Wisconsin People & Ideas – Fall 2022

MAGIC WILDERNESS DREAMSCAPES OF THE FOREST

ON VIEW through January 15, 2023

Magic Wilderness: Dreamscapes of the Forest features work by sixteen artists that present the Wisconsin wilderness in all its rebellious, bewitching glory. The exhibition celebrates nature’s bounty and those artists who can’t live without it.

MUSEUM OF WISCONSIN ART West Bend|wisconsinart.org

Shane McAdams, Rolling Coffee, 2022 (detail)

Thanks to the 2022 Exhibition Sponsors: James and Karen Hyde, Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Pick Heaters, RDK Foundation, Thomas J. Rolfs Family Foundation, Wisconsin Arts Board

WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS & LETTERS

WISCONSIN ACADEMY STAFF

Ursa Anderson • Exhibitions and Outreach Coordinator, James Watrous Gallery

Madison Buening • Donor Relations and Stewardship Coordinator

Christopher Chambers • Interim Editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas

Jody Clowes • Director, James Watrous Gallery

Lizzie Condon • Director, Environmental Initiatives

Jessica James • Program Coordinator, Climate Initiatives

Chris Lopez-Henriquez • Editorial Intern

Erika Monroe-Kane • Executive Director

Matt Rezin • Operations Manager

Zack Robbins • Director of Development

Lidia Villazaez • Administrative Coordinator

Yong Cheng Yang • Visitor Services Associate, James Watrous Gallery

ACADEMY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chan Stroman • President

Tom Luljak • Immediate Past President

Richard Donkle • Treasurer

Vacant • Secretary

Roberta Filicky-Peneski • Vice President for Arts

Vacant • Vice President for Sciences

L. Jane Hamblen • Vice President for Letters

Andrew Richards • Foundation President

Kimberly M. Blaeser, Burlington

Patricia Brady, Madison

Frank D. Byrne, Monona

Joseph Heim, La Crosse

B.J. Hollars, Eau Claire

Robert D. Mathieu, Madison

Michael Morgan, Milwaukee

Kevin Reilly, Verona

Rafael Francisco Salas, Ripon

Tim Size, Madison

Thomas W. Still, Madison

ACADEMY FOUNDATION

Ira Baldwin (1895–1999) • Foundation Founder

Andrew Richards • Foundation President

Vacant • Foundation Vice President

Richard Donkle • Foundation Treasurer

Arjun Sanga • Foundation Secretary

Mark J. Bradley

Patricia Brady

Jack Kussmaul

Tom Luljak

Chan Stroman

Steve Wildeck

Editor’s Note

About the time I started thinking about the editor’s note for this issue, my wife and I went up north for a weekend with my cousin and her husband who have a place in Sawyer County, near Exeland where my grandparents lived in during Prohibition. Family lore has it that my grandfather was a bootlegger in those days, but I’d only been up there myself a handful of times. We hiked the land, through several types of forest, swamps, and marshland, identifying plants and mushrooms with an app on a phone. We kicked up quail, saw deer, snakes, a bald eagle, and the largest snapping turtle I’ve seen since I left Louisiana. On our way to lunch at the Get Hooked Bar, we saw a white birch growing out of a vacant storefront in Radisson, nature reclaiming the land.

We took the boat out on the Chippewa Flowage, one of the state’s largest inland lakes, created in the early 1920s when the Wisconsin-Minnesota Light and Power Company built a dam on the Upper Chippewa River despite strong opposition from the Lac Courte Oreilles people who had long been living there. The beauty of the flowage belies its history. There. Are over two hundred islands in the flowage, and we saw one, a floating bog the size of a football field dotted with trees that had come loose from the shore last spring and blown across the lake to where it threatened to block a bridge and the entrance to a small resort. We watched time-lapse drone footage of a flotilla of 20 or so local fishing boats and pontoon boats pushing the island side by side, churning the water and slowly moving the huge floating piece of wayward turf away from the bridge. It was amusing with the time lapse, and oddly disconcerting.

It’s a long drive up north for us for just a weekend, but as always, we were glad we went. The wildlife and the beauty of the natural world alone were worth the trip but in the end, it was also about strengthening our connec tions with the friends and family that support and sustain us. As this issue came together, I began to notice the connections within and between these stories and it got me thinking about how often relationships and accomplish ment come from spending time together with people in the physical world. This seems almost so obvious as to go without saying, and yet it’s clear that at this point in time, we need stories to remind us of the importance of those connections. I invite you to spend some time with the people and ideas in the pages that follow, and see what connections you find.

the cover: David Rhodes in the Driftless, 2009. Photo credit: Lewis Koch

Laura Camille

Tuley

On

David Rhodes in Wonewoc, 2009.

Nicholas Gulig, Alecia Beymer, Jess L. Parker, Bruce Dethlefsen Book Reviews 53 News of the Air by Jill Stukenberg

Reviewed by Angela Woodward 54 Painting Beyond Walls by David Rhodes

Reviewed by Guy Thorvaldsen 55 Loving Orphaned Spaces: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth by Mrill Ingram

by Emily Park

Out in Milwaukee

Ideas that move the world forward

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

VOLUME 68 · NUMBER 4 FALL • 2022

Wisconsin People & Ideas is the quarterly magazine of the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Wisconsin Academy members receive an annual subscription to this magazine.

Since 1954, the Wisconsin Academy has published a magazine for people who are curious about the world and proud of Wisconsin ideas. Wisconsin People & Ideas features thoughtful stories about the state’s people and culture, orig inal creative writing and artwork, and informative articles about Wisconsin innovation. The magazine also hosts annual fiction and poetry contests that provide opportunity and encourage ment for Wisconsin writers.

Copyright © 2022 by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permis sion is prohibited. Postage is paid in Madison, Wisconsin.

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS interim editor

JEAN LANG copy editor

CHARLOTTE FRASCONA cold reader

JODY CLOWES arts editor

HUSTON DESIGN design & layout

ISSN 1558-9633

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

From the Director

Every election, my parents would joke about how their votes would cancel each other’s out. They agreed to disagree and there were some topics my parents did not debate. However, when my siblings and I became teens, no topic was off the table and our political debates raged long into the night—sometimes they still do. To put it mildly, political and cultural divides run deep in my family. So too, in our state. So too, in our country.

Democracy is not for the faint of heart. We learn this each furious election cycle. Our deeply held opinions rise and collide, our appre ciation of other perspectives dims. Every time we see that so much is at stake. Even as we share concern about top priorities, we disagree on facts. We have moved from the Age of Information to the Age of Disinformation. In this “post-truth world” the lines are etched deeply between us.

Through all this, the Academy serves as a nonpartisan convener, a calm place for shared explorations and experiences, amplifying the extraordinary and serving as a touchstone for what connects us. Across Wisconsin, we have stood in wonder under the night sky, were collectively awe struck by images from the James Webb Telescope. We have marveled and been moved by artwork that we encounter in public but which feels personal. We have learned and gained insight from writers who have honed their craft to adeptly reveal nuance and inspire deeper understanding.

For 150 years, the Academy has weathered storms with the people of Wisconsin, remaining reliable and relevant. As we recover from debates and disagreement, I’m glad we are meeting here under the umbrella of sciences, arts, and letters, where there is room for us all.

Sharon Vanorny

Erika Monroe-Kane, Executive Director

News for Members

JAMES WATROUS GALLERY

Call for artists: applications from artists interested in exhibiting at the gallery will be accepted December to March. We welcome proposals from guest curators as well as individual artists. Those selected by the jury will be invited to exhibit or curate within the next several years, with the earliest exhibition opening in late 2023.

CLIMATE & ENERGY CONFERENCE

Thanks to all who attended Climate Fast Forward 2022 in October. The conference was a resounding success, bringing together people from across the state to take stock of the progress Wisconsin has made towards mitigating and adapting to climate change and to continue working together on climate change.

FICTION AND POETRY CONTESTS

Call for writers: our annual Fiction and Poetry Contests for Wisconsin writers open January 15, 2023. Final judges: Debra Monroe (fiction) and Nikki Wallschlaeger (poetry). Winners receive cash prizes and publication in Wisconsin People & Ideas

NEW STAFF

The Academy is pleased to introduce new staff members: Ursa Anderson, Exhibitions and Outreach Coordinator for the James Watrous Gallery; Madison Buening, Donor Relations and Stewardship Coordinator; Yong Cheng Yang, Visitor Services Associate for the James Watrous Gallery.

JOIN THE FULL CIRCLE SOCIETY

The Full Circle Society helps to create a better world inspired by Wisconsin ideas. Join this group of amazing people in making an important investment for future generations by adding the Wisconsin Academy to your will or estate plan or by another type of planned gift. Contact Zack Robbins, zrobbins@wisconsinacademy.org

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

We want to hear from you. Send your feedback and comments about Wisconsin People & Ideas and other Academy programs to cchambers@ wisconsinacademy.org

FELLOW IN THE NEWS

On August 12, Academy Fellow Dipesh Navsaria was named to the National Museum and Library Services Board. Dr. Navsaria has graduate degrees in public health, children’s librarianship, physician assistant studies, and medicine, and brings a broad perspective to children’s health and well-being, and to the world of libraries. He is an associate professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and Public Health, and clinical associate professor of Human Development and Family Studies at the School of Human Ecology at UW–Madison. He has practiced primary care pediatrics in a variety of settings, particularly in underserved populations. He works with Reach Out and Read, an early literacy program, and researches early brain and child development, looking at the neurobiological effects of adversity and poverty on the developing brain towards helping educate people who work with children and families on concepts of social policy and how those policies can affect the cognitive and socioemotional development of children.

Dr. Navsaria was one of 11 new members appointed to serve a 5-year term on the National Museum and Library Services Board, and one of 2 appointees from Wisconsin. Amy Gilman, director of the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, was also appointed to the board. The National Museum and Library Services Board advises on general policies with respect to the duties, powers, and authority of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) relating to museum, library, and information services. The board is also involved in the annual selection of National Medal for Museum and Library Service recipients. Dr. Navsaria gave a COVID 2 Years On talk for the Academy, “Considering COVID, Children, and Community,” which can be viewed on the Wisconsin Academy website.

COMMUNITY POWERED PUTS THE HUMANITIES TO WORK

Emily Riewestahl, a project coordinator for Community Powered, a new initiative of Wisconsin Humanities (WH), returned home recently to Spooner to collaborate with the Spooner Memorial Library. After pursuing studies around the country, she has a new perspective on where she grew up. Riewestahl noticed that one of the strengths of her hometown is the care people have for each other and the intertwining relationships among citizens.

Riewestahl and the other Project Coordinators for Commu nity Powered have begun mapping local assets, connecting with community leaders, and working with community members to learn their community’s stories. In Spooner, Appleton, Racine, and Forest County’s Potowatomi community, the Project Coor dinators collaborate with public library mentors and community members on projects that are locally meaningful and that strengthen the roots of community and help build resilience.

Community Powered was inspired by the work of Arijit Sen, a professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at UW–Milwaukee, who worked alongside communities in his Buildings-Land scapes-Cultures Field School for a decade. Sen is serving as Co-Director of Community Powered, collaborating with WH to draw upon its 50 years of experience working with local partners to act on regional strengths, histories, and aspirations. Sen and fellow Co-Director Chrissy Widmayer trained Project Coordina tors to support their work in their communities.

Wisconsin Humanities funds more than 3,500 community-led projects around the state through its grant program, and is also known for programs like the Love Wisconsin digital storytelling platform and the Human Powered podcast. Since its begin ning, the organization has used the humanities to strengthen our democracy by responding to grassroots needs. Commu nity Powered is putting the tools of the humanities to work for everyone—listening, discussing, reflecting, and imagining. Through the project, Riewestahl hopes to nurture Spooner’s unique spirit as she keeps asking questions to spark new ideas.

Jessica Becker

MAKING WAVES FROM WISCONSIN: LEADERSHIP IN CLEAN WATER

People driving across the Leo Frigo Bridge into Green Bay have a beautiful view of the Fox River, the Bay, and two 100-foot high, salmon-hued cylinders that represent sustainability in action. Those cylinders are anaerobic digesters at the Resource Recovery and Electrical Energy facility, or R2E2, containing microbes that convert organic matter in wastewater into methane gas. The gas then fuels electrical generators for NEW Water, the brand of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District. The digesters meet about half the electrical needs of the facility, while also recovering heat, saving money, and reducing the utility’s carbon footprint.

According to NEW Water Executive Director Tom Sigmund, recovering the resources in wastewater is a critical tool for solving water issues. This visionary approach to water issues is one reason the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) tapped Sigmund to serve as new President this year.

In another innovative use of wastewater, around 70 waste water treatment utilities in Wisconsin are participating in a study that helps track community levels of infection from viruses such as COVID and flu by testing samples of local wastewater.

In 1970, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day, and the Clean Water Act followed two years later, initi ating profound reforms to improve and protect water quality. However, much of the national infrastructure built on the heels of the Clean Water Act is reaching the end of its useful life and is in need of upgrades that could help cope with both water scarcity and unprecedented storm surges. “We need to take advantage of increased federal funding to help resolve some of these challenges and remind our elected officials that this funding must be increased significantly to adequately address the needs of our sector,” Sigmund said.

