Wisconsin People & Ideas – Spring 2018

Helen Lee & Anne Kingsbury

Language as Order

and Play

Fighting the Formidable Flying Foe Mosquito research in Wisconsin

Mayana Chocolate Riders •• Mascot GrimmFactory & Litherland Driftless Area •• Freedom Hickory Syrup

Providing insight into Wisconsin issues.

WisContext.org

A service of Cooperative Extension, Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television

WISCONSIN ACADEMY STAFF Jane Elder • Executive Director Augusta Brulla • Head Gallery Attendant, James Watrous Gallery Chelsea Chandler • Director, Environmental Initiatives Jody Clowes • Director, James Watrous Gallery Kelly Hilyard • Program Assistant, Environmental Initiatives Angela Johnson • Exhibitions Coordinator, James Watrous Gallery Bethany Jurewicz • Business & Events Manager Matt Rezin • Data & Office Systems Coordinator Amanda E. Shilling • Development Director Jason A. Smith • Associate Director and Editor, Wisconsin People & Ideas Nikita Werner • Administrative Assistant OFFICERS OF THE BOARD Tim Size • President Patricia Brady • President-elect Linda Ware • Immediate Past President Rich Donkle • Treasurer James W. Perry • Secretary Richard Burgess • Vice President of Sciences Vacant • Vice President of Arts L. Jane Hamblen • Vice President of Letters Andrew Richards • Foundation President STATEWIDE BOARD OF DIRECTORS John Ashley, Sauk City Kimberly Blaeser, Burlington Malcolm Brett, Oregon Frank D. Byrne, Madison Roberta Filicky-Peneski, Sheboygan Joseph Heim, La Crosse Tom Luljak, Milwaukee Jane Elder, Madison Robert D. Mathieu, Madison Michael Morgan, Milwaukee Bernie L. Patterson, Stevens Point Kevin Reilly, Verona Nathan Wautier, Madison Marty Wood, Eau Claire OFFICERS OF THE ACADEMY FOUNDATION Foundation Founder: Ira Baldwin (1895–1999) Andrew Richards • Foundation President Freda Harris • Foundation Vice President Rich Donkle • Foundation Treasurer Arjun Sanga • Foundation Secretary

Editor’s Note While my parents aren’t exactly back-to-the-earth types, they raised me to appreciate edible wild foods. When I was a kid, it was common to see them reading Stalking the Wild Asparagus or Mother Earth News while experimenting with staghorn sumac “lemonade” (delicious) and roasted cattail tubers (repulsive).

I never thought it strange that I always knew the best places to find morel mushrooms and ramps or that I gobbled gooseberries and wild strawberries by the handful while other kids eyed these plants (and likely me) with suspicion.

One of my favorite childhood memories is of our family sitting by a glowing cast iron stove, shelling foraged hickory nuts while watching The Love Boat and Fantasy Island (arguably the best two hours of television ever invented). Even though removing the nut from its dense shell probably burns the same amount of calories as the nut provides, the sweet meat is worth it.

Hickory nuts are still my favorite. So, when I heard about an outfit on Green Lake near Princeton that is making hickory syrup, I thought it could be a good subject for the spring issue. To my surprise, I learned that you don’t actually tap a hickory tree for springtime sap to make the syrup. Instead, you toast the bark, simmer it to create a sort of “tea,” and then add sugar to make the smoky, earthy syrup (see recipe on page 13).

In the process of developing the article, I met Mike Starshak, who is, in addition to making some award-winning hickory syrup, striving to kickstart a hickory-products industry in Wisconsin.

Even though it can take up to forty years for a mature hickory tree to produce nuts, Starshak is pursuing a crop feasibility study to see if a concerted effort to grow these trees might help diversify a state agricultural portfolio that largely revolves around high-yield, land-intensive crops such as corn and soybeans.

I like the thought of planting something—a tree, an idea—that will bear fruit only for our children, our children’s children. And so I’m off this weekend with my kids to search for wild asparagus along country roads, morels near the damp edges of oak savanna. We’ll need to keep our eyes open. Like a passion for foraging, these wild foods can grow in unexpected places.

TJ Lambert/Stages Photography

The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters

FOUNDATION DIRECTORS Mark Bradley Patricia Brady Jane Elder Jack Kussmaul Tim Size Linda Ware

Wisconsin Academy Steenbock Center Offices 1922 University Avenue • Madison, WI 53726 ph 608-263-1692 • wisconsinacademy.org

Jason A. Smith, Editor

On the cover: Artists Helen Lee and Anne Kingsbury at the UW–Madison Art Department Art Lofts. Photo by TJ Lambert/Stages Photography.

SPRING 2018

1

CONTENTS 34

04 From the Director 05 Letters 07 Happenings Wisconsin Table

10 Nuts for Hickory

Max Witynski

Photo Essay

14 Mascot Factory

Adam Ryan Morris

TJ Lambert/Stages Photography

Essay

20 The Edge of Anomaly

Curt Meine

Profile

28 John Harmon: Symphony of Awareness

Matt Ambrosio

20

Jim Klousia/Edible Madison

2

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

14 @ the Watrous Gallery

34 Language as Order and Play

Dominique Haller

Fiction

44 Like This, Like That

Liz Wyckoff

50 Wisconsin Poetry

Angela Trudell Vasquez and Oscar Mireles

Book Reviews

54 The Philosopher's Flight, by Tom Miller

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS JASON A. SMITH editor

JODY CLOWES arts editor CHARLOTTE FRASCONA cold reader HUSTON DESIGN design & layout

Erik Richardson

55 Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles

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

Since 1954, Wisconsin People & Ideas has been a trusted resource for people who care about the issues and ideas that shape life in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin People & Ideas publishes fiction and poetry from Wisconsin writers, highlights new works from our visual artists and photographers, and covers science and environmental issues that affect Wisconsin’s people, lands, and waters.

Copyright © 2018 by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Postage is paid in Madison, Wisconsin.

JEAN LANG copy editor

Poetry

Adam Ryan Morris

VOLUME 64 · NUMBER 2 SPRING 2018

Through Philosophy, by Michael Perry

Mari Carlson

Wisconsin thought and culture Become an Academy member and support programs and publications that explore, explain, and sustain Wisconsin thought and culture.

Visit wisconsinacademy.org/membership.

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

From the Director

I

grew up on the shores of a small lake in southern Michigan. To this day, I can clearly recall the choir of natural voices, from the returning geese and red-winged blackbirds to the awakening frogs, heralding the arrival of spring. The marshy areas around the lake were the stage for the most exuberant performances, from the high pitched “kon-ka-rees” of the courting blackbirds to the booming bass notes of the bullfrogs.

Ecologists call wetlands “productive habitat” because they provide many critical ecological functions such as nursery, foodbank, and shelter for wildlife. Wetlands also act as natural “sponges” that store and filter storm water, helping to reduce flooding and polluted runoff that can degrade water quality. If this isn’t enough, the rich organic soil found in marshlands also helps to reduce greenhouse gas levels by capturing and storing carbon.

Over the past one hundred and fifty years, Wisconsin—like much of the Great Lakes region—has lost more than half of its original wetlands. Often regarded as “useless swamps” or impediments to agriculture and development, our natural wetlands have been drained, filled, paved over, and otherwise dispatched. The man-made, engineered alternatives that some developers create to offset wetlands destruction rarely match the quality or functionality of nature’s design.

Yet we continue to destroy and degrade our wetlands, even though for decades scientists have made a compelling case for protecting

4

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

them. Doing so will not only safeguard habitat for the heralds of spring (and myriad other quieter species) but also protect our water quality, water supply, and the hydrological systems that flow beneath and through our communities.

I’m of a generation whose impressions about the environment were shaped by Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Leopold made the case that the land is a community of which we are part; Carson sounded the alarm about the impact of DDT and similar pesticides on this community. Both drew their conclusions from scientific observation, and also made persuasive ethical arguments for safeguarding the environment.

Both Leopold and Carson were gifted writers and visionary thinkers. Each paid a price—Carson in particular—for publicly raising larger concerns revealed through science. Yet we are richer today for their advocacy, which deepened our understanding of our relationship with the natural world, and helped keep spring full of song and life.

Leopold wrote of this convergence of science and advocacy in Round River, noting that “an ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

As we mark another change of season, when the voices of sandhill cranes join those of the spring peepers, consider that they depend on us—and we on them—for a healthy place to live. I also invite you to consider the importance of scientists who ask us to pay attention to the data, engage our logical and ethical faculties, and support policy informed by science. Theirs, too, are the voices of spring that should never be silenced.

Jane Elder, Executive Director

Member News

NEWS for MEMBERS WELCOME TO OUR NEW FELLOWS On the evening of April 6, 2018, the Academy honored fourteen outstanding individuals (see page 6) for their intellectual and cultural contributions to our state. Fellows participate in Academy programs and publications, and work with us to share their knowledge, talent, and other gifts with the people of Wisconsin.

If you have questions about our Fellows, or wonder how to honor and recognize someone you know with a Fellows Award, e-mail us at fellows@wisconsinacademy.org.

ADDITIONS, TRANSITIONS & DEPARTURES We are pleased to announce the election of Michael Morgan to the Wisconsin Academy Board. A Milwaukee-based management consultant, Morgan formerly served as Senior Vice President for Administration and Fiscal Affairs for UW System.

We are also pleased to announce the election of two new officers to the Wisconsin Academy Foundation: Freda Harris (Madison) is Vice President and Arjun Sanga of (Madison) is Secretary.

Our deepest gratitude to Marianne Lubar (Milwaukee) who is departing after thirteen years of service to the Academy Board, including recent service as Vice President of Arts and member of the Fellows Selection Committee. In recognition of her service, Lubar has been named an Honorary Life Member of the Academy.

AMERICAN DREAM SERIES VIDEOS Thank you to everyone who participated in our American Dream in Wisconsin series, which is now available to watch online at wisconsinacademy.org/AmDreamVideos, courtesy of WisconsinEye. SPRING FUNDING DRIVE Please consider a tax-deductible gift beyond your annual member dues before June 30.

Each dollar raised provides essential funds that help the Wisconsin Academy to connect Wisconsin people and ideas for a better world.

Give online at wisconsinacademy.org/donate.

Letters I’m really glad I made the trip down to hear the “Pursuit of Happiness” talk (March 20, 2018), and pleased that we did a meditation together during the talk. Richard Davidson did a great job in fielding the audience questions. I have been so lucky to have attended a number of your Academy Talks, and all were amazing. Thank you for acquiring a larger venue when so many people wanted to come to see Dr. Davidson.

Marilyn Wilson, Washburn

I read with great interest about the 2016 James Watrous Gallery exhibition, Beading Culture: Raised Beadwork and the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. We’re in the process of indexing the Native American Artists Resource Collection Online with the artists cited in the wonderful article by Anne Pryor in the summer 2016 issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas.

Mario Nick Klimiades, Library and Archives Director Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ

Wisconsin People & Ideas is always a handsome piece, and an excellent presentation of the many interests the Wisconsin Academy speaks to.

The cover photo of Richard Quinney (Winter 2018) is both beautiful and poignant, so superb that I want to say, “Thank you!” It matches the quality of the accompanying article. Well done.

Sue Cleary-Koch, Saukville

Richard Quinney’s “Elegy for a Family Farm” (Winter 2018) is a delicious tribute to a way of life, a family, memories, and moving on. I did not grow up on a farm, but “ the Farm,” my greatgrandparent's place in Southampton, Massachusetts, was a family gathering spot throughout my youth. (Indeed, I often return to the farm in my writing.) My grandmother and her siblings grew up there, and, as they reminisced with my great-grandmother, I knew I had missed something special. It was a hard life; I understood that. But there was a depth in their connection to the land and each other that I envied. Quinney’s essay helped me better understand that connection.

Pam Parker, Wauwatosa

SPRING 2018

5

Happenings

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR FELLOWS Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters 2018 Fellows Awards Recipients

6

Todd Andrew Berry

Renee Boldt

Tom Boldt

Anthony Bukoski

Katherine J. Cramer

Public policy researcher

Community volunteer

CEO and philanthropist

Short story writer

Political scientist

Sarah Day

Max Garland

John D. Lyons

Curt Meine

David M. Mickelson

Actor

Poet

Fisheries scientist

Conservation biologist

Glacial geologist

Gregg Mitman

Dipesh Navsaria

Kevin L. Shafer

John W. Valley

Environmental historian

Pediatrician

Public utilities manager

Geochemist

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Happenings

W AT E R

by

Pie

rre D armon

FELLOWS I N TH E N EWS

ot

o

Ph

Ben Sidran Wisconsin Academy Fellow Ben Sidran (1996) and wife Judy are organizing what promises to be an exceptional gathering of former University of Wisconsin–Madison students to explore how Madison became the Midwest epicenter of 1960s counterculture.

