the full support of Senate Majority Leader Warren Knowles and many other members. This bill passed both houses of the Legislature with bipartisan support.

Now, there were only a few Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate at the time. My close and good friend, the late Gaylord Nelson, was their leader. Our friendship was well known. We “caucused” on many occasions after the adjournment of Senate

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“ Vietnam illustrates that when decisions of war are made, we must always remember to consider all the costs—not just the enormous costs of lives lost and appropriations spent during conflict but also the costs that begin after the fighting ends.”

sessions. On occasions, his wife Carrie Lee, a former Army nurse, would join us even though she got off duty sometimes very late from the University of Wisconsin Hospital.

The Laird–Lenroot legislation, with its very low 2% interest second mortgage housing loans, garnered credibility and support for the nascent Wisconsin Veterans Affairs Department. As a fellow veteran, I will always take pride in serving the veterans of Wisconsin and my district during this crucial period in American history.

While the importance of the work done by the Wisconsin Veterans Affairs Department can’t be overstated, there is need for more work. At present there are valid criticisms that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are not being treated adequately or promptly by the Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense. Their complaints and those from Vietnam veterans are being investigated

by Congress. Whether it was our two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or other calls for military action, all our veterans deserve to be heard and supported and to receive our help and counsel.

I tend to focus on Vietnam veterans mainly because we as a country failed to recognize their long, tough assignments. Too, I was actively involved in the struggle against poorly conceived war

policies at that time and saw the problems first hand.

The Vietnam War illustrated that it is far easier to get into a war than it is to get out of one and that the full, long-term costs are often badly underestimated. To go back in time for a moment, our entry into that war began hurriedly following the supposed North Vietnamese attack on the destroyers U.S.S. Maddox and Turner Joy on August 2, 1964.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, quickly passed by the Congress at the urging of President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, authorized us to engage in ground combat and other military operations in Southeast Asia. At the time, this authorization by Congress was assumed by the U.S. Attorney General to be adequate to conduct a war of this magnitude.

For the next almost five years, there would be no winning policy put forth, but, instead, an alarming escalation and commitment of U.S. military personnel along with ever increasing casualties and economic costs. During this period I served as a member of the House Defense Appropriations Committee. I questioned the Johnson Administration on the intelligence estimates as well as the rising costs of the war. There was never a withdrawal plan articulated to our committee, only upbeat reports on current operations.

In the eyes of the Washington press corps, I was always seen—because of my incessant questioning—to be an opponent of the Secretary and President’s policies on the war. But I always went out of my way to show respect for McNamara and Johnson individually, and limited my questions and criticisms to the war policies.

Suddenly, after the election of 1968, I found myself in a new position. Presidentelect Richard Nixon asked me to become Secretary of Defense in his incoming administration. Because of my background on the Defense Appropriation Committee and my service in the military, I asked for several conditions of non-interference from the White House to which the Presidentelect agreed. With this agreement, I felt it was my duty to do something to change our course in Vietnam.

When I became Secretary of Defense, we had over 500,000 ground combat troops in Vietnam and one million Air Force and Naval Forces in close country support activities with no withdrawal plan in sight. The cost of the Vietnam War in economic terms, but, more importantly in terms of human suffering, was simply too high. One of my first actions was to turn down an old request to increase the troop ceiling in Vietnam by 100,000, a request that already had been approved by the joint chiefs but remained on the desk of the Secretary during the election

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transition. I changed our national policy in Vietnam from an Americanization of the war to a Vietnamization approach. Instead of regularly increasing the deployment of U.S. troops, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard and I announced our plan to train more South Vietnamese troops and to begin withdrawing our troops on a well-programmed and fair basis. We began decreasing the numbers at every opportunity as we turned the war over to the South Vietnamese.

Entering my new post, I found it inconceivable that American prisoners of war had been almost forgotten. No one was pressuring the North Vietnamese to abide by the Geneva Convention in regard to the treatment of prisoners. The Johnson Administration refused to publicly discuss the plight of POWs or even press the international community on the issue. I was warned by the State Department and during a visit by Ambassador Harriman not to push the question of POW treatment on the grounds it might upset the North Vietnamese and have a negative effect on the Paris Peace Accord meetings.

During the ensuing four years, we Vietnamized the war, increased public

discussion of POWs, and instituted a new approach of participatory management of the entire Department of Defense. Previously there had been no withdrawal plan, no POW plan, and no real budgeting for the war. Up to that point, Defense had been making a series of separate requests and borrowing from within accounts— constantly reprogramming use of existing funds which merely weakened other areas of our national defense like NATO, the Guard, and Reserve forces.

When I left as Secretary of Defense in 1973 to move to the White House as Senior Counselor for Domestic Affairs, the Laird-Packard team’s changes were very evident: There was no U.S. military combat role in Vietnam, our POWs were coming home, the 34-year-old practice of drafting military personnel was over, and we had effectively put the All Volunteer Total Force in place.

Yet for all the work we did to respond to the needs of our returning soldiers, the Vietnam veteran may be the most unappreciated veteran in our military history. Some of them need as much help as our new veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many need more.

Vietnam illustrates that when decisions of war are made, we must always remember to consider all the costs— not just the enormous costs of lives lost and appropriations spent during conflict but also the costs that begin after the fighting ends. Some of these costs, like retirement benefits, are easy to understand. Other costs, like ongoing physical and mental health concerns such as posttraumatic stress disorder, are harder to address. Some of these costs will last forever.

Yet, too often these costs are not fully understood by those demanding military action.

We must not allow the service of any of our veterans to be forgotten. Today veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a critical time as they return to civilian life. We owe a responsibility to each and every one to assist them in assimilating back into society through medical assistance and help in securing employment, education, and housing.

It is the least we as a nation can do for those that offer their lives to protect this country. Z

Fellows at the Wisconsin Science Festival The Wisconsin Science Festival is the invention of a growing coalition of scientists, artists, citizens, and organizations passionate about engaging everyone in the power of science.

This year, the Wisconsin Academy and a handful of our Fellows lent their talents to this coalition.

At the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery in Madison, the Wisconsin Academy hosted “Science & Society: An Academy Fellows Showcase” (see photo at right), featuring atmospheric scientist Steve Ackerman (2011), bioethicist R. Alta Charo (2005), and chemist Laura Kiessling (2008). These three Fellows came together to share insights about and between their scientific fields, and the ways in which these fields impact the human experience. Of course, it was an evening that only scratched the surface of the knowledge held by these three remarkable scientists. From tracking climate change with satellite technology to the perils of stem cell tourism, they packed a lot into thirty minutes.

Beyond the “Science & Society” event, Academy Fellow and evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll (2008) gave a talk revolving around his new book Brave Genius: A Scientist’s Journey from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize, in which he chronicles the friendship of Jacques Monod, co-founder of molecular biology, and author Albert Camus. Fellow Bassam Shakhashiri

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(2005) shared the stage with Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffman and Rodney Schreiner from the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy for a unique spin on Shakhashiri’s traditional “Science is Fun” presentation. By using chemical demonstrations to communicate the wonders of science, Shakhashiri captivates audiences of all ages.

At the Wisconsin Academy, we are honored by the intellectual caliber of our Fellows, and by their commitment to sharing their knowledge with the people of Wisconsin. Our upcoming class of Wisconsin Academy Fellows, to be named in Spring 2014, will be in very good company.

To learn more about the Wisconsin Academy Fellows program, visit our Fellows page at wisconsinacademy.org/ fellows.

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This near true-color image of Green Bay taken on October 6, 1999, shows a plume of sediment flowing from the mouth of the Fox River and surrounding areas into Green Bay. Tons of sediment wash into Green Bay each year as a result of natural run-off and the discharge of 24 paper mills along a 39-mile stretch of the lower Fox River, the largest concentration of paper mills in the world. This image represents a merging of Landsat-7 satellite imagery with the shaded relief topography from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).

Image credit: Sam Batzli, Space Science and Engineering Center

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s captain of the Bay Guardian, Tracy Valenta is out plying the waters of Green Bay at least twice a week. From her sturdy research vessel, Valenta studies Green Bay for NEW Water, the City of Green Bay’s municipal sewage district. It’s the most extensive water quality monitoring

effort in the region, working from the mouth of the Fox River out beyond where cleaner upper bay waters mix with the more polluted waters of the southern bay.

If there’s something happening in the waters of Green Bay, Valenta knows about it. In early August of 2005, she got a phone call from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources asking for any information she might have about why massive numbers of gobies, a small invasive fish, had been spotted huddling up on the eastern shore of Green Bay near Bayshore County Park.

NEW Water had a continuous monitoring buoy that happened to be near the goby sightings, and on her next sampling trip Valenta pulled the recorded data.

Looking back over the readings, the problem was easy to spot: There was very little oxygen on the floor of the bay. Bottom dwellers who can’t swim up the water column, the gobies had been forced toward the shallow shore in search of oxygenated, breathable water.

According to the official Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources report, the gobies were “all clumped up, often resting on large rocks in such dense concentrations that you couldn’t see the rock … [with] all their heads pointing in the same direction, like scales on a fish.”

The goby event was concrete evidence of a problem long suspected in the

waters of the bay: a “dead zone” of bottom-hugging, oxygen-depleted water incapable of sustaining aquatic life.

A gateway to Lake Michigan and home to one of the world’s largest freshwater estuaries, Green Bay is no stranger to water quality problems. Efforts to clean up polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) discharged in the Lower Fox River and Green Bay by area paper mills during the 1950s and 1960s have been ongoing for the last few decades.

The confirmation of an expanding dead zone in the bay was not welcome news to an area reeling from years of arguments over who should pay for environmental remediation. It posed an uncomfortable question to the people of Green Bay and the Fox Cities: After all the clean-up work and almost a billion dollars in remediation funds, what if this important ecosystem is still broken?

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If you are a strong swimmer, and a curious one, then you have probably experienced the simple physics at the heart of the dead zone problem. You can feel it best in the summer time, when you

take a deep breath and dive into almost any of the deeper lakes in Wisconsin. At a certain point in the dive, water temperature begins to fall; this area is called the thermocline. And if you get deep enough, it suddenly gets quite cold; this is the hypolimnion.

The warm water is easy to explain: contact with summer air and the sun warms lake surface waters. But because warm water is lighter than colder water, it also floats on top. And if the difference in temperature between the top and the bottom gets too great—if the thermocline gets too steep—it becomes virtually impossible for wind to mix the two layers of water. When this happens, the hypolimnion is virtually sealed off from the atmosphere. Without any circulation, the oxygen on the bottom is quickly depleted by decaying organic matter. While some animals can swim up or out of the hypolimnion to find oxygen, others are stranded there and die. This is how dead zones occur.

Strictly speaking, dead zone isn’t an entirely accurate term to describe this phenomenon because some aquatic dwellers—for example, some worms and midge larvae—aren’t very sensitive

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ABOVE: Samples taken at various points in Green Bay during July of 2010 show the outline of the expanding dead zone. Note the hypoxic area of concern with five or less milligrams of dissolved oxygen per liter, which can comprise up to 30% of bay waters.

to oxygen depletion. And, in the case of Green Bay, these episodes of low to no oxygen don’t always last long enough to completely change the ecosystem.

Scientists prefer the term hypoxia to describe episodic low- to no-oxygen events. Hypoxia is known to occur as well in places like Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico, the latter of which has a dead zone approximately the size of New Jersey that begins near the mouth of the Mississippi River. For the purpose of this report, we’ll stick with popular term dead zone.

