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Wisconsin People & Ideas – Summer 2018

In this issue: We announce the winners of our 2018 fiction and poetry contests, and get the dirt on the looming dirt crisis, and eat a Culver's cheeseburger. We work with WisContext to dig up the science and stories behind wild Wisconsin ginseng, and share photographer Tom Ferrella's moving portraits of roadside memorials. Michael Fiore and the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention celebrate 25 years of waging war on smoking and geologist Eric C. Carson takes us with him on the path to discovering a river that flows uphill. FlakPhoto curator Andy Adams introduces us to ten must-know photographers from the Midwest and fiction and poetry from our contest winners remind us that we have incredibly talented writers here in Wisconsin.

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From the Director

Hands in the dirt

By:

Jane Elder

Midwesterners are obsessed with checking the weather. Most of us, though, aren’t looking at our mobile devices to see what tomorrow’s soil conditions will be.

Editors Note

A taste of childhood

By:

Jason Smith

That feeling you get when the taste of something brings back memories of a more carefree time in your life.

Wild ginseng plants in eastern Iowa County. Wild-simulated plants sown from responsibly gathered seeds, lightly cultivated and sustainably harvested on long rotations in private woodlands, can help wild ginseng populations rebound from over harvesting and poaching. Photo by Jerry Davis.

Wisconsin Table

Wild Wisconsin Ginseng

By:

Jason Smith, Scott Gordon

What we know—and don't know—about a popular medicinal herb found on forest floors across Wisconsin.

Named a Wisconsin Academy Fellow in 2004, Michael Fiore is a physician, a professor, and the director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. Here Fiore checks patient Mike Eheler’s carbon monoxide levels. Heeler, a father of four, quit smoking with help from Fiore and the UW–CTRI. Photo credit: UW–Madison Department of Medicine/Clint Thayer.

Report

Stamping Out Tobacco Addiction

By:

Christopher Hollenback, Michael Fiore

Through the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, Drs. Michael Fiore and Timothy Baker have helped more than 300,000 Wisconsinites kick the habit.

The view down the Wisconsin River from Cactus Bluff in Ferry Bluff State Natural Area. Millions of years ago this valley was carved to a depth of over 600 feet by an ancient river. The last major glaciation deposited as much as 300 feet of sand and gravel, resulting in the broad floodplain and terraces that characterize the Lower Wisconsin River valley today. Photo by Eric Carson.

Discovery

The River that Flows Uphill

By:

Eric Carson

Geologist Eric Carson's discovery of an ancient river in Wisconsin will change the way we think about rivers in North America.

Tiffany M. Dutcher • Highway 51 and Hoepker Road – Dane County. Photo by Thomas Ferrella.

Photo Essay

Not Forgotten: Wisconsin Roadside Memorials

By:

Thomas Ferrella

Roadside memorials are everywhere. Yet few people see them for what they are.

Nathan Pearce • Untitled, Fairfield, Illinois, 2015. Copyright @ 2018 by Nathan Pearce. No reproduction without permission.

@ the Watrous Gallery

New Midwest Photography

By:

Andy Adams, Clarissa Bonet, Jess T. Dugan, Tytia Habing, Jon Horvath, Julie Renee Jones, Dave Jordano, Nathan Pearce, Barry Phipps, Jason Vaughn, Lindley Warren

It’s taken me a while to realize it, but I’ve come to see that the Midwest is actually a perfect place to make a creative life.

Fiction

Static

By:

Michael Hopkins

I got stung. On my ankle, I saw three bees, and could feel them right through my sock.

Book Review

Taking Flight, by Mark Edmonds

By:

Shelby Anderson

Michael Edmonds’s new book, Taking Flight: A History of Birds and People in the Heart of America, provides an enlightening and well-researched account of our always-evolving relationship with birds.