Wisconsin People & Ideas – Fall 2019

Nanoparticles in the Great Lakes Rebecca Klaper studies their impact

Artisanal Oils • Free Range Art • Writing Contest Winners

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WISCONSIN ACADEMY STAFF Jane Elder • Executive Director Breeanna Dollak • Head Gallery Attendant, James Watrous Gallery Chelsea Chandler • Director, Environmental Initiatives Jody Clowes • Director, James Watrous Gallery Catie DeMets • Program Assistant, Environmental Initiatives Tina Ignasiak • Development Assistant Bethany Jurewicz • Director, Operations & Events Erica Paucek • Marketing Assistant Matt Rezin • Building Manager & Membership Coordinator Amanda E. Shilling • Director of Development Jason A. Smith • Associate Director and Editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas Nikita Werner • Administrative & Strategic Projects Coordinator Chrisssy Widmayer • Historical Communications Specialist Ann Wilson • Business Manager OFFICERS OF THE BOARD Patricia Brady • President Tom Luljak • President-elect Tim Size • Immediate Past President Richard Donkle • Treasurer Roberta Filicky-Peneski • Secretary Steven A. Ackerman • Vice President of Sciences Malcolm Brett • Vice President of Arts L. Jane Hamblen • Vice President of Letters Freda Harris • Foundation President STATEWIDE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Tina Abert, Madison Kimberly Blaeser, Burlington Frank D. Byrne, Monona Joe Heim, La Crosse Jane Elder, Madison Catherine Gunther Kodat, Appleton Robert D. Mathieu, Madison Michael Morgan, Milwaukee Dipesh Navsaria, Madison Kevin Reilly, Verona Linda Ware, Wausau Nathan Wautier, Madison Marty Wood, Eau Claire OFFICERS OF THE ACADEMY FOUNDATION Foundation Founder: Ira Baldwin (1895–1999) Freda Harris • Foundation President Andrew Richards • Foundation Vice President Richard Donkle • Foundation Treasurer Arjun Sanga • Foundation Secretary FOUNDATION DIRECTORS Mark J. Bradley Patricia Brady Kristen Carreira Jane Elder Jack Kussmaul Tom Luljak Tim Size

Editor’s Note Ask a historian. Over the past year or so, this phrase has become my standard answer to questions raised about our so-called “unprecedented times.”

Can you believe this or that bit of audacity by our president?

What would happen if we went to war in the Middle East?

Why does America seem so divided?

When these and other questions arise in conversation with friends and family, I often recommend (perhaps to their annoyance) that they ask a historian about what happened the last time something similar came up. It turns out, the unprecedented often has precedent—we either just don’t know or forgot about it.

This is because at heart America is a country of striving optimism, a place where it seems that anyone can trade in their current life for a better one. We love stories of fresh starts and newfound success. As such, we have little time for the lessons of the past, and history often takes a back seat in our relentless drive toward progress (even here in Wisconsin, where our state motto is the emphatic Forward).

Sometimes, however, we keep our eyes on the horizon because it can be painful to look back over our collective shoulder. Take for example the controversy surrounding the 1619 Project by the New York Times. Launched on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved people arriving on these shores, the ongoing print and digital project brings together essays, poems, fiction, and photography to explore the history and legacy of slavery in America. This very public history project is as ambitious as it is important for our understanding of the American experience, no matter what our heritage.

A series like the 1619 Project that looks to the past isn’t trying to re-write American history or place readers on the side of right or wrong, winners or losers, racist or not (as some critics have claimed). Rather, it is about stepping away from these lazy binary assignations so that we can begin to accept the complexity and contradictions that led to the establishment of our republic, and the lingering influence our history of slavery has on contemporary American life.

So when questions arise about the next unprecedented moment that appears on your TV, Facebook feed, or local newspaper, postpone for a moment your judgment and find a book that, or person who, can help you discover an analogous situation from our past.

In short: Ask a historian.

Patrick Stutz Photography

WISCONSIN ACADEMY

OF SCIENCES, ARTS & LETTERS

Jason A. Smith, Editor

On the cover: Rebecca Klaper, Professor and Director of the Great Lakes Genomics Center in the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, examines the impact that various emerging contaminants, such as nanomaterials and pharmaceuticals, have on freshwater organisms. Photo by Peter Amland/UW–Milwaukee.

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CONTENTS 04 From the Director 05 Letters 07 Happenings Wisconsin Table

10 Farming for Oil

Candice Wagener

Essay

16 Wonder Spot

Krista Eastman

Report

22 Tiny Changes, Big Impact

Adam Hinterthuer

@ Watrous Gallery

28 Barnyard Iconography:

The Art of S.V. Medaris & Craig Blietz Elissa Koppel

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WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Craig Blietz, Helianthus (detail), 2018.

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VOLUME 65 · NUMBER 4 FALL 2019

Wisconsin People & Ideas (ISSN 15589633) is the quarterly magazine of the nonprofit Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Wisconsin Academy members receive an annual subscription to this magazine.

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

Copyright © 2019 by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Postage is paid in Madison, Wisconsin.

22 Fiction

38 Exile 1st Place Contest Winner Steve Fox Poetry

47 _Poems 1st–3rd Place Contest Winners

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Robert Russell, Mary Wehner & Jeri McCormick

JASON A. SMITH editor

Book Reviews

ALEX PANIAGUA editorial assistant

55 Seventy at Seventy: New Poems, by Tom Montag

Kathy Miner

JEAN LANG copy editor

56 Dairylandia: Dispatches from a State of Mind,

JODY CLOWES arts editor

by Steve Hannah

CHARLOTTE FRASCONA cold reader

Michael Hopkins

HUSTON DESIGN design & layout facebook.com/WisconsinAcademy twitter.com/WASAL instagram.com/WatrousGallery

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

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From the Director

O

n the anniversary of the catastrophic floods of 2018, the Academy hosted a leadership gathering in Baraboo. Our common goal was to explore better ways to anticipate and prevent damage caused by flooding as the Upper Midwest continues to experience more intense and extreme storms. As one of our presenters noted: We all live in a floodplain. Some of us just have more apparent risks than others, but we’re all vulnerable.

Our group of forty or so people included leaders from many fields: climate science, floodplain and watershed management, municipal water treatment, water policy, emergency management, energy planning, public health, and community action. We also welcomed historians and storytellers, concerned citizens working on flood recovery, and a venture capitalist investing in community resilience.

As we spent the day exploring ideas, I found an old Margaret Mead quote noodling around in my mind: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Early in our discussions, it became clear that any plan to deal with climate change-fueled flooding needs to embrace the concept of watershed planning, rather than traditional planning. Plans need to evolve and anticipate the impacts of a changing climate to help us live with water in a new era. Successful “whole watershed” planning approaches in the greater Milwaukee area and Ontario offer potential models for Wisconsin.

Our many participants from smaller communities around the state also made the compelling case that we need to stop starving local governments and constraining their ability to address unique local needs.

Rural resilience in the face of climate-related threats came up again and again during the afternoon discussion. For instance, emergency responders in rural communities affected by massive flooding are often volunteers with limited resources. Local emergency planners may have multiple other job assignments and similar resource constraints. Most small communities lack the funding to recover from a flooding disaster, let alone to pay for preventative measures that can reduce risk and vulnerability.

The group also noted how a strong rural ethic of hard work and self reliance can sometimes get in the way of individuals asking for help. This same ethic, coupled with a distrust of government, can make watershed planning and regional cooperation really challenging. Our discussions about supporting rural resilience pointed to the need for a culture shift that begins with listening, valuing local expertise, funding 4-H programs and schools, and offering assistance when asked—much more than short-term disaster relief in a crisis.

Over the day we affirmed what the scientists have been saying for a while: extreme storms in our region have been on the rise over the past fifteen years, and the trend will continue. The flooding we are experiencing isn’t just from swollen rivers or lakes; it’s also from the intense inundation of places where the storm water simply has nowhere to go but into basements and low-lying areas.

I watched people lean in and listen to each other and offer respectful critiques and challenges that broadened the conversation. There were divergent points but also many areas of agreement. We were talking about climate change, we were emphasizing community well-being and social values, and we were hopeful. This, I thought, is what collaboration looks like. Maybe forty thoughtful, committed people can change Wisconsin’s future for the better.

I think, perhaps, they already have.

Jane Elder, Executive Director

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Member News

News for Members

Letters

WERE YOU A JUNIOR ACADEMY MEMBER?

I have been a Wisconsin Academy member for many years, and I appreciate the variety and quality of what you offer. It is refreshing to see what you do every year.

Most recently I attended the Art of Teaching, a multimedia performance and panel discussion held in Overture Center for the Arts. The event was wonderful. I felt so much energy from the creativity and passion of these educators. The artists and teachers were talented and expressive, and their performance and discussion offered new perspective on what it means to teach. I wish we could communicate how important and appreciated they are for us and society.

It was nice to able to walk across the hall and visit your James Watrous Gallery. I make a point of coming to the gallery each time you change the art because the exhibitions are varied and stretch the imagination. The gallery is free, accessible, and intimate.

Thanks to the Academy for continuing to share learning opportunities and collaborations in many disciplines—and for encouraging creativity statewide,

Did you participate in the Junior Academy or any of our other science education programs? Do you have any images or objects from your participation in these programs or a favorite memory or reflection of your experience? Please send us a note at members@wisconsinacademy.org, and share what you have and remember for our 150th anniversary year celebration. Thank you! #GIVINGTUESDAY December 3rd is Giving Tuesday, an annual day of charity. Make sure to like our Facebook page at facebook.com/wisconsinacademy and follow us throughout the day.

GIVE THE GIFT OF ACADEMY MEMBERSHIP With the holiday season fast approaching, consider sharing your love of Wisconsin with a Wisconsin Academy gift membership (which includes four issues of Wisconsin People & Ideas). To purchase a gift membership, visit wisconsinacademy.org/ membership today.

LITERARY CONTESTS OPEN JANUARY 2020 Our annual Fiction & Poetry Contests will be accepting submissions January 15 through March 15, 2020. Contest winners in both the fiction and poetry categories receive awards of $500 to $100, publication in Wisconsin People & Ideas, and a reading at the Wisconsin Book Festival. For more details and to read this year’s winning submissions, visit wisconsinacademy.org/contests.

DISCOUNTS FOR MEMBERS Don’t forget that Academy Members receive discounted prices not only on Academy events but also our poetry and fiction contest submissions.

Whenever you register for an event or submit writing for contest consideration online, look for an option to do so as a member to enjoy your discount. If you have questions about how to redeem your member discount, contact members@wisconsinacademy.org.

Irene Golembiewski, Madison

All sorts of things come in the mail!

Sometimes it’s just bills (ick) Something’s junk mail (meet recycle bin) Sometimes a letter from friends (yay!) and sometimes a donation (whew!)

—groceries can be bought, plans made, and gifts shared!

Here is a little bit we wish we could have given sooner one day, we hope to be able to give more often meanwhile, the best thing is you are there giving tools and access to the next generation broadcasting and planting seeds and sharing the fruits of scientists, artists, writers to grow a community that cares You are a gift to the world

Sister Therese Poli, The Order of Julian of Norwich

We want to hear from you. Please send feedback and comments about Wisconsin People & Ideas and other Academy programs to: editor@wisconsinacademy.org. Thank you!

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Tom Uttech Into the Woods Opening October 12 Into the Woods is artist Tom Uttech’s first full-career retrospective, featuring more than 150 paintings, drawings, and photographs.

In anticipation of the museum-wide exhibition, MOWA commissioned Nin Gassinsibingwe, the most recent and spectacular painting in his migration series. The Ojibwe title translates as: “I Wipe My Tears.”

View exhibition activities at wisconsinart.org/intothewoods

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205 Veterans Avenue West Bend, Wisconsin 53095

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

happenings

FELLOWS I N TH E N EWS

Tom Uttech Artist Tom Uttech (2004) will have his first full-career retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. Recognized as one of the leading landscape painters working today in the United States, Uttech weaves together a mystical world of both real and imagined elements of nature. On view from October 12, 2019, to January 12, 2020, Into the Woods includes a number of Uttech’s large-scale migration series paintings from the last decade, including the MOWA-commissioned Nin Gassinsibingwe, as well as never-before-seen early paintings and drawings. The exhibition is accompanied by a major gift of almost two hundred photographs that was made possible by the artist and the Kohler Foundation Inc.