The dead zone begins near Dyckesville, which is located to the north of the city of Green Bay. From there the zone can extend for miles to the north and south, sometimes reaching as far as the mouth of the Fox River. The challenge in monitoring the dead zone is that it is mobile, expanding and contracting when variables like wind, water temperature, and other factors combine to mix bay waters and return oxygen to the bottom layers.

“It is one of the most important components of water,” says Valenta, marveling at the bay organisms that can survive for days without oxygen. “We wouldn’t survive with a plastic bag on our head for ten minutes.”

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Yet without indicators such as large fish kills, dead zones can go unnoticed for years.

The work of water researchers like Valenta has brought much attention to the dead zone, but there is evidence that Green Bay has struggled with hypoxia since the 1950s. Low levels of oxygen were reported in the lower bay during the late summer months beginning in 1939. In August of 1974, samples of bay waters taken as far as three miles out from the mouth of the Fox River showed oxygen levels of zero.

While the amount of oxygen an aquatic system needs to function can vary according to location and temperature, in Green Bay, which is classified a warm water sport fishery, anything below five milligrams per liter is considered compromised. Valenta’s data from 2005 showed seven events (most lasting a few days) where oxygen dipped below this threshold.

Panicked gobies surfaced near Bayshore County Park again in 2011, but this year the problem was much worse.

At the end of July, dissolved oxygen was at or near zero, where it remained for almost two weeks. It didn’t climb back to safe levels until the middle of August.

Then it plummeted back down, see-

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sawing over the divide, with only brief breathable periods until September.

While hypoxia varies across the bay, by looking at one particular location over time it is easy to see the numbers are rising: four hypoxic days in 1990 and seventeen in 2005. From 2009 to 2011 the count continued to rise, from 28 days to 39 and on to 43.

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To understand what is happening to the oxygen in the dead zone, we first need to understand what is happening on the land surrounding Green Bay. Once upon a time, phosphorous from industrial processes and untreated sewage flowed unabated into the waters of the Fox River and Green Bay. But these inputs have been steadily declining, and Green Bay’s sewage treatment plant now accounts for only 2% of the phosphorus entering the bay.

The major source of pollution today is the sediment and phosphorus that runs off of farm fields, residential lawns, and city streets every time it rains.

“What you see in the water is a direct correlation to what’s happening on the land,” says Valenta. “If you see green water, [that means] there are nutrients

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and sediment running off the land into the water,” fueling algal growth.

Every year 132,000 metric tons of nutrient-rich sediments enter Green Bay via the Fox River. This is roughly equivalent to 27 dump trucks emptying mixed loads of silt, plant debris, and phosphorus off the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge and into the Fox River—seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The nutrient-rich runoff fuels explosive algae growth in the waters of the bay. When algae dies, it falls to the bottom of the bay where microbes and other organisms working to break it apart significantly increase the demand for oxygen, choking off bottom-dwelling animals and creating a hypoxic dead zone.

Because phosphorus can come from anywhere, the technical challenge is tracing it to its source. This job falls to University of Wisconsin–Green Bay scientist Kevin Fermanich and his collaborators.

While leaf and lawn debris, as well as the overuse of yard fertilizers, are urban sources of phosphorus pollution, one of the bay’s biggest problems is the large phosphorus load carried by Plum Creek, says Fermanich.

Originating in the Forest Junction area and flowing north to Wrightstown, where it empties into the Lower Fox River, Plum Creek meanders through a largely agricultural area that happens to be a little hillier than average. From years of manure spreading, many of the area fields have far more phosphorus than plants can use. In 2011, during a heavy April storm, water rolled brown through the Plum as rain dislodged soil and applied manure from fields with little or no plant growth. Even to a nonscientist, the subsequent storm-washed plume of brown water that appeared in the bay clearly was a sign of something wrong.

That image of the brown plume spreading across Green Bay is a good reminder that phosphorus pollution is an event-driven phenomenon. In 2011, 79% of the phosphorus entered Green Bay in eight storm events over the course of just fourteen days. Drier years are cleaner simply because less rain

washes across the landscape. “One mistimed two-inch rainfall could [lead to] the highest loading of the year,” says Fermanich. In other words, luck alone can play a big role.

But that’s not to say we can’t do better.

“We’ve got a vulnerable landscape because of the nature of our farming enterprises,” says Fermanich, pointing to the region’s massive dairy and corngrowing operations. “We need to create healthier soils in our watershed, ones that are more resilient and less vulnerable to erosion.”

To understand what is happening to the oxygen in the dead zone, we first need to understand what is happening on the land surrounding Green Bay. Some progress is being made in soil management, most notably a pilot project launched by the Oneida Nation and NEW Water. They’re studying the Silver Creek watershed, where the Oneida own more than half of the agricultural land and have the authority to impose stricter management practices like reducing row crops, reducing dependence on corn-feed with managed grazing, introducing cover crops, and creating buffers between agricultural lands and the creek.

But between the technical challenges and the vast amount of phosphorus stored in fields, streambeds, and bay sediments, Fermanich wonders if these changes will be enough.

“I’m not very confident that we can actually meet the water quality criteria that’s currently set,” he says, noting that there is no way to know if the bay-area citizens—both rural and urban—will respond to the call.

One thing is clear, he says, and that is the need for the community to persevere. “We need to improve the

communication [between scientists and the public], and build the sense that we’re all in this together.”

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Green Bay is a complicated ecosystem, and overseeing the massive computations needed to predict how the dead zone might respond to human tinkering is Val Klump. Klump has studied Lake Michigan for more than thirty years from his post at the Great Lakes WATER Institute at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

Klump says that the bay is a very effective trap for the pollution that flows down the Fox River, allowing only 30% of the pollutant load to enter Lake Michigan. While that’s good for Lake Michigan, the 70% of the load left behind is not good for Green Bay. Klump estimates that in order to address the dead zone problem, we need to reduce overall bay pollution by about half. He says the challenging piece of the puzzle right now is climate change, which seems likely to make the problem worse.

“This area is predicted to be both wetter and warmer, and both of those things tend to exacerbate the problem,” explains Klump. Warmer weather means longer periods where the lake is stratified, with warm water trapping the cool bottom waters. The extra precipitation is expected to fall in bigger storm events.

Under current land conditions, this means more runoff, more pollution, and more algae.

Changing weather patterns have already exacerbated the hypoxia problem. Over the last decade the prevailing direction of storms in the bay has shifted from the northwest to the southeast. In addition to the shape and depth of a lake, mixing is partly influenced by wind direction and speed, and this change in weather reduces mixing potential.

What will it take to improve this situation as changes in climate continue?

Klump is overseeing the building of many models: how the water moves, where the climate is going, how the oxygen is used, and where the phosphorus goes.

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“All these models need to be linked in order to estimate what it’s going to be like,” he says.

Like UW–Green Bay’s Fermanich, Klump is not sure we can repair the dead zone in the short run. But he’s happy with the new regulatory tools and the public response to the media’s recent coverage of the dead zone.

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Repairing the dead zone would lead to cleaner water, reconstituted fisheries, and an overall healthier Green Bay and Lake Michigan. But fixing just one part of the problem won’t work.

To understand this intertwined ecosystem, we need to get to know genus Hexagenia. Three species of Hexagenia—better known as the giant mayfly—used to call Green Bay home.

And, for a few nights every summer, mayflies owned the bay, hatching out in untold billions.

According to Jerry Kaster, senior scientist at the Great Lakes WATER Institute, mayflies spend one or two years in a small U-shaped burrow in the mud of the bay bottom before molting and leaving the water en masse on a very calm summer night. This is called

the subimago emergence, unique to mayflies because they still must molt one more time on land. They then fly out over the water and reproduce,

Repairing the dead zone would lead to cleaner water, reconstituted fisheries, and an overall healthier Green Bay and Lake Michigan. mating in mid air. Billions of eggs fall to the lake, sinking to the bottom and starting the cycle again.

Kaster says that the mayflies disappeared from the bay in the late 1950s, a casualty of phosphorus pollution.

While these insects don’t deal well with hypoxia, Kaster also believes that they are hindered by the accumulation of algal sediments on the bay floor that are too loose to support mayfly burrows.

Kaster is experimenting with techniques like the introduction of algae-eating freshwater oligochaetes (a kind of worm)

that might help restore the mayfly population by consolidating the oozy bottom of the lower bay.

It’s an interesting way of combating the dead zone, and one that excites Valenta, who sees the giant mayfly as Green Bay’s missing charismatic megafauna.

“They used to hatch by the truckload,” she says. “Imagine the fisheries that we would have if we actually had giant mayfly larvae for our fish to eat instead of bloodworm—which they can’t eat for a large portion of the summer because the fish can’t breathe down there.”

The mayfly won’t return overnight, Valenta cautions: “This is not an easy fix.” But cleaning up phosphorus would have major benefits for the entire bay.

Sediment reduction begets phosphorus reduction, which begets algae reduction, which in turn improves water clarity.

Rooted aquatic plants rebound, mayflies recover, and fisheries prosper and support bird and small mammal populations around the bay.

“I do feel optimistic,” she adds. “Just the fact that we’re having this conversation right now is huge. But I hope these conversations lead to action.” Z

CONNECT: The Waters of Wisconsin Initiative Wisconsin is home to 15,000 inland lakes, 3,000 miles of perennial rivers and streams, 5.3 million acres of wetlands, and our four aquifers hold 1.2 quadrillion gallons of groundwater.

All these waters interact through an integrated hydrological system that holds life’s essential element … and an asset of inestimable global significance. We have a special responsibility to safeguard these waters for ourselves and the community of life that depends on them.

Building on the successes of our first Waters of Wisconsin (WOW) initiative between 2000 and 2003 and with support from the Joyce Foundation, the Wisconsin Academy is renewing its commitment to Wisconsin waters by revisiting our WOW initiative. Many of the challenges of a decade ago are still with us today, and new and more complex threats to water will require a fresh examination of the way forward. Our aim is to foster nonpartisan, science-based strategies and solutions to safeguard Wisconsin’s freshwater ecosystems and water supply

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for generations to come. To this end we are engaging with a wide crosssection of Wisconsin people—leaders in science, policy, practice, education, arts and culture—to collaborate on needs and opportunities to advance Wisconsin water strategies. Through this collaboration we will provide information and insight to our members and wider public audiences through analysis and stories in Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine, Academy Evening talks, community forums, and our website, which will feature profiles of and blogs from leaders in Wisconsin water management and strategy.

Flash the above QR code with your mobile device to view videos from our recent public forums or visit us online at wisconsinacademy.org/WOW for more information on how to join us in our exploration of Wisconsin’s precious water resources.

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ABOVE: Two Creeks, Wisconsin, 2012

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P h otograp h y by J ason V aug h n

Hide is a project that began as a commentary on Wisconsin’s hunting tradition, using deer stands as a metaphor for the changing values of the sport. When my sudden cancer diagnosis interrupted the project, hide took on a much deeper, more personal meaning.

I was inspired by deer stands on my drives through Wisconsin, and began having conversations with hunters about the tradition of hunting in their families. Some people described building the stands as something permanent that could be passed to the next generation, especially sons who would inherit the land. I was anticipating the birth of my own son and thinking about my legacy, so this idea resonated strongly with me.

I also heard hunters emphasize that their pastime is not about violence, but more about oneness with nature and time spent with their children in the stands. I wanted these photographs to capture the serenity of that sentiment, and to suggest the dignity associated with hunting when seen as a means of feeding one’s family. Finally, I wanted to look at the issue from a historical standpoint, and the impermanent nature of some of the stands illustrates the fading tradition of hunting in Wisconsin.

