Wisconsin People & Ideas – Winter Spring 2024

Everett Marshburn

Left: WPR’s “Uprooted: Cuban in Wisconsin” podcast, Center: members of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestra performing live on “The Midday,” Right: Wisconsin high school football players Hannah Peters and Ava Matz on WPR news.

WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS & LETTERS

WISCONSIN ACADEMY STAFF

Madison Buening • External Relations Coordinator

Jody Clowes • Director, James Watrous Gallery

Elisabeth Condon • Director of Science and Climate Programs

Lulu Fregoso • Climate & Energy Intern

Jennifer Graham • Exhibitions and Outreach Coordinator

Jessica James • Climate & Energy Program Manager

Erika Monroe-Kane • Executive Director

Matthew Rezin • Operations Manager

Zack Robins • Director of Development

Julie Steinert • Administrative Assistant

Yong Cheng (Yong Cha) Yang • Visitor Services Associate, James Watrous Gallery

ACADEMY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Roberta Filicky-Peneski • President

Frank D. Byrne • President-Elect

Thomas W. Still • Secretary

Richard Donkle • Treasurer

Amy Horst • Vice President of Arts

Kimberly Blaeser • Vice President of Letters

Robert D. Mathieu • Vice President of Sciences

Tom Luljak • Immediate Past President

Mark Bradley • Foundation President

Steve Ackerman, Madison

Ruben Anthony, Madison

Lillian Brown, Ripon

Jay Handy, Madison

BJ Hollars, Eau Claire

Nyra Jordan, Madison

Michael Morgan, Milwaukee

Kevin Reilly, Verona

Brent Smith, La Crosse

Jeff Rusinow, Grafton

Julia Taylor, Milwaukee

ACADEMY FOUNDATION

Ira Baldwin (1895–1999) • Foundation Founder

Mark Bradley • Foundation President

Jack Kussmaul • Foundation Vice-President

Arjun Sanga • Foundation Secretary

Richard Donkle • Foundation Treasurer

Roberta Filicky-Peneski • Academy President

Frank Byrne • Academy President-Elect

Tom Luljak • Academy Immediate-Past President

Kristen Carreira

Betty Custer

Andrew Richards

Steve Wildeck

Editor’s Note

Last year, after almost 30 years of living in Wisconsin, I realized it was time to come home. I now reside in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, with the Blue Ridge Mountains floating along the skyline like a backdrop to a movie. As interim editor of Wisconsin People & Ideas for the last few months, I’ve frequently been reminded of why I was drawn to Wisconsin all those years ago. Travel anywhere in the state—urban or rural, north or south, Driftless or Great Lakes regions—and you experience such a diversity and richness in geography and culture. It sounds a bit corny to say it was, in fact, the “people” and the “ideas” that sustained me, not only in my career but in making a life there for myself and my family. Almost as compelling were “lakes” and “cheese.” I do miss them all, which is why it is such a delight to share some highlights of what we’ve put together for you in this month’s issue.

Our cover profile chronicles the rich journalistic life of Milwaukee TV producer Everett Marshburn. He was recently inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 2024 Gold Circle, the first person in the state to receive this distinguished service honor. My dear friend and colleague John Motoviloff writes this issue’s “Wisconsin Table,” part memoir, part treatise on state efforts to bring game hunting to a wider audience. Similar themes of inclusion are abundant in Dexter Patterson’s essay on the joy of birding. The author also urges us to get out and enjoy spring bird migration hotspots around the state. Sarah White’s fascinating piece on artists who create their own pottery pigments and glazes will leave you with an unexpected appreciation for this unique aspect of ceramics.

The Academy is proud to feature another impressive group of 2023 fiction and poetry contest winners in this month’s issue. Susanna Daniel’s “Goddess of Illicit Choices” won 2nd place in fiction, while Emily Bowles, Adam Fell, Steven Espada Dawson, Marnie Bullock Dresser, and Kelly R. Samuels received honorable mentions in poetry.

Because this is a double issue, the content I mention here is just a sampling of a robust and satisfying collection of essays, profiles, book reviews, and more. Also featured is our usual primer on the upcoming artists exhibiting at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison’s Overture Center.

In addition to what I learned from the people and ideas featured in this magazine, I gained some insight into myself. That instinctive tug to return home recently was the same one that brought me to Wisconsin. If home is where the heart is, then Virginia holds my heart. Wisconsin, however, will always hold my soul. I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed being reminded of the many things that are so very special about Wisconsin.

Brennan Nardi, Interim Editor

JayneKing

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

Since 1954, the Wisconsin Academy has published a magazine for people who are curious about the world and proud of Wisconsin ideas. Wisconsin People & Ideas features thoughtful stories about the state’s people and culture, 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.

From the Director

Spring emerges and we can’t help but have a lighter step, feel encouraged as color brightens the landscape, and enjoy moments lingering outside. I am particularly grateful to be a part of the Academy this spring.

In the midst of election intensity and divisive politics, the Academy is focused on connecting people with different perspectives through the shared exploration of timely and timeless topics.

Even with differences of opinion on important issues, Wisconsin is still a place where people have much in common. The experiences we have together can increase our understanding of one another, as well as the world we share.

It was this goal that inspired Bloom: a season of poetry, a series of events unfolding over the next couple months across the state. A showcase of poets and their works, Bloom will explore and illuminate both individual perspectives and shared themes. These events will culminate with a reading and book signing by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. Find more details on the back cover of this month’s issue and at www.wisconsinacademy.org/events.

I’ve been reading works by Ms. Limón and as an exuberant star gazer, I sought out In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa. In collaboration with NASA, this poem will be engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft and travel 1.8 billion miles to the Jupiter system. In the poem, we are reminded that, it is not darkness that unites us, but our shared existence on earth and our shared humanity.

Erika Monroe-Kane, Executive Director

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa

Arching under the night sky inky with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know, we pin quick wishes on stars. From earth, we read the sky as if it is an unerring book of the universe, expert and evident.

Still, there are mysteries below our sky: the whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.

We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain, each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.

Sharon Vanorny

News for Members

MEMBERSHIP DRIVE

In just the last year, the Wisconsin Academy’s programs have engaged audiences from ages 9 to 91 years old, from 63 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. Many were inspired to become new members and support the Academy’s mission. We are grateful for their support. Now we are asking for your help to reach even broader audiences. If you value the Wisconsin Academy, the Wisconsin People & Ideas magazine, and our programs, please consider sharing the gift of a Wisconsin Academy membership with someone in your life.

VISUAL ARTS ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

Every two years, the Academy partners with Wisconsin Visual Artists and the Museum of Wisconsin Art to present the Wisconsin Visual Arts Achievement Awards. These awards recognize educators, writers, visual artists, exhibition teams, and community advocates whose contributions significantly enrich life in our state. Join us April 14, 2024, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend for the awards ceremony. Learn more at wisconsinart.org/wvaaa-24.

BLOOM POETRY INITIATIVE

Please join the Wisconsin Academy this spring for Bloom: a season of poetry. This series features events such as Poetry and the Natural World, a talk and book signing by the U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón on the evening of Thursday, May 23, 2024, at the Overture Center for the Arts. We hope you or an organization that you represent will consider partnering or sponsoring one, or perhaps all, of these engaging events.

SPONSORSHIPS

If you are interested in sponsorships, contact Director of Development Zack Robbins at zrobbins@wisconsinacademy.org or via phone at (608) 733-6633 x16. If you are interested in partnering with the Academy on Bloom , contact Executive Director Erika MonroeKane at emonroekane@wisconsinacademy.org. If you want to attend one or more of these exciting events, visit our website at www.wisconsinacademy.org/bloom-season-poetry.

THANK YOU NEW ACADEMY MEMBERS!

Mary Sue Adey

Lisette and Darrell Aldrich

Brian L. Anderson

Wendy Anderson

Irmgard Andrew

Jennifer Angus

Jennifer Anne

Elizabeth Babette Wainwright

Lisa Marie Barber

Adriana Barrios

Al and Shirley Beaver

Robert N. Beck

Mary Bero

Mr. Michael R Betlach

Doug and Pam Bradley

Mary Kohl

Ann Brusky

John Bates and Mary Burns

Debra Byars

Ms. Cindy A. Carter

Matthew Cashion

Yeonhee Cheong

Portia Cobb

Dr. Clifton Conrad

Trent Miller and JL Conrad

Angelica Contreras

Sarah Crittenden

Susanna Daniel

Terry Daulton

Tara Daun

Katherine de Shazer

The Dickinsons

Jane Doughty and David Wood

Elizabeth Feder and Mark Johnson

Jason Fletcher

Anwar Floyd-Pruitt

Dick Folse

Jennifer Garner

Lilada Gee

Samer Ghani

David and Anne Giroux

Melody Hanson

Allyson K. Hanz

Holly Hilliard

Karen Ann Hoffman

Ann Huntoon

Wilson Irigoyen Quiroz

Jill Renee Iverson

Dennis James

Mahanth Joishy

Frank Juarez

Mary Juba and Charles Wiesen

Ms. Edwina Kavanaugh

Jodi Kiffmeyer

Sara Kiiru

Jayne King

Taylor Kirby

Jackie and Doug Kruse

Joel Kuennen

Madeline Grace Martin

Mandi McAlister

Bill McBeth and Heidi

Dyas-McBeth

Linda McCarty

Katherine E. McCoy

Gerard and

Alice McKenna

Christine C. Melgaard

Emily Merisalo

Jill Metcoff

Don and Mary Miech

Betsy Morgan

Rhianon Morgan

Jeffrey Morin

John Mulvihill

Tim A. Murphy

Kimberly A. Nash

Doug Nelson

Linda Nelson

Donna Neuwirth

Debra Nichols

Michael Notaro

Louise Nutter

Rebecca Oettinger

Jill Olm

Judy Olson and Richard Stollberg

Kurt Olsson

Ann Orlowski

Maria Otto

Nancy Peterson

Diane Pflugrad Foley

Yvette M. Pino

Carolyn Pittman

Jo Preston

Chuck Pruitt

Gary Puta

Jane Radue

Kathleen Rasmussen

Fred and Janice Redford

Adriana Reilly

Darvin Reilly

Liam Reilly

Angela Richardson

Dan Rosati

Katherine Steichen

Rosing and Mike Rosing

Thomas Loeser and Bird Ross

Mr. Jeff Rusinow

Ms. Juanita Schadde

Nancy Schraufnagel

Rita Sears

Rae Senarighi

Bret Shaw PhD

Kristin Sherfinski

The Sinskys

Wendy Skinner

Isa Small

Kristin Solander

Dale and Deborah

Sproule

Robert Alan Steffen

Dee Sweet

Julie Swenson

Scott Terry

Kathy Thome

Alice Traore

Nicholas A. Tseffos

Peggy Turnbull

Marijo and John

Van Der Vaart

Leslie Walfish

David and Nancy Walsh

Robert Whitcomb Fulton

Ally Wilber

Susan Wirka

HUMANITY UNLOCKED

While in prison, Mark Español received his first college credits from University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Odyssey Behind Bar’s English class.

“It made me feel human again,” Español says of his experience crafting and reading his personal narrative to the Odyssey class.

The powerful insight that often comes from such important moments is explored in a new season of the Human Powered podcast from Wisconsin Humanities. The new series, called Humanity Unlocked, offers a unique opportunity to hear from people who have been incarcerated about how creative writing and humanities education can transform understanding of oneself and the world.

Episodes of the new podcast will explore the impacts of art exhibits, storytelling, and poetry workshops on prisoners; what happens in classrooms where college students learn alongside incarcerated students; and the benefits of prison newspapers for people inside and outside.

Today, more than 35,000 residents of Wisconsin are serving time in prisons and jails. Human Powered offers the uncommon opportunity to hear directly from current or formerly incarcerated citizens, as well as advocates working to make the experience of incarceration less de-humanizing.

“I got to interview people about how they think about their own humanity, and how they keep their curiosity and creativity alive in a space that is not designed with their humanity as a priority,” says Adam Carr, a public historian and co-host of the podcast. The six-part series is also co-hosted by Dasha Kelly Hamilton, the former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, who ran Prose & Cons workshops in Racine Correctional Institution and founded A Line Meant, a poetry exchange for people living in Wisconsin prisons and around the state.

Listeners can find the Human Powered podcast in any listening app and at wisconsinhumanities.org/podcast.

—Jessica Becker

SHORT STORY NIGHT AT THE PUB

It’s a Monday evening but the inside of Lion’s Tail Brewing Co. in Neenah, Wisconsin, is packed with so many people, it feels like a Friday evening fish fry. It’s Short Story Night, and an equal mix of men and women, from college students to retired folks, are discussing Erin Somers’ short story, Ten Year Affair, from the 2022 Best American Short Stories collection. After a conversation that touches on everything from the mundanity of marriage and child rearing to a debate about the ending of the story, the host, Richie Zaborowske, a librarian from the Neenah Public Library, connects with the author via Zoom for an interview plus audience questions. The interview is lighthearted and covers a broad range of subjects, from writing advice to the symbolism of a character’s toothpick habit. To finish the evening, Zaborowske hands out copies of stories for the next session of Short Story Night and just about everyone, plus a few newcomers, will attend again next month.

Celebrated writers have included Bobbie Ann Mason, National Book Award Finalist Deesha Philyaw, and National Book Award Winner Phil Klay. While the group occasionally dips into classic stories (Hemingway, Carver, Ferber), contemporary stories are preferred since they allow the group to discuss present-day topics.

The group meets the second Monday of each month at 7 pm. Visit www.neenahlibrary.org for a copy of the short story and complete details. On April 8, the evening will feature Wisconsin author and former Wisconsin Academy communications director Christopher Chambers.

—Richie Zaborowske

Nicole Acosta

Richie Zaborowske

HONORING ACADEMY FELLOW RICHARD DAVIS

The world lost jazz great and social justice champion Richard Davis last fall at age 93. A true Renaissance man, Davis lived every decade of his life in earnest, sharing his gift as a premier bassist with some of the finest musical artists in the world, and then bestowing his gifts as an educator and activist to generations of students and citizens at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As a musician, Davis honed his craft in his hometown Chicago before heading to New York, where his live music career flourished in the 1960s followed by a string of recording successes in the 1970s. In the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll published in 1991, his work with Van Morrison on the album Astral Weeks, was revered as “the greatest bass ever heard on a rock album.”

Davis explored bass in a wide range of musical genres—from his first-love jazz to rock, pop, and classical. At the peak of his 23-year career, he was sought after by the greatest artists of the times: singers Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra; singer/songwriters Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen; and maestros Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein.

In 1977, he was recruited by UW—Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, where he taught string bass, jazz history, and improvisation. In 1993, he co-founded the Richard Davis Foundation for Young Bassists to give emerging musicians who attend an annual conference the opportunity to learn from and perform with professionals from across the country.

In 1998, Davis founded the Retention Action Project at UW–Madison to address the multicultural climate and graduation rates for students of color. Two years later, this grassroots approach to social justice led him to found the Madison chapter of the Institutes for the Healing of Racism, and to host the group’s meetings at his home for more than 15 years.

In 2004, Davis was inducted as a Wisconsin Academy Fellow. He was honored as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2014.

An extraordinary man, Davis will perhaps best be remembered for so generously sharing his countless gifts with Wisconsin and the world.

—Brennan Nardi

Bryce Richter / University of Wisconsin–Madison

Anne Motoviloff

The author on a recent duck hunt to the Prairie Pothole region of North Dakota.

ONE FATEFUL BITE ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF EATING WILD GAME

BY JOHN MOTOVILOFF

It’s been three decades since I took my first bite of wild game. It was the fall of 1992, and, fresh out of graduate school, I had just begun my first real job—production manager for scholarly journals at the University of Wisconsin Press. At lunch time one day, my size 13 Doc Martens clambered down the oak stair treads. The Journals Division was one of three Craftsman style houses that—along with a warehouse once belonging to the defunct Fauerbach Brewery and still smelling of must and grain—made up the Press’s quarters at the time. Opening the refrigerator and realizing my leftover pot roast was at home, I was hit by a blend of low blood sugar and sadness.

Hunt for Food students clean their harvest at the Beaver Dam Conservationists facility in Dodge County.

John Motoviloff

The one block to Fraboni’s Deli—with its spicy olives and cured meats—felt miles away and, anyway, I didn’t have money for a sandwich. I stared out the window at the leaden sky and the railroad tracks beyond the Press buildings. Just then, I heard the ding of the microwave door . A commingling of meat and citrus filled the air. My supervisor and Journals Manager, Steve Miller, divided the contents of the Tupperware he’d heated onto two plates and slid one down the counter to me. I grabbed hold of a bird leg cased in crisp brown skin and flecked with sauerkraut. Dark, tender meat fell from the bone. The taste stirred something primal in me. It was at once rich and lean, steak and poultry—unlike anything I’d eaten and magically satisfying. I asked the bluntest and—it would turn out—most transformative question I could muster: What is this and how do I get more?

RATHSKELLERS AND SMOKING BARRELS

Steve told me the meat was wild duck that he’d shot on the Mississippi River the previous weekend. Moreover, he invited me hunting and we were often joined by his friend and Associate Press Director, the late Ezra “Sam” Diman. My interest caught like brushfire, and the two of them were just the kind of mentors a young hunter needs—wool-clad and dependable, tempered by a gallows humor that salved the sting of shots and outings gone awry. We hunted far and near. The Lucey Farm and the overgrown right-of-way behind the School for Girls. French’s Creek and Grand River and Hog Island. Rugby and Aberdeen, Jamestown and Gackle. There were mustard yellow duck skiffs and decoys made from cork salvaged from a refrigeration plant. Dusty rathskellers turning out great racks of pork ribs atop crispy potatoes. There was the smell of cordite, sharp in the cold air, as we crouched between prairie potholes, the barrels of our Wingmasters smoking, the sun bleeding out into the Western sky.

