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Wisconsin People & Ideas – Winter Spring 2024

In this issue: Our cover profile chronicles the rich journalistic life of Milwaukee TV producer Everett Marshburn, who was recently inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences 2024 Gold Circle. Learn about efforts to bring both game hunting and birding to wider audiences, plus great places to watch the spring bird migration. Enjoy a fascinating read about artists who create their own pottery glazes and pigrments; preview the James Watrous Gallery’s two upcoming exhibitions; and delve into the second-place fiction piece and five honorable mention poems from the Wisconsin Academy’s 2023 Fiction and Poetry Contests, plus reviews of two Wisconsin books.

Volume:

Issue Number:

1&2

From the Director

Poetry in Bloom

By:

Erika Monroe-Kane

Spring emerges and we can’t help but have a lighter step, feel encouraged as color brightens the landscape, and enjoy moments lingering outside. I am particularly grateful to be a part of the Academy this spring.

Editors Note

Coming Home

By:

Brennan Nardi

Last year, after almost 30 years of living in Wisconsin, I realized it was time to come home. I now reside in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, with the Blue Ridge Mountains floating along the skyline like a backdrop to a movie.

John Motoviloff on a recent duck hunt to the Prairie Pothole region of North Dakota. Photo by Anne Motoviloff

Wisconsin Table

One Fateful Bite

By:

John Motoviloff

It’s been three decades since I took my first bite of wild game. It was the fall of 1992, and, fresh out of graduate school, I had just begun my first real job—production manager for scholarly journals at the University of Wisconsin Press.

Christina West, Untitled, 12”h x 20”w x 16”d, glazed porcelain, 2021. Photo by Jason Houge

Essay

Crafting Brilliance

By:

Sarah E. White

In the world of pottery, where creativity and craftsmanship converge, some artists are not just molding and glazing their clay, but creating their own unique surface treatments.

TruStage Financial Group’s new building on its west Madison campus

Essay

Sustainability Inc.

By:

Kristine Hansen

Wisconsin’s long been a national leader in sustainability. After all, former Gov. Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day in 1970. And, in 1968, Madison became the first community in the country to offer curbside recycling.

Male Wood Duck, Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin. Photo by Dexter Patterson

Essay

Flight of Resilience

By:

Dexter Patterson

In the heart of Wisconsin’s sprawling landscapes, my journey into the world of birding began—as did this tale of resilience, self-discovery, and the profound importance of diverse social representation in outdoor activities.

Profile

Let It Shine

By:

James Causey

Ask anyone who’s worked with award-winning television producer Everett Marshburn to describe him, and the consensus is clear.

“Great storyteller.”

cropped image of "Alegrias" by Lisa Marie Barber

@ the Watrous Gallery

Playground

By:

Lisa Marie Barber

Lisa Marie Barber’s dense, large-scale ceramic assemblages command attention, spilling vivid imagery and bright colors across the gallery floor.

cropped image of Freak of Nature by Jayne King

@ the Watrous Gallery

unearthed

By:

Jayne King

Jayne King’s porcelain vessels explore the nature of memory, nostalgia and personal narrative, and how Jewish tradition informs their relationship to their family’s past and present.

Wisconsin EcoLatinos participants partner with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum on the Tu Agua (Your Water) Project (photo by Francisco Guerrero)

Initiatives Update

Community Science is Fueling Wisconsin EcoLatinos

By:

Lulu Fregoso

Later falls, earlier springs, smoky air from wildfires thousands of miles away–these are just a few examples of the impact of climate change in our state and in our everyday lives in recent years.

A campaign speech by presidential candidate John F. Kennedy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Field House. Reprinted by permission of Wisconsin Historical Society, WHI-8118

Read Wisconsin

Wisconsin For Kennedy

By:

B.J. Hollars

While much has been written about John F. Kennedy’s presidency, personal life, and tragic death, less is known of his 1960 primary race to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Fiction

The Goddess of Illicit Choices

By:

Susanna Daniel

For about a month now, my best friend Amanda has been exchanging one hundred texts a day with a man she met at a dinner party.

Book Review

Black Diamonds, A Childhood Colored by Coal by Catherine Young

By:

Martin Andrew

Imagine living everyday of your childhood in a place where today’s Environmental Protection Agency would have declared the air quality “hazardous,” coding it in the dark red color of deoxygenated blood on its air pollution maps.

Book Review

The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home by Alison Townsend

By:

Jessica Becker

“The land set me dreaming, summoning memories of my other soulscapes and psychogeographies, layering them over one another in a palimpsest, many times and places present within me at once.” This line offers both description and explanation of...