When I was diagnosed with leukemia in 2011, my work on hide was put on hold. I was 32 years old and had a three-month-old baby at home. Having to face mortality so unexpectedly made me come back to the project with a new perspective on the ideas of permanence and impermanence. Ultimately, hide became a reflection on my own legacy and family, an homage to the state that has become my home, and a narrative about accepting change. —Jason Vaughn

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ABOVE: Waupun, Wisconsin, 2013 OPPOSITE PAGE (top): Portage (4), Wisconsin, 2012 OPPOSITE PAGE (bottom): Forest, Wisconsin, 2013

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ABOVE: Endeavor, Wisconsin, 2013 OPPOSITE PAGE (top): Pardeeville, Wisconsin, 2013 OPPOSITE PAGE (bottom): Ladysmith, Wisconsin, 2013

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ABOVE: Portage (3), Wisconsin, 2012 OPPOSITE PAGE (top): Portage (2), Wisconsin, 2012 OPPOSITE PAGE (bottom): Portage, Wisconsin, 2012

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Mean Enough to Push a Widder Woman’s Dog in the Well

B y R oland B erns I llustrations by K ate B ausc h

T

he historian Barbara Tuchman once noted that dire events are five or ten times more likely than pleasant ones to find their way into history. A writer may sleep through a quiet time, but not through a disaster. In the same way, long after

we have forgotten the many pleasant coworkers who shared a laugh at coffee break and remembered our birthdays, we recall in miserable detail the nasty, spiky, crazy one who set everyone else on edge. So it is not surprising to find that some of the most vivid, heartfelt, and interesting words or phrases picked up during Dictionary of American Regional English fieldwork refer to the least pleasant of people.

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Dante, who knew something about unpleasant people, established a hierarchy for them in his Inferno. To judge from the color and vigor of their remarks, the people interviewed for the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE)— whom we call Informants—likewise saved special consideration for some offenders.

Six of the Seven Deadly Sins (for some reason we didn’t ask about Envy) are covered in the questionnaire D A RE researchers provided to Informants.

However, we found that by far the most memorable responses are those having to do with Anger.

There may be a practical reason for this. Gluttony is an inward vice, and does not affect the observer. The same is mostly true of Avarice. And Sloth, unless you are a parent or an employer, disturbs no one. Lust is often focused on one object at a time, and so attracts limited attention. Pride does have an outward show, but is primarily self-regarding.

Anger alone is so diffuse in its objects, and, being directed violently outward, so impossible to ignore.

Let us start small, with anger directed at the mildest of creatures. In response to the questionnaire lead-in, “He’s mean enough to ___________,” an Indiana Informant responds, “pinch a sensitive plant.”

From Louisiana, “pull up young cotton,” and from emphatic Mississippi, “pull up young cotton and piss in the hole.”

A little further up the chain of being, we have “mean enough to push baby chicks in the creek” (or water), attested by five Informants. This turns strangely ineffective (or shows unconscious pity) with the seventeen Informants who say, “mean enough to push (throw) baby ducks in the water.” Finishing up the poultry, we have the wonderfully complex “mean enough to steal a blind chicken’s breakfast,” which, when you think about it, probably had to come from New York. For muscle, “mean enough to choke his own horse to death” (Minnesota) is very impressive. But the

palm for downright meanness goes to Texas for “mean enough to push a widder woman’s dog in the well.”

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Of course dogs are not the half of it, at least not for those with mothers and grandmothers. As high-value targets in the meanness game, Mom and Grandma are at the very top, and those mean enough to mistreat them lurk at the very bottom.

“Mean enough to kill his (own) mother” (or grandmother) is just about as mean as it gets (83 Informants), with the colorful “cut (or chop) his (own) mother’s (or grandmother’s) head off” thrown in here and there for variety. “Mean enough to sell his grandmother to the glue works” (Minnesota) seems to combine business with pleasure. The disturbingly specific “kill his grammaw downstairs” is from California. Somewhat surprisingly, “screw his own mother (grandmother)” occurs

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only once in each case. (Remember, though, that the fieldwork was done between 1965 and 1970.)

Those restrained by filial devotion merely “hit,” “whip,” “kick,” “beat,” or “throw rocks at” Mom or Grandma, or hit her with a shovel (New York). Slightly better (or worse), the unnatural grandchildren may become litigious. There is the popular “mean enough to sue his momma” (South Carolina), “arrest his own mother (or grandmother)” (8 Informants), “throw his own mother in jail” (Pennsylvania), “give his own mother a ticket (New Jersey), or in a twofer, “put his mother in jail and throw in his sister for company” (Florida).

So what are these people eating that makes them so mean? The DARE findings suggest that ferrous poisoning may be a factor, but cause and effect are hard to distinguish here: With 54 Informants, “Mean enough to chew (or bite or eat) ten-penny (or twenty-penny) nails (or spikes)” certainly shows a pattern. Some “chew nails and spit rust” (or tacks), but the most ambitious “spit submarines” or “battleships” (both New York)

Other contributing causes are suggested by “mean enough to eat glass,” “eat shit,” “eat shit with a stick,” and “eat shit and bark at the moon” (New York, again). Biting is a related phenomenon, as in “mean enough to bite a snake,” “bite you,” “bite your head off,” or “bite him own self” (sic) in North Carolina.

“Mean enough to take your eye out and

eat it for a grape” (Illinois) falls outside any category, and “mean enough to wipe his ass with sandpaper” (Pennsylvania) is another one of those cause-and-effect puzzlers. “Mean enough to fart in a pail of water” (New Jersey) will keep you awake at night trying to figure it out.

After dinner it’s time for (what else?) a good rousing fight. Our contenders are not only tough enough to tangle with the customary “bear,” “bull,” and “buzz-saw,” but in some cases to meet them armed with only a stick. “Mean enough to fight the Devil” (Alabama) seems plenty mean, but according to one Pennsylvania Informant, the ne plus ultra is “mean enough to fight Gene—he’s the baddest dude in the world.”

B ut l et u s t a ke a s te p b a c k f o r a moment. In each of these descriptions we have been assuming an unconscious identification with the bad guy: what is he mean enough to do? How does he act?

We put ourselves in his place. In one of those reversals that proves that genius lies in looking at things in a new way, two Informants from Arkansas put the matter in different (and practical) terms: “He’s mean enough to need killing.”

To Zydeco and Beyond:

The Dictionary of American Regional English goes digital

It’s an odd sensation to hear an unfamiliar word during a conversation—not unlike a pothole on the smooth highway of American English.

“Pop?” You might ask, only to follow with another question: “Don’t you mean soda?”

For those who can’t get enough of the bemusing and sometimes befuddling idiosyncrasies that make up this patchwork quilt of a language, there is a six-volume dictionary dedicated to defining them: the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE).

DARE covers mostly folk and regional terms, words like “whoopensocker” (something extraordinary), “hell’s banjer” (an Appalachian oath), “pea ripper” (a very hot day) and others you won’t likely find in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Many of these words were collected in interviews done all across America by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers between 1965 and 1970.

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These interviews, along with words gleaned from historical documents dating back to American Colonial times, yielded more than 60,000 entries in the six volumes. But the editors decided that a digital version of the esteemed reference guide could provide more—and perhaps more engaging—ways of accessing this material.

Of course, some of the words collected during the 1960s have since gone out of usage, but there is much historical value in capturing them, according to Joan Houston Hall, DARE’s second and current chief editor.

The preservation of lost words and phrases is only one part of creating a “living dictionary,” and Hall also wants to ensure that contemporary contributors can add new words as they come into use.

“Once the digital edition is launched, we hope to add to it on a regular basis. So that means we will not only add new entries, but go back and improve the original ones,” she says.

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The foregoing gives us something of a picture of meanies at work (or play, depending on how you think about being mean). But what about when they’re just sitting around? “He’s mean enough to ___________” elicits characteristic actions, but the DARE question “He’s meaner than ___________” calls for description and comparison. “Meaner than the Devil (or Satan) (himself),” and the like, with 307 responses, would reassure the Prince of Darkness that he is still the villain to beat, with Kaiser Bill, Judas Iscariot, Hitler, and “Nero when Rome burned” making only a poor showing behind him. “Meaner than my wife” (New York) gives one pause, though.

“Meaner than itchy underwear” (Texas) and “mean as his hide will hold him”(Georgia) show the uses of poetry in expressing a deep truth, as do “meaner than gar broth” (Indiana and Wisconsin), “meaner than skunk meat“ (also Wisconsin), and “meaner than turkey-turd beer” (Maryland). As to

the last, there really is such a thing, as Volume 5 of DARE shows.

These instances show a semantic shift from the mean of the previous question. Here, meaner is also taken to signify “unpleasant” or “nasty” in the sense of disgustingly offensive. Right at the top of that list has to be “meaner than a peck of assholes,” followed by “owl’s shit” (or

DARE’s editors are already using a digital editing system that allows them to upload changes directly to the publisher, Harvard University Press. The digital edition, set to be completed before the end of 2013, will be sold to libraries and universities and priced according to how many users have access to it. Hall says this is intended to make the dictionary available to a greater number and variety of people.

“We are hoping that, even in smaller communities where there isn’t a university, people will urge their libraries to get it,” she says.

Hall is overseeing a crack team of 35 beta testers who will make practical, technical suggestions related to their experience in order to create a digital dictionary that is both utilitarian and enjoyable to use.

For example, the digital edition of DARE will offer a “word wheel” users may spin to serendipitously stumble upon a random word. Advanced indices will allow for easier and more accurate word searches. And an interactive map will provide additional context for words by listing respondents’ geographic location, age, race, sex, education level, and community type based on data collected in the original fieldwork.

“a bucket of sour owl shit,” as my father used to say). Shit in general, but especially cat shit is an index of this kind of meanness (as in “meaner than cat shit and a damn sight nastier”[New Jersey]), though the scientific thinking behind “lower than whale shit” (Pennsylvania) (or as I once heard it, “lower than the whale turds on the ocean floor”) has to be admired.

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So what, if anything, does this add up to?

I have to say that I chose this subject because I thought it would be fun to look at. I enjoyed compiling this record, and I cannot escape the notion that most of the Informants here enjoyed giving their responses. Their language not only shows them having fun; there’s something else going on, too. Maybe when we can get a little distance from the people who make us crazy, it isn’t just exasperation but a kind of head-shaking admiration we feel.

And maybe the way to account for that is to admit that sometimes they do what we’d like to. Z

The digital edition even has links that, when clicked, play audio clips of the original interviews. Hall hopes these f e at u re s w i l l b r i n g u s e r s closer to the speakers of our complex language.

“It shows us about who we are and where we’ve been,” says Hall. “It’s a great bit of Americana.”

The Dictionary of American Regional English reflects the rich, ongoing narrative of a nation that has drawn on the influence of many different cultures and events. Digitization is simply the next chapter.

For more information on the Dictionary of American Regional English, visit dare.wisc.edu.

—Sarah Witman

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Inhabited landscapes

By Randall Berndt

“ We are surrounded with things which we have not made and which have a life and structure different from our own: trees, flowers, grasses, hills, clouds. For centuries they have inspired us with curiosity and awe. They have been objects of delight. We have recreated them in our imaginations to reflect our moods.”

—Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art, 1976

Kenneth Clark, the eminent art historian, examined and wrote about historic landscape painting styles. An Englishman with an orderly mind, Clark devised a few classifications for these styles—“the landscape of symbols,” “the landscape of fact,” and “the landscape of fantasy”—that he hoped would shed light on to what uses landscape imagery has been put over the ages.