YOU WRITE. WISCONSIN WRITES. “A word after a word after a word is power.”

Margaret Atwood

JOIN. wiwrite.org

Plant geneticist Molly Jahn (2012), along with fellow UW– Madison researcher and soil scientist Matt Ruark, recently completed a six-year-long, nationwide study of 150- and 1,500-cow dairy farms called the Dairy Coordinated Agricultural Project. Their goal for the project was to find ways the dairy industry could help farmers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing profits. Research for Dairy CAP was done in collaboration with seven other universities and with support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. In their final report, issued earlier this year, project leaders Jahn and Ruark found that a combination of ideal cow genetics, improved feeding strategies, and better manure management could allow dairy farms to increase production while slashing emissions by a third to almost half. The report provides encouragement and guidance for farmers looking to create a more sustainable business model for milk production.

Sigma Xi STEM Art and Film Fes�val Free and Open to the Public November 17, 2019 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

Monona Terrace Conven�on Center Madison, WI Come explore science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) through different forms of visual arts.

Academy Fellows are recognized for outstanding leadership and achievement across disciplines.

Learn more at wisconsinacademy.org/fellows.

Screening and discussion: Chasing Coral documentary film Informa�on and to RSVP:

www.sigmaxi.org/stemartandfilm

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happenings

Giles Photography/STEC

STO RYTELLI N G

P U B L I C A RT

Giles Photography/STEC

Eau Claire is home to one of the largest three-dimensional art exhibitions in the United States. Winding along a seven-mile route that runs through the downtown area and by the Chippewa River, Sculpture Tour Eau Claire showcases large outdoor sculptures— from realistic people and animals to experimental abstractions—in a variety of media. While STEC began as a collection of twelve bronze works clustered downtown, the program today features more than fifty sculptures created by artists from across the United States.

The artwork for STEC is found through an annual call for art (the 2019 call ends Oc t o b e r 2 1 ) t h a t g a r n e r s ove r 7 0 0 submissions that make their way to a selection committee. Selected artists are notified in December, arrangements to transport their sculptures are made over the winter months, and installation of their work begins in early May. Artists selected to show receive a stipend, and viewers are encouraged to purchase featured works as well as others by the exhibiting artists. According to STEC executive director Julie Pangallo, the stipends and publicity are very important for working artists. “It’s simple,” she says. “They need to make money.”

With more and more local support from businesses and civic organizations, STEC is continuing to grow in both size and scope.

Pangallo says they are looking to provide more opportunities to hold talks with exhibiting artists, art education programs, and even an indoor exhibition to showcase work in media beyond the required weather-resistant outdoor materials. Maps of the exhibition that outline bike routes and even local breweries are also in the works.

As STEC heads into its tenth anniversary in 2020, Pangallo says the growth of the exhbition illustrates the positive community response to more public art. “Art is important in healing, developing creativity, and social inclusion. That to me is one of the most important things of our tour, that it’s available to everyone 24/7.”

The Wisconsin Humanities Council is expanding its partnership with Love Wisconsin, a digital storytelling project that helps people from all across the state share life stories with one another. Beginning this fall, the WHC will manage Love Wisconsin’s day-to-day operation for the next three years to ensure that it continues to bring great stories of diverse Wisconsinites to hundreds of thousands of readers online and via e-mail.

“Humanities is just a fancy word for how we think about the whole human story, and each of our parts in it,” says WHC executive director Dena Wortzel. “Sharing stories is what make us human.“ According to Wortzel, the partnership is a perfect fit, and Love Wisconsin’s new executive producer, Maria ParrottRyan, will join the WHC and collaborate with fellow staff members to find stories that deepen our understanding of one another, and of our shared humanity.

Alex Paniagua 8

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Want to stay connected to new and interesting things happening across wisconsin? Sign up for our emails at wisconsinacademy.org/connect.

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BLACK VIOLIN FRI, OCT 25 | 8 PM

STRAIGHT NO CHASER THE OPEN BAR TOUR MON, NOV 4 | 7:30 PM

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS WED, NOV 13 | 7:30 PM COME EARLY FOR FREE PRE-SHOW MUSIC UNDERWRITTEN BY CEDRIC ELLIS

PHOTO BY PIPER FERGUSON

ON SALE NOW! | OVERTURE.ORG RECOMMENDED WHEN USED FOR REPRODUCTIONS SMALLER THAN 2.25” WIDE.

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Wisconsin Table

FARMING FOR OIL

BY CAN D I CE WAG EN ER

W

hen most of us think of pumpkins, we envision the Halloween variety, plump and

full of white seeds that, when roasted, transform into a delicious snack. At Hay River Farm, just about an hour north of Eau Claire in rural Prairie Farm, Ken Seguine and Jay Gilbertson grow a variety of pumpkins containing “naked� seeds without the protective white coating known as the testa. While these little green seeds are also good for snacking, they are perfect for making pumpkin seed oil, a delicious and versatile cold-pressed oil that is one of many kinds of seed oil being produced throughout the state today.

Scott Kearney

Ken Seguine and Jay Gilbertson of Hay River Farm have been producing artisanal pumpkin seed oil since 2005.

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WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Wisconsin Table

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Wisconsin Table

First cultivated and harvested by Native Americans long ago, pumpkins were brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus and quickly adopted as an easy-to-grow-and-store staple food. Extremely popular in Austria, pumpkins were declared “medicinal” because of the perceived health benefits from the oil-rich seeds. The Austrians were the first to create the standards and processes for making pumpkin seed oil and are still the largest consumers and producers of it to this day.

Indeed it was an Austrian-American, Aveda founder Horst Rechelbacher, who introduced Seguine to pumpkin seed oil when Seguine was working for the plant-based cosmetics company in the 1990s. The two were attending an international natural product trade show when they stopped by an Austrian booth that had sample bottles of pumpkin seed oil. “I had never tasted anything like it,” recalls Seguine.

While Seguine and Gilbertson searched Northwestern Wisconsin for a farm that might be suitable for growing pumpkins, the two were also considering a few other value-added crops for cultivation, including peonies. It wasn’t until they attended a Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service conference in Eau Claire that Seguine and Gilbertson decided to go all in on pumpkin seed oil. What convinced them was a presentation by Mark Mueller of Botanic Innovations, encouraging farmers to take advantage of high-value seed oil crops such as broccoli, cranberries, and pumpkins. Mueller pointed to a spectrum of cold-pressed oils that he was making with the help of local farmers at his facility in Spooner, noting how the cold-press process helped retain the natural antioxidants and nutrients found in the seeds.

Shortly after establishing Hay River Farm in 2001, Seguine and Gilbertson narrowed their focus to a very specific type of nakedseed pumpkin known for producing exceptional oil. Their trial patch performed so well that they tried successively larger and larger patches until their first official crop was harvested in 2006. Seguine says it takes about a dozen pumpkins to produce enough seeds for one 8.45 ounce bottle of oil, which costs around $24.

Over the last thirteen years, Seguine and Gilbertson have learned a few things about making superlative pumpkin seed oil, and they have even become organic certified. During this time they also purchased some very specific equipment for harvest: a Turkishmade machine that speeds up their timeline for harvesting and cleaning the seeds, and modified corn-drying equipment that hastens the drying process. After processing, the seeds are taken to Botanic Innovations in Spooner for cold pressing. Bottling and labeling are done back at Hay River Farm.

The resulting product is as beautiful as it is nutritional, a dark red oil that is rich in antioxidants, omega-3s, and lutein (a carotenoid similar to vitamin A). The oil is best used for finishing: giving that extra lift to soups, as a substitute for butter on popcorn or bread, drizzled on ice cream, or as an ingredient in homemade salad dressings (pumpkin seed oil is not ideal for cooking).

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WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

For Seguine and Gilbertson, farming pumpkins has become a passion project. “Neither of us are from a farming background, so we started out with nausea and despair,” says Seguine. “But, very, very slowly it became almost fun. And now it’s lots of fun.”

The two hope to harvest 2,000 pounds of seed in 2020. They are also experimenting with some new Austrian pumpkin varieties developed to be more disease resistant and climate tolerant. While the partners now employ a few people on a seasonal basis, they hope to expand their business to up to eight full-time employees, and to hire other local farmers to help plant and harvest hundreds of acres of their orange-and-green-striped pumpkins.

M

ark Mueller isn’t a farmer, but he believes there is huge potential for growth in plant-based oils. Mueller founded Botanic Innovations in 1999 to turn nutrient-rich fruit and plant seeds into dietary supplements and botanical oils. Botanic Innovations developed and trademarked the NatureFRESH Cold-Press method, which uses tremendous mechanical pressure to extract seed oil that retains the nutrients found in the cotyledon structure of the seed—the place that stores the polyunsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids the embryonic plants draw on during early stages of germination.

This is the good stuff that Mueller says commercial-brand vegetable and canola oil makers often strip out by using a solvent called hexane to extract the seed oil cheaply and efficiently before bleaching it for uniformity of color. “Unfortunately, when they bleach the oils, they are losing some of the good antioxidants, the carotenoids, the sterols, which have the ability to combat cholesterol,” says Mueller. Ironically, the application of hexane and heat to refine the oil removes vitamin E, which has preservative qualities.

This means that commercial producers also have to add preservatives to provide their oils with a longer shelf life.

As an FDA-registered dietary supplement manufacturer, Botanic Innovations follows strict guidelines in processing its products.

Mueller and his production team ensure that seeds are free of any type of foreign material before they’re pressed and test every single batch of oil for pesticides and metals. In addition to processing seeds for small-batch seed oil producers, Botanic Innovations has its own line of botanical supplements and skin care products, including the recently released SO Plus, a ready-to-eat nutrition mix containing fruit seed powders and oils.

Mueller says there is a lot of opportunity in the state for growing good seed oil plants: watermelon, broccoli, and cranberries are just a few. Even though he recently relocated Botanic Innovations to a larger facility in Spooner, where the business was originally headquartered, he still sees room for more growth. “Consumers today are looking for more healthy products to put on their skin as well as to ingest,” says Mueller. “We think cold pressing has the right future.”

Wisconsin Table

UW Communications

J

Above: Mark Mueller of Botanic Innovations.

Below: Josh Engel, Mike Lind, and Noah Engel of Driftless Organics.

Jim Klousia/Edible Madison

There is a lot of opportunity in the state for growing good seed oil plants: watermelon, broccoli, and cranberries are just a few.

osh Engel and his brother Noah have been growing potatoes since they were kids. The two are co-founders of Driftless Organics, a hundred-acre farm nestled in the ridges and valleys of the Driftless Area of Southwest Wisconsin. Well known for its popular community-supported agriculture program and stalls at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, Driftless Organics also supplies several Madison-area restaurants with organic broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, squash, lettuce, carrots, zucchini, and other vegetables.

Always on the lookout for ways to diversify the farm’s revenue sources, Josh Engel decided to try growing seed oil sunflowers after reading an article that referenced both Hay River Farm and Botanic Innovations. Engel planted his first crop of sunflowers in 2007, but, due to heavy rains that year, the fields flooded and the crop was lost.

After another failed crop in 2008, the farm had a successful harvest in 2009.

Engel admits to some trial and error in figuring out the best way to grow sunflowers. Planting happens some time in June. The sunflowers take one or two months to come to full bloom, then are left in the field for up to two more months to begin the drying process. Because the hilly Driftless Area has a moisture-heavy climate, the sunflowers grow a lot taller than they would in, say, the flatlands of Central Wisconsin.

While high winds and hungry deer are two threats to a healthy harvest, Engel says that the biggest factor to consider in growing sunflowers is birds, which can consume an entire crop of seeds in just a few days. To discourage the birds, Engel thins his plantings so the sunflowers don’t grow too tall in their competition for sunlight. When sunflowers are shorter, more of their energy goes

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Wisconsin Table

into growing a larger flower. The bigger the flower, the more likely it is to bend down as the seeds mature and dry, thereby keeping most birds (that can’t fly upside down) and rain away from the seeds.