Taking place June 14–16, The Madison Reunion features conference panels and discussions at several locations on campus and around town. Public libraries, musical venues, and restaurants are all jumping into the spirit of the Reunion with 1960s themed fare.

In his new Milwaukee: A City Built on Water, celebrated historian John Gurda (2009) expands on his popular Milwaukee Public Television documentary, leading readers through the marshes, lakes, and rivers that gave Milwaukee life. Through tales of the city’s brewers and brickmakers, ecologists and engineers, Gurda explores the city’s complicated connection with its most precious resource—and its greatest challenge. He deftly brings readers into the lives of those who connect to Milwaukee’s water history—from a Potawatomi chief to fur traders and fishermen to early residents and, ultimately, to recent city leaders who transformed the abused and neglected waterway that was the Milwaukee River into today’s lively and lovely RiverWalk.

Wisconsin recently lost two beloved Wisconsin Academy Fellows: Robert H. Dott Jr. (2011) and Irving Shain (1996). Dott was a professor of geology at UW–Madison for 36 years with a career focused primarily on sedimentology, tectonics, and the evolution of the Earth. He is author (with John Attig) of the 2004 Roadside Geology of Wisconsin, a guidebook that recounts the geologic evolution of places that people can see from their cars or access readily from state highways. UW–Madison’s chancellor from 1977 to 1986, Shain was responsible for helping establish a veterinary school and the University Research Park business incubator. Shain was a respected scholar and researcher in the field of electrochemistry who also embraced the arts and humanities, endowing two student competitions at the UW–Madison School of Music.

Both Dott and Shain will be missed.

Fellows are the best and brightest of our friends and colleagues. Learn more at wisconsinacademy.org/fellows.

Celebrate Water, a new initiative through Healthy Water Door County (HWDC), is launching a year-long campaign on May 5, 2018, to enhance appreciation for and awareness of Door County’s greatest natural resource.

Funded by the Door Country Community Foundation, HWDC works to protect human, environmental, and economic health in the region by guarding against threats to water. According to HWDC committee member and Celebrate Water chairperson Anne Egan, the time is right to “make some waves and begin healing our waters.” To do this, Egan says that Celebrate Water is “enlisting gifted people in our community … to help promote lake literacy among residents and visitors alike.”

Drawing support from local businesses and organizations across the peninsula, Celebrate Water takes a “big-top” approach to public programming with a series of arts-based and experiential activities throughout the year to raise awareness about water issues. Gallery exhibits and musical performances, environmental programs, and outdoor experiences will all accentuate the role of water in our lives.

Through presentations, discussions, films, and two Door County Reads selections—including Dan Egan’s The Death and Life of the Great Lakes—students and adults will have various opportunities to explore the challenges and threats facing the Great Lakes. Celebrate Water will culminate with a Water Summit in June 2019 that focuses on water advocacy and the ways is which educators, researchers, and journalists can better share current scientific information, replicate past successes, and explore future ways of protecting and restoring our waters.

Egan says this broad approach will bring people of different cultural and political affiliations together for Celebrate Water. “Water is essential to all life on the planet. We all have it in common. And we believe that working together, especially at the community-level, is the most effective way to support our Great Lakes.”

Len Villano

SPRING 2018

7

Happenings

A RT P R E S E R V E Since the 1970s, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) in Sheboygan has worked to preserve and collect what are known as artist-built environments from across the United States. Some of these artist-built environments are rooms or even homes that artists have used as a canvas for their work; others are outdoor areas with in situ sculpture or installation artwork.

In conjunction with the Kohler Foundation, JMKAC has been instrumental in the preservation and restoration of some of Wisconsin’s best-known outdoor artist-built environments, such as the Wegner Grotto (La Crosse), the Fred Smith Wisconsin Concrete Park (Philips), and the Mary Nohl Home and Sculptures (Fox Point). While some of these environments are open to visitors, others are not, for a variety of reasons such as structural problems or issues with commercial zoning. Even worse, some environments are left to decay or are demolished without any understanding of their value.

In an effort to make America’s imperiled yet culturally important artist-built environments more accessible to the public and to preserve them for future generations, JMKAC recently broke ground on an Art Preserve. Located on 38 acres along Indiana Avenue on Sheboygan’s west side and opening in the summer of 2020, the Art Preserve will house over 20,000 artist-built environment pieces from JMKAC’s collection. Made of concrete and glass, the three-level building will offer multiple visitor experiences, from academic exploration to meditative consideration to personal discovery.

Ruth DeYoung Kohler, Director of Special Initiatives at JMKAC, notes that the 54,000-square-foot facility will help the center “continue and expand on the important work of preserving art environments for the future, fostering scholarship in this diverse and fascinating field of art making, and investigating new ways of making the lifework of these artists more meaningful to the public.”

8

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

I NTE R S E CTI O N After the success of a recent series of community conversations on climate issues in the Fox Cities, a core group of fifty or so people across environmental, faith-based, academic, artistic, musical, student, and legislative entities made a commitment to continue the discussion. Determined to reach new audiences and ease the tension and conflict surrounding discussions about climate change, the group developed a project called PopEarth. PopEarth promises to engage people of all ages in discovery of, and conversation about, environmental issues through a variety of open-to-the-public installations created by collaborating artists and scientists.

Roger Kanitz, one of PopEarth’s founding members, says that everyone involved in the community conversations agrees that it is important “to reach more people of all ages, more families, and more students with an understanding of the environmental issues of our time,” and that “the arts and welcoming activities [can] help people become more comfortable discussing and learning about environmental issues.”

An engineer from Menasha who also serves on the city’s Sustainability Committee, Kanitz says that PopEarth “builds on the momentum from conversations already taking place in the community… in a fun, creative way” that can “help people explore and learn about environmental factors, both locally and globally.

PopEarth’s first free event, hosted on April 19, featured small problems, BIG TROUBLE at Stone Arch at Riverview Gardens in Appleton. Previously featured in this magazine, small problems, BIG TROUBLE is a series of 28 paintings by UW–Fox Valley art professor Judith Baker Waller accompanied by essays written by earth scientist James A. Brey and other scientists.

“We are so excited not only to launch PopEarth but also to introduce it to the community by hosting our first arts-related event,” says PopEarth member Jill Mitchler, who also leads the Appleton chapter of Citizen’s Climate Lobby. “We really wanted to offer a unique first event to set the tone for the continuing conversations and events we hope to create as we move forward.”

ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 29 Free admission • 227 State Street • mmoca.org

Robert Cottingham, M (detail), 1975.

Graphite on paper. Collection of MMoCA. Museum Purchase Fund.

When your company slogan is “it’s about people” you see things a little differently.

At National Guardian Life Insurance Company (NGL), we focus on what matters most and that’s helping the people around us.

TAKE A LEARNING JOURNEY WITH

Continuing Studies WHERE WILL YOU BE A YEAR FROM NOW?

At a new job? | Performing on a stage? | Visiting another country?

Two East Gilman Street • Madison, WI 53523 • www.nglic.com National Guardian Life Insurance Company (NGL) is not affiliated with the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, a.k.a The Guardian or Guardian Life.

Whether you’re chasing professional goals or seeking personal enrichment, our budget friendly classes and conferences can help you succeed on your journey.

JOIN US!

CIWPI 1/18

continuingstudies.wisc.edu Proud Sponsor of

THE AMERICAN DREAM IN WISCONSIN A series by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters

Proud Sponsor of

THE AMERICAN DREAM IN WISCONSIN A series by the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters

SPRING 2018

9

Wisconsin Table

10

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Wisconsin Table

NUTS FOR HICKORY

BY MAX WITYNSKI

I

t’s a not-so-well-kept secret in Wisconsin that hickory nuts taste better when someone else shells

them. Two hickory species are found in Wisconsin, the shagbark (Carya ovata), and the rarer bitternut (Carya cordiformis). With coarse bark that hangs off the tree in shaggy strips and large, pinnate leaves, a mature shagbark hickory is easy to recognize. The tree’s nuts make for superb eating. However, clad in a leathery outer husk and hard inner shell, the hickory nut meat is a treat for which one must work.

Jay Dampier/UW Extension, Green Lake County

Green Lake County resident and Wisconsin Hickory Association president Mike Starshak sees a bright future for the hickory foods industry in Wisconsin.

SPRING 2018

11

Wisconsin Table

All photos courtesy of the Georgia Botanical Society

Shagbark hickories are monoecious, which means that all trees can produce nuts. Look for dark-brown fruit up to two inches in diameter with very thick husks that are nearly round; nuts are distinctly four-ribbed.

Springtime terminal buds are large, covered with three to four scales.

Industrious nut foragers who know where to look—along back roads, in woods shared with oak trees, on hillsides with dry soil— can easily gather enough fallen nuts (look for brown outer husks) from a single tree to yield at least a pound of meat. The amount of nuts produced by the trees, a process known as masting, varies naturally from year to year, with most nuts falling to the ground in late summer and early fall. Occasionally there is a “bumper crop” of hickory nuts, which are a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E for wildlife, particularly squirrels, deer, and wild turkeys—as well as humans.

According to Brown County’s University of Wisconsin–Extension horticultural agent Vijai Pandian, foragers should bring a heavy sack or five-gallon pail to collect hickory nuts, which can be oily. Remove the pithy outer husk and put the light-brown nuts in buckets of water, discarding any that float. Lay the nuts in a warm area to completely dry, which usually takes a week, and then move them to a cool, dry area (such as a basement or root cellar) for up to a month. A nutcracker or Vise-Grip and a nut or dental pick are essential tools when it is time remove the meat from its tightly enfolding shell. Nut meats are ready to eat fresh from the shell or can be frozen and stored for months.

Humans in North American have been eating hickory nuts for thousands of years. Writing in his 1792 book Bartram’s Travels, William Bartram reported “ancient cultivated fields” of hickory trees in Georgia and noted that Creek Indian families would store as many as a hundred bushels of nuts every season. Another Native

12

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

American practice was to toss crushed hickory nuts into boiling water to make a kind of nut milk known as pawcohiccora, the Algonquian word from which the word, hickory, is derived.

Native Americans are thought to have helped propagate and expand the range of the species, which in Wisconsin covers the lower two thirds of the state. Early European settlers planted the trees near farmhouses for summertime shade and in woodlots for autumn crops of nuts and wintertime hardwood for fuel and smoking meat. Dense, heavy, and difficult to work with, hickory wood was good for shovels, axe handles, and wagon wheels, while oak and pine were often used for home furnishings. Hickory trees take a long time to mature and produce nuts (from twenty to forty years), and this, combined with the difficulty of extracting the nut meat, made them less conducive to commercial production than related species such as the pecan, and, perhaps, has led to their decline in popularity.

Today, however, interest in the hickory tree is rebounding.

And the nuts are not the only hickory product drawing attention. Hickory syrup is beginning to appear at farmers’ markets in a few areas of the state. Mike Starshak, president of the Wisconsin Hickory Association, sees a potential market in Wisconsin for both nuts and this delicious alternative to maple syrup.

Unlike maple trees, hickories are not tapped for their sap. Doing so would be harmful to the tree, which is adapted to drier soils than a maple and needs to remain unstressed in order to produce a mast of nuts. Additionally, hickory sap does not contain enough sugar

Wisconsin Table

to make syrup in an economical way: eighty gallons of hickory sap would be required to produce a single gallon of syrup, which is about twice the amount of sap required from a maple tree.

The organic compounds that give hickory syrup its flavor are found in the bark, which is naturally shed from the tree. Hickory syrup production begins by collecting, scrubbing, toasting, and then simmering the bark in water to extract the flavor. The flavor-infused water is then combined with cane sugar for sweetness and reduced over heat to make the syrup (see sidebar).

The smoky, earthy syrup has myriad applications, including as a topping for pancakes and ice cream, a glaze for roasted meats, and a sugar or honey substitute for Old Fashioneds and other cocktails. Starshak, who has been producing hickory syrup at his home near the Town of Princeton in Green County for fifteen years, says that he can hardly keep up with customer demand, especially after his Wisconsin Hickory Syrup won a blue ribbon at the Green Lake County Fair for three years in a row.

