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Wisconsin People & Ideas – Fall 2018

In this issue: We get the sweet and tart sides of cranberry growing and see photos of ourselves through the lens of an anti-portraiture photographer. A report from our Climate & Energy Initiative director Chelsea Chandler untangles the knot of how decisions are made surrounding electricity generation and transmission, and an article on UWM neuropsychologist Karyn Frick explores emerging research about the role estrogen plays in making and keeping our memories. We preview and upcoming Watrous Gallery show by Milwaukee artists Maggie Sasso and Nathaniel Stern, and share the 2nd place winning story from our 2018 contest. New Wisconsin poetry, book reviews, and a few happenings around the state round out our Fall 2018 issue.

Volume:

Issue Number:

From the Director

Getting an education

By:

Jane Elder

I was born into a family where the value of education was never questioned.

Editors Note

Picture this

By:

Jason Smith

My wife once asked me why we print photo essays in the magazine. “Photos are everywhere online and everyone has a camera these days,” she said. “So, why bother?”

The town of Warrens in Monroe County, where these cranberries are being harvested, is the epicenter of cranberry production in Wisconsin. Every year the town celebrates the fall harvest with the Warrens Cranberry Festival, the largest cranberry-related arts and crafts festival in the United States. Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association.

Wisconsin Table

The Sweet and Tart of Cranberries

By:

Candice Wagener

Everything you wanted to know and more about Wisconsin's state fruit: Vaccinium macrocarpon, better known as the large-fruited cranberry.

Report

Finding Your Role in Our Energy Democracy

By:

Chelsea Chandler

There are many places where people concerned about climate change can influence decisions surrounding electricity generation and transmission.

Neuropsychologist Karyn Frick (center), postdoctoral fellow Wendy A. Koss (left), and graduate student Miranda Schwabe (right) in the Frick Lab at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee where they examine the complex relationship between hormones and memory in the brain. Photo by Troye Fox/UWM Photos.

Discovery

Gender, Memory, and the Aging Brain

By:

Laura Otto

Even as you read this sentence, a neurochemical process has begun that will determine how long you remember it—and this process happens differently in men than in women.

Photo Essay

Life's Rich Pageant

By:

Stephen Milanowski

I like to think of my pursuit of a new kind of portraiture as a one-man crusade against those false 17th century court paintings and vainglorious images of business titans and corporate board members.

Maggie Sasso, Semaphore-1-Y (from Y.H.W.), 2018. Handwoven cotton, mahogany, photographic documentation, 6 x 5 feet. Photo by Ben Dembroski.

@ the Watrous Gallery

Sasso & Stern @ the Watrous Gallery

By:

Nathaniel Stern, Maggie Sasso, Jody Clowes

Milwaukee-based artists Maggie Sasso and Nathaniel Stern use somewhat unconventional means to achieve their artistic ends.

Fiction

Aeshnidae

By:

Jack Harris

The day had wrapped us up in the blanket of its heat and refused to let us out, so much did it love us. Or maybe it was just lonely.

Book Review

Boy into Panther and Other Stories, by Margaret Benbow

By:

Ronnie Hess

The New York Times critic A.O.

Book Review

The Collected Stories of Carol Wobig

By:

Elizabeth Wyckoff

If you’re looking for sentimentality, you won’t find it in The Collected Stories of Carol Wobig.

Book Review

Wisconsin State Parks, by Scott Spoolman

By:

Mark Zimmermann

Science writer and naturalist Scott Spoolman not only knows Wisconsin’s natural world well, his fine new book, Wisconsin State Parks: Extraordinary Stories of Geology and Natural History, reflects a lifetime spent in the woods and wilds o

Book Review

To this I Am Native, by Richard Quinney

By:

Paul Buhle

Readers of Wisconsin People & Ideas need no elaborate introduction to writer/photographer/philosopher Richard Quinney, whose “Elegy for a Family Farm” was featured in the Winter 2018 issue.