The seeds, a black oil sunflower variety that you would find in commercial birdseed, are harvested with a modified combine, then stored and further dried and conditioned with air, a process that takes anywhere from six to eighteen months. According to Engel, the drier they get, the better they press. Once the seeds are fully dried and conditioned, they are run through a cleaning machine and then taken to Botanic Innovations to be pressed, filtered, and bottled into half pints, pints, half gallons, and gallons.

Today the farm is producing between 1,000 and 1,500 gallons of sunflower oil from around 15 acres of sunflowers. The oil, which has characteristics very similar to a light olive oil, is low in saturated fats and high in oleic acid and vitamin E. Like pumpkin seed oil, sunflower oil can be used as a finishing oil. Because it has a smoking point of 225 degrees, it can be used in baking and sautéing but not frying. According to Engel, the base of most commercial vegetable oils you find in the store is actually refined sunflower oil. But Driftless Organics’ is unrefined, and this contributes to its rich, nutty flavor and helps retain beneficial compounds that might otherwise be lost in the refining process.

While Driftless Organics sunflower oil can be purchased at its farmers’ market stalls and Willy Street Coop in Madison, Engel says that it is still very much a niche product. He notes that visitors from Eastern Europe and Russia, where sunflower oil is common, pay more attention to his oil than the regular farmers’ market crowd.

However, he hopes the market for his Driftless-made product will grow as awareness about the health benefits of cold-pressed oils grows.

“Someday, we’d like to be known as the olive oil of the Midwest,” says Engel.

farm implements that run on traditional diesel fuel. By the second year, Derr was biodiesel certified, and he still makes biodiesel fuel to power his delivery wagon and farm equipment.

In the process of teaching him how to make biodiesel fuel, LoBreglio also showed Derr how to create cold-pressed canola oil for use in salad dressings, deep fryers, and the like. The flavor and texture of Farm Fresh canola oil mimics that of melted butter, and the product can be used in high-heat applications like roasting and grilling. Derr quickly realized that producing a food product from his crops, rather than fuel, generated more revenue. So he decided to invest more time in his Farm Fresh canola oil business.

Canola oil comes from rapeseed, cold-hardy plants that can be sowed right away in April and grow about waist high by midsummer.

A member of the Brassica family (which includes mustard, cabbage, and broccoli), rapeseed plants have bright yellow flowers that form pods in which the seeds grow. By August, the plants are ready to be swathed, or cut, even though the seed is only about half ripe. Derr then rakes the swathed plants into windrows, allowing them to dry a bit in the field before collecting the fragile seedpods with a special head on a combine that works like a conveyor belt. At 35 pounds per acre, the yield sounds low, says Derr, but the earning potential is big—easily more than corn—when you utilize all parts of the rapeseed harvest, creating oil plus livestock feed from the leftover meal.

A bushel basket of seed produces well over a gallon of oil. Production is simple: Derr uses small, German-made screw presses to extract the oil, then filters and bottles it. “People don’t understand that [most cooking oil] is a super processed food—it’s the Twinkies of oil.”

Derr, like many producers, is hopeful about the future of coldpressed seed oils in Wisconsin. “This is Wisconsin’s olive oil.

Whether it’s canola, sunflower, pumpkin seed, we’re cold pressing,” he says, adding, “Life’s too short for cheap beer and cheap cooking oil. I hope someday there’s that awakening.”

O

n the eastern side of the state in Marshall, just between Madison and Milwaukee, you’ll find Jamie Derr raising and producing his own small-batch version of one of the more mainstream cooking oils. Derr, who launched his Farm Fresh canola oil brand a little over a year ago, handles everything from seed to sale in his business.

A fourth generation farmer with a passion for addressing climate change on the local level, Derr composts everything he can on his farm and is working toward a zero waste system. “I’m trying to get farmers to realize there are some real practical ways to do something about climate change,” says Derr.

In fact, it was Derr’s interest in biodiesel fuel, sparked by conversations with Great Dane Pub brewmaster Rob LoBreglio, that led him to canola oil in the first place. In 2005, Derr received a grant to build a biodiesel production unit in a semi trailer on his farm. He used his slow times in winter to work on this new project, collaborating with LoBreglio to create biodiesel fuel by recycling used cooking oil from Great Dane and Eddie’s Alehouse in Sun Prairie.

A more environmentally friendly alternative to petroleum-based fuels, biodiesel fuel can be used to power all kinds of vehicles and

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WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Candice Wagener is a freelance writer and regular contributor to Brava, Isthmus, and Wisconsin People & Ideas. Wagener lives in Middleton with her husband and two rambunctious boys, who make her laugh every day.

WISCONSIN TRIENNIAL 2019

Artwork within state outline: Ben Grant, Untitled 115 (detail), 2016.

OCT 19, 2019–FEB 16, 2020 A n exhib ition of con tem pora ry a rt from a c ross the state MUSEUM ADMISSION FREE 227 STATE STREET MMOCA.ORG • 608.257.0158

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, OCT 18 • 6–9 PM • $10/FREE FOR MEMBERS FREE EVENTS: GALLERY TALKS Friday, Nov 1 • 6:30–7:30 PM Chele Isaac and Helen Hawley in conversation Thursday, Nov 7 • 1–1:45 PM Stephen Perkins on Latin American Art and the Decolonial Turn Friday, Dec 6 • 6:30–7:30 PM Tomiko Jones and Tom Jones in conversation

DROP-IN TOURS Saturday, Nov 9 • 1–1:30 PM Saturday, Dec 14 • 1–1:30 PM KIDS' ART ADVENTURES Sunday, Nov 10 • 1–2:30 PM Sunday, Dec 8 • 1–2:30 PM

MMoCAKIDS ARTPACK Stop by the museum's lobby welcome desk and ask for the MMoCAkids ArtPack, the museum's hands-on discovery kit for exploring art throughout the museum, which includes a special take-home activity developed for the Wisconsin Triennial.

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WONDER SPOT

BY KRISTA EASTMAN

The Dells of the Wisconsin River (1856): For Recreation Resort to the Dells!

Where depressed spirits can be alleviated, gloom and melancholy soon be dispelled and the mind become Greatly invigorated. Leroy Gates has purchased a pleasure Boat for the purpose of penetrating the numerous occult caves of the Dells.

E

vidence of human attempts at luring are here in all these excavated lots and parcels, these sums of

money once borrowed from the bank, this old resort cabin now sheltering earwigs and mice, the Eastern European college students who wake to interim American lives, to jobs as fudge confectioners or laser tag cashiers. This small Wisconsin settlement, the kind of town that might have centered itself around the Catholic Church, the family farm, the local tavern, instead hunkers down on the banks of the Wisconsin River, surveys the sandstone scenery banking upriver and down, and takes its communion by peering down at the promise that never stops eddying in froth and darkness here.

This selection from The Painted Forest, by Krista Eastman, is reprinted with permission of the author and West Virginia University Press.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

In this often-surprising book of essays, Krista Eastman explores the my t h s we m a ke a b o u t w h o we a re and where we’re from. The Painted Forest uncovers strange and littleknown “home places”—not only the picturesque hills and valleys of the author’s childhood in rural Wisconsin, but also tourist towns, the “underimagined and overly caricatured” Midwest, and even a far-flung station in Antarctica where the filmmaker Werner Herzog makes an unexpected appearance.

We’re pleased to share an excerpt from an essay in The Painted Forest named for a well-known but now gone landmark of the Wisconsin Dells: The Wonder Spot. Read this essay in its entirety at wisconsinacademy.org/WonderSpot.

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It was from this spot, or these “Dells,” that local river pilot Leroy Gates first made the bid in 1856 to beckon the tourists forth. An offer of “Great invigoration”—later coupled with stereoscopic photos of the place—would generate the eager eye and middle-class pocketbook of the new nineteenth-century tourist: the Chicagoan, the Milwaukeean, the men working the desks of Saint Paul. From the start, there were tourists and there were locals; currency, that is, to be removed from your pocket and placed into mine.

In 1960, John Steinbeck became one of the many tourists to pass by here in answer to Gates’s call. Born of a short stay occurring more than fifty years ago, his written observations are oddly complete.

He mused over a seashell collection, one he was surprised to find in a place “which hasn’t known a sea since pre-Cambrian times.”

He didn’t fail to note “the merchants of the cheap and mediocre and tawdry,” but he also approached the river with awe, speculating that its unusual rock formations might contain “the engraved record of a time when the world was much younger and much different.”

When all present-day jet skis cease to advertise their individualism, having sputtered back to port for the night, the river and its formations do still suggest and invite a keeping and recording of time.

These sandstone cliffs have the sedimentary look of history after history rolled out, a delicate sequencing, a careful brushing down.

Up close, there is a beauty and endurance peculiar to this place—to this soft orange bedrock smelling strangely of five hundred million years gone by, and to the dank and secret quality of the river’s caves, canyons, and gulches. But again, up close, a similar level of scrutiny reveals other sorts of records being kept here, ledgers on profits and ensnarement, lists engraved on the lips of good witnesses, locals who will not forget.

Still alive are the names of the many boats that have traveled this river in remunerated quests for scenery, “Indian” culture, and the fresh air of the Wisconsin wild: the steamboats Modacowanda, Dell Queen, and Winnebago; the all-steel twin screws Red Cloud and Marquette, Joliet and Yellow Thunder; and now—given the current appetite for jet boat thrill rides—the nameless blurs performing splashy “power stops” before towering cliffs of sandstone. Fast, this is the newest promise made here on a river whose man-made dams have entirely reined in its once pregnant rise to rapids. And yet the river, and its role as watery platform for escape, is no longer even the half of it, just as the jet boat’s offer to transport you quickly is now far from the only one of its kind. One hundred fifty years of fabricated attraction will give way to some of the most varied offers ever made here on Earth: a deer park with large signage that has advertised the opportunity to FEED AND PET THE DEER! since local time immemorial; restaurants, hotels, mini-golf courses, water parks, and bars themed to suggest you are (all at once) in the Caribbean, encountering Native American traditions, living like Paul Bunyan, on an African safari; and generously numerated offers like this one: “37 steep and slippery slides, 6 hair-raising roller coasters and 8 curve-hugging go-kart tracks, all sitting on 156 acres of adventure.” These days, it is not enough for a store to simply stand ready to be entered, offering only itself or its contents. Something

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must also be promised in big bold letters, lest the store go unnoticed by eyes just then taking in thirty other offers to exchange. Here, everyone understands perfectly when you emblazon YOU NEED IT?

WE GOT IT!

on a panel stretching the entire length of your store’s exterior wall.

The skies just behind this same panel fill with roller coasters that pile on one truss at a time, cranking out mechanical routes to the heavens.

And yet as eyewitness I might be guilty of something here. I’ve begun with a bit of natural beauty, given it the sheen of gold, and then finished with a physical cobbling on, a smorgasbord of plastic thrills grown large enough to obscure the hearts of people and noisy enough to silence entirely what could be the sound of a river if, in fact, the sound of the river was the descriptive detail that got chosen. When faced with so many neon grabs for the pot, it is tempting to paint only with the wide strokes of Americana, or to lay the groundwork for an easy allegation of greed and consumerism all around. It is easy, again almost natural, to classify tourists as materialist drones consuming the world in increments and pieces, just as it is also easy to define the local population by their open pockets.

Harder, though, is to put one’s finger on the Everyplace pieced together by these transactions. “Escape,” the bumper sticker used to read, “to Wisconsin.” To this town come people who wander in awkward states of not knowing and not known, who surrender much and surrender often in their search for escape. Promises flicker and twist at a dizzying pace. Eddying, after all, is when water doubles back, turning out a small whirl.

Up close, there is a beauty and endurance peculiar to this place—to this soft orange bedrock smelling strangely of five hundred million years gone by, and to the dank and secret quality of the river’s caves, canyons, and gulches.