Meanwhile, with initiatives such as the Freshwater Collabo rative (a partnership of Wisconsin’s 13 public universities), the establishment of a National Estuarine Research Reserve on the bay of Green Bay, and resource recovery facilities like NEW Water’s R2E2, Wisconsin continues the crucial work of studying and protecting our waters and their uses.

Tricia Garrison

People gather at Vollrath Park in Sheboygan for Food Truck Monday.

SHEBOYGAN’S FOOD TRUCK EXTRAVAGANZA

BY LEO AGUILAR

Once a week, from late spring to early fall, Vollrath Park on the northeast side of Sheboygan transforms from a serene lakeside park to a bustling mall of hungry people and colorful food trucks. From specialty sandwiches, burgers, and pizza to Mexican, Thai, and Chinese dishes, and an array of dessert choices, you’ll be hard pressed to find better takeout options elsewhere on a Monday night.

Leo Aguilar

The weekly event runs from 4 to 8 pm and attracts up to a thou sand people, so my girlfriend Reyna and I and our kids made sure to arrive early. We parked and walked in as food truck operators made their final preparations. Other early birds were pacing the sidewalk and reading over menus. Reyna already knew what she wanted— steak tacos—but we walked past all the trucks for good measure. There were over a dozen to choose from.

People were already forming lines outside the food trucks. Along the roadside, the hum of generators blended with chatter from the excited crowd. In years past, there were only enough trucks to fill the main road. This year there were half a dozen more trucks parked on the intersection leading towards the bluff.

In between chance encounters with friends and family, I tried to catch some of the food truck operators in a lull to learn more about this event and what they were serving. The business at some of the trucks never slowed down long enough for me to talk with the proprietors, but there were plenty of people who were happy to recommend their favorite dishes.

The first vendor we visited was Gyros 2 Go, an authentic Greek cuisine food truck owned by a local Sheboygan family. I spoke with Adam, who was managing the food truck while Greg, the owner, attended to their brick-and-mortar restaurant, The Greece-ESpoon. Gyros (pronounced Yee-ro, from the Greek word “to turn”) are made from meat that’s sliced, stacked on a spit, seasoned, and cooked on a vertical rotisserie that turns slowly in front of a broiler. The cooked and seasoned meat is sliced thinly and served on pita bread with tomatoes, onions, and a cucumber sauce. While lamb meat is traditionally used, beef and chicken options are available with a variety of toppings. I asked Adam his favorite item on the menu, and he quickly responded, “the deluxe gyro for sure, either lamb or chicken.” The deluxe comes with all of the toppings plus feta cheese and hot peppers.

People congregated around the park, some groups sitting on benches to visit while others stayed just long enough to finish their food. While some families brought blankets and foldable chairs, others simply sat on the grass. Friends caught glimpses of one another walking through the crowd, leading to new groups forming and long conversations through the evening. When an acquaintance and I recognized each other from the local archery range, Reyna asked him and his wife what they were planning to eat, and a conversation began. Strangers can become new friends here, such is the power of good food and a welcoming environment.

The kids insisted they weren’t hungry and wanted to go to the park’s playground. I decided to return to the truck and grab our folding chairs. On the way I saw Jim, a good friend’s brother, heading home with a hefty burrito from José’s Food Truck. Turns out Jim lives a few blocks from the park and visits nearly every other week to grab a meal.

As I headed towards my truck, my friend Ray appeared, heading in the same direction. I asked if he had decided on a food truck. He thought he might go for gyros, but he was not sure yet. Then, in the sea of scooters, bicycles, and wagons, I bumped into my cousin Christopher pushing his godchild in a stroller. Our conversation was brief but another unexpected treat, thanks to Food Truck Monday at the park.

I looked over the bustling scene before heading back in. A steady stream of cars passed by on their way towards the lake. Every half hour the city bus made its route through the neighborhood. Motor cycles of all sorts crept by to allow pedestrians safe travel before roaring on. Any other day of the week this park would be quiet.

One food truck that caught my attention was Jamaica Mi Krazy, owned and operated by a young man named Rushane. His tow-be hind trailer was modified with sliding windows, a functioning kitchen, and decorated with painted palm trees. Getting an audience with Rushane meant getting in line like everyone else. Originally from Jamaica and now living in Green Bay, he told me, he’s always dreamed of being his own boss. These days, Rushane makes a living using his entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for cooking, feeding people across northeast Wisconsin.

This was the perfect time for me to learn more about jerk chicken, the signature Jamaican dish. Although he didn’t share his recipe, Rashane described the process. The chicken is marinated over night with a spicy wet rub, then grilled the next day and served with a side of rice and a homemade coleslaw that includes pineapple and cashews. This complex mix of flavors makes it his bestselling dish. The jerk chicken is authentic, Rashane told me, “It’s what we’re known for.”

It took some convincing, but the kids finally agreed to leave the playground. From the diverse range of foods, they opted for quesa dillas and French fries. Lucky for us, José’s Food Truck had us covered. A community staple, and one of the original five food trucks since this weekly event began back in 2013, José’s is an authentic Mexican food truck run by a multigenerational family originally from California. I spoke with José himself, who told me how the business has evolved over the years. His father started a restau rant and food truck combo in California long ago, which became a Mexican grocery store when the family moved to Sheboygan around 2003. A few years later, they returned to their roots in the food industry and haven’t looked back. With a new location in town and a second truck focused on seafood in the works, the family works year round to meet demand. I asked José if he preferred working in a restaurant or the truck. “Working in the truck is better than a restaurant,” he said. “Here, I can step outside whenever I want.”

From specialty sandwiches, burgers, and pizza to Mexican, Thai, and Chinese dishes, and an array of dessert choices, you’ll be hard pressed to find better takeout options elsewhere on a Monday night.

All photos by Leo Aguilar

Food Truck Monday scenes in Sheboygan.

Knowing they operate the truck year round, I asked if that meant winter, too. José looked up and just laughed.

One of the food trucks parked along the intersection was Authentic Thai Cuisine On Wheels, serving Thai street food out of a repurposed ambulance with functioning red lights. A woman named Saji was working inside, along with her mother and young son. Short in stature, open, and full of energy, she reminded me of my own mother. Saji told me about her move from South Carolina to Sheboygan, and how the idea of running a food truck arose after she received compliments on her cooking at a neighborhood block party. It took a few years and a major financial investment, but the end result is not only authentic but delicious. A woman in line said she had come all the way from Howards Grove, northwest of town for the Thai food.

I ordered cashew chicken and a spring roll and waited with the other customers. The aroma that wafted from the truck made me smile in anticipation. Thinly sliced chicken, artistically cut carrots, cashews, yellow and green bell peppers in a red sauce with plain white rice to the side all came together perfectly. I took my first bite. It was difficult to believe how tender everything was, especially the carrots. The chili flakes had me expecting more heat, but the mix of slightly sweet and fully savory flavors were more than enough to support the chilis. The vegetable spring rolls had an enjoyable simplicity that paired well with some hot salsa from Jose’s . Even Reyna, a notoriously picky eater, complemented Saji on the food.

As daylight began to fade, some of the food trucks turned on their outdoor lighting. Last minute customers took this as a call to

action, returning to place their final orders. Even with some Cookie Cart cookies for the ride home, it was tough to leave. I felt like a kid forced to leave a party early.

Vollrath park is open year-round and usually frequented by joggers, dog walkers, and groups of kids out having fun. Growing up in Sheboygan, I also equate the park with graduation ceremonies, winter sledding, public movie events, and disk golf. And always, glis tening beyond the trees, the great lake can be seen any day of the week. On Mondays though, weather permitting, this park trans forms into a dynamic scene where people from all over the city and the region congregate for good local food and good company.

Leo Aguilar is a graduate of Lakeshore Technical College and a student at UW–Green Bay. When he isn’t creating art, he’s daydreaming about horticulture, reptiles, or edible insects. He lives in Sheboygan and enjoys visiting Lake Michigan with his family. His work has also appeared in On Wisconsin Outdoors.

Leo Aguilar

A path in Sheboygan’s Vollrath Park on Lake Michigan.

On the outskirts of Valton.

DAVID RHODES IN THE DRIFTLESS

BY RON KUKA

One morning in 1978, the novelist David Rhodes rolled his wheelchair to the door of his farmhouse in rural Wisconsin to find his neighbor, Dick Woolever, waiting to make him an offer. “God woke me up in the night and told me how to make an elevator for you,” he said. This was three years after a motorcycle accident left David paralyzed from the chest down.

Stephan Shambert

Appearing like this was apparently not out of character. A farmer and something of a polymath, Dick Woolever is a legend in the hilly region of Wisconsin known as the Driftless area. He had once devised a system that would allow him to pull the engine from a car using only the power he applied from a belt around his waist. Dick Woolover was a big guy. He was an expert electrician and welder, known for fashioning mechanical devices from materials he might find on his farm or could order from a hardware store. So maybe David wasn’t crazy to let this man take a chainsaw to the ceiling in a corner of his dining room. Within weeks, Dick had a working elevator fabricated from four vertical metal rods, cable, plywood, belts, rotating drums, an electric motor installed in the attic, and a hand-held control switch. He did it all for about $300, the cost of materials.

David Rhodes’ fiction first came to my attention after the publi cation of his novel, Driftless, in 2008. Friends of mine had talked about “falling into” the novel, and I too was won over by his charac ters, complicated individuals with whom I could empathize. I also found the book at a time when it seemed like rural people portrayed in movies and television were either lionized, made the butt of jokes, or depicted as ill-informed and/or vaguely dangerous. It rankled me. David, however, writes with a level gaze, both unsentimental and fair-minded.

A few years later, I met David Rhodes through a mutual friend and liked him immediately. Soft spoken and deeply passionate about a variety of topics, David is easy to like. This opportunity came just before the release of his fifth novel, Jewelweed, in 2012, at a reading in a room full of people who felt as I did. I overheard a couple sitting in front of me talking about two characters from Driftless as if they were all old friends, happy that a writer had put their lives to the page.

I’ll admit to being drawn to David’s personal story as well. On the back cover of Driftless, I had learned about David’s accident and that after having published three well-received novels between 1972 and 1975, he had not published another book for three decades. Like many of my favorite stories, it hinted at a profound struggle and redemptive ending.

I met David on two occasions this last August outside his daugh ter’s house in Madison. Happy to talk about his life, he invited me to ask him anything. At one point, Edna, his wife, joined us. I was struck by their level of intimacy. Perhaps even more than David, she is lively, quick-witted, and warm.

Except for brief periods during his twenties, David has lived in the Midwest. Born in 1946, he grew up alongside two brothers outside Des Moines, Iowa, in a traditional household. His father was a pressman. Though describing himself as being filled with frus tration and angst, David was very close to his mother, the daughter of a Quaker preacher. After first attending Beloit College, David moved to Philadelphia to work in a chemical plant before re-en rolling at Marlboro College in Vermont. There, a “middling student,” he finished a senior thesis on the anti-hero in American literature. The writer John Irving served as an outside judge on his committee and was apparently surprised to learn from David’s thesis that his (Irving’s) protagonists were NOT antiheroes. I would imagine it was a lively debate. The fact that David finished the thesis at all is note

Lewis Koch Ron Kuka

Above: David Rhodes at home, 2009. Below: View from the farmhouse kitchen window.

Stephan Shambert

The farmhouse with the elevator that Dick Woolever built for David Rhodes, in 2022.

worthy, for in 1968, during his senior year, his beloved mother died of cancer at the age of 52. He left school and lived with his father in Iowa for two months after her funeral. Of those long months, he says dryly, “I became bitter.”

Though not a voracious reader as a child, David recalled a high school teacher reading a line to him from Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. He says, “It was like something just clicked.” One of the most important lessons he learned at Marlboro College was to be honest in his writing. David later discovered William Faulkner, in particular, Absolom, Absolom, and he recognized a kindred spirit in Faulkner’s attempt to resolve an inner struggle and in his desire to speak the truth of a place through a singular voice.

A year later, David was at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he admits he had little social life. Even so, he met Lucy, also a student at the workshop, who would eventually become his first wife. While a grad student, he worked nights at the Oakdale Sanitarium, an alcohol treatment center, and wrote during the day and on week ends. John “Jack” Leggett, the director, recognized his talent and put him in contact with Atlantic Monthly Press. David Rhodes’ first novel, The Last Fair Deal Going Down, came out in 1972 during the spring of his final year at Iowa. The Chicago Tribune called it “The best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”

After graduation, David and Lucy moved to Valton because farmland in Wisconsin was cheaper than in Iowa. The land is also different. Valton lies in the northwest corner of Sauk County, six miles from Wonewoc, close to the little Baraboo River in a region known as the Driftless area. The region, so named because it wasn’t leveled by the last ice age, is hilly and picturesque. Most of the till able land is farmed on ridge tops and river bottoms. Though census numbers are not available, I was told that the population of Valton hovers around fifty souls. The most impressive building is the Valton Friends Church, home to a congregation of Quakers.

David describes the farmhouse they bought as “run down,” but that might be an understatement. Build in the late 19th century, it had been owned by a bachelor farmer (a crumbling silo provides evidence of that dairy operation) who didn’t have the resources or

inclination to make improvements. The house was heated by a wood stove in the basement. David bought a chainsaw and an old Inter national pickup and began cutting and hauling wood for winter. But the house was drafty, and they burned through their supply by mid-winter. Even so, it was a start: a home in a rural area, a place they could both write. Lucy started work at the Reedsburg news paper, and David took a job at Sauk County Retirement Home.