Sam and Steve gave me heaps of encouragement and guidance as I learned to hunt: first squirrels and rabbits, then birds, and ultimately deer. They were the “social support” one hears about in outdoor skills research. Their steadfast company notwithstanding, they were not, per se, the reason I decided to try and—ultimately to embrace—hunting. This was something I’d uncovered, as one might find an ancestral portrait or coat of arms deep within a fieldstone basement. This inner wildness was about pursuing—and eating—wild game. Or, more accurately, connecting with something that had long been part of human existence and only recently had faded from view. As I progressed as a hunter, I also grew as a chef, beginning with simple sears over glowing coals and black skillets and then progressing to savory stews like Squirrel Burgoo or Rabbit Cacciatore and sharing them with loved ones. While I vaguely sensed that I was on a path, I would never have guessed that, decades later, its arc would have been so profound and circular.

With my first steady paychecks, I began to acquire the material trappings one needs to become a hunter. I bought a used Remington Wingmaster, a few burlap sacks of decoys, a Karsten’s duck skiff. My wife Kerry and I used the money we received from our wedding as a downpayment for a cabin on the banks of the Kickapoo River. I hunted feverishly into my 30s, accompanied by

Pheasant with Dried Apricots

This recipe is adapted from the cookbook Wild Rice Goose and Other Dishes of the Upper Midwest by John Motoviloff. It is a low-and-slow dish that gives a nod to ingredients such as dried fruit and cinnamon that evoke Central Asia, where pheasants originated.

INGREDIENTS

2 Pheasants, cut into serving pieces and seasoned with salt and pepper (or equivalent weight in thighs and drumsticks)

Flour for dredging

¼ C olive oil plus 2 Tbsp butter (more as needed)

2 C chicken or pheasant stock, heated to just below boiling.

I C dried apricots

1 C yellow raisins

1 cinnamon stick

3 Tbsp honey, or more to taste

Additional salt and pepper to taste

Cornstarch for thickening if needed

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Place shallow baking pan in the oven.

Dredge pheasant pieces in flour and shake off excess.

Heat a large Dutch oven, Le Creuset, or similar lidded, ovenproof vessel on the stovetop. Add oil and butter and heat until it sizzles. Brown pheasant pieces in batches, being careful not to crowd the pan. Place browned pieces in the baking pan as you work.

When all pieces are browned, scrape up any remaining bits with a spatula or wooden spoon. Deglaze the pan with stock. Replace the pheasant pieces. Add the dried fruit plus the cinnamon stick and honey.

Bake, covered, until pheasant is fall-off-the bone tender. Taste the liquid to see if it needs more salt, pepper, or honey.

If the sauce is too thick, add broth or water. If it is too thin, add cornstarch dissolved into a few tablespoons water.

Serve over saffron rice.

a lithe black Labrador retriever named Tasha, and worked at various editorial jobs. The more game I ate, the more I wanted to learn about cooking it. Books from LL Bean, Remington Arms, Ducks Unlimited— as well as spiral bound cast-offs and jottings on scrap paper—were my bedtime reading. In my 40s, narrowing the gap between my personal and professional worlds, I became a full-time freelance outdoor writer. Scores of articles in the conservation press and then publication of Driftless Stories and Fly Fishers Guide to Wisconsin and Iowa followed. Then came invitations to run game cooking seminars at the Journal-Sentinel Sports Show, the Wisconsin Writers Festival, and DNR facilities. By 2008, I had collected enough recipes to pen my first cookbook, Wisconsin Wildfoods Wild Rice Goose and Other Dishes of the Upper Midwest followed in 2013.

In 2014, I took the position of Shooting Sports Assistant at the Wisconsin DNR. A central job duty was helping to design and implement a course called “Learn to Hunt for Food,” a brainchild of then Hunting and Shooting Sports Program Specialist Keith Warnke. The goal here was to reproduce for novices just the kind of experience—and support—that I had gotten. Following five years of work at WDNR, I’ve been fortunate enough to continue this rewarding career on the nonprofit side as the Wisconsin Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation (R3) Coordinator for the National Wild Turkey Federation (from 2017 to 2022) and since then as the Wisconsin R3 and Outreach Coordinator for Pheasants Forever.

DIVING INTO DEMOGRAPHICS

Hunt for Food classes (WDNR adopted the term Learn to Hunt for these classes in 2023) didn’t just happen. This, like all stories, is backed by other stories. To begin this one, hunting license sales in the United States and Wisconsin peaked in the 1980s and 1990s. Since that time, the demographic “bubble” representing Baby Boomers (those born between 1948 and 1964) continues to advance across the age spectrum. In fact, the average age is closing in on 70, which is when most people stop hunting. Of course, one can point to many Baby Boomers who do hunt—and avidly—but those cases tend to prove the general rule that this age cohort is becoming and ultimately will be too old to engage in the tasks associated with hunting: climbing tree stands, dragging deer from the woods, following bird dogs over rough terrain.

This is important because conservation funding comes from hunting licenses sold, and even more comes from the 11 percent Pittman-Robertson federal tax placed on firearms and ammunition. In other words, declining hunter numbers spell serious economic and relevance problems for the conservation community. Historically, creating new hunters to backfill those who aged out has taken care of itself. A high density of hunters, who in turn taught their children to hunt, kept the pool of license buyers robust. But as America has grown more urban, as average family size decreases, and as more pastimes (like digital media and team sports) compete for the family calendar, fewer hunters are being produced. This decrease is expected to become more pronounced as the Baby Boomer cohort continues to age.

At the same time—and this can perhaps be viewed as a happy coincidence—Americans in general and millennials in particular are becoming increasingly concerned about their food sources and food sovereignty—for meat in particular. It’s not difficult to see how

John Motoviloff

a ready-made sales pitch (secure your own ethically sourced meat through hunting) and an audience (millennials and others who eat meat but dislike factory farming) seem to suggest themselves. This line of thinking wasn’t lost on natural resources professionals like Warnke, who pioneered the first WDNR Hunt for Food class in 2012.

Warnke, who is now the Midwest R3 and Relevance Coordinator, put it this way: “This strong interest in food sources easily carries over to hunting. Killing meat themselves from a wild, sustainable resource is very attractive. It builds on their values of conservation, land ethic, and animal use.”

Not surprisingly, given the urban and suburban demographic of Hunt for Food participants and the students’ lack of exposure to firearms and animal processing, Hunt for Food classes are long courses rather than short ones. The many skills necessary to hunt— marksmanship and gun safety, field dressing and butchering, basic biology and regulations—are taught over something like 10 hours in the classroom and field. To get a sense of the class experience, readers can google the term “Hipster Hunter.” Alternatively, a literature search will reveal a wide range of publications covering similar stories over the last five years. A short list includes the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Slate.com, Outdoor Life, Field Stream, and MacLeans

Just as WDNR was among the first state agencies to offer courses like Hunt for Food, it now continues to lead the way in the realm of R3. As of fall 2023, four distinct conservation organizations have partnered with WDNR to create partner R3 coordinators: Pheasants Forever, the National Deer Association, Raised at Full Draw, and Pass It On Outdoors. While these nonprofits each have their own point of view, all four partner R3 coordinators share the aim of creating new hunters and are financed through Pittman-Robertson revenues.

According to WDNR R3 Supervisor Bob Nack, “Wisconsin DNR was one of the early leaders in recognizing the importance of outdoor experiences that occur when hunting, fishing, and trapping. We are excited to continue as a national leader in providing programs.”

Women are the fastest growing demographic in hunting. Still, men make up the vast majority (88%) of hunters.

STUDENTS SPEAK

Because I was so affected by hunting, I have been keenly interested in how it affects others. Statistics are one way to prove a point, and one study of Hunt for Food students in Wisconsin shows that 40 percent of them became regular license-buying hunters. My own records suggest that this number may be closer to 50 percent. Further, all students were shown to hold a favorable view of hunting after completing Hunt for Food classes. These statistics may seem underwhelming and self-validating. If only half the students in a course on basket weaving go on to weave baskets, wouldn’t we question the worth of that class? And, if someone is considering taking a class, doesn’t this imply approval?

Considering the degree of behavioral change involved in going from being a nonhunter (someone who does not take the life of animals for food) to becoming a hunter (someone who takes the life of animals for sustenance within a strict code of regulations), one realizes that the bar is very high here. In fact, it is difficult to envision a change that is weightier than taking the life of another being. That said, if roughly half the sample set chose to undergo this change, the agent of change— Hunt for Food classes—can be viewed as a powerful catalyst. That students enroll in courses on which their point of view is already established tends to put the cart before the horse. While one can certainly take a course on a subject in which he or she is already interested and disposed to view positively. Just as often, one can enroll in a course about which he or she is undecided, ambivalent, or just plain curious. So, unless all students were unanimously positive about hunting prior to enrolling in Hunt for Food, it’s fair to say at least some underwent a change of opinion. Bolstering this are my observations as an instructor with more than a decade of teaching such classes: I’ve observed most entering students exhibit some degree of fear about using a firearm and taking an animal life. A unanimously positive subsequent view of hunting here suggests that this fear is allayed or overcome.

According to the current WDNR Hunting and Shooting Sports Program Specialist Emily Iehl, whose master’s thesis is cited above, “There appears to be lots of interest in Hunt for Food among people who didn’t grow up hunting. If we can offer relatable resources, experiences, and instructors, people are likely to take advantage of this.”

A brief scan of comments from Hunt for Food students shows similar sentiments. One student says, “I took a series of these classes, and now hunting and fishing for my own protein are an integral part of my life.” Another adds, “Without this class, I would not have felt prepared to join a group of seasoned hunters. The programs were a gift to help me carve out time for being outdoors, learning new skills, and navigating the ethics and emotions of hunting with a friendly and welcoming group.”

Still another says, “My family gathered and we feasted upon the wild turkey meat. As we digested, we could feel the meat nourishing our bodies and spirits, slowly becoming and building our life-filled molecules. The impact of this turkey hunt and the subsequent memories and nourishment it provided are simply intangible. Hunting and eating locally

Duck à l’Orange

There are many versions of this classic dish, and it’s served in both high-end restaurants and at the homes of humble duck hunters. The sharp taste of citrus contrasts nicely with the rich and meaty fowl, making it a winning combination. Take care not to overcook wild duck, as it becomes livery and tough. Interestingly, the author’s first bite of wild game was a version of Duck a l’Orange complimented with sauerkraut and caraway seeds.

INGREDIENTS

Breast fillets of prime-quality ducks (such as mallard, wood duck, pintail with skin left on). Substitute domestic duck breast, which will require slightly longer cooking, if wild duck isn’t available.

Salt and pepper

Flour

4 Tbsp clarified butter (butter with dairy solids removed)

1 C sherry or port

2 oz currant jelly

1 Tbsp grated orange rind

1 tsp of fresh grated ginger

1 C fresh squeezed orange juice

Water or broth as needed

1 Tbsp sugar (more as needed)

1 Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in a bit of cold water

Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

Salt and pepper duck breasts. Dredge them in flour and shake off the excess.

Heat a large cast iron or nonstick skillet on the stovetop. Add butter.

Brown each breast fillet well on either side. Do not cook the duck fully at this point; it should still be cool and pink at the center. Remove to oven.

Deglaze the pan with sherry. Add the currant jelly, orange rind, ginger, and orange juice. Simmer and reduce to half the original volume.

If too little liquid remains, add broth or water. Stir in the corn starch-water mixture. Taste the sauce. If it seems right to you, leave as is. IF you find it too tart, add sugar a little bit at a time. Check for salt and pepper and add as desired.

Replace the duck breast in the sauce, making sure to coat on both sides. Cook until just-done. Serve on the side of wild rice or mashed potatoes. A robust Côtes du Rhône or Bordeaux will round out the meal.

is a way of life that is as natural as the seasons.” Finally, another expressed that “these programs were my guide into the unknown ... without them, I’m certain this would still be a distant dream.”

DEEP BONDS AND WALKING SHADOWS

Novice or veteran, mentor or mentee, we live lives that are brief and bound by work and family. And yet, in this sojourn we undertake without mile markers, in this theater where we’re given no playbills, we find ourselves connected to others. We share a common experience. As I had the good fortune to learn, I am compelled to teach. The people I’ve met through hunting—male and female, gay and straight, Black, brown, and white—have become an extended family. We’ve logged in what feels like a lifetime on duck marshes and uplands, trout streams and lakes, backyard barbeques and game dinners. A particular day in the grouse woods with one friend comes to mind. We decided to take a break from hunting in a field of blackberry and milkweed. We picked up the milkweed pods, and, whimsically, let the floss fly out into the autumn breeze, watching it slip away toward the Minnesota line and then finally fade into nothing. We laughed together, and then laughed some more. In addition to the humor, I also felt something else which I can only put into words after the fact. No matter how hard we strive, no matter how much we want to pass something along, we’re still just small specks in a vast and existential enormity. “Out, out, brief candle,” Shakespeare’s Macbeth tells us. “Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”

John Motoviloff is the Wisconsin R3 and Outreach Coordinator for Pheasants Forever. He earned his Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin—Madison in 1992. He has worked for the University of Wisconsin Press, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Wisconsin DNR. In addition, he is the author of several books about the outdoors including Wild Rice Goose and Other Dishes of the Upper Midwest. He has written for the Wisconsin Academy Review, Grays Sporting Journal, a wide variety of conservation publications as well as in Fodors Travel Guides and National Geographic. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife Kerry and Labrador retriever Gypsy. He is an avid hunter, angler, forager, and cook.

Emily Lehl

A quiet moment during a mentored squirrel hunt in Sauk County.

TJ Everett/Stages Photography

Milwaukee PBS Producer Everett Marshburn with Clayborn Benson, founder and curator of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society and Museum

LET IT SHINE

AFTER FIVE DECADES IN PUBLIC TELEVISION, EVERETT MARSHBURN STILL HAS STORIES TO BRING INTO THE LIGHT

BY JAMES E. CAUSEY

Ask anyone who’s worked with award-winning television producer Everett Marshburn to describe him, and the consensus is clear.

“Great storyteller.”

“He’s committed to telling the untold stories of the Black community and the Black condition.”

“Great listener and ultimate professional.”

“Whatever he puts his stamp on, you know it’s going to be great.”

“He is a great researcher who understands how to showcase a story.”

“Incredible eye and a man loaded with an encyclopedia of journalistic knowledge.”

Top: Friends and colleagues Everett Marshburn and James Causey. Left: Torean Smith, a student in the Milwaukee Area Technical College’s TV Production Course, had the opportunity to be part of the studio crew. Right: Milwaukee PBS Multimedia Producer/Journalist Alexandria Mack with her daughter, Gia.

TJ Everett/Stages

Photography

I, too, have nothing but praise for Marshburn. For nearly a decade, I’ve worked with him as a news reporter at Black Nouveau, one of the country’s longest-running series on public television and an Emmy-winning program of Milwaukee PBS. Marshburn has produced the show, now in its 32nd season, since his arrival in Milwaukee in 2006.

As a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, I was a frequent guest on Black Nouveau, discussing a variety of topics. After several appearances, Marshburn saw enough in me to put me on the other side of the camera, interviewing people who were having a positive impact in the community. The switch was not easy, but Marshburn took his time mentoring me, and I started to see the improvements.

His advice was simple: “You know what you’re doing. Just relax and be yourself.”

Marshburn has accomplished much and received many honors in his nearly 60 years in public television. He’s won five Emmy Awards, 14 National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Awards, and two Milwaukee Press Club Awards. He was the 2014 recipient of the Bayard Rustin Leadership Award from Diverse and Resilient in Milwaukee, the 2012 Black Excellence Awardee in the field of Media from The Milwaukee Times, and a was a 2013 Inductee into Maryland Public Television’s Alumni Wall of Honor. In November, it was announced that Marshburn would receive one of the highest honors in television when he was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 2024 Gold Circle, the first person in the state to be bestowed with this honor.

Marshburn’s award goes beyond his five decades in the business, honoring his lifelong commitment to storytelling and shedding light on issues important to the African American community.

BREAKING INTO THE BUSINESS

Marshburn’s love of media began as a teenager with his passion for spoken word, poetry, music, Broadway, theater, and, of course, film and TV. The Baltimore, Maryland, native wrote plays for his church and continued to write several plays as a student at Morgan State University. When Marshburn switched his major from education to history, he became friends with Thomas Cripps, a professor at Morgan State, who wrote and lectured about the history of African-American cinema. Marshburn helped Cripps with research and editing, and in 1968, Cripps introduced him to Ken Resnick, a film director and producer. Resnick had been hired to head what was to become the film department at the Maryland Center of Public Broadcasting. Maryland was starting to build a public television system to serve its 23 counties and the city of Baltimore. In April of 1968, Marshburn received a call from Resnik to come in and talk.

“I was looking for a summer job so I could go back to school to work on my degree, and he offered me a full-time position as a production assistant that started that summer,” says Marshburn.

By the late 1960s, the nation was in steady conflict. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Protests and riots erupted in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Cleveland, and the Kerner Commission Report warned: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one White – separate and unequal.” The Commission criticized newspapers and television for failing to report on African-American life adequately or to employ

more than a token number of Blacks. The bottom line was that Blacks wanted a kind of journalism that spoke to them and provided them with news and information they could use. At the young age of 20, Marshburn would become part of this change.