The Wonder Spot (1952–2006): No one stands erectly, sees correctly, or walks a straight line as things that appear to be quite normal are just the opposite. You’ll be mystified at what you experience in this small corner of the world where the laws of nature have gone awry. Would you believe that your sense of balance and perspective have deserted you? Water flows uphill, pendulums hang crookedly, and chairs balance on only two legs. The Wonder Spot defies the law of gravity as natural forces tilt you up to unexplainable angles. Discovered in 1948, the Wonder Spot has baffled its visitors for over 40 years. You have to see it to believe it!

The Captain bounces on wiry muscle and loose joints, shoots the river his grin.

“This. Place. Is. Funny.” He stands in ritual at the helm of his small tour boat, his hand fidgeting on the innermost circle of its wooden wheel. It appears he’s seen something on shore and this something has set him to smiling. Leaning away from the controls, he pours himself another Styrofoam cup full of coffee and adjusts the black locks he keeps pushed up into a cap. “What?” I ask, “What is it?”

“This place is fun-ny!” the Captain says again, this time in a dark tavern downtown where a bachelorette party, recently alighted from its rental bus, plays “Suck for a Buck,” offering men the opportu-

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nity to suck Lifesavers off the T-shirted breasts of the intoxicated bride-to-be.

This Captain could tally up more than five decades of living here, more than enough time to observe purchased discovery playing out in vacation-long increments, or to see each Memorial Day bring in a new crew of workers, any of whom might eventually disappear into the relief of Labor Day, their pockets heavy with cash and anonymous leave-taking. A middle-aged man who has supped again and

Is it after two years of this work or two days that all tourists start to seem the same? Come morning, passengers board, come evening, they disembark. again from the fountain of youth, the Captain’s bearing nonetheless shows a stalwart accumulation of years. His “Welcome aboard” and “Sit back and relax” and “Thank you, come visit us again” are easy and unforced. And yet, in private, he speaks in language measured by years of analysis and theory. His is the speculative language of the researcher who has undertaken a lifelong study, who, upriver and down, navigates the same five miles of river, over and over again asking why.

When visiting the Captain at work, I stand at his boat’s entrance, hands clasped behind my back, feet cast slightly apart, smiling and greeting each of his customers as they board. I also spring off the boat as it’s docking, grabbing its lines and twisting them into half hitches on the cleat, smiling once again. “Have a good night,” I can’t help but say to his passengers, an old, practiced sincerity automating all over again. Compared to the Captain, I have put in only a few years of study here. Ushered into the adult world at least partially by the experience of working in this town, emerging from it with what may be the requisite amount of skepticism, I worked summers here from ages fourteen to twenty-two, spending the last four of those years as a tour guide on the river, at the heart of the oldest industry, either holding a microphone to my flapping mouth, or floating pleasantly about the small all-steel vessel as I asked my brood of eighty if they had any questions “How deep’s the river?”

Generally speaking most of the river we’re traveling on today is about thirty- to forty-feet deep, but we do travel over a section that is about eighty-feet deep. I’ll point that out to you as we come to it.

“Why’s the water so brown?”

Because of a natural substance called tannin or tannic acid, which is found in the tamarack and hemlock trees that grow north of here,

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and which naturally makes its way into the water. Actually, a lot of ponds and lakes in Northern Wisconsin are also similarly dark in color.

“Miss, what did you say you’re majoring in?”

English and French.

“What are you going to do with that? Teach?”

Is it after two years of this work or two days that all tourists start to seem the same? Come morning, passengers board, come evening, they disembark. The sun will then rise on the group of them, in line with tickets, waiting again the next day. After a while, there is no question you’ve never been asked, few kids you haven’t seen smacked. There are hardly any religions to which you haven’t been converted, no accent you can’t place. Even tourists who grow self conscious and clever, who watch you in just such a way, who want you to know they realize full well that this, their change of scenery, is your everyday grind, who are capable of remarks that mock this place, this tour, this tourism, even these people are merely an average day to you. Such repetition should make it difficult to keep watching. And yet, after purveying your daily myth, after sitting down in final silence, smile turned off, the boat heading back to port, it’s good to be wary, to wonder at these passengers who doze and cuddle, who relax all of a sudden, who have hastily rummaged through your offer of escape until at last—experiencing something, experiencing nothing—a silence falls and not a single desire can be heard over the bellow of the boat’s Chevy engines.

In sociologist Dean MacCannell’s classic The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, he writes, “Just as the great lighted signs at Las Vegas can be converted into sights, it is possible to transform the tourists themselves into attractions.” The tourists, yes, but everything else too, every single wayside promise. When the Captain says to me yet again, “This place is funny,” I know the moment well, but I know it by the impulse he has helped work into my bones, the way the refrain keeps me on course. The sentence may fall in mystery from the Captain’s lips, but what he means is that there’s never a bad time to lay claim to your wonder, to take a long look around, to wryly catalog how the laws of nature can astound.

Krista Eastman is the author of The Painted Forest, which Poets & Writers named one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2019. Her writing has earned recognition from Best American Essays and has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review (KROnline), New Letters, and elsewhere.

She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Training the next generation of investigative reporters and truth-tellers.

Learn more about our mission at wisconsinwatch.org/training

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Tiny Changes, Big Impact

BY ADAM H I NTERTH U ER

O

n the shores of Lake Michigan, one the largest sources of fresh water

in the world, Rebecca Klaper is busy pouring the tiniest materials humans have ever made into tanks containing some of the smallest members of the Great Lakes food web.

WDNR

Daphnia, or water fleas, such as these are found in lakes and ponds across the world. They are primarily grazers of algae, bacteria, protozoa, as well as the main forage of fish. Because of their pivotal position in food webs, daphnia are widely utilized as an indicator species to assess the response of ecosystems to environmental change.

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Rebecca Klaper

We’re trying to create a technology that is beneficial but environmentally safe at the same time.

Klaper is a professor in the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences and a researcher at the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, a National Science Foundationfunded collaboration of scientists across the country. And nanomaterials—which she’s pouring into the tanks of tiny zooplankton called daphnia—are almost indescribably small.

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. That’s the length your fingernail grows in one second, or 100,000 times smaller than the edge of a piece of paper, or any number of other impossiblesounding comparisons. To qualify as a nanoparticle, a material has to measure between one and 100 nanometers. Forget invisible to the naked eye—a nanoparticle is visible only when using an electron microscope.

But don’t let their size fool you—nanomaterials are a big deal.

They’re currently used all over the world to help with everything from building better batteries to improving cancer treatments to fighting foot odor. This means these materials are also constantly shed into our environment, including our freshwater systems, such as when nanoparticle-enhanced sunscreen washes off a swimmer in Lake Michigan.

The problem is, no one’s quite sure what happens when these more-micro-than-microscopic bits of human industry reach the water. And that gets at the heart of Klaper’s research. She wants to understand the fundamental science of how nanomaterials interact with freshwater organisms. If these interactions prove harmful, she wants to understand why and how that happens so that safer, better nanomaterials can be crafted to replace the problematic ones.

“Part of my research is basically preventing something from happening to the Great Lakes,” says Klaper, who’s also director of UWM’s Great Lakes Genomics Center. “We’re trying to create a technology that is beneficial but environmentally safe at the same time.”

MAKING THINGS SAFER Klaper didn’t set out to study nanotechnology. Her PhD in ecology is from the University of Georgia, where she worked to understand how natural chemicals in plants interact with insect populations.

But in 2001, she moved to Washington, DC, to serve two years as an environmental science and technology policy fellow at the Environmental Protection Agency.

During the fellowship, as Klaper explored how chemicals can alter gene expression and an organism’s DNA, she met researchers working on nanomaterials. That’s when she began to realize the power of working with manmade materials. Unlike naturally occurring chemicals, manmade materials could be designed,

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SUNSCREEN

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engineered, and regulated, potentially leading to better results for both the environment and human health.

Focusing on nanomaterials kept her asking “the same kinds of questions,” Klaper says, “just with different outcomes.” It also put her at the forefront of scientists doing ecological studies of nanomaterials in the environment. After she arrived at UWM’s School of Freshwater Sciences in 2003, the impact of nanomaterials on aquatic ecosystems became a focal point for her research.

Today, Klaper is essentially exploring the idea of building safer chemicals. If scientists can better understand the structure, chemistry, and impact of nanomaterials, they can continue finding uses for them in industry, medicine, and agriculture. But beyond that, scientists can also make sure that, when nanomaterials inevitably end up outside of their intended uses, they do the least amount of harm.

In explaining this intention, Klaper alludes to a cautionary tale about a once-popular material.

In the second half of the 19th century, the industrialized world fell in love with a set of naturally occurring silicate minerals known for their thin, fibrous crystals. Mining of the minerals took off in the United States, Canada, Italy, and South Africa, as the substance’s heat-resistant powers led to widespread use as coatings and insulation, especially in the construction industry.

There was only one problem—asbestos ended up showing a propensity to cause cancer and kill people.

It turns out that what we couldn’t see could hurt us. The tiny, sharp crystals were prone to becoming airborne during mining and manufacturing. By the early 1900s, studies began linking exposure to asbestos to scarring of the lungs and, in the worst cases, death. As the health risks of asbestos became known, countries regulated and, in many cases, banned its use.

The desire to avoid a repeat of all that, Klaper says, drives her work with the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology.

“One of the exciting things about our initiative,” she says, “is that the federal government decided to make investments in research on the environmental health and safety of nanomaterials along with investing in the growth of the technology.” It’s a proactive approach to developing new technologies that is far different from the business-as-usual story of many past technologies.

So Klaper hopes to help write a new narrative—one about working proactively to identify the dangers of a new technology, and then using that knowledge to build less harmful materials.

For her, that means designing experiments that closely approximate what real-life interactions between nanomaterials and aquatic organisms are likely to be.

ATHLETIC SOCKS

CHEESE

A GROWING CONCERN Since scientists first unlocked the vast potential of very tiny things in the early 1980s, the field of nanotechnology has grown tremendously. Over the last decade or so, nanomaterials have popped up in products across the globe.

Some applications don’t exactly address urgent medical or industrial needs. For example, sometimes nanoparticles of titanium dioxide are added to the powdered sugar that is sprinkled on doughnuts to give them a dense, snow-white coating. Likewise, many brands of athletic socks contain synthetic yarn embedded with nanosilver to discourage the growth of bacteria that cause foot odor.

But other nanomaterials have the potential to powerfully affect human health. Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanomaterials increase the effectiveness of sunscreens. And “nanogold,” essentially gold nanoparticles, shows promise as a cancer-targeting tool. These nanoparticles can be injected into the bloodstream, where they are carried to cancerous cells and begin accumulating inside tumors. When the nanogold is then hit with light waves from the edge of the infrared spectrum, it heats up, thereby killing the cancerous cells.

On the green technology front, nanomaterials derived from complex metal oxides, like cobalt or manganese, are providing important advances in next-generation batteries and energy storage devices. Such applications hold the promise of making renewable energy and electric cars more efficient and could push these technologies and products into more widespread use.

But these metal oxides are highly reactive and known to be toxic in their larger forms, which gives some people pause. The truth is that scientists simply don’t know what a lot of the nanomaterials we’re currently manufacturing are going to do once they are out in the world. While nanosilver-enhanced socks might be useful in the fight against foot odor, substantial amounts of these nanoparticles wash out during laundering and pass through the wastewater treatment process, raising concerns about how this antibacterial material will affect freshwater organisms.

This is why, back in Klaper’s lab, she introduces a minuscule amount of nanomaterial into the aquariums of daphnia zooplankton. Daphnia are tiny, free-floating crustaceans that serve as a foundation for many aquatic food webs. Big fish eat little fish. Little fish eat daphnia. Daphnia eat algae and, it turns out, nanomaterials.

In traditional studies of safe levels for chemical exposure, an organism in a lab is given a dose of a potentially toxic substance,

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and the amount is increased until obvious impacts occur, such as deformity or death. But, Klaper says, those “dose ’em and kill ’em” experiments provide information on only the most toxic compounds. When it comes to nanoparticles, Klaper says she’s more interested in “the realistic environmental scenario [such as], what kinds of changes happen in the organism as a result of very low exposure over a long period of time?”

As scientists in industry work to find new, exciting uses for nanoparticles, Klaper and her colleagues partner with them to ensure the particles are also engineered with the environment in mind.