“Initially I made it for family members during the holidays. Then, in 2012, I began selling my syrup to the public at the Princeton Flea Market. Since then, demand has increased greatly, and we regularly appear at farm markets in Appleton and Milwaukee, and get many more requests that we are not able to fulfill.”

As president of the Wisconsin Hickory Association, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting awareness of and interest in hickory products, Starshak sees a future in which hickory nuts, syrup, and wood are central to the state economy. He believes there is potential for a hickory industry in Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Hickory Association has obtained a grant from the USDA to conduct a crop feasibility study in collaboration with UW–Whitewater. While the study is being conducted, the Wisconsin Hickory Association will continue to promote the culture of hickory around the state through nut-cracking workshops at public libraries, presentations at schools, and an annual hickory feast, a four course meal that highlights the unique flavor of hickory.

“Wisconsin is a wonderful foodie state. We also enjoy and highly value our natural areas and the wildlife and vegetation that define them,” says Starshak. As a resource, hickory can bring together some of the things Wisconsinites love, which, for Starshak, means the time is ripe for Wisconsin to “rediscover hickory’s long, notable history and restore its prominence” in our state’s culture as well as our kitchens.

HICKORY SYRUP STEP 1: COLLECT AND PREPARE THE BARK

Locate a shagbark hickory and collect the newly fallen bark near the base of the tree. Bark can be taken directly from the tree, but only loose pieces should be harvested so as not to harm the tree. You won’t need much to make syrup: approximately a one-gallon bucket full of bark should be enough.

Fill the bucket with enough water to cover the bark.

Scrub each piece on both sides, rinsing well to remove insects and lichen. Pat the bark dry with a dishtowel.

STEP 2: BREW THE HICKORY TEA

Preheat an oven to 325°F, break the bark into six-inch pieces, and lay them on a sheet pan. Toast the bark in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the sheet from the oven and allow the bark to cool.

Place the bark in a large pot with enough filtered water to cover it. Bring the pot to a boil and immediately reduce the heat to medium. Simmer the bark for 30 minutes. Remove the pieces and continue reducing the “tea” until it reaches the desired flavor and a darkamber color, about another 15 to 30 minutes.

Place a fine mesh strainer with a coffee filter inside over a bowl or pitcher and pour in the tea.

STEP 3: MAKE THE HICKORY SYRUP

Max Witynski is a Madison native and graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He is interested in ecology and science communication. In his free time, Witynski enjoys birding, cycling, and cross-country skiing.

In a large saucepan combine four cups of the hickory tea with four cups of unprocessed cane sugar. Dissolve the sugar completely in the warm tea as you slowly bring it to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and continue cooking for two or more hours until the liquid is reduced to a thin syrup (over-reduction can cause the sugar to crystallize). Turn off heat and add a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice, which will help inhibit crystallization.

Sterilize three or four small canning jars and lids and pour in the hot syrup, leaving a half-inch space at the top of jars. Cover with lids and rings to seal, and store the jars at room temperature until ready to use.

Refrigerate open jars.

SPRING 2018

13

Photo Essay

14

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Photo Essay

MASCOT FACTORY PH OTOS BY ADAM RYAN M O RRIS

I

never learned to make things by hand. But I’m fascinated by those who do. When I discovered that some of

the world’s most recognizable sports and product mascot costumes—Tony the Tiger, Yogi Bear, Bucky Badger, the Famous Racing Sausages—are designed and handcrafted in Milwaukee by a company called Olympus Group, I had to check it out. With over 15,000 mascot costumes made since it was founded in 1896, Olympus Group is the largest manufacturer of costumes in the United States. Their designers work with clients to create memorable mascots (remember: there’s a person in there) that generate brand recognition and audience excitement. It takes a team of designers, artists, and technicians about six weeks to make a mascot costume, each of which is unique. In an era when production surely would be cheaper overseas, there’s much to admire about a company committed to making it in America—and about the artisans who do the making.

Adam Ryan Morris

SPRING 2018

15

photo Essay

16

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

photo Essay

SPRING 2018

17

photo Essay

18

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

photo Essay

Adam Ryan Morris is a photographer and director based in Milwaukee. His work is driven by curiosity about places, things, and, most of all, people—their interests, their passions, their dreams.

SPRING 2018

19

Essay

20

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Essay

THE EDGE OF ANOMALY

BY CU RT M EI N E

Wilderness exists in all degrees, from the little accidental wild spot at the head of a ravine in a Corn Belt woodlot to vast expanses of virgin country. … Wilderness is a relative condition.

—Aldo Leopold, “Wilderness as a Form of Land Use” (1925)

O

ur four-car caravan leaves the creekside parking lot, winds across the valley, follows

the curves of a narrow road, climbs up a bank of steep, oak-forested hills, and rolls through open pastures and upland crop fields toward the ridgetop farm of Joseph Haugen. Most of the twenty university students have no idea where we are. There is no reason they should. Some

Jim Klousia/Edible Madison

have come from ten thousand miles away.

A defining characteristic of the rural Driftless Area landscape today, the contour strip protects waterways from excessive sediment, manure, and chemical runoff.

SPRING 2018

21

Essay

Rory O'Driscoll/La Crosse Tribune

But here we are, a few miles from the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, heading to a small farm where eighty-eightyear-old Joseph now lives alone. His older brother Ernest, with whom Joseph lived and farmed this land all his life, died two years ago. The bachelor brothers had sold their dairy herd some years before but kept three Jersey cows for milk, for company, and for continuity’s sake. The lede of the obituary in the La Crosse Tribune read, “Ernest Haugen, a farmer and champion of land conservation, died Thursday at age ninety, just five weeks after milking his last cow.”

We pull into the Haugen farm. Its modest old farmhouse sits on one side of the road, outbuildings on the other—a not-uncommon arrangement in this part of Wisconsin. The students settle onto the sloping lawn, sip from their water bottles, and enjoy the midmorning summer sun. My friend Jon Lee, who farms nearby, and I go to fetch Joseph and three wooden chairs.

Jon knocks on the door. “Good morning, Joseph!” he says loudly. Joseph’s hearing has faded.

“Hello, Yon.” Joseph speaks with a second-generation Norwegian accent. He is slight and wiry. He’s a smiler and lights up as we meet him at the door. He wears blue jeans, a plaid, short-sleeved shirt, and a ball cap. He walks haltingly with his cane across the grass. For someone who comes close to fitting the stereotype of the stoic Norwegian bachelor farmer, he enjoys our having come for a visit. But he also tires more easily these days, so we must make good use of our time with him.

The Haugens and their neighbors in the Coon Creek watershed were revolutionaries. In the mid-1930s, the farmers of Coon Valley came to terms with their land, with each other, and with the actions of their forebears. Three generations of post-settlement farming and flooding had ravaged the watersheds of these steep-walled valleys. The region’s fine loess soils—rendered vulnerable by heavy grazing, constant monocropping, and up-anddown-hill plowing—had melted away in heavy rains. Chasmic gullies ate into the hillsides, the eroded soils burying downstream homes, farms, and businesses. Down-valley, in Chaseburg, you can find the tops of chimneys just barely poking out above the ground. In 1935, Aldo Leopold summarized the situation: “Coon Valley is one of a thousand farm communities, which, through the abuse of its originally rich soil, has not only filled the national dinner pail, but has created the Mississippi flood problem, the navigation problem, the overproduction problem, and the problem of its own future continuity.”

The solution came in the form of a watershed-wide community response. More than four hundred farmers broke with past practice and adopted novel soil and water conservation methods.

The techniques were in many cases experimental, the aims basic.

Keep the soil in place. Slow the water. Start at the upslope sources.

Moderate the water’s infiltration. Adjust land use to fit the degree of slope. Plow and crop along the natural contours of the land. Intersperse and rotate crops. Take the cows off the steep slopes. Repair and revegetate the stream banks. Plant food and cover for wildlife. To make all this happen, work with neighbors and with the newly established Soil Conservation Service, university specialists

Coon Creek farmers Joseph (left) and Earnest (right) Haugen carry on the land stewardship tradition learned from their father, Johan, who was one of the first to sign up with the U.S. government’s soil conservation program in the early 1930s.

22

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Essay

(including Leopold), the callow boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the town bankers, and local governments.

And don’t just do all this for a season, or a year, or until the soil erosion crisis passes, or as long as the government funding lasts.

Commit to it. For a lifetime, or longer.

Beyond the technical details of the innovative field projects, the work at Coon Valley and throughout the region reflected a radical new approach to conservation. Here, conservation focused not on protecting large expanses of public land but on the restoration of private lands and collaboration among private landowners. It did not treat parcels of land in isolation but involved an entire community and a whole watershed. It not only brought in specialized agronomists and soil scientists and foresters and wildlife biologists, but also integrated their perspectives, skills, and expertise in the field. It recognized the need to rebuild and sustain the economic productivity of the land and saw that this could be achieved only by recognizing a broader set of values and respecting the native qualities and wild ways of the land itself. In repairing the Coon Valley landscape, its people helped redefine the very meaning of conservation.

Joseph is among the last living links to that generation of revolutionaries. That is why we wanted the students to meet him.

We sit in our chairs on the lawn and share a few stories and questions. Joseph, in his lilting accent, recounts how all this looked eighty years before. He remembers the government engineers who helped lay out the contours. He describes the changes in wildlife: fewer grouse and quail now, but the return of deer, turkey, even rabbits. He recalls life on the farm with his brother. There is a famous story told about Joseph. He is said to hold the all-time record for sustained milking, having attended to his cows every single day at 5:00 am and 5:00 pm for forty-seven straight years. In all that time, he missed only one milking. And that was because he was called into town—“for yury duty!”

Before Ernest died, the Haugen brothers put their names to a conservation easement for their 160-acre farm, protecting it forever from development. Their final act of grace. The revolution continues.

Our Q&A session comes to a close. The students have sat rapt for the last half hour, half bemused, half in awe. They gather themselves together, and we prepare to head on to the next stop on our tour. We help Joseph back into his house. The mudroom is dusty and weathered. There is kindling in a well-worn wood box. Joseph heats and cooks with a wood stove. He smiles as we say good-bye.

Joseph Haugen is an anomaly.

y

I live a hundred miles east of Joseph, on the other edge of anomaly.

We both dwell in the Driftless Area, where the flat land wrinkles. Where the back roads and cornrows are not straight but curve around tight bends and through sweeping arcs. Where land uses don’t follow the checkerboard grid of the land surveyors’ township and range lines—the rigid pattern familiar to anyone who has flown over the American Midwest—but go awry and get twisted. Where reality loosens the fixed grip of the rational and orderly. Where abnormality is not only accepted but unavoidable.

Depending on how it is defined, the Driftless Area embraces between sixteen thousand and twenty-four thousand square miles, mostly in southwestern Wisconsin but also in portions of adjacent Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. The Mississippi River runs through it, as do its feeder streams: the Saint Croix, Red Cedar, Cannon, Chippewa, Zumbro, Whitewater, Trempealeau, Black, La Crosse, Root, Pine, Bad Axe, Upper Iowa, Baraboo, Kickapoo, Wisconsin, Yellow, Turkey, Grant, Platte, Pecatonica, Sinsinawa, Galena, Maquoketa, Apple, and a thousand other smaller rivers and creeks, rivulets and cold springs. Geologists describe the characteristic pattern of the Driftless river drainages as dendritic—like the branching of a tree or the fingers on our hands, like the splayed-out, interconnecting ends of our neurons.

The Driftless Area has other names. Geologists refer to it as the Paleozoic Plateau. Some call it the Driftless Zone or Region. Around La Crosse, Wisconsin, its municipal heart, people speak about the coulee country (from the French Canadian coulée, from the French couler, meaning, “to flow”). In other times and places, it may be known as Little Norway or Little Switzerland (reflecting segments of its European settler demographic), the Western Uplands, the Cuestaform Hill Land, the Ocooch Mountains.

Here’s the key thing to know about the Driftless: it defies the common image of the American Midwest. Because the Pleistocene glaciers never leveled the landscape here, it is not pancake flat. You can’t drive straight through it at eighty miles an hour on the way to Denver. It slows you down. It makes you turn.

The Driftless is an anomaly. Through the recurring episodes of Pleistocene glaciation—seventeen pulses of expansion and shrinkage over two and a half million years—ice hemmed in the Driftless on all sides at one time or another but left its interior ice-free. To the east, Lake Michigan’s north-south basin served as a sluice, channeling one great lobe of the glacial ice through its periodic advances and contractions. The Green Bay lobe of the last glacial pulse formed the eastern edge of the Driftless. To the north, the ice sheet dove into the depths of Lake Superior’s bowl, while the hard bedrock highlands just south of Superior limited ice flow into what is now Wisconsin.