Clark wrote that already by the 15th and 16th centuries artists had moved beyond symbolic landscapes drawn from Christian philosophy and into realism. At the time, a burgeoning merchant class fueled the craze for realist landscape painting with expressive compositions and strong contrasts of light and color.

But artists like Albrecht Altdorfer and Hieronymus Bosch felt that landscape art had become too tame and domesticated. They set about exploring the mysterious and the un-subdued, giving birth to a style that we today think of as Expressionist Art. For Clark, more recent expressionists like Vincent van Gogh, Max Ernst, and even Walt Disney exemplify this spirit of using landscape forms to express a range of emotions—disquiet and wonderment among them.

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So it was that James Watrous Gallery director Martha Glowacki and I had for some time discussed the idea of curating an exhibition of Wisconsin painters who are landscape expressionists of different kinds. The artists we brought together for our recent Inhabited Landscapes exhibition may not easily fall into any of Kenneth Clark’s classifications, but they all adventure beyond mere topographical rendering.

Martha and I as curators wanted to play with the idea of landscape art being “inhabited” by artists’ subjective states— mood, memory, dreams—as well as their ideas. The artists included in this exhibition all use their own visual language to create personal visions, unique ways of imbuing the natural world with meaning.

Tom Uttech’s art is literally inhabited by memory. Uttech is passionate about spending time in the woods, leaving behind his everyday life to wander and look. His depictions of a radically wild Northwoods—northern Wisconsin and up into Minnesota and Canada—are not painted out of doors in a specific place (that is, he does not take his paint and brushes there). Rather, Uttech absorbs the atmosphere, the texture, and the light. He then returns to his studio to make paint-

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ABOVE: Tom Uttech, nin gaskanas, 2013. Oil on linen, 57 x 61 inches Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee

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ings without preparatory drawings on the canvas, finding the shapes of wildness from memory. Working this way results in more powerful images, he says, eliciting more drama and connection with the mysterious moods of a fictional but naturally convincing wild place than would be possible by sitting outside and copying a tree.

Uttech grew up near Wausau, and he has spoken of a childhood visual epiphany, a magically pure event: the startlingly vivid appearance of a redwing blackbird flying above a green hay field. This memory of a colorful, natural otherness is emblematic of his life as an artist, where his love of bird life—as well as the other creatures of the Northwoods— helps Uttech transform them into messengers of the mystery of wildness. This is a world that humans cannot manufacture, and Uttech puts no human figures in his paintings because he wants to make space for the viewer to enter the painted landscape. Using Ojibwe (Anishinabe) words for his painting titles, Uttech immerses his art in the ancient life of places that have no names.

Much of John Miller’s art also comes from Northwoods wilderness areas. He has spent time as an artist in residence on Lake Superior’s Isle Royale, absorbing the spirit of that special place. Where Uttech paints in a style that is lush and romantic, with echoes of the 19th century Hudson River School, Miller has developed a system of signs to describe the essence of natural forms. Miller’s work as a graphic artist has schooled him in the power of design, and some of his paintings share elements of Japanese woodblock prints. Nature speaks through his artist’s shorthand to translate the landscape’s infinite variety into patterns, texture, and color that resonate with the ancient energies of rocks, trees, and water.

The message is a visual ordering that transforms what might look like randomness into an exquisite, perfectly natural orderliness. With his art Miller is our intrepid guide to those wild places he knows; we can trek into the woods or ride along in his canoe.

Charles Munch’s paintings—like Miller’s—make a virtue of simplification. He has over the years developed a highly personal visual vocabulary of flat color pattern and stylized form that projects feeling and mood. Early in his career, Munch painted in a representational style using illusionist space and traditional figure anatomy. By the early 1980s he felt the need to make his work more emotional and expressionistic, closer to what was going on in his personal life.

Munch began searching for a formal system that would allow his personality to inhabit his art. Color and a distinct geometry of landscape forms came together to merge feeling and description. Munch is a consummate colorist, using color in his work to create space and light and tune each painting to sing in its own key. Each painting is a unique adventure in design, encapsulating sometimes-dramatic and sometimessubtle action. His narrative themes, often presented in ambiguous or mysterious imagery, nevertheless speak clearly

of his concerns about the “civilizing” tendencies of humans and their destructive effects on the natural environment. This worry, however, is tempered and redeemed by his art’s luminous celebration of life.

Dennis Nechvatal’s art is the product of the artist’s deep immersion in a private world of landscape meaning. He became enchanted with nature during his youth growing up in Lancaster, Wisconsin, in the 1950s. Nechvatal experienced bucolic boyhood days: riding his bike over the rolling sun-

The artists we brought together for our recent Inhabited Landscapes exhibition may not easily fall into any classifications, but they all adventure beyond mere topographical rendering.

The artists all use their own visual language to create personal visions, unique ways of imbuing the natural world with meaning. dappled roads, fishing pole over his shoulder, and lounging for hours in the shady thickets on the banks of a trout stream.

Many years later, Nechvatal has arrived at an art language that celebrates natural forms in what at first appears an idiosyncratic and primitive style. Only by surrendering to the emotional logic of Nechvatal’s busy world of color and design can one visit his delightful wonderland. Like other artists in this exhibition, Nechvatal is a close reader of art history and theories of perception. The result is the transformation of an everyday view of landscape into an alternative reality where feverish concentration on detail, a sharply focused definition of otherwise soft forms, and sparkling color beguile the eye and lure viewers into this green space humming with nature’s secrets. In Nechvatal’s world, the trees, flowers, and rocks can become figurative elements—energetic primal effigies promoting affection, awe, and maybe a little fear as to what surprises nature has to offer us.

Living on Madison’s east side, Barry Carlsen has found some of his landscape subject matter in his neighborhood’s backyards and bike paths. He has always been interested in the ways that nature coexists with built environments. Carlsen grew up in Omaha where he became intrigued with old industrial warehouse architecture. His family vacationed in northern

OPPOSITE PAGE (top): John Miller, The Launch, 2009. Inkjet print, 11 x 15 inches OPPOSITE PAGE (bottom): John Miller, The Carry, 2009. Inkjet print, 11 x 11 inches

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ABOVE: Dennis Nechvatal, Passage IV (1), 2013. Acrylic on panel, 24 x 18 inches OPPOSITE PAGE (top): Charles Munch, Cloudy River, 2011. Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 48 inches OPPOSITE PAGE (bottom): Charles Munch, Boiling, 2011. Oil on canvas, 16 x 21 inches Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee

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Minnesota, where he was also imprinted early on with the magic of the water and the woods, the campfire, and the muskie lurking in the lily pads. Memory is embedded in all his painted landscapes—whether urban or Northwoods—and familial narratives are at home in both places. The search for an emotional home gives his work physical shape, and luminosity brings it to life, animating his visual autobiography. Carlsen has said that he uses light as a unifying element in his paintings to heighten the emotional level of the work. Light from an unseen source and the transition between night and day intrigue him. He is interested in human scale in the environment and context’s effect on objects and their meanings. Whatever the content, he sees the paintings as “emotional vignettes,” rather than formal landscapes. They represent visual remembrances; the artist paying homage to place and time.

Landscape art can be inspired by the poetry of exotic

The Inhabited Landscapes exhibition is as much a celebration of nature that delights and intrigues as it is a collection of diverse perspectives on the natural world that provoke questions about the role of nature in our lives. places, but it can also come from an everyday source.

Cathy Martin is a farmer as well as an artist who has a lifelong connection with the rolling countryside near Prairie du Chien. Her hands-on experience with the land lends her art an authenticity that results in imagery that goes beyond picturesque recording. Her recognition of the beauty of fields formed by good stewardship of the land—as well as her knowledge of what is required to raise a crop and conserve the soil—makes her a natural interpreter of her home ground.

Self taught as an artist, Martin instinctively composes her paintings in ways that invite the viewer to stand where she stands, to feel the ground beneath the alfalfa. These are pretty places, to be sure, but they also grow the hay that feeds the cattle. Appreciation of the patterns of this singular landscape, as well as its weather and seasonal moods, makes a satisfying life for Martin and her family—and some incredibly beautiful landscapes.

David Lenz lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin, and some of his subject matter comes from places in and around nearby Milwaukee. Another important source of inspiration for Lenz is the landscape of Sauk County in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area where he and his family own a hilly piece of land next to a small, traditional dairy farm owned by Erv

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and Mercedes Wagner. Lenz became close friends with the Wagners and documented their work and their lives on the canvas in loving detail. Lenz has also portrayed his son Sam, who has Down Syndrome, in that farm landscape for a portrait that won first prize in the Smithsonian’s prestigious 2006 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. He has also painted portraits of children of different races who live in Milwaukee’s working class neighborhoods. In these varied subjects that he calls “the three legs of my painter’s stool,”—farm life, people with disabilities, and inner-city youth—Lenz honors the dignity of his subjects in whatever circumstances he finds them. Regular people in regular places commingle in a painting style where realism is so stunningly heightened that ordinariness becomes spiritual. Landscape, urban or rural, is always the surrounding for David Lenz’s art. In all their glowing naturalistic detail, his paintings become a transcendent setting for people and places that might not otherwise be celebrated.

For me, the Inhabited Landscapes exhibition is as much a celebration of nature that delights and intrigues as it is a collection of diverse perspectives on the natural world that provoke questions about the role of nature in our lives. In the work of seven fine Wisconsin artists with different life experiences with the land, we have seven individual visual narratives of how we all inhabit a landscape of our own perceptions. Exhibitions like this inform our own sense of place and give us plenty to think about when it comes to recreating nature on a canvas.

Indeed, ideas about “landscape into art” in this postmodern age are as complicated and varied as they were for Kenneth Clark writing on the topic in the middle of the last century: They can run the gamut from an innocent and friendly nature scene all the way to a lurid rendition of environmental apocalypse, spawned by anxieties over what we humans have wrought on this planet. The work in Inhabited Landscapes falls in diverse and rewarding ways between these two extremes.

And yet for many of us the beauty and grandeur of nature is all mixed up with concern about what the weather will do to us next, whether the oceans will rise, and whether we will still be hearing the meadowlark’s song from that pasture fence post a few years hence. More and more folks walk down the street looking at the digital device in their hand, not seeing the spectacular panorama of blossoming cumulus clouds in the startlingly blue sky overhead or (apparently seen only by this writer) the Cooper’s hawk’s dramatic swoop at a hapless popcorn-eating sparrow on the Capitol lawn in downtown Madison. So many of these messages of natural wonder are not being received when we submerge ourselves in virtual realities.

But we share in common the environment that sustains us all. Having seen landscape made into art in the gallery and on these pages, we might all go outside, eyes and minds stimulated, to notice more—and to value more—of what is all around us in the city as well as in the country. Z

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ABOVE: (top) Barry Roal Carlsen, Dreaming Westwards, 2011. Oil and acrylic on panel with artist made frame, 24.5 x 53 inches ABOVE: (bottom): Barry Roal Carlsen, Waiting, 2005. Oil on panel with artist made frame, 10.5 x 17 inches Courtesy of Artisan Gallery, Paoli

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ABOVE: (top) Cathy Martin, Country Summer, 2010. Oil on Masonite, 32 x 12 inches ABOVE: (bottom) Cathy Martin, Breakfast in the Meadow, 2013. Oil on Masonite, 16 x 26 inches Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee OPPOSITE PAGE: (top) David Lenz, Of Heaven and Earth, 2011. Oil on linen, 20 x 24 inches Courtesy of Deborah Beck and Frederic H. Sweet OPPOSITE PAGE: (bottom) David Lenz, A View of Milwaukee, 1999. Oil on linen, 32 x 42 inches 42

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Image credit: Teemu008/Flirckr.com

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READ WISCONSIN In case you don’t already know, our 2014 poetry and fiction contests are well under way. The contests, which accept submissions from September 15 to December 15, 2013, are open to all Wisconsin residents and students. Send us your best works of poetry and fiction to win up to $500 and other prizes along with publication in Wisconsin People & Ideas, a slot at the 2014 contest reading at the Wisconsin Book Festival, even a one-week residency at the lovely Shake Rag Alley School for Arts and Crafts in Mineral Point.