For Klaper’s lab, this “long period of time” is often only a month or so—but it is a lifetime for daphnia. “Our goal is to look from development all the way through reproduction, and sometimes we even follow their offspring to reproduction, to see if there are any multigenerational impacts,” Klaper says.

amount of eggs they are able to produce, and even their ability to survive and emerge from the water.”

But, Klaper is quick to note, harm to an organism isn’t the only, nor perhaps even the most common, story. Different organisms respond in different ways to different nanomaterials, which leaves Klaper’s lab with the job of understanding why.

Although currently surrounded by more questions than answers, Klaper says, “the good news is that there are quite a few nanoparticles where we don’t find a lot of toxicity. Not all nanoparticles are created equal.” Many nanomaterials are derived from naturally occurring materials, and they appear to be harmless to living organisms.

As scientists in industry work to find new, exciting uses for nanoparticles, Klaper and her colleagues partner with them to ensure the particles are also engineered with the environment in mind. If what we don’t know could hurt us, what Klaper and her colleagues have learned can be used to make us safer.

For example, scientists with the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology are already changing the chemical structure and physical properties of some metal oxide nanoparticles used in batteries, and they’re also tweaking the delivery method of gold nanoparticles to make them less toxic if they make their way into the environment.

These are small but promising steps, Klaper says, toward the goal of responsibly guiding the development of nanotechnology.

“We want to create materials so that, if they are released, they just don’t have an impact,” she says. “They just sit out there—safe by design.”

This article first appeared in UWM Research, published by the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, 2019.

TIME WILL TELL Klaper has found that most of the aquatic organisms she studies end up with nanomaterials in their bodies, either by ingesting them or absorbing them through gill tissue. Often, there are no immediate impacts from nanoparticle exposure, but tiny changes to an animal’s inner workings can lead to big repercussions over time.

For example, in previous studies, Klaper has documented gene expression changes related to stress in daphnia exposed to titanium dioxide. In other cases, nanomaterials altered daphnia movement and behavior, which, in the wild, would make them more susceptible to predation and reproductive decline.

Klaper is also looking to see how these nanoparticles affect the life cycle of chironomids. Small, aquatic invertebrates that live in the sediment of lakes and rivers during their larval stage, chironomids swim to the surface as adults to emerge as swarms of midges. The flying insects serve a purpose beyond annoying beachgoers, however. Midges are important to the food webs of fish in the water and of birds on near the shore.

“Nanomaterials can impact the emergence of those midges,” Klaper says. “They can cause them to be smaller or change the

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Adam Hinterthuer is the director of programs for the Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources, and he also oversees communications and outreach for the Center for Limnology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Originally from Arkansas, Adam moved to Madison in 2005 to pursue a Master’s degree in journalism from UW– Madison and never found a good reason to leave.

He lives with his family near Lake Monona.

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A working conference designed to “fast forward” solutions for carbon reduction and climate resilience in Wisconsin FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2019 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM Monona Terrace Community & Convention Center, Madison, WI The Wisconsin Academy and partners are bringing together a projected 300 leaders from a variety of sectors to develop key recommendations for how Wisconsin can become a clean energy leader with a practical plan to deal with climate change.

Info & registration at wisconsinacademy.org/fastforward Thanks to Wisconsin Academy donors, members, and the following sponsors and partners for their support:

Sally Mead Hands Foundation

Dane County Office of Energy and Climate Change

Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission • Nelson Institute at UW–Madison • RENEW Wisconsin • Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts

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@ Watrous Gallery

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@ Watrous Gallery

BARNYARD ICONOGRAPHY THE ART OF S.V. MEDARIS & CRAIG BLIETZ

BY ELISSA KO PPEL

W

hen people think of Wisconsin, they think of farms. While farms both large and small dot

our pastoral lanscapes, images of cows, barns, and cornfields are almost as ubiquitous. License plates, grocery store signs, and all types of non-farmed products incorporate agricultural imagery—both as an homage to the state’s largest industry as well as a symbol of Wisconsin authenticity. The farmland heritage of Wisconsin is so woven into our iconography that it is easy to forget there are living and evolving people, plants, and animals behind these images.

S.V. Medaris, Meet Howdy!, 2017. Hand-colored woodcut, 64 x 44 inches.

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@ Watrous Gallery

Wisconsin artists Sue “S.V.” Medaris and Craig Blietz draw inspiration from our state’s deep agricultural heritage and practice.

Their artwork has gained both critical and popular praise for the ways in which they use animal models to honor and instill new life into agricultural narratives. In her paintings and prints, Medaris deploys unexpected, vibrant color and immaculate detail to capture the charm and character of her family’s chickens, ducks, and pigs. Blietz employs deep color and intense contrast of light to create realistic oil paintings of cattle that abandon typical barnyard context

S

Beth McConnell

.V. Medaris is as much a farmer as she is an artist. When she and her husband, James, were in the market for a new home in southeastern Wisconsin, she had a short list of criteria that needed to be fulfilled.

She told him to find a bedroom for her son Luis, a studio (with a drain) where she could make artwork, and a plot of land for raising chickens.

When James called and told her about this place just outside of Mount Horeb that had “all those things and … landscapes for the rest of [her] life,” Medaris wasn’t prepared for the beauty she would find: soft, contourfarmed hills that look like a quilt from above. In 1998, the family settled in to a home located on 98 acres of prairie grass protected by a conservation reserve program. It was a place that would change Medaris’ relationship with both the land as well as her artistic process.

Throughout those first years in Wisconsin, Medaris filled her Driftless Area pastures with an ever-growing group of dogs, cats, peafowl, and chickens. She and her family assembled a fenced-off area for raising pigs a couple of years later, and she quickly learned the basics of butchering from a neighboring farmer.

During this period, Medaris was learning new artistic techniques as well, pursuing a graphic design arts degree and working as a designer and illustrator for The Why Files. An initiative of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, The Why Files was an awardwinning print and (later) online magazine that explained the science behind the news through fun and visually engaging articles.

“I was given free range to do whatever I could to pull the readers in,” says Medaris, reflecting upon the ways she drew upon her graphic design ability to make complex scientific ideas understandable.

In the early 2000s, Medaris began a ten-year run of successful solo exhibitions that merged her interests in domestic animal husbandry with her expanded artistic capacities. Although she had worked as a professional artist in the past, Medaris says she was struck with “this need to have a solo show, make professional artwork, and start showing again.” Her opportunity came when Madison Central Public Library hosted A One Chick Show, Medaris’ installation of large-format cock and hen paintings, in October

Medaris rolls ink on a large woodcut in her studio.

S.V. Medaris, A Few Months Past Market Weight, 2018.

Hand-colored and reduction woodcut, 53 x 35 inches.

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Aaron Carlson

@ Watrous Gallery

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2004. “I grew from that first show. It was my welcome back into the fine art world as a professional artist.”

She spent the following year taking oil and pastel courses from Madison Area Technical College, building up her body of work, and creating a 20-by-13-foot mural of a chicken titled The Return of Big Tiny, which was later purchased for the permanent collection of Verona-based software company Epic. “That year I got better with pastels because I wanted to have a show that knocked people’s socks off in terms of the chickens, all the different breeds, and what life is like for them.”

When the economy crashed in 2008, Medaris began supplementing her income with her artwork. She founded Market Weight Press and embraced linocuts and printmaking as a way to create works that were smaller than her oil-painted canvases and more accessible to the casual art buyer. During the recession, Medaris was accepted as a graduate student in UW– Madison’s Department of Art, where she focused on printmaking and book arts, further honing her craft. More exhibitions followed, two at the Artisan Gallery (The Tunnel of Mortality and In Dog Years) and a solo show at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (Strange Breeds: Evolution and Selective Breeding).

Always gathering techniques and subjects, old and new, Medaris is building an innovative practice and business. With the meticulous planning of a graphic designer, she is able to maximize the dramatic narrative of her prints, capturing an audience’s attention around typically underappreciated livestock.

Throughout her career, Medaris has defined herself by the miraculous detail of her works and the witty, electric personality each piece conveys, time and again.

Craig Blietz in his Sister Bay studio.

Craig Blietz, Potato Harvest, 2019. Oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches.

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I

n the mid-1980s, Craig Blietz was working as a portrait painter in Chicago and dreaming of an idealized rural lifestyle. “I wanted to live in a barn, and have my studio in there,” he says. Blietz often drove out to visit cattle at Wagner Farm in Glenview, a Chicago suburb, spending hours observing the energy and behavior of the animals. “They’re enormous [yet] very gentle, very kind.”

In autumn of 1995, ten years after his first but forgotten dreams of rural life, Blietz was introduced to the painter James Ingwersen who lived in Sister Bay. Ingwersen encouraged Blietz to visit Door County. He soon did. “I was unbelievably impressed with the culture, the performing arts as well as the visual arts. The community was friendly,” recalls Blietz. “I saw [Ingwersen] was living as I had imagined I had wanted to.” Four years later, Blietz came to stay.

Like Medaris, the move to rural Wisconsin irrevocably changed Blietz’s relationship with the land and his artistic practice. Blietz is today painting full-time and living in Sister Bay. Where in the past

@ Watrous Gallery

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@ Watrous Gallery

Craig Blietz, Zea Mays, 2018. Oil on panel, 60 x 60 inches.

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@ Watrous Gallery

Craig Blietz, Triticum, 2018. Oil on panel, 60 x 60 inches. Courtesy of J. B. and M. K. Pritzker, The Governor’s Mansion, Springfield, Illinois.

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@ Watrous Gallery

S.V. Medaris, Chicken Pot Pie, 2015. Hand-colored woodcut, 65 x 41 inches.

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@ Watrous Gallery

his work largely focused on still-life portraiture and landscapes, he has entirely transitioned to a mode and style that position him as a master of his craft. Blietz shares, “If you had to categorize them now, they are principally landscape paintings in that they represent Place—and I say place with a capital “P.” Despite drawing context from the vintage agricultural implements of Old World Wisconsin and the rural landscape of Northeastern Wisconsin, Blietz’s recent paintings present a placenlessness that is paradoxically familiar. In Of Twilight, a Holstein cow seems to confront the viewer, illuminated by an unknown light source while a full moon hangs distant in the maroon sky. Saffron–August presents a side portrait of a Holstein in a late summer field that could be almost anywhere. These realistic-looking cattle in familiar surroundings seem to be symbolic fodder for our introspection.

To find models, Blietz relies on good friends and neighbors. One farm on Highway 57 offers him open access to their animals. With patient dedication, Blietz spent years perfecting and abstracting the Holstein form, conjuring substantive bodies of work from his explorations. While his earlier Herd series layers cows upon each other in small assortments before muted, horizonless backgrounds, the new Yard series features eight-by-nine-foot, high-contrast depictions of cattle.

In his most-recent work, Blietz pushes the boundaries of iconography and pastorality. Pollen shows a pale cow next to its faded shadow, bright white with a wilting flower on the far right. Some paintings contain sheep and goats beside classical or Renaissance references. In Triticum, a group of cows crowd together in front of a backdrop of circular symbols while stems of golden wheat sway in the foreground. Emotionally evocative, even disconcerting at times, Blietz’s work revels in its unexpected, surrealist presentation of agrarian landscapes of Northeastern Wisconsin.

Despite the color and depth these two artists instill in their work, Blietz and Medaris recognize their subjects have vivid, interior lives of their own. “I don’t ascribe anything to them,” says Medaris.

“These animals that I call companions, models, pets, family members, they have extremely expressive faces. If you catch them at a certain moment, you see it.”

SEE THE EXHIBITION On view at the James Watrous Gallery in Overture Center for the Arts 201 State Street • Madison

CRAIG BLIETZ AGRARIA

S.V. MEDARIS

MAKING MARKS GREAT AND SMALL NOVEMBER 15, 2019 – JANUARY 26, 2020 Please join us for:

Artists’ Reception Friday, November 22 5:30–7:30 pm Free and open to the public

Art Bites Brunch Sunday, December 8 10:30 am–12:00pm Advance registration required: $20 Academy Members/$25 general public

Thanks to Wisconsin Academy donors, members, and the following sponsors for their support:

Elissa Koppel a freelance writer and a graduate student in public affairs at Brown University.