The southern flanks of the ice sheets were relatively thin, and even modest variations in topography were enough to influence the shape of the glacier’s edge. To the west, the great ice had an open field—the flatlands of the mid-continent—to ease its way south. As the ice sheets advanced and receded, over and over, they scraped clean the high-latitude and high-altitude landscapes of the continent but missed the Driftless. The most recent advance maxed out some twenty thousand years ago, melted back, and left behind its burden of boulders, gravels, sands, silts, and clays—the “glacial drift.” But this odd exception, this large dent on the southern margin of the North American ice, remained unglaciated and, hence, driftless.

y

A few miles from the Haugen farm, on the western edge of Coon Valley, a roadside historical marker commemorates the revolution: “Nation’s First Watershed Project.” The text explains that

SPRING 2018

23

Essay

this valley served as “the nation’s first large-scale demonstration of soil and water conservation.” In its own way, this marker might well be placed alongside those that stand at Lexington and Concord, Seneca Falls, Fort Sumpter, Little Big Horn, Pullman, Selma, Stonewall. Those places became emblematic of dramatic changes in our nation’s human relations. Coon Valley, in the heart of the Driftless Area, was, and is, symbolic of far-reaching changes in our human-nature relations.

The Driftless Area is not a “pristine” wilderness. Humans have played a transformative role in the region ever since Paleoamericans, drifting along the edge of the receding glacier in search of favorable hunting and gathering opportunities, came upon the great gap in the ice wall. Although debates among New World paleontologists continue, it appears that the newly arrived humans and their descendants were directly or indirectly complicit in the extinction of the mastodon and mammoth, the dire wolf and short-faced bear, the giant beavers and ground sloth, ancient camel and horse, and other Pleistocene fauna.

Over the next dozen millennia, a series of Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippian peoples made their home in the Driftless, hunting and fishing, growing gardens, running fire through the prairies.

In the later stages of prehistory, they inscribed their own distinctive marks on the land: the Driftless Area was the epicenter of the effigy-mound-building cultures of the mid-continent, their varied earthworks dot the landscape in profusion (and still do, even after widespread destruction of mounds over the last two centuries).

Modern tribes of the Driftless landscape include the Ho-Chunk, Sauk and Fox, Santee Dakota, Potawatomi, Ioway, Kickapoo, and Ojibwe.

European explorers and missionaries came into the Driftless starting in the 1600s, followed by transient trappers, miners, loggers, and, in the mid-1800s, immigrant settlers. By the 1930s, three generations of farming the Driftless ridges, slopes, and valley floors had brought a measure of prosperity but also an accelerating rural crisis in the form of ruinous soil loss, flash flooding, degraded woodlands, and depleted wildlife (as so distressingly exemplified at Coon Valley).

The Driftless Area is, then, a long-peopled and much-used landscape. And, as with the rest of the planet, more than four hundred parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide (including the 120 post–Industrial Revolution parts) now waft over the coulees. Still, the earth endures and reminds: however changed and however constantly changing the landscape, it is not and will never be a completely humanized one. The sandstone, limestone, and dolomite bedrock, poking out of the hilltops like impacted molars, ground us in the non-human and pre-human cycling of carbon and minerals among atmosphere, ocean, and earth. On the steepest slopes with the thinnest soils and driest conditions, remnants of the preEuropean vegetation—“goat prairies” and oak savannas—still hold fast onto the outcrops. The Driftless has its share of dams and ditches and dikes, but the dendritic network of branched waterways still utterly defines the region.

And it was the way of water that finally forced necessary changes in land use in the 1930s. In the face of destructive floods, gullied slopes, sloughing soils, and dissolving pastures, people in the Drift-

24

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

less had to make a turn. Of all the restorative measures that the region’s landowners adopted, and the many that have been retained since, the most readily visible are the alternating, contoured strips of crop and pasture, hayfield and woodland edge, that hug the Driftless hills. Retaining soils, recycling nutrients, and interrupting the downhill flow of water, the contours are nowhere uniform; they are unique to each piece of land, expressing its Paleozoic past, its land-use history, and its contemporary land ownership. Each parcel tells a tale of a farmer willing, at some point, to counter convention—perhaps even a neighbor, a friend, a father—to change from plowing straight up and down the slope to following the lead of the land and turning with it. So basic, and so radical. Such a wild thing to do.

If the Driftless Area is neither pristine nor thoroughly humanized, it is also unlike the rest of the agro-industrial American Midwest. It is not wholly engineered to serve as a mere medium for corn and soybeans bound for the global market. It has not been made efficient to the point of diminishing returns. The goat prairies, woodlands, bottomland forests, riparian wetlands, rivers, streams, and springs keep the landscape diversified. Smaller-scale dairy and livestock operations, with actual grazing animals, remain relatively viable so that a large portion of the land is covered in permanent pasture. The corrugated topography does not lend itself to ever-expanding economies of scale. Even the big-box stores have a hard time squeezing into the narrow valleys. Whatever algorithms allowed Walmart to proliferate with surgical precision, conquer the flat Midwest, and redirect the flow of capital, they presumably had to be rejiggered in the Driftless.

Like all places, then, the Driftless Area landscape is a complex expression of natural features and processes that are always shaping, and being shaped by, human actions that began long ago and continue up to this instant, including actions unforeseen even a few years ago. The near-surface sandstones so characteristic of the Driftless now make the region ground zero for the extraction and processing of industrial sand, an essential ingredient in the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) process. The modest economy of the region makes the prospect of quick frac-sand profits attractive to many landowners and local municipalities. The global economy—and the fossil fuel juggernaut that feeds it—leaves no place untouched. Here, it scrapes land bare in a way that seventeen onslaughts of glacial ice over two thousand millennia could not.

And so the human impressions on the land emerge and fade, accelerate and slow, intensify and wane. Since Joseph Haugen was a boy—since the Haugens and the other farming families along Coon Creek signed up for the watershed restoration project—the Driftless landscape around him has changed. In many ways, it’s grown wilder. Its soils are healthier, more stable, more productive (agriculturally and ecologically). Its surface waters, slowed in their overland flow, clarified by infiltration, chilled by their passage underground, now support thriving populations of trout and a profitable fishing economy. Its remnant prairies and savannas are treasured. In the last two decades, black bears have come into the region from the north in increasing numbers. Gray wolves have reestablished themselves along the northeast edge of the Driftless and occasionally cross over into farmland to test the levels of human tolerance.

Essay

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

Phantomlike, cougars come and go amid the coulees, caught on trailcams as they arrive from as far away as the Black Hills and head off stealthily to points east.

Even as the American Midwest was surveyed and settled, gridded and sodbusted, plowed and ditched, simplified and commodified, the Driftless Area in its midst took a different path.

The patterns and methods of land exploitation that worked so smoothly in the flatlands—imposed “efficiencies” that disrupted the region’s soils and waters and assailed the native flora, fauna, and peoples— met their match in the convolutions of the Driftless.

Here, the main stream of culture had to self-correct.

Here, the culture had to admit to itself that selfcorrection was in fact needed, and that progress does not always entail going full bore, heedless, straight ahead.

Over the last decade, several “five-hundred-year” floods have come to portions of the Driftless. The Haugen farm was among those in the path of epic rainstorms, intense downpours of the sort that are expected to become more common with accelerated climate change. Even the professional soil and water conservationists who most closely monitor these rain events were surprised and encouraged to see how well the watersheds responded. The conservation measures first adopted seven decades before did their job—performed, in fact, beyond their design specs. Here, where the nation’s first watershed project was undertaken, we learn vital lessons for the uncertain future: if we ignore the particular qualities, needs, and opportunities of the land, we put ourselves at risk; if we work with the wild, the land grows more resilient; and as the land grows more resilient, so do our communities.

By 1939 advancing erosion created deep gullies in the Black River watershed near Melrose, rendering eighty acres of land worthless and pushing the road (near the bottom of the photograph) further and further away from the crumbling edge.

y

Throughout its history, the Driftless Area has regularly attracted renegades, refugees, resisters, and adventurers. Ho-Chunk who were removed time and again from their homeland but whose love of the land kept them returning. Fur trappers from France. Lead miners from Cornwall. Homesteaders from out east. Quakers seeking religous freedom, German “Forty-Eighters,” Scandinavian farmers, and the others who came in shortly after Wisconsin became a state in 1848. Escaped and freed slaves who, before and after the Civil War, settled in several communities in Grant, La Crosse, and Vernon counties. Black Hawk and Yellow Thunder, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Aldo Leopold. Since the 1960s, the Amish have come into the Driftless, drawn by its rural character and relatively affordable farmland.

The Driftless remains a tolerant home to the unconventional: independent farmers, seed savers, organic growers, aging hippies, young agrarians, outsider artists, Wiccan worshippers, unpredictable voters, river rats, trout bums. Anomalies all.

Just a few miles away from the Haugen farmstead, and just a couple of years before our visit, I was at work with a film crew documenting a bit of Coon Valley’s conservation history. My filmmaker friends

SPRING 2018

25

Essay

Jim Klousia/Edible Madison

Steve Dunsky and Dave Steinke—from California and Colorado, respectively—were new to the Driftless. We asked the indispensable Jon Lee if he could help us locate an Amish farm where we might be able to film. We did not want to impose, especially on a mellow midday in early October during prime harvest time. But soon we found ourselves on another ridgetop farm. The farmer was hitching his team of brown-and-white Paint/Percheron horses, preparing to bring in hay and oats. He agreed to let us film but requested that we not record any close-up images. He also asked us, by way of barter, to help him pitch a load of straw bales.

After finishing the chore, we waited for the farmer to harness his team and come around the fields. We stood gazing across the valley, where the local Amish schoolhouse sits atop the adjacent ridge.

Recess had just been called. Fifteen boys and girls, dressed in brown and blue, bonnets and suspenders, emerged and commenced playing baseball. We watched with fascination. A right-handed pull hitter had it made: one line drive into the clover, in the steeply pitched left field, and the ball would roll on until it reached the Mississippi River. We listened to the click of bat on ball, the laughter of the children, the rustling of the leaves in the autumn breeze, the whinnying of the horses behind us.

During a pause in the action, Steve offered color commentary.

Then he said, balanced perfectly between joking and sincerity, “I have never felt so American in all my life!”

A bucolic moment, captured in memory, framed by the billowing hills and odd angles of the Driftless and by the unsettling tensions and restless discontents of our times. But even the Amish—especially the Amish—are nowhere near as simple as they appear to be.

It is not a simple life that can defy pressures to conform, or simple convictions that can maintain modesty. It is not simple routine that allows a man to milk cows without interruption for forty-seven years, or simple warmth that allows an octogenarian to smile when

26

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

strange students come knocking, or simple need that causes farmers and tractors to turn with the contour. It is not a simple notion of the wild, or the human, that brings us around. We try to impose our will, yet we are shaped fundamentally by the wild, the spontaneous, the non-human, by forces that are greater than us, by realities that are older than us, by futures that draw us out. We are always finding ourselves on the edge of anomalies. And anomalies—with proper care and cultivation, exploration and contemplation, coordination, and action—can seed revolutions.

Reprinted with permission from Wildness: Relations of People and Place, edited by Gavin Van Horn and John Hausdoerffer, published by The University of Chicago Press in association with the Center for Humans and Nature. Copyright © 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist, environmental historian, and writer. An associate adjunct professor in UW–Madison’s Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology and Senior Fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, Meine was recently named a Wisconsin Academy Fellow. His most recent book, co-edited with Keefe Keeley, is The Driftless Reader (University of Wisconsin Press).

Essay

We’ve had issues for 40+ years

CHILDREN OF METROPOLIS THU, APR 26, 7:30 PM

DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM

SERIES SPONSOR

TUE, MAY 8, 7:30 PM

Underwritten with generous gifts from Joe & Mary Ellyn Sensenbrenner and Jeff & Tiffany Mack

Get Social Pre-Show Party!

JUST CALL ME GOD:

A DICTATOR’S FINAL SPEECH STARRING JOHN MALKOVICH PHOTO: Rachel Neville

SAT, MAY 12, 8 PM

OVERTURE.ORG | 608.258.4141

RECOMMENDED WHEN USED FOR REPRODUCTIONS SMALLER THAN 2.25” WIDE.