We’re pleased to have as judges for our 2014 poetry and fiction contests Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland and author Susanna Daniel.

A first generation college student, Max Garland left a ten-year career as a mail carrier to pursue his love of poetry. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa in 1989 and has been teaching since 1990; currently Max is Professor of English at UW–Eau Claire. In his first poetry collection, The Postal Confessions, which earned the Juniper Prize for Poetry, Max chronicles his years carrying the mail in a classic American voice.

Our lead fiction contest judge, Susanna Daniel, is the author of two novels: Stiltsville was a winner of the 2011 PEN/Bingham award for debut fiction, and Sea Creatures was named an Amazon Editors’ Top Pick in August of 2013. Susanna is the co-founder of the Madison Writers’ Studio, a high-quality and casual private writing workshop, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Columbia University. Her work has been published in Epoch, Newsweek, Slate, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and for more than a decade has lived in Madison.

You can find out more about the 2014 poetry and fiction contests—prize details and complete rules—as well as get to know our lead judges by visiting our contest page at wisconsinacademy.org/contests. Too, the first person to e-mail me (jsmith@wisconsinacademy.org) and identify which famous Wisconsin author was born in the house in the above photograh wins a hardbound edition of lead fiction contest judge Susanna Daniel’s new novel, Sea Creatures. Good luck!

—Jason A. Smith

TURN THE PAGE TO READ THE SECOND-PLACE PRIZEWINNING SHORT STORY FROM OUR 2013 FICTION CONTEST!

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read WI Local Bookshop Spotlight { Novel Ideas – Baileys Harbor } Michelle Palmer still remembers her first job and the influence it had on her career. Still in high school, Michelle took a part-time position at Kroch’s and Brentano’s in Oak Park, Illinois. Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, Michelle spent much of her childhood reading, her favorite place a bedroom full of books.

So, she felt right at home among the shelves at the venerable bookstore. After she finished college, Michelle learned more about the trade by working at Anderson’s Books in nearby Downers Grove. When Michelle decided to pursue her dream of opening a store of her own, the owners of Anderson’s turned from employers into mentors.

“I could call them any time for advice and encouragement,” says Michelle.

But Michelle needed more than advice and encouragement to open her own shop, so she began looking for a partner. Her father Patrick and his wife Betsy had moved from the Chicago area to Baileys Harbor in Door County, and after a few visits Michelle found she liked the small town atmosphere. In early 2006, the Palmers—father Patrick and daughter Michelle—ended up purchasing a former cafe in downtown Baileys Harbor and began renovating the space.

Novel Ideas, the only bookstore on the lake side of Door County, opened in May of 2006.

“My love of reading and my desire to promote reading all figured into my move and the store. I wanted Novel Ideas to be part of the community and provide something that was missing,” says Michelle, noting with a grin that

their motto is Plenty of Pages for All Ages.

The titles stocked reflect the eclectic nature of local and tourist tastes. “I like to find out what interests browsers have and then suggest books that might not be on their radar,” says Michelle.

To keep readers engaged, the store hosts a monthly book club whose selections run the literature gamut. At each meeting six or more avid readers discuss books like Jessica Gregson’s The Angel Makers, Erin Morgenstern’s Night Circus, or Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Book discussions are set against a backdrop of murals created by two local artists: Nik Garvoille and Corinna Lea. Garvoille penned cartoons for Door County’s Peninsula Pulse newspaper before his recent move to Spring Green. The versatile Lea is both artist and chocolatier. The children’s area mural is full of recognizable book characters and welcomes both the young and young at heart, reflecting Michelle’s belief that family time is important.

“There’s nothing like parents and children sharing real books and turning pages together,” she says.

Author book signing events are regular happenings at Novel Ideas.

Most recently Michael Perry visited and spun tales from his 2012 book, Visiting Tom. The Palmers host an annual open mic poetry event each April (National Poetry Month) that features local and national poets of note. The store stocks chapbooks by local poets, including Phil Hansotia, June Nirschl, Judy Roy, and Door County Poets Laureate Barbara Larsen and Estella Lauter.

While the Novel Ideas carries a nice selection of toys and games (for summer visitors seeking something to do on those occasional rainy days), visitors might be surprised to find guitar strings and straps, picks, and other items for musicians. Also featured are CDs by locals like Marybeth Mattson (who is a seasonal clerk at Novel Ideas), Eric Lewis, and Jeanne Kuhns. It turns out that Michelle’s dad is a bass player in a local band, Small Forest, and he was the one who insisted the store carry items for local musicians and music lovers alike.

While the Palmers are committed to being a local, community resource, in 2007 they decided to expand their reach by joining Books for Soldiers, a nonprofit that provides books, magazines, and other media materials to active duty soldiers serving abroad.

“We wanted to do something to support American troops overseas,” says Michelle.

Novel Ideas acts as a repository for donated Books for Soldiers materials, accepts donations on behalf of the program, and also funds the packing and shipping of materials from their sales of used books.

Visit Novel Ideas at 8085 State Highway 57 in Baileys Harbor or online at novelideas-books.com.

—Nancy Rafal

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Wisconsin People & Ideas 2013 Short Story Contest

Fallen Magi B Y R u d y K osh a r

C

ora Gutierrez distrusted good news. So on the Friday when she learned her temporary lectureship in Environmental Studies at Cal State Long Beach was renewed for another year, her future snarled like an angry Doberman.

Not that she was unhappy. She laughed with delight when her friend Paula, the program secretary, gave her flowers. Knowing she could still pay tuition for her seven-year-old son Mauricio at the Catholic school in the neighborhood brought a satisfied smile to her face. She didn’t even mind that the department chair, Professor Bob Fennel, hugged her much longer and more tightly than he should have.

But when the letter from the bank arrived the following Monday, Cora was relieved. The logic of the situation had worked itself out and the world was

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rebalanced around the bleak axis of reality. Because fate was fate, bad news followed good news.

Cora had planned to pay the mortgage for March, but it was impossible.

Once she’d laid out money for utilities and food and the car—and for the minimum credit card payment on the outrageous balance left behind by her husband Oscar before he ran off with some whore from Oshkosh—there wasn’t much left.

She’d written the bank stating that if her teaching position were renewed, she would try to make a double mortgage I D E A S

payment. The bank always gave them breathing room before. Oscar had made the monthly payments; he said everything was fine. “The bank is cool with us,” he boasted. “I’ve got it all under control. Between your salary and my disability checks, we’re cool.”

The letter said all was not cool. Delinquencies stretched back over eighteen months. The condominium was under water. Cora’s credit rating had slipped far below what the bank wanted for its mortgagors. The bank regretted “deeply”—the word pounced at Cora— that it was necessary to take action.

read WI Cora nodded as she put down the letter. Foreclosure. It just had to be.

 Cora was reluctant at first to accept Professor Fennel’s offer of help. The Fennels had a mother-in-law apartment in the backyard of their two-story home. The professor’s mother-in-law had passed away a year ago, and the Fennels decided to rent the place out.

They would let Cora live there for minimal monthly payments until her finances were under control. Mauricio would have to leave St. Maria’s Catholic School, which was too bad, but this was an emergency.

The apartment was small but comfortable. Mauricio liked his tiny bedroom, which had been the sewing room. Cora’s bedroom window looked onto the Fennels’ large backyard, where avocado trees lined a brick wall on two sides and a purple-flowered jacaranda strutted lasciviously.

Mrs. Fennel was also a professor, but unlike her husband, she traveled much and said little. She drank a lot of red wine judging from the recycling bin filled with bottles whenever she was in town.

She dressed impeccably. Cora noticed her expensive shoes more than anything.

Cora was surprised by how much privacy she and Mauricio had in their new apartment. She saw Bob Fennel almost not at all when she was home, and when she was in the department, he talked with her as he always had—too cheerily and with a look of expectation.

After a few weeks, Cora allowed herself a small luxury: she thought things might work out.

“It’s almost too good to be true,” said Cora to Paula over lunch one day. “I can’t believe my good luck.”

Paula had worked for Cal State Long Beach for more than twenty years. She was one of those senior staff members who always knew which office to call and what form to fill out. She reminded Cora of Radar, the character in M*A*S*H who knew his commanding officer’s order before he gave it. Paula had advised her against accepting Bob Fennel’s offer.

“Good. I’m glad for you. You know, he has a reputation.”

{ Book Reviews } Sea Creatures

By Susanna Daniel Harper, 320 pages, $25.99

Reviewed by Susan Day Georgia Quillian’s family seems to cope well enough with its quirks. Three-year-old Frankie inexplicably stopped talking after he turned two. Her husband Graham suffers from parasomnia, which presents itself as nocturnal roamings.

A disturbing and embarrassingly public roaming episode prompts the road trip that unfolds in the first few pages of Sea Creatures, as the Quillian family moves from Round Lake, Illinois, to Coral Gables, Florida.

Like Sea Creatures author Susanna Daniel, protagonist Georgia Quillian grew up in Florida. Upon her return, Georgia and her family make their “home” in a boat docked at the house of her father and step-mother Lidia. While Graham delves into his promising, but temporary, academic fellowship, Georgia nurses the failure of her own consulting business. Trying to forget the troubling wake behind them, the Quillians settle into a life of relative safety and stability.

While her husband works, Georgia dotes on her son, signing for communication.

She is an anxious and protective mother, yet Georgia and Frankie’s navigation of the world using American Sign Language is a sweet portrait of motherhood. During her aimless days Georgia reflects on her own mother, who died five years earlier, before Frankie was born. Georgia’s love for her mother is palpable, yet proscribed by an adult awareness of her mother’s faults and the difficulties of her parents’ marriage.

The telling of these memories is both intimate and frank.

Georgia thinks how the loss of her mother was an “empty vessel that consumed so much space, the thunderous void. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or even angels, though I’d always loved the idea of these things and wished I could believe—but how else to define the bellowing, chest-beating presence of absence?”

Georgia’s stepmother Lidia nudges her toward a job as a personal assistant to an eccentric hermit named Charlie Hicks. Despite her disdain at taking a job she feels is beneath her and some initial wariness about the location—the collection of rickety homes supported on pilings in the middle of Biscayne Bay known as Stiltsville— she begins working for Hicks. Not long after, Graham pursues an opportunity on a research vessel in Hurricane Alley that will take him out of touch with his family for many weeks.

Hicks turns out to be a talented artist with his own troubled past, and a friendship unfolds between him and Georgia and Frankie at the undemanding pace of a summerlong beach vacation. Their cautious, yet probing conversations reveal long hidden details about Georgia’s life; their adventures with Frankie are life-changing. The friendship brings about jubilation and devastation as the three face metaphorical and quite real storms.

Most of Sea Creatures is set on or adjacent to water: the Coral Gables canal way, the Dry Tortugas, and Biscayne Bay and Stiltsville (the setting of Daniels’ first novel by the same name). These places are portrayed as peripheral, even magical, liberated from the urban demands of inland life.

While a few real ocean dwellers make notable appearances, caught and struggling against human-made snares, the sea creatures we encounter are largely mythic creations of the characters’ making. Imagined and re-imagined, they represent stories of beauty or terror or wonder as needed—to fill “the thunderous void” of absence—

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read WI “I’ve heard rumors,” said Cora. “And he is creepy. But it’s probably best for temporary instructors not to know too much.”