“I always said I didn’t choose television; television chose me,” says Marshburn. “I’ve just been lucky enough to meet the right people and be able to make some impact.”

The entry-level position got Marshburn in the door and within a year he was a film cameraman. One of the shows he shot was called Strategy for Action, an urban affairs program that featured people and organizations finding solutions to the problems of urban America. In 1974 Marshburn created a series for the show called “Burglar Proofing,” documenting how easy it was to break into homes, using three ex-burglars as sources. Viewers could call in to request informational packets on how to prevent home invasions. The program earned him his first Emmy.

NABJ HOSTED A PANEL ON AIDS

For Marshburn, public television was an effective and influential vehicle to tell stories about African Americans through a more authentic lens. In the late 1980s, as the AIDS epidemic was sweeping the country, Marshburn again used public TV as a platform to raise awareness. Marshburn understood that AIDS was not just a gay, white man’s disease but a public health emergency that the African American community had yet to fully comprehend. This became apparent in 1988 when he attended a National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention, which hosted its first panel on AIDS.

“There were five people on the panel and three in the audience, and I was one of the three,” Marshburn says.

While the panel provided great information, the stigma and homophobia surrounding the disease kept people from attending. When Marshburn returned home, he knew he had to get information out to communities, which led to his nearly two-year project, Other Faces of AIDS

“The thing that struck me was that the time from diagnosis to death for a white person with AIDS was two years at that point, and the time for a Black person was six months,” says Marshburn. “I wanted to know why and what was going on.”

With what was considered a meager $25,000 budget, Marshburn and his team told stories from the frontlines in Miami, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, he met Bishop Carl Bean, who led a congregation that served as a haven for the Black LGBTQ community, and also founded an organization that brought care and attention to poor people of color living with HIV and AIDS in South L.A., when most of those efforts were being funded by white communities.

The one-hour segment aired in 1989 and featured then-U.S. Surgeon General Charles Everett Kopp, who cautioned against the stigma associated with AIDS and HIV: “We are fighting a disease, not people. Those already affected are sick and need our care, as do all sick patients. The country must face this epidemic as a unified society.”

Marshburn remembers the AIDS story as one of the most difficult projects he encountered in his career. Sources would go on the

“I just really wanted to speak up,” said 5th grader Zaida Smith on why she entered the citywide student speechwriting contest on the topic of “What Affects One … Affects All,” the central theme from Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Smith (pictured here with Marshburn) had the opportunity to give her speech on the Black Nouveau program.

record and then back out. Interview subjects feared how the story would be told–how they might be portrayed in a negative or stereotypical light. Yet, he persevered, knowing that the Black community was on the edge of a life-threatening catastrophe unless people were made aware of the dangers of HIV and AIDS.

WELCOME TO MILWAUKEE

After a string of layoffs in Maryland, Marshburn would make his way to Milwaukee after seeing an opening for a producer job at Milwaukee PBS on the NABJ listserv. He had visited Milwaukee during NABJ’s national convention and saw similarities between Baltimore and Milwaukee in terms of their proximity to even larger metropolitan areas and similar demographics for African Americans. Joe Savage, co-creator and former producer of Black Nouveau , was familiar with Marshburn’s work—they often competed against one another for NABJ awards—and felt confident Marshburn would take the show to the next level.

“I first met Marshburn 25 years ago,” recalls Savage. “We met in different cities, and over time, we became friends. His journalism integrity is unmatched. I had no doubt he would be excellent. I’ve never questioned his ability, and he’s never questioned mine. We have mutual respect, so when he came to Milwaukee, there was nothing I taught him that he didn’t already know. He’s a good storyteller, and we need someone to tell our stories.”

Liddie Collins, Emmy-winning co-creator, producer, and host of Black Nouveau, says Marshburn’s focus on positive change and impact has been one of his greatest contributions to Milwaukee and beyond.

“What I love the most about Marshburn is that he’s never been afraid to tackle tough issues,” says Collins. “What he does and stands on is what we will do about it to improve our conditions.”

Over the years, Black Nouveau has changed and evolved with the times. Once a weekly, the show now airs once a month. Personalities have come and gone. What has remained, though, is the quality of and commitment to the genre of storytelling. In six-minute segments, the program offers its viewers a slice of Black life that often goes untold.

In many ways, Marshburn’s work is its own form of activism as evidenced in two of his best-known documentaries: Freedom Walkers for Milwaukee , which aired on PBS Milwaukee in 2011, followed the city’s historical importance in the Civil Rights struggle of the mid-1900s, leading to its nickname, “The Selma of the North.” In 2017, a Black Nouveau special, Crossing the Bridge, depicted the tumultuous protest marches that pushed for the Fair Housing Act in 1968. The piece, for which Marshburn earned an Emmy Award, brilliantly forged a connection between the veteran marchers and the activism of today’s youth, who express themselves through spoken word and social justice movements, tackling the challenges that remain these 50 years later.

TJ Everett/Stages Photography

Veteran broadcast documentary producer Greg Morrison calls Marshburn a “complete journalist.” In characterizing Marshburn, Morrison reflects on an old saying that the job of the media is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

“Marshburn truly comforts the afflicted,” says Morrison. “He listens to them, and he gives them a voice. You can see it in everything he does.”

Morrison and Marshburn met in Chicago in 1997 while working with young journalists at the NABJ convention, and discovered they shared many of the same acquaintances in Baltimore. Morrison considers Marshburn a great friend, who loves great food, like Baltimore-style yakamein, the Baltimore Ravens, and a competitive game of pinochle.

I asked Marshburn, 75, if he was ready to slow down—maybe watch more football and play more pinochle: “Well, I still think I have something to offer because there are still stories out there that need to be told.”

He left me with a quote by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, who organized the 1963 March on Washington but was nearly written out of history because he was openly gay.

“God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.”

“This is what I live my life by,” says Marshburn.

James E. Causey is an award-winning special projects reporter and columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . He has spent over 30 years as a professional journalist after becoming the first African-American high school intern at the Milwaukee Sentinel at age 15. He worked for the paper every summer through high school. He worked as a night cops’ reporter, earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Marquette University, followed by an M.B.A. from Cardinal Stritch University. In 2008, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where he studied the effects of hip-hop music on urban youth.

Michael Ware, Blue Anti-Oxygens 2, 14” x 17” x 14”, Colored Porcelain, Silica Sand, Claze, and Glaze, 2022

CRAFTING BRILLIANCE

CERAMIC ARTISTS PERFORM ALCHEMY WITH GLAZES AND PIGMENTS

BY SARAH E. WHITE

In the world of pottery, where creativity and craftsmanship converge, some artists are not just molding and glazing their clay, but creating their own unique surface treatments. Experiments with glazes lead these artists down rabbit holes to places where earthy elements transform into never-before-seen hues and textures.

At the Center for the Visual Arts in Wausau, the studio produces 35 custom glazes. "It's like cooking," says potter Ron Hay. "There are thousands of recipes."

The Center for the Visual Arts in Wausau (CVA-Wausau) is spreading the joys of glaze-craft in central Wisconsin. Opened in 1976 and now located in a historic arts block in Wausau’s downtown, CVA-Wausau is a dynamic and inclusive space for both emerging and established artists. The Center takes pride in its education program, which offers workshops, classes, and lectures for both aspiring and seasoned artists.

Mara Mullen, Director of Education, finds that students in CVA-Wausau’s pottery classes come in “focused on the clay body— making a mug, a bowl, a vase—rather than thinking about how it might be glazed. They’ve never been exposed to this aspect of ceramics,” she said. “They look at our glaze board and they can be a little overwhelmed.” The studio, where potter Ron Hay has been artist-in-residence since the 1990s, currently produces 35 custom glazes. “It’s like cooking,” Hay said. “There are thousands of recipes. Potters share them, and there are books full of them.” But he noted that outcomes can still be unpredictable. “A lot of times, a recipe doesn’t work when you mix it up, because your chemicals came from a different part of the country than the than the other ceramicists.” A slightly different molecular composition can yield a quite different result. But, said Hay, “You don’t have to be a chemist— you learn to adjust recipes through trial and error.” Because most students want to make functional ware, almost all of Hay’s housemade glazes are designed to be food-safe.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SURFACE

People unfamiliar with ceramics may have admired the colorful surfaces of pottery without giving a thought to the “how” and “why” of their glazes. Glaze is a coating applied for both aesthetic and practical purposes, designed to adhere to a fired ceramic object. Glaze attributes vary widely, from glossy to matte, translucent to opaque, glassy-smooth to textural. Its main components are silica, which forms the glassy surface; flux that lowers the melting point to improve adherence; and alumina to stabilize the glaze. Silica comes from quartz, flux is often feldspar or boron compounds, and alumina is an element derived from clay. Additionally, pigments play a crucial role in ceramics, contributing to the rich palette of colors seen in glazed pieces. These finely ground substances are added to the glaze mixture or to the clay itself, to introduce hues and variations. Part of ceramic art’s appeal is the earth-bound nature of the materials involved.

Glaze components react in a kiln during the firing process. As the temperature rises, the glaze transforms from a powder into a molten, glassy substance. The right balance of silica, flux, and alumina, along with additional elements for color and texture, determines the final appearance of the glaze. Understanding this basic chemistry provides a practical foundation for ceramicists to experiment with different formulations to achieve specific effects on their pottery.

Beyond the three main components, a variety of other materials can be added depending on the artist’s vision for the piece. For example, colors and textures can be customized, and glazes can be made to move in certain ways to achieve effects such as cracking, foaming, or dripping. A glaze’s behavior and appearance depend on how it is fired—the same glaze may turn out differently with different temperature, timing, and the atmosphere in the kiln. Adding or reducing oxygen or introducing wood, salt, or other materials will also affect a glazed object’s ultimate appearance.

Beginners can get started in ceramics with just an introductory level of knowledge, or choose to advance as far as they like; the range of knowledge among working ceramic artists is broad. Some, however, who fall down the rabbit hole and discover the intriguing world of pigments and glazes, are driven to learn the chemistry behind this wonderful alchemy.

David Harper, an interdisciplinary artist living near Racine whose work is in the collections of the John Michael Kohler Art Center and The Museum of Wisconsin Art, began working with clay when he realized he was using non-clay materials to create objects that imitated ceramics. “At any point, you can choose to stop or go deeper. Knowing the basics is important, like how hot to fire certain things to achieve certain effects. Then people might get into making their own glazes, achieving effects nobody has ever seen before.”

Some artists introduce pigments into the clay itself, not just the glaze. Michael Ware creates abstract ceramic sculptures and teaches ceramics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He began working with stains and pigments to express his interest in “this geological world,” he said. “It was disappointing whenever I broke a little bit off a sculpture and it was white inside. Glaze is just on the surface, whereas when I color the clay, it has color the whole way through—like a rock.”

But, artists advise, do not start making glazes until you know how to do so safely. Understanding material hazards and proper use of studio equipment and tools is critical. Potters need to minimize aerosol particles and exposure to toxins. That means, when mixing clay and glazes, always wear a respirator and work with good ventilation systems; never eat or drink in the studio; wear safety glasses and gloves. Wipe down work surfaces and mop floors. Some glaze ingredients, like barium and lithium, yield beautiful effects but are toxic. The toxicity can range from mild skin irritation to causal factors in cancer. Kilns have their hazards, too. Loading and unloading heavy pieces can cause injury. While firing, fumes are present. It is important to avoid the area and/or use good ventilation and a respirator. Check that no combustible materials are located near a kiln before every firing. When producing functional ware, such as plates and mugs, use only food-safe glazes. Safety guidelines are reassessed regularly— otherwise, we might still use lead in glazes! Check for current information before working with glazes.

WHY GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE?

Potters choose to make their own glazes for several reasons including cutting costs, developing greater skill with their medium, and controlling the environmental impact of their work. But the reason most cited for diving into glaze-making is to achieve a specific creative vision.

The cost of commercial glazes often drives beginning potters to make their glazes. Simply setting up a studio requires an initial investment that can be steep even before purchasing dozens of glazes, which frequently cost more than twenty dollars a pint. Mixing glazes requires only common kitchen tools like a scale, mixer, and measuring utensils, and the ability to follow a recipe.

The educational value of learning to formulate and test glazes is undeniable; potters deepen their understanding of materials, chemistry, and firing processes through glaze-making. Mullen said, “With beginning students, we steer them towards our most predictable glazes because they put so much effort into making these precious objects. If they fail, it can turn students away from ceramics in general.” Ceramic-making involves not only experimentation but also failure. Learning to troubleshoot the causes of failures is important to the process.

Increasingly, ceramic artists are considering the environmental sustainability of their art form. Clays and the chemicals used in glazes are mined all over the world. Materials mined in one place are frequently shipped to distant locations for processing and then shipped again to the point of sale. Ware said, “I’ve become more aware of the environmental impact of ceramics and the environmental impact of all that transport.” Historically, potters lived close to sources of clay and mined the clay themselves. Today some

potters are working with “wild clay,” finding raw materials nearby and screening out impurities to create workable clay.

Madison-based potter and ceramics teacher Joanne Kirkland makes porcelain sculptural pieces inspired by the pottery of the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Japan. She primarily uses Grolleg, a blended china clay from England, where some Grolleg mines are now depleted. Kirkland said, “I recently started thinking I should use more local materials, what with climate change and the impact of transportation.” She has begun experimenting with wild clay herself. So has Ware, who likes using the local pale-gold clay that, made into bricks, gave Milwaukee the name Cream City. From the sustainability of the raw materials, through managing the risks of the more dangerous chemicals in glazes, to the disposal of waste materials, potters are increasingly choosing materials and processes for their environmental sustainability.

Artistic expression is the foundation of every aspect of a ceramic artist’s work and the dominant reason for making glazes. Color palettes, surface effects, and where a particular idea for a piece fits on the spectrum from functional to sculptural all factor in, driving choices about pigments and glazes. Experimentation is an integral part of that process, as artists tweak formulas, test new combinations, and push the boundaries of traditional glaze recipes to achieve unique results. Harper said, “Every ceramicist I know has libraries of test tiles where they have added grain after grain of a certain mineral to change a pigment or change how a glaze flows. Control is the draw for a lot of people.”

And yet control must be balanced with openness to serendipity. Scott Draves of Door Pottery in Madison teaches beginning and continuing students through local community programs. “I conceive of a glaze for each piece before throwing it, a process that only a small percentage of potters do. The best work comes out of the surprises and mistakes I make.”

Rachel Imsland, a potter who serves on the board of the Madison Area Potters Guild, said, “I have to remind myself to have no expectations, because when I expect a pot to look a certain way it won’t. You always need to be open and be ready for a surprise.” Imsland set up a home studio during the pandemic. She began making glazes because she missed the ones available at the Midwest Clay Project, a community clay studio in Madison, where she had worked prior to COVID. At first, Imsland saw making her own glazes as a huge hurdle. “As a beginner, you just want to think about making pots. Somebody else, please make the glaze. But with practice, you find, it’s fun!”

ARTISTS SPEAK

Custom creation of glazes and pigments is taking place across Wisconsin in schools, universities, community spaces, and artists’ studios. Some are working in traditional techniques and some are digging deeper with experiments that erase the line between the clay body and the glaze.

Scott Draves creates functional ware inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. This international trend in the decorative arts emerged as a reaction against the industrialization of the late 19th century. Its proponents championed craftsmanship, simplicity, and a return to traditional techniques in which the maker’s hand is visible. Draves recreates that style with pigments and glazes he customizes to mimic the originals, minus

the deadly lead content used in the glazes of a century ago. Like Draves, many of today’s ceramic artists are drawing inspiration from the ethos of the Arts and Crafts Movement, finding a potent source of creativity in its rejection of mass production and celebration of the handmade.

Kirkland took a ceramics class while studying fashion design in college, where she fell in love with the physical, tactile, experience of clay. “What drew me in was learning how to throw on the wheel; learning how to center was the hardest thing,” she said. “You have to be pretty centered yourself to do it. When you learn to use your body, that is a very magical experience.” Over the decades, she has evolved from an interest in functional objects to a focus on more metaphorical sculptural vessels. Throughout, her objects’ surfaces have been decorated with geometric representations of natural phenomena. Ancient pottery fascinates her; “I enjoy residing in a continuum of thousands of years of tradition,” said Kirkland. “It’s been a constant evolution and exploration, a dialogue with clay and glazes.”

CVA-Wausau’s Mullen started out primarily sculptural in her art, but after her teaching experience she now leans toward functional ware. “It’s a joy to create things I need and would like to use. But I do still love sculpture. I love rethinking the vase, rethinking the mug— how can I bring sculptural elements to these functional works?”

Harper considers himself not a ceramicist, but an artist who uses clay as part of his vocabulary. Originally from Toronto by way of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, he spent two seasons as the Kohler Arts and Industry Artist in Residence in winter 2012 and 2014. “There is a beautiful symbiotic relationship there,” he said. “Working in this very utilitarian environment, watching the grace, the dance of these factory associates working with the same material I use—it still affects the way I work in the studio, based on their model of efficiency.” Harper’s installations are cross-disciplinary and employ both traditional and nontraditional materials. “I make these small worlds that are so bizarre but are grounded by materials I choose because of their familiarity,” he said. “I choose colors and surface textures that are nostalgic.”