SPRING 2018

27

28

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Joe Sienkiewicz/USA TODAY NETWORK–Wisconsin

Profile

Profile

John Harmon

Symphony of Awareness

BY MATT AM BROSI O

I

n John Harmon’s home studio, filling the shelves and file cabinets beside a well-used baby grand piano,

are hundreds of beautifully handwritten manuscripts that chronicle over sixty years of musical composition.

Mementos lining the walls of the Winneconne home where he lives with his wife, Traf, offer a glimpse into the storied composer’s interest in visual art, the environment, and Native American cultures.

Musician, composer, and Academy Fellow John Harmon in his home studio in Winneconne.

SPRING 2018

29

Profile

Harmon’s first foray into music came through childhood piano lessons with his mother. The two would sit together and play “four hands,” figuring out popular songs like “Sweet Georgia Brown” by ear. While his mother taught Harmon the popular music of the day, his father introduced him to the world of jazz. Harmon soon began to mimic the artists he heard on his father’s favorite records—Duke Ellington, Teddy Wilson, and Art Tatum—and found new sounds at the keyboard through exploration and experimentation.

Upon the recommendation of a family friend, Harmon applied to study music at Lawrence University. There, Harmon developed a fondness for some of history’s great composers—Stravinsky, Debussy, and Brahms, among others. His coursework gained him a strong foundation in technique and sparked an everlasting curiosity.

But it was his passion for jazz that led Harmon to the Lenox School of Jazz, a short-running summer program held in Lenox, Massachusetts, that groomed luminaries such as Ornette Coleman.

Harmon credits his time at the Lenox School as one of his most formative experiences, during which, besides developing his piano skills, he broadened his purview of harmony and improvisation. As a member of the program’s inaugural class of 1957, Harmon trained with a distinguished faculty that included Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Bill Russo, John Lewis, and, most significantly for Harmon, pianist Oscar Peterson, whom Duke Ellington once referred to as the “Maharaja of the keyboard.” Harmon says that Peterson “opened up a whole new life” for him by showing Harmon new ways of considering musical texture and expanding his harmonic palette.

The Lenox School gave Harmon a real sense of what it meant to be a working musician, a lesson that would prove invaluable to his career.

After a stint in the army, Harmon cut his teeth in the 1960s New York City jazz scene. For ten years, Harmon played clubs around The Village and watched some of the biggest names in jazz perform.

His skill at the piano took him beyond the clubs of Manhattan to cities across America and, eventually, Europe, where he led a piano, bass, and drums trio on a USO tour.

Taking note of his growing reputation in the jazz world, Harmon’s alma mater asked him to return to Appleton to head Lawrence University’s new Jazz Studies program in 1970. Harmon transitioned into his new pedagogical role well, tapping into his wealth of experience to conduct, teach, and arrange/compose for the Lawrence University jazz ensemble. In his second year there, Harmon led the school’s ensemble to a victory at the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival, elevating the program’s national reputation.

Inspired by the talent of his students and colleagues at Lawrence, Harmon decided to form his own group, one that had its roots in jazz but pushed the envelope of the genre. In 1974 he formed Matrix, a jazz-fusion group that coupled the power of a big band with the agility of a small ensemble. Harmon, who was the main composer and pianist, refers to his eight years with Matrix as “the most amazing chapter” of his life. Composing for a group of players willing and able to tackle new and difficult projects, Harmon explored dynamic themes, experimented with genre splicing, and generated a unique sonic signature for the band. Matrix recorded several well-received albums, performed at some of the country’s biggest jazz festivals, and won awards for their groundbreaking sound.

30

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Over the years, Harmon has been recognized repeatedly for his contributions to Wisconsin’s music community. He received an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Lawrence University (2004), a Fox Valley Arts Council’s Renaissance Award (2000) and a Distinguished Service Award from the Wisconsin State Music Association (1999). In 2005, Harmon was named a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters.

Even with all these awards and a successful career as a composer and performing musician, Harmon says that teaching has always been one of the most satisfying parts of his musical life. Harmon cites his years in the Oshkosh and Appleton Public School Districts as one of his most challenging compositional experiences. As composer in residence, Harmon was charged with writing for myriad ensembles and skill levels. He remembers the students as “fearless.” The Red Lodge Summer Music Festival, a music camp in Montana for high school-age students, continues to be perhaps his favorite teaching experience. The familiar faces, talented faculty, and eager students draw him back every year.

A

widely commissioned composer, Harmon has written music for the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, “The Orchestra” of Los Angeles, the Fox Valley Symphony, and the Santa Fe Chamber Orchestra. Harmon says that he has always used his craft to provoke awareness, a kind of “musical activism,” in one way or another.

Throughout his career, Harmon has had a predilection for political and social matters regarding First American cultures as evidenced by a sample of his compositions: Seven Arrows (1991), a six-part choir for low brass; Prayer for the Bison (2000) a clarinet and marimba duet; and Hopi Prayer (2005), a composition for solo piano.

A devoted learner, Harmon reads about Native American history and politics and often visits Native American communities. Harmon recalls an especially formative trip to the New Mexico Pueblos, native communities that preserve traditional Southwestern Native American ways of life. Traveling with his friend and well-known jazz trumpeter Bobby Shew (who is part Cherokee), Harmon immersed himself in the native culture of the Pueblos, gaining a window into their traditions and lifestyles.

As Harmon continued to learn more about the current state of Native American cultures, he felt compelled to give voice to their plight. With his newest compositions, which he calls “awareness symphonies,” Harmon deploys the most thunderous musical voice at his disposal, the symphonic orchestra, to call for the preservation of not only Native American cultures but also their histories. His awareness symphonies address Native American matters ranging from the historical to the contemporary: from conflicts with the Europeans who settled in America to protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

Completed in 2014, Harmon’s first awareness symphony tells the story of Crazy Horse, a leader of the Lakota, a Sioux people of the plains of North and South Dakota. Crazy Horse is perhaps best known for his role in the defeat of the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment led by General Custer in the 1876 Battle of Little Big Horn.

Though this battle was a victory for the Lakota, future conflicts would deplete their population, putting them in a dire situation

Greg Gatien

Profile

as they approached winter. Witnessing their people suffering due to diminishing resources, Crazy Horse and other Lakota leaders decided to surrender in August of 1877. Crazy Horse died in the custody of the U.S. Army at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

By recasting Crazy Horse’s story in orchestral form for his eponymous symphony, Harmon presses listeners to consider the consequences of America’s relentless western expansion and seizure of Native American lands. Through lush harmonies, songful melodies, and a Stravinsky-like orchestration, Harmon’s musical rendering of the story tactfully invites listeners into its sonic milieu while urging them to consider deeper issues of justice and human rights.

Harmon has always said, “Titles are important to me.” As such, the titles of the movements of Crazy Horse point to significant portions of the great hero’s life-story without spelling them out pedantically. The symphony’s first movement, “Youth: The Journey Begins,” tells of the young Crazy Horse’s coming of age in the traditions of his people. Several melodic themes in this movement, such as the bassoon and xylophone’s opening theme, become associated with the historical Crazy Horse. In reviving this theme later through the piano, Harmon puts a personal touch on it, making a direct

John Harmon at Wounded Knee Cemetery during a 2016 visit to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. An active reservation cemetery, the site contains a mass grave for hundreds of Sioux massacred on December 29, 1890, by the U.S. Cavalry. In 1973, the cemetery was site of a standoff between the American Indian Movement and the federal government.

SPRING 2018

31

profile

The fourth and final movement derives its title from Crazy Horse’s most well-known statement: “My Lands Are Where My Dead Lie Buried,” a response to an adversary’s barbed remark— “Where are your lands now?”—after Crazy Horse’s surrender. This last movement divides into two clear sections—fast and slow—separated by a contemplative flute solo that reframes the main theme.

Recalling many of the songful motifs from the previous movements, the finale forms a sense of cohesion across the symphony, bookending the work.

Joe Sienkiewicz/USA TODAY NETWORK–Wisconsin

H

connection to the story of Crazy Horse. This memorable musical theme carries into the following movements, providing the listener with a main character of sorts for the unfolding musical narrative.

The second movement, “The Deepening,” turns more introspective, offering insight into Crazy Horse’s personal growth. The main theme now sounds in the oboe and develops into a full-fledged melody—a metaphor for the Lakota leader's maturing intellect, humility, and compassion.

In “Little Bighorn: June 25, 1876,” the third movement, Harmon makes a decided departure from the symphony’s main theme.

Beginning with a soft rumble, this movement quickly builds, borrowing orchestral textures and melodic figures from earlier movements to gain momentum. One passage seems to represent the outnumbered 7th Cavalry approaching its well-prepared opponent. Suddenly, the tonality drifts, and the orchestra enters into a cacophony of competing themes and rhythms, a battle fought in the music’s very syntax. We sense the cavalry realizing its mistake as the brass and percussion sections attempt but ultimately fail to take charge of the sound-space. A decisive climax—perhaps General Custer’s last stand—concludes the battle, and the movement promptly slows, as if surveying the bloodshed. Emerging from the battle, the symphony’s main theme returns with the clarinet bringing the boisterous movement to a quiet close. Though Crazy Horse may have been victorious, there is certainly no cause for celebration.

32

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

armon’s Crazy Horse symphony premiered in Great Falls, Montana, on January 17, 2015. Before the premiere, Harmon spoke with the audience about the subject matter, discussing his admiration for Crazy Horse and his passion for bringing awareness to his story. With tears in his eyes, Harmon recalls how, after the concert, a Lakota audience member approached him to say, simply, “You touched my heart.”

It seems only appropriate that a wonderful orchestra from Harmon’s hometown, the Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra, recorded his first awareness symphony on December 3, 2016. Under the direction of Daniel Black and accompanied by Harmon’s son Noah, an accomplished pianist in his own right, the ensemble vividly rendered Harmon’s vision. The subsequent recording embraces listeners with a warm sonic hue and dawning awareness of the complex story of the man known as Crazy Horse.

Harmon is currently working on coordinating a performance of his next awareness symphony, Wounded Knee. Now in his eighties, Harmon is endlessly energized by the creative process; there always “has to be a project,” as making music “is like breathing” to him. When asked what, after his many years of composing, keeps the music alive inside of him, Harmon replied, “The fun of the creative process is so high level. … You’re at the center of this organic thing that grows into something; if you can make it work, then what a joy!”

Matt Ambrosio is a PhD candidate in the UW– Madison Mead Witter School of Music. His research focuses on topics of philosophy and music at the turn of the twentieth century. Originally from New York, Ambrosio spent four years teaching physics in Washington DC public schools and continues to work in education today.

profile

award-winning support No one does it quite like UW-Eau Claire Recognized in two consecutive years with Board of Regents Diversity awards for the Blugold Beginnings and Upward Bound programs, and recently designated the “Best College for LGBTQ students in Wisconsin.�

Learn more about how we support students from underrepresented communities.

uwec.ly/diversity

SPRING 2018

33

@ Watrous Gallery

language as order and play

BY D O M I N I Q U E HALLER

C

ontemporary artists Helen Lee and Anne Kingsbury share an exploration of language as a central theme in their work.

Similarly, both rely on glass as a primary material. Yet their work looks strikingly different. Helen Lee’s sharply intellectual hot glass pieces are minimalist in appearance: clean cut with restrained, precise shapes and colors. Anne Kingsbury’s glass beadwork, on the other hand, is exuberant and ludic, with a visual witticism that dazzles the eye.

This difference in visual flavor can be traced back to the way each artist operates in the studio. Lee tends to approach projects conceptually, starting with an idea and working with the characteristics of her materials accordingly. Kingsbury’s ideas emerge from her work as she’s making it, with the artistic process of making and remaking one piece sometimes taking years or even decades. Yet both artists explore the theme of language in their own way.

Artists Anne Kingsbury and Helen Lee, 2018.

Photo by TJ Lambert/Stages Photography.

34

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

TJ Lambert/ Stages Photography

@ Watrous Gallery

SPRING 2018

35

TJ

La

mb

ert

/Stag

es Photogr

aph

y

@ Watrous Gallery

o Ph

to

by

HELEN LEE: AN ACUTE AWARENESS OF LANGUAGE Helen Lee’s understanding of language is deeply rooted in her upbringing. Currently an Assistant Professor of Glass at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Lee grew up in two worlds: one that she shared with her maternal grandmother from China, who raised her, and another that surrounded her whenever she left home. At home, Lee spoke Chinese and was immersed in the symbols and ways of her elder; everywhere else, she was just another American girl speaking English with friends and teachers.