“Maybe. You let me know if anything funny happens, okay?”

“I will. And thanks for looking out for me.”

AUTHOR BIO

2013 Fiction Contest 2nd-Place Winner: Rudy Koshar Rudy Koshar started writing fiction in 2010. His short stories and poems have appeared in Avocet, Blinking Cursor, Eclectica, Forge, Revolution House, Sleetmagazine, and Thunder Sandwich. He has written or edited seven books on modern German and European history, winning Guggenheim, American Council of Learned Societies, and other fellowships along the way.

He teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is the George L. Mosse/Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation Professor of History. Read more of his work at rudykoshar.net.

 That evening, Mauricio had a high fever and vomited several times. Of course, thought Cora—something bad had to follow her good fortune getting the apartment. She didn’t want to be a panicky parent, but her son did seem very sick.

She remembered growing up in Los Angeles and her parents’ reluctance to take their children to the clinic because of medical bills. Her youngest brother Carlos had lost hearing in his left ear due to a minor infection that should have been treated earlier. She’d pledged never to scrimp on medical care for her son even if her health insurance paid only a fraction of the costs. She bundled Mauricio into her Hyundai and drove four miles to the clinic on West Boynton.

After a forty-five-minute wait, they saw a middle-aged doctor whose frown might have been etched with a Bowie knife.

Ten minutes in the exam room, another twenty waiting for a prescription, and they were back in the car going home. She carried Mauricio into his bedroom. She knew she couldn’t do that much longer; he was a growing boy. As she felt his burning forehead, she remembered she needed to call her younger sister Bianca. Maybe she’d come over tomorrow and stay with Mauricio while Cora was at work.

She decided to take a shower and try to sleep. She assumed she’d be up at least once with Mauricio during the night. She also knew she’d have to get up earlier than usual to work on her lecture on the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

It was a new subject for her, and it was almost certain the fifty-something guy in the front row of her class would defend the oil companies; she needed extra preparation.

Ray Damaske was a soft drink salesman who’d been downsized. He was bald, overweight, always smiling.

JUDGE’S NOTES

From Lead Judge Jerry Apps We meet Cora Gutierrez—a person that many of us know (or think we know)—in the first paragraph of “Fallen Magi.” A strong woman who has extricated herself from a bad marriage, Cora is about to embark on a career as a college instructor. As the story progresses we learn much about Cora and her struggles by the interesting way the author presents glimpses of her life in between segments of a lecture she is giving. Nuanced character development, clever touches of detail, and a surprise ending make this story a winner.

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He’d been out of work almost two years and decided to return to a long abandoned bachelor’s degree. He wore his conservative views openly but goodnaturedly, and often assailed the class with quotations from Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Cora liked Ray, but she never understood how someone who’d been cut to the bone by corporate economic policies could defend them with such glee.

After getting out of the shower, Cora looked at herself in the mirror and shrugged. There were faint lines around her eyes; the skin on her neck was no longer as taut as it once was. She’d been through this inventory before— thirty years old, one miscarriage, one healthy boy, weight still okay. Her long legs were still, well, long. Oscar once told her that with breast implants she would look as good as the nude dancers he and his pals watched at Gringo’s Bar. “That bastard,” she said out loud as she toweled off.

As she opened the bathroom to let steam out, there was a knock on the front door. She quickly put on a bathrobe. She wished it wasn’t the very short robe Oscar had given her, but it was the only one handy. She drew the robe more tightly around her neck when she opened the door and saw Bob Fennel.

“Professor Fennel. I’m surprised to see you.”

“So, Cora. I know it’s a little late.

But I saw you leave with Mario, and I wondered if everything was okay.”

“With Mauricio,” said Cora. “Mauricio.”

“Mauricio. Right. Should have remembered that. So sorry.”

Fennel had the habit of turning sibilants into whistle-like bursts of air. It wasn’t a speech impediment, just an annoying detail that Cora couldn’t overlook, like a bright crimson wart at the tip of someone’s nose. She hesitated.

“Everything’s fine. He has a fever and an upset stomach, but it’s nothing serious.

This will probably be the worst night for him. Thanks for asking.”

“Sometimes people need backup. They need security, assistance.” Again the whistling sibilants.

“I guess that’s true.”

Cora expected Fennel to sweep her body with his eyes, but he looked only

read WI at her face. Then he looked down, like a shy schoolboy. Had it been in the afternoon and had she been fully clothed, she would have invited him in. After all, he was her landlord, and a generous one to boot, as well as a colleague. But it was ten thirty in the evening.

“Well, I’d better get back. I was writing a paper on the environment in the former Soviet Bloc,” said Fennel at last.

“I have some work to do too. For my lecture tomorrow. But I’m going to try to sleep first.”

“Right. Yes. No substitute for a good eight hours. Well, let me know if you need anything.” Fennel turned as if his black penny loafers were on swivels.

Cora locked the door. What to think of Fennel’s visit? A genuine attempt to help? Maybe she was too suspicious, especially of men. He hadn’t approached her, hadn’t even ogled her. He still looked like a trained sea lion expecting a treat, but there was something else, something troubling. She’d have to think about it more. Now it was time to dry her hair, check on Mauricio, slip into her nightgown, and fall into bed.

It was eleven by the time she pulled the bedspread back and slid under the covers.

Mauricio was up at two. He felt nauseous but couldn’t vomit. Cora brought him into bed with her. He tossed around for twenty minutes before he fell asleep. The next thing Cora knew it was five o’clock. Mauricio still slept soundly, so she edged out of bed and went to make coffee. Soon she sat at the kitchen table looking over her notes.

She looked up; she’d forgotten to call Bianca. She would wait until six, though she was tempted to call right then. Bianca had far more time than she did. She’d married Jesus, a car salesman, who wouldn’t let his wife work outside the home. They had no children and seemed in no hurry to have any. Bianca spent the day looking perfect, doing a little housework, shopping, watching soap operas. Mauricio adored her.

“Bianca? It’s Cora. Sorry it’s so early.

Did I wake you?”

“Yes, you did. What is it, almost six?

That’s okay. Jesus sleeps like a rock. Is there something wrong?”

by the strange humans who make their home in a world where they are not equipped to survive.

Sea Creatures is an exploration of the fragile structures people build for solace, protection, and desire, and the ways in which these structures must weather the storms of consequence and tragedy. The novel could easily dwell in regret and guilt; the grownups all have reason enough. Yet Sea Creatures is more interested in the deep and complex connections of family as well as the ways in which we bear the returning tide of loss.

Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus

By Dean Jensen Crown Publishers, $26.00, 336 pages

Reviewed by Terri Schlichenmeyer The bar was all of an inch in diameter, but it was the perfect size. You only needed to grab it and hang on. It could hold your weight as you swung hand-over-hand, hung upside down, and performed monkeyshines on the monkey bars.

Many of us will remember doing this when we were young, imagining ourselves as daring acrobats of the Midway. As you’ll see in Dean Jensen’s new book, Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus, it’s not the trapeze that will keep you hanging. Rather, it’s the high-flying love affair between real-life circus stars of the 1920s, Alfredo Codona and Leitzel—better known as the Queen of the Air. At sixteen years old, the relatively minor trapeze artist and soon-to-be heartthrob Alfredo Codona didn’t believe in love. That is, until he met Leitzel, Queen of the Air. She was eighteen, stunningly beautiful, and a “darling with circus audiences everywhere.” Smitten, Codona pursued her with single-mindedness. But the Queen of the Air had her career to think about, and she ended their brief romance.

Leitzel definitely had circus blood in her veins: her father had owned a traveling troupe; her grandmother and aunts were all performers and her mother was a trapeze sensation. Of course, it didn’t take long for Leitzel to upstage Mama.

Alfredo was the long-awaited son of Edward Codona, owner of a traveling circus, and one half of the Flying Codonas. Born in Mexico, Codona spent most of his youth watching his sister, Victoria, receive tutoring on the high wire. It was her prowess that got him to Chicago. It was she who saw his heart break when Leitzel said their romance was over.

Leitzel married, divorced, and married again but always had lovers on the side, powerful men who visited her tent after her performances. Her fame grew, and she made “Mister John” Ringling a lot of money.

On the trapeze, the grown-up Alfredo “had no peers.” His fame, too, was growing and he had his sights set on a feat of acrobatics that everyone said was impossible.

He married a fellow troupe member, but he never forgot his first love. And when, eighteen years after their last kiss, Alfredo Codona finds himself working beneath the same roof as his beloved Queen of the Air, the story reminds readers that this seemingly innocent time was not so innocent after all.

For readers who love a good romance filled with drama and peppered with 1920s intrigue, well-researched period settings, and lots of elephants, Queen of the Air is just the ticket. I could barely tear myself away from this book. By conjuring rich settings and exquisitely shaped characters, author Dean Jensen makes Leitzel and Codona’s tale seem more like a novel than a true story.

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read WI “Just a little emergency. Mauricio’s sick. Can you stay with him today? Hopefully just today.”

“Sure, I can do that. I could probably be there by eight thirty. Is that good?”

“Wonderful. Thanks so much.”

“You could use another man in your life, Cora. You know that, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t know that.”

“But a man can be very useful, you know? Around the house and whatnot, you see what I’m talking about, girl.”

Bianca laughed.

“Well, maybe I should rent a man for the day, huh?”

Cora smiled at her sister’s gentle harrying about finding another man. At least she did it with a little humor. Her mother’s sharp-tongued comments were more irritating, like Fennel’s sibilants, or automated telephone calls offering to melt her mountain of credit card debt.

Once Bianca was situated and the school was informed of Mauricio’s absence, Cora was in her Hyundai. It was reassuring that Mauricio already seemed a little stronger. She doubted he could go to school the next day, but tomorrow she didn’t have to lecture. She could work at home and tend to her son.

 At ten she stood at the podium of a small lecture room. Her course on Contemporary Environmental Issues had thirty-five students. Many were older than the normal college student and almost every one worked in addition to going to school. She liked teaching students whose life situations mirrored hers—negotiating education, work, and family in a tense balancing act. It was more real, more authentic. It was a good sign that of the students who had showed up on the first day of class, all but two remained. The department took note not only of temporary instructors’ class enrollments but also how well they retained students.

Cora took pride in approaching environmental issues from a cultural angle.

She’d started the class quoting the poet Wendell Berry: “Neither this world nor any of its places / is an ‘environment.’”

The idea was that “environment” was a human invention for which nature had 50

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little interest. She also stressed writing.

Many of her students had science backgrounds, and Cora was determined they should improve their command of the written word. Environmental “science”— any discipline arrogating the word “science” to itself—was as dependent on cultural values and linguistic conventions as the humanities were.

Physical contact of any kind, especially with a male student—and a married, fifty-something male no less—could have consequences far beyond a simple empathetic hug.

Cora felt confident about her lecture.

Despite only a few hours of sleep and the anxiety of knowing her son was ill, she felt alert. She was thankful she’d had time to look through her notes. She’d revised her account of the ecological impact of the oil spill, and her conclusions were now more coherent. Even then, as she began her background narrative on oil spills in American history, she felt a nagging concern, like the rub of a brake pad on her bicycle tire when it was misaligned. There was something she should be worried about, but it had nothing to do with the lecture. Once she started on the events that led to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, she knew what it was: Oscar.

When Oscar disappeared four months ago she’d been enraged. But more disturbing than Oscar’s ditching her for some bit of white trash was the massive debt he’d left behind. She agreed with her mother, who, with characteristic charm, said “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

But Oscar was still Mauricio’s father.