Christina West is an Associate Professor in Ceramics in the Art Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While teaching an introductory ceramics class, West found herself growing enthusiastic about what glaze can do that other materials can’t. “In trying to get the students excited about it, I sold myself on it,” she said. “You can change the qualities of an individual glaze, but when you put two or three glazes on top of each other, they do unpredictable things.” She explores the push-pull between unpredictability and replicability. “I’ve found a sweet spot where I know in general what’s going to happen, but I can’t predict exactly.” Her work is sculptural and frequently multi-media; her installations have explored fragmenting human forms and creating surface textures that contemplate mortality. “I feel very much like a painter when I’m glazing,” West said. “I’m thinking about marble, but I want a fleshiness to show through so it’s more humanistic.”

AT THE DRIPPING EDGE OF EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUE: GLOOPS AND CLAZES

Ceramic artists are embracing the expressive and organic nature of their materials and processes, part of a movement sometimes called “action claying” that exploits the alchemy inside the kiln. Some are

Toni Hafkenschied

David Harper, A Fear of Unknown Origin, 96” x 108”, Ceramic, glaze, 2012, Collection of the Museum of Wisconsin Art

Left: Scott Draves, 18”h x 8”w. Right: Scott Draves, three fainence cone 03 blend, 12”h x 5.5”w. Scott Draves

Christina West, Untitled, 12”h x 20”w x 16”d, glazed porcelain, 2021.

Jason Houge

Morgan Baldinelli

Morgan Baldinelli, Giving In, 22” x 11” x 10”, Ceramic, 2022

WHERE WILL TOMORROW’S GLAZE-MAKERS LEARN THEIR CRAFT?

A journey down the rabbit hole of custom-made pigments and glazes leads to something akin to the extremes at the earth’s core, where intense heat applied to earth elements produces a magic array of rocks and minerals. One wonders what tomorrow’s ceramic artists will produce, and how they will learn their craft.

Draves, who teaches pottery through Madison School-Community Recreation (MSCR) and at Madison College, observed, “Everything used in ceramics is essentially broken-down rock. The first time students get their hands on that, they just love the feel of the material. Nine out of ten will want to try another class.” But will there be classes for them to enroll in?

using “gloop” glazes, a term coined to describe thick, viscous, unpredictable surface treatments, which represent a departure from the traditional, more controlled glazing techniques. Heat determines whether clay and glazes behave like solids, liquids, or even gasses. Gloop work is characterized by drips, dynamic textures, and vibrant colors. Artists are drawn to the serendipity inherent in a process that leaves so much to the kiln’s environment to complete.

One of West’s graduate students, Morgan Baldinelli, is part of this trend, creating clay bodies with voids that she fills with gloop, then suspends in the kiln so that drips pour from inside the pieces when the kiln reaches its highest temperature. “I’m personally fascinated with glazes and how surface texture occurs,” she said.

“The only thing connecting the two gray pieces is the gloop material. It took a bit to figure out how to suspend it in the kiln so that it would flow as I wanted.”

Ware was drawn to ceramics once he discovered the parallels between the ceramic process and certain geologic processes; in both, materials combine through heat, pressure, and time. Bringing that into his vision for his pieces, he said, “I’m not so much trying to replicate what forms look like but more so to bring out their energy.” Seeking to express energy with color, he began adding pigments to clay when he noticed the colors were even more vibrant than glazes.

Recently Ware has begun experimenting with the sculptural qualities of glazes. “I call it “claze” because it’s kind of a mixture of clay and glaze,” he said. “I play a lot with that boundary between the two. I try to create some parameters to then experiment within and solve problems.” In some of Ware’s work, he uses claze—and the kiln’s heat—to fuse in the kiln small individual elements built of clay to make larger sculptural pieces. In others, he buries claze in boxes filled with sand, and then excavates the resulting pieces after firing. “That came from my interest in geology,” he observed.

This trend in ceramic arts embraces spontaneity and the imperfections that arise in the creative process. It celebrates the unplanned and the unrestrained. It is only natural that counter-trends will emerge as they always have, pushing the boundaries in different directions. We may next see a deliberate move away from the exuberance of gloop glazes toward minimalist and refined aesthetics, where artists opt for cleaner lines and precise glazing techniques.

While teachers report that classes fill immediately, some schools and universities under pressure from tight finances have closed pottery teaching studios and even ended arts instruction entirely. At CVA-Wausau, Mullen said, “We’re lucky because we have wonderful arts educators within our school system. But I know that access to ceramics equipment and facilities isn’t the case elsewhere, especially in more rural areas. We try to spread what we do here as far into the state as we can.” Rural schools in central Wisconsin bring their students into Wausau for immersion days offered at the Center’s pottery studio.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s data indicates that student enrollment in ceramic arts programs declined from 32 percent in 2019 to 28 percent in 2021, while overall arts enrollment dropped by 10.7 percent in that timeframe. To lose more arts programs, especially in ceramics, would be a blow.

Ware observed, “Ceramics inherently creates communities because it’s hard to do alone. Filling and firing a kiln can be very laborious. Also, potters work long hours in a space shared with other people.” At a time when social isolation has been identified as a national health threat and young people are experiencing worsening mental health, arts programs offer a counter-balance. Kirkland said, “When I started teaching at Madison College, so many students told me, ‘This is like therapy.’”

But perhaps the most important reason to call for the continuation of arts education programs is the least tangible. “When students ask me what they can do with a ceramics degree,” Ware said, “I tell them, you’re qualified for everything and nothing. You are learning problem-solving skills, and those are invaluable throughout your life.”

Sarah E. White is a freelance writer and personal historian. She helps people write about their lives and work from her home base in Madison.

Joanne Kirkland, 4”h x 3.5” w. The black glaze overlapping the tan glaze which has rutile in it causes tiny crystals to form and creates a visual texture or mottling.

Joanne Kirkland

TruStage Financial Group’s new building on its west Madison campus earned LEED Gold certification, the second-highest designation from the U.S. Green Building Council.

SUSTAINABILITY INC.

WHEN FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES ADOPT SUSTAINABILITY AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY, INNOVATION CAN LEAD TO BETTER WORLDS AND BETTER BOTTOM LINES

BY KRISTINE HANSEN

Wisconsin’s long been a national leader in sustainability.

After all, former Gov. Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in 1970. And, in 1968, Madison became the first community in the country to offer curbside recycling. Today, the state ranks number two—only behind California—in its number of organic farms, and has pledged to generate 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050. But even before this, Wisconsin’s landscape

birthed

many environmentalists, including Aldo Leopold, the author of “A Sand County Almanac,” who taught wildlife management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1930s; and John Muir, who lived on a farm near Portage with his family as a child in the 1850s.

“We have a long history of conservation and outdoor recreation in the state that supports employees and business leaders valuing our natural resources," says Jessy Servi Ortiz, managing director of Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council.

In recent years this sustainability mantra has expanded into the Wisconsin business sector, inching into industries as small and niche as a dental office and a coffee roaster, but also into a major hospital system, a clothing and lifestyle brand, and a manufacturer of boat parts. Whether it’s about adopting renewable energy, offsetting greenhouse gasses, recycling, or using post-consumer recycled materials, earth-friendly innovators are attracting the attention of both their employees and customers.

Organizations like the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council foster community and conversation within the business sector so that there is a process for sharing both the positives and the pitfalls. One example is the Council’s Green Masters Program®, a virtual tool open to any business wanting to improve its sustainability. Businesses first measure their own performance and then benchmark themselves against the maturing field.

“The tool helps companies define, prioritize, measure and improve their sustainability performance through systems development, best practices and performance improvement,” says Jessy Servi Ortiz, managing director of Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council (WSBC).

Participating in the program entitles them to use the Green Masters Program logo in their marketing. At the Council’s annual conference, businesses convene to continue to learn and share best practices around mitigating risk around climate and improving their environmental and social performance.

“We have a long history of conservation and outdoor recreation in the state that supports employees and business leaders valuing our natural resources,” says Servi Ortiz. “These values often translate to business practices and wanting to leave a legacy for future generations.”

LANDING AN EARTH-FRIENDLY ETHOS

Headquartered in Dodgeville since 1963, the Lands’ End clothing brand is the Midwest equivalent of L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer, with outerwear, casual clothing, and home goods like towels and comforters. For the company, durability—products that stand the test of time—is built into its DNA.

“From the beginning of Lands’ End, we’ve always had an emphasis on quality products that last for generations,” says Lauren Kasten, the company’s PR manager. “With that in mind, the hope is our customers use our products continuously and don’t have to worry about replacing their items over and over again.” So it was not hard to move toward greater sustainability.

Recently the company issued six product goals to accomplish by 2025. Two have already been met: 100 percent compliance with the Responsible Down Standard (ensures humane treatment of geese and ducks, whose feathers are used for insulation) and 30 percent of garments made with fabric finishes that use less water in manufacture. The three that are left to tackle are: 100 percent cotton from sustainable sources, 100 percent polyester fibers from recycled sources, and—to bring this all together—a product lifecycle component that allows for recycling.

In 2016, Lands’ End started working with Martex Fiber on an innovative project. Material scraps and clothing that can’t be repurposed by Lands’ End are sent to this textile-recycling company and transformed into post-consumer fibers used in a variety of

new ways. This includes noise insulation in automobiles as well as bedsheets, socks, knit caps, and home furnishings.

One of the brand’s own products realized through post-consumer recycling is a line of denim pants for women that debuted in 2023. The pants are made of fabric from Recover, a company—like Martex Fibers—that takes textile waste scraps and makes them useful again. Each pair of jeans made from Recover fabric features 20 percent recycled cotton fiber. In addition to this, there is very little indigo dying that takes place in production, another way of limiting water usage in the manufacturing process.

SUSTAINABLE SMILES

While much of the sustainability efforts at Madison’s Artisan Dental can actually be put into practice in other office environments, it’s also getting major attention within the dental industry.

Founders Nicole and Scott Andersen—who operate the U.S.’s first carbon-neutral general dentistry practice—were invited to speak at the first Sustainability in Dentistry, a global conference. They’ve also created a no-cost webinar (available on YouTube) for other dentists about how to shift their practice to carbon-neutral status. And, finally, by collaborating with dental-industry suppliers they’re educating others about how dental offices can become even more green.

Their carbon-neutral operation begins with the purchase of 100 percent of its electrical supply through Madison Gas and Electric’s Green Power program, which draws primarily on wind and solar power installations. As for the day-to-day tasks in their office that lean toward sustainability, they include going all-digital with patient records and communications, eliminating toxic cleaning and disinfecting products and also toxic chemicals normally used to develop X-rays, installing low-flow toilets, using low- or no-VOC paints and ceiling tiles, turning to steam sterilization (because it’s nontoxic), and maximizing natural light (using less artificial light) with tons of windows. Carpeting is crafted from 100-percent recycled materials and anybody—not just patients—can bring in toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, floss containers and mouthwash bottles to be recycled. Artisan Dental partners with the company, TerraCycle, as a public drop-off station for items that don’t qualify for curbside recycling. TerraCycle researches and develops recycling methods for items that would otherwise go in the landfill. The dental office also takes care of recycling clear aligners, a popular product for straightening teeth.

Finally, the company donates one percent of revenue from the Artisan Dental Health Plan to environmental nonprofits, some of which are in Dane County.

THE GREAT STATE OF COFFEE

In the big-wide world of food and drink, locally-owned and community-based coffee roasters have been leading the way when it comes to environmental stewardship and social justice for a long time.

Wonderstate Coffee was founded in 2005 by TJ Semanchin and Caleb Thomas in the agriculturally diverse Driftless Region, which enjoys a flourishing economy for organic and artisanal food. The coffee roaster, originally named Kickapoo Coffee, got its start selling to local coops and boutique grocery stores.

Before launching Wonderstate Coffee, Semanchin worked for seven years at Peace Coffee in the Twin Cities, a leader in organic, Fair Trade coffee since its 1996 founding. That experience has helped Wonderstate Coffee lend more support to coffee farmers to ensure they are paid fair wages. Eighty percent of the farms they work with are smaller than 12 acres and the largest clocks in at 125 acres. Nearly all are family-owned and organic, and keep money in the community. They particularly enjoy working with farms that practice organic fertilization, organic composting, and judicious tree pruning. These practices reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by capturing and keeping carbon in the soil or in the living plants—and out of the atmosphere.

Now keenly aware of how climate change affects these farmers, Wonderstate became one of the world’s first roasters to switch to solar power. This new source of electricity is used for heating, cooling, vacuum systems and lights at the roastery.

As a further commitment to honoring the environmental landscape, including its stewards, in 2019 the co-owners went so far as to change their name—a costly process, as any business owner knows—because they felt Kickapoo Coffee’s name did not belong to them; instead, it belonged to the indigenous Kickapoo Nation.

Wonderstate now has four cafes: in Viroqua, Madison, and Bayfield. At the cafes, efforts are made to compost food waste and offer customers a discount if they bring in a Wonderstate reusable cup—instead of filling yet another paper cup. Bonus: twenty-five cents of each drink purchase supports reforestation efforts at coffee farms. And one dollar from each bag of Organic Canopy coffee goes to a fund that helps plant both shade and coffee trees, with those shade trees protecting the coffee trees from effects of climate change.

BUILDING A TRUE GREEN BUSINESS MODEL

Known as CUNA Mutual Group until 2022 when they adopted a new brand name, TruStage Financial Group is about more than following the money as most finance-oriented businesses do. While they do sell insurance and investment products to credit unions and their members, the 89-year-old company says it also wants to protect the Earth’s natural resources at the same time.

When building an addition to its west side campus in Madison— dubbed The Lighthouse—TruStage worked with EUA, an architecture firm, to earn LEED Gold certification, the second-highest designation from the U.S. Green Building Council. Earning 72 points, it is the highest point total of any LEED v4 (the newest LEED version) project in Wisconsin with publicly available information.

From triple glazed bird deterrent glass to a 10,000-gallon cistern that collects rain from the roof for reuse, the newly revitalized campus boasts 35 percent restored native vegetation, which also creates a calming environment for workers when coming and going from the office. Energy use was slashed nearly in half thanks to 75 percent of occupied spaces having access to natural daylight and efficient lighting. Indoor water use has also been reduced by nearly 40 percent. The toilets, urinals, and plumbing fixtures alone save an estimated 100,000 gallons of water annually.

Just a peek at the five-story, 125,000-square-foot building reveals this is a smart design. Walls of glass coax in natural light and greenery is abundant, including a living-greenery wall near a floating staircase on each floor. The idea is to make this a healthy and appealing place

to work, with a rooftop terrace, auditorium, dining area and collaboration spaces to coax people into conversation and human contact, particularly important after pandemic lock-downs.

Knowing that asphalt and gasoline are air pollutants, TruStage moved the parking structure underground. They were recently recognized for these efforts by the WSBC’s Green Masters Program.

GUNNING FOR GREEN

The impetus for this La Crosse hospital and health-care system to include renewable energy in its thinking and planning occurred in 2008. “As an organization, we were building a new hospital and our CEO came to us and said ‘Can we make this a net-zero building?’” recalls Alan Eber. “We said ‘Yes, and we can make the entire corporation net zero.’”

Eber is director of Envision, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gundersen Health System, which functions as its energy and sustainability division. This is a big job since the company operates six hospitals and 70 clinics in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.

Instead of the standard way—through a utility—Gundersen Health System was successful in harnessing energy from four other sources: solar installations on-site, biomass (wood byproduct from local wood mills near their northern facilities), biogas from three Dane County farms (cow manure turned into biogas), and local windmills.

It was also important to Gundersen that the energy come from local sources and not out of state wherever possible.

Within the first two years, energy use was reduced by 35 percent at the main campus, in La Crosse. The Legacy Building, completed in 2014, also earned LEED certification.

The company went net-zero for two reasons. One, to reduce costs as a company during a health-care cost crisis. “Today, we’re saving $5.6 million a year,” says Eber. The other reason? If the mission is to keep people healthy and from getting sick, then creating healthy environments free of toxins easily falls in line with that reasoning.

Efforts to incorporate sustainability into one’s business also opens up opportunities that weren’t otherwise there. “It’s helped put us at the table where we might not normally be,” says Eber. “It helped us recruit new staff. We had physicians calling Gundersen to say ‘One of the reasons I want to interview is the sustainability effort,’ especially the younger people.”

In addition to ongoing efforts in La Crosse, Gundersen has since implemented a dozen similar projects centered around renewable energy. Nearly every facility has solar power now. Clinics range in size from 5,000 square feet to 90,000 square feet. In 2014 they became the first energy-independent hospital system in the country—essentially producing an energy surplus.

In January, Gundersen opened a clinic in downtown Elroy as its first on-site, net-zero energy building. This is different from all the other clinics, which rely on energy generated off site, and it represents the company’s movement toward even greater self-sufficiency.

Partnering with local businesses that had waste biofuels to sell was also an important strategy for Gundersen. Examples were a brewery that had a methane byproduct useful for producing electricity, and a county landfill that generated methane gas that could be tapped and used for heating.

Neal Olson

Ray Siler

Left: Wonderstate Coffee founders TJ Semanchin (left) and Caleb Thomas Above: Wonderstate Solar arrays system at Wonderstate’s roastery in Viroqua.

A SEA OF SUSTAINABILITY

As a maker of propulsion systems for boats, and operating as Brunswick Corporation’s marine engine division, encouraging people to get out and enjoy the water is built into all of Mercury Marine’s marketing. So why not also do their best to keep Wisconsin’s waterways as clean as possible?

Looking back to last year, three product introductions are in perfect pitch with those sustainability aims. All are Avator electric outboard motor platforms, the first of which debuted in early 2023 at the Consumer Electronics Show: Avator 7.5e. The process of developing these electric outboards took two years. Swap-in, swap-out batteries charge overnight in a standard household outlet.