David loved his job. He admired the staff, whom he found “filled with compassion and unbelievable mercy.” He also began writing life stories of the people he cared for. Copies of these biographies were then offered to their families. More than a few of the residents were suffering from dementia. One woman, close to death, opened her arms and embraced him. She called him Jesus. Even now, almost fifty years later, he is moved in the retelling.

David’s daughter, Alexandra, was just two weeks old when he had the accident. It was late summer. Afternoon. David says that though he’d ridden motorcycles for years, in the months approaching the birth of his daughter, he’d become more cautious. His motorcycle was not running, and he traded it to a neighbor kid for a bicycle. The neighbor got it running again and stopped by so David could take it for one more ride.

On that ride, David missed a curve. Instead of laying the motor cycle down as he might have in earlier years, he rode it into a shallow ditch, flipped over the handlebars, and landed on an exposed rock. Even suffering from shock, he knew immediately that he had broken his back. There was no feeling in his legs. As David told this story, I was haunted by the image of him staring into the afternoon sky that day as the gravity of his situation took hold. He was taken to Rich land Center (in an ambulance that had been retrofitted from its previous life as a hearse) and then transferred to Madison General Hospital where he would spend most of the next two years.

The suffering David endured over the next five years was unimag inable, unrelenting, chronic. He feared that the pain would be permanent. He was also wrestling with the reality of his disability. During one of our talks this summer, he stated flatly, “Everybody who breaks their back believes they will walk again.”

David sought help at several pain clinics. He learned biofeedback and meditation techniques. Months and then years passed. Little helped. He became addicted to morphine. He endured twenty-one operations. For some reason, David’s hips began depositing extra bone which had to be removed in order for him to sit up straight. The incisions became infected and opened into sores. He ran high fevers for weeks at a time. Not until a surgeon figured out a way to remove muscle tissue from his thigh and then reattach a blood supply could David begin healing. David commented, with biblical economy, “I was bitter.” It was the second time that day he had used that word.

That bitterness must have contributed to the failure of his marriage. And for this, David takes the blame. “I should have tried to make it easier for her,” he said. Soon after the accident, Lucy moved to Middleton, just outside Madison, with their daughter. The demands of a newborn, a job, a husband paralyzed and in chronic pain who is perhaps distancing himself emotionally, must have been crushing. Today he and Lucy are good friends.

Over the long months during his treatment, David became close with the staff at Madison General. “They treated me like a human being, not a patient.” He also made friends with a priest, Tony. Tony arranged for David to meet other patients with spinal injuries, one

David Rhodes’ first novel, The Last Fair Deal Going Down, came out in 1972. The Chicago Tribune called it “The best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”

All photos: Ron Kuka

Dick Woolever’s elevator.

Top:

Bottom: Hand-painted signs above the door of the church.

of whom was a young farmer who had broken his back. At this point in our conversation, David fell into silence.

David also received visits from the pastor of the Friends church in Valton. Though David had little in common theologically with the young minister, he was won over by the man’s compassion, his open heart. After his discharge from the hospital, David moved back to the farmhouse, and began attending services at Valton Friends.

He was to endure three more years of pain. Confined to a wheel chair, restricted to the first floor, how could he have not felt trapped in that quiet farmhouse? Though he had found a doctor willing to keep him supplied with narcotics, the morphine became less effec tive and the side effects more severe. A therapist described David’s state of mind this way: “You’re not depressed, you’re distressed.” With little outside help, David kicked his addiction. He acknowl edges that it is hard for him to imagine how he would have survived without help from his neighbors. One friend reconfigured the bath room to give David access to a shower. He also built a ramp so that David could wheel himself to and from his front door.

Thiswas about the time Dick Woolever knocked on David’s farmhouse door with his proposal to build an elevator for him. I wonder if his announcement and generous offer might not have signaled a change in David’s prospects. David told me that he was learning not to panic when the pain got bad. Perhaps slowly, a life that might also include joy began to seem possible.

Shortly after, he met Edna, the woman who would become his second wife, and their relationship changed everything. The story of their courtship must include mention of the second most impres sive building in Valton, built as a lodge for the Modern Woodmen of America (MWA). A fraternal order founded in 1883, the MWA was one of the first organizations to offer life insurance to its members. Considered progressive for its time, it offered policies to “Jew and Gentile, the Catholic and Protestant, the agnostic and the atheist.” However, professional baseball players, gunpowder factory workers, and the residents of large cities were disqualified. The lodge in Valton is notable for a mural it had commissioned in the late nine teenth century called “The Painted Forest.” The mural scenes, primarily of forest, cover all the walls, and the lodge itself, now known as The Painted Forest, is a gallery currently administered by Edgewood College.

During a celebration of the mural’s restoration, David met Edna. The chemistry between them was strong enough that David called her soon afterward. Edna was teaching school in Madison, and Valton was at least a ninety-minute drive each way. On their second date, Edna showed up with a bucket of paint and their courtship began in earnest. She told me that the house in those days seemed like a “tragic place to live.” When she first saw the kitchen it was windowless and the color of “dark, overripe cantaloupe.” It “could barely be considered a kitchen.” The improvements took place over decades and eventually included the addition of a porch that caught “breezes from both directions.” David would spent most of his days there overlooking their perennial garden.

They married in 1983.

Though for the most part happy, their life together was anything but simple. They had a daughter in 1985. Edna took a job as a school psychologist, which meant traveling hundreds of miles a week in her little Subaru to visit clients in rural schools. David’s condition

Ron Kuka

Ron Kuka

Valton Friends Church in Wonewoc.

required constant vigilance. At one point many years later, David spent an entire year in bed, healing from bedsores while he was finishing the edits to Driftless. He and Edna traveled to the Mayo clinic in Minnesota for treatment and later to St. Luke’s Hospital in Milwaukee for therapy in a hypo-baric chamber once a week. David told me that there were wards full of patients in traditional wheel chairs who, because they couldn’t afford an electric model that would allow them to switch positions, were in constant danger of bedsores. David, however, thanks to a generous physical therapist who advocated for him to an insurance company, was able to acquire a new reclining electric wheelchair. Edna was troubled by the costs incurred by families who were not eligible for Medicaid, and rightly so. The cost for the chair was close to thirty thousand dollars.

Whenever it was possible, David wrote. David is clear about his writing process: 1) place, 2) character, and 3) theme. He first attempts to understand how a landscape (and its history) imposes demands on its inhabitants. Place dictates character. Character then determines the plot. Unlike some other writers, David doesn’t speak about conflict driving the action of his fiction. Instead, he describes writing as a spiritual exercise, a process of self-explo ration. Furthermore, and this might not come as a surprise to his readers, David wants his writing to show his “thankfulness,” the joy he takes in watching and listening to other people.

He worked on a novel for several years before abandoning it. He volunteered in hospitals and nursing homes, writing life stories and editing newsletters. He worked for a prison reform organization. He volunteered his “secretarial services” to Family Farm Defenders and their extended battle with the Milk Marketing Board. David also played guitar for The Valley Tones, a gospel group, a role that gave him a great deal of pleasure. The musicians, from different denom inations, tacitly agreed to avoid controversial subjects. They played all over the Driftless, enjoying fifteen productive years together.

Although David had begun a draft of Driftless in the mid-nine ties, he was finally motivated by the death of a close friend, Mike, to complete the novel. It took him ten years. Mike, inspiration for July Montgomery, introduced in Rock Island Line , was killed in a farm accident when his clothes were caught in a power take-off, a spinning shaft protruding from the rear of a tractor to power farm implements. David recalls that when he was promoting Driftless in rural libraries, librarians who’d grown up around farms told him they knew the character July would die because he was described as wearing a floppy jacket.

Before David had finished Driftless, he was contacted, seemingly out of the blue, by Ben Barnhart, an editor for Milkweed Press, a small, independent publisher based in Minneapolis. He was asked if he might be interested in selling the publishing rights to his first three novels. (Yes, he was interested.) When asked if he’d been working on anything else, he again answered yes. Driftless, however, needed editing. It was over 1,600 pages long, written in long discur sive sections exploring, the inner world of individual characters. Ben asked David to break up the sections into traditional chapters. Edna was deeply involved as well. In the acknowledgments, David credits her for advocating on behalf of characters he describes as “not the kind of characters who usually find their way into print— very private, never satisfied with their assigned roles, always wanting their voices to be more accurately rendered and their feel ings better dramatized.” He credits her assistance as “instrumental

throughout the entire process.” They worked for two years, cutting the manuscript down to 450 pages.

In late August, I drove to Valton with my friend Chris. We are both fans of David’s work and interested in learning more about the Driftless area and the people who inspired his writing. Just outside of Valton, we met David’s longtime friend Stan Bauer, who was wearing a Lands End cap and overalls and seemed to have the skinny on all things Valton. Friendly and talkative, he struck me as someone completely comfortable in his surroundings. And why not? He’d farmed in different locations in the valley for close to fifty years. Stan had made a call to the current owners of the farmhouse, Zoraida and David June, and they had invited us over. We piled into Stan’s van, and he drove us over the picturesque country roads to meet Zoraida and tour the farmhouse. I’ll confess to wondering which curve in that lovely stretch of road was the curve.

Though I’d known that David and Edna had put in endless hours over thirty years, maintaining and improving the farmhouse (a project continued by subsequent owners), I was surprised to pull into their old driveway and find a virtual postcard. The addition of a wraparound porch, a red metal roof, and landscaped grounds all added to the effect. It looked like a home you might see featured in a magazine. Zoraida invited us in. The interior was beautiful and homey. Chris and I noted that a window had been put in the kitchen at the perfect height for someone in a wheelchair to catch a view of the farmyard. I was hoping, however, to see the legendary elevator, and Zoraida agreed to give us a demonstration. After moving a few plants to the side, Chris, Stan, and I climbed aboard and rode the open carriage to the second floor. The ride was smooth and at least as quiet as the elevator I take to my office. After disembarking, we toured the upper floor where, through a trap door in the ceiling, we inspected the ingenious mechanism designed and built by Dick Woolever for his friend, David Rhodes.

Though the house is now a showpiece, lovingly cared for and cherished, I couldn’t help contrasting its current state with an image I’d carried with me over the previous weeks, one based on how it might have appeared to David during the winter when he returned from the hospital, forty years ago.

What started as a story about singleminded perseverance had become something larger, a story about community—a narrative about how people make life possible for their neighbors.

Stan drove us through Valton where we stopped to see the MWA lodge with its Painted Forest and the Friends church. Both are well maintained and obvious points of pride for the community. We parked and talked to Stan’s brother-in-law who was trimming shrubs lining the church parking lot. Over the church door, a handpainted sign reads: Enter to worship—Depart to serve. We stepped in to look around. Though a new sanctuary had been added in the 1980s (it looked like it could have accommodated the entire popu lation of Valton and then some), my favorite room comprised the oldest section of the church. The congregation had installed a kitchen on one end and set up tables where, I imagined, they might still prepare meals and talk over the latest news, their lives, and how best to care for those in need.

As we continued the tour of the countryside, Stan told us that David, in the days before he had a van with access for a wheelchair, owned a Buick Electra with two large doors that allowed him to maneuver himself into the front seat and then turn to lift his chair into the space behind the driver’s seat. In this way he would drive himself to La Crosse to visit patients in the hospital.

Stan also let it slip that he knew most of the people David had based his characters on. July? (Yes.) Grahm? (Sure.) Winnie? (A pastor here in the 1980’s.) Would other readers in Valton recognize these characters? (Certainly.) Stan nodded and smiled as he care fully meted out his insider’s knowledge. (David would later make clear that his characters were composites.) Stan’s pride in David’s representation of their community was clear, as was the pleasure he takes in their friendship.

Before leaving town, we drove down Woolever Road to Dick Woolever’s old farm. We stopped outside the barn. The modest buildings belied Dick’s impact on the community and the affection they still hold for him. His legacy reminded me of something David said when I had asked him how he made it through those terrible years following the accident. “It was always other people,” he said. “I could never find enough in me, it was always other people.”

Onthe drive back to Madison, Chris and I got lost briefly. The roads in parts of the Driftless remind me of highways in Appa lachia or the Ozarks as they follow closely the demands imposed by the landscape. My cell phone had lost its signal in that hilly topog raphy, and my GPS was, let’s say, unreliable. It was early evening. We might have been distracted while recounting a story of David’s wherein Dick Woolever, always looking for an opportunity to put his skills to work, had built David a rocking chair out of a recliner and a motor salvaged from a washing machine. He’d heard that David loved rocking chairs. It was belt-driven, I would imagine. The motion, however, was so uncomfortable that David couldn’t bear to use it. (The description brought to mind a mechanical bull.) Later, when Dick would stop by David’s for a visit, he always wondered why someone had unplugged the recliner again. Though he could not use it, David wouldn’t get rid of the chair until after Dick died.

What started as a story about single-minded perseverance had become something larger, a story about community—a narrative about how people make life possible for their neighbors. In this case those flawed, misunderstood, and sometimes heroic people became the inspiration for the unforgettable characters in David Rhode’s last three novels, books that honor their lives and this community.

Ron Kuka is the Creative Writing Program Coordinator at UW–Madison. His teaching has been recognized with the Chancellor’s Hilldale Award for Excellence in Teaching.