She received her Bachelor’s degree in sociology and environmental studies from UW–Madison, and founded and organized the Wisconsin Ideas Conference, a national youth policy program for students to explore the future of public policy.

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Illustration by Laura Ovberg

Fiction

EXILE

BY STEVE FOX

P

ractice is over. You’ve planted your butt firmly upon the wooden bench of the warming hut, where your

stiff fingers unlace hockey skates covered in fresh ice shavings. Around you, other boys revel in the glory and agony of tonight’s scrimmage, still breathing hard. Your side lost, and it’s very possible it was your fault. But then again, it’s always your fault.

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Fiction

What did you do this time? With less than a minute to play, and the score knotted at two, you carried the puck over the other side’s blue line into the attacking zone, skillfully drawing both defenders to you inside the left face-off circle. It was a perfect move. The thuggish defenders closed upon you eagerly, leaving Eddie Farrar wide open in the slot mere yards in front of the opposing side’s net, ready to score the game-winning goal. He rapped the ice with his stick. Your eyes met. And, in a forever instant of that eternal moment, you decided against it. Called the whole thing off. The pass to Eddie Farrar that everyone saw coming. His shot tearing into the mesh at the back of the net.

You’d already done the hard part by sucking both defenders away from the center iceman, Eddie. All you had to do was pass the puck to him. And the enormous and skilled Eddie Farrar, who sports a blinding wrist shot and who never misses, would have scored, and your side would have emerged the victors. Eddie was wide open and yet you, normally the team player, chose not to pass the puck to him. End of story.

Almost. You know better. You still have another skate to pull off and a duffel to pack and you have no idea if your dad’s going to show up on time to pick you up on this frigid night. Plus you will very soon have substantial flak to deflect from Eddie and his a-hole sidekicks before your punctualphobic father finally arrives.

So, yeah. Eddie would have scored. He was wide open. And you can’t believe Diekert hasn’t reamed you for it yet.

Actually, you can. That’s because Coach Diekert, right on schedule, is still outside pulling on his post-practice smoke and brandy-filled flask with one of the other coaches. They don’t think you guys know.

TO M M I LLER Your hands and feet ache from the cold. You press your fingertips together and ball your hands into tight fists and open them slowly above an old electric Second-person narration is a difficult heater, coated in a leprosy of rust, rattling away in the corner. You’re surprised trick to pull off. But, in “Exile,” the author it still works. Local lore has it that generations of boys have survived dares to piss on the thing in order to prove or (hopefully) disprove the theory that you commits to this point of view from the can electrocute yourself, brutally, in the dick by way of a stream of urine. So opening paragraph and brings the story’s far as you can tell, though, the stories of the random sap jolted backwards onto ten-and-a-half-year-old protagonist, his ass, rendered unconscious and partially naked may be just that—stories.

Arthur, to vivid life. His selective hearing Yet there’s no denying what this source of heat smells like.

Your name is Arthur Penske and you are ten-and-a-half years old and you and unhearing of profanity, the physical like words— a lot. Like the shape, sound, meaning, and power of words. How and social brutality of ice hockey, and his they feel when you roll them around in your mouth, curl them with your burgeoning awareness of the fine social tongue, when they part your teeth and lips. Already your dictionary at home distinctions of small-town life all help to is all marked up— endless pages of words starred and underlined and highlighted. When you look up a word definition you spend several minutes more further draw him as a complex character. reading about words above and below the one you were looking up in the first And what could be more quintessentially place. It’s only a matter of time until you stumble upon, with tremendous Wisconsin than the cuffs of his sweatsatisfaction, serendipity. soaked clothes slowly frosting over on a This word-fetish trait of yours makes the other boys on your team want to check you into the boards even harder. You don’t know why. But you’ve sub-zero night while he scans the road, mastered the Reverse Harpoon. It’s a deft method of your own invention for looking for his dad’s headlights? defending yourself against the guys you’re not fast enough to skate away from.

At the very last possible second, you slide your top hand down your hockey stick ever so slightly when they try to board you from behind. When they hit you— and, there is no “if ” in this scenario … they will hit you, hard—from behind, they jam the butt of your stick, the blade of which you have pressed firmly into the base of the boards, deep into the guts of their solar plexus. And, once harpooned, always shy.

Well, shy at least until the pain wears off and their feeble little goldfish brains forget, and they come at you again five or so minutes later.

But they’re a-holes anyway, and you’ve learned this much about them: they are forever doomed to be just that. Except for Eddie Farrar, unfortunately. His parents are really nice, so your mom and dad logically conclude there may one day be hope for him, too. But not you.

J U D G E’S N OTES

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Fiction

You have absolutely no trouble envisioning Eddie’s now super-nice father as a once-eleven-year-old dickhead. This is because you’re still dealing with a fresh, steaming serving of present-day Eddie, who remains an a-hole and continues to behave exactly like one during this current version of your present. And you’d like to treat him like the giant a-hole he is, too. But he’s too big. So you need to resort to petty behavior in order to get back at him.

Antics like not passing him the puck when he’s standing wide open in front of the net on a minus-twelve-degree night with the outcome of the game dangling in the balance.

You hear a tittering at the mention of an object that measures eleven and a half inches in length. You haven’t started to mature yet, you’re reminded yet again, though some of these boys. … But then you hear they’re talking about Mr. Davidson—Phil’s dad—who ran off to the clinic last Fourth of July with what he thought had been an embedded deer tick below his earlobe that turned out instead to be a massive ingrown hair. The doctor pulled the coiled mass slowly with a pair of tweezers, revealing inch by inch an ever-lengthening black thread of horror and pus.

But back to Eddie Farrar, known a-hole. Until that day his grand enlightenment arrives, he is, and will continue to reign, in all his a-holiness, Leader Supreme of Planet of the A-holes.

“Hey, Pensk,” a friendly voice says. A thrill surges through you as you realize the voice comes from one of the cooler kids on the team. The next-best player on the team, in fact, who now calls out your name how you’d like the guys to call you: Pensk.

“S’up, Hutch?” you ask, looking up from your skate, acting as though Brent Hutchinson is always asking you stuff, wondering what you think of this or that, or always just B.S.ing with you about anything, just because. You smile nonchalantly, and give a stock shrug, wiping down the blade of a skate with a cloth. Normal stuff for you and Hutch, this.

“Dickish move out there,” he sneers, and nods in Eddie’s direction. “Shoulda passed the g-”, he says, and your ears go blind as he takes the Lord’s name in vain so as to condemn to eternal flames a small, black, rubberized object: A hockey puck.

“And be a f-”—Chris Willems, one of Eddie’s lackeys blurts, inserting the f-word descriptor, adding the ‘-ing’ adjectival ending— “team player!” He folds his arms and sneers, as if he’d been waiting all night to say: “Ain’t no ‘I’ in team, Pinky!” He grins at Eddie and Hutch obediently.

Your ears are still ringing yet you can hear them titter. But only for another moment as they abruptly fall silent, snapping their heads around, wary and ever vigilant for Coach Diekert. They never speak like this, never repeat the language Diekert berates you guys with, when Diekert himself is around. But he’s likely still outside pulling on his flask or second smoke or both. Your coach, who finds himself ever so clever, pumping his throat muscles on the other end of a shiny flask he slips into a breast pocket while you guys buzz around that rink, a jar full of hollering yellow jackets.

You don’t know what to say. What can you say? You should have passed the puck. Everyone in the entire county knows this. And if they don’t, well, it’ll be all over school tomorrow: Instead of trying to stick-handle your way through two defenders and get the puck stolen for a critical turnover that led to a two-on-one breakaway and the decisive goal for the other team with mere seconds remaining to play—it doesn’t matter if your goalie is a total sieve and should have stopped that lame back-handed deke in the first place—you should have passed the puck to Eddie when you so artfully drew both defenders to you, leaving Eddie with his powerful wrist shot completely alone in front of the net.

But Eddie is an a-hole. A big enough a-hole to compel you to risk the outcome of the game.

Anything, really, to deny Eddie yet more certain glory you’d never, ever, hear the end of. You shove your other skate and helmet into your not-gay!-brother’s duffel and stand up to leave.

You don’t need a reason. He’s an a-hole. That’s your story and you’re sticking to it.

Outside, the boys await parents, stamping feet. Moms and dads roll into the parking lot near the rink, rounding the high school building in their large new cars, always shiny no matter the season—early winter, mid-winter, late-winter, or next winter—marching forward, dutifully in procession, a tight stream of carpenter ants on parade, to gather their children, one gleaming new vehicle at a time.

Hardening molasses minutes pass. Dad doesn’t come. It’s just you and Devon now. Devon is mostly your physical and social equal, and for a moment you allow your guard to slip. But

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tonight even Devon can’t resist the contagion of Eddie’s a-holiness. He starts in on you, Pinky. Pinky the wall crawler, the boy who wishes himself into invisibility each time he steps into the school building. The one who packs slices of dread into his cold lunch every morning. The kid who brings upon himself an isolation of despair.

You’re good at ignoring your near-equal peers, though, and your eyes slide away from him and lock onto the spot where your dad’s car should be rounding the corner of the building.

And just as you start to drift away from Devon, his mom suddenly barrels around the corner in her black Volvo sedan, the exaggerated speed an apology for her tardiness. Always flustered, Devon’s very pretty mother normally says something, breathless, about being so terribly, terribly busy. There’s a roar and a bounce of headlights off Devon’s eyes. He flashes you a threatening glance, shakes his head, and climbs into the back seat of his mom’s car, fully domesticated and reduced to a sweet little boy, again. Just another tough guy whose turn it probably is to do the dishes.

Your dad is still nowhere in sight. You’re relieved. Freezing, but relieved. Relieved because you don’t want your teammates, mostly all front-seat riders by now, to see you hoist yourself into a child safety seat in the back of Dad’s van. Technically, you are old enough to ride up front, but physically you are still not big enough. Plus, Dad’s van is all rickety and rusted and seems to move down the road all horked. You don’t want anyone to see that, either, thinking less of you than they already do. Hockey is an expensive sport, and your dad isn’t exactly rich.

Not poor, but not rich. You know that Dad tries hard, does his best. And you love how he pulls those black leather gloves onto his hands. He clenches each fist methodically, patiently, then tugs down that boiled wool cap and adjusts it, just above those impenetrable black eyes. Like a hitman. That’s how you like to think of your dad: feared and revered. A total badass.

But you actually pity him now, forced to endure a son like you not wanting to be seen getting picked up in his car. You realize that this would make him sad: You, so worried about looking poor, knowing how you feel about how you look wearing the constant hand me downs. About how the other boys, always with all their new stuff, their nicer things, think you’re white trash.

More minutes pass and you’ve become bored watching your breath rings crystalize and suspend before you, each drifting away and dissipating magically. Like a wraith. Another new word you found by accident. You’re still not sure you’re saying it right, especially in the plural.

You need to keep moving to stay warm. The heat from the bungled scrimmage and warming house, now padlocked shut, has long left you. Your sweat-heavy clothing freezes stiff with hard crusted edges around your neck, arms, and chest. So you decide to walk out of the high school parking lot and start down the broken sidewalk on Ninth under the phone lines at Pine, still with a pair of sneakers draped over from Cernie’s lucky toss last summer.

Ahead lies the corner you know Dad will turn at. Head him off where Ninth crosses Cedar, that’s your intent. Get into his crappy but very warm car faster. Any minute now.

It’s darker out here. You’ve stepped from the reach of the scope of school lot lights into immediate blackness. The shift is like a fall from a sunny cliff. But it’s been a mere step forward down Ninth Street, with just the one dim but familiar street lamp a half block away on the other side.

A block away from the rink, you wonder about your teammates and your not-gay!-brother, nearly sixteen. About how much time and energy he and his buddies dedicate to proving to one another and anyone else within earshot they’re not gay. And about teammanship and if teammanship is even a word. Something about the boys on your team that eludes you, something so ineffable about those boys and their brains. The way they think. And why they hate you so. Something irritating, confusing, distant, and itchy hangs in the air every time you are with the boys on the hockey team. Like you’re some kind of exile. That’s another word you recently discovered. Means to live away from one’s native land, either by choice or by compulsion.

