Home is a simple word, but the experience of finding home is personal, complex, and always evolving.
The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters invites people across Wisconsin to join our Finding Home series and explore what it means to find home through the lenses of science, arts, history, literature, and civil discourse.
In every region of the state, people shape their sense of home through cultural expression, ecological knowledge, and community care. Many are also noticing changes in the places they know best, from shifting seasons to new pressures on land, housing, and water. Finding Home programs explore how people respond with creativity, stewardship, and resilience.
At its core, Finding Home brings people with different perspectives together with the goal of deepening understanding and identifying shared values and common ground.
This Finding Home success story features Samantha Laskowski from La Farge, Wisconsin. Samantha shares how a historic house in rural Wisconsin became home through sustainability, solar power, and a surprising connection to its past. During a remodel, she discovered a letter from the 1920s and a 1903 Indian Head penny tucked away inside the house. Later, guests who stayed at her bed and breakfast turned out to be related to the person who wrote the letter, reconnecting the home with its earlier family in a meaningful way.
For Samantha, comfort is home. It lives in the history of a place, the people who pass through it, and the memories waiting to be uncovered.