According to Brunswick’s 2022 environmental report—the latest data available—Mercury Marine has also made significant progress toward meeting three environmental goals with deadlines in 2025: reduce water consumption by a quarter, energy consumption by 25 percent, and emissions of outboard engines and sterndrive/inboards.

For all of its efforts, the company just received its 13th consecutive Green Masters Level Award, a designation awarded by the WSBC.

In addition to weaving sustainability into their products and services, supporting sustainable-minded initiatives through charitable giving is another mantra for these Wisconsin businesses. Many choose to align with projects close to home, to further preserve the communities in which they are located. For example, Lands’ End became a founding corporate partner of the Clean Lakes Alliance of the Dane County area in 2010 by donating clothing, volunteer hours and money—and continues to be a partner. And, in 2022, Mercury Marine donated $5,000 to Winnebago Waterways Program, whose conservation efforts focus on Lake Winnebago.

“We will continue to see a rise in opportunities for businesses to add value through sustainability,” says the WSBC’s Servi Ortiz. “Exasperated with inflation, climate, and social challenges, consumers are rewarding companies for reducing costs and environmental impact, increasing worker retention and satisfaction, and collaborating with customers and stakeholders for solutions. In turn, those businesses are growing through new customers and markets with whom they didn’t previously have access.”

Based in Milwaukee, writer Kristine Hansen loves supporting Wisconsin businesses that advocate for sustainability and climate change, whether it’s wearing her Lands’ End cheetah-print fleece pullover or buying coffee from a coffee roaster like Wonderstate Coffee that pays farmers a fair wage.

PAIRED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

FEBRUARY 23 – MAY 5, 2024

LISA MARIE BARBER Playground

JAYNE KING unearthed

MAY 24 – AUGUST 5, 2024

5-10-100: WOMEN ARTISTS FORWARD FUND

Jennifer Angus, Adriana Barrios, Mary Bero, Yeonhee Cheong, Angelica Contreras, Lilada Gee, Katherine Steichen Rosing, Alice Traore, Babette Wainwright

AUGUST 23 – OCTOBER 20, 2024

NIRMAL RAJA

A Question of Thread

Learn more and register at wisconsinacademy.org/gallery

Young Barred Owl at Picnic Point in Madison, Wisconsin.

Dexter Patterson

FLIGHT OF RESILIENCE

BY DEXTER PATTERSON

In the heart of Wisconsin’s sprawling landscapes, my journey into the world of birding began—as did this tale of resilience, self-discovery, and the profound importance of diverse social representation in outdoor activities. Join me on this expedition through the chapters of my transformative experiences, and the evolution of birding in the Badger State.

A LEGACY OF LISTENING

My foray into birding began with the wisdom of my grandfather, Ed Brown, a seasoned birder who always found solace in nature. Grandpa Brown, a father of eleven, made nature a cost-effective haven for his large family. Our family’s pursuit of recreation through state parks laid the foundation for my budding love for the outdoors. And Grandpa’s passion for eagle-watching on the Mississippi River and his whimsical tales of bully Blue Jays at his feeders became threads intricately woven into the fabric of what I like to refer to as my “Bird Nerd” identity.

My grandfather’s backyard bird feeders and binoculars were everpresent, ensuring he was always within reach of the captivating beauty of his birds. His humor, love for the outdoors, and meticulous care for his yard left an indelible mark on my soul. Inheriting his passion for the painstaking upkeep of my yard, cutting the grass, and pruning my flowers became more than chores; they transformed into a therapeutic escape. Hours would pass as I sat, mesmerized by the diversity of backyard birds at my feeder, binoculars always within arm’s reach. My first pair of binoculars, a gift from my mother, and once my grandfather’s, propelled my birdwatching habit to new heights.

A JOURNEY IN COLOR

Despite my burgeoning connection with nature, my childhood experiences paled compared to my mother’s tales of outdoor adventures. As a man of color, the lack of representation of people like me in the birding and outdoor community left me feeling disconnected. Green spaces were scarce in our low-income neighborhoods, and individuals who resembled me were seldom seen reveling in the outdoors, let alone cherishing the marvels of bird life.

The turning point in my journey arrived in 2008, a tumultuous year for many in our country, when the economic crisis reshaped lives. As a hardworking family man, I suddenly found myself among hundreds of laid-off local factory workers. The abrupt shift shook the foundations of my mental well-being, casting me into a seemingly impossible darkness and depression.

Amidst the chaos, an unexpected lifeline emerged—my newfound passion for birds and the simple joy of birding. Nature became a sanctuary where I sought refuge from the storm of uncertainties that clouded my mind. In this turbulent period, my late grandmother’s voice echoed, encouraging me to harness my intellect and forge a path beyond the confines of factory walls.

Black Tern perched on the boardwalk at Horicon Marsh in Dodge County.

Dexter Patterson

CELEBRATE SPRING MIGRATION: A WISCONSIN BIRDING ADVENTURE FOR ALL

As winter's chill retreats, Wisconsin transforms into a vibrant spectacle of birdlife during the annual spring migration. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned birder, our state's diverse landscapes provide an enchanting backdrop for our feathered friends. Join us as we explore renowned birding destinations in the Badger State, encounter captivating species, and equip you with everything you need for a productive and fun birding experience.

Horicon National Wildlife Refuge Located in Dodge County, Horicon Marsh is a migratory haven and one of the largest freshwater cattail marshes in the United States. In this pristine habitat, observe flocks of Sandhill Cranes, grassland birds, waterfowl, terns, and shorebirds. See the endangered Whooping Cranes that breed at Horicon Marsh and listen for the distinctive calls of the exotic-looking Yellow-headed Blackbirds.

Milwaukee Lakefront Witness the vibrant transformation of Milwaukee's Lakefront into a lively migratory corridor each spring. Enjoy the sight of various warblers, sparrows, and waterfowl at prime viewing spots like Bradford Beach, Grant Park, and Lakeshore State Park. The Milwaukee Lakefront consistently welcomes unexpected visitors, offering rare bird sightings during the spring season, making it a must-visit destination for bird enthusiasts.

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge Discover tranquility at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Juneau County, a captivating sanctuary for bird watchers and nature lovers. Explore diverse landscapes, from wetlands to savannas. Encounter a variety of migratory and resident bird species, such as owls, eagles, warblers, and nesting Whooping Cranes.

Wyalusing State Park Nestled at the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers convergence in Grant County, Wyalusing State Park is a haven for raptors and songbirds, including the stunning Cerulean Warbler. Take a scenic hike along the bluffs, enjoying expansive views of the two rivers while discovering the vast diversity of birds in the park. While relishing Wyalusing's offerings, consider expanding your birding adventures to other state parks throughout Wisconsin.

Peninsula State Park Embrace the natural beauty of picturesque Peninsula State Park in Door County, where diverse habitats attract a variety of bird species. Explore wooded areas, shorelines, and open fields, spotting resident and migratory birds. High atop Eagle Tower, which is wheelchair accessible, take in a canopy view of migrants.

Crex Meadows Wildlife Area Crex Meadows, located in Grantsburg, Wisconsin, is a sanctuary for 270 bird species, drawing numerous visitors during the spring migration. Venture into the expansive 30,000 acres, where restored wetlands and grasslands offer an ideal habitat for wildlife. Look for the majestic Sandhill Cranes, and various waterfowl and shorebirds.

Picnic Point – Lakeshore Nature Preserve Situated along the shores of Lake Mendota within the University of Wisconsin—Madison campus, Picnic Point extends into University Bay and provides a serene wooded setting for birding enthusiasts. Witness a variety of flycatchers, waterfowl, woodpeckers, herons, and migrating songbirds in this tranquil environment.

Wisconsin Point Venture to Wisconsin Point in the city of Superior for a unique birding experience along the shores of Lake Superior. This scenic location—one of the largest freshwater sandbars in the world—is known for its diverse birdlife, offering opportunities to observe waterfowl, shorebirds, and other species.

All photos by Dexter Patterson

Top Row Left to Right: Whooping Crane at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin; Members of the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin exploring Horicon Marsh; Prairie Warbler at Carpenter Ridgeway Park in Madison, Wisconsin. Bottom Row Left to Right: Members of the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin exploring Horicon Marsh; Male Wood Duck, Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin; Members of the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin at its first birding event at Nine Springs in Madison, Wisconsin.

COMMON SPRING MIGRANTS TO WATCH FOR:

Warbler Wonderland Witness a lively spring spectacle as trees burst into life with flocks of migrating warblers like the American Redstart, Blackburnian Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, and Black-throated Green Warbler. Wisconsin’s state parks and natural reserves, characterized by diverse habitats and old-growth trees, are exceptional locations for spotting these vibrant and colorful gems.

Raptors in Flight Experience the majestic flight of raptors at the locations above. Watch for American Kestrels, Bald Eagles, Osprey, Red-tailed Hawks, and Turkey Vultures gracefully soaring in the sky.

Shorebirds at Horicon Marsh, Crex Meadows, and Necedah National Wildlife Refuge These regions welcome a diverse array of shorebirds during migration. Sandpipers, plovers, rails, stilts, and killdeer congregate around the wetlands, providing fantastic opportunities for observation.

ESSENTIAL TOOLS FOR YOUR BIRDING QUEST

Binoculars Invest in good binoculars that fit your budget for clear and detailed bird watching. Look for ones with 8x42 or 10x42 magnification for a better view. If you’re in the Greater Madison Area, you can borrow a birding backpack from the Madison Library. Also, many birding clubs have free binoculars for you to use at their events. It’s a great way to start your birding adventure without spending too much!

Field Guides Carry a comprehensive field guide specific to the region for deeper learning. The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America or Peterson Field Guide to Birds of Eastern & Central North America are excellent choices.

Birding Apps Download birding apps like Merlin Bird ID to enhance your identification skills. These apps provide real-time information and can help identify bird calls.

Camera or Smartphone Capture your birding encounters using a camera or smartphone. Documenting your sightings allows you to share these moments with family and friends and create enduring memories.

A MENTOR’S EXAMPLE

Empowered by my family’s unwavering belief in my potential, I decided to return to school as an adult student. In this endeavor, Dr. Jeff Galligan, my academic advisor at Madison Area Technical College, played a pivotal role. A man of color and a passionate birder, Dr. Galligan wasn’t just an academic guide but a representation of inclusivity in the natural world that I had craved as a child. Jeff always says, “If you can see it, you can be it.” With that, I started my own migration.

Jeff’s shared love for birds and his prowess as a bird photographer became the catalyst for a profound shift in my life. Under his guidance, my journey transformed from a haze of uncertainty to a laser-focused pursuit of a communications profession. I began developing my own skills in nature photography and multi-media. Dr. Galligan’s steadfast support and faith in my abilities reshaped my self-perception, instilling a newfound confidence. I no longer feared sharing my love for birds; instead, I embraced it as an intrinsic part of my identity. The Wisco Birder was born.

THE BIPOC BIRDING CLUB OF WISCONSIN

My story was not just a personal triumph; it sparked a movement. Collaborating with Dr. Galligan, we created the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin in 2021. This community—Black, Indigenous, and People of Color—emerged as a haven for people of color and allies who shared a love for the outdoors and birding. More than a collective, it became a testament to the transformative power

American Redstart is singing at Horicon Marsh.

Dexter Patterson

of shared passions and representation. We wanted to be a part of the solution. BIPOC Birding Club is a conduit and a safe space for people like us who want to let their Bird Nerd flag fly with pride. As members, we find solace in the camaraderie of like-minded individuals who cherish Wisconsin’s natural landscapes and its vibrant, feathered residents. This communal space became a celebration of birds and a testament to the resilience and strength ingrained in diversity, a core tenet of our mission.

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF BIRDING

With the COVID-19 pandemic, birdwatching experienced a significant upswing in nationwide participation as individuals escaped into the outdoors. The lockdowns that gripped much of the country inadvertently sparked a renewed appreciation for nature, prompting a collective realization that the outdoors could be a sanctuary for rediscovery and fulfillment.

As the community of bird enthusiasts, affectionately known as “Bird Nerds,” continues to flourish, the traditional image of a birder is transforming. Leveraging my @WiscoBirder social media platforms, I am actively reshaping and diversifying the perception of what it means to be a birder, emphasizing that these winged wonders are meant for everyone’s enjoyment. Over the years, my birding videos have amassed millions of views, each helping break stereotypes and dismantling cultural barriers surrounding the hobby. My grandfather would undoubtedly delight in the diverse flock of bird enthusiasts that have taken flight, particularly in the case of his grandson.

NATURE’S INCLUSIVE SANCTUARY

Reflecting on my bird-watching journey, I was struck by the profound connection between nature and the human spirit. In the feathered world and in ourselves, I saw inherent resilience. The diverse birdlife, each species with its unique melody and vibrant plumage, became companions in this adventure. Their wings, more than just tools for flight, symbolized freedom and the tenacity to weather life’s storms—a powerful metaphor echoing the strength in each of us.

I encourage you to begin your own birding journey. Let my example inspire you to discover the wonders that await. Join the harmonious dance of nature, marvel at the rich mosaic of life, and unfold a new chapter in your own story. Are you ready? Let’s go!

Dexter Patterson is a multimedia professional, contributing as a freelance photographer, writer, and faculty member in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at University of Wisconsin—Madison, and co-founder of the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin.

Scarlet Tanager at Picnic Point in Madison, Wisconsin.

Dexter Patterson

A campaign speech by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Field House. Reprinted by permission of Wisconsin Historical Society, WHI-8118

WISCONSIN FOR KENNEDY

EAU CLAIRE AUTHOR’S LATEST BOOK HIGHLIGHTS POIGNANT

MOMENTS IN JFK’S 1960 WISCONSIN PRIMARY CAMPAIGN

BY B.J. HOLLARS

While much has been written about John F. Kennedy’s presidency, personal life, and tragic death, less is known of his 1960 primary race to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Of the various state primaries in which Senator Kennedy ran, perhaps none provided a better education for the future president than Wisconsin, where Kennedy spent three cold months sparring with Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. “I suppose there is no training ground for the Presidency,” Kennedy remarked in Milwaukee in 1962, “but I don’t think it’s a bad idea for a President to have stood outside of Mayer’s meat factory…at 5:30 in the morning with the temperature ten above.”

Wisconsin wasn’t only a “training ground” for the candidate, but a testing ground, too. The Wisconsin primary was destined to reveal answers to pressing political questions, including how an East Coast senator would fare in a head-to-head matchup with a popular Midwestern senator from “next door,” as well as whether Wisconsin Protestants were willing to vote for a Catholic. The stakes were high for both candidates. Senator Kennedy remarked that if he lost the Wisconsin primary, he would drop out of the race.

On April 5, 1960—primary day—Kennedy bested Humphrey with 56.5 percent of the vote, winning six of ten districts. It was hardly the knockout blow the Kennedy campaign had hoped for. In addition to squeaking out a victory, they also learned lessons from near defeat. Most importantly, that politics is always personal, and successful campaigning often requires a personal touch. While Senator Kennedy didn’t know every Wisconsinite by name, he understood the importance of learning as many names as possible. Even if, on occasion, Wisconsinites didn’t remember his.

One such encounter occurred on February 23, 1960, when Wisconsin state architect Karel Yasko was given last-minute instructions to introduce Senator Kennedy to a crowd of architects—which he did with little success. But Yasko’s faux pas inadvertently set into motion a beautiful example of Senator Kennedy’s quick wit, long memory, and personalized approach to reaching every voter.

Throughout my two years researching and writing Wisconsin for Kennedy, I was regularly struck by Senator Kennedy’s personal approach to campaigning throughout the state. Hardly a day goes by without an acquaintance stopping to regale me with their own Kennedy story. How they shook his hand outside a tire plant in Eau Claire, or at a diner in Marshfield, or outside a chapel in Beloit.

The Wisconsin primary didn’t just help propel Kennedy to the presidency; it shaped the president he would become.

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS

Karel Yasko and Ivan Nestingen | February 23, 1960

One month and thirteen days before the Wisconsin primary

Forty-eight-year-old Karel Yasko smiled as he listened to the laughter that filled the dining room of Madison’s Hotel Loraine. This was the perfect venue for the night’s festivities: the Wisconsin chapter of the American Institute of Architects annual convention. To the untrained eye, the ten-story hotel was a brick box on West Washington Avenue, but to Karel—Wisconsin’s newly hired state architect—it was a fine example of the Beaux Art tradition, which melded Tudor and Mediterranean styles. Completed in 1924, the Hotel Loraine was just one of the many achievements of Milwaukee-based architect Herbert Tullgren, who was famous for designing schools, hotels, and apartment buildings throughout the state.

As state architect, Karel had become adept at seeing the artistry in places others often overlooked. A different kind of artistry was required in pulling off a night like tonight. So far, everything was going as planned. State chapter members happily filled every white linen–covered table, exuding an air of opulence in their suits, ties, and dresses as the cocktail hour gave way to dinner.

Karel, who preferred a drafting table to a banquet table, nonetheless had agreed to serve as the evening’s emcee. Looking around the room, he was pleased to see that everyone was enjoying themselves.

Maybe a little too much. But so what if his colleagues indulged a bit? If anything, it would help his jokes land with a bit more zing.

Yet the best joke of the night was the one Karel hadn’t prepared for.

Karel was sitting at the front table of the hotel dining room when a fellow architect and chapter committee member approached him. The committee member had learned that Jack Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, were staying just a few floors up with their campaign staff, and they were about to head out for a campaign event. Would it be all right, he asked Karel, if he invited the Kennedys to pay a quick visit to the architects?