“Exile,” you hear someone say. You look up and take one more step. A mass of snow and ice ruptures beneath your boot, a detonation scattering high-octave shards tinkling across the sidewalk ice. Normally you would snatch up one of these shards to peer at the moon through

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it, making the world disappear, even if only for a moment, through a kaleidoscope to another life. But not tonight because there is no moon. Just a river of bulging beads and trembling pearls about to drip from a sprawling black ocean above.

Instead your eyes stop on a man leaning against a nearby telephone pole. You can smell him. Alcohol gasoline urine sweetness. Even in the dark of the new moon you can see he’s soiled. Frozen grease splotches like oil or blood spills on his jacket and dingy pants.

And you know. Or, you think you know. Your dad has told you about people like this, mostly men. But you wonder. Wonder how he got this way, homeless. You’re not even sure what homelessness is or what it truly means. People are meant to live in homes, right? So what happened to his? Where did it go? How can he not have a place to live? And why doesn’t he just get a hotel room or stay with a friend if his home is somewhere else far away like Milwaukee or Chicago?

The man wears only one boot, untied, his other foot wrapped in rags with a large wool (you think) sock pulled over, frayed pant cuff tucked in. One hand is plunged into a jacket pocket, the other clutches a brown paper bag he now raises to his lips. This makes you think of Diekert, pacing around at the end of that rink, just getting through practice, swig by swig. You can’t quite make out his face in the wedges of light offered by the lone street lamp down the block, he’s dark from the beard up. But you can tell he’s looking right at you.

“Exile,” you hear him say again. “Some things are just kinda hard to describe, aren’t they?” he rasps. “But that’s what I am. An exile.”

This makes you forget the cold. You squint at him, this man with only one boot and precise speech. But there are no eyes there.

Just blackness. You don’t know what to say. You’re a nice boy from Wisconsin and you have been trained to respond to similar situations by simply allowing your good manners to take over. You swing your hockey bag from one shoulder to the other and address the man.

“Hello,” you say, moving one step closer.

With a visible effort, the man shifts his weight. And you can tell he thinks you’re rich. Of course he does. You have money for things like hockey sticks and rolls of tape, your hockey duffel now an absurd sack of luxury slung over your shoulder. But you’re not rich. No one in your town, in fact, is rich. At least, you don’t think so. Your hockey association can’t even afford an indoor rink.

You practice and play games out in the wind and cold and snow within a misshapen oval of broken boards the parents have the nerve to call a rink.

“How are you tonight,” you ask.

“I’m homeless and alone,” he says sharply, “And leaning up against a post on a freezing cold night. How the f-” and he uses the f-word, in a colorful display of sarcastic inquiry to wonder just how it is, you believe, he is in fact, doing.

The f-word makes you recoil. It’s different coming from him, not the same as when Eddie and his a-hole minions say it. They’re still practicing compared to this guy. This man says the word like he owns it, with what actually could be hate, and you can smell it. Smell the hate coming from whatever it is inside that bag he keeps raising to a black void in the middle of his head just below his nose holes. It’s his mouth, you realize, though it’s unsettling the way his hairy skin collapses around the neck of the bottle. Like when you went to Florida with your parents and you saw an eagle ray consume a small squid near a tide pool. Peristalsis and osmosis via one mysterious orifice at the center of the ray’s fluid fleshiness, a hairy vortex here right in front of you that pulls in hate from a bottle. Hate. That’s what your dad calls it. Hate from a bottle.

The man wears only one boot, untied, his other foot wrapped in rags with a large wool (you think) sock pulled over, frayed pant cuff tucked in. One hand is plunged into a jacket pocket, the other clutches a brown paper bag he now raises to his lips.

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Fiction

You don’t know how, but you are standing even closer to him now. Something draws you to him. Something against your will. It’s not the cold. He holds a certain power over you because …

Exile. How does he know? How does he know what you were just now thinking? Is it that obvious? Mrs. Aspenes, your fourth grade teacher, says you wear your heart on your sleeve.

But you always thought that was just an expression. An idiomatic expression, in fact. That you blurt things out or maybe take everything too seriously. And it shows, Mrs. Aspenes says.

Exile. It’s not him. It’s you.

He’s laughing. The man drinking fatigue from a bottle is laughing. Laughing a cold laugh that’s one of world-weariness the guys only a few years older than you are trying so desperately to imitate or claim. You realize what you said was stupid and you decide to shut your big mouth for once and just keep quiet.

After a while, he still hasn’t said another word. Neither have you.

The stillness of the clear night has crept into you now, and your father still hasn’t come. The road he should be driving down remains wide, cold, dark, and empty. The last echoes of the last car to rumble past now long died away. Days ago, it seems.

The man raises the bottle to you. He gives it a twitch with a flick of his wrist. He’s offering you a drink, you finally understand.

You’ve had wine at Christmas a couple of times and it felt okay. It burned a little, but it wasn’t so bad. Then you recall your cousin’s wedding last summer. You threw up on the waiter after drinking two full glasses of champagne on your not-gay!-brother’s dare. You want to back away from this man with one boot but can’t. His arm is now fully extended, a brown paper clump in his hand twitching impatiently, urging you to accept.

You are a polite boy from Wisconsin. You should excuse yourself, now. And bid unto the man with one boot a pleasant evening. But you can’t move.

An awareness engulfs you. This small act of walking down the street has unfolded into a huge decision that you will look back upon as a big moment in your life. Bigger than not passing the puck to Eddie Farrar, bigger than not kissing Monica Ritzing that one day after school when she wanted you to and no one was looking. (Your only chance!)

Monica wouldn’t do this. Neither would Eddie. And you know you shouldn’t, either.

You pull the bottle away from your chapped lips and hand it back. Strangely, the contents of this bottle of hate don’t taste like hate. So, for now, you disagree with your father. It’s sorta sweet, actually. And kinda angry. Like toothpaste. Hate tastes like angry liquid toothpaste, you almost say aloud. You catch yourself as a smile is about to part your face, wondering what you were worried about, what Eddie would have been so scared of. Then that laugh of his, now like he’s expecting you to leap into a fit of coughter. But you don’t. You bite your lip and he laughs again. Then, in response to the smile that started to split your face, your stomach revolts and catches fire. You hope you don’t lose it again, now, on the ride home in the back seat of your dad’s van. Like that strawberry milkshake from McDonald’s a couple of years ago on that one 106-degree day. Remember that? It got down behind your legs and into the folds of your car seat, and … God, Dad was pissed.

“Your ride,” the man says, the blackness above his neck, his head, motioning to a void behind your shoulder, “has arrived.”

And it occurs to you that somehow this man can move the dark. Like pushing a coin with only your thoughts, he can grasp darkness between his fingertips. Or perhaps he’s clutching on to it with the hand that’s remained inside his coat pocket this entire time. Either way, you’re convinced he got here by opening a crack in the blackness and stepping out to join you in your mutual exile. Greet you and share a drink. And that soon he’ll disappear back inside.

You know it.

The coughter finally comes, and you realize you are looking at the ground, eyes filling, when you notice your dad’s van round the corner and bank down the street toward you. You,

Your dad asks how practice went but you are still staring into the darkness, tracing with your eyes a path the man with only one boot may have taken.

But this new moon is very dark.

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with nothing to hide, really, apart from one selfish play at the end of scrimmage. Nothing to hide at all.

Except your breath.

Your father’s van eases to a stop next to you. He doesn’t roll down the window, just beckons from inside with a few pumps of a gloved hand. It’s dark and all you can see is the deeper darkness of the man with one boot reflected off the windows of your dad’s van, but you know that’s what your dad’s doing inside. Beckoning. With a slightly pained expression.

It’s the face he can always be counted on to make. A face you’re glad no one can see.

Now you nod, thinking quickly that you should breathe, like your not-gay! brother once advised you, through your nose only. Like after you sneak sips of brandy from Dad’s liquor cabinet. Behind you, the man slips from his post. You don’t hear him leave. He parts a seam in the dark and steps through the barrier into a beyond some where and possibly some time else, you think. Peristalsmosis, perhaps. All you hear is the popping crunch of sub-zero snow beneath the tires of your father’s van, then complete silence and the return of stillness. You sense Dad beckoning again.

Your dad asks how practice went but you are still staring into the darkness, tracing with your eyes a path the man with only one boot may have taken. But this new moon is very dark.

Dark where he walked, dark where he drank, dark inside the belly of wherever it is he just went, dark out on the ice where you should have passed the puck tonight, and dark in the bedroom where Monica Ritzing, fragrant and warm beneath her cozy quilts, will soon ease to sleep.

Your stomach plummets miserably as Dad’s van jerks forward. He speaks again and your ear blindness is back. And from here it’s clear that your darkness may as well be eternal, that it will remain dark everywhere you happen to step, everywhere you happen to look, and everywhere you happen to think.

Steve Fox’s writing has appeared in or has been recognized by Creative Wisconsin, The Iowa Review, The Midwest Review, Midwestern Gothic, The Masters Review, and the Wisconsin Writers Association. Fox lives with his wife, three boys, and one dog in Hudson and studies creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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

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CONGRATULATIONS

TO OUR 2019 FICTION & POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

FICTION WINNERS

POETRY WINNERS

First Prize

Second Prize

Third Prize

First Prize

Second Prize

Third Prize

Steve Fox Hudson “Exile”

Nikki Kallio Waupaca “Spirit Box”

Michael Hopkins Neenah “Mirror Box”

Robert Russell Madison “Greyhound”

Mary Wehner Fond du Lac “Morning’s Detour”

Jeri McCormick Madison “Nineteen Forty-five”

FICTION HONORABLE MENTIONS “Then It Would Be Raining,” Steve Fox – Hudson “Second Fiddle Widow,” Dion Kempthorne – Richland Center “Hey, Blue,” Charles R. Lewis – Beloit “Shields Up,” Kimberly Suhr – Wales

POETRY HONORABLE MENTIONS “Still Life,” Ingrid Andersson – Madison “ An Accident is Always Happening,” Christopher Chambers – Madison “Gaia’s Song,” Tom Davis – Sturgeon Bay “Unqualified,” James Landwehr – Waukesha “Ghandi Spinning, India, 1946,” Estella Lauter – Fish Creek “The Agility of Chopsticks,” Karen Loeb – Eau CLaire “Origami Spirits,” Elizabeth Odders-White – Madison “No Attic in the Attic,” Nathan J. Reid – Madison “Enough,” Judith C Shaffer – Madison “Ailments,” Lynn Patrick Smith – Madison

JOIN US on Friday, October 18, at 5:00 pm for a special Wisconsin Book Festival reading with our contest winners at A Room of One’s Own in Madison.

THANKS TO OUR 2019 CONTEST JUDGES Tom Miller (fiction) and Dasha Kelly Hamilton (poetry), as well as to preliminary readers CX Dillhunt and John Lehman. All contest judging is done blindly and the winning submissions are selected on criteria established by individual judges.

CONTEST WINNERS RECEIVE CASH AND PRIZES Winners receive awards of $500 to $100, publication in Wisconsin People & Ideas, and a reading at the Wisconsin 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.

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THANKS TO OUR 2019 CONTEST SPONSORS:

WISCONSIN

BOOK

F E S T I VA L

Poetry

New Wisconsin Poetry Winners from our 2019 Poetry Contest

Greyhound In what seems another lifetime, I drove a bus for Greyhound.

Riders weren’t allowed to talk to the driver, and I couldn’t talk to them—company rules— and I wasn’t allowed to look at a map, at least not when anyone was watching.

I remember the long silences between stops late at night, sixty people breathing behind me, sometimes a baby crying, or a young soldier on his way home, mumbling in his sleep.

Up front, I was the only one who could see where we were going and the only one who wasn’t really going there.

The midnight streets were crossed with cats and broken into corners by the same three colors of lights.

Then the lights would fall behind and no matter how many times I’d driven the route, in the dark I’d wonder if I were lost and there was no one I could ask.

