Your shopping cart is empty.

Wisconsin People & Ideas – Summer 2014

In this issue: The Wisconsin Academy begins untangling the climate change/energy use knot, Milwaukee-based Penelope Project uses theater to address memory loss, Wisconsin looks for a new poet laureate, and Edgerton dives into Film-making 101. Features include a mememto mori on the passenger pigeon by Stan Temple, a report from FIRST Robotics regionals, a walk along the Yellowstone trail with Carl Corey, and a glimpse into the mad genius of archivist and photographer Paul Vanderbilt. Plus new fiction and poetry from our 2014 contest winners and honorable mentions, book reviews of new Wisconsin titles, and more.

Volume:

Issue Number:

Photograph of Jane Elder, executive director

From the Director

Grounded in Place and Story

By:

Jane Elder

How do the natural places we know and love define so much of what Wisconsin means to us?

Editors Note

The Kids Are Alright

By:

Jason Smith

Wisconsin is rapidly graying. What impact will this have on our quality of life?

Finding Penelope's climactic "chorus" scene. Photo courtesy of 371 Productions.

Happenings

The Penelope Project Creates Meaningful Moments for Seniors with Memory Loss

By:

Joseph Borgwardt

In the Fall of 2010 an unlikely group of actors set to work transforming Luther Manor Senior Living Community in Wauwatosa into an interactive venue for live theatre.

Happenings

Edgerton Book & Film Festival Expands Opportunities for Learning

By:

Merri Oxley

Founded in 2005 to celebrate the legacy of Rascal author and hometown hero Sterling North (1906–1973), the Edgerton Sterling North Book & Film Festival has expanded in recent years.

Stanley A. Temple addresses the audience at the May 17, 2014, rededication of the Passenger Pigeon Monument at Wyalusing State Park. Temple, who led the effort to restore the 67-year old monument, has traveled the U.S. this year on a speaking tour in observance of the centenary of the extinction of the species.

Fellows Forum

A Bird We Have Lost and a Doubt We Have Gained

By:

Stanley A. Temple

A century after the bird’s extinction, conservation biologist and Academy Fellow Stanley A. Temple reminds us of the tragic story of the passenger pigeon.

FRC Team 1732 Hilltopper Robotics is a FIRST Robotics team comprised of Marquette University High School (MUHS) and Divine Savior Holy Angels High School (DSHA) students.

Essay

Saving the World—One Robot at a Time

By:

Erik Richardson

FIRST Robotics volunteers, mentors, and students are all creating a brighter future for women in STEM.

Essay

To Creation and Beyond: The Remarkable Life of Leslie Lemke

By:

Darold A. Treffert

On a warm summer night in June of 1980, Leslie Lemke gave a piano concert in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. That concert was my introduction to an extraordinary man and his surprising talent.

Photo Essay

Along the Yellowstone Trail

By:

Carl Corey

Over a two-year period, I walked the 480-mile Yellowstone Trail through Wisconsin in an effort to understand the state of the State—and the Union.

Profile

Local Bookshop Spotlight

By:

Brenda Bredahl

It wasn’t long after Brian Roegge lost his job as a credit union manager that he and wife Sue began weighing the risks and rewards of opening an independent bookstore.

Interview

5Q – Erik A. Evensen

By:

Jason Smith

My love of drawing and illustration is what got me into graphic design in the first place, and comics were a big part of that.

@ the Watrous Gallery

Paul Vanderbilt: Recombinant Iconographer

By:

Lewis Koch

Curator, photographer, librarian, archivist, Monuments Man, teacher, philosopher, flaneur, iconographer—Paul Vanderbilt was all these things

Fiction

Snow Globe Policy

By:

Jenn Sauer

Victoria conceded that her "nothing new under the sun" mantra might be taking its toll on her personal life by draining it of a certain immediacy.

Book Review

Banning DDT: How Citizen Activists in Wisconsin Led the Way, by Bill Berry

By:

Ron Seely

Wisconsin writer Bill Berry manages to turn one of the state’s most historic—and perhaps longest—environmental battles into what sometimes feels like a fast-paced thriller.

Book Review

The Anatomy of Dreams, by Chloe Krug Benjamin

By:

Erika Janik

Dreams are mysterious. Sleep can transport us to another life where we have tea with the Queen or swim across an ocean. These events—no matter how fantastical—seem real at the time because we don’t know we are dreaming.