David Rhodes and his wife, Edna, in 2018.

David Rhodes’ sixth novel, Painting Beyond Walls, published in September 2022, is reviewed in this issue.

An oak opening, late August, in the Marlin Johnson Prairie in Waukesha County.

STORIES FROM A RESTORED PRAIRIE

BY MEG MUTHUPANDIYAN

The story of a farm—or a restored prairie for that matter—is told by 1000 voices. When I offered to conduct an oral history project on the Friends of the Field Station of UW–Milwaukee at Waukesha, I had no idea the project would be such an instructive delight in how to belong to the land as a community of practice.

Within days of the prescribed burn in April, the forbs and grasses of the Marlin Johnson Prairie emerged and began hardening, greening. Many weeks later this southeastern Wisconsin prairie on the 98-acre UW–Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station in unincorporated Waterville actively prepared for another stage of life, absorbing nutrients. But now their leaves and stems are browning and withering with the colder and shorter days. All but a few species have let go of their seeds and the persistent enterprise of growth.

Meg Muthupandiyan

Among the bent stems of their soil-fellows, the goldenrods have entered their final act. Like method actors, they embody a different character at every stage of their lives. First they grow tall and gangly, slouching until in June their winking green eyes unfurl. Then they become self-possessed as the jocund sparklers of their inflores cences ignite in August. By October their leaves and stems have faded to yellow-grey, and the bearded floss that carries their seeds has turned from gold to white. They hang like hoarfrost throughout the rolling fields, in anticipation of winter.

On the day for goldenrod seed collection, the Friends of the Field Station have come, and I am among them, learning how to gather and store the treasured seed for next year’s planting. I am equally hopeful of gathering the Friends’ trust and their stories. By early afternoon the western section of the prairie is occupied by Friends, each wearing a harness with a cut-away milk jug tied with twine. Like milkweed seeds lofting on the air, we drift together and apart in a loose, comfortable congress. A toddler meanders curiously toward a college student who came out to satisfy an assignment in one of his biology classes at UW–Waukesha. The young man squats to help him gather a tiny fistful of seeds. The boy’s father, with an infant strapped to his chest in a baby carrier, waves to the young man in appreciation. All around them, every where, long-standing friends of the Field Station are gathering and gossiping. It has been two years since they have been able to do this work together. Births, weddings, graduations, retirements, moves, deaths—there is much to catch up on.

Farther down the field, biologist Marlin Johnson is collecting seed, greeting former students and old friends. The first director of the Field Station and its grand architect, he continues pinching the goldenrod seed off the spent blooms and placing them in the milk-jugs as he answers questions and directs volunteers who need assignments. Plant to jug, plant to jug, his hands never rest. Fifty-two years after drafting the master plan for this Waukesha County arboretum, he is still ceaselessly working to bring it to frui tion as a community of practice.

The land remembers, as Ben Logan reminds us in his memoir of growing up on his family farm in southwestern Wisconsin. But what is the power of the land’s memory if there is no one who witnesses it? And as important a question, what is the power of the land’s memory when there are people who do?

These questions guide the Field Station’s work these days, for organizations are like prairies. Each succession of their life cycle possesses its own color and intensity, its own unique labors. In the years since Marlin Johnson retired as Field Station Director and UW–Waukesha became a college administered by UW–Milwaukee, the Field Station has entered a new stage of succession—one perceived as mature, stable, past the need for restoration, but still requiring maintenance.

Within this period of its succession, stories will be its most crit ical tools . This past year Marlin has worked with Field Station Committee Member and UW–Waukesha biologist Suzanne Joneson to curate a digital archive of photographs that capture 55 years of the Field Station’s history. The archive is housed in the UWM Library’s Digital Collections and accessible on their website. In conjunction with their efforts, I have been collecting oral histories and photographs of the Friends of the UW–Waukesha Field Station.

The stories, footage, and images I collect will help keep the public memory of this land trust alive, to serve as a resource for those committed to earth-centered learning, and those who are entrusted with the Field Station’s future.

Like

all subjects whose memories are deep, sonorous, and under-documented, the land must be invited to reveal its past, ideally by a skilled historian with a biologist’s tendencies. Marlin Johnson is such a specialist. He took up residence in the Field Station’s 100-year-old farmhouse in 1970 and began his life’s work at UW–Waukesha. He immediately turned to the soil, the flora, the fauna, and began asking them to divulge their stories.

The oaks, it seems, were the first to speak to him. “We have six very large trees here,” Marlin explained during our first interview. “[They are] probably 200 years old, so they were here at the time that the pioneers came. […] That was a clue to me, to say that ‘hey, there was an oak opening here at one time.’”

Oak openings were a common form of natural plant community in central and southern Wisconsin for thousands of years, but today few of them exist. They were characterized by stands of open-grown oaks, their thick limbs extending in all directions like spinning Sufi. Bracing the ample space between their arms, the oaks towered above an open understory of prairie or woodland species.

Notably, oak openings had another characteristic feature: they were a sort of exclusive country club for bur and white oaks. Other than in seedling form, no other tree species were found within these ecological systems, which led them to resemble the curated parks found on English estates. How was that possible? 18th- and 19th-century travelers pondered. Who has done this? Where did they come from, and where are they now?

For centuries before the settlers came, fire had been a mainstay of the land’s existence. Often ignited by lightning or by accident, fires were also set by indigenous Americans, who used controlled fire as a tool for hunting, land management, and propagation. While fire ravaged the understory, carbonizing forbs, grasses, and weaker tree species, the oaks grew stronger. Their bark was resilient.

In all histories there is a peripetia—a turning point that marks irrevocable change. For Wisconsin’s oak openings the peripetia happened in 1837. The year before, the federal government had parceled up the state’s land communities into acreage. As the land was bought, it was converted for agricultural or domestic use. Although many of the largest oaks would remain, the native plants that composed the understory would be all but irradicated with the introduction of corn, wheat, and other crops. As importantly, as fires were suppressed, other tree species and woody plants began to crowd out the oaks that remained. Those that found new fastgrowing neighbors shouldering up next to them began losing their sunlight, causing their lower limbs to die and fall off. The oaks’ majestic reign over the southcentral Wisconsin landscape was over.

But the land surveyors unwittingly helped the oak openings record their history so that it could be heard and shared. After having seen six bur oaks dotting the abandoned farm-field while he first walked it in 1970, Marlin sought the original land surveyor’s records and found the oaks staking their claim in history. Through the process of creating the maps, the 19th century surveyors “recorded what they called witness trees at every half mile,” Marlin explains. “…they recorded the distance to the tree, the size of the

tree, and the name of the tree.” These details for Marlin were the key to understanding what the trees were trying to tell him about this native ecological community. “It turns out that this field station was actually in an oak opening that the surveyors saw,” he explained.

As he pursued an understanding of the land’s history during the early days of his land restoration process, Marlin walked miles of the rail line that bisected the southern end of the property. In the spirit of naturalists like Aldo Leopold and May Theilgaard Watts, he sought native species in un-landscaped places—between fence posts, in abandoned cemeteries, and along railroad rights of way. He classified the natives, documented emergent species, and, after seeking permission from the railroad, harvested the prairie plant seeds to bring home to the Station.

A naturalist would have prepared and labeled the seed for winter storage, then brought it out to be broadcast in the spring. An envi ronmental historian would have documented and shared what the land revealed about its ancestral origins, then broadcast it in academic and scholarly publications as soon as possible. A teacher would ignite a flame in others to share in the work. Marlin did all of these. He collected photographs, he engaged in phenology, he spent hours at Waukesha’s Historical Society pouring over historical accounts of the first travelers to pass through these lands. He cata logued and archived, plotted and planned. And then he set to sharing what he had discovered about the land and its native inhabitants. He wrote articles and essays and drafted maps about the pre-settlement

vegetation in Waukesha County. He cultivated relationships with students and neighbors, colleagues and strangers, and taught them to read the land’s history—to take in what it continues to say. As he summarized toward the end of our first conversation, “It’s a long history, and we’re kind of restoring what it was.”

Inpreserving the land’s history, Marlin Johnson did not work alone. The Friends of the Field Station have been “in the mud of it” for the last half century, in his words. The Friends, currently a group of 35 households, are UW–Waukesha educators and students, public artists and local citizens, each one or two degrees removed from Marlin. “This prairie was restored through their efforts,” he explains, surveying the rolling hills beyond where we sit on a hot July afternoon.

The prairie is in full bloom now; twelve spotted skimmers shimmer like floss while they do their dragonfly hover, foraging above this midwestern “sea.” That first April of the restoration process, and for many Aprils to come, the prairie looked nothing like this, Marlin tells me. It had been fallow for many years, chock-full of the non-native smooth brome and thistle that had overtaken the abandoned farm fields. That spring the first Friends lay black plastic in 50' x 50' or 100' x 100' plots, and then let the arid dark heat go to work on the non-native invasives, killing all but their seeds.

For ten months, the brome and thistle were left to bake, break down, and return to the soil. Marlin grew seedlings in the Field

Meg Muthupandiyan

Seed collection with the Friends of the Field Station, October 2021.

Station greenhouse—lupine and compass plant, leadplant, wild quinine, and white wild indigo. The following May, the Friends returned to lift the plastic, rake the earth, broadcast seeds, and rake them lightly into the black earth. Then they planted the 600 seed lings Marlin had nurtured. A couple of months later, they began cutting and pulling newly sprouted, non-native weeds so they couldn’t go to seed and regain footing. A restored prairie was born, and its stewardship had begun.

For over fifty years, this community has gathered to accompany the prairie over the threshold of every season. Until several years ago, they managed the prairie burn that takes place each April. However, the task was taken over by the Prairie Enthusiasts when the Field Station Committee, reorganized after Marlin’s retirement, decided there was too much liability involved in letting the Friends manage it. But they still come to sow seeds in May, weed and pull garlic mustard in June, gather seeds in mid-September and mid-Oc tober. After each long working day they celebrate with a potluck around a campfire or in the greenhouse, as the weather dictates. In their stewardship of this prairie, its members have found a ritual that binds them to the land, and to one another.

As the land community has been restored, the Field Station has also become a community of practice. A multi-generational group of people with different motivations, levels of formal knowledge, and backgrounds, the Friends nurture one another’s passion for living and learning from the land. It’s a group that takes care to deepen its shared knowledge and to celebrate and lean on each member’s increasing expertise. They have adopted a peer-to-peer model of learning used by Marlin from the start of the restoration process.

Fran Cheney, along with her husband, UW–Waukesha professor of philosophy Jim Cheney, was one of the earliest and most active of the Friends. In a March 2022 interview, Fran described the culture of knowledge-sharing that has been fostered through the seasons and years of restoration:

…Marlin’s way of sharing. It’s not in your face. When we gather, he’ll say “today we’re going to pick seeds from compass plant, big bluestem, little bluestem, lead plant.” He’ll name what we’re going to do, and he’ll show us because there will be some new people. It might be five of us, but ordinarily it’s twenty of us gathered together. And we all have our equipment to gather the

seeds, sacks and pencils to write on the paper sacks. But Marlin, really, he’s just got this generous spirit, so when he’s showing new people ‘this is big bluestem’ there’s a kind of generous open ness. He takes the time. So it has very much to do with Marlin starting this. When we were out on the field gathering, and maybe new at this…we began to teach each other.

Other Friends also noted how Marlin’s generous spirit guides their work. Brian Engel related how Marlin continues to be a dear friend, three decades after he met him as a college student. “I took all of his classes—every spring break trip to the Smokies or Ozarks. He wouldn’t let me know he was grading my papers as I drove,” he said with a chuckle. “We still go out at least once a month,” he says.

And that spirit is perhaps most profound when exhibited toward new people who arrive at the Field Station. “It always amazes me when somebody new arrives,” Meredith Cullen shared. “He imme diately makes that connection, asks a few questions, and even, if it’s like, you know, a little three-year-old or something, he will say something, and he’ll smile, and he’ll be very welcoming.”

Every Friend I interviewed stated that they have taken what they learned in this place and applied it to land communi ties farther afield. Remarkably, many of them had no particular interest in prairie restoration or ecological issues before stum bling into Marlin’s class or onto the Field Station grounds. As Ann Austin confessed, her 36 years of work at the Field Station evolved from a single, fortuitous, seemingly unremarkable choice. As an eighteen-year-old freshman at UW–Waukesha in 1986, she was registering for her first-semester classes and saw that Botany 101 with a professor named Marlin Johnson was open. Little did she know, the course required site work at the Field Station.

My thought process as an 18-year-old was, “I like plants, I need some biological science credits.” Fridays we had lab at the Field Station and I was sold. I definitely wasn’t ready to be done with the Field Station when that semester ended. Enter Field Station workdays. The best potlucks. Amazing people of various gener ations…That botany class and the Field Station have changed my life. I’m the person who walks out of a hotel in Washington, D.C. and thinks, “This is an oak tree. I don’t know what kind, but I need to find out.” A few years ago, my husband and I bought 38 plus acres in southwest Wisconsin and we are working on restoring oak savanna and prairie. Maybe I would have eventu ally found my way here without Marlin and the Field Station, but that is so uncertain.

Many of the Friends shared as much: becoming a steward of the Field Station led to becoming a steward elsewhere. Empowered and inspired, many of them lead restoration projects elsewhere and teach others how to build a relationship with the land.