“Growing up, I had to do a lot of translation work for my grandmother, who only spoke Chinese in America,” recalls Lee. She compares the work of translation to the act of pouring water from one vessel into another, differently shaped vessel; the result is never quite the same, and the process tends to be messy.

The necessity for this translation work disappeared with the passing of her grandmother, but the habit stayed. Lee’s acute awareness of language lies at the core of her work as a visual artist. She’s fascinated by the “lost spaces where one language doesn’t overlap with the map of another” and the slippages, chance encounters, and unintentional consequences that result from the collision of different linguistic realms.

Lee first encountered her medium of choice during high school, in an art summer camp that featured a glass lab. The attraction was instant. “Hot glass resides within such a mysterious state of matter; it moves like honey, but at a much bigger scale. Watching hot glass, we just can’t believe that it moves the way it does. It’s completely non-intuitive—and that’s what fascinates me,” she says.

The fact that glassblowing is expensive, physically demanding, and an impractical skill to acquire did not stop Lee from pursuing it.

She went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study architecture and discovered that she could practice glassblowing at the renowned MIT Glass Lab on the side. After graduation, Lee got a job as a graphic designer. She began to think of language in phys-

36

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

ical and spatial terms and learned how to negotiate a visual balance between a letter and its surrounding negative space, transforming them both into one visual entity.

Lee’s interest in language, glass, and graphic design converged during her pursuit of an MFA in Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design. “It’s interesting how intense graduate school was,” says Lee. “I’m still working on ideas that started during this time.”

One of the pieces Lee made during graduate school, A E I O U, consists of five glass vessels that each produce the sound of a vowel when blown into with the help of a reed. With this and other pieces, Lee hopes to draw attention to moments of transition between body, language, breath, and glass. She likens transitions such as these to the zones of intense tumult one finds on a beach or other area between land and sea.

For her exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery, Lee will present pieces that delve into the material history of physical typography— hand-set letterpresses and electric typewriters, for example—just before the rise of the digital age. “We’re past the cusp of dematerialization in typography,” says Lee, noting how “the history of physical typography has evaporated into our screen displays.”

One of Lee’s pieces called Alphabit explores our culture’s physical memory of language. Crafted from the same material as smartphone screens and fiber-optic cables, Alphabit consists of five transparent glass trays divided into compartments that hold small, translucent glass tiles. The tiles contain one black letter or symbol that corresponds to the letters on the standard QWERTY keyboard. Reminiscent of vintage letterpress drawers, the trays are nearly identical to each other, with the only difference being that the glass tiles get smaller with each tray—each set of symbols descending in both physical as well as font size. The piece points to similarities between digital vector graphics, which allow for character re-sizing without any loss of fidelity, and a technique called murrine in which stretched hot glass retains internal characteristics. Alphabit also references material elements of typography, such as the keyboard, which has made a successful transition into the digital age, and the letterpress type case, which has not.

Helen Lee, Oh My God, 2015. Neon, 20 x 74 inches.

Helen Lee

@ Watrous Gallery

SPRING 2018

37

Helen Lee

@ Watrous Gallery

38

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Gabriel Cosma

@ Watrous Gallery

Ben Orozco

Helen Lee, Pyrocumulus, 2015. Glass and metal, 84 x 54 x 30 inches.

Helen Lee, Alphabit, 2017. Float glass, hand-pulled glass murrines, and steel, 32 x 17 x 17 inches.

Opposite page: Helen Lee, Infinitive, 2017. Site-specific installation in neon, 64 x 64 x 5 inches.

SPRING 2018

39

TJ

La

mb

ert

/Stag

es Photogr

aph

y

@ Watrous Gallery

o Ph

to

by

ANNE KINGSBURY: ELEVATING THE MUNDANE Anne Kingsbury is a visual artist, poetry advocate, and community activist who, together with husband Karl Gartung, founded the nonprofit Woodland Pattern Book Center in 1979 in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood. Woodland Pattern offers an eclectic selection of small press publications as well as visual art exhibitions, poetry readings, writing workshops, and youth programs dedicated to the literary arts.

“Woodland Pattern, for me, is a form of education”, says Kingsbury. “It’s a place where I encounter books, artists, writers, and ideas—I absorb it all.” Woodland Pattern offers the largest selection of small press poetry for sale in the United States; its reputation as a hub for poets and writers extends nationally. Simply put, the books one can find at Woodland Pattern are hard to find anywhere else, but Kingsbury makes them visible and available—and that’s the point.

Elevating the things that otherwise remain unnoticed is central to everything that Anne Kingsbury does, in life as in art.

Since the 1970s, Kingsbury’s artwork has evolved from largescale woodblock prints to mixed media figurative work, and, more recently, to intricately beaded pieces. Above all, her work is firmly rooted in the daily rituals and encounters of life. For decades, Kingsbury has kept a journal that records the most ordinary events, as well as the time they take to complete (e.g. “Wash face and hair: ten minutes.”). More significant events are listed in the journal as well, but they are made no more important than any other. Drawings exist alongside words—two orders of representation weaving into each other. Anne Kingsbury is curious about it all.

These layers of information, along with their indiscriminate presentation, find their way into Kingsbury’s art. Begun a little over two decades ago, Kingsbury’s Beaded Deer Hide is directly shaped by her journaling. Tiny glass beads painstakingly stitched to deer hide replicate selected pages from her journal. Over the years, new journal pages were added, and Kingsbury invited writers, poets, and artists she encountered to fill in the blank spaces between the

40

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

beaded journal pages—new voices and writing besides her own that she would also bead. Today, Kingsbury’s Beaded Deer Hide is far from being finished; it continues to evolve along with her life. “The pressure to work fast or be efficient is consciously removed from my work,” Kingsbury says. “It allows me to rework my pieces like crazy, and it allows the pieces to develop a life of their own.”

The glass beads she uses in her work are instrumental to this process. “The beads are like pixels,” says Kingsbury. “There’s a limit to how small I can go, but they also offer resistance. They slow me down and force me to spend time making things by hand.” Her main attraction to the material of beads lies in the core characteristics of handiwork and time. Kingsbury’s rejection of our contemporary obsession with efficiency and speed is quietly subversive.

The meticulous nature of Kingsbury’s work is balanced with a distinct playfulness. She is loosely inspired by Pataphysics, a Dadaist play on philosophy that grants permission to combine the known with the unknown and the serious with the whimsical to create nonsensical orders, absurd symbols, and paradoxical narratives. In this spirit, Kingsbury takes liberties with letters, infusing them with an eccentric spirit. In Beaded Pataphyiscal Alphabet, one encounters a painstakingly rendered letter K in tiny, colorful beads, and discovers that this familiar symbol has been transfigured into an elegant man with two standing legs, flying scarf, and extravagant hat. There is no logical link between the idea of the letter K and that of an elegant man, and that logical gap is where the pataphysical playfulness resides. Similarly, Kingsbury’s letter G is a deity that seems to have sprung from the carvings of an Aztec temple, with colorful marks on the cheeks and the tongue sticking out in a powerful and irreverent gesture.

Anne Kingsbury, Beaded Journal Page, 2006.

Glass bead and linen., 12.25 x 15.75 inches.

TJ Lambert/Stages Photography

@ Watrous Gallery

SPRING 2018

41

@ Watrous Gallery

42

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

@ Watrous Gallery

“I don’t plan out my pieces, Kingsbury says. “I learn from the work as I make it.” To work this way, an artist must learn to let go of control and to be open to the unexpected: “One learns to tell the difference between a gift from God and a disaster,” she jokes.

During her exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery, Kingsbury will invite viewers to witness her artistic process through live beading demonstrations. Gallery visitors will also encounter her sketches as well as intricately beaded renderings and journal pages alongside artwork. Finished or unfinished: the distinction is irrelevant to Kingsbury’s work, as her life and her art evolve as one. For her, this evolution carries the most meaning.

SEE THE EXHIBITION ANNE KINGSBURY & HELEN LEE side-by-side exhibitions MAY 16 – JUNE 24

KINGSBURY & LEE: LANGUAGE AT WORK AND AT PLAY

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, MAY 11 • 5–7:00PM with artists' talks beginning at 6:00PM

The side-by-side exhibitions of Helen Lee’s and Anne Kingsbury’s work at the James Watrous Gallery should make for a satisfying show, as there are additional congruities between their work besides language and material. Both artists are, in their own way, dedicated to the historical and the archival: the mundane events of Kingsbury’s journals constitute their own, unorthodox archive, while Lee’s interpretations of the physical and material memory of language reveal a distinctive historical attitude. Those similarities stand in fruitful tension with the divergent ways in which these two artists work in the studio, a fact that will be integral to the contrasting characters of their respective exhibitions. To see their work together is to witness proof that there is no limit to what one can do with art.

ART@NOON FRIDAY, JUNE 22 • 12–1:00PM This exhibition and all related events are free and open to the public.

James Watrous Gallery Hours: W–Th 12–5 • Fr–Sa 12–8 • Su 12–5 Overture Center for the Arts, 3rd Floor 201 State Street • Madison, WI 53703 608-265-2500 • gallery@wisconsinacademy.org

Dominique Haller was born and raised in Switzerland. She immigrated to the United States in 2009, and graduated from UW–Madison with an MFA in 2014. Her artwork and documentary films have been shown in galleries and film festivals in Switzerland, Portugal, Chicago, New York, and Madison, where she currently lives. She teaches art and art history at Madison College and UW–Whitewater.

Anne Kingsbury, Pataphysical Alphabet, 2013-2018. Glass and metal beads, Ultrasuede, dimensions variable. Letters photographed by TJ Lambert/ Stages Photography.

SPRING 2018

43

Fiction

M

e and Janie and Melissa, we want to be other women. Not the women we are expected to be, but the ones we’ve seen on television and read about in novels.

Women we barely remember from movies we watched as little girls. Older women. Wealthy women. Sad, married women. We are twenty-four and single and broke, but we have good imaginations.

We’ve been in school forever: enrolled in early preschool, sent to after-school tutoring, fanny-patted into summer programs, waved away to college, and cheered off to graduate school by proud, tearful parents. Sure, we are smart. Smart enough to know we cannot be what our parents want us to be. So, we’ve made a decision. We will not be hard-working, career-focused, driven, successful. We will not even try. We will shrug off these ambitions like wet raincoats onto a floor. We will fall, together, over the edge of a cliff. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Like This, Like That

BY LIZ WYCKO FF

M

onths ago, our grad school advisors waved us out of their offices. They had good intentions. They wished we were engineers. Now it is August and we have used their job-hunting literature for apartment decoration. Janie papier-mâchéd lists of active verbs onto a lamp shade and Melissa’s pamphlets on interview techniques have been unfolded, then refolded, and origamied into swans, crabs, and Yorkshire terriers.

They are thumbtacked to our ceiling with lengths of floss. They swing in tune with the oscillating fan. This is how we use our imaginations to turn one thing into another.

In July, we broke up with our boyfriends—first me, then Janie, then Melissa. They were softies, sweethearts, grad school accessories. They reminded us of our youths and we no longer wanted to seem youthful. Now we are alone, which feels right. We more accurately resemble bored housewives and lonely empty-nesters. The newly-exboyfriends still call—soft-spoken and full of apologies. “Are you okay?” they ask. “Is there anything I can do?” Our indifference is a fortifying tonic.

Some nights, the apartment hums with the barely audible symphony of vibrators. In separate rooms, we masturbate to clichéd fantasies of pool boys, electricians, and FedEx deliverymen. They enter our rooms to find us cross-legged on beds, drowsy with ennui, crocheting tiny dog sweaters or reading The House of Mirth. They stride toward us, all thigh muscles and eye contact, and only unbuckle their belts once we’ve tossed our needles and novels to the floor.

W

e don’t want to be pragmatic, like our mothers. We want to be cynical and jaded.

To cleanse ourselves of hopefulness and optimism. We want to be the sexy mother in The Graduate; the trapped wife in Revolutionary Road; that woman in The Awakening who walks stoically into the sea. In September, our newly-ex-boyfriends start boring entry-level jobs, to which we respond with subtle ridicule and disdain. They are corporate copywriters, high school drama teachers, phone-answering assistants. Unlike them, our pride will not stop us from taking our parents’ money.