That sounded wonderful, Karel said. Getting to meet a presidential candidate from either party was something he thought the architects in the room would appreciate.

The committee member went to find Ivan Nestingen, Madison’s mayor and chairman of the Kennedy for President Club of Wisconsin, and asked if the Kennedys, on their way out for the evening, might pop their heads into the dining room to say hello. He’d try, Ivan told him. Nothing fancy, though. Just a brief hello, a couple of handshakes, and maybe a few words if time permitted.

All that sounded fine to Karel, who guarded the secret while he waited for the famous couple to arrive.

The elevator doors opened, and a dapper Jack and a dazzling Jackie began their cinematic descent down the balcony stairs. It was a grand entrance that should have silenced the room—two famous and breathtakingly beautiful people dressed in their best, walking down the architectural world’s equivalent of the red carpet. But the architects at their tables—absorbed in their discussions and drinks—barely took notice. Except for Karel, who beamed as the Kennedys made their way toward the front of the room.

Later, Karel would wonder if the lack of attention the Kennedys received had something to do with the Republican-leaning crowd. For his own part, Karel welcomed them warmly, grasping Jack’s and Jackie’s hands and thanking them profusely for taking the time.

“Would you care to say a word or two to the architects of our state?” Karel asked.

Jack, who hadn’t even known who was in the room two minutes prior, happily agreed. He proceeded to give, as Karel would later describe it, “an extemporaneous, spontaneous talk on the responsibility of the architect to society. . . . He called it the exploding society, and that made a tremendous impact on those people, and I’m sure unwittingly he gained votes.”

Karel listened in awe. “The great regret of my life,” he would go on to say, “was that someone forgot to turn on the tape recorder.”

But that wasn’t his only regret of the evening. Because immediately before Jack’s speech, Karel would commit a blunder so memorable that its legend soon surpassed the speech itself.

Reaching for the microphone, Karel quieted the crowd and began his introduction.

“We have with us tonight a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president,” Karel said, “and I thought that you would like to see one in the flesh.”

The crowd chuckled.

“I introduce you to,” Karel began, “Senator Robert Kennedy!”

As Karel turned to pass the mic to Jack, the room erupted in uproarious laughter.

Excerpted from the new Wisconsin Historical Society Press book, “Wisconsin for Kennedy,” by B.J. Hollars

Confused, Karel replayed the introduction in his mind before realizing the terrible truth.

Had he said, Senator Robert Kennedy?

It was an innocent mistake, but it was mortifying.

A good-humored Jack accepted the mic with a grin. “Yesterday I was in Eau Claire,” Jack began, “and a nice old lady came up to me and said, ‘Mr. Kennedy, I’m so glad that your sons are taking an active part in public life. I think that’s wonderful.’ So I said, ‘Thank you, Madam, but I happen to be one of the sons, you’re talking about my father.’ ”

The laughter grew.

“Just before that I’d been up to Wausau where the skiing was pretty good, and some of the young people got around me and said it was wonderful that I found time to ski up there last weekend, and I had to tell them that was my brother Ted.”

Louder still.

“The best of all . . . was over in Sheboygan,” Jack continued, “and a very nice pair of ladies came up to me and said, ‘It’s wonderful that busy people like you can still find time to have a large family of children.’ So I just had to sadly tell her that was my brother Robert.”

By then, even Karel was laughing.

“And he took me off the hook so beautifully,” Karel later reflected.

If this had been Karel’s only encounter with Jack Kennedy, it would’ve made for a good story. But what happened next made for a better one.

Karel’s

family had stayed behind in Wausau when he’d taken the job in Madison, and every Friday night he flew back to see them. A few weeks after his embarrassing mishap at the Hotel Loraine, Karel was lounging in the all-but-empty Madison airport, waiting for the final flight of the night. Suddenly there was a slight commotion, as people gathered to get a glimpse of a plane that was taxiing toward the gate. Karel looked up. It was the Caroline.

No, Karel thought. Impossible

He watched as campaign staff assembled, led by a man with a large cigar who turned out to be Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s future press secretary, along with Ivan Nestingen, whom Karel recognized from the Hotel Loraine, as well as several others.

It was freezing that night, about twenty degrees below zero. When Kennedy appeared moments later, he was hatless, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his thin blue topcoat, his shoulders raised toward his ears. Kennedy took a moment to chat with Ivan before his eyes drifted toward Karel on the opposite side of the room.

Karel tried making himself invisible, to little avail. Though they had only ever seen each other during those few embarrassing moments in the hotel ballroom, the look on Jack’s face confirmed he remembered everything.

Grinning, Jack strode in Karel’s direction.

Leaning forward, hand outstretched, he said, “Bobby Kennedy’s the name.”

Karel didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or drop dead on the airport floor.

“I’m sorry,” Karel said miserably, “for what happened that night.”

“You know,” Jack smiled, “the big problem is those three stories were true. I didn’t make them up, but they just seemed to fit.”

Jack excused himself to greet the twenty or so folks who’d gathered to see him (“I’m Jack Kennedy, and I’d appreciate your interest in the upcoming election”), and then—once the hobnobbing was complete—he turned back Karel’s way. By then, Karel had taken a seat on a hard bench, resting for the flight ahead. It was a little past ten o’clock, and after a long week, Karel was anxious to get home to his family. He wasn’t the only one in need of a rest.

Looking exhausted, Jack sank beside him, stretched out his legs, and said, “If I fall asleep, wake me up before my crew gets here.”

Karel promised the senator that he would.

Jack—who’d become adept at catching a few winks wherever he could—was asleep within seconds. Reclined on the bench, it was as if all the pressures of his presidential run suddenly faded. They sat there for some time, completely uninterrupted, as Karel tried to trace the strange circumstances that had led him to this moment. First, a chance run-in at the Hotel Loraine, and, now, a second run-in at the airport. Of all the ways the stars might’ve aligned, this seemed rather fortuitous. Karel was glad for the chance to brush shoulders with greatness, even if he’d paid the price with a bit of embarrassment along the way.

The minutes passed in silence until Karel spotted his plane taxiing toward the gate. Though he’d never woken a senator before, he figured a bit of humor might do the job.

Tapping the senator, Karel said, “Bob, Bob it’s time to go.”

Jack woke with his humor intact.

“Yes, Ted,” Jack grinned sleepily.

And then they were gone, both “Bob” and “Ted” moving their separate ways.

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Wisconsin for Kennedy: The Primary That Launched A President And Changed The Course of History, Year of Plenty: A Family’s Season of Grief (May 2024), and Go West Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America. He is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the Council of Wisconsin Writers’ Blei-Derleth Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award. His work has been featured in The Washington Post , Creative Nonfiction, Parents, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Millions, and elsewhere. A professor and award-winning columnist, he lives and works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Lisa Marie Barber’s “Playground” and Jayne King’s “unearthed” will be on view at the James Watrous Gallery through May 5, 2024.

PLAYGROUND

Lisa Marie Barber’s dense, large-scale ceramic assemblages command attention, spilling vivid imagery and bright colors across the gallery floor. Layering and accumulating enigmatic shapes, figures, and floral imagery, she creates environments bursting with playful, celebratory energy. Barber’s aesthetic sensibility is rooted in Mexican folk art and the Latin American Catholic shrines of her heritage and upbringing in Tucson, Arizona, and her fluid, deft touch highlights the soft plasticity of clay. The rich ornamentation, color, and abundance in her work expresses reverence, gratitude, and joy.

Lisa Marie Barber, Playground, 2024. Ceramic, 74 x 89 x 95 in.

LISA MARIE BARBER

Raised in Tucson, Arizona, Lisa Marie Barber earned her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a full Professor in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, where she teaches ceramics, art foundations, and studio seminars, and works as the Community Liaison in the Arts. Previously Barber worked as a university and youth art instructor in the San Francisco Bay area, including positions at Santa Clara University and the Palo Alto Art Center. Barber has exhibited widely throughout the U.S., received numerous honors and artist’s residencies, and has led workshops and outreach activities from New York to California.

Kenosha

Lisa Marie Barber, Alegrías, 2021. Ceramic, 47 x 54 x 69 in.

unearthed

Jayne King’s porcelain vessels explore the nature of memory, nostalgia and personal narrative, and how Jewish tradition informs their relationship to their family’s past and present. Instead of food or water, these pots carry memory and history, embellished with lively images of family life, tools and keepsakes, slivers of landscape, skeletons and fossils. Stacked and interwoven layers of imagery suggest geological strata and the dream-like quality of memory. Eschewing the bright, clear glazes traditionally associated with porcelain, King emphasizes dark earthy tones that reflect the archeological nature of family history.

Jayne King, Home Sweet Home, 2023. Porcelain, 25 x 10 x 20 in.

Chicago

Jayne King, a Jewish artist focused on ceramics, bookmaking, and collecting, is a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with strong ties to Wisconsin. King was a 2022 ArtAxis+Haystack Fellowship recipient, a 2022 Chicago Artist Coalition SPARK Grant recipient, 2023 Luminarts Finalist, and the 2023 Old Town Arts Fest Inaugural Emerging Artist. They have a strong record of exhibitions and are currently an artist in residence at The Digs Chicago.

Jayne King, Freak of Nature, 2020. Porcelain, 22 x 8 x 8 in.

JAYNE KING

THE GODDESS OF ILLICIT CHOICES

BY SUSANNA DANIEL

For about a month now, my best friend Amanda has been exchanging one hundred texts a day with a man she met at a dinner party. It’s suddenly fall, and after I take my youngest to school, if work isn’t too heavy, I walk the dog with my headphones in my ears, talking to Amanda, who lives in my old neighborhood across town. Her new friend’s name is Scot. He’s long-married and has two kids in high school; Amanda is longmarried and has one gifted and autistic 12-year-old son. I have two kids in middle and high school and am almost seven years divorced from a man I’ll call X. X and I are on good terms. A little friction, a lot of warmth.

Earlier this year, alarmed by reports of climate migration to our mid-size city, I scraped together enough to stop renting and buy a renovated ranch in a modest, nondescript neighborhood, and now I explore the neighborhood’s uninspiring crannies. There’s a weedy basketball court in one direction, a bowl-shaped park in another. Almost every house on my block flies an American flag, and one has a sign on the door that says GONE TO MENARDS. Within walking distance is a gas station, a pretty good Mexican place, a library, a Korean tailor. My neighbors on one side are a gay Black couple who occasionally text me late at night to tell me my garage door is open. On the other side is an older straight white couple who take long walks every day. They start out together, but by the time they return, she is half a block behind him, holding one hip.

The texts Amanda and Scot exchange are mostly playful, salted heavily with puns and double entendres and lightly with personal questions and flirty compliments. In the screenshots I’ve seen, I read his excitement for her — for sex, sure, but more for how she keeps him sharp.

Yesterday, she says, he showed a little vulnerability. She sends screenshots of their texts.

Amanda: Have you recovered from being told seventeen times how much I want to kiss you?

Scot: What you don’t yet know about me is that I’m a master disassociator.

Amanda: We don’t say master anymore. Now you’re a primary disassociator.

Scot: Did I irritate you yesterday?

Amanda: When and how? No.

Scot: When I was badgering you to tell me your favorite band and song and movie. I really want to know!

Amanda: My mind goes blank with that stuff but you didn’t irritate me.

Scot: I felt like I was being theatrical. Like the sidekick in a sitcom with a ready reply for anything. The Beatles! Hey Jude! The Godfather!

Amanda: The National! Candy by Iggy Pop! The Royal Tenenbaums!

Amanda and Scot have not so much as kissed yet, and she’s worried about spooking him before they cross a line. Potential lovers are, given her situation, few and far between. She says to me, “So I woke up in the middle of the night with this realization—”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” I say.

Amanda, an easy laugh, laughs and laughs. This will be a rising bubble of joy in my long day. She tells me her epiphany anyway. “It’s Rabbithole all over again,” she says. “It’s not real.”

Rabbithole was a younger colleague, also married, whom she grew close to about seven years ago, when middle age revealed itself to be a plateau bleeding into the vanishing distance. It never went anywhere with Rabbithole, and after they stopped exchanging one hundred texts a day, he divorced and remarried and had twin boys.

What does it say about me that I believe that sometimes, under certain circumstances, finding love with someone you’re not married to is an act of bravery? What does it say about our friendship that although I am ardently honest in my own life, I will do whatever I can to help Amanda get what she wants? Our lives are our own to ruin, to burn down in a blaze or lace with lightning bolts of pleasure.

“I’m afraid he’s walking it back,” she says. Some of his texts feel thin and obligatory. Yesterday, after she told him to have a beautiful day, he responded, U 2

“There are so many reasons for him to not proceed,” I tell Amanda. “Really good reasons that have nothing to do with you. Let him wrestle. How can he not?”

Amanda is beautiful and wise and sexy and charming. She has a lot of freckles everywhere, even on the backs of her pale hands, and fine, naturally blond hair that curls at the ends, and years ago she started wearing her bangs in that very short way that looks hip, though she complains that they don’t lay right if she doesn’t use a straight iron. She has keen green eyes and a heart-shaped face and ten different laughs, including a snorty giggle that is all her own. She’s a little androgynous in a badass way. If I saw her on the street, I would be attracted not just to her looks but also to her swagger, which verges on imperiousness.

“I’m so confused,” she says, meaning not about her own intentions but about Scot’s.

“If neither of you were married, it wouldn’t be confusing at all,” I said. But I’m not married anymore, and when is there ever zero doubt?

“That’s insightful,” says Amanda, by which she means it’s true but irrelevant.

Amanda’s husband, Marcus, is a VP at the healthcare software company that put our town on the biotech map; from the outside, they are a power couple. I happen to know that she and Marcus have had sex once this year, a fifty percent decrease from last year. She doesn’t love him anymore, and she doesn’t think much about whether he still loves her. She’s over marriage, she says. It’s snake oil and the gig is up. Still, twice a week they sit together on their back deck, chatting about the day and making weekend plans.

Heartsickness has been my and Amanda’s shared language for thirteen years, since we met in an infant CPR class when we were both pregnant. A year ago, I was dumped by my first-ever girlfriend, whom I’ll call Y. Y left me for a pretty union organizer named Layla who told Y that she hadn’t lived until she’d ridden a gravel bike. When Y told me about Layla, she also told me they were leaving the next day to go camping together, so Y and I needed to “reify” our heretofore monogamous relationship, stat. Clarity was not Y’s strong suit. I said, “Are you saying you want to be poly?” X had been polyamorous since our divorce. I didn’t want it, but I understood it, and I didn’t want to lose Y, almost entirely because I didn’t want to lose my nascent lesbianism. Y looked at me pityingly and said, “The thing is, Layla isn’t sure she wants to be poly.”

Dating women has felt so right in every way, except for a few instances of blithe, unacknowledged cruelty, which have surprised me.

“Did you just say that?” I said to Y, who I thought loved me.

“What?” she said.

Amanda bellowed me back to life after Y. “Y sucks. Take what she gave you and leave the rest,” she said, referring to my rainbow-colored future.

After Y, I dated Nadine, Gretchen, Fiona, Margie, Dani, Lucinda, Joyce, Naomi, and two Amys. I told myself I was earning my chops, and then at some point I had them firmly in hand. I no longer worry about whether I’m good in bed with women — I am — and I no longer worry that I don’t like it quite enough, as was the case with Y. I really, really like it. A lot.

Sometimes things end naturally, and sometimes I make an uncomfortable phone call or take an uncomfortable walk, and once I received a text that said, You don’t pay enough attention to me. Peace out. That was Fiona.

And for nine heady weeks, in the eye of my ladystorm, there was Z.

Amanda is starting to breathe heavily. While I stroll with my coffee and my sniffing dog, Amanda rollerblades a four-mile loop along our bigger lake and up a hill to the coffee shop where we used to go together. She talks loudly over the wind, and people look twice as she passes them, which she likes. When she gets home, she’ll feed her son’s iguana, grab a banana, and bike to work. It’s mid-October and a sunny, pleasant cold. The maple leaves plastered against the sidewalk look like craft-store versions of themselves. In the daytime you can go out on the lake in your kayak with a woman you’ve been seeing, and when you look in the mirror that night, your cheeks will be pink.

With these morning walks I’m learning the neighborhood at the level of the cracks in the sidewalks, the interesting bulbs on the tree trunks, the tidy gardens shorn in preparation for the first snow. Above the many-colored treeline there is a full morning moon, dusty and wizened.

“Can you see the moon?” I ask Amanda.

“Wait. Yes, it’s there. Oh my!”

“I know!”

I send a group text to my brother and his husband in California and my father in Miami: Check out the moon this morning? To my dead mother, I think, Look at the moon!

I am not alone.

JUDGE’S NOTE

DEBRA MONROE

“The Goddess of Illicit Choices” is a lively, lithe take on a primordial subject. Its protagonist has rushed in while convincing herself she’s held back, and though she’s smart enough to know that a broken heart can be endured but not understood, she conducts a postmortem anyway, assessing every memory of foreboding or euphoria, applying logic to illogic. This torch song of a story tricked me into believing, as the protagonist seems to, that good critical thinking applied to lost love might magically reconstrue the one who got away as one who might still make her wildest dreams come true.

There’s something else,” Amanda says now. Last night, after she told Scot she was muting her phone to make dinner for her family, she received six rapid messages.

“He’s not following protocol,” she says to me.

“I don’t understand.”

Evenings and weekends are family time, she says. She is assuming, as someone who has given up on monogamy, that this is understood.

“Texts can wait,” I say.

“I felt like there’s subtext.”

“What kind?”

“Either ‘You’re mine’ or ‘There’s nothing to this so why be careful.’”