Yvonne and Mike Fort became Friends of the Field Station in 1989 after they moved to the area. They became members of the local chapter of the Ice Age Trail and the Waukesha County Land Conservancy and met Marlin at the meetings. Like many burgeoning naturalists, they had little experience in environmental restoration, just a healthy curiosity and a willingness to sweat. As they honed their skills, they marveled at Marlin’s ability to interpret the land’s history. Mike recalled:

By October the goldenrods’ leaves and stems have faded to yellow-grey and their bearded floss has turned from gold to white. They hang like hoarfrost throughout the rolling fields, in anticipation of winter.

All photos: Meg Muthupandiyan

Clockwise: Brian Engel and Marlin Johnson. Pottery totem. Marlin and Suzanne Joneson. Fran Cheney, Joan Warsinski, and Ann Austin, Friends of the Field Station.

There were four or five of us on a kind of a mucky day, and we were working, we were trying to put this field path through an old corn stubble, and then through a big buckthorn mess that Romey Schoeninger had observed…she could see that there were some big old trees back in here over on the other side of the buckthorn. As we cut a path through the buckthorn in order to get to the trees, Marlin said, “Well, stop…stop here just a second. We’ve got the potential for a special restoration here. Right here, where we’re standing in the mud and corn stubble would be where the tallgrass prairie would be.” And you get a little farther up the hill and you run into a couple of big oak trees and it looks like a savanna. And then on the far end of it we discovered there’s almost all trees and hardly any buckthorn. An eastern woodland.

That was the start of our restoration. Yvonne and I planted the first groups of seeds together, around one acre, right there in that corner. That was the start of our 25-year adventure with trying to put some seeds down at Lapham Peak. He knew what he could see—he’s been our leader through this adventure.

Today, the Forts are widely recognized for leading the restoration of up to 250 acres of prairie at Lapham Peak State Park in the Kettle Moraine, not far from the Field Station.

The

adventure of the Field Station itself began when Gertrude Sherman contacted the UW–Madison Alumni Association in 1966 about donating her familty farmstead to the university. The association didn’t quite know what to do with it. Bob Rennebohm, Director of the UW Foundation, saw an opportunity nonetheless. He called Murray Deutsch, the dean of the recently founded UW–Waukesha Center. and asked him to contact her. Dean Deutsch fondly recollects calling Ms. Sherman to arrange a visit. “She was a lovely lady, quite old then, in her 90s.”

Deutsch, now 95 and living in San Francisco, was thrilled at the prospect of acquiring the land, as were educators at the Waukesha Center and the educators associated with UW–Milwaukee’s Field Station. “We wanted to use the land for the sciences,” he told me. “It was my idea that the biology department look after it. But we used it in all the sciences. When we secured the donation, there were a number of faculty who were interested in getting involved in the planning for its use.”

If developing a field station for the natural sciences was an early objective of UW–Waukesha, it soon became clear that many educa tors viewed the Field Station as a space for all disciplines to find both inspiration and instructive opportunities. By the late 1970s, Jim Cheney and his wife Fran, along with art professor Mary Ellen Young, and literature professor Tom Moylan, had worked with

All photos: Meg Muthupandiyan

Goldenrod in late summer.

The barn at the UW–Milwaukee at Waukesha Field Station.

Marlin to lay the groundwork for the Wilderness University: An Exploration of Right Relationship to Nature and Land. The program brought poets like Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry, photographers like Robert Glenn Ketchum, and others to the Field Station to lead clinics, workshops, and lectures which were—like the work of the humanists and artists themselves—earth-centered.

In a March 2022 interview I asked Wisconsin Poet Laureate and former UW–Waukesha English professor Peggy Rozga if she thought the Field Station had a golden age. After pausing a moment, she replied, “Maybe there were several golden age periods. When there was Wilderness University, when there were supportive faculty across multiple disciplines, and when there was a source of funding for programs that certainly were important. There was no way that I could become a faculty member here and be unaware of the wonderful addition to the campus that the Field Station is.”

Throughout the past, year both the Friends and Marlin himself have spoken of changes at the Field Station that have given them pause, sadness, or a sense of longing for something lost. When Marlin retired from teaching…when he stepped down as the director of the Field Station…when the Friends were no longer able to partic ipate in the prairie burn…when the long day’s labor on the prairie moved from restoration to maintenance…when UW–Waukesha merged with UW–Milwaukee…

Joannie Warsinki shared one such moment at the fiftieth anni versary of the Field Station, after the prairie was named the Marlin Johnson Prairie. Marlin shared his final wishes with the crowd, to have his resting place be there in the prairie. Shortly after, a man came up. He said, “Well, we’re not going to do that,” and laughed. “We’re certainly not going to do that,” he said.

The man, Joannie believes, was an administrator at the univer sity. “I just thought ‘wow,’” she said. “What a difference in the kinds of people we’re talking about here. […] Marlin is very aware that this is where we came from and this is where we’re going. He wanted to have a natural burial here, but the people who […] now have domain over this field station don’t want that.”

Even though a natural burial on the prairie is in fact prohibited by law, the incident reveals a great deal about the tension that many of the Friends of the Field Station feel at the transition of leader ship. Nonetheless, many of them seem to have a cautious optimism that with the changes afoot, new friendships can be fostered— that the community of practice will continue to draw them back season over season, year over year—through births and deaths, and changes—to a place that they consider a spiritual home. In a conver sation that included her husband Meredith, Mary Cullen succinctly summarized the challenges that any organization has in replacing a charismatic leader and teacher like Marlin, who has meant so much to the community in this small corner of Wisconsin:

He just makes my heart kind of grow and feel. He’s just one of those very special, special people. I don’t know if you talked to Meredith about [Marlin’s] being a steward of these lands. I can’t imagine anyone else. This is his life’s focus…you don’t know where Marlin ends and the prairie begins.

As Marlin made the prairie, the prairie made him, and those who love and learned from the one, very much love and learned from the other. The stories that these people hold among themselves, while deeply rooted in the past, are like the goldenrod they pinch and gather in bags to store for next year’s planting. Gathered bit by bit, these seemingly ephemeral seeds of personal history can play a vital role in shaping the future of the Field Station for seasons to come.

Meg Muthupandiyan has spent her creative life musing on the Wisconsin land communities to which she belongs. The founder of Poetry in the Parks and the author of Forty Days in the Wilder ness, Wandering, an illuminated poetry collection, she works with artists and conservationists to create poetry films that celebrate communally and publicly held lands.

Marlin walking the farmstead.

HERBARIUM

Above:

Right:

Joseph Mougel, Dendroleipos, 2022. Archival pigment print. 40 x 32 inches.

Joseph Mougel, Ideal Cedar, 2020. Archival pigment print. 28 x 20 inches.

JOSEPH MOUGEL Milwaukee

Joseph Mougel’s Herbarium project is a series of photographs inspired by plant archives and the desire to capture and preserve things that comprise a place. Living plants, both native and introduced, are contained or surrounded by floral-patterned teacups, plastic shopping bags, darkroom equipment, and scientific instru ments, and further contextualized with patterns from domestic life like wallpaper, curtains, and embroidered tablecloths.

Together these components describe narratives of transition, colonization, and the exploration of the prairie. Mougel’s photographs illustrate moments of wonder, of not fully comprehending or seeing the world as a place of magic, as well as attempts to describe and analyze nature. This tension between the miraculous and the understood describes a journey of discovery, and an environment filled with mysteries for curious people to explore.

CLASH/MELD

Above: Richard Moninski, Corbel and Joe Pye Weed, 2021. Acrylic on camouflage fabric. 34 x 26 inches. Right: Richard Moninski, Witness, 2021. Acrylic on camouflage fabric, 34 x 26 in.

Richard Moninski’s recent work explores several themes: the systemization of nature, the decora tive impulse, the choices between representation and abstraction, and the history and culture of specific places. His paintings and drawings juxtapose indigenous flora and fauna, man-made artifacts, and stylized repre sentations of plants taken from European decorative arts traditions such as tapestry and lace-making.

Moninski often paints directly on commercially printed fabrics, usually camouflage patterns, incorpo rating and modifying the existing printed designs. The imagery ranges from more fully rendered objects to loose, gestural paint splatters and strokes. Why camou flage? Individual camouflage shapes are abstract, yet the overall pattern represents foliage. This duality of abstraction and representation allows for the inclu sion of flat, decorative patterns and things rendered as three-dimensional forms. The resulting works take the original military or hunting context of the camouflage and bend it to a commentary on the meeting places of nature and culture.

RICHARD MONINSKI Platteville

Reception Saturday, November 19, 6-8pm with artists’ talks at 6:30pm

Mineral Point Gallery Night Saturday, December 3, 6-8pm Meet-up with Richard Moninski at Green Lantern Studios

Seeds of Resilience: an idea exchange

Saturday, January 14, 10:30am-12pm with Joseph Mougel and Moselle Singh Wisconsin State Herbarium Tour, 1:30-4pm

Digital Drawing Workshop Sunday, January 22, 10am-12pm with Richard Moninski

Joseph Mougel Richard Moninski

Chippewa Falls “In Rock Springs When the Angel Trumpets Sound”

FICTION HONORABLE MENTIONS

“Sadie in Love” by Nancy Jesse, Madison “No Other Dog” by Jerry Peterson, Janesville

Madison “A Couple Months After My Father’s Death, I Read About Songbirds Mysteriously Dying in Pennsylvania”

POETRY HONORABLE MENTIONS

“Amor Fati” by Nicholas Gulig, Fort Atkinson “It Is, It’s Not” by Jim Landwehr, Waukesha “Home in the Borderland” by Curt Meine, Sauk City “This is First Son / Second Son” by Nick Sengstock, Madison

THANKS TO THE 2022 CONTEST JUDGES Amy Quan Barry (fiction) and Rebecca Dunham (poetry), and preliminary contest screeners Ryan Browne, C. X. Dillhunt, and Claude Clayton Smith. All contest judging is done blindly and the winning submissions are selected through criteria established by individual judges.

CONTEST WINNERS RECEIVE CASH AND PRIZES of $500 to $100, publication in Wisconsin People & Ideas, and a reading at the Wis consin Book Festival. First-place winners in both categories also receive a one-week writers’ residency at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point.

Tom Pamperin

First Prize

Nicholas Gulig Fort Atkinson “Of Genesis”

First Prize

Richie Zaborowske Appleton “Down in the Valley”

Second Prize

Alecia Beymer

Second Prize

Janice Wilberg Milwaukee “Snow Door”

Third Prize

Jess L. Parker Fitchburg “Neptune”

Third Prize

Jahmanz Williams

IN ROCK SPRINGS WHEN THE ANGEL TRUMPETS SOUND

BY TOM PAMPERIN

When fire began to fall from the sky and the stars started going out one by one, Burnhardt’s car was in the shop for new brake pads, or maybe the muffler—he’d been through a lot of cars and it was hard to keep track sometimes—so he was stuck at home. He wanted to make something for breakfast but all the dishes in the apartment were dirty and there was nothing left to do but wash them, unless he wanted to go down to the thrift shop and buy more. Every flat surface was covered with stacks of mismatched plates and bowls, and coffee mugs bristling with dirty forks and spoons. So Burnhardt opened the hot water tap to fill the sink, squeezed in a bit of soap, then reached over and turned on the radio.

He would have watched TV instead, but his roommate Denny had taken the innards out of their old console set a while back and replaced them with a small aquarium he’d picked up at Goodwill. A couple of pale fish slumped along behind the dirty glass, not quite belly-up, but it wasn’t much for entertainment. So it was radio or nothing. That’s how Burnhardt found out about the end of the world—the DJs were in the middle of an argument about it. The first DJ thought it should be ‘Apocalypse’ instead of ‘apocalypse’ but the second DJ said that when you capitalized the ‘a’ it meant you were talking about the Book of Revelation from the Bible, not the actual event itself. That was the only time you capitalized it, he said.

Unless it’s the beginning of a sentence, the first DJ said.

Sure, the second DJ said. But can you give me a sentence that starts with “apocalypse”? he asked, and the first DJ couldn’t think of one.

Burnhardt thought that if they announced a prize for it he would call in and say Apoc alypse is a ten-letter word and they would have to give him the money or the free concert tickets or whatever. But they started talking about John of Patmos and the Seven Seals of God instead, and the angel trumpets that would herald the Day of Judgement.

That took him back to Sunday school: seven seals, seven trumpets. He had pictured trained seals when he first heard about it, spinning balls on their noses and honking horns while balancing on red platforms that looked like oversized Turkish hats. But the Sunday school teacher told him no, they weren’t those kind of seals. Burnhardt thought that was too bad. Up until then he had pictured the apocalypse as a circus or something.

No, his Sunday school teacher had said. She seemed angry about it for some reason. It’s not a circus. It’s the end of the world. Fire. Agony. The forces of hell unleashed. Death and damnation for sinners. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. A few of the kids in the class had started crying. Burnhardt thought a circus would have been better.

After a while, the DJs’ discussion of John of Patmos’s apocalyptic vision was suddenly displaced by a loud enthusiastic voice telling Burnhardt how he could stay warm this winter with a propane heater from Sunbeam. Burnhardt switched the radio off. He knew what to watch for. Seven trumpets, angel trumpets. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. He thought about calling Denny to let him know what they were in for, but the landline wasn’t working anymore, and Burnhardt didn’t believe in cell phones.