So, no. We are not broke. Not exactly. Checks arrive in the mail, folded up inside notes from our mothers. They write to us on free notepads from the hospitals and offices where they work. Beneath the ads for new fungal creams and fluoride gels, their neat cursive spells out advice we do not consider. Put half of this into savings! Don’t forget your iron supplements! Call me on Sunday if you feel like a chat!

44

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Fiction

Our mothers have never been wealthy housewives. We have overworked, overextended, overweight mothers. They are on their feet all day. When they were our age, they say, women didn’t have so many choices. They are tired, yet indefatigable. Our veiny-nosed, chip-toothed, baggy-eyed mothers. They live in small houses in the small towns where we were raised. They have never lived in a city and cannot comprehend the simplest aspects of our lives—the swipe of our subway cards through the metal turnstiles; the pop culture references on our comedic news shows; our trendy, uncomfortable shoes.

They attended colleges, but sent us to better ones. They have framed the papers touting their associate degrees and certificates, while we have lost the diplomas from our pricy liberal arts schools, stuffed them absentmindedly into some drawer. Or maybe we never picked them up from the registrar at all.

We are so many things that they have never been. Our dogged, sensible, matter-of-fact mothers. They rarely come up in conversation. But when Sunday evening descends, we call and tell them every detail of our lives. We press hot cell phones to the sides of our faces. We ask if they are still on the line. We talk and talk and talk to them until we have nothing left to say.

T

hough we may not be broke, and we may not even be completely single, we are twenty-four and we are really, truly, very much unemployed. We don’t work; we consider it intellectually. It is an algebra problem with too many variables. Janie, who wrote a thesis on Anna Karenina, wants to avoid falseness and find value in a simple life. Melissa believes in patents—big pay-offs for little effort. One of these days, she says, the right idea will hit her.

She hums jingles while smoking cigarettes on the windowsill—clap on, clap off—and stares down into the traffic below.

On our laptops at coffeehouses, we troll through disheartening wastelands of job posts full of asterisks and exclamation points. The companies hiring are too embarrassed to even list their own names; they are “busy, fast-growing organizations” and “professional environments in downtown locations.” We cannot lower ourselves to these standards. We can hardly consider it.

“Make some calls,” Janie’s mother says.

“Find the job you want. Don’t wait for one to fall into your lap.” But she can’t understand the scale of our unimportance here, the extent to which we don’t matter, the swiftness with which someone will shoo us from the premises and not return our calls.

“Come home,” says Melissa’s mother.

“We’ll find you a job here.” But our lives are not fit for parental observation. We still make too many mistakes, too many bad decisions that would make them cringe or cry.

“You’re so smart,” my mother says, “you could do almost anything.” According to our missing diplomas, this should be true, but it is not. Perhaps the system has failed us. Perhaps we have just failed.

We wish we didn’t know what our mothers’ lives had been like at twenty-four. It would be nice if we could not picture them thinner, longer-haired, married to our handsome fathers, pregnant, and starting jobs they would have forever. Young women who looked so much like us and had already achieved so much more.

We don’t work; we consider it intellectually. It is an algebra problem with too many variables.

I

n October we join volunteer organizations, but we never volunteer. We take up hobbies we’ve been meaning to adopt for years: watercolors, crosswords, harmonica playing.

Some hobbies become obsessions. Melissa looks forward to hours in the day that call for meal preparation; she stands in our one-person kitchen with a knife in her hand, the stove warming her back. She’s particularly drawn to the home-style production of condiments—

SPRING 2018

45

Fiction

ketchup, hot sauce, jam—foods that demand hours of attention, patience, the directions to stir occasionally and let simmer.

We see matinées mid-week with a handful of old people and high schoolers cutting class.

We conceal tiny feasts in oversized purses—jars of Melissa’s homemade peanut butter, plastic knives, and Buttercrisp crackers. The pockets of our pea coats bulge with the smooth, cylindrical outlines of travel-sized Merlot bottles.

In the theater, it’s hard not to think of the ex-boyfriends—their fuzzy forearms and soft fingers, the sloping cliffs of their faces in profile as the screen brightens and darkens. On our first nervous movie dates, years ago, the films seemed to last forever. Now, because things end as soon as we sit down, we splurge on double and triple features. When we finally wrest ourselves from the velvety chairs and stumble out onto the street, the sun has disappeared.

We are so unemployed, what else can we do but spend our parents’ money? We make friends with the used clothing store owners in our neighborhood—the gay men with sideburns named Bob and Gerald, the women in black stockings and vermilion lipstick. We create a new term—hanger fingers—to describe the speed and efficiency with which expert shoppers flip through the racks. We breeze in unwrapping the scarves from our necks, blow Gerald kisses, and disseminate, each claiming a circular rack. We put our hanger fingers to work. We flip counter-clockwise.

We pull for style, shape, fabric, pattern.

We know the exact dimensions of each other’s bodies—Janie’s long torso, Melissa’s broad shoulders, my flat chest—and we pass things around. We look out for each other. The plastic hangers clack and scrape along the metal poles, the polyester shushes against cotton against silk, and we are soothed. We forget about the way our fingers shake when we try to hold them still. We keep them moving and flipping. Keep them distracted.

When we call our not-so-newly-exboyfriends, suddenly, we’re forced to leave messages on their machines. They are seeing new girls and making less time to talk. They’re too busy out on dates, eating food we would never eat, watching the type of awful movies we always refused to see. When they do answer, they mention unfamiliar names—Gretchen, Brandy, Julia. They sound so different from us, these women. Around the apartment, we laugh about their high foreheads and love handles and thin lips and long toes, about how ugly they must be. How our exes surely still imagine us while having sex. But we know what is more likely. The new girlfriends are probably mature, which we never were and are not now and possibly never will be.

We wish we didn’t know what our mothers’ lives had been like at twenty-four. It would be nice if we could not picture them thinner, longer-haired, married to our handsome fathers, pregnant, and starting jobs they would have forever. Young women who looked so much like us and had already achieved so much more.

W

e want to be like women who don’t give a fuck; women who fuck for fun; women who, after fucking, hug their knees and stare out windows watching rain fall. But as it gets cold, we spend most of our time together, looking down onto the street. We pull chairs up to the sill, clumping like ants around crumbs. We sit for hours watching the neighborhood gentrify. At the rent-controlled end of our street, families hold stoop sales on the weekends, hocking books and records and gently worn jackets that were left in free boxes at the other end of the street. At that end, a children’s clothing store is opening amidst the brownstones.

The windows are strung with tiny T-shirts and onesies.

Here in the middle, our rent is high. Too high. Astronomical, our mothers say, and they don’t even know about the hole in the ceiling. They don’t know about the cockroaches.

46

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Fiction

We avoid getting up at night, even to pee, so we don’t see the roach-babies scuttling over our kitchen counters. We don’t see them, and we pretend not to hear them, and we almost forget they are there. It is preferable to lie in the dark, curled up like infants, with our thighs clenched together. It is preferable to spray the counters down in the morning as if we’re simply warding away bad spirits.

After the store’s grand opening in November, the babies below our window sport sweatshirts with ironic phrases. I knew about breast milk before it was cool. They look nothing like the unsmiling women pushing their strollers.

We will not be mothers. Of this, we are sure.

Janie has been sure since third grade when her classmate’s mother died giving birth to his baby brother. Melissa has been sure since eighth grade when she watched the FarrahFawcett-haired woman in The Miracle of Life spread her legs and birth an alien. I’ve been sure since ninth grade when I watched fifteen-year-old Helen Burnham’s stomach swell up like a watermelon with Eddie Morrison’s baby.

We’ve been sure since our first pregnancy scares when we lost our virginities, and all the subsequent scares after that. Since we learned to live with the constant fear of one pill taken too late, one condom applied too hastily, one man pulling out at the too-last second. We’ve even had pregnancy scares after dry humping, since our health teachers assured us our eggs would attract sperm like magnets. We have been sure we do not want to be mothers since our five-year high school reunions when a handful of former classmates arrived pushing their actual babies in strollers so cheap they must have been meant for baby-dolls, and Helen Burnham showed up at mine with a pre-teen.

We will not be mothers because we pity the women who want this. Women who keep lists of bridesmaids in their drawers. Women who coo at small children with hands between their knees. Women who clamor to hold babies at parties, then walk away gazing into the bundles in their arms, searching for some sort of decree. We know Gretchen and Brandy and Julia must be women like that.

“I need you to stop calling,” the ex-boyfriends tell us. “I just don’t have the time.” Surely the new girlfriends are behind this. They must hate the messages we leave, the texts we send, our emails that still end in Xs and Os. We boost our call-frequency in retaliation. “Saw a hummingbird today and thought of you,” we chime onto their voicemails.

We still get drunk and laugh about masturbation, but no longer about our FedEx fantasies. We confess all of the things in the apartment that we have rubbed up against when no one was watching—the rounded edge of the stove, the slightly-less-rounded edge of the refrigerator, the couch backs and cushions and armrests. Collectively, we have humped everything in the house. Months ago, we would have found this hilarious and empowering, but now we seem desperate, possibly dangerous. When we smile, our canines catch the light and gleam like daggers. We drink the cheap wine and cast our eyes around the house suspiciously.

“Maybe this isn’t working,” our mothers say. “Maybe we should think about Plan B.” They don’t want to tell us it’s about the money, but we are smart enough to know it has always been about the money.

Who have we been imitating? We don’t know women like that. In our hometowns, women work as college professors, ministers, mayors, hockey coaches, waitresses, convenience store clerks, librarians, crossing guards, dairy farmers. Even the women without jobs have jobs—they sew clothes for their children and sing the national anthem at high school basketball games and measure spices at the co-op for store credit. No one seems particularly world-weary. Not enough to do nothing like us.

We are smart enough to know we don’t really pity our mothers. We wish we were our mothers. Our mothers then. Those twenty-four-year-old women with good heads on their

We are smart enough to know we don’t really pity our mothers.

We wish we were our mothers.

SPRING 2018

47

Fiction

shoulders. They had a better picture of what their lives would look like, a better grasp on what the world had in store. They knew how to write checks and manage savings accounts, could bring fevers down and staunch bleeding wounds. They drove stick-shift beaters, handled raw flank steaks with bare hands, and started fires in wood stoves using newspaper and kindling and one single match. We want to be them, we just don’t know how.

T

his time of not knowing, however, is temporary. Soon I will realize this. This time of not knowing is before my mother gets sick. Before she calls to say, “I have some bad news.”

Before the malevolent thing in her breast is discovered. This is months before Janie and Melissa sit on my bed watching me pack to go home, watching me change. Before the hot water bottles and heating pads, the plastic pill dispensers, the vomit-stained towels rotating through the wash. Before I rise early to boil tea water, to blow on spoonfuls of oatmeal with my father, to wave his truck down the road as he heads to work. Before I get re-accustomed to driving, finally learning the importance of deliberate deceleration. I will drive so slowly with my mother next to me that her body never moves an inch from the seat back.

This is before I will retrieve a bin from my closet, dig through the dried-up rubber cement jars and packs of batteries and the ripped blouse I’ve been meaning to mend, until I find the photographs.

The ones from her youth. Her breasts are unassuming—barely detectable lumps beneath sweaters and turtlenecks. The small curves of her nipples push at the fabric of a crocheted swimsuit and a cotton T-shirt. In one photo, she smiles at the camera while holding a tiny bundle to her breast. It is me. Me and my mother and her breast, all together. Our own female family. A temporarily self-sufficient circle.

During one of her post-chemo naps, I will hold the photo between us, then take it away.

Back and forth. Past mother, present mother. Like this, like that. She is an angel, a crone, a goddess, a husk. The embodiment of health and beauty and power, and a cancer patient.

During one of her post-chemo naps, I will hold the photo between us, then take it away. Back and forth.

Past mother, present mother.

Like this, like that. She is an angel, a crone, a goddess, a husk.

The embodiment of health and beauty and power, and a cancer patient.

B

ut before all of that, Janie and Melissa and I decide to try. We need money and we are smart. We attach our résumés to e-mails and send them out into the ether. We print copies on heavy paper and keep them in old, heart-covered folders from junior high. We remember writing our names on these folders, in bubble letters and block letters with three-dimensional shadows. We remember how we used to have different ideas about ourselves. We played MASH and imagined ourselves as grown women: an award-winning author with three kids and a silver Toyota 4Runner; an abstract painter with five kids and a red Mazda Miata; a beautiful actress with zero kids, but a dark blue limousine and a longhaired dachshund and a honeymoon in Switzerland. We married cute boys from our gym classes. The combinations changed, but there were always husbands, homes, cars, jobs. In junior high, we imagined ourselves like our mothers, just better. We thought we’d never have to try. Just be yourselves, they told us. You can do almost anything.