“I don’t think it means either of those things. I think it means he wanted to ask you questions and was willing to wait for your answers.”

“Or maybe it was a joke?” she says. “Like, Oh you have to go, just six more questions . . .”

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” I say. My brother is a relationship therapist, and this is one of his lines. Another is, “Bear your discomfort.” After Z dumped me (in a text that read, I’ve decided you’re not right for me), my brother said, “People can’t give what they don’t have. Z just saved you a lot of time and heartache.”

There’s no way to know if this is true, but it has never felt true.

Weeks after Z, I went back to dating like it was my job. I told Amanda that I was like a shark that will die if it stops swimming, and she said, “Except the shark is a middle-age mother divorced from a man, and the swimming is going on dates with women.”

Amanda and Scot have met twice to take a walk in the middle of a weekday. Amanda worries over forgetting to delete her texts and Scot forgetting to delete his, but I think these weekday walks are far more damning. But so far, no one is watching them, except me.

She long ago weighed the pros and cons and decided to stay in her marriage. This means that being found out isn’t the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that Scot’s wife takes the dynamite out of Amanda’s hands and sets it off herself.

“Maybe he’s a little confused,” I say. “Who wouldn’t be? This is scary shit.”

“He wouldn’t be if it were not his first rodeo,” she says. This is not her first rodeo. That was Shawn, a work colleague. Also married, also lonely.

“That’s not necessarily true,” I say.

“Do you think he’s done it before?”

To me, he reads as enthusiastic but cautious. “I’d be guessing based on very little, but I think maybe he’s considered it but never crossed the line.”

“But he’s our age!” she says.

“I know,” I say. But there are people our age who are in long, not-unhappy marriages. Just not very many of them.

Backwhen I was still dating men after my marriage ended, which I did briefly in an obliging way before realizing — hallelujah! — I was not obliged at all, I met an online date on a street corner, and he looked me up and down and said, “I’m tired of women lying about their weight on their profiles.” My pictures were recent, a mix of face pics and body pics — had I misrepresented myself?

I’ve never had a conversation with a woman where suddenly I didn’t know my own body and mind. If this isn’t enough reason to stop dating men, I’m not sure what is. Also the curve of a breast makes my mouth water, and three times after having sex with a woman for the first time, I’ve dozed against her without thinking twice about whether I might snore or her arm might fall asleep.

Later on that same Last Man date (can you believe it went on from there?) the guy — whose name I can honestly say I don’t recall; ditto his unexceptional face — told me he’d been 1L at Harvard when Barack Obama was 3L, and then he said, “One L means—” and I held up my hand and told him I lived on planet Earth and anyhow there’s adequate context.

How do you know if someone went to Harvard Law? The same way you’ll know if he thinks you’re a fat liar!

Amanda has always had a sixth sense about my attraction to women. More than once, before I was out to myself, she’d mention an acquaintance and say something like, “I can see

you with her.” If she’d expressed even the faintest surprise, would I have hesitated or stumbled? Because I’ve aimed toward women with an exuberance and surety typically associated with youth. But really it’s the exuberance and surety of a woman who has worried too much about other people’s opinions, and too often wondered if all she knew was all there was.

Notsince Z have I exchanged a hundred texts a day with anyone.

Once, Z sent a text that said You are sooooooo amazing, and once she sent a text that said I can’t believe how lucky I am to have met you, and once she sent a text that said I am nowhere near your neighborhood . . ., and once she sent a text asking if I’d walk the Camino de Santiago with her, and I said yes and then looked up the Camino de Santiago. I cannot wait to walk the Camino de Santiago with you, I wrote, and she gave that message a heart.

Excitement = fun + fear, I remind my children, but sometimes the portions get wonky.

Once, Z and I laughed so hard I stopped the car in the middle of the street to keep from crashing. Once in bed we laughed so hard that my nose started running and I smeared snot all over her beautiful belly. Once she said she loved how I cry when I laugh, and it was the first time in my life I didn’t wipe away those laughing tears in mild embarrassment. Once we lay naked together and I told her things about myself I didn’t like, and things I’d done that I wasn’t proud of. There was something between us that was safe and thrilling and very precious all at the same time, a mix I’d never felt before.

I wrote back after her final text, asking to speak either by FaceTime or in person, assuming naively that we could come to some sad but caring and humane parting of ways — and never heard back. No sorry, no goodbye. Amanda tells me this isn’t ghosting, not technically, but I can’t manage the effort required to parse the distinction. Whatever it was, it made me feel worthless. An inconvenience, a nuisance. Left alone on a scorched island, haunted by memories of all that lush splendor.

In middle age, it’s sacrilege to wish for a failing memory. I will not do it.

We take a break from analyzing Scot so Amanda can tell me about her son’s new occupational therapist, a trans man who has a PhD in Italian translation and is teaching Lionel to ride a skateboard to work on balance. In a pause, she says, “My knees have started popping when I go up the stairs.”

“But not when you go down?” I say.

“They ache when I go down.”

We keep a running list of activities that make us feel old. Lifting weights, stadium concerts, early flights, loud restaurants, weddings. Going to the dentist is a big one for me. Teeth are all about irreversible decay. My father’s teeth are worn yellow nubs, more oval than rectangular, and every time I catch sight of them, I’m reminded that he will die soon. He turned eighty this year.

Today’s yoga term is sidebody, I tell Amanda. Every week or so, I give her a yoga term — I do yoga, she doesn’t — that she has to use as naturally as possible in a sentence, preferably with someone outside of her own family. Once, in a meeting with a white male colleague, a dude who has a tendency to step on the ends of everyone’s sentences and once said that he didn’t consider himself to be yelling simply because he raised his voice and slammed a hand on the table to make something perfectly clear, she said, “I’m concerned we aren’t shining our heart-centers at this solution.” Her colleague set his jaw in a display of forbearance and moved on. “Namaste,” she said at the end of the meeting, for good measure.

Sometimes we shout, “Let me make something perfectly clear!” to each other, then stomp around like children.

“That’s easy,” says Amanda now. “My sidebody hurts because I haven’t been using my corebody or my backbody.”

“Lazy.”

She sighs. “What’s the percentage chance that if I push things he’ll disappear? I should play it cool, right?”

I have a hard time with games. Has this hurt me romantically? Of course it has.

“Less than twenty-five percent. But I think there’s value in letting him set the tone and seeing what he chooses.”

“You mean playful or personal or sexy?”

“Exactly.” We will hope for personal or sexy, but he will choose playful, of course. Every damn time.

“I’m trying too hard. It’s a turn off. He’s realizing I’m not worth ruining his life over.”

From what I can tell, this man is clinging to Amanda’s life-affirming texts almost as tightly as she is clinging to his. But not everyone wants to save themselves quite as badly as we do.

“You’re life-ruiningly great,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean he wants to ruin his life.”

“You’re a good friend,” says Amanda.

Onour fourth date, Z and I met on my side of town at a Belgian pub. It was storming and I was sitting at the bar when she came in. I turned around to greet her, and she said, “I love how happy you are to see me,” and I said, “I am so happy to see you!” And then we kissed as deeply as two adults can semi-respectably kiss in public, and then we ate burgers and talked. After dinner, we made out in my car.

It doesn’t matter anymore, but I have to tell you that there was something about the kissing. It wasn’t just that time and space ceased to exist, along with breath, because that happened when we talked, texted, once when we watched TV together. It was something else, an egoless wormhole sensation — OK, that’s overstating it, but what I’m saying is that when we kissed, I wanted never to stop.

That night, she pulled away to catch her breath, and sometimes when I think of her now, I think of the look on her face in that moment. I’d like to say it was astonishment or excitement, but given what happened, it was most likely fear. What I saw in our future was calm and supportive and genuine and lasting. What did she see?

If I were a person who scares easily, those kisses might have sent me running, too.

After we parted ways that night, I texted her: I can’t believe we made out in in a restaurant! She wrote back, Those kisses! and sent three flame emojis.

Before Z, I had a go-to song for kitchen dancing or house cleaning or driving at night with my windows down, and there’s a line in the song that says, Don’t even try and ex-plain how it’s so diff-er-ent when we kiss . . .

What I’m saying is that it was different when we kissed. I don’t listen to that song anymore.

The Belgian pub closed permanently a few months later. Z had erased me by then, and my first thought when I heard the news was to text her. (I did not.) My second thought was that everything I touch dies. My third thought was that going forward I would be spared the memory-trigger of that evening — the rain, the kissing, the laughter, the look of fear on her breathtaking face.

When I told Amanda that I’ll never again have with anyone the connection that came so naturally with Z, she frowned and said, “You think?” Which was her way of saying I was being melodramatic and also that I was wrong.

“Maybe someday I’ll find ninety-three percent of it,” I said.

“The seven percent will be more than made up for by the fact that the new woman will acknowledge your existence,” said Amanda.

Had I gotten wobbly with Z the way Amanda has with Scot? Yes. Once as I was getting dressed, I caught her glance at my body and couldn’t read her expression. “Pink,” she said about my bra. Was this approval or disapproval or something else? For what it’s worth — zilch! bupkis! — I adored every inch of her, every mole and freckle and dimple and stretch mark, the curves of her ears, her sturdy ankles, her ladykiller grin. The pleasing topography of her breasts under her ironic t-shirts, her clean trim fingernails, the whites of her eyes when she rolled them at herself, the way her lids reddened when she started to cry, the aging skin at her neck, her warm eyes. “You are so beautiful,” I told her more than once, when words failed me. What I meant was: You are magnetic and glorious and I cherish you. It wasn’t just her beautiful face and body or our unmoderated kisses — it was how she resurrected my belief in Big Love.

Once, I asked Z about her hardest-ever breakup and she told me — Clara, who moved to take care of her aging parents — and I thought, petulantly and nonsensically, I want to be your hardest-ever breakup. But I didn’t. She had a teeming stable of exes and I did not want to

join them. With Z, I could see the vanishing distance, not a plateau but a series of gentle hills, a canopy of bright sunlight interrupted by clouds. Shining starlight, intermittent fog, flashes of hard rain, every sunrise, a last sunset.

Scot

usually replies to Amanda’s first text of the day after he’s left the house but before he’s arrived at work — the soonest safe moment. But yesterday he didn’t reply until lunchtime. “Do you think he’s having second thoughts?” says Amanda now. It’s not the first time she’s asked, and I wish I knew the answer.

“It probably means work is busy.”

“Or his wife found out.”

“Maybe?”

“Or he changed his mind.”

“It’s possible,” I say. People change their minds all the time. Changing your mind, says my therapist brother, is always allowed. It’s how you do it that makes the difference.

The moon is high and hazy now. Amanda says “Douchebag!” and tells me that some runner dude in a neon green muscle tank just clipped her shoulder and she almost went down.

“Phew!” I say. “Maybe Scot needs you to be more assertive.”

“Maybe?”

She puffs a little while and I turn away from the wind. My dog stops to pee. I miss my old neighborhood, particularly the short walk to Amanda’s.

“Maybe I won’t be,” she says.

“To see what happens?”

“No. Maybe I’ll just stop.” She sounds tired.

“Can you?” I say.

“I don’t think so.”

Zand

I went on six dates over the course of eight weeks — she was out of town for three weeks in the middle — and we slept together twice in the afternoon, both times at my house. Once, on her living room couch, I sat on her lap and smothered her with kisses, but I never saw the inside of her bedroom.

Three days before she dumped me, I picked her up from work at lunchtime and drove to a swimming pond outside of the city. It was late June and we were the only ones there. We swam to a floating dock and lay on the sun-warmed wood. She propped up to look me in the eye.

“I have a few questions,” she said, touching the neckline of my swimsuit. “I need to feel comfortable before we do this.”

“Before we’re a couple, you mean?” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Ask me anything.”

“I’m afraid I won’t always be able to be myself with you,” she said.

“Are you yourself now?”

“Yes, more or less. More and more.”

“I’m not interested in whoever else you think you need to be. Leave her home.”

“How can you be sure?”

I shielded her face from the sun with my hand and her blue eyes relaxed. How I adored even the slightest of her smiles. Her lips. The smudge of pink on her cheeks. Her front teeth and her back ones.

“I might not be so gaga for you forever,” I said. “But I’ll always treat you with love and respect.”

“That works for me.”

“Next?”

“This one’s not too different. What happens after the blush is off the rose?”

“Are you asking if I’ll get tired of you?”

“Yes. And if you’ll start getting annoyed by me.”

“Yes, I’ll be annoyed with you once a year, maybe twice. And I’ll handle it the way I always handle it with people I love – by reminding myself that I’m the luckiest human on the planet.”

“Wow.”

“If I liked you for the blush not the rose, that’d be pretty naive. I know blushes fade. Mine will fade, too.”

She said, “Will you always bake me cookies when I’m sad, or was that just an early-days thing?”

“I’ll bake you cookies for the rest of your life.”

“Good answer,” she said slowly, like each word was its own sentence.

I could see those cookies. I could smell and taste them. My palm cupped her upper thigh and hers pressed against my low back. Did she think I was prone to speculating about the distant future? (I was not.) Maybe she was beset at all times by women offering her the moon, and I was just one more smitten suitress.

She ran a finger over my lips and I parted them to let her in. This went on for a while.

“You make my heart pound,” I said.

“Will we rely on each other without suffocating each other? Will we get busy in our lives and neglect each other? That’s two questions, sorry.”

Suffocate, maybe. But neglect? Ha!

I said, “Being together will make our lives calmer, more joyful, more meaningful, sunnier and snowier, and even a little tastier.”

“How?”

“A hundred ways. I’ll help rake your yard before the first snow, and I’ll bring you coffee when you’re having trouble waking up, and I’ll listen while you recount your dreams, because I know you need to get them out.”

“I’ll only recount the juicy ones. What else?”

“I’ll drive when you’re tired and turn down the volume when you have a headache and give you advice when you want it and keep my mouth shut when you don’t. When you snap at me, I’ll make funny faces at you until you laugh. I’ll listen to songs you love and love them too, and when you need me or even kind of need me a little bit, I’ll be there.”

“What will I do for you?”

I thought, but not for long. “Ask me about my day, please. Like regularly, even daily if it’s not asking too much.”

“It’s not. That’s easy.”

“Really? No one else has ever seemed to think so!”

This made her laugh a little. Directly into my ear, she whispered, “I’m in.”

We dozed, facing each other, then raced back to shore. She won. That night on video chat, we showed each other our weird sunburns: her left side and my right side, two halves of two wholes.

Amanda’s theory is that Z got back together with her ex. But Z had described that relationship as full of contempt and unkindness, and who in her right mind would exit my warm, eager heart for that?

When Z asked her questions, I read it as due diligence. I didn’t see it for what it was: fear. Should I have answered differently? Should I have tried to play it cool? Sometimes red flags look very much like green flags, and I think it’s asking a lot of a person to spot the difference.

In the months since she scorched our paradise, I’ve sent Z three longish emails, all meant to be casual and friendly, asking for nothing but contact. She did not respond. I told Amanda after the first email that I felt like a stalker and she said, “Don’t say that. Stalking is a real and scary thing, and you attempting to politely access someone who disappeared overnight is not remotely in the same ballpark.”

After the second email, Amanda said, “Please remember that lack of discouragement is not encouragement.”

When humans communicate, there’s usually a feedback loop, and when there’s not, the silence is terrible. It’s not being left that hurts the most; it’s being erased. She became my phantom limb, and I became her – what? Toilet paper stuck to the sole of her shoe.

After the third email, Amanda said never to send Z another word. “Listen to me. Listen,” she said. “You are not in a movie. You are not in a novel. This is not cute. Picture her rolling her eyes and deleting your heartfelt words as soon as your name hits her inbox. Worse, picture her reading them aloud in a mocking voice to her best friend.”

Amanda and I would never do this, and I don’t think Z would, either. Still.

“Thank you so much,” I said to Amanda.

Itsmells like patchouli in here,” Amanda tells me after ordering her latte. “At least I think it’s patchouli. It might be body odor. It might be my body odor.”

Early this morning, after thinking about it for weeks, I removed Z from my social media followers and myself from hers. Then I replied to work emails while calmly weeping.

Now, I tell Amanda, “I disconnected from Z online.”

Amanda is not on social media. “Did she get an alert?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. She won’t know unless she checks.”

“I approve, but why?”

“So my brain stops thinking she’s someone I know. She’s not. She doesn’t want to be.”

“You’re strong,” says Amanda.

I press my back against a tree and close my eyes. My neighborhood smells of wet leaves and cinnamon. Someone is running a leaf blower but it’s not close enough to bother me. It seems like every other headline is about how to carve a pumpkin to make it last longer, and I can’t understand why we need pumpkins to last longer. I almost could have stayed fakefriends with Z forever, gobbling up her digital crumbs. I don’t want to be strong anymore.

“Do you want to stop?” I ask Amanda, meaning Scot.

“It’s the right thing, yes?”

I don’t know anything about Scot’s wife or marriage, their children, their shared dreams and disappointments. I know Marcus and I like him, but I gave up on pushing couples therapy years ago.

“No,” I say. “You’re not the goddess of illicit choices.”

“You should make t-shirts that say that,” says Amanda.

We like to think that we have some control over the world outside of ourselves, and also that we are only mostly in control of ourselves. Neither is true.

I say, “Do you think it’s possible Z will come back in a year?”

“Would that make it easier now?”

“Yes.”

“Set a reminder for October 13 of next year to send a note asking if you can buy her coffee.”

I hunch over my screen. “Done,” I say.

She draws a breath. “Here we go.”

“He texted?”

“Oh yeah,” she says. “He wants to meet for lunch.”