You don’t believe in anything, Karen had said once, back when they were still together. That’s your problem.

And maybe it was. If he had a cell phone he could call someone right now. Maybe Karen. Although how that would go would be anyone’s guess. He went back to doing the dishes.

It wasn’t just the phone. He hadn’t opened any of his mail, either—not since Karen went off to Laramie and started sending back his letters unopened, with RETURN TO SENDER!!! written on them. After that he stopped paying attention to things for a while. But the mail kept coming and there was a pile of bills and credit card offers somewhere. For a while he had planned to sign up for every credit card he was offered so he could max them all out on cash advances and move to a small village somewhere on the west coast of Mexico where he would live the life of a disillusioned expatriate. He would buy a surfboard and a fly rod and a bike with a handlebar basket and fat tires and live on the beach until his money ran out. Then one day Karen would show up. Probably in a bikini.

I’ve been looking for you, she’d say.

I know, he would say.

Once Burnhardt had called Karen to tell her about Mexico and a man had answered. Burn hardt had quietly hung up, and then picked up the handset again and smashed it against the tabletop several times until something broke loose inside. Since then, there had been no calls. He picked up the phone just in case Denny had fixed it without telling him, but there was no dial tone, just a rattling noise from the receiver.

Burnhardt was drying the plates when the first trumpet sounded, a long low roar that reminded him of a video he had seen on YouTube: Six Hours of the Amazing Shofar . It hadn’t been much of a video—mainly just a series of photos showing people blowing long curly rams-horn trumpets, with captions that said things like “The Powerful Sound of the Shofar is Healing, and causes Confusion in the enemy’s camp.” But this wasn’t YouTube—it was for real.

Burnhardt turned to the window as the trumpet’s low roar faded away to silence. Fire had begun to fall from the sky. He dropped the dishcloth and went outside to watch the world coming to an end. Ashes and embers drifted downward like the first fat snowflakes of winter, flaring briefly into flame as they hit the pavement. Other than that, things didn’t seem much different. Cars were driving the streets, pulling into gas stations. People were going in and out of shops. They looked maybe a little more harried than usual, but it was hard to tell.

His stomach rumbled and Burnhardt thought about the Subway down the block. He wanted a meatball sandwich—provolone cheese, black olives, tomatoes, and jalapeños, a little oregano—but he didn’t think he had enough money. When he had tried to cash in the points from an old Subway card that he had found in the street a while back, the cashier told him they didn’t use those cards anymore. And besides, she said, you don’t even have enough stickers on your card for a six-incher.

And so it goes, Burnhardt thought. The world was ending and he couldn’t even get a sand wich. No breakfast, either. Even if the dishes hadn’t all been dirty, he didn’t think there was any food left in the apartment. He wondered what he wanted to do before it was all over.

Over. He rolled the word around in his mouth, not quite saying it out loud but just feeling it, savoring the astonished roundness of the initial O, the pressure of his teeth on his lip as he shaped the silent V, marveling at how well the word fit into his life, how completely it seemed to define him. He wished he had gone to Mexico when he had first thought of the idea. Too late now. He thought that he might go to Laramie instead, but his car was in the shop. He decided to walk down to Willy’s East Side Garage to see if it was ready.

He

waited a while at the counter before Willy appeared.

Which one is yours? Honda Civic, right? Willy asked.

Yeah.

Willy flipped through a box of index cards. A couple of other people came in—one of them wanted an oil change and the other one wondered if his new tires were installed yet. They were complaining about the crowds, the smoky and sulfurous air, the way the apocalypse was making even the simplest errands feel like major undertakings. Groceries. Car repair. The post office. The hardware store.

Willy mumbled something to signal his disinterest, then turned back to Burnhardt. Hold on a minute, he said, pulling another card from the file box. He turned and shouted instructions to three men in dirty blue cover alls hanging around the garage, all thick-fingered greasy hands, dirty faces, uncombed hair and unruly mustaches. They started moving around the car that was up on the hoist. One of them stuck his head under the car and then stood up and waved Willy over. Willy went over and looked.

The oil change guy and the guy with the new tires sat down and started looking through old People magazines. Willy disappeared behind the garage with one of the mechanics. After a while, Willy came back in and walked over to where Burnhardt was waiting.

Not done with her yet. Try back next week, he said.

I need it today, Burnhardt told him.

Sorry, Willy said. He shrugged.

Burnhardt thought about it for a minute and watched the fire falling in wavery sheets from the sky onto the streets and that’s when he heard the second trumpet—a low strident moaning that echoed across the city and seemed to shake the sky. He thought about Karen in Laramie and how she was probably wishing he were there with her now, how scared she must be, how she would be hoping for a chance at least to say goodbye and tell him that she wished everything had turned out differently between them. I know, he would say. Then he would kiss her gently on the forehead. They would hold hands and watch the fires burning themselves out as the world wound down around them.

How about a loaner? he asked Willy.

Burnhardt, Willy said. The way he said it reminded Burnhardt he still owed Willy money from last time.

He dropped the dishcloth and went outside to watch the world coming to an end. Ashes and embers drifted downward like the first fat snowflakes of winter, flaring briefly into flame as they hit the pavement. Other than that, things didn’t seem much different.

C’mon, Willy, Burnhardt said. I’ll take whatever you got.

Look, man, Willy said, I gotta go. Check back next week, best I can do. Then he disap peared into the garage and left Burnhardt standing alone in front of the counter.

He wandered out into the street and started going through his pockets. He found three dollars and twenty-seven cents and a blank American Express traveler’s check worth twenty dollars left over from a trip to Moab with Karen. He found the Subway card, too. And two matchbooks from the Smokin’ Tuna Saloon in Key West. He wondered if there was anything back in the apartment that he might pawn. Something of Denny’s, maybe.

By this time the city was burning, but they were small fires mostly and it was all a lot quieter than Burnhardt had expected. Traffic seemed to be winding down. A few people were hurrying around here and there. Burnhardt wondered where they were going. He couldn’t think of any reason to hurry. He couldn’t even think of anywhere to go.

He counted the money in his pocket again. It was the same as before, three dollars and twenty-seven cents. He started walking along Business 80. At the KFC he went in and spent a dollar seventy-nine on a Coke that he took outside with him. He thought with the end of the world upon them that people might have stopped charging money for small simple things like Cokes. He should have known better.

He was walking along through the smoke, drinking his Coke and thinking about Karen, when he remembered the pile of overdue library books back at his apartment. If his total fine went over ten dollars they wouldn’t let him check out any more books. It seemed petty to cut him off that way, given the circumstances, but he had learned never to underestimate bureaucracy’s enthusiasm for persecution. It seemed to be an iron law of social organization. He searched his pockets again and this time found only a dollar forty-eight and his traveler’s check. He wished he hadn’t bought the Coke.

The thing is, he wouldn’t have minded paying overdue fines except Denny had told him once that the money didn’t even go to the library, it went into the general municipal fund instead, where it could be used for roads or schools or other unrelated infrastructure. It seemed dishonest. For a while he’d thought about going to a city council meeting to complain about it but in the end he decided that he didn’t want to legitimize the mayor’s authority by appearing before him as a supplicant. When he explained all this to Karen she just rolled her eyes. A few days later she left for Laramie.

He finished his Coke and kept walking. He would go back to his apartment and get the books and return them to the library, he decided. It would be nice to have a loose end that he could tie up without anyone else having to be involved. Like Karen. What if he went all the way to Laramie to tell her about Mexico and she wasn’t interested? She could be funny that way. She might even call the cops again. He turned around and headed back to his apartment.

In front of the Holiday gas station, or what had been the gas station before the fires had reached it, exploding the pumps and leaving a charred ruin in its place, an old man walked by with a Repent! sign made from a sheet of cardboard stapled to a stick. He waved it at Burn hardt without much enthusiasm.

Burnhardt had seen the old man around town now and then, but the sign was new. He wondered what he was supposed to repent for, and what it would get him if he did. The old man just stared at him.

How’s it going? Burnhardt finally asked.

Fuckin’ apocalypse, the old man said, and shrugged. You got a light?

Burnhardt dug around in his pockets, found one of the matchbooks, and gave it to him.

Got any cigarettes? the old man said.

Sorry, Burnhardt said. No.

Shit, the old man said, and wandered off, the sign slung over his shoulder.

Burnhardt didn’t see anyone else after that. When he got back to his apartment Denny still wasn’t there, so he gathered all the library books together from behind his bed and on the couch and under the pizza boxes and stuffed them into plastic bags from Safeway.

Next he opened the refrigerator and found some ham that looked like it might not be too old but there was no bread for sandwiches anyway, so he put it back. He threw a few clean t-shirts in a backpack and grabbed his toothbrush. From the kitchen he took two cans of olives and a box of dog biscuits. It was all the food there was and the dog had run off some time ago anyway so he felt like it was probably ok. They weren’t that bad, actually.

The damn dog saw it all coming, Burnhardt thought. That’s why it took off. Not that it had been that great of a dog anyway—some kind of Irish Setter mix, maybe, something reddishbrown and shaggy, with bad breath and fur matted into spongy clumps. It had been old and feeble, staggering around the apartment drooling on everything. It wasn’t even his dog, really. It had just showed up on his doorstep. When he opened the door, the dog had walked in and looked around disapprovingly for a few moments. Then it slowly collapsed at the foot of the couch with a loud sigh and put its head on its paws and stared at Burnhardt. He didn’t have the heart to make it leave.

Karen used to bring the dog treats. Its teeth were bad and it could barely chew the dog biscuits she brought, but it would try. Then it would sit on the floor surrounded by the slobbery crumbs it hadn’t managed to swallow and stare at Burnhardt until he gave up and petted it. It would roll onto its back and moan as Burnhardt scratched its belly. Karen would smile at Burnhardt. The dog’s tail would thump a couple of times. But now the dog was gone and Karen was gone and Burnhardt was alone except for Denny. And Denny wasn’t around either. Burnhardt sat down to write a note for him.

Denny, he wrote. I am

Then he stopped. After a little while he crossed the words out and started again. Denny, it’s me—Burnhardt. But he stopped again because he didn’t like how the first words looked, crossed off on the page. It looked too much like an ending. He tore the page off the pad and crumpled it up. Best to start over on a new sheet.

Where are you? he wrote. Then he decided that was a stupid thing to write because if Denny was going to read the note he’d have to be standing right here holding it. Burnhardt would’ve crumpled that sheet up too, but it was the last one. He had gotten the pad of paper from his dentist—it was shaped like a giant tooth— but Burnhardt hadn’t been to the dentist in a year and a half and now he was out of paper except for this last piece. He wasn’t sure what to do. All that was left after this sheet was the tooth-shaped cardboard backing that the paper had been stuck to. He tried writing on the cardboard but the pen he was using wouldn’t write smoothly on the rough surface and it made his handwriting look lumpy and amateurish.

Finally he went back and scribbled a blob of ink over the question mark so it would look like a mistake and went on with going? Then he stopped and looked at it. Where are you (ink blotch) going? the note said.

Outside he heard the trumpet again. He decided not to worry about it.

He finished the note: I’m hitchhiking to Laramie. It felt good to have a plan. He was pretty sure he would be able to find Karen and when he did he would tell her about Mexico, how nice it all would have been. Maybe they would go out and buy tequila and mix up a few pitchers of margaritas and go up on the roof and watch everything wind down. That would be nice. It wouldn’t be Mexico, but it would be something. He signed the note Burnhardt and left it on the middle of the table. Then he added P.S., I took the dog biscuits

JUDGE’S NOTES

AMY QUAN BARRY

When Burnhardt finds himself without a car on the very day the apocalyptic visions of John of Patmos begin raining down out of the sky, what had been his mean dering path through life takes on new urgency. A compelling story of the search for community in a world that often favors our floating along on the surface of things.

On the way to the library, Burnhardt stopped by Pizza King to pick up his check. Fat Bob would probably be managing the lunch shift, and he disapproved of Burnhardt on prin ciple. Principle, and unfounded suspicion: Pizza King paid drivers an extra fifty cents per hour to put a magnetic Pizza King sign on their cars and Bob was always accusing Burnhardt of claiming the extra money without displaying the sign. Which was true, but Burnhardt found his presumption of guilt offensive. Burnhardt had tried to explain this to Karen more than once, but he was never able to make her understand.

Pizza King was busy, the rush for the lunch buffet even worse than usual. Small fires were spreading across the parking lot on a hot ashy wind, and the sky overhead was starting to take on a rumbling darkness. In back where the delivery drivers parked there were a couple of beat-up cars with Pizza King signs stuck to their roofs.

Fat Bob was sitting in the tiny office behind the counter, wedged into a cheap office chair that shifted sharply from side to side on uneven legs. His body spilled out over the arms of the chair, wobbling as the chair moved, and Burnhardt found it difficult to look away. Employees hurried around them shouting and baking pizzas and elbowing past Burnhardt

in the narrow space behind the counter, but Bob ignored it all. He stared almost thoughtfully at Burnhardt.

Long time no see, Burnhardt, he said finally.

Burnhardt had never liked working for Bob, but Karen had never been sympathetic. If it’s so bad, then quit, she’d say. Get a real job like everyone else.