We wear leggings to the coffee shops and tights to the restaurants and bare legs to the bars. If there’s one thing we should be able to do, it’s serve drinks. “Can you work weekends?” they ask. “Early mornings? Late nights?” Yes. We can. We say this with confidence. The managers shake our hands; they will get back to us.

48

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Fiction

We call our mothers as soon as we get home. “I had an interview,” we say. “They’re going to call me back.”

“What kind of job?” Our mothers ask about hours and wages, and sigh when we tell them.

“I guess that’s something. But don’t sell yourself short.”

When we shout, our mothers’ voices get quieter. “I’m glad for you, honey,” they say. “But I really can’t talk now. I’ll call after work.”

We hang up. We hate them. We are as far from them in this moment as we will possibly ever be. “What do you want from me?!” I throw a pillow at our cheap plaster wall, and the Yorkshire terriers dance above my head. “What do you want?” My voice is not echoing, I realize—Janie and Melissa are screaming it, too. We are all in the apartment, in our separate rooms, shouting at the small boxes of wires and circuits that have been transmitting our mothers’ voices into our ears. Or are those voices our own? We are a pack of wild things without their mothers—big, dumb animals incapable of survival. Our windows are painted shut and our outlets are overflowing with cords and the traffic outside is carrying people into and out of the city, but we cannot go back to them. If only we could make them proud, we think. If only we could need them less. If only we could be what they’ve always wanted us to be, which is only what we want to be: like them, like that, like something.

This story first appeared in Copper Nickel, Fall 2016.

Liz Wyckoff's short fiction has been published in Copper Nickel, The Collagist, and Quarterly West, and she received the 2016 Zona Gale Short Fiction Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers for “Like This, Like That.” Her nonfiction writing appears online and in print in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Tin House, and Wisconsin People & Ideas. She lives in Madison, where she is an editor at the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

Read award-winning fiction from new and established Wisconsin writers at wisconsinacademy.org/fiction.

SPRING 2018

49

Poetry

New Wisconsin Poetry

Scribbling I prefer crowds with voices echoing up and down the train cars, city bus gears singing exhaust spewing, laughs rolling to the page— boots, heels, sneakers step on and off the curb,

stop here

voices flood ears become stolen dialogue in ink.

I write in public to feel stilettos slap pavement, for the roar of pigeons in flight, the scent of yeast to count those who stop to give the cold and knocked about coins on the corner. Watch a little boy with his grandma hand out raisins, buy their newspapers, deliver popcorn balls, candy canes, cards full of glitter, signed in a seven-year-old scrawl God Bless You. I write so we can rest our bones, our driving force to live without capture, to forget about death float words to the page without waking rise above ego brain become scribbler with no name observe life teeming: chipmunks who skedaddle at the crow’s shadow, squirrel highways in city parks, on power lines, pitches, to see young men assist a tottering woman and her bags cross the street when traffic does not stop for thin bones, the way the sun goes to sleep, casts a halo over structures humans construct to shield people from ice sheets whistling across lakes, prairies, the summer rays that burn foreheads and cheeks stamping a fury

so we can sleep at night embrace the soft dark light.

Angela Trudell Vasquez

50

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Poetry

Wheel Kids Chocolate children race down the cul-de-sac tight curls bounce jeans T-shirts rise with air clenched fists, taped bars, tennis shoe brakes, no breaks a shout and they cruise out of sight of the window bikes, scooters shake quake skinny kid arms, legs, torsos their skin flattens— neighbors straight arrows shooting stars flesh flies bodies grow wings.

Angela Trudell Vasquez

Previously published in Cloudthroat

Angela Trudell Vasquez received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and she has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry workshops and has her own press, Art Night Books. Vasquez has written three books of poetry, and her poems have appeared in the Taos Journal of Poetry, Yellow Medicine Review, Raven Chronicles, San Diego Poetry Annual 2015–2016, and Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters.

SPRING 2018

51

Poetry

My mother is a social worker who works in a hospital My mother is a social worker who works in a hospital she makes daily visits checks her charts shares small talk with the patients as she brightens up their rooms My mother is a social worker who works in a hospital she is always the first one at the scene just like the television doctors whether in the birthing room at my niece Amanda’s arrival or at the operating table medicine’s trap door My mother is a social worker who works in a hospital my mother translates for the Spanish patients especially after surgery she touches their fear with words that can heal My mother is a social worker who works in a hospital Surprisingly there is little blood on her pink uniform just a day’s sweat and dirt you wouldn’t know she was a cleaning lady if you looked in her eyes My mother is a social worker who works in a hospital Oscar Mireles

Oscar Mireles is a poet, editor, and educator. He has published three editions of the anthology I Didn’t Know There Were Latinos In Wisconsin, a children’s book titled Why did you name me Javier, Dad? and a chapbook of poetry titled Second Generation. Mireles is Poet Laureate of the City of Madison (2016–2020) and the executive director of Omega School, where he has been employed for the past 23 years.

52

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

Poetry

Father’s Day Poem My children are old enough to know it is Father’s Day but the younger two are not old enough to work

or buy gifts

so a friend purchased the gift, an electronic Sudoku game, and my daughter and son presented it to me (no it was not wrapped, except with the delight on their faces giving me something they knew I would like) My nineteen-year-old, who just got his first summer college-area, sub-leased apartment but doesn’t have enough money for food or toilet paper, decided to text me this message, “Happy Fathers Day Pops!” at 9:33 pm the day before just in case he forgot to wake up before noon the next day My other son the eighteen-year-old who headed off to college a little early sent me an e-card “Happy Father’s Day” It’s too bad, I can’t be home this weekend,

but Happy Father’s Day!

and it reminded me that just being remembered is the greatest gift one can ask for from teenagers on Father’s Day. Oscar Mireles

SPRING 2018

53

BOOK REVIEW

The Philosopher's Flight

by Tom Miller Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $26.00 Reviewed by Erik Richardson

The Philosopher’s Flight, by University of Wisconsin Hospital emergency room doctor and first-time author Tom Miller, combines magical realism with coming-of-age romance and swashbuckling adventure.

Miller’s fantasy novel is set in America in the early years of World War I on an alternate timeline where technology is driven by magic. In this version of the world, magic emerged in the final stages of the American Civil War, as gifted women first learned to use magic symbols—sigils—to shape and control smoke, affect the winds, fly, and heal wounds. Referred to as “empirical philosophy,” this magic is practiced mainly by women, placing the so-called “philosophers” at the forefront of many fields. The plot of the novel revolves around the journey of eighteen-year-old Robert Weekes from rural Montana and his quest to become the first male flyer of the U.S. Sigilry Corps Rescue and Evacuation Service (a team of flying medics).

In the course of his quest, Robert struggles against overt as well as institutionalized sexism as one of only three men accepted to study the use of magic at Radcliffe College, which creates an interesting counterbalance to the romance that unfolds over his time there.

Against a backdrop of the escalating Great War in Europe, Robert and his family and friends find themselves persecuted for their magical abilities. A powerful group of anti-philosophical zealots, outraged and terrified by what magic had wrought in the last days of the Civil War, is using terrorism and propaganda in an attempt to turn back the clock on both magical progress and women’s empowerment.

You’ve got Maxwell Gannet sitting in Boston, preaching that Jesus weeps every time a philosopher draws a sigil. Go back to the good old days of self-reliance and work in the traditional ways. No electricity, no sigilry. Don’t send your children to school; educate them at home. Don’t educate your daughters at all beyond keeping house.

54

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

We can forgive Miller if he tends to fall back on easily resolved situations and archetypical characters in order to explore complex contemporary themes without slowing the pace of the story. From an awkward freshman to a seasoned country doctor to an emotionally scarred wartime heroine, Miller’s characters deliver just enough struggle and sadness to bring them to life. In this way The Philosopher’s Flight resembles Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, but, much to his credit, Miller’s deft hand steers us well clear of the grim hyperbole that characterizes that popular trilogy.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the character development is that although the story is told from Robert’s point of view, and seems to be about him, in the end it is the various women around him that stand out as the more complex, more heroic figures.

They are the ones most likely to draw the reader into future books Miller has planned for the series.

Erik Richardson lives in Milwaukee, where he works as a development director for the arts, small business consultant, and adjunct professor in several disciplines. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, from magazines to poetry to nonfiction books on math and history.

BOOK REVIEW

Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy

by Michael Perry HarperCollins Publishers, 240 pages, $25.99 Reviewed by Mari Carlson

Michael Perry, a pig farmer and bestselling author of books about life in rural Wisconsin, decided to immerse himself in the essays of sixteenth-century politician-turned-philosopher Michel de Montaigne while recuperating from kidney stones. In Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy, we learn how Perry discovers that Montaigne suffered from kidney stones, too, and wrote about them along with memory, health, aesthetics, sex, marriage, cannibalism, and faith, among a host of other topics in his influential and voluminous Essais.

An “essay” in French means an attempt. The point of writing is “to look narrowly into one’s own bosom” says Montaigne, to put ideas to practice. Perry writes that, like the electric fencer he once grabbed, Montaigne’s essays “jolt[ed] me out of my absentminded musing and into the recognition that through the examination of my imperfections I can better serve my obligations to others.”

Where Montaigne wrote from a castle tower in an attempt to describe in utter frankness the traits of man, Perry writes from a room above the garage on his farm to pay the mortgage. Perry points out that while the two might be separated by centuries, socioeconomic status, and intellect (Perry notes that while Montaigne could read at age two, he placed only second in his sixth grade spelling bee), they are both writers pecking away—like chickens—at life through words.

Each of the ten chapters in Montaigne in Barn Boots, Perry’s version of the Essais, includes an introduction in which Perry draws poignant and humorous parallels between his own experiences and those of Montaigne. Topics range from the weighty (sex, race, death) to the quotidian (aromatherapy, non-spill fuel nozzles, Prince albums). For instance, Perry reflects on the dissonance between the Shakespeare play he'd attended with his daughters the day after taking them to see a demolition derby. Perry’s hunting buddies chide him for bringing tea into the deer stand. “Right on,” he retorts.

It turns out that deep thinkers—Montaigne and Perry both—can get the blues. Sometimes it’s tied to illness, sometimes to writer’s

block, and sometimes it just happens. But, for writers, no material goes to waste. Perry notes: I “leverage that vulnerability to deepen the vigor of my life by—here I paraphrase Montaigne—countering its brevity by appreciating its weight.”

Sometimes Perry laments the palpable chasm between his life as a farmer and a that of a popular writer. In a chapter titled “Roughneck Intersectionality,” Perry admits to growing concern about the distance between rural and urban America. Montaigne helps Perry see how opposites can inform one another and create a greater understanding of the breadth of human experience.

What Montaigne does for Perry, Perry attempts to do for readers of Montaigne in Barn Boots by providing us with room for selfreflection. “I’m less interested in confirmation or repudiation than I am in exploration,” he notes. Perry asks us to go deep, dedicating the book to “those willing to approach conversation with something less than a steamroller.” We readers can aspire to be those to whom the book is dedicated, to read not as passive observers but as thoughtful citizens who understand our duty to each other in an increasingly divisive world.

Mari Carlson is a book reviewer, Norwegian language teacher, violin teacher, and performer living in Eau Claire.

Don’t know what to read? Check out reviews of new and interesting books by Wisconsin authors at wisconsinacademy.org/reviews.

SPRING 2018

55

Helping

BUSINESSES

Do Better

56

uwm.edu/uwmresearch

WISCONSIN PEOPLE & IDEAS

The billions of machines connected to the internet provide companies with an unprecedented amount of information.

Wilkistar Otieno, an associate professor in industrial engineering, helps manufacturers pinpoint data to make the best possible decisions at the equipment, plant and corporate levels.

Telling Wisconsin’s stories.

Wisconsin Public Television wpt.org

Nonprofit Org. U.S. POSTAGE PAID MADISON, WI Permit No. 1564

1922 university avenue | madison WI 53726

IN THE PAGES OF THIS MAGAZINE YOU’LL FIND...

Photo credit: Jeff Miller/UW Communications

A Wisconsin where science is central to the health of our people, lands, and waters

Photo credit: Aaron Dysart

A Wisconsin brimming with the arts and a lively creative culture

A Wisconsin brought together through civil discussion and exploration of the best ideas of today

JOIN THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY AND FIND A BRIGHTER WISCONSIN. Visit wisconsinacademy.org/brighterwi