Maybe it was homesickness, in one sense or the other, that filled the bus at the herd-shocked city terminals and the small town stops at discouraged cafés, always in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t unusual for guys to get on dead drunk and sleep through the whole thing.

They’d be the ones who’d cry out a name in the dark and I’d almost risk killing us all and turn around, because I thought they meant me.

Nobody ever got a good night’s sleep, not like they might at home.

They just dozed, or stared into the half-life of their reflections in the windows, imagining a happy childhood or dreaming of the future— cheap heavens, maybe, but absorbing.

Robert Russell

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Poetry

My Life as a Houseplant My roots told me what I needed before I needed it.

The soil held me closely as darkness.

Night rises from there.

Day grew quietly, a whisper beyond the window I could barely hear.

The sun moved across the window and made a shadow of me.

Was I happy? I couldn’t say.

I could blossom; so many faces turned up, all mine, listening to the sun.

The girl gave me water, and would lean over my blooms to breathe.

This was the way she knew me best, the way I spoke to her.

Some nights, the girl stood and stared into the refrigerator as if remembering something lost. Her lips were moving, but there was no sound.

The last pot held me until my roots split it open.

She carried me beyond the window to bury my roots in the ground, and I was found by sparrows and squirrels.

I thought the window was the world, now I see that it’s only glass.

Robert Russell

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Robert Russell is a recovering economist currently living in Madison. For over ten years he was co-producer of the “Radio Literature” program on WORTFM, and was coordinator for the CheapAtAnyPrice poetry series.

Russell led the Madison National Poetry Slam teams from 1992 to 1994, and has taught poetry in high schools and colleges here and abroad. His short fiction and poetry have been published in various literary magazines and anthologies, and his chapbook, Witness, is available on Amazon.

Poetry

Morning’s Detour One would expect grackles or crows, purple necks stretched out in the backstreet gloom, fluttering from dumpster to chain-link fence.

But here come the wayward geese fanning out over asbestos shingles landing flat-footed on the parking lot in an artful unraveling fuss.

Across the street on a low roof hangs a six-foot American flag strung antenna to chimney, a faded feathered Indian painted over its stars.

Dim lights line the street.

A storefront window is stacked with boxes.

The window above is open, a curtain swept back against the white wall.

And at the crossing, a freight train slows, shuffles the geese. They poke the asphalt, stretch and shudder, rise to travel the yellow sky. I’m breathlessly late for work.

Mary Wehner

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Poetry

Time He sits in the shade of a cottonwood watching the square stemmed leaves rattle in the slight wind, the sparrow pokes and chews, pokes and chews, then flits on to a higher spot.

He sees how focus brightens the errant blue in the brown feathers, the glint-silver in the eye, how morning light outlines the stooped neighbor in her frantic purge of jewelweed in her garden.

If she stops and looks his way, she might scoop up the pale spindly weed and study its curved edges and juice-filled stem.

She might rub the cool balm on her wrist, and find she has all the time in the world.

Mary Wehner

Mary Wehner is a poet and visual artist who lives on the shore of Lake Winnebago in Fond du Lac. A widely published poet, Wehner is also author of several letterpress chapbooks and broadsides through Red Hydra Press and has spent two sessions as Poet-in-Residence at Penland School of the Craft in North Carolina.

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Poetry

Nineteen Forty-five

I am lazing around, sharing my attic room with Cincinnati’s swelter and three more books from the library—Girl of the Limberlost, Jo’s Boys, Dr. Doolittle—when the church bells begin to ring and the kitchen radio raises its decibels, casting some sort of announcement up the staircase, and my mother calls me down, takes my little brother by the hand, walks us outside where the neighbor women converge in front of Jimmy Doyle’s house— a half-dozen shrill voices competing with the bells, still tolling in their high steeples, the city throbbing in one great vibration, reverberating all the way down to the river, I imagine, across the bridges and docks and the polished decks of the beloved Island Queen, and back up Vine Street to my ordinary block where the Polish tavern opens early and the tool factory releases its second shift—workers like my father, who has passed the age of soldiering—and we all sing at the top of our homefront voices, Roll Out the Barrel, Roll Out the Barrel, and for one triumphant August day

we have the blues on the run.

Jeri McCormick

Jeri McCormick is a Madison-based poet and former teacher of creative writing in senior centers and Elderhostel. She recently won the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets’ Muse Prize and her new chapbook, Breathtaking, was recently released by Hummingbird Press.

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Poetry

Gone Missing Mine was a nurtured childhood, with ample love and attention; nevertheless, I harbored grievances time to time, hugged them close like teddy bears, plotted retaliation on my perch in the cherry tree.

When payback seemed called for, I’d head down to the fruit cellar, that black hole of revenge-hatching; down into the darkness, feet slow on the stairs, shuffling across cement, I’d open the creaking door to my hideout, listen for my name echoing from above, proof of their concern—Has she really left home this time—and I’d whisper, yes, she’s gone, and it serves you right!

How could they live without her—me?

A test that would take time as I huddled among relishes and jams, sat on a slab-covered crock of sauerkraut— no book, no radio, no light, just a vinegary voice in my head as I sat picturing my wrists bound, mouth gagged.

Hadn’t the Pastor warned about the forces of evil in this world? Well, here they were, at large in this spidery basement.

When petulance and abduction grew tiring, pity for the worriers drew me back upstairs.

The prodigal back in the fold. And though asked, I refused to tell the troubles I’d seen.

Jeri McCormick

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Poetry

J U D G E’S N OTES

DASHA KELLY-HAM I LTO N

Greyhound The movement in this poem is serene and skillfully done. The poet’s reach for narrative detail and visual poetics drew me into my seat, and the driver’s seat, too. Best of all, the poem pulled me into the quiet night.

Morning’s Detour This poem seized my attention, looked me square in the eye, and dared me not to gaze at its sharp angles—just like that unexpected glint of sun on the toaster. The blunt rhythm is engaging and carries a glint of gratitude.

Nineteen Forty-five The lovely parts of this poem are the skips and spaces, what we don’t see. The poet’s lyrics are physical, gliding time and bouncing from line to line.

Hear our 2019 contest-winning writers and poets read these works and others on October 18 at 5:00 pm at A Room of One’s Own in Madison during the 2019 Wisconsin Book Festival.

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LEARNING POWERED BY CURIOSITY Wisconsin Public Television Education creates and curates high-quality educational resources for Wisconsin educators to use for free in every learning environment. Explore the full library of content – locally focused, created with Wisconsin teachers and aligned with state curriculum standards.

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WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Book Review

Seventy at Seventy: New Poems

by Tom Montag MWPH Books, 89 pages, $12.50 Reviewed by Kathy Miner

T

he very title of Tom Montag’s latest book of poetry started a Simon & Garfunkel song playing in my head. “How terribly strange to be seventy,” a 27-year-old Paul Simon wrote in “Old Friends” back in the late 1960s. In having reached and passed that milestone, Montag writes in “The Honeyed Sweetness”: I am an old man on a new spring day and everything sings around me. … … even as I age, even as I fall away, wondering how this world goes on with me, without me.

Montag ’s name will be familiar to readers who know their Wisconsin poets. A resident of the tiny village of Fairwater in Fond du Lac County, he has been active in poetry and creative nonfiction—writing, editing, and teaching—for nearly half a century.

Among many other accomplishments, Montag originated the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar, published it (with help from his wife) from 1982 to 1984, and then turned it over to the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, which produces it to this day.

In an interview, Montag once said he’s most poetically productive when on the road, describing the process not as “writing while driving,” but rather “driving while writing.” The difference, he says, is important; the process has bearing on not only the length of the resulting poems, but one’s ability to revise them, at least in the moment.

In Seventy at Seventy, Montag has crafted a collection that manages to be both lyrical and spare. He gives the natural world the gift of his close, respectful attention—perhaps the highest form of praise—then returns that gift to the reader in the fewest words necessary. (The shortest poem in Seventy at Seventy is a mere five words, including the title—and I would not change a letter of it.)

Seventy at Seventy touches on themes of hope, seasonality, music, gratitude, and (of course) mortality. Humans seldom figure directly in the poems, but natural entities are imbued with intentionality: the wind takes what it wants, fences hope to be mended and fields to be walked, water knows what loss is, crows show us “bird magic and card tricks,” and trees love the light which in turn loves the trees.

But lest you fear an overly saccharine diet, let me reassure you that Montag shares his doubts and uncertainties as well, as in “Another Day”: Some days you turn back and behind you find nothing. Some days you do not turn.

Montag has clearly loved his life, his wife, and his hometown.

Lucky man. And, lucky us that he has written about so much of it, and distilled it so well into this stellar collection.

Kathy Dodd Miner is a naturalist at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, and a former editor of the Wisconsin Poets’ Calendar. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies and collections.

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Book Review

Dairylandia: Dispatches from a State of Mind

by Steve Hannah The University of Wisconsin, 248 pages, $26.95 Reviewed by Michael Hopkins

I

n a world of superficial relationships enabled by social media, Steve Hannah’s book, Dairylandia: Dispatches from a State of Mind, shows us the value of taking the time to connect with ordinary people through their extraordinary stories.

In Dairylandia, Hannah presents us with what he calls, “a little love letter to Wisconsin.” His thirty-two vignettes, many of which are drawn from his syndicated column, “State of Mind,” take the reader on a reflective tour of the Wisconsin people and places Hannah encountered during his time as managing editor for The Milwaukee Journal and CEO of the satirical newspaper, The Onion.

In every essay Hannah introduces us to someone we wish we knew. As we learn about the impact these people have had on Hannah’s own life and understanding of “Wisconsin-ness,” Hannah transcends the role of a journalist and becomes our friendly guide, taking us where the trail leads him.

Investigating the frog invasion that happened in Oconto (about twenty minutes north of Green Bay) back in 1952, Hannah got to know eighty-five year old Art Gering, a one time professional frogger. Through Hannah we learn about the old days when Gering made a living catching and selling thousands of frogs for both medical research and fried-frog legs at local taverns. “The word ‘frog,’ I learned then, could be a verb,” recalls Hannah.

Hannah introduces us to Ken Lange, a resident naturalist at Devil’s Lake State Park for three decades, and shares wisdom gleaned from the ancient stone cliffs. Emma Washa wrote a weekly column for The Boscobel Dial, a regional newspaper published in the southwestern part of the state, until she died at the age of 105. In her essay she provides some helpful journalistic advice to Hannah: “Try not to be boring. There’s already plenty of boring stuff out there.

Nobody needs you to add to it.”

Hannah’s stories are anything but boring. With a reporter’s instinct, and a touch of carnival showmanship, he entertains and makes readers want to see who’s next. Because Hannah packs so much personality in every essay, Dairylandia is perhaps best read in small bites. While each essay leaves behind an aftertaste of nostalgia, each also serves as a reminder that, if we slow down and get to know the people around us, everyone has a story, a legacy in process, and a lesson worth learning.

Michael Hopkins lives on a small farm in Neenah, Wisconsin, with his wife and their dog, cats, and chickens. His book and music criticism have appeared in Philadelphia Weekly and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and his short fiction has appeared in Millwork and Pleiades. His short story “Static” won first place in the 2018 Wisconsin People & Ideas Fiction Contest.

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

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Janan, listener from Mequon

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UPCOMING EXHIBITION

COLLECTIONS & CONNECTIONS

THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY AT 150 On view FEBRUARY 14 – APRIL 5, 2020

In celebration of its 150th anniversary, the Wisconsin Academy hosts an exhibition at its James Watrous Gallery that recreates the natural history and archaeological collections gathered by early Academy members such as Increase Lapham, Thomas Chamberlin, Charles E. Brown, Edward Birge, and John Wesley Hoyt. Curated by Martha Glowacki and Jody Clowes, the exhibition embraces a nuanced view of the Academy’s historical collections, considers its legacy, and looks to its future.

Wisconsin Historical Society, WHS-1944

James Watrous Gallery in Overture Center for the Arts – 3rd Floor Admission is Free

201 State Street · Madison, WI · 608-733-6633 x25 Wed–Thurs 12-5pm Fri–Sat 12-8pm Sun 12-5pm

Closed Mon & Tues