She seemed to think he had something against work. But that wasn’t true—Burnhardt didn’t have anything against work; he just didn’t want to be the one doing it. He refused to surrender meekly to the puritanical work ethic foisted on society in the guise of morality so that undeserving plutocrats could profit from the labor they had shamed everyone else into taking on. Once Karen had a chance to see what Mexico was like, she would understand. Burnhardt was sure of that.

I just came by for my check, Bob, he said. He wished he had set the bags of books down outside. The thin plastic handles were cutting into his fingers.

Bob shook his head, his jowls wagging limply. The sight reminded Burnhardt of the dog again, how it used to climb painfully to its feet and move across the kitchen in small jerks and starts. Sometimes its feet would slip on the linoleum and it would collapse with a thud, and stare at Burnhardt until he helped it back up. Then its tail would thump a couple of times and it would try again. Sometimes just watching it would make Karen cry.

Burnhardt, Bob was saying. When is the last time you bothered to show up for work?

Yeah, Burnhardt said. Listen. My car’s been in the shop and everything.

Burnhardt, Bob said. Burnhardt. Did you even bother to call in?

Oh, Burnhardt said. Yeah, my phone . . .

Bob said something else then but Burnhardt didn’t really hear him. The smell of fresh pizza and breadsticks reminded him that he had never gotten around to eating breakfast. When he and Denny were working the same shift they would sometimes make up a ham and pineapple pizza that hadn’t been ordered and then eat it themselves when nobody showed up to pay for it. Sometimes they would make another one to take home. That’s what they’d done the night Karen left.

Subversion, Burnhardt had explained as he laid the Pizza King box on the table and opened it.

Got to be the change you want to see in the world, Denny said, and grabbed a piece of pizza.

Or you could, I don’t know, just fucking pay for your food for once, Karen said. Like everyone else does. Then she’d gone out, got in her car, and driven away to Laramie and stopped answering her phone.

Even one call? Bob was saying. That was the thing about Bob, he just kept talking, even when it was obvious that no one was listening. It had been a bad idea to come in, Burnhardt decided.

Bob was wrapping things up, pointing toward the door now. Some of us have work to do, he said.

Burnhardt said, Yeah, whatever. I think you have my last check, though?

Bob folded his arms across his chest. Burnhardt, he said, you’ve worked a grand total of— what? Six hours in the last two weeks? That doesn’t even cover the cost of the Pizza King sign you still have. You bring the sign back, I’ll give you your check.

Burnhardt went out the back door to where the delivery drivers were parked, set the books down, took the Pizza King sign off a battered Corolla and brought it inside.

Here, he said, and handed the sign to Bob.

The check came to twenty-eight dollars and forty-six cents. There was a bank next door to the library and Burnhardt went in, wondering if twenty-eight dollars—forty-eight, counting the traveler’s check—would be enough to get him to Laramie. There were long lines at every window and he had to stand around quite a while. A TV bolted to the wall blared news: riots, earthquakes, plagues, floods, wars, entire cities destroyed by fire. Looting and rioting. While he was standing there listening, Burnhardt watched the other people in line. The lady behind him kept fidgeting. She wore some kind of pantsuit and too much makeup and she kept looking at her watch and rolling her eyes and tapping her foot. Can you believe this? she said every once in a while, but everyone pretended she was talking to someone else. Burnhardt thought it was too bad she would never get to Mexico and see what it was like just

to live on the beach, because if anyone needed it, she did. He was getting tired just watching her, so he turned and looked out the big glass windows of the lobby instead.

Off in the distance he heard the trumpet again—was it the fifth time? Looking out the windows Burnhardt saw that fire and blood and hail were coming down all mixed together, and the sky was even darker. Lightning flashed jaggedly through a field of bulbous purple clouds that hung over the city like an angry fist raised for smiting. There were a few over turned cars in the street now, and small groups of people wandering around holding torches and singing hymns, but it was still pretty quiet for the most part. Off in the distance another trumpet sounded. Six, thought Burnhardt. Not much time left.

Finally he got to a teller, the cute one at the far left window. Her name tag said Bev. He wondered if Karen would be jealous if she saw them together. Or regretful, maybe. Because you never realize what you have until it’s gone—or until someone else has it. When Bev counted out his cash and handed it to him, their hands touched briefly, a moment of sudden shocking intimacy. Burnhardt almost started to tell her about Mexico, how you could just live on the beach there until all the money ran out. How if you were paying attention you could see there was a leisure class at both ends of the social spec trum. How the Protestant work ethic that had become so deeply rooted in American culture was not an ethic at all but only a lie that allowed the idle rich to feed off those who were stupid enough to let them. She looked like someone who might understand that. But she was already turning to the next customer and saying, How can I help you today? with a fake smile that made her teeth look too big.

It’s better this way, Burnhardt thought as he walked out. Stick to the plan. He’d find Karen. They had history, and that’s all you were left with when the stars came crashing down. History. She would be glad to see him this time. They would mix up some margaritas and talk and remember and maybe hold hands. She would probably want to kiss him. He would let her. He would tell her all about Mexico, all the plans he had wanted them to share. She would be sad that it was too late now, and he would be sad too, but it would be good to be sad together as the world ended.

I’m glad you came, she would say. He would smile.

Afterwards maybe they would be walking down the street holding hands and he would stop at one of those vending machines that sell fake tattoos and plastic jewelry and he would buy her a ring with a butterfly or a diamond on it. It would be too small and he would have to bend it open to fit her finger. Neither of them would say anything but they would know what it was supposed to mean. She would look at him and she wouldn’t cry but she almost would. They wouldn’t talk about the restraining order or any of that.

So Burnhardt just went outside to count his money—Bev had cashed both checks for him. With what he had left from buying the Coke at KFC it came to forty-nine dollars and nine ty-four cents. He felt better knowing that he had almost fifty dollars.

One last stop, Burnhardt thought. He went into the library and jammed all of the books into the book return slot at the front desk. One of the library ladies came over and stared at him while he was doing it. She made a big deal out of taking the books one by one and restacking them neatly on the front counter. Burnhardt dropped the empty bags on the counter, smiled at her, and walked out.

Out

at the edge of town, a tall hooded figure in a dark robe stood in the swirling wind at the top of the entrance ramp to I-80 watching the city burn and the stars drop from the sky to land out on the empty plains in explosions that sent huge geysers of dust shooting into the darkness. There was something oddly frail, almost skeletal, about the figure, as if under the robe there was nothing but a bundle of sticks. As Burnhardt crossed the street and started up the on-ramp, the figure lifted a long rams-horn trumpet.

Wait, Burnhardt started to say.

The figure shook its head slowly at Burnhardt, and the ram’s horn bleated its last long ugly roar. The echoes faded slowly to cold silence, and a billowing darkness settled over the starless sky like a dusty blanket tossed down carelessly from somewhere overhead. The

He would tell her all about Mexico, all the plans he had wanted them to share. She would be sad that it was too late now, and he would be sad too, but it would be good to be sad together as the world ended.

robed figure lowered the trumpet and walked out into the darkness, out where the fires were burning down and the winds were sweeping brimstone and ashes across the plains like the broom of God, leaving Burnhardt standing alone beside I-80.

Burnhardt waited a while after that, but nothing happened. Except for the wind it was quiet. He slid the pack off his shoulder and let it drop at the top of the on-ramp, then sat down beside the highway. Leaning back against the guardrail, he closed his eyes. He thought again about Mexico, about how things might have been. He wondered what Karen was doing, if she was thinking about him. She probably was, he decided.

After a while Burnhardt felt himself drifting toward sleep. He didn’t fight it. There didn’t seem to be anything else left to do. But then a faint noise, a tentative scrabbling, caught his attention. Burnhardt opened his eyes, turned his head.

Below him, at the foot of the ramp, an odd lurching shape made its way slowly through the smoky darkness. The damn dog, Burnhardt realized. It staggered toward Burnhardt, strug gling up the steep ramp with its head hanging, its breath coming in gasps and wheezes, nails scrabbling on the crumbling pavement.

Burnhardt climbed to his feet and pulled open his backpack. The dog biscuits had spilled out of the box and into his clean t-shirts, crumbs and broken bits everywhere. He found one that was mostly intact and held it in his outstretched hand.

Here, boy, he said, and patted his leg. Come here. The dog’s tail thumped weakly against the guardrail. Burnhardt moved to the dog and it slobbered the biscuit from his hand. Around them the air was thick with ash, the darkness nearly complete. The dog didn’t seem to notice. It finished chewing and looked up at Burnhardt expectantly.

Yeah, Burnhardt said. Okay.

He picked up his pack, slung it over his shoulder, and started walking slowly down I-80 toward Laramie. The dog staggered along beside him. It wasn’t much, but they were moving. That was something. Even someone who didn’t believe in anything could believe that.

Tom Pamperin has taught high school English for 19 years, in the U. S. and overseas. He writes about wooden boat building and sailing. His book, Jagular Goes Everywhere: (mis)Adventures in a $300 Sailboat, was an honorable mention for the 2014 Blei/Derleth Nonfiction Book Award. He is currently living in Wrocław, Poland.

A new podcast from WPR Reports

Award Winning Poetry

from our 2022 Poetry Contest

Of Genesis

The origin of every book is loss. There is not a word in the beginning and language always listens to its end. Tell me what has left its mark upon the names you give to stars you cannot see and I will try to break the sentence into something strange enough to trust. Look, the world is blue as death down here already. The air is poisoned by our breath. It is getting difficult to teach our children how to speak by speaking

Nicholas Gulig

Nicholas Gulig is a Thai-American poet from Wisconsin. The author of North of Order, Book of Lake, and Orient, he currently works as an Asso ciate Professor at UW–Whitewater and lives in Fort Atkinson with his wife and two daughters.

A Couple Months

After My Father’s Death, I Read About Songbirds Mysteriously Dying in Pennsylvania

What does this life require of me. A constellation of sharp caution empties: embers crackle in a nearby firepit. Textured branches seduce the night, consider this was all you ever thought desire could be: planted calm and the arrival of darkness. Always someone running the hills. Always a creek, yearning. What scrapes the inside of my wrist, what thorn bush caught in the understory rises, what is left—my father taught me to trust in the attempt: wake up, begin, follow some semblance of caught joy: eggs over-medium, a horse gasping oats from your flat palm, driving across a bridge, suspended, tasting air, a pronounced grin to anyone in the service of a second.

I ask again: what does this life require of me. In the imprint of the landscape Sycamore trees raise the question to a slotted sky with absent blues: how long can a body search for what has been taken; this loss I wish to escape makes a nest in my chest: above me, goldfinches are threading what little they can unearth: pine needles, bark, bits of trash, discarded feathers.

Beymer

Alecia Beymer is a poet and teacher. Some of her poems have been published in The Inflectionist Review, English Journal, Sugar House Review and Bellevue Literary Review, where she was a finalist for the Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry.

Alecia

2022

Neptune

Before the moon, there was Neptune. And before that, one giant sky rock took a bite from another, spitting in anger— a wet thud went to Earth who, spinning too close, caught a bit of sponge in her teeth... First it was Florida, coastal erosion, part of nature’s normal cycle, they said. Then, a third of California and it happened quick. Santa Barbara went underwater in one week and from here you can just make out the top of several Subarus sunning their backs in the water like snapping turtles. Some say that late at night, thousands of mermen come, drowning the vehicles like Oreos in milk, softening them up—which is why they’re gone come morning. I mean, softening them up to feed her, Mother Sponge—that’s what the locals call her— but I think it’s just the water rising and the land shrinking, crowding people out, that’s got them spinning stories…. It’s not like the movies. No screaming ladies clutch one hand to the last slice of land, legs dangling. Actually, they are in their beds when the water whelms like a wet blanket, rolls over. It is not dark—her bright is blinding— at the bottom she opens her mouth, immense eraser, and starts over.

Jess L. Parker

Jess L. Parker is a poet and strat egist from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She lives in Fitchburg with her husband, son, and pitbull, Poe. Her debut poetry collection, Star Things, won the 2020 Dynamo Verlag Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Bramble, Kosmos Quarterly, Blue Heron Review, and elsewhere.

Sun Black

I tried to read his favorite poem at my son his fun his fune read at his funeral he’d you see died there was a motorcycle a sunny black motorcycle and red the blood his head was red on one side and the asphalt was black and hot and sundown red at my son his funeral and the yellow helicopter and the helpers fred said fred rogers said the helpers fred mcfeely rogers said look you can be sad or you can look at all the helpers oh mister rogers help me the read the

Dethlefsen

Bruce Dethlefsen , Wisconsin Poet Laureate (2011-2012), has his fourth book of poems, Losing Purchase, coming out next spring, published by Apprentice House Press. He volunteers in Wisconsin prisons doing poetry workshops. A member of the Prairie Sands Band, Bruce lives in Westfield.

Bruce

EDITOR’S CHOICE

JUDGE’S NOTES

First Place

Of Genesis explores language and the human search for meaning via the question of how we can understand this world even as we desecrate it. The stakes are high here, and the poem’s exquisite lyricism enacts this conflict and leaves its impress upon the reader. I admire both the technique and emotional impact of the piece.