Mauricio asked about him all the time at first, and she’d said all the right things. Daddy wasn’t mad at Mauricio.

It was Mommy and Daddy that had a I D E A S

problem and Daddy needed to sort things out. How long was a little while? asked Mauricio. About as long as it takes to build a fence, said Cora. Is the fence done yet? asked Mauricio. And so it had gone, until Cora dropped the fence story and admitted to Mauricio she didn’t know how long it would be.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell him he might never be back.

Cora was at the point in her lecture where she discussed BP’s initial attempt to soft-pedal the scope of the crisis to the media. As she laid out the details, a part of her mind rehearsed the early days of her relationship to Oscar. She was just eighteen, rebellious, driving around East Los Angeles with her girlfriends on an August night, when she met Oscar. He was twenty-one, tall, raven-haired, as exotic as the toreadors she once saw on a family vacation in Mexico City when she was fourteen. He came from the working class, listened to Los Lobos, wore multiple tattoos, and smoked cigarettes. He was also as quickwitted and intelligent as any man Cora would meet at the university. He was the first and only man she’d slept with. They were married four months after they’d met. Her entire family protested.

The first year of marriage was hot and carefree. Oscar worked construction and Cora was pregnant five months after the wedding. Oscar’s already considerable prowess with his friends only increased when he was seen with his beautiful and very pregnant wife. Then the miscarriage, which brought on a heavy fog of depression for Cora that nobody could penetrate. It was a time of reassessment. Once she felt better, she raced through an undergraduate degree at Cal State L.A. Oscar was uncertain about her breakneck approach to school, but then education was women’s work. For his part, he had enough money saved to pay the tuition and buy a small condominium. He could handle all of it.

Cora gained entry into a doctoral program at UCLA with full scholarship.

As her star rose, her relationship with her husband began a six-year long slide.

The longer Cora sat at her laptop writing seminar papers the greater Oscar’s distance became. More and more, when she slipped under the covers at

read WI midnight, Oscar grunted, turned away, ground his teeth. An adventurous lover had become as cold as a dead-end trail of clues in a murder mystery.

When Cora became pregnant with Mauricio, Oscar was uninspired by his second chance at fatherhood. He was injured at work, drew workmen’s compensation, took several part-time jobs, and finally gave up, laughing at how easy it was to “con the state” by drawing unemployment and disability payments.

His visits to Gringo’s increased just as his circle of friends widened to include characters Cora thought were outright dangerous. She had arguments with Oscar about bringing them home late in the evening to drink, smoke grass, and watch TV. There was now a child in the house, after all.

Oscar ran up debts from all-night binges and gambling on dogfights. The checks Cora thought were being written to pay the mortgage and credit cards remained unwritten. Later Cora chided herself for not noticing. Years ticked by like seconds. Between finishing the dissertation and caring for Mauricio, then scrounging around for teaching positions in the Los Angeles area, there was no time to tend to her husband’s feeling of being superfluous. When she landed her first serious teaching job, a temporary lectureship at Cal State Long Beach, her elation was as great as Oscar’s disinterest, which was mighty.

How long will Oscar occupy my mind? thought Cora as she turned to the last page of her lecture. She concluded with a short narrative of what might have happened to prevent the BP fiasco. Not just more corporate responsibility but also more effective government regulations were needed. But was strong public oversight possible when antigovernment hysteria ruled the land?

She always ended her lectures with questions. It was up to students to decide. The ensuing discussion was spirited and Cora could see her lecture had been a success. She dismissed the class, reminding them they had a heavy reading load the following week.

As the class filed out, she noticed Ray Damaske still seated. She thought it strange he’d said nothing during the discussion.

Jensen, a former arts critic and writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, explains in his Afterword how he researched this epic tale. Long before you get that far, though, you’ll be treated to hours of stupendous thrills and chills under the Big Top. For anyone who knows that stardust can be tarnished and magic is an illusion, Queen of the Air absolutely soars.

Whale of Stars

By Michael Kriesel Sunnyoutside Press, 16 pages, $20.00

Reviewed by Linda Aschbrenner While poet Michael Kriesel hails from Wausau, his newest poetry chapbook, Whale of Stars, hails from New York publisher Sunnyoutside Press and sells for approximately twenty cents a word. Yes, you can own 96 of Michael Kriesel’s words for twenty dollars. Why does a diminutive, four by four-inch collection of haiku sell for this price? To find out, one has to enter the world of rare books with limited press runs, fine art publishers, and, of course, stellar poets.

Sunnyoutside publisher David McNamara must have been satisfied with the success of the two previous chapbooks by Kriesel that he published in 2008—Moths Mail the House and Feeding My Heart to the Wind—because he pulled out all the stops for Whale of Stars. McNamara chose hand-set letterpress printing and a handsewn binding—elements prized by rare book collectors, small press aficionados, and poetry lovers—to create a work that is both art and artifact.

Kriesel has always been a master of image, a skill required for haiku. As a result, his work has appeared in top haiku journals, including Modern Haiku and Frogpond.

But it’s more than image at work here in Kriesel’s poems. Take for instance his deceptively simple haiku from Whale of Stars: marigolds at dusk bee gathers light A haiku is often rooted in nature combined with some reflection on nature, often with Buddhist overtones—one feels the transience of things in addition to a certain quality of loneliness. The haiku: one moment captured, one mood conveyed, more mystery than clarity, more image than explanation, as in another of my favorites from this collection: drinking with your ghost raccoons steal corn like no one’s there How does one know a good haiku from a failed one? According to Kriesel, a good haiku has images with “a frisson between them, like two bits of magnet creating the field between them—an ‘ah-ha’ moment arising from two images coming together, dissociated on the surface, but having a deep-image resonance between them, creating a third meaning.”

This isn’t to say that these haiku aren’t accessible. Kriesel says that he hopes that in these poems readers will find surprise, and, hopefully, a delight—but never a puzzle. There’s a belief system at work here, to be sure. But, as Kriesel notes, this system may be so subtle that the reader needn’t even notice it to enjoy the poems. Z

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read WI “Ray, I’m surprised you were silent today,” she said cheerily.

Cora’s friend Nadine, an art historian, had once shown her a photo of a sixteenth-century sculpture at the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Italy. It depicted a porcine dwarf resembling a drunken, naked Bacchus perched atop a tortoise.

With his stubby legs and paunch, Ray reminded Cora of that little Bacchus.

The fluorescent light played more than usual off his shiny forehead.

“I’ve been thinking about where this country is headed,” he said, frowning.

“Yes?” Cora had another class at one. Her normal routine was to hurry to her office, close the door, turn off e-mail, and eat a tuna salad sandwich and carrot sticks while looking over her afternoon lecture. Today she decided to stay a few minutes and chat.

“Seems that how we think about freedom is up for grabs,” he said.

“I think you could say that, yes. Do you have anything specific in mind? The oil spill, for instance?”

“That’s part of it. The reading you assigned this week has me thinking.

When the oil industry and the politicians that support it say ‘freedom’, do they mean everyone’s freedom, or just theirs?”

Cora nodded. Ray’s ability to connect the dots always impressed her. He was a smart man whose talents were wasted listening to right-wing talk radio.

“I’ve lost my health insurance,” he said suddenly.

“Oh my,” said Cora. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“I can’t pay the premiums any more.

My wife and I have used up all the savings. My 401k, her little nest egg. I’ll have to withdraw from classes. The main thing is I can’t provide for my wife any more. And she has a heart condition.”

Ray’s face clouded. He was about to cry, which made Cora feel panicky. Part of her wanted to reach over and hug this distraught Bacchus, but the internal yellow caution light a young woman in academics needs started to flash. Physical contact of any kind, especially with a male student—and a married, fiftysomething male no less—could have

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consequences far beyond a simple empathetic hug.

“Ray, maybe things will turn around for you. I heard today that unemployment has come down a little.”

“But economists say it could take years to get back to the employment levels we had before ‘08. And most companies will want to hire younger people anyway—and on a part time basis, so they don’t have to pay benefits.”

Two short knocks at the front door. Somehow she knew who it was. When Fennel asked to come in, she said okay without thinking. She had good reasons to say no.

After a few more minutes Cora looked at her watch and apologized. She really needed to look over her notes for the next class. She felt horrible leaving Ray sitting in the empty room. He told her he would stay for just a few more minutes.

He had to pick up his wife and take her to the doctor.

 During lunch and lecture and the ride back home she thought of almost nothing but Ray. She was relieved to find that freeway traffic wasn’t too bad; she’d beaten rush hour by forty-five minutes.

Mauricio was much better when she got back to the apartment. He was sitting in his bathrobe watching a television show, and Cora could see his normal color had almost returned. She wanted Bianca to stay so she could make dinner for her and have a chat, but Bianca had to leave.

Cora made soup for Mauricio, whose appetite was surprisingly good. By nine, she had him tucked into bed. At nine-thirty she sat under the hanging

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lamp over the kitchen table reading for a lecture she would give the day after tomorrow. Again she found her mind drifting to Ray. Two short knocks at the front door.

Somehow she knew who it was. When Fennel asked to come in, she said okay without thinking. She had good reasons to say no. She was working. It was late.

She was exhausted. Maybe her feelings about Ray’s predicament made her unwilling to refuse Fennel. He sat in the chair that had been Oscar’s favorite.

Again he was shy. Again he had the look of expectation. Then he blurted out that he was leaving his wife and moving out of the house.

Oh no, thought Cora. He wants me to hold his hand. Or he’ll hit on me, now that he’s declared his freedom.

“I’m so sorry, Professor Fennel,” she said. She thought of her expression of sympathy to Ray earlier in the day.

She’d meant it then, but not now. Now it was her sense of self-preservation speaking. Sympathy was a purely tactical maneuver that bought time.

“Call me Bob,” he said, fingering the armrest.

Cora had as much difficulty calling Professor Fennel “Bob” as she had swallowing her mother’s chop suey when she was eight. Her mother had forced her to eat it, which she did, only to vomit all over a new white tablecloth.

“Okay … Bob,” she said.

“I know it seems inappropriate for me to tell you this. But I’m not speaking here as your department chair. And you always seem so simpática.”

Cora hated it when Anglos used Spanish words with her. She was born and raised an American. English was her first language. She had never thought much about her ethnicity. Nor had Oscar, despite the barrio-boy image he paraded.

“Could I have a drink of water?” asked Fennel.

When Cora handed him the water he cleared his throat. The words were out by the time she sat back at the kitchen table. “You see, I’m gay.”

“Oh?” She couldn’t think of anything more to say. Why does that matter? occurred to her, but it seemed rude.

“I’m moving in with my lover, Damon.

We’ve been seeing each other for four years. I’ve never told anyone until I told my wife last night. And now you.”

Cora’s first thought was that she’d just heard dangerous personal information about her department chair that only made her position as a temporary instructor more vulnerable. But that was more like scud before a storm. The main event, the storm, was her anxious realization she might have to leave the apartment. If the Fennels were divorcing, what would happen to the house and the mother-in-law apartment? Who would keep the house? If Mrs. Fennel had it, would she still rent to Cora at a loss?

What if there were new owners? What would they do?

She almost didn’t hear Fennel say, “I just had to stop living a lie. I’ve been in the closet for twenty years, at least.

Twenty years. It felt so stifling. Like I couldn’t breathe. I thought I’d feel such liberation telling my wife. But she screamed at me. It all happened while you were at the emergency room with Mauricio. She called me scum, filth. She threw her wine glass at me. I felt so low.

