Dear reader,
Let me be the first to welcome you here, to this special issue of Wisconsin People & Ideas on the theme of Finding Home. Each of you is an honored guest in this conversation.
It is said that home is where the heart is, which suggests that home is a feeling, though we all know the fickle and fleeting nature of feelings. So while the word home implies a structure that is sound in form, its meaning cannot be contained or nailed down.
My first home was in upstate New York, where I was born, but I have no recollection of that place. While I was growing up, home was central Ohio, though my parents are from Kentucky, where their elders put down roots. Later I had addresses in Texas, Washington DC, France, and three times in two different cities in Germany, the homeland of my great-grandparents, before I chose to live in Wisconsin. A Wisconsin driver’s license for more than 25 years makes the Badger State undeniably home, but it wasn’t until I chose to have and raise my children in Wisconsin that I made myself at home. As a mother, I felt the responsibility of teaching my daughters to belong in a place.
For me, belonging has been an imperfect, ongoing, wandering attempt to know the waters, plants, and landscapes, as well as the histories, stories, cultures, communities, and conversations that shape the people and ideas of Wisconsin. Working for organizations dedicated to serving the entire state has enriched my understanding but also widened and deepened the questions.
Maybe home is where you get to know your neighbors, or yourself. Maybe it is where you are moved to speak up, ask for what you need, and stand up for what matters. Maybe belonging arises as a feeling of generosity toward others, or alongside a readiness to co-create a vision for the future. In the essays and stories found in the pages of this issue, you’ll hear from people exploring these and other possibilities.
The celebrated poet and musician, Joy Harjo, wrote in her most recent memoir that “we can call culture back.” While writing the cover article, I had the pleasure of talking with many who are doing just that – calling culture home. The work of the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Council is an example of how the choices we are making now shape the home our children, and their children, will inherit.
Thank you for being here. I hope you find something familiar, something that sparks your imagination, and something that reminds you that every journey to find home is personal. Yet it is our shared legacy of making a home that invites us in, to find common ground.