Second Place

A Couple Months After My Father’s Death, I Read About Songbirds Mysteriously Dying in Pennsylvania: The poem’s diction, music, and imagery are lush, even as loss and the speak er’s struggle to continue with life, haunt it. The poet aptly writes of “…this loss/I wish to escape makes a nest in my chest,” and line by line, image by image, the poem salvages these lost memories of firepits, eggs over-medium, pine needles and discarded feathers into something new that may someday hold a future and even offer hope.

Third Place

Neptune: Line by line, Neptune surprises the reader, demanding our attention. The realistic image of “several Subarus sunning their backs through the water like snapping turtles” in the wake of sudden coastal erosion is fused to the fantastical via the appearance of mermen on the scene. The collision of science, myth, and the quotidian in “Neptune” create a new sort of “de-creation” story, one which grapples with the effects of climate change on our planet.

REBECCA DUNHAM

News of the Air

by Jill Stukenberg

Black Lawrence Press, 350 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Angela Woodward

Unease crackles through an otherwise familiar Wisconsin North woods setting in Jill Stukenberg’s debut novel, News of the Air , winner of the Big Moose Prize from Black Lawrence Press. Allie and Bud abandoned Chicago almost twenty years ago to run a mom-and-pop resort in Vilas County, where the same guests book the same cabins year after year at Eagle’s Nest on Little Eagle Lake, and the area’s charm depends on its aura of unchanging rural sanc tuary. Disquieting differences mark the end of the summer season when the novel’s action begins. This year, outsiders linger in the area past Labor Day. A girl in Allie and Bud’s eighteen-year-old daughter Cassie’s school orchestra has died. And a grandmother shows up by canoe with her two grandchildren, whom she’s rumored to have kidnapped.

As Allie, Bud, and Cassie uncover the reasons for these events, they rarely confide in each other. Bud, a former librarian, finds comfort in their backwoods community, while Allie counts on the area’s remoteness to keep her past hidden. Meanwhile Cassie knows nothing of the world outside her home county. Cassie is unaware of her mother’s politics, and what drove Allie out of the city before her daughter’s birth. Without a shared understanding of where they live, father, mother, and daughter take actions at cross-purposes with each other. Their family begins to fracture, and so does the wider community that has sheltered them.

News of the Air is set in a slightly altered present or a plausibly extrapolated near future. The climate crisis has spurred migra tion. While Allie fusses over planting pollinator-friendly plants, border checkpoints spring up on the routes to Michigan and Canada. Wealthy people barricade themselves into luxury compounds, and water issues plague Milwaukee. These problems are a little worse than present day, but nothing in the novel seems futuristic. Stuken berg renders the area around Little Eagle Lake, with its dripping trees, starry nights, battered pickup trucks, and rural taverns, as a familiar and recognizable haunt. It’s the Up North we think we know, though perhaps not for much longer.

News of the Air is a brilliant exploration of what it means to protect the young. The relationship between Allie and her daughter Cassie sears because it’s so ordinary. A mother who nags, a daughter who doesn’t listen—it shouldn’t be anything special, except that the earth is cracking between them. In the book’s climax, both Allie and Cassie are in flight, trying to help someone escape to Canada. In separate vehicles, with no way to communicate, they don’t realize that they have similar aims. Both of them listen to “the girl DJ from Houghton,” a radio host from a college that may or may not still be extant. “Any girl listening,” Allie thinks, “could imagine herself part of something larger, an audience of girls throughout the North woods, each alone in her truck, like the DJ herself alone in her station booth in Houghton.” Stukenberg’s novel plays out these tenuous connections, where to be part of something larger means actually having to deal with it.

Angela Woodward ’s short stories and essays have appeared in many literary journals including Green Mountains Review, Kenyon Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is the author of five books of fiction, including the novels Natural Wonders (2016) and Ink, forthcoming in 2023 from University Press of Kentucky.

Painting Beyond Walls

by David Rhodes

Milkweed Editions, 403 pages, $28.00

Reviewed by Guy Thorvaldsen

In his new novel, Painting Beyond Walls, David Rhodes returns to the hamlet of Words, Wisconsin, the setting of his two most recent novels, Driftless, and Jewelweed. It is now 2027 and change is on everyone’s mind: environmental degradation, aging, class disparity, and sexual politics. August Helm, now thirty, has traded his idyllic rural life in the Driftless region for an academic life in Chicago. There, somewhat monastically, August studies adaptive immuni zation engineering—the intimate cosmos of the human species’ physical, genetic, and biochemical underpinnings.

Enter Amanda: independently wealthy, smart, and most impor tantly, possessing the precise physical and hormonal biome that momentarily pulls August out of his head and into a confluence of brilliant sex. Still, August responds to their primal joy like a scien tist, “Amanda and I were simply gene-expressing the algorithms of our breeding congenators.” In August’s new world, feelings are no longer just feelings; they are rooted in our genes. But sex, privilege, and power get the better of him. He returns home to Words to recon noiter and recover the part of him that got lost in Chicago.

But the hamlet of Words is having its own growing pains. August’s parents, Jacob and Winnie, are feeling their age. August’s best friend, Ivan Bookchester, has developed increasingly radical ideas about social change. The mysterious orphan Hanh, formerly known as Jewelweed, cares for the ailing Lester Mortal and tends to her orchard and wild ginseng, caught between Ivan and August. Forest Gate—a collective of uber-wealthy refugees, fleeing urban blight and environmental collapse—has bought, fenced off, and developed their own version of utopia on a huge swath of prime land near Words.

Like a melting glacier, Forest Gate looms large in the present and future. Its wealthy inhabitants are both eccentric and traditional but, it seems, only because they can afford to be. As Ivan puts it, “The Forest Gaters couple heard the faint heartbeat of something better and came to stamp it out.” Technology, at its best and greedy worst, is both their master and modus operandi. They hire locals to do their dirty work.

The story turns when August takes a temporary house-sitting job for Thomas and April Lux in Forest Gate. Suddenly, August is stretched between worlds, a border skirmish of beliefs and bound aries: his fascination with the lives of the rich; his loyalty to Ivan and loved ones in Words; his head-spinning attraction to the myste rious April who, it seems, has ruffled many feathers in Forest Gate. In essence August becomes Words’ unofficial mole, stumbling on the cracks of his own, and Forest Gate’s, internal dramas. In a clever bit of writing, August’s first day at the ‘Gate’ includes a Scrooge-like series of visitations by several members of the community that will lead to a transfixing conclusion.

Rhodes, as always, lifts the daily human struggle to a higher and more complex conversation, understanding that humans will always struggle with change and thus will always need community to navi gate that journey, and that the natural world—including our internal biochemical configuration—will be our guide and teacher.

Guy Thorvaldsen is a journeyman carpenter and taught English for 20 years at Madison College. His book of poetry, Going to Miss Myself when I’m Gone, was published in 2017. He lives in Madison with his partner.

Loving Orphaned Spaces: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth

by Mrill Ingram

Temple University Press, 203 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Emily Park

In Loving Orphaned Spaces: The Art and Science of Belonging to Earth, Mrill Ingram explores the forgotten spaces of both urban and rural landscapes, and finds grace in neglected pockets of human landscapes. Often accompanied by a friend, Ingram documents and ruminates on the quiet and understated beauty and peace that can be found in abandoned lots, overgrown medians, and the ruins of buildings being reclaimed by nature and the elements. In places often dismissed as eyesores or evidence of societal failure, Ingram manages to find both joy and solemnity.

The brevity of the text paired with abundant full-color photo graphs add to the impact of the book. Ingram’s writing is evocative, spare, and efficient—appropriate for a meditation on the signifi cance of these forgotten pockets of humanity’s infrastructure and industry, like a cornfield after harvest.

I am following my friend John once again. He is walking rapidly, as he does, moving up a gently curving slope. I can easily see the flow of the land around me, as it’s blanketed only by corn stubble. [...] Listening to him talk about monocropping, mold board ploughing, hardpans, and dead soil, I begin to see this field as another orphan, a space disciplined for maximum produc tion of corn and beans, its purpose maintained with agricultural chemicals and heavy machinery.

But as I continue to listen to John, my way of seeing shifts again. He describes a landscape in conversation with glaciers. We are walking in the Kettle Moraine area of eastern Wisconsin, a yiyang undulation. I watch his hands as he talks [...] He is espe cially captivated by the kettles nestled into the landscape; each one is unique, he points out. Similar types of plants, insects, and birds exist in each kettle but in different relationships.

As much as I enjoyed and appreciated this book, it’s not a pageturner. It’s not the sort of book that compels you to consume it in a rush or in a single-sitting. It’s best appreciated in small, quiet moments, just before dropping off to sleep or in a short break during the work day. I picked it up and put it back down frequently for short periods for days at a time, and I’m glad I read it that way.

This is a book that will appeal to those who enjoy finding beauty in the unexpected, and to urban explorers and adventurers. Since reading it, I see decaying human structures differently. For readers looking for something quiet and contemplative to break up their busy day, Loving Orphaned Spaces is a good choice. I recommend taking your time with it, returning to it whenever you’re in the mood for something thoughtful or meditative…and then passing it along to the next person who will.

Emily Park grew up in the Mountain West but has lived in various parts of the Midwest for her entire adult life. She works for the grassroots climate action group 350 Wisconsin, where she handles communications and organizes to end fossil fuel financing in the U. S. She lives in Madison.

BRANCHING OUT IN MILWAUKEE

BY FELICE GREEN

Earlier this year, the nonprofit Milwaukee Water Commons launched a green infrastructure initiative to increase the urban tree canopy in the city’s neighborhoods. The program, called Branch Out Milwaukee, is a community-led, resident-driven collaboration in neighborhoods long neglected by policymakers and with high rates of poverty and environmental health issues such as asthma. The program focuses on equity, public health, environ mental health, climate resilience, and workforce development while maximizing the benefits of an urban tree canopy.

The pilot program, launched in April in the Sherman Park neighborhood, involves p lanting trees as a practical step toward addressing climate change. A robust tree canopy helps capture rain and therefore reduces flooding and increases soil’s absorption of stormwater, along with providing other benefits. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and protect people from the sun, as well as improving mental health and wellness and adding natural beauty to the landscape. So far, two vacant lots in Sherman Park have been transformed by local people coming together to plant trees. There also has been increased interest in climate education in the neighborhood.

The Branch Out Milwaukee pilot program includes the develop ment of Wisconsin’s first neighborhood tree board. The Sherman Park Neighborhood Tree Board is a volunteer committee of resi dents who participate in making decisions involving trees and green spaces in their neighborhood. The program also includes develop ment of a neighborhood tree inventory in which Milwaukee Water

Commons staff will work with residents around Sherman Park to identify the species and age of trees on their properties and in their favorite green spaces and share information and resources about trees and tree care. They will also catalogue trees to be added to the Department of Natural Resources Wisconsin Community Tree Map, thereby assisting future forestry programs and building connections with the city forestry department.

Milwaukee Water Commons will fund Branch Out’s work with homeowners in Sherman Park, coordinating professional assess ments of trees on private property and subsidizing the cost of hiring arborists to maintain trees that pose a risk to public safety or prop erty. The organization will also provide residents in Sherman Park with information about partner programs, the benefits of trees, forestry employment and career opportunities, tree care resources, and information on purchasing and planting trees.

Milwaukee Water Commons launched Branch Out Milwaukee to address inequity and to bring economic, health, and environmental benefits to the community, believing that in tackling climate change and environmental issues, it is important that the diverse perspec tives of all communities are included. They are working to build a multi-cultural, multi-racial coalition that includes people from underrepresented communities, people from the working class, and people who don’t identify themselves as environmentalists. Branch Out Milwaukee hopes that their initiative and its diversity will contribute to the conversation around climate change, climate resil ience, and climate justice.

Felice Green is the Director of Programming at Milwaukee Water Commons, an alumni Environ mental Leadership Program Fellow and a member of the Sherman Park Community Association Board of Directors. She is a servant leader and enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, visiting museums, playing golf, and taking walks on the city’s riverwalk.

Milwaukee Water Commons

Community members planting trees in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood on Arbor Day, April 29, 2022.

Now you can stream more of your favorite PBS shows including Annika and many other popular Masterpiece series, Finding Your Roots, Cook’s Country, Nature, NOVA, Ken Burns documentaries and many more — online and in the PBS Video App with PBS Wisconsin Passport.

Learn how to sign up or activate your membership at pbswisconsin.org/passport.

Annika on Masterpiece Cook’s Country Finding Your Roots Nature

Learn

Academy Courses are designed to bring people together for lifelong learning and personal enrichment. Our expert instructors cultivate an intimate atmosphere for learning and discussion for creative people at all levels of experience.

WRITING MEMOIR

Instructor: Marja Mills

Wednesdays • Nov. 2–Dec. 7 6:00–8:00 pm • Virtual

Whether you hope to publish a memoir, chronicle periods of your life or record family stories, this supportive workshop focuses on how to write about your experiences with clarity and style, specificity and substance. New York Times bestselling memoirist Marja Mills will offer instruction, share excerpts from a variety of compelling memoirs and personal essays, and lead discussions on how to overcome obstacles and dilemmas.

THE LOST ART OF LETTER WRITING

Instructor: Marja Mills Nov. 30 & Dec. 7 11:00 am–1:00 pm • Virtual

Craft a concise holiday message; mark a milestone; offer a real apology; send thanks; reconnect with an old friend; and more. You’ll read examples of notes and letters that do the job beautifully, and get some in-class practice.