So I chose you as the second person to hear my news. Because you have something about you, a non-judgmental aura, maybe that’s it.”

She still didn’t know how to respond.

Then, as if she were talking to the easy chair in which Fennel sat, she said, “It’s not easy for a man these days.”

Fennel looked at her questioningly.

“To come out, I mean,” said Cora. “But also just to be a man, whether gay or straight or in between.”

Fennel nodded. He looked down at the faded parallelograms of green and blue on the carpet. He pressed his fingertips to his forehead.

How sad, Cora thought. For the second time today, I’m in the presence of a grown man about to cry.

Now she understood Fennel’s look of expectation. It wasn’t sexual desire but longing for understanding. Again she felt a strong tug of compassion, but her internal caution light blinked even more rapidly than when she’d talked with Ray. She made a quick decision.

Ignoring the light, she stood up, walked

over to Fennel, leaned down, embraced him. Then she stood and said, “Now you have to go, Bob. I still have a sick child in the house, and the last two days have been tiring. And I have some work I want to finish tonight yet. Come back tomorrow if you like, and we can talk more.

 A few minutes later she sat alone at the kitchen table. She closed her book. Her concentration was shot. She felt almost too tired to think about the precariousness of her situation. She would have to start looking for a new apartment, just in case.

She looked at the kitchen counter and saw the small cardboard box Bianca had left. “Mom’s cleaning out her basement.

She thought you might like to have this,” her sister had explained.

Cora had forgotten all about it. She got up, opened the box. It was her mother’s cheap plastic Christmas crèche, the one from the tiny stucco house on West Sierra where Cora grew up. Cora took out the barn and the manger. All the figures were there—the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the animals, the shepherds, and the three wise men, the Magi, bearing gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh.

She used to play with the figures, especially the bearded and turbaned Magi, rearranging them to tell stories.

Her thoughts turned in quick succession to Ray, Fennel, and Oscar. All had their own stories. All were in her life, even through absence. Like the Magi, they were intelligent, though they were anything but kings, astrologers, or magicians. They were fallen Magi. Modern Magi. They came not with gifts but with troubles. Loads of them.

She returned the figures to the box and turned off the overhead light. The apartment was dark except for the streetlight’s pale yellow swath on the carpet.

She thought of Mauricio. Would he end up like the other three? Confused, feeling inadequate, oppressed? She would do everything in her power to prevent that.

Whatever it took. She would see to it that her son would someday bear gifts.

But now she needed sleep. Z

New & RECENT Releases

SEPTEMBER 2013 The Book of Big Dog Town: Poems and Stories from Aztalan and Around

by Jim Stevens Fireweed Press A Sense Sublime

by Richard Quinney Borderland Books Sister Satellite: Poems

by Cathryn Cofell Cowfeather Press Let Him Go

by Larry Watson Milkweed editions OCTOBER 2013 My Life with the Green & Gold: Tales from 20 Years of Sportscasting

by Jessie Garcia Wisconsin Historical Society Press The Map of What Happened: Poems

by Susan Elbe The Backwaters Press November 2013 Romantic Geography: In Search of the Sublime Landscape

by Yi-Fu Tuan University of Wisconsin Press Happenstance

by Robert Root University of Iowa Press DECEMBER 2013 Good Stock: Life on a Low Simmer

by Sanford D’Amato Agate Midway Editor’s Pick: Best known for his Sanford restaurant in Milwaukee, chef D’Amato shares stories and recipes in this compelling memoir of a life spent behind the burners. A good read for Wisconsin foodies and biography buffs alike.

One Room Schools: Stories from the Days of 1 Room, 1 Teacher, 8 Grades

by Susan Apps-Bodilly Wisconsin Historical Society Press What We Lost in the Dark

by Jacquelyn Mitchard (YA title) Soho Teen Did we miss something?

E-mail jsmith@wisconsinacademy.org with other current or forthcoming titles from Wisconsin authors.

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2013 Poetry Contest Honorable Mention Poems I Like November

Return Trip Coming back always went fast.

We fell asleep on the rear seat in happy tangle and were home before we wished it.

My father carried us to our beds, my younger brothers limp and soft, easily moved.

I was too old for such attention, and feigning sleep I’m sure he knew.

He picked me up all dangling legs and arms, my face in his shoulder of tobacco and wool, trudged up the stairs.

By hall light he put me down gently took off my shoes covered me up, clothes and all.

Then tip toed out leaving the door ajar.

Spice Cake For his sixty-sixth birthday the nurse brought my father spice cake I don’t know whether he could eat it himself or she fed him as part of her duties.

He said, “That’s about as special as it gets in here” after hanging up on me three times trying to answer the phone with his bent hands.

I don’t know my father well enough to help him live or die better. I don’t know how tired he is of needles, how he mourns his hands, whether he thinks more about his life or the damned TV. I don’t know if he is afraid of dying, if it is more the emotional fatigue or the physical sadness.

I don’t know how long he will last with all of his organs clamoring like children to prove who’s got it worse, but he has started telling me he loves me.

—Peggy Trojan, Brule

—Paul Terranova, Madison

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I like the grey and woody way November leaves a filigree of trees stripped and spare untidy tatters at their feet Let it go I like the grey and weary way November hunkers down to stubble in exhausted fields Give it a rest Spring is so insistent Summer is so full of itself Fall tries to feed everyone but not November November says Give it a rest Make soup with what’s left from the harvest Find a good book and light a fire It’s almost dark —Elizabeth Harmatys Park, Burlington

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Birds in Flight My best friend’s grandmother survived the holocaust.

Lived in a tiny room off of the kitchen ate like a bird yet wanted to be near food.

Others in the house slept in huge bedrooms with tall ceilings and sliding glass doors.

She preferred small places and a window just big enough for a bird feeder.

Sometimes we were invited in to watch her paint peered over her shoulder like two sparrows at a birdbath watched her dip her tiny paintbrush in and out of bright, watery substances, stipple wings with the beak of her pen crosshatch talons that gave us nightmares.

She sold her illustrations to Audubon signed her name at the bottom like a bird’s claw.

Sometimes I find her paintings in old bookstores the ones that flew out the window flapped their dark wings over the barbed wire fence past the tower of death to freedom.

—Hope McLeod, Washburn

A Tiny Village Due South of Guangzhou for David Yellow sweater. She settles in the crook of your arm.

Our new daughter barely three waves her hand as chickens run by as a rubbish heap to our left catches my eye as a woman stands in an apron on the threshold of her house, observing us, surrounded by her new years banners proclaiming luck, happiness, joy. I’m wrapped in a black and white dress with daisies sprinkled everywhere. And you’re in a black silk shirt bamboo adrift on it. We dressed for this occasion thousands of miles from our flower gardens, books everyone we know. We crossed an ocean, leapt continents. We tread the sacred ground where our daughter as an infant was discovered. When we fly home we’ll arrive the day we left.

—Karen Loeb, Eau Claire

Ecru, adj.

For Joyce

1. The color of unbleached linen. 2. And the creased skin of her forearms, as if she was never enveloped by the sun. 3. The drapes ever drawn, copse against glare and spectacle. 4. Her eyes on dishes piled in the sink, another afternoon up to her elbows.

5. She orchestrated escape. 6. Reluctant to leave before triple-checking the locks and palming the stove to prove the burners cold. 7. No coil of blisters to have or to hold.

—Melissa McGraw, Wauwatosa

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read WI Easy The moon alert in the sky, tomorrow like an arm waving, I love to go out late in the evening, stand beside the huge barn, rickety over its rusty machinery.

Serenade You wonder why I’m at the piano in the middle of the morning when I should be working, but last night my mother—yes, I know she’s long dead—last night my mother lurked again in the brooding forest of her mental illness, pruning with her sharp shears the tiny shoots of trust just beginning to sprout in the springtime of my growing.

No one told me that night what she tried to do in the back pantry. I was watching the moth hit the chimney of the kerosene lamp and fall in a crumple on the kitchen table when my big sister rushed me upstairs without a word of why I had to go to bed so early and without even staying long enough to help me say the Angel of God, My Guardian Dear.

I don’t know if I actually heard my mother wailing downstairs afterwards or if I dreamt that part. But sometimes, like last night, the black forest she planted in the back pantry of my childhood creeps like Birnam Wood to the very windows of my sleeping. And the only way I know to soothe her is to play some Mozart and her favorite piece, Schubert’s Serenade.

— Irene Zimmerman, Milwaukee

Familiar as loaves of bread, white wooden houses rise and fall under the moonlight, breathing the same air I breathe and that the cows breathe as they sleep or drift with a heaviness drawn from deep hollows beneath them, their movements easy, the way we remind ourselves to move— slow and mothering through the dark.

—Patricia Zontelli, Menomonie

Where the Evening Sun Goes Down The book that caused me the most anguish […] the one I feel most tender toward.

—William Faulkner, 1955 Somewhere in that leisurely tortured syntax, where minds, like streams, overflow into streams, a man and his Caddy retrace their tracks through the flux of luckless yet conscious dreams, the man-child safe in her arms again, father silhouetted in the door, the scent of fresh leaves, of a sister who mustn’t linger, snagged on a nail, drawers muddied, softness of a slipper slipping away forever and never beyond the flood of sound and fury, where only an idiot, cut off, would stand waiting, fingers in chained links, in no hurry— witness to generations of decay, where brothers drown and daughters run away.

—John Pidgeon, Green Bay

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What if

television opened a window to bigger worlds?

Wisconsin Public Television

wpt.org

Watch online anytime.

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Madison, WI Permit No. 1564

1922 university avenue | madison WI 53726 Price

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Two Generations, One Dialogue:

Lisa Gralnick and Venetia Dale On view November 8–December 22, 2013

Trained as metalsmiths, Lisa Gralnick and Venetia Dale are currently working in ceramics to produce hybridized objects that merge sculpture, design, and craft sensibilities. Two Generations, One Dialogue explores the ways in which the incongruity between place of production and place of consumption has produced objects with increasing layers of meaning and complex relationships between material, process, and design. As cultural signifiers are absorbed, transformed, and pieced together, a commodity culture has emerged that is both far more eclectic than at any time in history. Yet a whole host of everyday objects now look disconcertingly the same across the globe. Dale and Gralnick approach this phenomenon from different positions: while Dale’s work deals with mass-produced goods as complex assemblages, Gralnick is more interested in the idiosyncratic object.

Top: Lisa Gralnick, Ceramic Studies, 2013. Stoneware with terra sigillata Bottom: Venetia Dale, wedges, 2013. Vitreous clay, 16 x 16 x 26 inches

Side by side solo exhibitions:

Pamela Callahan and Rhea Vedro On view January 14–March 2, 2014 Meet the artists at an opening reception on Friday, January 17, from 5:30–7:30 pm

For her exhibition titled How a Bird Is Watched by Water, Pamela Callahan’s explores the convergence of the inner and outer landscape. Inspired by the hills around her studio in southwest Wisconsin, her recent paintings incorporate their curves, shadows, shapes, and creatures. Rhea Vedro’s painted steel sculpture evokes the vulnerability of armored bodies. Her Ogum series is inspired by the cyclical migrations of creatures inhabiting both air and water. She is fascinated by the trajectory of humankind’s relationship with metal—sourcing it from the earth and learning to refine it into objects of beauty, war, value, infrastructure, ceremony, and industry.

Top: Pamela Callahan, Lagoon Me/Lagoon You (diptych), 2013. Oil on wood, 48 x 24 inches Bottom: Rhea Vedro, Saudades, 2009. Steel, mica, gold leaf, and gesso, 36 x 60 x 12 inches

Visit www.wisconsinacademy.org for more details