“Tell me what he said exactly.”

“‘I think we need to talk. Lunch? One o’clock at Sardine?’”

“Holy moly,” I say.

She’s alert but cautious. This text is potentially good news and potentially bad news. We won’t know which until they’re in a room together, two fleshy bodies and moving mouths full of warm breath and words. The wild, messy, exquisite promise of an unknowable future.

Looking forward to it, writes Amanda.

Susanna Daniel is the author of four novels, including Stiltsville , winner of the 2011 PEN/Bingham Award, and Sea Creatures, a 2014 Target Book Club selection, as well as the forthcoming Girlfriending. Daniel co-founded the Madison Writers’ Studio (www.madisonwriters.com) with author Michelle Wildgen in 2013.

Award Winning Poetry

from our 2023 Poetry Contest

A DETERIORATION IN TALKS

A lone green tree standing in a demolished frontier // The sleeping animal huff of our own pried-open country // Time will not exonerate us // We are half-lit / godwit / complicit // We sigh ourselves into ever more fashionable pyres / try in vain to break our animal faces away from all this sudden immutable damage / coax a language for grief from the crushed-glass throat of the sea // Tranquilizers // Tourniquets // Triglycerides // Talismans of holy fear // Talismans of holy damage // Tear off our tender buttons // Tear off our tender buttons // Tear off our tender buttons // Will we ever find a comfortable darkness again? // Down the street the corpses of thousand horses burn like flowers in the stadium //

Adam Fell

Adam Fell is the author of Catastrophizer, winner of the 2022 Sixth Finch Chapbook Contest, and two poetry collections, Dear Corporation (Forklift Books 2019) and I Am Not A Pioneer , winner of the 2011 Posner Poetry Book Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. An Associate Professor of English at Edgewood College in Madison, Fell is co-founder and curator of the Monsters of Poetry Reading Series.

Ambiguous Loss

We would talk of what was defined as tangible, rap the table with a knuckle, stroke the cashmere. Sip the tea. Fathers were not mentioned. Nor how my mother would call me by her sister’s name, suddenly, sometimes. He said he thought his sense of smell was lessening, and how to tell? Was it just age? I thought so or thought it best to say so. Some form of compassion was needed. He missed it: even burnt toast. He sat, looking off beyond my shoulder, at something I couldn’t see. There were never any letters, and even hastily signed cards stopped arriving years ago. We found ourselves on occasion wandering down city streets after heavy snow, before any clearing.

Kelly R. Samuels

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of two poetry collections— Oblivescence (Red Sweater Press) and All the Time in the World (Kelsay Books)—and four chapbooks: Talking to Alice, To Marie Antoinette, from, Words Some of Us Rarely Use, and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing in The Massachusetts Review, Sixth Finch and RHINO.

I Hate People Who Cut in Line But

I’ve been thinking about things that skip a step because now in late winter the snow does its subliming, jumpstarts to vapor, says to the streams “not today.”

I thought fog was clouds coming down but this, this is clouds disambiguating from the snow to rise like a gesture against the dark tree meaning “Scottish weather” or “curly hair.” Enoch and Elijah didn’t die. Some carts work fine without a horse. Early tenure. Half-court shot. You have to have cake before you eat it.

The high school students in my college class are so frighteningly smart. When my youth group leader tried to tell us her ex-fiancé had pressured her to have sex, she said, “He wanted the honeymoon before the wedding.” I’m not altogether sure I knew what she meant. She married someone else. They got divorced.

“Pandemic” precedes “panic” in the dictionary. Otherwise they do-si-do. Sometimes in nightmares I give up. I lie down and say “Just do it. Just kill me. Get it over with. Do it now.”

Marnie Bullock Dresser

Marnie Bullock Dresser lives in Spring Green, Wisconsin with her husband and son and three cats. She taught English at UW-Richland until the campus closed. In retirement, she is writing, writing, writing, and expanding her collection of washi tape, which she loves beyond all reason.

Mercury Goes Right Through You

On September 3, 1809, Meriwether Lewis set out for Washington, D.C. Lewis carried his journals with him for delivery to his publisher. He had written his will before attempting suicide on this journey. He was restrained.

Lewis and Clark chewed on mercury for its laxative effects. Historians tracked America’s woody sternum using expedition shit, each proud cluster gleamed like a medal. The article reads Mercury Goes

Right Through You. I imagine a body impaled by a planet. Such light work this galaxy makes of bone, fat, muscle. Once, I drove through Colorado looking for happiness I left in a snow drift.

I stalled my car, tried to unbury its wheels with everything I had in the trunk: a bag of charcoal, overdue library books, a fishing net the snow passed through. I found only my appetite and left, walked clumsily towards the dark forest of my life. The wind blew a song I recognized. One we’d dance to in the living room. The tree line parted like an exit wound. I hummed harmonics.

Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles. The son of a Mexican immigrant, he is a former Ruth Lilly Fellow and Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellow. He has served as a poetry editor for Copper Nickel and Sycamore Review and has taught creative writing at universities, libraries, and prisons across the country. His poems appear in many journals and have been anthologized in Best New Poets, Pushcart Prize, and Sarabande’s Another Last Call. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he serves as Poet Laureate.

Steven Espada Dawson

This Is Not a Villanelle

life is as if Elizabeth Bishop wrote it, and the poem is on repeat repeat repeat: loss, a violent form. loss, of violence formed. loss, a violation of form / meaning

form meaning brings (and grief knows no form).

This is not a villanelle, but I am still losing keys, kingdoms, [meaning] and Mastery.

Emily Bowles

Emily Bowles has a Ph.D. in English and a Certificate in Women’s Studies from Emory University, where she studied the works of early modern women writers, including Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, and Charlotte Lennox. She now works as grants manager for the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Fox Valley. She’s a member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets and has published two poetry collections with Finishing Line Press.

Join the Wisconsin Academy and partners for Bloom: a season of poetry, a series of poetry events in the spring of 2024 celebrating literature in Wisconsin. Showcasing the interdisciplinary power of the written and spoken word, Bloom will highlight poetry events across the state that illuminate perspectives, experiences, and the natural world.

CAPITAL VERSES SLAM POETRY FESTIVAL

April 11, 6:30-8:30 pm Madison College Goodman South Campus, Madison In partnership with Madison College, Capital Verses features nationally-recognized Andre Bradford, a.k.a S.C. Says. Austin-based, he is an Austin Poetry Slam Champion, 2022 Texas Grand Slam Champion, and author of Golden Brown Skin. Free, registration requested https://www.tickettailor.com/events/madisoncollege/1157822.

CLIMATE CHANGE STORY SLAM

April 20, 7-9 pm Madison Public Library, Central Branch, Downtown Madison Celebrate Earth Day with storytellers who will share stories about how climate change has affected their lives, how they have coped, and what they’re doing about it. This inspirational event is in partnership with Mad City Story Slam. Free. Registration requested https://www.wisconsinacademy.org/civicrm/event/register?id=507&reset=1.

POETRY READING

April 24, 7 pm, Woodland Pattern Book Center, 700 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, or online Featuring Laura Tohe, current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and author of Tseyí / Deep in the Rock, Kimberly Blaeser, author of Ancient Light, and Elise Paschen, author of Tallchief. Presented as part of our series “Native Writers in the 21st Century” with support from the NEA. Free or give what you can. https://woodlandpattern.org/events.

VISUAL POETRY WORKSHOP

April 27, 10 am-12 pm, Center for the Visual Arts, Wausau Celebrate National Poetry Month with a free art project for all ages. Enjoy extended gallery hours 10 am-4 pm. Learn the basics of blackout poetry, ekphrastic poetry, and more with Wausau’s Poet Laureate. No experience necessary. All supplies are provided. Free, no registration required.

POETRY AND THE NATURAL WORLD

May 23, 7-8:30 pm, Playhouse Theater, Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, in-person and online via Zoom Join U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón for a reading and conversation with former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Dr. Kimberly Blaeser, followed by a book signing. This event focuses on the connections between nature, the changing environment, and poetry. Tickets required. $10-30. Registration required https://www.wisconsinacademy.org/ evenings/poetry-and-natural-world.

Find more details at www.wisconsinacademy.org/bloom-season-poetry

Black Diamonds, A Childhood Colored by Coal

by Catherine Young

Torrey House Press, 288 pages, $17.95

Reviewed by Martin Andrew

Imagine living everyday of your childhood in a place where today’s Environmental Protection Agency would have declared the air quality “hazardous,” coding it in the dark red color of deoxygenated blood on its air pollution maps. That world in which Catherine Young grew up is richly detailed in her compelling, thought-provoking book, Black Diamonds, A Childhood Colored by Coal.

In this beautiful memoir of her childhood, Catherine Young, a Wisconsin writer, scientist, farmer, poet, and educator, lived and walked, holding her mother’s hand through her depressed neighborhood in the Lackawanna Valley in the 1960s. From the first page I was immersed in her dystopian world at the epicenter of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Appalachian anthracite coal country. Many pages left me covered with coal dust, ash, suffocating smoke, and sorrow. The author writes about her neighborhood: “…diesel locomotives of five railroads corralled us into distinct neighborhoods of our city. Coal trains pulsed through our sleep, their engines grinding and growling.” And “Ours was an ashen landscape veiled by gray air.”

Young survived to share her story. Most people did not live long, especially young boys and men working in the mines, factories, and on coal-powered trains. The author was born into hellfire. Mines were on fire below the streets of Scranton and, above ground, burning ten-story high culm hills spewed methane gas. A lethal combination of toxic sulfur smoke, acid rain, and gas caused chronic disease, early death, or long-term misery.

Young and her mother frequently walked up and down hills, broken sidewalks, cindered alleyways, along railroad tracks, and crossed the polluted orange Lackawanna River in all weather, to the grocery store, church, school, and visiting relatives. Despite her hardships, Young shares loving memories of her proud Italian and German immigrant relatives, who, though economically poor, were culturally rich, making the most of meager resources.

Throughout the book, she dreams of a life in an idyllic Garden of Eden, inspired by George Inness’s 1856 painting, The Lackawanna Valley, (shown on the book cover) though she considers the scene a mythical depiction. “I longed to be in a landscape as beautiful as I perceived the Lackawanna Valley in the painting to be—wished

for my own landscape to look like that once more—if indeed it ever did.” Her poetic narrative transported me from an “abandoned land of desperate people in poverty with nowhere to go,” to the soft green and golden-brown hues of her valley framed by the bluishtinged Pocono Mountains, as it must have been before the rapacious environmental decimation of the industrial revolution. The stark contrasting images of the peaceful verdant valley of the 1850s and the barren industrial wasteland of the 1950s awaken the reader to the incalculable environmental, human, and societal costs of America’s inexorable economic expansion.

Now Young lives in her Eden where the Mississippi River Valley cuts through the Driftless Region. It is a place that inspires her writing and teaching about the moral imperative for preservation of precious land, water, and wildlife.

Her story is more than a childhood memoir. The transformation of the Lackawanna Valley is an omen of future unabated environmental destruction. Continued fossil fuel exploitation and coal power’s corrosive effects on our clean air, water, and wildlife habitat will have dramatic human social and economic costs.

Martin Andrew of Madison is the author of a story collection, Deception, and novella, Easy as Pie . He earned degrees from the University of Wisconsin—Madison and University of Michigan— Ann Arbor. A retired healthcare executive and college educator, he is currently finishing a novel of historical fiction.

The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home

by Alison Townsend

University of Wisconsin Press, 256 pages, $28.95

Reviewed by Jessica Becker

“The land set me dreaming, summoning memories of my other soulscapes and psychogeographies, layering them over one another in a palimpsest, many times and places present within me at once.” This line offers both description and explanation of Alison Townsend’s recent collection of twenty-six semi-biographical essays. Professor emerita of English from the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, Townsend humbly celebrates her own hard-earned wisdom and a ‘deepening awareness’ about how the places she has lived have ‘seeped’ into her creative life, while never losing touch with the original essence of her early years. The Green Hour is both a tale of homecoming and a travel narrative, shared through heartfelt missives from the author’s memory and life. Townsend writes, “I am not romanticizing or being poetic when I say the sound of running water began me.” And these essays follow a lineage through landscapes, flowing from the creek outside her nursery window, to the ‘five acres of gentle woods and fields’ of her childhood home on Wild Run Farm in eastern Pennsylvania, to a nearly mythic summer spent on a lakeshore in Vermont, to the mountains and ocean of Western Oregon and California, eventually landing in an unexpected but welcome home in Wisconsin. “I am haunted by lost places,” she writes in the prelude, offering the reader an intimate warning of the sadness that has shaped her life. Her mother’s early death left a hole that Townsend continues to peer into, digging up lessons and putting words to feelings that seem best understood in the later years of one’s life. But in this soil of self-reflection, there continues to be wonder and the blooming of new joys. Of the restored prairie and oak savannah she now tends with her conservationist husband, she writes of the thrill in seeing it come back to ‘what it was meant to be, the small tongues of new growth rising through the blackened earth like green flame.”

Like Leopold’s 1949 book of seasonal essays published as A Sand County Almanac, The Green Hour offers a window into Townsend’s beloved homescape. One can imagine that Leopold himself would enjoy the playful observations presented as “An Alphabet of Here.” A is for Aster and Z for “the zed-shaped folds of the aurora opening its luminescent green curtains on a winter night…the zodiac swirling around us like the wheel of life that is here, now, the only one we are given.”

Green imagery vines through the collection and indeed the cover of the book is verdant and blooming with a detailed watercolor by the Madison-based artist Helen Klebesadel. When I emailed Townsend to ask about the book’s title, she praised her publisher at the University of Wisconsin Press for noting the phrase from the opening essay. She said, “I was just trying to describe the beauty and spirit of the land and how it makes me feel connected to larger things.” In this she has succeeded: The Green Hour beautifully celebrates our human relationships with the natural world.

Jessica Becker is director of digital communications for Wisconsin Humanities and writes Wanderlife, a newsletter to liberate your spirit and light up your brain, for people who love to wander and are open to life, at jessicabecker.substack.com.

COMMUNITY SCIENCE IS FUELING WISCONSIN ECOLATINOS

BY LULU FREGOSO

Laterfalls, earlier springs, smoky air from wildfires thousands of miles away–these are just a few examples of the impact of climate change in our state and in our everyday lives in recent years. The critical need to raise awareness and mobilize local communities that are often disproportionately impacted by these changes is part of what motivated Cristina Carvajal to launch Wisconsin EcoLatinos, the nonprofit she founded in 2021 and serves as its executive director. Her other mission is to educate people about everyday actions to reduce environmental pollutants. Serving Dane and Rock counties, the group works to empower and engage Latinos and people in disadvantaged communities in protecting both the environment and their health. Carvajal, who serves as the organization’s director, says these voices are often left out of sustainability and conservation conversations for a variety of reasons, including language and social barriers.

“It is our duty to advocate and speak up for people that cannot,” says Carvajal, whose staff includes outreach and program coordinators and volunteers. “One of our strategies is to do outreach; we go where people are and engage them in their own environment.”

Last summer, the group organized free kayak lessons with a dual mission to provide greater access to our natural resources and to educate participants about the impact of stormwater pollution on water quality. Last fall, Latino students who attended the Dane County High School Climate Conference could earn community volunteer hours with Wisconsin EcoLatinos. The conference featured guest speakers and workshops on renewable energy, climate activism, adopting eco-friendly products and services, and environmental education and career pathways.

Current Wisconsin EcoLatinos projects include a partnership, called the Tu Agua (Your Water) Project, with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum to increase participation in water quality initiatives. People who participate in the program become Water Quality Ambassadors in their own communities and neighborhoods.

Wisconsin EcoLatinos also tackles environmental hazards at home, with instruction on how to install air monitors and test their own water quality. The transition from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy is another ongoing conversation Carvajal is leading. For example, helping people take advantage of investments and incentives at the local, state and federal level, such as tax credits and rebates on solar energy and other energy-efficient home improvements, is a critical step toward environmental equity and inclusion.

“It’s important to give these tools to the community so they feel a sense of control over the topic,” says Carvajal.

Next up, says Carvajal, is a PFAS chemicals awareness campaign in partnership with the Catholic Multicultural Center and a tree planting project with the Urban Tree Alliance, both Madison-based organizations.

“People from all backgrounds want to help reduce emissions even if they don’t have the resources,” says Carvajal. “Their desire increases our commitment to find ways to protect their health and well-being from different environmental burdens.”

Lulu Fregoso is an intern for the Climate and Energy Initiative and a junior at UW-Madison majoring in conservation biology and economics. She is passionate about the overlap between economics and the environment and is excited to connect with the community to create equitable solutions to the current climate crisis.

Francisco Guerrero

Wisconsin EcoLatinos participants partner with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum on the Tu Agua (Your Water) Project

Now you can stream more of your favorite PBS shows including Masterpiece, America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, America’s Test Kitchen, Nature, NOVA, Finding Your Roots, Ken Burns documentaries and many more — online and in the PBS App with PBS Wisconsin Passport.

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

Grantchester America’s Test Kitchen

America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston

Nature

POETRY

May 23, 2024, 7:00-8:30 pm

Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, Wisconsin

The Academy is bringing U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to Madison for a reading with a conversation with Dr. Kimberly Blaeser, followed by a book signing. This event focuses on the connections between nature, the changing environment, and poetry. Through Limón’s work, the Academy will bring people together to explore these themes and the intersection of literature and sciences. Limón will be joined on stage for a Q&A moderated by Dr. Kimberly Blaeser, Academy Fellow, Vice President of Letters, and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate.