For University of Wisconsin-Madison Alumni and Friends

Author! Author! Lorrie Moore and Jacquelyn Mitchard converse about the writing life.

SPRING 2010

Earthly Matters For decades, the UW has been watching over our planet.

Udderly Fun A Badger makes an indie movie.

Press On The UW Press faces the changing world of publishing.

Poet Power Martín Espada champions the poor.

directory_ad_onwis_2010.indd 1 1/29/10 1:55 PM Invest Invest in in Great Great PEOPLE PEOPLE Ensure that the leaders Ensure that the leaders of tomorrow can afford a of tomorrow can afford a world-class UW-Madison world-class UW-Madison education today. education today.

Ben Van Pelt aspires to be the next great Students like Apriel Campbell will change American writer. Right now, he’s a triple-major, our world in ways that we have yet to work-study student. When he isn’t in class, imagine. This work-study genetics major he trains for his hobby – wrestling – and revels in the unlimited possibilities of a gains stamina for his second, late-night job. great public university, from cutting-edge But even smart, ambitious students like science to intercultural dialogs. Ben can’t afford to attend UW-Madison But even bright students like Apriel cannot by simply working more hours. afford to attend UW-Madison without Your gift to the Great People your help. Your gift to the Great People Scholarship will create a pool of Scholarship creates a pool of financial financial resources for promising resources for promising students. Make scholars like Ben while ensuring the your gift now to support UW-Madison’s next socioeconomic diversity of a strong generation. The UW Foundation public university. Make your gift now will even match your gift to increase and the UW Foundation will boost its its impact. impact with a match. For more information, go to: For more information, go to: www.uwgreatpeople.org www.uwgreatpeople.org Or contact Dani Luckett at 608-263-0522 Or contact Dani Luckett at 608-263-0522 [email protected] [email protected] Great People Move Great People Move Wisconsin Forward Wisconsin Forward

OnWisconsin_InsideFrontCover_01-07-10_v01.indd 1 1/7/2010 3:34:51 PM OnWisconsin_InsideBackCover_01-07-10_v01.indd 1 1/7/2010 3:36:31 PM SPRING 2010 contents VOLUME 111, NUMBER 1

Features

22 Heads and Hearts  Chancellor Biddy Martin PhD’85 describes the incomparable role of the humanities in helping us discover what it is to be human.

24 Words, Wit, and Wild Hearts By Jacquelyn Mitchard It’s a writer-to-writer conversation when Mitchard sits down for a chat with Lorrie Moore, acclaimed fiction author and UW faculty member.

30 Someone to Watch over Earth By Gwen Evans ’79 The UW’s legacy with environmental issues started in 22 the 1860s when student John Muir embraced nature. It continues evolving on today’s campus, where classes meld filmmaking skills with community activism.

36 Moooovie Making By Jenny Price ’96 Can Tyler Knowles ’05 pull off his first film with a small crew, a fictional beer, a road trip peppered with Badgers, and a cow costume?

38 The Changing Face of Publishing By John Allen As profit margins shrink and technological change speeds up, academic publishers face an uncertain future — but the UW Press is adapting to the new realities of bookselling in the twenty-first century. 42

42 The People’s Poet By Eric Goldscheider Influenced by his activist father, photographer Frank Espada, and his own struggles with poverty, Martín Espada ’81 uses his poetry to speak for the downtrodden and the forgotten.

Departments 5 Inside Story 6 Letters 10 Scene 12 News & Notes 18 Q&A 19 Classroom 36 20 Sports 48 Traditions Cover The latest novel by Lorrie Moore, 50 Gifts in Action a professor of creative writing, 51 Badger Connections was published in 2009. 66 Flashback Photo by Andy Manis

SPRING 2010 3 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Before child labor laws, children as young as 9 worked in coal mines.

Many workplace protections we count on came from the University of Wisconsin. At the turn of the past century, university economists helped redefi ne government’s role in the workplace. Because of their guidance, Wisconsin had the nation’s fi rst worker’s and unemployment compensation laws and led the country in enacting child labor and minimum-wage laws.

Through advocacy and education, the Center for Patient Partnerships helps people who face serious illness to make more informed choices. Students and staff at the center guide clients and their families as they explore diagnosis and treatment options, resolve insurance and billing disputes, and navigate employment and disability issues.

FORWARD. THINKING. www.wisconsinidea.wisc.edu

When Parker Summers was 3, the insurance company for the Appleton family refused to cover his cancer treatment. The CPP provided advocacy and 4 support ON WISCONSIN as Parker received vital medical care. Today, Parker is healthy and enjoys a romp in his yard. with his pal, Kahlúa. insidestory JEFF MILLER

Tyler Knowles ’05 On Wisconsin headed to Hollywood after gradu- SPRING 2010 ation to make movies, but he had to return to Wisconsin to realize the Publisher dream of directing his first film. Wisconsin Alumni Association 650 North Lake Street, Madison, WI 53706 It was only fitting. As a commu- Voice: (608) 262-2551 • Toll-free: nication arts major at UW-Madison, (888) WIS-ALUM • Fax: (608) 265-8771 E-mail: [email protected] Knowles learned the basics of Web site: uwalumni.onwisconsin.com movie-making while shooting Co-Editors student films on campus, and along Niki Denison, Wisconsin Alumni Association Cindy Foss, University Communications the way, he mastered the fine art of

Senior Editor doing a lot with very little. John Allen, Wisconsin Alumni Association Knowles called on those Writer skills throughout the making of Jenny Price ’96, University Communications Go West Happy Cow, a movie he Art Director Tyler Knowles directs Go West Happy Cow on Earl J. Madden MFA’82, conceived and directed. Filming the first day of filming. University Communications started in Madison last September Production Editor and wrapped when the cinematic road trip ended in California just over a week Eileen Fitzgerald ’79, University Communications later. (See story, page 36.) He had plenty to be nervous about from the get-go. He

Editorial Associates met one of his two lead actors for the first time the night before shooting started Paula Apfelbach ’83 and Ben Wischnewski ’05, — and he wasn’t sure if either of them could act. But along the way, he drew from Wisconsin Alumni Association both the academic and extracurricular experiences he had on campus. Editorial Intern Sam Oleson x’11 When Knowles was weighing colleges as a high school student, he visited Los Angeles and looked at schools renowned for film studies, but found them Design, Layout, and Production Barry Carlsen MFA’83; Toni Good ’76, MA’89; lacking. When he chose the UW, it was for its atmosphere and opportunities, not Kent Hamele ’78, University Communications because he thought it was a place he could learn how to be a filmmaker. But Campus Advisers that’s what happened. Paula Bonner MS’78, President and CEO, and Mary DeNiro, Vice President of Marketing While he was a student, Knowles was manager for the MadHatters, a UW and Communications, Wisconsin Alumni Association • Amy E. Toburen ’80, Director, men’s a cappella group. He organized gigs, including a West Coast tour that and Albert Friedman, Associate Director, followed almost the same route that his movie does, traveling through Denver University Communications • Lynne Johnson, Senior Director of External Relations, and Las Vegas, and on to Los Angeles. As it turned out, keeping track of sixteen University of Wisconsin Foundation singers was far more difficult than leading the team making the movie. Knowles Advertising Representative also managed the now-defunct University Square Theater during his last year at Madison Magazine: (608) 270-3600 the UW, which helped him learn about the business end of film production and Alumni Name, Address, Phone, and E-Mail Changes • Death Notices showed him firsthand how a filmmaker’s vision can directly touch audiences. Madison area: (608) 262-9648 But the most important message Knowles took with him from Wisconsin Toll-free: (888) 947-2586 E-mail: [email protected] was the encouragement from professors, friends, and family to go west and pursue his dreams. Quarterly production of On Wisconsin Magazine is supported by a UW Foundation grant. © 2010 Wisconsin Alumni Association Jenny Price ’96 Printed on recycled paper using soy inks. Please remember to recycle this magazine.

SPRING 2010 5 letters

In addition to its spiritual ministry and Your repeated use of the word “quote” in your service to the Madison Jewish community, article on famous sayings from Wisconsin Hillel was an important space for the entire alumni brought to mind a fond memory of campus community in its sponsorship of live Professor John M. Cooper’s senior history music and dance performance during my seminar, in which he would shout “quotation!” years at UW in the early sixties. [It inspired a] when any presenter was unfortunate enough great gathering of new artists and enthusias- to use the word “quote” as a noun. tic audiences. Thank you, Professor Cooper, for insisting Chuck Kleinhans ’64 that your students use words correctly in both Eugene, Oregon written and oral presentations. That attention to detail has paid off in my professional life! I appreciated the story on Hillel and its role Rachel Gavelek Konkle ’98 in the growth of Jewish life at the UW. I was Kenosha, Wisconsin a graduate student in political science from 1949–52. As newlyweds fresh out of Brooklyn, “On, Wisconsin!” the Song my wife and I visited the State Street walkup, The article in the Winter 2009 On Wisconsin where we were greeted by the exuberant [“Fight on for Her Fame,” News and Notes] Rabbi Max Ticktin, who provided both solace reminded me of my father’s affection for the Monster Medical Bureaucracy and advice on life in Madison. great Badger song. The selfless people who help patients make Professor of economics Selig Perlman is Dad, who graduated from the UW Law medical care decisions (“The Wayfinders,” mentioned twice in the article, stirring a strong School in 1911, was there when the new Winter 2009 On Wisconsin) are entitled to take recollection of a program at Hillel for gradu- “On, Wisconsin!” was presented to the stu- pride in their work. However, it’s outrageous ate students featuring Perlman on the subject dent body, and the song always provoked that patients should need advocate teams to of Jews in academe. Perlman told the group a strong emotional response in him. That sort out the competing insurance claims and that, as Jews, they would never become was especially obvious on one occasion in self-replicating bills that go with health care. department chairmen, deans, vice presidents, the late 1940s when we happened to be on In the name of free enterprise, we have or presidents, due to anti-Semitism being the [University of Minnesota] campus on a created a monster medical bureaucracy for alive and well in universities. Unfortunately, he Wisconsin-Minnesota football weekend. We the benefit of the insurance industry, whose did not live to witness the numerous Jewish rounded a corner and unexpectedly encoun- skillful propaganda deceives the public and academics who assumed leadership roles tered the UW Band marching down the street whose largesse corrupts our elected lawmak- throughout the academic world decades later, just as they started “On, Wisconsin!” It was ers. Our health care system has evolved to including numerous Jewish presidents at Ivy one of the few occasions when I saw my serve these commercial interests. League schools. father break into uncontrollable tears. Such To get into a sensible system, I’d have to Milton Greenberg PhD’55 can be the power of “On, Wisconsin!” move to Canada.Thank goodness I’m not sick. Washington, D.C. David Strang ’59, MD’62 Mary Ross Holbrow ’55, MA’56 Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Cambridge, Massachusetts Don’t Quote Us [The song “On, Wisconsin!”] brought to mind Heaps of Hillel Memories My apologies for zeroing in on what is cer- a letter we found among our family papers, Thank you for your article on the new Hillel tainly the most insignificant of all the Badger written by my mother’s cousin, Ellenwood building [“Hillel Encapsulated,” Winter 2009]. words of wisdom compiled (“Houston, We’ve “Jim” Halsted, UW circa 1915, to his parents. I have fond memories of Hillel. I came to Had a Problem,” Winter 2009) in which the The letter mentioned New York City’s the UW as a freshman in 1957 and gravitated cryptic phraseology of Steve Miller’s line in his ticker-tape parade for Charles Lindbergh x’24 to Hillel to start my social and religious life. I hit “The Joker” (“’Cause I speak of the pom- in June 1927, after he returned from his his- made several lifelong Jewish friends from that patus of love”) has been endlessly speculated toric New York-to-Paris flight. The city’s freshman year, and also met my girlfriend and upon. welcoming committee, mayor, and other politi- later my wife through Sherman Ansel, who The answer has actually been deciphered cians who all wanted to be seen with him had was a fixture at Hillel, in the 1950s and ’60s. by humorist Dave Barry: simply put, the word tightly scheduled Lindbergh’s every minute. The new building looks much larger, and isn’t a derivation of anything. He made it up. I believe Halsted was an officer of the hopefully will give many Jewish students there That’s why some people call him the Space New York City alumni chapter at the time. today a lifetime of friends. Cowboy. Their regular monthly meeting coincided with Peter Hirsch ’61, MS’63, PhD’66 Elizabeth Strand-Nevin ’90 Lindbergh’s visit, and they were determined Cupertino, California Elkhorn, Wisconsin to get Lindy to their luncheon. Several of the

6 ON WISCONSIN alumni knew that as a Wisconsin student, he intentionally put their animals in harm’s way. had loved the fight song. Thus, they decided An eye for an eye. that Carl Beck (who wrote the lyrics for “On, Carol Fix ’76 Wisconsin!”) would be the perfect bait to lure Snoqualmie, Washington him to their meeting. Halsted, Beck, and several other chap- Kudos for Fall Issue ter members became the designated “kid- This might well be the first time I’ve ever writ- nappers.” They dressed in tuxedos, rented ten to a university alumni journal, but your Fall a limousine, and set out to catch their prey. 2009 issue moves me to let you know that all Their tuxedos made them look official and five feature articles were very well done. gained them admission to one of the sched- Congratulations to all of you and thank uled activities. They were able to introduce you! I’m an alumnus of the University of Lindbergh to Carl Beck and invite him to their Western Ontario in London, Ontario, and also luncheon. Lindy replied that he would love to of the University of Toronto, so when your escape the official folderol, but that he was magazine comes along, I think to myself that closely guarded and didn’t know if he’d be as emeritus professor, I know most of this

It was one of the few occasions when I saw my father break into uncontrollable tears. Such can be the power of “On, Wisconsin!” able to slip away — whereupon the chapter local stuff, so I can skip over it quickly, but it leaders put on their most officious looks and sure didn’t happen this time. walked him out of the meeting room and into I enjoyed every minute (most of yesterday their waiting limo. afternoon) reading it. Best wishes, and keep It must have been a fabulous alumni up your fine work. meeting, and I’m sure they sang more than Richard Steeves one chorus of “On, Wisconsin!” before, some- UW Hospital and Clinics (Human Oncology) how, officialdom tracked Lindbergh down Madison after several hours and whisked him away. Evan Clingman ’50, PhD’72 Please Update Your Address Kennett Square, Pennsylvania UW-Madison wants to stay in touch with you. To update your contact information, which is maintained by the UW Foundation, please Redux on Wolf Redux visit www.uwfoundation.wisc.edu/survey. To While reading about wolves making their way log in, use the ID number above your name on back to Wisconsin [“Wolves at the Door,” Fall the magazine label. This information is shared 2009], I was struck by the irony of this situ- selectively with other campus units and the ation. The hound in the article was not a pet Wisconsin Alumni Association to ensure that nabbed off someone’s porch. It was a dog alumni information is consistent and accurate. used to chase, terrorize, and ultimately enable Thank you! a human to kill a bobcat by shooting it out of a tree. It is acceptable to use hounds to kill On Wisconsin Magazine welcomes letters bobcats. It is seemingly acceptable for those related to magazine content, but reserves same hounds to harass wolves. It is not, the right to edit them for length and clarity. however, acceptable for wolves to defend You may e-mail your comments to onwis- themselves. Perhaps the DNR reimburse- [email protected]; mail them to On ment should extend to the bobcat kits that Wisconsin, 650 North Lake Street, Madison, will starve, with their mother killed so she can WI 53706; or fax them to (608) 265-8771. We be skinned for vanity’s sake. Perhaps DNR regret that we don’t have space to publish all reimbursement should be limited to livestock the letters we receive, but we always appre- losses and to pet owners who did not ciate hearing from you.

SPRING 2010 7 Fueling the drive toward green gasoline

Imagine moving from a fossil fuel economy to a clean, carbon neutral energy economy. This shift is in high gear thanks to WARF helping launch Virent Energy Systems, Inc. in 2002. Virent, founded upon University of Wisconsin-Madison discoveries, recently was selected as the only biofuel company among North America’s 100 top tech start-ups. Now Virent is working with Shell on joint research and development efforts to convert sugars from biomass directly into ‘green’ gasoline and gasoline blend components for use in today’s engines. Virent’s success reflects WARF’s commitment to advancing world-class research at UW-Madison through funding, patenting, licensing and protecting inventions of university faculty, staff and students. Since 1925, WARF has been driven to help companies like Virent make their innovative dreams come true.

WARF. Helping invent a better world. www.warf.org

8 ON WISCONSIN ive in luxury with other Badger 1, 2 & 3 bedroom condos from L alums just minutes away from our $180,000-$525,000 beautiful University of Wisconsin Penthouses from $450,000-$1,000,000 campus. Metropolitan Place II off ers ready to customize on-site management, a private fi tness For more information contact: center, guest parking and a one-acre rooftop park…all while being a short walk to the Kohl Center, Camp Randall Stadium, Overture Center for the Arts, 608.268.0899 State Street shopping and galleries, Debby Dines, Broker | UW MBA ‘02 Sales Center open: and the Capitol Square’s dining and ursday and Friday noon-5 p.m., Saturday-Sunday noon-4 p.m. entertainment hot spots. 333 West Miffl in Street, Madison WI 53703

WWW.METROPOLITANPLACE2.COM

SPRING 2010 9 scene Snow Foolin’ Snowboarder Peter Limberg boosts some phat air while freeriding at the Hoofers’ flail and bail last November. What the heck are we talking about? We don’t really have a clue. But evidently, in November the UW Hoofers outdoor excur- sion club hosted a freestyle skiing and snowboarding event called the Rail Jam. The event took place on the Memorial Union Terrace, where the Hoofers constructed scaffold- ing and then covered it in twenty tons of manmade snow. Wisconsin’s winter hadn’t yet set in, and the temperature was 42 degrees under mist and rain — tough sledding for the pros, but gentler on any grommet who cratered a lip trick. Or whatever. Photo by Jeff Miller

10 ON WISCONSIN FALL 2009 11 news ¬es RANDI SCHIEBER

Rough Landing After the quake, student group returns safely from Haiti.

When the students in the UW unharmed. That day they sent a service group Engineers Without message confirming their safety. Borders (EWB) left for a brief trip “We are ok!” Eyleen Chou to Haiti over winter break, they x’10, one of the team members, knew that they were going to the posted on the EWB blog, not- poorest nation in the Western ing that the quake “was a mere Hemisphere. But they didn’t tremor here.” know how bad conditions there EWB’s mission is to send would become. engineering students to develop- Tyler Lark x’10 (left) of Engineers Without Borders helps two On January 12, three days ing communities around the world Haitians repair a water pipeline in the village of Bayonnais. after the group arrived in Haiti, to aid with construction projects. its capital, Port-au-Prince, was (See “Down from the Mountain” United States as originally sched- The Bayonnais project is rocked by a massive earth- in the Fall 2005 issue for more.) It uled on January 15. scheduled to run at least five years, quake. An estimated 170,000 has been working in Bayonnais for “Basically, it came down and EWB had intended to return Haitians were killed, and hun- three years, attempting to improve to a decision as to what was in March. Chou notes that those dreds of thousands more were the village’s water supply. more burdensome [to the plans are now uncertain, though left homeless. The buildings in Bayonnais Haitians],” says Chou. “If we she hopes to return to Haiti soon. The UW students, however, did not suffer any structural dam- stayed, we would just have “After talking with other [EWB] were situated in the village of age, and the students were in no been more mouths to feed, and members,” she says, “we feel Bayonnais, about seventy miles immediate danger. After repair- supplies there were already even more that we want to help.” from Port-au-Prince, and were ing a pipeline, they returned to the diminishing.” John Allen quick takes Six hundred million collisions Erin Conrad ’09 is the UW’s The work of UW flu researcher psychology and psychiatry per second is cause for cele- first Marshall Scholar in ten years, Yoshi Kawaoka may speed professor Richard Davidson bration by UW scientists playing winning the chance to pursue a the delivery of influenza vac- (on the neurology of happiness). central roles in a massive experi- master’s degree in philosophy, cines in the future. FluGen, a ment to solve the biggest myster- politics, and economics of health Madison-based start-up, is using Bratwurst is a part of ies in physics. The Large Hadron at University College London. Kawaoka’s research to develop a Wisconsin culture (especially at Collider, featured in the Fall 2008 Conrad, who plans to combine new method for producing vac- football tailgating parties), and issue of On Wisconsin, is up and a medical degree with her policy cines. Traditional production relies now the UW is doing its part to running three hundred feet below training to become a medical eth- on chicken eggs and is time- make Wisconsin brats better. This the French-Swiss border, allow- icist, is one of thirty-five talented consuming — one reason for spring, the university is develop- ing a broad range of experiments American students selected for H1N1 vaccine shortages in 2009. ing a master meat-crafter training to begin. the honor. FluGen’s process uses hamster program as part of a state-spon- cells, and proponents say cell- sored specialty meat develop- UW leads the Big Ten — at Badger Yearbook staffers culture production will be faster ment center. The program will number fourteen — in Kiplinger’s roundly rejected the idea of than egg-based production. teach people to make artisanal Personal Finance ranking of the producing a digital edition for sausage and cured meats. Yum. best values among public univer- their 125th anniversary. Instead, A PBS science program airing in sities. The magazine reviews data they’ll produce a familiar cardi- January featured UW research into The U.S. Department of from more than five hundred pub- nal-and-white hard copy that happiness. A three-episode series Agriculture selected the UW’s lic four-year colleges and uni- students can hold in their hands, titled This Emotional Life included Institute for Research on Poverty versities and bases rankings on with a theme based on the cen- the work of psychology professor to host a Center for National academic measures, including tennial of the UW’s fight song, Seth Pollack (on childhood experi- Food and Nutrition Assistance graduation rates and costs. “On, Wisconsin!” ence and brain development) and Research.

12 ON WISCONSIN ISTOCK

Walking Wounded Can differences in the brain predict better treatment of post-war trauma?

The casualties of war are too many returning ser- great to count. Limbs lost. Lives vicemen and women, ended. Loved ones left behind. nor the fact that sol- But many men and women diers redeployed a who return home after serving third or fourth time are their country with bravery suf- at an even greater risk fer wounds that no one can see. of developing PTSD. The rate of post-traumatic stress “You have really disorder (PTSD) among soldiers a tremendous amount who have served in Afghanistan of suffering, and that’s and Iraq is estimated at 13 to 18 how I became inter- percent, and many consider that ested in this,” says a conservative number. PTSD Nitschke, who hasn’t results in persistent and frighten- studied the condition ing memories of a terrifying emo- before. To tackle the tional or physical event that make problem, he is com- it difficult to hold a job or sustain bining his efforts with a relationship. The disorder is also Eileen Ahearn and associated with higher rates of Tracey Smith, clinical alcohol and drug abuse, as well UW psychiatry faculty as suicide. practicing at William Help is available in the form S. Middleton Memorial of medication and psychotherapy, Veterans Hospital in but half of the veterans with com- Madison. bat-related PTSD don’t get bet- Very few stud- ter after taking medication for eight ies have been done on weeks. Jack Nitschke, a psychi- how to treat combat- atry professor in the UW School of related PTSD, Ahearn Medicine and Public Health, wants says. “People spend to know how brains differ at the a lot of time wait- start of treatment for those who ing for treatment to UW researchers say veterans in the study are enthusiastic about helping get better and those who don’t. take effect, and we’re other soldiers struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. “What are the brain mech- not good at predict- anisms that are involved in this ing which treatment is because they heard that it might Nitschke has used this disorder? We don’t have a good going to benefit which patient,” help another veteran,” she says. method to guide treatment for idea of that, so there’s just a lot she says. “[If] we can understand “There is an unparalleled sense patients with generalized anxiety of work that needs to be done,” what’s happening at the brain of altruism and camaraderie disorder. In one recent study, he says Nitschke, who is studying level … it would save a lot of dis- amongst veterans. They want to found one medication was more brain differences, hoping to pin- tress and time for patients. They help each other.” effective for some patients with point the most effective treatment could be directed to a particular Each participant in the study the disorder by looking at how for individual soldiers. type of treatment.” has a brain MRI done before and their brains processed anxiety. Nitschke, who also treats Hospital staff inform patients after beginning medication or psy- He’s hoping to do the same thing patients with severe anxiety dis- about available studies, and the chotherapy for PTSD, allowing with PTSD, noting, “If we can find orders, researches these differ- researchers say there is no short- Nitschke to look for differences out what brain signatures there ences at the Waisman Laboratory age of enthusiasm among veter- between the brains of people who are prior to treatment, that can for Brain Imaging and Behavior. ans for helping fellow veterans. have been exposed to combat and predict treatment outcome.” He decided that he could no “We’ve actually had people who have the disorder, and those who Half of the PTSD study par- longer ignore the crisis facing agree to try medication in part don’t develop any symptoms. ticipants receive anti-depressant

SPRING 2010 13 news ¬es

medication while the other half people not to avoid the trauma, reactions to their experience,” “You go over, and you undergo psychotherapy. After an but actually revisiting the trauma Smith says. “Studies have found experience all of this awful stuff. eight-week period, Nitschke looks in a protected, therapeutic setting that trauma survivors who expe- You come back, and you get a lit- at brain differences between helps to diminish the symptoms rience conflict between their prior tle celebration at first, [but] then people who respond to treatment overall and to provide relief.” beliefs and the trauma experi- you end up suffering — for some or medication and those who Veterans hospital psychol- ence are more likely to have people, years and years and do not. His findings could help ogists employ cognitive-pro- more severe reactions and more years. … And a lot of that stuff, I doctors decide — based on what cessing therapy, a treatment difficulty recovering.” think, really could be eradicated,” a patient’s brain looks like — specifically designed to address After Nitschke finishes col- he says. “Some of the treatments whether medication or therapy is PTSD. Patients write about the lecting scans from 120 subjects, we have already are doing that the best course of treatment. traumatic event in detail and which should take about three effectively, and for those who “Part of the problem with work with a therapist to recon- years, he hopes to launch studies we’re not reaching, we need to PTSD is that there’s very high cile the beliefs they held before to test the effectiveness of ther- find out how to reach them.” avoidance. … People try to avoid it happened — such as, “I am apies based on any brain differ- For more information, visit thinking about these terrible safe” — with what they experi- ences he identifies. Ultimately, http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/ experiences, but the avoidance enced in combat. he wants to find a way for all sol- nitschkelab. perpetuates the PTSD symp- “How veterans interpret diers with PTSD to get better Jenny Price ’96 toms,” Ahearn says. “So teaching the trauma affects subsequent after a first attempt at treatment.

Contented Cows A comfy space and familiar companions make for a healthier herd.

What’s the recipe for a healthy resulting scores to develop con- cow? UW-Madison veterinarian crete suggestions to help farmers Ken Nordlund found a relatively improve the health of their cows. simple answer: keep her happy with Dairies with deep sand stalls enough space and a soft cushion, that give cows more room to and minimize social turmoil. feed — so they can all eat at Dairy cows are incredibly vul- once rather than in shifts — and nerable to disease in the weeks that keep cows in stable social following the birth of a calf, and groups have the best scores. conventional wisdom used to be Cows are social animals, a fact that when more than a few animals not always considered in modern got sick, it was time to change dairy barn design. their complex feed rations. But “It just requires a change in Nordlund says what researchers thinking,” Nordlund says. needed was an objective measure Since the index was first of cow health that would allow introduced in 2006, about them to compare management two thousand dairy farmers, practices with other dairies. mostly in Wisconsin, have pur- Nordlund and colleagues in chased the record system, pat- the School of Veterinary Medicine ented by the Wisconsin Alumni Cows thrive best when they have deep sand stalls and can hang worked for four years, using Research Foundation and out with friends, UW researchers have found. records for a half-million cows, to licensed to AgSource. A num- develop a statistical model called ber of farmers even built brand- have adopted the suggestions that that’s what’s needed, many the Transition Cow Index. The new facilities to meet the UW have seen significant drops in will say, ‘Okay, we’ll figure out a record-keeping tool predicts researchers’ recommendations, expenses for antibiotics. way to do that,’ ” Nordlund says. a cow’s expected milk output and Nordlund says the differ- “In general, dairy farmers “It was more readily accepted during the first month after birth- ence in productivity and health want to do their very best for their than I ever expected.” ing a calf; the UW team used the is astonishing. Farmers who cows, and if our work suggests J.P.

14 ON WISCONSIN The Case of the Disappearing Mastodons

At the end of the last ice age, much of North America looked something like this — a vast savanna populated with many species of large animals, including mam- moths, camels, horses, giant beavers, and mastodons (pictured here). But something happened that wiped out all these creatures, and a study published in November in the journal Science sheds some new light on just when North America’s megafauna disappeared. UW graduate student Jacquelyn Gill MS’08, PhDx’12, along with professor Jack Williams, Katherine Lininger ’08, and researchers at other universities studied fossilized pollen, charcoal, and dung fungus to determine when the large animals were last present in central North America. Their findings indicate that the animals died out over the course of nearly two millennia, between 14,800 and 13,000 years ago. The decline of the animals appears to have been gradual — neither caused by rapid kill-off by humans nor by a sudden change in habitat.

Bully Pulpit STUDENT WATCH Certain friends can help kids who are picked on at school. Say cheese! If there is anything Wisconsin is famous for other than beer or bratwurst, it’s cheese. Consider Parents may be quick to offer calling kids names,” she says. cheese curds, cheeseburgers, and cheeseheads. So it advice to kids who are being “We assume that that’s okay or bullied, but Amy Bellmore is that’s not going to be harmful to should come as no surprise that the UW has a student devoting her efforts to finding kids, but it’s the most frequent organization devoted to tasting, learning about, and more realistic answers. event they report.” experiencing this dairy delicacy. Bellmore, an assistant pro- To develop strategies, The Badger Cheese Club, formed in fall 2006, is fessor of educational psychol- Bellmore is determining the pop- ogy, is surveying sixth graders ularity of the kids in the study, if dedicated to spreading the word about one of the most at two Wisconsin middle schools they have friendships, and what significant aspects of Wisconsin culture. The club, to learn how they cope with bul- kind of friendships they are. “If which has about forty members, has tasted more than lying. Students read a hypothet- the strategy is, ‘I want to tell a ical situation and a checklist of friend,’ you need to have a cer- fifty cheeses, organizes club projects, and has a maca- options to indicate how they tain kind of friend — a friend roni-and-cheese cook-off to end the academic year. would respond, including stand- who’s empathetic, or who will Educating members doesn’t stop with simply cook- ing up to the bully, ignoring the listen or who could potentially go ing with and eating cheese. Club president Jordan bully, or telling a teacher, a stand up to the bully,” she says. parent, or a friend. She figures that out by ask- Walker x’11 brings in “cheese experts,” such as a But Bellmore is also asking ing the students to tell them representative from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing kids to do something research- whom they hang out with and Board, as guest lecturers. The club’s Web site even ers haven’t done before: which peers are the most popu- features “cheese in the news.” describe an actual event from lar. “They take it very seriously. the recent past where they felt They are really methodical about Although cheese education is an important mission bullied and what they did in telling us,” she says. of the club, Walker says tasting different varieties of response. Bellmore says the broad cheese is definitely the best part about participating. “Most kids can readily recall range of responses kids have to an incident where they did feel being bullied demonstrates what His favorite is Dubliner, a Cheddar-like Irish variety. The picked on, which is the bad parents may not want to hear: most original mac-’n’-cheese he’s had? One made with news,” says Bellmore. “There’s no one right coping beer. Only in Wisconsin. “I think one of the behaviors strategy.” Sam Oleson x’11 that flies under the radar is J.P.

SPRING 2010 15 news ¬es

It Takes a Team Students reach out to help a small island in east Africa.

A group of UW-Madison students The students traveled THE EDGE PROJECT working on isolated Lingira Island to the island through EDGE in Uganda’s Lake Victoria knew (Empowerment through they were making a difference Development and Gender when a member of the country’s Equality), a student-run inter- parliament came to check out the national development pro- fledgling girls’ soccer team they gram launched by Mommaerts, had helped organize. Michelle Mazzeo ’09, and Government officials in the Farha Tahir ’09, MIPAx’10. east African nation often ignore About fifty students in the isolated island’s residents. But Madison — 7,800 miles from the after the high-ranking visitor’s stop, island — researched potential one soccer player won a coveted projects for a smaller group that scholarship that previously would traveled to Lingira last summer. have been out of reach. Once there, the students built a Thanks to UW students, isolated Lingira Island now has a joyous “It’s a huge deal that this grain mill, set up a women’s craft girls’ soccer team. member of parliament came cooperative, and organized the to the island,” says Marissa girls’ soccer team, among other fit from EDGE’s work between students’ next trip, a farmers’ Mommaerts ’09, MIPAx’10. projects. the students’ trips there, says association continues to meet, “There’s been attention drawn Sustainability and educa- Mommaerts. Under the watch and Lingira’s girls’ soccer team to the island and the living condi- tion are essential to ensuring of a young Ugandan woman hired is expanding to two squads. tions there.” that Lingira residents will bene- to monitor the projects until the Stacy Forster ISTOCK

What Motivates UW Students to Learn Foreign Languages? Encompassing more than eighty modern and classical (ancient) 43% languages, the UW offers stu- Personal interest, dents choices that span the enjoyment globe. From Chinese to Quechua 1% Other (a South American language 1% Societal responsibility originating in the Andean 3% mountains) to Yoruba (spo- Application for ken in Nigeria and other parts advanced degree of western Africa), sixty mod- 6% ern language offerings help to Family prepare students to succeed in background an increasingly interconnected world. To delve into ancient 9% texts, students also get their fair Future travel, share of language choices, with study abroad twenty-seven classical offer- ings, ranging from Old Norse to Biblical Hebrew. But why 13% do students enroll in language Use in future career courses? According to recent 24% figures, many say simply for the Degree requirement fun of it. Source: Language Institute, UW-Madison

16 ON WISCONSIN ISTOCK

Driven to Distraction How do we keep drivers’ minds on the road?

John Lee knows that the most Advanced Driving Simulator. dangerous thing on the road is a There, he made a study of the driver whose eyes aren’t. things that keep drivers from Lee joined the industrial and watching the road. New technol- systems engineering faculty in fall ogies, it seems, offer new ways 2009, and brings an expertise in to drive poorly, and Lee notes what he calls technology-medi- that the most distracting thing Sending and reading text messages are the most distracting ated attention. drivers commonly do today is activities that drivers commonly engage in. According to John Lee, “It’s a sort of vague label that text-messaging. people are twenty-three times more likely to get into an accident I apply to my work,” he says, “but “When people are texting,” he while texting than non-texters. In comparison, intoxicated drivers basically I look at the dangers says, “they’re twenty-three times are only four to eight times as likely to crash. and benefits of technology” with as likely to crash as when they’re respect to distraction. just driving. As a comparison, “We’re trying to find ways to appears the driver isn’t paying Lee has studied both psy- people who are intoxicated are develop an attentive car,” he says, enough attention. chology and engineering, and four to eight times as likely [to be “one that’s attentive to the driver’s Lee is collaborating on a he combines those disciplines involved in an accident].” state and attentive to the road.” study with engineers from the to examine the ways that people Lee hopes to find ways to Using video cameras in its University of Washington and pay attention to or ignore their alert drivers to when they’re being dashboard, such a vehicle could Virginia Tech to evaluate a sys- surroundings. Before coming to less than alert, and he believes monitor the driver’s eyes to see tem like this for use by long- the UW, he was on the faculty that one answer might be to cre- how long he or she is looking haul truckers. The tests are at the University of Iowa, where ate cars that keep an eye on their away from the road, and then scheduled to begin in 2010. he worked with the National own drivers’ eyes. give a warning signal when it John Allen

Speakin’ Palinese Why the heck does Sarah Palin talk like a Midwesterner?

Though it was hardly one of the Dialects are important to says Raimy, and those migrants of vowels, while Salmons tallied great controversies of the 2008 Raimy, who along with German brought Midwestern dialect with her dropped g’s (pronouncing, presidential campaign, one issue professor Joseph Salmons them. “Although it’s been sev- for instance, the word pronounc- resonated with UW linguists: and linguistics professor enty or eighty years, which is ing as pronouncin’), and Raimy why does Sarah Palin sound like Thomas Purnell, runs a proj- enough time for that dialect to followed her word usage (espe- a Midwesterner? ect called Wisconsin Englishes, differ from here, the echoes of cially such informal euphemisms Palin, the Republican vice a study of the linguistic traits Midwestern speech remain.” as heck and darn or the phrase presidential candidate, grew that differentiate Midwesterners To analyze Palin’s dialect, you betcha, which became up in Wasilla, Alaska, far from from those elsewhere in the Raimy, Purnell, and Salmons widely associated with Palin). the Great Lakes, and yet many country. In November 2009, the examined her speech patterns Raimy admits that Palin’s media figures noted that her three professors published an during her October 2008 debate speech patterns may not have speech patterns made her sound article in the Journal of English with Democratic vice presiden- much scientific import, but he like she came from northern Linguistics noting the charac- tial candidate Joseph Biden. says that popular views about Minnesota or Wisconsin. teristics of Palin’s Wasilla dia- While repeatedly viewing a digi- her dialect shed interesting light “When she was first named lect, which combines aspects tal recording of the debate, each both on language and culture. John McCain’s running mate, a of Midwestern and Western scientist quantified different The campaign, he says, “offered lot of people in the popular press speech patterns, and hypoth- aspects of the way Palin spoke, a unique opportunity to talk said she sounded like she was esizing how that combination comparing the numbers with about dialect identity and per- from the Midwest,” says English came to be. Biden’s speech patterns and ception. It’s interesting to look professor Eric Raimy. “This “We know that there was an with what they know about var- closely at a dialect and the ways made us wonder: what do peo- influx of Midwestern migrants to ious American dialects. Purnell people react to it.” ple really know about dialects?” the Wasilla area in the 1930s,” monitored Palin’s pronunciation J.A.

SPRING 2010 17 q&a JEFF MILLER

Michael Fiore This anti-smoking advocate believes the battle against tobacco can be won.

On Wisconsin last featured Fiore, director of UW-Madison’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, in Winter 2005, not long after he testified in the federal government’s landmark lawsuit against Big Tobacco. His efforts got another boost last summer, when new legisla- tion gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco. More recently, Fiore received a national award for his dedica- tion to patient advocacy, and his center earned a $9 million research grant from the National Cancer Institute to find new ways to help the 20 percent of Americans who still smoke to break free of the addiction.

Q: What’s making it possible to eliminate tobacco use in America? A: Two things — first, the recognition of tobacco use as a drug of dependence, and second, the recognition that when I smoke in your presence, it’s not just a choice I’m making, but it’s also putting your health in danger. These developments have totally changed the landscape.

Q: You’re concerned about the rate of smoking couple weeks.’ Some very provocative early results have suggested among veterans. Do they need different support that this approach might help, because it lessens the power of nicotine from civilians to quit? addiction. The third approach is to address the issue of medical com- A: We’re investigating that. We have a young investigator [at the vet- pliance. When we do succeed in convincing a person to make a quit erans hospital] — Jessica Cook — who is looking at post-traumatic attempt and put them on treatment, the sad reality is less than half of stress disorder and smoking, because those two challenges that vet- them take the treatment as prescribed. So … with this new research erans face really run in parallel. … Rates of smoking among returning effort, we’re going to try innovative interventions to increase adherence Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in some surveys are above 40 percent — to treatment. double the rate of the general population. That is an enormous legacy: we’re asking these young people to serve our country and risk their Q: You have said it’s possible to eliminate tobacco lives. They make these sacrifices willingly, then return home addicted use in the United States by 2047. Is there a single to a drug that’s going to kill half of them prematurely. change that would help us get there? Q: How can the new grant help tackle the ongoing A: I’m going to mention three things I believe will make a difference. … The first one’s allowable under FDA regulation, and that is [to] gradually challenges to helping people quit? eliminate nicotine from cigarettes. … The second thing is price — we A: Virtually all of the treatments currently available for smokers are for know when the price of cigarettes goes up, many smokers think about those who are ready to quit that day — and that represents less than quitting. … And third, I believe we have an ethical and moral obligation half of smokers. Our goal is to evolve a new set of treatments for peo- to provide easy access to treatment if we are to continue to raise the ple who aren’t yet ready to quit, but are willing to take treatment that price of cigarettes — an addictive product. may motivate them to quit in the future while they continue to smoke. Q: What has it meant for your efforts to have a Q: What will that include? president who struggles with tobacco addiction? A: One approach is a new kind of counseling called motivational inter- A: For someone like that — of such extraordinary accomplishment — to viewing … in essence, trying to engender motivation to make a quit [also] be dealing with tobacco dependence, speaks to me of the power attempt. The second one, paradoxically, is giving people over-the- of tobacco addiction. counter nicotine replacement therapies like the patch or the gum, and saying, ‘Listen, you don’t have to quit, but just try this medicine for a Interview conducted, condensed, and edited by Jenny Price ’96

18 classroom

Manga Mania Students get serious about Japanese comics.

In Adam Kern’s class, do not rials sold there, appealing to all KEIJI NAKAZAWA, COURTESY OF LAST GASP PUBLISHING refer to mangas. The term manga ages and classes of Japanese. takes no s, either in singular or plu- However, though manga may ral. And if you describe a manga, have deep roots in Japanese cul- do not call it a Japanese comic. ture, Kern notes that it draws from “A comic is a comedian,” eclectic sources and owes a heavy Kern says. If you’re talking about debt to American pop culture. a narrative form that uses graph- In a class session discuss- ics and language laid out in ing Sailor Moon, for example, he panels across pages — comic traces that popular series back books, comic strips, and graphic to a 1960s manga called Magical novels — then “as a noun, the Witch Sally, which in turn was term is comics, whether singular inspired by the American TV or plural.” program Bewitched. Terminology is important “A lot of what we think of to Kern, an associate profes- as quintessentially Japanese sor of East Asian languages and is actually appropriated [from literature who’s using his new other cultures],” Kern says. “This course, East Asian 376: Manga, kind of hybridity runs throughout to examine this rising pop culture manga.” phenomenon. Afterward, the students Taught Tuesdays and closely examine Sailor Moon’s Thursdays in Van Hise Hall, the text, trying to learn its visual course offers a survey of Japanese and verbal themes and symbols. comic-book-style literature from Sailor Moon, Kern notes, is part the eighteenth century to the of a particular tradition, called present, following the develop- bishojo senshi manga, or “beau- ment of the form and examin- tiful girl team manga.” Aimed ing its symbols and themes. His primarily at a teenage, female texts include such pop culture readership, these books create items as Astro Boy (originally a sci- a fantasy world to symbolize the ence fiction manga launched in the transition of adolescence. 1950s) and Sailor Moon (a super In Sailor Moon, the main hero manga launched in the early character, Bunny, goes through 1990s and aimed at girls), as well a magical transformation to Kern’s class includes serious and hard-hitting manga, such as Barefoot Gen, which recounts life in Hiroshima after its bombing as more mature works, such as become the leader of a team of at the end of World War II. Barefoot Gen (which describes super heroes, the eponymous life after the atomic bombing of Sailor Moon. “It’s a sort of wish- “It’s good product place- on romantic relationships, family, Hiroshima, based on creator Keiji fulfillment,” Kern says, “an answer ment, isn’t it?” he asks. “Here’s and politics. Nakazawa’s personal experiences) to the question ‘What will I be this highly stylized crystalliza- But Kern has a larger pur- and Abandon the Old in Tokyo (a when I grow up?’ ” tion of a dramatic moment, and pose for the course than just to collection of adult-themed stories). But, Kern notes, the book the industry is using it for product teach students to be better at Kern, who spent several years delivers its message of female placement.” reading comics. He hopes that it in Japan and briefly worked in the empowerment with a dose of Over the semester, Kern will help raise interest and aware- publishing industry there while commercialism as well. leads his students through the ness of East Asian studies. “I’d completing his doctorate, notes When one student notes many different forms of manga, like to make manga a gateway that manga is a far more preva- that one of the magical transfor- showing them why this art form course,” he says. “I think it really lent art form in Japan than most mations takes place in a video has been so popular in Japan for ties in with our existing strengths people realize. Manga account for arcade, Kern confirms that this is centuries. Manga, he says, offer in the department.” nearly a third of all printed mate- no accident. deep insight into Japanese views John Allen

SPRING 2010 19 sports

TEAM PLAYER Ben Feldman

Ben Feldman x’10 always knew he wanted to come to Wisconsin. Both of his parents and his sister are Badgers, making it, he says, “kind of a family tradition.” When he began playing Ultimate Frisbee as a sophomore at his high school in Minnetonka, Minnesota, Feldman also knew he wanted to play the sport for as long as possible. Luckily, his family tradition and favorite pastime complement each other well. Wisconsin’s Ultimate Frisbee club, the Hodags, is among the nation’s best. The team has qualified for the national tournament the past nine sea- sons and has won the championship three times. Ultimate Frisbee is a game in which a team tries to pass a Frisbee down a soccer-sized field without running if holding the disk. The UW sponsors the sport, but only to a certain extent. Feldman estimates that although the team “It’s very motivational for receives a few thousand dollars in support, each player shells out around the team, knowing that $2,000 out of pocket each year to cover travel expenses and tournament entries. what we’re working for However, the costs and time commitment — a few practices a week during the season is going with weekend tournaments held as far away as California — are all worth- while, Feldman says, especially with nationals coming to Madison to be on our home turf.” (technically, Verona) in 2010. Feldman, a receiver or “cutter” on the team, says that all the hard work they’ve done this year will pay off if they can win a championship in front of their own fans. “It’s very moti- vational for the team, knowing that what we’re working for during the season is going to be on our home turf,” he says. Although being part of the Hodags has consumed much of Feldman’s college life, he’s grateful. “My whole college experience has revolved around the team, and my memories from college are going to be what I did on the Hodags,” he says. “It’s going to be an experience and a regimen that I’m going to miss.” Sam Oleson x’11 JEFF MILLER

20 ON WISCONSIN PAUL MARKER

Pedal Power UW cycling team wins bid to host national championships. In the world of bicycle racing, will be held in May, when nearly Madison is the real deal. three hundred teams and eight With miles of paved bike trails hundred athletes are expected and low-traffic rural roads, the to participate in a road race; Madison area has long enjoyed a “criterium,” or short, closed- a national reputation for bicy- circuit race through downtown cling. This year, UW-Madison’s Madison; and a team time trial. cycling team has parlayed that University cyclers last reputation into a two-year com- hosted the event in 2004. “We mitment to host the 2010 and wanted to bring nationals back Collegiate cyclists speed past Wisconsin’s Capitol during a 2009 2011 Collegiate Road National to Madison, but it’s a lot of work road race. May’s national championships, hosted by the UW, will Championships. The races are for college students,” Carr says. include a criterium through downtown Madison. run under the auspices of the With encouragement from the National Collegiate Cycling Greater Madison Convention and in the sport of bicycle racing,” scholarship. Part of the Midwest Association, a division of USA Visitors Bureau, they found help Hirt says. “The sport has a huge College Cycling Conference, the Cycling, and the UW team says in a partner: Team Sports, Inc., potential for becoming a main- team participates in road racing in the organization was impressed a Wauwatosa, Wisconsin-based stream sport, and it also has great the spring and mountain bike rac- with the Madison area’s company that will handle the benefits from a tourism and busi- ing and cyclocross — a rough- topography. event’s logistics, from marketing ness standpoint.” terrain race — in the fall. “[This] part of the state has and promotions to securing roads The League of American “We generally attract people incredible riding — big hills and and setting up the courses, as Bicyclists ranked Wisconsin as who were into cycling before they rural roads near a city, which is well as covering the liability and the second-most-bike-friendly come to college and who love the pretty uncommon — and scen- financial risk. state (after Washington), and outdoors,” Carr says. “Every year ery on top of that,” says cycling The project was a perfect America’s Dairyland boasts we get a couple of people who club president Jason Carr x’10. fit for Jack Hirt ’99, director a $1.5 billion bicycle tourism have never seen a road bike or “That helped our position.” of cycling races and events for industry. they’ve had the same bike since Sponsoring the events for Team Sports. “My mission is to Cycling is the largest club they were twelve.” Any student two consecutive years is a coup make Wisconsin known across sport at UW-Madison, with about with any bike is welcome to join, that organizers hope will attract the country and around the world 120 dues-paying members, and as long as he or she has a helmet more U.S. cycling events to as a place where anyone at any it’s the only club sport on cam- and brakes. Madison. The championships level can come and compete pus that has its own endowed Karen Roach ’82

BADGER SPORTS TICKER The outdoors provided a happy The Badger men’s soccer team may still require higher ticket prices home for the Badger hockey team has a new head coach. John Trask, as the departmet continues to deal this winter. Both the men’s and wom- formerly of the University of Illinois- with the effects of the recession. No en’s teams skated to victory in the Chicago, was named to the post in decision on the budget had been Camp Randall Hockey Classic, held January. He’s the team’s sixth head made as of press time. in February on the ice-covered sur- coach in its thirty-four-year history. face of the UW’s football field. The In January, men’s basketball coach women’s squad beat Bemidji State Badger fans may have to pay a Bo Ryan won his hundredth Big 6 to 1, while the men’s team defeated little more to watch their teams Ten game with a victory over Penn the Michigan Wolverines 3 to 2 in in person. In January, the athletic State. By winning 100 of his first front of a crowd of 55,031 very chilly department proposed a 2010–11 140 games, he is the second fastest fans — the largest crowd ever to budget that would cut operating and coach to reach that milestone, after watch a Badger home hockey game. support expenses 5 percent, but former Indiana coach Bob Knight.

SPRING 2010 21 Heads & Hearts The humanities take many forms in helping us to understand and communicate being human. On Wisconsin explores some of them.

When you hear the word “humanities,” what comes to mind? For a certain cohort of

ISTOCK UW alumni, this word-association game may prompt memories of a building on the central campus rather than a branch of learning. Yet, the humanities encompass areas of study that allow humans to communicate what is in their heads, as well as convey what is in their hearts: languages, literature, classics, history, philosophy, law, religion, and both visual and performing arts, such as music, theater, film, and dance. As the Humanities Association, based in the United Kingdom, unabashedly boasts, “[The humanities are] about people: how people create the world they live in; how the world they live in makes them the people they are.” When members of the On Wisconsin team first heard that 2009–10 was the Year of the Humanities on campus, it didn’t take long to recognize that the humanities play a central role in many of the stories we were researching and writing. And with Chancellor Biddy Martin, a champion for the humanities, now at the university’s helm, it made sense to take a closer look. What we found was exciting. For example, students are still studying Shakespeare, but they are using digital technology to effortlessly tap into commentary on his work. Faculty choreographers in the dance program are collaborating with campus research- ers to create performances inspired by science. And groundbreaking research into BRYCE RICHTER mindfulness marries neuroscience with meditation. “The humanities emphasize, and also continually refine, critical thinking and discovery in the realms of human thought, expression, and culture,” Martin says.

22 ON WISCONSIN MICHAEL FORSTER ROTHBART JEFF MILLER (2)

“Humanities scholarship preserves languages, cultures, and modes of thought, while also changing them through analysis and imaginative new perspectives. Humanists ensure the transmission of culture, but also contribute to its transformation. In both cases, their work draws on and builds communities of readers, thinkers, and consumers of culture. “Scholarship in the humanities is focused on the heart of things — how we define, understand, and live our humanity; how we constrain and enable human expression and achievement; and what impact the wide range of human cultures has had in the past and has now,” she continues. “Humanists seek to expand our understanding and appre- Humanists ensure ciation of different modes of thought and to introduce ever more capacious approaches to fundamental questions about what it means to be human.” the transmission The stories featured in the following pages represent just some of the forms that of culture, but also the humanities can take as we seek to understand and appreciate being human. Rather than limit opportunities, a solid grounding in the humanities opens up possibilities, contribute to its Martin says. transformation. “People with humanities degrees go on to do every conceivable thing,” she says. “There is no better foundation for eventual careers or for satisfying lives. The abilities Chancellor Biddy Martin to think critically, synthesize information, make cogent arguments, communicate, and express oneself clearly and imaginatively are skills that every kind of work requires and that every person will be enriched by having.” On Wisconsin Editors

SPRING 2010 23 ZANE WILLIAMS

24 ON WISCONSIN ZANE WILLIAMS

Words, Wit, Wild Hearts &A Conversation with Author Lorrie Moore

By Jacquelyn Mitchard L orrie Moore, professor of creative writing at UW-Madison, is one of the premier authors of her generation, called variously “the maestro” and “the most irresistible” writer now practicing the art of fiction. Almost as though her life were a screenplay about being a successful writer, Moore, at nineteen, won Seventeen Magazine’s fiction contest, and then, after she completed MFA studies as a protégé of Alison Lurie, her first book of short stories, Self-Help, was published by Knopf in 1985, when Moore was just twenty-six. In 1984, with a newly earned MFA from Cornell, Moore began teaching fiction at UW-Madison, although she commuted between New York and Madison for several years. She won the 1998 O. Henry Award for her short story “People Like That Are the Only People Here,” published in The New Yorker in 1997. In 2004, Moore was selected to receive the Rea Award for the Short Story, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 2006, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Now a full-time Madison resident, she also is the divorced mom of a teenage son. While Moore’s privacy is delicate, as a friend and a kindly fellow human being, she recently sat down with me to talk about books, publishing, and A Gate at the Stairs, her most recent novel — also her first book in eleven years and her first novel in fifteen. It tells the story of one year in the life of twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, a potato farmer’s daughter attending college in a fictional Madison immediately post-9/11, who is a nanny for the mixed-race toddler adopted by her beleaguered and eccentric employer, Sarah Brink. Besides being a coming-of-age story, the book is heartbreaking, rum, tragic, witty, and trenchant social commentary: the protagonist loses her virginity to a feckless lad who may or may not be a jihadist and then loses her only brother to the war in Afghanistan. A Gate at the Stairs also was a New York Times bestseller, and of it, notoriously choleric New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani wrote, “In this haunting novel, Ms. Moore gives us stark, melancholy glimpses into her characters’ hearts.” Characteristically diffident, Moore, a native of New York state, plays down the novel’s enormous success while acknowledging that its “nightmare story” moved her to tears as she wrote. While the book owes some of its inspiration (and its final wry line) to the “governess” tradition of Jane Eyre, it is Moore at her crisp twenty-first-century finest, remembering all of us — for all of us — with charac- teristic and sardonic charm. Besides A Gate at the Stairs, Moore’s oeuvre comprises four collections of short stories: Self-Help (1985), Like Life (1990), Birds of America (1998), and The Collected Stories (2008); and two novels, Anagrams (1986) and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? (1994). Anagrams was optioned for a film by ... Madonna.

SPRING 2010 25 [Mitchard] This is fiction, but what about the choice to system installed to protect him by his adoptive parents. Some create a twenty-year-old virgin? critics say, ‘Hey, girl, it’s just not funny.’ What do you say? [Moore] Oh, so it’s going to be that kind of interview! Interest- I would agree. Those parts aren’t funny. At least they’re not ing. You think twenty-year-olds would not be virgins the way supposed to be. I never thought of this book as being very the twenty-year-olds are in Jane Eyre and Turn of the Screw, the funny. And the parts you mention are horrifying to me, and governess novels most on my mind here? I can easily imagine a so as part of the horror show that is the novel — its tragic and twenty-year-old virgin. But the book’s job, I guess, is to get you politically gothic components — I felt they needed to be there. to imagine it, too. A lot of readers do a kind of reality-testing I do have stories where I think horrifying events are handled of fiction against their own experience and have quibbled with with dark humor, but I don’t think this new novel does that. many aspects of this book (as in, “She would never listen to the band Modest Mouse!”), but you’re the first to use the phrase A person doesn’t write directly about her kid, her life, her “create a twenty-year-old virgin” as if I’d done it freakishly in a politics — that is, in fiction. Except we do. I do ... albeit in lab. I think many twenty-year-olds have proceeded slowly and a less confessional way, maybe, some more than others. uninspired through their teens. Am I wrong? It never occurred to When you write about a woman with a little mixed kid in a me that this might be statistically unusual. Do you have the stats? stroller, are you writing about you? Do your feelings about raising your own particular child inform this book? Are you examining questions you asked yourself as a young mom, or This book is not for everyone. No book is for yearning to be that young mom or relive that experience? No, nothing’s me, but as you know, we get interested in certain everyone. The wider the audience you reach, things because of our lives and then travel with these things in a the more disgruntled readers you create. ... different direction. Such is storytelling. Writers do have to eat, however. But you are This book has been a major, major bestseller for three months. Are literary fiction writers allowed to do this? also trying to make literary art, which has a Are you going to have the scarlet L ripped off your limited number of consumers. black sweater? Darling Jackie, it was not a major, major bestseller for three months. It was a minor, minor one for three weeks. So the L Do you play the bass guitar? Tassie loves it. What makes stays on the sweater. you crazy about the bass guitar? I don’t play the bass. My niece does, though — or used to. I Was that part, the bestseller-ness, thrilling or vindicating did borrow a version of her e-mail address. But mostly I had to or just plain nice and lucrative in some sense? Is a big- make this all up and ask people — including Nick Moran, the screen movie next? A soundtrack? terrific bass player here in Madison whom I quizzed one day I love this experience you’re inventing here, and I’m trying to when he was waiting lunch tables at his mom’s restaurant; he have it along with you. In reality, however, it doesn’t have any allowed me to take notes. He also said he had always wanted of the ingredients you suggest. The novel has had much the my niece’s e-mail address for his own, but it had been taken. same trajectory as my last book, which was a collection of I suppose here I should say, if you want to know what the mail stories. The story collection got better reviews because people address is, you’ll have to read the book ... feel more sorry for you, but in general, the commercial narra- tive is the same. No movie, no soundtrack, and I’ll share the Some quite horrific things in the book are handled in a sobering sales numbers with you when you turn off the tape. darkly comic way — the horrible incident with the four- year-old at the highway picnic area, the shooting of the You once told me it was fun to own a house — that it was black teen by police called to his house with an alarm like playing house, playing being grown. How do you see

26 ON WISCONSIN that world of domestic dominion, a man and a woman and I think students were tremendously curious about the world a house, at fifty? that had suddenly landed here — or that, in reality, had been Well, I am fifty-two and missing one of the ingredients you here all along. This was the response of non-Muslim stu- mention. Did I really say it was like playing house? Was I dents. Muslim students have had their own great diversity of taking Claritin-D at the time? Perhaps I felt the fun-ness of response. One can be interested in understanding jihadism it at the beginning. My first house was a sturdier house. The without being a jihadist. Susan Sontag wrote admiringly of next house I moved to, which is where I still am, is a falling- the bravery of the 9/11 terrorists [in The New Yorker], which apart house and requires emergency buttressing weekly to prompted much outcry. Understanding terrorism while also keep it from crashing down. There are squirrels in the chim- condemning it is an intellectual space that many people have ney, raccoons in the walls, and bats throughout. The wir- entered. Perhaps young people, in their searching-ness, can ing blinks the lights on and off, as in Gaslight. It never had get there more easily. I think that Tassie Keltjin is one of a proper owner — that is, someone who could really pour those, somewhat. The young man she falls for has lost his money into it. Oh, well. I’m avoiding your “domestic domin- job due to the racial profiling on bridge and tunnel traffic ion” question because I’m not sure exactly what it means, after 9/11. though the alliteration is nice. Which brings me to another question. If we write in the You’re shy. What’s that like, going out to flack a book? Common Era, as it were, are fiction writers obliged to Has this tour been more intensive and exhausting than it give a nod to 9/11, as Bugs Bunny constantly referred back should have been? to World War II? (I regret the unfortunate example, but Yes. Luckily I’m on heart medication, so I can clutch the Warner Brothers cartoons were significant in my cultural lectern and remain vertical. Mostly audiences have been very anthropology.) nice, though I’ve had my share of glowerers. Hmmm ...

Would you like more of your books to reach this wider Is Tassie in any sense a sendup? She seems so made from audience that has embraced A Gate at the Stairs, or is that contradictions — only twenty, yet referring to music not the point? and movies not just of her parents’ generation, but back Yeah, I don’t think that’s the point. This book is not for every- beyond that. Is she a Renaissance girl? She’s never been one. No book is for everyone. The wider the audience you on an airplane, yet she has parents who honeymooned in reach, the more disgruntled readers you create, so I don’t know. England. What’s with her? Writers do have to eat, however. But you are also trying to Tassie is not a sendup and is meant to be experienced on a realis- make literary art, which has a limited number of consumers. tic and intimate level. Her cultural references are a hodgepodge, You can grow that number only up to a point, I’m afraid. the way I imagined a musician’s would be, the granddaughter of academics would be, a bright but isolated girl growing up in the We’re of a generation, you and I (sounds like Kipling). countryside would be. I don’t think a writer’s obliged to nod in In our adulthood generation, the “where were you when any direction that the book doesn’t want to go. ...” experience is 9/11. Of course, that’s not unique to our age group, just as the “where were you when President Some years ago, you told me you were late with the Kennedy was shot?” was not unique to our parents or our deadline on a pastoral novel. In what sense is A Gate older brothers and sisters. Tassie Keltjin lives directly at the Stairs a pastoral? post-9/11, but seems unfazed by it and even has a maybe- Well parts of it, I suppose, are. But Tassie’s family in the coun- Islamic-terrorist lover. Why? try is viewed as a kind of ersatz farm family, and so the pastoral I was interested in the “chickens have come home to elements are engaged with almost touristically — until the end, roost” response to 9/11, and the very few Islamic studies I think, when Tassie is returned to the country and reconnects courses here at the UW did fill up quickly after 9/11. with her dad there in a new and appreciating way.

SPRING 2010 27 Coming of age is a recurring motif for you. What so more than is ideal — but in a way that is not necessarily untrue captivates you about the threshold of adult life? to life. As we know, there’s a great variety to couples. Which is It’s not a motif at all in my [short] stories. I don’t think there’s why they make for good stories. a single story that takes it on. But it is at the heart of two of my novels. Coming of age, of course, requires more time and You don’t sound like a very proficient housecleaner. Do space to depict. And I guess when I think of a long story, young you have help, now that you’re on the bestseller list? women leaving their homes behind come to mind. The passage It’s been eleven years between books. I don’t have any extra of time and looking back on youth from even a slight distance money. Plus, I try never to discuss housecleaning. seems better for the larger canvas of a novel. I loved the potato parts of this book. I don’t know why. Potatoes are so inscrutable, although they have eyes. Negative reviews written by other writers are Did you choose them because they take so much from the earth? good for keeping house, since you get to take They have eyes, thin skin, and snappable roots. These are fea- that writer’s books out of your shelves and toss tures of most of the novel’s characters. Plus, they are a genuine Wisconsin crop. I know Idaho gets all the fame, but Wisconsin them, making room for other books that are grows a lot of them.

just lying around in piles. My favorite exchange in the book was the social observa- tion at the playground — in which Tassie rejects a mom’s [Tassie’s employer] Sarah is such a jerk — to me, anyway! self-seeking wish to give her daughter Mary-Emma as an She is such a Madison-Woman-of-a-Certain-Kind, but “African-American friend.” I think that it’s possible that on steroids. She doesn’t want the little girl. She wants ordinarily constructed families sometimes see families her husband and some morels with a mustard-and-thyme in which there is something different (adoption, mixed reduction sauce. Tassie may be aimless, but her heart is race) as fair game, as fuel for either self-righteousness or pure. How can she stomach Sarah and the Wednesday consciousness-raising. As a mom of some children who evenings? How can she hold on emotionally after Sarah’s were adopted and some who weren’t, that makes me crazy. dark revelation? Were you driven by those kinds of encounters in writing Oh, I don’t think Sarah’s so terrible. I keep imagining her this book? being played nervously and wearily and comedically by Judy The book was primarily an update of the governess novel. But Davis. I see her as full of good intentions and living on the I was inspired to include various things I knew or heard about road to hell that is paved with them. But everyone’s entitled regarding trans-racial parenting. to her own opinion. Someone in Santa Cruz stood up at a reading and told me the same thing, that she didn’t like Tassie doesn’t believe in true love. Does Lorrie Moore? Sarah. And I said, “That’s okay.” A reader doesn’t have to. If so, what kind? For a friend, a man, an English garden, Sarah’s a mixed bag, and readers can have whatever response a breed of cat? they want. Tassie is trying to make her way toward an idea of useful love rather than one that is mere dream or fun intoxication. I People do the strangest things for love. They revoke their personally don’t see love as something you believe in. I don’t dreams. They see the “other person’s” point of view. The think you get to choose. It happens to you and events ensue. “other person” is always a guy and the revoker is always a woman. This is a thread throughout A Gate at the Stairs. Is When you depart from short stories, a form in which you it a vexing part of the human condition? are an acknowledged maestro, it seems to bug people. Do I try never to pronounce on the human condition. I do think in you think this? this book that women accommodate themselves to men a little A lot of things bug a lot of people, and I’m lucky not to be privy

28 ON WISCONSIN to it all, since, as I mentioned before, I have a heart condition. Do negative reviews hurt you? Do you read them? Do I try not to pay attention to the ways in which my fiction might glowing reviews send you dancing down the street like irritate people, since — good grief — it is only fiction. Besides, Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain? Do you read them? it’s a cliché of small communities that they bash their writers, This is really a housekeeping question! Negative reviews and I’d rather think of this community as a larger one than that. written by other writers are good for keeping house, since you get to take that writer’s books out of your shelves and Do reviews in which your novel is called “utterly neces- toss them, making more room for other books that are just sary” confuse you as much as those in which the critic lying around in piles. complains about too many similes? Is fiction ever utterly necessary? Can there be too many good similes, even on a When you teach, and I know you do love to teach, what given page? do you tell your students over and over? Do you see I don’t think I saw the “utterly necessary” ones. That “utterly” is yourself teaching always — that is, for the rest of your a strange word — don’t you think? It suggests degrees of neces- life until you’re buggy? sariness. And then we are really off on another subject entirely. I will die with chalk in my hands. Can there be too many similes? Of course. With A Gate at the Stairs, Tassie is a bit of a lyricist and is in constant searching Why do we teach writing in the first place? mode — sometimes even caught in verbal rhapsodies of emo- If you teach to undergraduates, you are just part of their tions like disgust. I gave her free reign to have extra language college education, and you are teaching them composition when it suited, as it would be appropriate for her character. and literature and what is psychologically and linguistically true and what is manufactured and shortchanging of the I once admired Jill McCorkle for beginning a talk by say- life of the mind. At the graduate level, one teaches the same ing, “Ladies and gentlemen, I now hate this book.” She things, really, but there are also discussions about agents. said that because she’d plowed the same ground over and over, and in some places, simply could not reproduce the tune she heard in her head and she wanted to put it behind Last one: You spoke once in an interview of feeling a her. Do you ever feel that way about completed work? Or sort of “Oh, dear ...” emotion while reading the proofs do you cherish it? of stories written in your twenties. It’s nearly thirty years Well, when you go on a book tour, there comes a point later now. What do you know that you didn’t know ... and where you do turn against the book. It’s the part the publisher I don’t mean only about writing prose. shouldn’t learn about. It took me a while to get over keeping I’m not sure that one is wiser as one gets older. I don’t really company with Tassie Keltjin — I did miss her for a while, but buy that. But one is better read, even if one has forgotten I’m over it. I’m eager to move on to the next thing. half of what one has read. So one can look at early work and think I would never choose to write a story about that now, et Are you a natural, sure and swift, or a Very. Deliberate. cetera. One’s interests change. Also having only a typewriter Writer.? back then made revision much more difficult. That you I’m haphazard, ad hoc, and intermittent. Also I require coffee. would just have to let a page go because you couldn’t bear to In short? I’m slow, but there are bursts. retype it was a common condition back then that no one has to endure now. n If you could write another kind of novel, what would that kind be? If you could be another kind of artist, what would Jacquelyn Mitchard is a journalist and author, most recently of you be? No Time to Wave Goodbye (a continuation of her first novel, I would be the intrepid sort of novelist who goes all over and The Deep End of the Ocean). She teaches seminars at the free writers’ residence she founded in 2007, One Writers Place (www. writes from war zones — like Bill Vollmann, but without the onewritersplace.com), and lives with her husband and nine children prostitutes. Or at least with fewer prostitutes. I would also love on a farm near Madison. Mitchard was a member of the UW’s public to write a thriller or a detective novel. Wouldn’t you? affairs staff from 1989 to 1997.

SPRING 2010 29 Someone to Watch over Earth

eil Armstrong, an American astronaut UW’s remarkable connection to three of the and the first man to walk on the most influential environmentalists in American Moon, once said of his journey, “It history. To commemorate these milestones, Nsuddenly struck me that that tiny the institute is sponsoring a public conference, pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my Earth Day at 40, and an environment-themed thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted concert at the Overture Center for the Arts, out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I both in April. For more information, visit felt very, very small.” www.nelson.wisc.edu/earthday40. In many ways, the university’s Nelson Insti- In addition, a traveling mini-festival is tute for Environmental Studies was created four planned to continue conversations about the decades ago to watch over that tiny pea. The environment that began during the 2009 Tales institute has played a steadfast leadership role from Planet Earth, a festival that featured fifty in this arena, from examining local concerns films from around the world. (See story, at about Madison’s lakes to tackling the global right.) This spring, the Wisconsin Humanities issues of climate change. The institute adopted Council is hosting Making It Home film festivals its current name in 2002 to honor the late Gay- in Baraboo, Dodgeville, Milwaukee, and the lord Nelson LLB’42, former Wisconsin governor Ashland/Bayfield area in Wisconsin. Follow- and U.S. senator, and the founder of Earth Day. ing the films, people will discuss what defines As both the institute and Earth Day reach their homes and communities, their cultural and

fortieth anniversaries in 2010, On Wisconsin historical ties, and environmental and social- IMAGE: NASA looks at how compelling films can build aware- justice challenges they face. For more informa- ness of environmental issues and notes the tion, visit www.makingwisconsinhome.org/.

30 ON WISCONSIN Making a Reel Difference Take one environmental film festival, add two classes of enthusiastic students, and mix with community groups in need of partners.

By Gwen Evans ’79

Gregg Mitman believes in the power of documentary storytelling, and students documentaries that explore justice, equity, film to change lives. He should — he’s taking the course created short films that and the environment. In that film, Pete living proof that a good tale, told with debuted at the event. Seeger talks about art in the service of passion and heart, can influence the way Judith Helfand, an award-winning activism, and Helfand was smitten with his an audience regards our planet. environmental filmmaker and a UW- message and the power of nonfiction film. As a youngster, Mitman MA’84, Madison Arts Institute artist-in-residence, Today she is active with Working Films, PhD’88 was enthralled by the 1960s collaborated with Mitman on the class and an organization she co-founded that links television programs The Undersea World the festival. Helfand, too, was inspired by nonfiction films with activism. of Jacques Cousteau and Flipper. That early a story well told. After seeing “The Weav- Tales from Planet Earth and its stu- enthusiasm led to a degree in biology and ers: Wasn’t That a Time” on television dent films drew raves in 2007, Mitman graduate degrees in the history of science, in the 1980s, she was motivated to create says, but the audience was left with a now and today, Mitman is interim director of the UW’s Nelson Institute for Environ- mental Studies.

Ten years ago, he published an award- JEFF MILLER winning book, Reel Nature: America’s Romance with Wildlife Film, and a second edition was published last year. The book was the first to examine the enormous impact of nature films on how Americans see, think about, consume, and protect animals across the planet. Mitman, who holds appointments in medical history, and science and technology studies, teaches courses on the history of ecology, and the history of environment and health. He decided to draw upon the lessons of his- tory, saying he wants to “open up what we think is a good environmental film and how we might tell other types of stories to change our interactions and attitudes.” He had a chance to put those ideas to the test in 2007, when he organized a film festival, Tales from Planet Earth, as a project of the Nelson Institute’s Center Jesse Mursky-Fuller x’11 (left) works with Maggie Flamingo PhDx’11 to edit a video project as part of a class offered last fall. Students learned how to use the artistry of film to for Culture, History, and Environment. convey messages about the environment, and to then spur audience members to apply He coupled the festival with a class in what they’ve learned to tackle problems at the community level.

SPRING 2010 31 what? feeling. “There was so much partner, then building an outreach cam- new awareness into action. Students enthusiasm from the last festival. We paign that is beneficial and measurable. took big-picture topics raised by the wanted to take that energy and turn it “I was thrilled to come back to film festival and turned them into local into community engagement and activ- Madison and to be able to bring and wear efforts. (See sidebar, page 35.) ism,” he says. “If you know something, my Working Films hat,” says Helfand. Making all that happen — in just eight you’ll care. And when you care, you’ll do “There is a new level of community weeks or so — would send most people something about it.” engagement and interest among students. packing. But Mitman and Helfand viewed With one festival behind them, Mit- They want to be engaged in the world it as real-world experience, challenging the man and Helfand devised two courses that, where they live while they are in school. students to learn on their feet. During a together, could become a groundbreaking My filmmaker friends are so jealous.” boot camp held over two and a half days, model. The first, a film production class, Together, the classes and the fes- students met their community partners, explores what constitutes an environmen- tival created a compelling focal point visited sites, and learned to listen to their tal film, then challenges students to create for environmental storytelling. Held partners’ needs and issues, while also stories that use film’s artistry to engage last November, the festival presented being sensitive to the cultural and political an audience, create hope, and provide the best examples of the craft from the dynamics in the organizations. opportunities for action. The second class world’s filmmakers. Student-produced “Some of these students have lived links storytelling with activism by partner- trailers addressed issues raised in the in Madison for years, but have never left ing students with Madison-area nonprofit films, and community program lead- the campus. They are seeing that the organizations that are dealing with issues ers were present to show the audience issues raised in the films are very real, and raised in the festival’s films. Students are members how they could take next steps. real right here,” says Mitman. “They are charged with linking one of the festival’s Forums and special events held before also learning new ways to think about films with the needs of a community and after the films channeled community service — where they learn UW–MADISON ARCHIVES Fervent Voices John Muir Perhaps it was his childhood From its earliest days, the UW can in Scotland or his years on a Wisconsin farm. Maybe it was claim strong connections to three the view from his room in the visionary men who loved our planet. university’s North Hall. Who knows what place They were three men, environmental pioneers, each or experience triggered Muir’s love of nature into a passion for with a distinct approach to a common cause: pro- its appreciation and defense? tecting the wilderness. John Muir x1864, a reverent Whatever the cause, Muir’s appreciator, saw divinity in the forests, rivers, and vision and environmental resolve mountains. Aldo Leopold, a forester, academic, and helped create the ecological conscience we have today. educator, applied scientific methods and study to pro- “I was only leaving one Farmer, inventor, sheep- University for another, the tect the wilderness he loved. Gaylord Nelson LLB’42, herder, explorer, writer, and Wisconsin University for the University of the Wilderness,” conservationist, Muir — through a plainspoken politician and son of Wisconsin, maneu- Muir wrote. vered the halls of government, creating a national envi- his writing and tireless advo- cacy — inspired many American of the Sierra Club, and his work ronmental movement along the way. The University of conservation programs, most was featured prominently in Ken Wisconsin nurtured three of the country’s best-known notably the establishment of Burns’s recent six-part docu- environmentalists: Muir and Nelson were UW students national parks. Muir was also mentary, The National Parks: and Leopold was a UW faculty member. the founder and first president America’s Best Idea.

32 ON WISCONSIN JEFF MILLER

After learning the nuts-and-bolts aspects of hardware and software, the artistry enters. For a documentary to be effective, Helfand says, it must have high stakes: a relationship worth fighting for and a heart at risk of being broken. “With- out heart and character, it’s just a lens and a camera. I want to teach the students to make moving moving pictures,” she says. The student films explore topics rang- ing from the dairy industry’s dependence on Hispanic labor, to the story of an eighty-six-year-old woman from North Freedom, Wisconsin, who led a revolution Kevin Gibbons MSx’11 and Judith Helfand, artist-in-residence, (both standing) look on as in recycling plastics, to an example of how Meridith Beck Sayre PhDx’11 describes her video project for a class taught by Professor marketing food products for a housing Gregg Mitman (far right) and Helfand. organization can create jobs. about doing things with people, not for edit footage, use sound and music, and In turn, students in the community- them. That builds relationships, trust, and truly understand the story — all while engagement class had to quickly develop follow-through.” exploring how people shape and interact skills to broker real-world relationships, In the film production class, students with the environment. It’s a tall order for where the stakes are high. “This was learned how to use a camera, frame shots, neophyte filmmakers. not a typical class,” says Helfand. “The UW–MADISON ARCHIVES Born in Dunbar, Scotland, interconnectedness of the envi- had a hand in the creation of in 1838, Muir immigrated to ronment and a lifelong mission Sequoia, Mount Rainier, Petri- the United States with his fam- of approaching nature with a fied Forest, and Grand Canyon ily in 1849, settling on a farm deep, worshipful humility. For national parks. near Portage, Wisconsin. He Muir, God was revealed through Although Muir once entered the university in 1860 nature. Over the years, he pub- described himself as a “poetico- and studied botany and geol- lished some three hundred arti- trampo-geologist-botanist and ogy. He left after three years to cles and ten major books that ornithologist-naturalist, etc., travel the United States, includ- detailed his travels and thoughts etc.!!!!”, history has bestowed ing a saunter from Indiana to on environmentalism. more generous titles, includ- the Gulf of Mexico and a sailing Although President Theo- ing “The Father of Our National trip through the Panama Canal dore Roosevelt usually gets the Parks,” “Wilderness Prophet,” and up the West Coast. He then credit for establishing the coun- and “Citizen of the Universe.” walked from San Francisco to try’s national parks, it was mostly the Sierra Nevada. Muir who did so. In 1903, Muir “When we see land as a com- What he saw on his travels invited the president for a three- Aldo Leopold munity to which we belong, we was transformative. He aban- day camping trip in the Yosemite Leopold is one of the most may begin to use it with love and respect,” Leopold wrote. doned the pioneer attitudes Valley. That trip sowed the seeds influential conservation think- from his youth, a homesteader’s for conservation programs, ers of the twentieth century. An set the stage for the mod- ethos of subduing and control- leading to the establishment of educator, philosopher, ecol- ern conservation movement. ling nature for the benefit of the first National Monuments ogist, and wilderness advo- He believed that the land — its man. His self-described “bap- by presidential proclamation cate, his “land ethic,” which soils, waters, plants, and ani- tism of nature” sparked a and Yosemite National Park by articulated a new relationship mals — should be protected respect and reverence for the congressional action. Muir also between people and nature, and preserved, and that we

SPRING 2010 33 students were accountable to their [com- are labs for community engagement and themselves each time. It’s not textbook munity] partners and learned lessons of film production,” says Mursky-Fuller, material,” he says. tenacity, negotiation, and respect. What who is double-majoring in biology and Public engagement is a core mission was hardest for them was also the most life science communications. not just of the Nelson Institute but also of exciting. And best of all, they could see His film, More Jam, More Jobs, dem- the campus in general, says Mitman. And they had an impact.” onstrates what can happen when the he sees film as the perfect catalyst not only Knowing that people in the commu- film, the classes, and the community to bring the university and the community nity were counting on them made students cross-pollinate. It follows fellow student together, but also for weaving together in both classes determined to commit sig- Jessica Halpern x’10, who — tray in hand perspectives from the humanities, social nificant time and energy. “[The students] — tries to convince twelve sororities to sciences, and sciences. “It’s such an effec- were so respectful of the partners. … In buy food items (such as fruit preserves) tive medium to see relationships — often return, the students earned their trust,” produced by Porchlight, Inc., a Madi- hidden from view — in a new light and to says Helfand. son housing advocacy group. After the harness the power of storytelling to effect Jesse Mursky-Fuller x’11 knew what he festival’s screening of More Jam, there environmental and social change,” Mitman was getting into after taking the first film was standing room only for a tasting of says. “Environmental film festivals on col- production class in 2007. Even so, when Porchlight products. lege campuses are growing, and I wanted he had the chance in 2009, he enrolled in Although he wasn’t sure what the to create a model for others to follow. both classes. “I understand and agree with community-engagement class would The classes are a true expression of the Gregg’s teaching philosophy — that is, entail, Mursky-Fuller says he was happy Wisconsin Idea.” n experience and hands-on training [offer] as the experience unfolded. “That’s Gwen Evans ’79, a senior university relations the best way to learn. Just like science what’s nice about these classes — dif- specialist for University Communications, never courses have lab sections, Gregg’s classes ferent issues and problems will present turns down the chance to see a good film.

have a responsibility to ensure Leopold is perhaps best Leopold was also involved the health of the natural com- known for A Sand County with another lasting restora- Gaylord munity. The land, for Leopold, Almanac, a collection of essays tion project. By the early 1930s, Nelson was to be loved and respected on wild and manmade worlds some 1,200 acres of land a as an extension of ethical that he wrote over a twelve-year few miles from campus, once A boy from the northwest- behavior. period. He wanted to convey his cultivated farm fields and ern Wisconsin hamlet of Clear At the beginning of his observations and expertise on pastures, had fallen into Lake, Nelson went on to career and with a degree in wildlife, and in doing so, con- disuse. With scientific and become the state’s governor, a forestry in hand from Yale vince readers that they should civic vision, and with years of U.S. senator, and the founder University, Leopold took posi- treat the natural world ethically. hard work by crews from the of Earth Day, launching a wave tions with the U.S. Forest The book, published in 1949, Civilian Conservation Corps, of environmental activism in Service in the Southwest. describes, with heartbreaking the University of Wisconsin 1970 that continues today. He came to Madison in 1924 eloquence and scientific rigor, Arboretum has become an Unlike Muir and Leopold, for a job with the U.S. Forest the wonders of nature he saw at example of what at that time his fieldwork took place in gov- Products Laboratory. He joined his famous “shack,” a played- was a new ecological concept: ernment hallways and meet- the university in 1933 to lead out farm north of Madison along returning a landscape to a more ing rooms, most likely beneath game management studies; in the shores of the Wisconsin natural condition. the harsh glare of fluorescent 1939, he was named chair of River. More than 2 million cop- In 1935, along with other lights rather than in sun-dap- the new Department of Wildlife ies of the book have been sold, visionary conservationists, pled meadows surrounded by Management. The department and it has been translated into Leopold founded the Wilderness pristine wildlife. — a first for the university and nine languages. Over the years Society, an organization with a Still, his environmen- the nation — launched an area at the shack, Leopold and his mission to “protect wilderness tal contributions are every bit of studies known as wildlife family planted thousands of and inspire Americans to care as significant as theirs, and ecology. pine trees and restored the land. for our wild places.” his legacy endures on the

34 ON WISCONSIN Going Local Last fall, students in the community-engagement class taught by UW professor Gregg Mitman and documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand formed partnerships with Madison-area organizations and achieved significant results. For example: ISTOCK

UW–MADISON ARCHIVES education, inquiry, and public the first to work toward federal The first Earth Day was service. mandates on automobile fuel held on April 22, 1970. An esti- Nelson earned a law efficiency, the control of strip mated 20 million people partici- degree from the UW in 1942 mining, and bans on the use pated in demonstrations across and served in the Navy during of phosphates, the pesticide the country, and thousands of World War II. Politics became DDT, and the defoliant 2,4,5- schools, colleges, and commu- his career, and he rose through T. In response to Nelson’s nities were involved. the state’s political ranks, serv- advocacy, Congress created Nelson received the ing first as a state senator and the Environmental Protection Presidential Medal of Freedom then as governor from 1959 to Agency and passed legislation in 1995. “As the founder of 1963, and U.S. senator from to protect air and water quality. Earth Day, [Nelson] is the 1963 to 1981. But among his many grandfather of all that grew Land protection, wild- accomplishments, he is out of that event — the life habitat, and environmental perhaps most remembered Environmental Protection quality were always priori- as the founder of Earth Day, a Act, the Clean Air Act, the Earth Day, Nelson said, met his hopes — “a nationwide ties in his legislative agenda. seemingly crazy notion he had Clean Water Act, the Safe demonstration of concern for Among the landmark legisla- to organize environmental Drinking Water Act,” said then the environment.” tion he sponsored and saw teach-ins. The idea, borrowed President Bill Clinton. “He also through to enactment are the from the anti-war movement, set a standard for people in UW-Madison campus: the Wilderness Act, the National called for a day on college public service to care about Institute for Environmental Trails Act, the National Wild campuses to discuss environ- the environment and try to do Studies, named for Nelson, and Scenic Rivers Act, and mental issues, increase public something about it.” is an incubator, a laboratory, the National Environmental awareness of problems, and G.E. and a model for collaborative Education Act. He was also work for solutions.

SPRING 2010 35 JACK KNOWLES Moooovie Making Producing an independent film means taking risks, calling upon friends, and — in this case — a cow costume.

By Jenny Price ’96 and promote a beer known as “Happy “We were able to build some buzz,” It’s a near-perfect autumn morning on Cow” that is only available in their home Knowles says. “We were able to connect State Street, and Tyler Knowles ’05 is state. Or, in industry parlance, it’s This Is with Wisconsin people primarily and get about to direct his first movie. Spinal Tap meets Strange Brew and Road them to show up at these events.” “We’re behind — it’s 9:01,” he says Trip, with a little Tommy Boy mixed in. The social networking strategy also with a nervous smile, clutching a cup “It was a bona fide road trip. It’s seven yielded a mailing list of participants of coffee as he awaits the arrival of his guys, two vehicles,” says producer Derek Knowles and company can keep updated on actors and crew. He’s about to lead the Hildebrandt ’93. But here’s where it gets the status of the movie, letting them know group on a more than two-thousand- really interesting: Knowles and Hilde- where to watch clips and, eventually, how to mile, eight-day road trip from Madison brandt, a former Bucky Badger, decided buy a DVD or catch a local screening. to California in his quest to turn a dream to harness the power of UW alumni net- “It’s really amazing, the technol- into reality on a $10,000 budget. works to secure shooting locations and to ogy that’s out there now that just lets a Everyone involved in making the provide extras for scenes filmed at stops little film … become something bigger,” mockumentary-style, improvisational along the way. Knowles says. film is either a UW-Madison alumnus Before shooting a single scene of or has strong ties to the state, giving Go West Happy Cow, Knowles built a Paternal Assist Knowles the perfect team for a project Web site (www.gowesthappycow.com) Knowles moved to L.A. to follow his that is, more than anything, intended as that explained the premise of the film, dream of directing immediately after a love letter to Wisconsin, with all of its its characters, and its inspirations. The spending his final UW semester abroad quirks and kooky traditions. production team also used Facebook and in London. But it didn’t happen right Go West Happy Cow is the story of two a startup Web site called Eventbrite to away. He first worked as a temp for E! childhood friends from Wisconsin who give people the chance to attend parties Entertainment Television before find- make their way to California in an effort to connected to each stop along their route: ing a job leading lessons and workshops impress a potential employer, win back the Madison, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, at the Apple store in Century City. He girl (in the case of one of the characters), Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. then spent six months singing a cappella

36 ON WISCONSIN JEFF MILLER

on a cruise ship — he’d been a member of MadHatters at UW — before return- ing to California and to Apple, while also doing freelance work, including editing several low-budget feature films. “I’ve had friends who have really been broken down and ended up leaving L.A., because they just work like crazy and they’re not appreciated. They’re kind of a gofer … go for this, go for that,” Knowles says. Knowles came up with the idea for Troy Vosseller (center) gets direction from Tyler Knowles (right) and some advice from director of photography Ben Simms (left): “Even if you think you screw up, just keep going.” his film in 2008, during a Christmas trip home to Richland Center, Wisconsin, The set for the morning’s shoot is the bad eating, and endless hours on the road and his father, Jack, agreed to put up Sconnie Nation store, owned by Troy between locations was a relief, but mainly, the budget for the project. Jack Knowles Vosseller ’06, MBA’09, who is providing it represented progress toward his main earned the title “utility stunts,” along with the wardrobe for the movie and acting goal, which Knowles describes as “being executive producer, for driving the truck the part of an entrepreneur who is send- able to say we pulled this off.” and trailer loaded with Wisconsin beer, ing the pair across the country on the And pulling it off required Knowles bratwurst, and cheese for 90 percent of promotional tour for Happy Cow beer. and his team to be resourceful — and the trip — a task that included parallel While Knowles and crew work to set flexible. When they realized that rent- parking the forty-five-foot rig in Kansas up the shot and prep Vosseller for the ing a sport utility vehicle to follow the City. Knowles hopes the movie will be scene — a telephone call with Kurt the truck and trailer would cost $1,800, they successful enough to return his father’s Cow — Jensen huddles with Tiboris at the instead bought a minivan with 130,000 investment in the project. front of the store. They keep cracking up miles on it for $1,000. as they plot out his side of the conversation After an actor who was to play the role Take One! using a piece of cardboard and a marker. of the “mad beer scientist” dropped out, Several months before last fall’s shoot, When the scenes at the store wrap Knowles called his former high school Knowles worked with Hildebrandt, and the crew begins packing up, Jensen band and drama teacher, Chris Simonson whom he met through the Wisconsin and Tiboris run across the street to buy a MS’92, the night before filming started Alumni Association chapter in L.A., and Cheesehead hat that Tiboris will wear in and asked for help. Simonson provided with other cast and crew members to a scene to be shot later that day at Uni- his own wardrobe and borrowed a fog finalize the story and production details. versity Ridge Golf Course. He hands the machine from the Riverdale High School On the first day of filming, the lead receipt for $21.05 to Knowles, who says student council to use in his scenes, which actors arrive: Mike Tiboris ’02, a PhD there is room in the film’s limited budget took place in a “mini-brewery” rigged up philosophy student at University of Cali- for the key piece of headgear. in Jack Knowles’s workshop. fornia-San Diego, and Kurt Jensen ’04, a “Whatever road blocks came up, laboratory technician support supervisor Pulling It Off they would just find a way around them,” in Madison who is using furlough days Back in his L.A. apartment after shoot- Simonson says. “I have such admiration to take on the role of “Kurt the Cow.” ing Go West Happy Cow, Knowles spent for kids like Tyler who throw caution to It’s one of the few times Jensen will be in two months working furiously to create the wind. … This was really, really what street clothes for filming; he spends about a rough cut to submit to the Wisconsin he wanted to do, and I admire him for 90 percent of the movie in a cow costume Film Festival, paring down more than sticking with that and saying, ‘This is my n — surprisingly comfortable attire, given thirty hours of digital film footage into dream.’ ” that he, too, was a Bucky Badger during a ninety-minute movie. Seeing the story Jenny Price ’96 is a big fan of the brew that his college days. emerge from days filled with little sleep, served as the inspiration for Happy Cow beer.

SPRING 2010 37 The Changing Face of Publishing

By John Allen top nonfiction seller on Wright, but its “Scholarly presses are going through twenty-fourth-best-selling biography of a transition,” says UW Press director Once a day, sometimes more often, an artist or architect, its fifty-first-best- Sheila Leary. “Not only is there more William Drennan sits down at his com- selling true crime book, and number electronic publishing, but the ways that puter, directs his Web browser to Ama- 31,200 among sales overall. classes are being taught are changing. zon.com, and punches in the title of a And one other thing: it’s the top- The ways libraries operate are changing. book he does not intend to buy: Death selling book the UW Press published in The retail book business is in a radical in a Prairie House, by William Drennan, this decade. transformation. We have to try a lot of published by the UW Press in 2007. Drennan uses Amazon to check on his new things and figure out what works. “I like to check its status,” he says, book not only because it’s convenient — To survive, we need to publish many and he’s seldom disappointed. “It’s it’s also authoritative. Amazon sells more different kinds of books, deliver them in consistently the number-one nonfiction books than any other store, chain, or out- a lot of different formats, and sell them book on Frank Lloyd Wright.” let on Earth. Amazon’s dominance of the through a lot of channels.” Death in a Prairie House tells the story book-selling world is a sign of the new age of the brutal murders of seven people of publishing. An industry once based in If you didn’t know the UW — including Wright’s mistress, Martha paper and blue editorial pencils has been has a press — let alone what it publishes Borthwick Cheney — who were hacked transformed by digital sales, digital ware- — you’re not alone. to death with an ax at Taliesin, Wright’s housing, and digital books. To survive, “It’s funny,” says Raphael Kadushin home near Spring Green, Wisconsin, those who create books — especially small ’75, MA’78, “but some of the press’s in August 1914. At the beginning of publishers such as the UW Press — must books may be better known nationally 2010, the book was not only Amazon’s explore new methods and new formats. than here in Madison.”

38 ON WISCONSIN DAVID MCLIMANS

The publishing industry is going through radical changes, and the UW Press is adapting to preserve its mission and protect its bottom line.

Kadushin knows the press’s reputa- the publishing world, these are classified Like most university presses, the tion better than almost anyone. His time as trade books, ones that are written for UW’s is mission-driven, meaning it on the staff spans three decades, and as and marketed to the general public. defines success not just by its financial one of its two acquisitions editors, he’s Though the UW Press may have statement but by its goals, which Leary something of a guardian of that reputa- a low profile on campus, it’s been part says are threefold: to publish scholar- tion — he seeks out the manuscripts that of the university — or of the Graduate ship for a worldwide audience, to docu- the press publishes, and he nourishes rela- School, specifically — since 1937. Over ment the cultural heritage of the state tionships with authors and reviewers. three-quarters of a century, the press has for its citizens, and to publish books that Kadushin acquired Death in a Prairie built a reputation for producing deeply contribute to a literate culture and an House for the UW Press. “It’s in some researched scholarship. It’s in this role, informed citizenry. ways typical of our regional list,” he says, Leary feels, that the press serves its most This wasn’t always the press’s mission, “which really explores the history and important purpose. however. When it was founded, its pur- culture of Wisconsin.” “University presses fill a vital role pose was to get the work of the university’s These are the books that are best in the academic world, and particularly own researchers — and particularly its known locally — regional-interest titles, within the humanities,” she says. “Profes- scientists — into print. This is why it’s part such as James Norton ’99 and Becca sors need to publish their research, and of the Graduate School. The first book it Dilley ’02’s Master Cheesemakers of they need textbooks for their classes, but a published, by chemistry professor Homer Wisconsin, a photo-and-essay collection lot of those books wouldn’t be published Adkins, was titled Reactions of Hydrogen covering some of the state’s top dairies, or by anyone else. They’re too narrow in with Organic Compounds over Copper-Chro- Jerry Apps ’55, MS’57, PhD’67’s Wiscon- focus, or aren’t likely to make enough mium Oxide and Nickel Catalysts (ranked sin-based novel, Blue Shadows Farm. In money to interest commercial publishers.” number 5,482,944 in sales at Amazon).

SPRING 2010 39 But over the decades, the UW Press UW Press expects its books to sell very found its niche primarily within the nearly forever, because the longer they humanities and social sciences. There, it sell, the more likely they are to become can publish books that might not sell a lot profitable. initially, but which have staying power. “We expect our books to have a very Thus the focus on the humanities — in long tail,” says Krista Coulson MA’06, the sciences, medicine, and technology, the press’s electronic publishing manager. many publications have a short shelf life. Coulson’s office at the UW Press “University presses exist by being very has nearly as many stacks of paper as specific and knowing their niches very anyone else’s, but it has one thing the well,” says Leary. “In science and medi- others don’t — a Kindle. The Amazon cine, it’s difficult to be competitive. The e-book reader — which is loaded with information changes rapidly.” of central campus, where every desk, shelf, a few titles, including Drennan’s Death Though the press does publish in closet, and cubicle is buried in piles of in a Prairie House — serves a variety of some science niches, such as regional paper. Chairs there aren’t for sitting in but purposes: it’s something of a curiosity, an field guides and UW professor Bassam rather for stacking on: books, manuscripts, experiment, a toy. And it’s a time bomb. Shakhashiri’s Chemical Demonstrations reviews, sales reports — the paraphernalia Amazon is using its dominant posi- volumes, its established expertise today is of nearly three-quarters of a century in the tion to foster the growth of e-books, and in other subjects, where Kadushin and his paper-usage industry. 2009 was a banner year for digital readers. fellow acquisitions editor, Gwen Walker But the value of the press isn’t found Amazon saw Kindle become its most- MA’93, PhD’06, work with UW faculty in its paper — it’s in that three-quarters popular product, and industry analysts to find authors and evaluate works. of a century. estimate 2 million units were sold last In 2009, the press published seventy- “Our biggest asset is our intellectual year. Other companies, including Sony nine new or revised books, and it plans to property,” says Russell Schwalbe ’88, the and Barnes and Noble, launched compet- ing e-book devices, and Apple joined the publish about the same number this year. press’s business manager. “Our goal is to leverage the backlist and get as much fray in 2010 with its iPad. Subject areas include two distinct series value as we can out of it.” Amazon’s push to sell the Kindle in in African studies, one general and one The backlist is the collection of books particular and e-books in general has the on women in Africa; Slavic and Eastern — now about three thousand — that the potential to wreak havoc across the pub- European studies; studies in American press published in the past, as opposed to lishing industry, and it’s Coulson’s job to thought and culture; Southeast Asian new books (i.e., its “front list”). To see find ways for the UW Press to harness studies; environmental studies; Jewish the backlist’s value, consider Paul Mac- that chaos, not be blown up by it. studies; European intellectual history Kendrick’s Classics in Translation, volumes Relatively inexpensive to produce, and culture; Irish history; classical studies; I (ancient Greek) and II (Latin), first warehouse, and ship, e-books present history of dance; folklore; film studies; printed in 1959. By Amazon’s standards, new possibilities for academic publish- gay and lesbian studies; memoir and neither book is hot stuff, with sales rank- ers, especially with the classroom market. autobiography; and human rights. ings of 457,478 (volume I) and 929,673 Consider UW history professor Jeremi In these areas, Leary notes, a book “is (volume II). But together they’ve sold Suri, for example. During the fall 2009 likely to be as relevant in fifty years as it is some 119,958 copies over the course of semester, he experimented with assigning the day it’s first published.” half a century, making Classics the press’s a Kindle to every student in one of his number-one title. classes, so that they had to carry only one At first glance, the UW Press The point is not that UW Press device instead of eight weighty tomes. doesn’t seem like it’s facing digital titles sell poorly on Amazon — they do, Further, e-books offer the possibility upheaval. It occupies a warren of rooms in but only because Amazon is just fifteen that professors can tailor their own text- the Monroe Building, about a mile south years old. The point, rather, is that the books by loading a reader with chapters

40 ON WISCONSIN or sections of various books. Called dis- Still, Schwalbe puts digital sales expecta- aggregation in the industry, the process tions in the hundreds, not the thousands. offers a new way to gain revenue from The relatively small numbers and the books by licensing parts of them. press’s tight finances mean that Coulson “It really gets into the idea of the long and her colleagues have to be careful tail,” says Coulson. about following where electronic publish- She was hired into her current posi- ing — and any experimentation — leads. tion in 2006, and so far, the UW Press has “Whenever you’re talking about a just begun to explore e-publishing. Death new distribution channel, people get ner- in a Prairie House, for example, has sold vous,” she says. “We have to be sure that more than 18,000 copies in hard cover and e-books don’t just cannibalize our paper paperback. But its sales as an e-book, while Her initial work has been to go books. The thing about university presses tops among UW Press titles, are more through the press’s backlist to select titles is that there’s not a lot of room for risk. modest: 278. that are likely to sell well. So far, the press In general, we’re strapped for cash.” “We have very little data so far,” says has made digital versions of some 350 of For Sheila Leary, this risk is necessary, Coulson, “but what we’re seeing seems its books, focusing on the ones that have and may give the UW Press more options to show that the books that sell best in sold the best over the last decade. for fulfilling its mission. Her take is posi- traditional formats are also the ones that In fall 2009, the press published elec- tive: “Let a thousand formats bloom.” n sell best digitally. These aren’t academic tronic versions of many of its books at the books but rather bestsellers.” same time that it released paper versions. John Allen is senior editor for On Wisconsin.

Journal-ism Like the press’s academic books, its journals fill a function in the scholarly world of disseminating research, The UW Press produces more than books. It also though they are also successful financially. publishes eleven journals, some of which are older than “The press itself doesn’t profit [from journals],” says the press itself. Monatshefte, a quarterly on German journals manager Pamela Wilson. “Rather, our financial literature and culture, ran its first issue in 1899. surplus goes back to the editorial offices.” Other publications include: Six of the journals are edited at UW-Madison, with the • The American Orthoptic Journal, the press’s only other five edited at other universities. Wilson says that her medical periodical, on issues relating to the eyes division returned some $500,000 to campus entities in the • Arctic Anthropology last fiscal year. But the journals division is also leading the • Contemporary Literature press into the digital age. Although all eleven periodicals • Ecological Restoration come out in paper, they’re also produced digitally, a move • Ecquid Novi, a journal studying African journalism that’s being driven by the press’s leading customers: • The Journal of Human Resources university libraries. • Land Economics “Many libraries aren’t really interested in a journal if it’s not electronic,” says Wilson. “Online access allows • The Landscape Journal them to save money, save space, and make the journal • The Luso-Brazillian Review, an interdisciplinary publi- available to thousands of people. Electronic is where cation concerning Portuguese-speaking peoples the real growth is.” • SubStance, a journal of literary criticism J.A.

SPRING 2010 41 people’sthe poet one of the leading poets of his generation, martin espada speaks for those whose voices are rarely heard.

By Eric Goldscheider As his undergraduate career in Madison to go to law school?’ That answer was easy: drew to a close, Martín Espada ’81 to get off welfare. found himself simultaneously filling Now Espada’s business card identifies out applications for welfare and for his profession with one word: poet. He is law school. also a professor of English at the University The welfare forms were much more of Massachusetts-Amherst and a member difficult, he says, because “they required of the Massachusetts bar. Along the way, me to document where I had been for years he has had many jobs. His colorful resume and years.” The others basically boiled includes dishwasher, bouncer at Madison’s down to one question: ‘Why do you want now-closed Club de Wash, door-to-door

42 ON WISCONSIN BRYCE RICHTER

encyclopedia salesman, bindery worker in As a Latino, Espada has felt the sting of Martín Espada was invited back to campus last spring to give a poetry reading. a printing plant, and patient advocate for racism and assaults on his dignity. And he the mentally ill, to name a few. inherited from his father, documentary a bridge between Whitman and Neruda, All of these positions have informed photographer Frank Espada, “a set of a conscientious objector in the war of his understanding of the world. He grew political values and a sense of struggle.” silence.” Espada joins causes, heralds up in a rough section of Brooklyn, New Widely considered a leading poet of everyday heroes, chronicles the travails York, and in a working class town on his generation, Espada is unabashedly of the downtrodden, and casts his eye on Long Island, the son of a Puerto Rican political in his life and letters. The cul- world events. He also brings music to his father and a Jewish mother who con- tural commentator Ilan Stavans calls him cadences and revels in fresh and often verted to become a Jehovah’s Witness. “a poet of annunciation and denunciation, surprising images and words. His

SPRING 2010 43 appreciation for literature starts with compared. Stern calls Espada “one of cruelty of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship content. “I am primarily interested in our most distinguished alums,” not only in Chile; the plight of evicted tenants; and what people have to say, whatever the because of the prizes he has won and the the felling of the World Trade Center poet feels must be urgently communi- fact that top publishers seek him out, but (see “Alabanza,” below). cated to the world,” he says during an because of the Latin American tradition Stern frames Espada’s importance in interview in his home in Amherst. of melding politics and literature that he terms of the impact Latino authors have Espada was in Madison last spring embraces with alacrity and profundity. had on world literature over the last half at the invitation of Steve Stern, the uni- Espada’s Puerto Rican heritage is century. “Latin America has historically versity’s vice provost for faculty and staff an important part of his identity. Yet been a region in which writers have not who is also a professor of Latin American his themes, often prompted by vignettes assumed a disconnect between a sense history. Espada gave a reading attended from his life, range widely. He has writ- of political obligation to society and by two hundred people and spoke with ten about tending animals in the UW a sense of artistic drive and ethos,” he students about the influential Chilean primate lab; the nightlife in San Juan seen says. “We’re most familiar with that in poet Pablo Neruda, to whom he is often through a historical and political lens; the the realm of novels and movies because

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100 or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans. Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees of his dishes and silverware in the tub. Local 100, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center who worked that morning because another dishwasher Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime and a tattoo on his shoulder that says Oye, to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo, floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs. the harbor of pirates centuries ago. Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza. glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea. Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap After the thunder wilder than thunder, worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows, that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua, after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs, for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes. after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen, Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo, even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza. about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face, soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up, across the night sky of this city and cities to come. like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium. Alabanza I say, even if God has no face. Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations: Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul Ecuador, México, República Dominicana, two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other, Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh. mingling in icy air, and one says with an Afghan tongue: Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning, Teach me to dance. We have no music here. where the gas burned blue on every stove And the other says with a Spanish tongue: and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers, I will teach you. Music is all we have. hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs From Alabanza: New & Selected Poems (Norton, 2003)

44 ON WISCONSIN FRANK ESPADA

Espada’s father, the documentary photographer Frank Espada, made many portraits of his children over the years. This one depicts Martín as he was about to leave for the University of Wisconsin. of the presence of immigrant and racial customers he served. They would do and He came to Wisconsin, a state he had themes.” Espada is widening that lens say things in his presence that were often barely heard of and couldn’t locate on a to include his art form, Stern says, add- astonishing for their insensitivity. Recall- map, on the strength of a passing com- ing, “We have failed perhaps to notice ing his job pumping gas in Maryland, ment by a high school English teacher, how powerfully this literary tradition has Espada still grimaces. “I can’t tell you the who said that it had a good university inflected poetry.” number of times someone would light up where he might have a realistic chance of Espada crosses cultural and artistic a cigarette standing next to me — I could being admitted in spite of lackluster grades boundaries in ways that bring that ethos have been blown sky high.” during a false start at the University of home to North Americans. Though his In response, he took notes, becoming Maryland. “I was one of those twenty- social conscience is obvious, he can’t be in his mind a “poet spy” on the doings year-old kids who do what twenty-year- pigeonholed as a political or a Latino of people who had an internalized sense old kids do — they make momentous life poet, because his devotion to his art defies of privilege. “I don’t think it’s a coinci- decisions on impulse based on very little such simple categorization. “I’m alien in dence that we talk about the ‘invisible information,” he says. “I had no idea how two lands and illiterate in two languages,” man’ as a trope in American literature,” cold it was — when I showed up, I he quips, referring to the fact that he did says Espada with a nod to Ralph Elli- didn’t have an overcoat; I didn’t even not master Spanish until he was an adult. son’s 1952 book of that title. “When have boots.” It was while working at a string of you are a laborer, when you work with After arriving as a sophomore in low-status jobs after high school that your hands, you are only seen for what 1977, somewhat to his surprise, Espada Espada was first inspired to begin writ- your hands can do ... and that can have thrived academically, but he was forced ing poetry. He had noticed that he was its benefits if it so happens that you are to drop out after one semester due to lack essentially invisible to the bosses and writing things down.” of money. He went back to menial jobs

SPRING 2010 45 for a year while establishing residency so Street, an encounter that would grow in subsequently landed a job with the orga- he could pay in-state tuition. “I was like meaning as his own poetic voice devel- nization as an advocate for its clients. a rubber ball, bouncing in and out” of oped. It was a book with both the Span- But he credits his father and the late school, he says. ish originals and English translations. “I Herbert Hill, a former labor director of The university and the city shaped read Neruda the way I still read, which is the NAACP and professor of Afro-Amer- him in many important ways. At one with one foot in each language,” he says. ican studies at the UW, for his ultimate point, he moved into an apartment in the Espada discovered his penchant for decision to study law. Hill was a mentor building that housed WORT-FM radio, the law in what he calls “an accidental who “saw something in me that other and soon he was spending late nights in job” with the Wisconsin Bureau of Men- people didn’t see at the time,” Espada his bathrobe spinning discs. “I did a lot tal Health. He had been hired as a clerk recalls. He applied to several law schools, of that — I was the mystery midnight soon after the legislature mandated that and Northeastern University in Boston programmer,” he says. mental patients were entitled to a griev- awarded him a full scholarship. At the radio station, Espada devel- ance procedure. After he began his new Throughout this time and then at oped a close relationship with fellow DJ law school, Espada never stopped writ- and poet Jim Stephens, who was active ing poems. “I wrote about everything in poetry circles. “Jim, to his eternal “I had no legal training, that was going on around me,” he says, credit, was wildly enthusiastic about my and many of his experiences in Madison work, and this was not a guy who was I was twenty years old became grist for later work. wildly enthusiastic about things as a rule. and in my first semester Espada learned more about social He was very laid back, as befits a jazz and legal priorities while representing programmer,” Espada says. He gave his at UW, yet I was doing poor people in Chelsea, a city in the first reading of original work at Club de Boston area with a large immigrant pop- Wash. Through contacts Stephens gave legal work represent- ulation. “When you are a tenant lawyer, him, Espada published the first of his ing committed mental what you are dealing with by definition seventeen books, The Immigrant Iceboy’s is the legal system’s clear preference for Bolero, in 1982 with Madison’s Ghost patients at administra- property over people,” he says. His legal Pony Press. It is a collection of observa- training sharpened his impulses to speak tions from his youth in New York illus- tive hearings at hospitals for those whose voices are rarely heard trated with his father’s photographs. throughout Wisconsin.” and refined the role that advocacy plays Espada delved deeply into the history in his poetry. of U.S. domination of Latin America, His career as a lawyer also, as choosing courses based on his passions. job, “the patient rights advocate quit and planned, lifted him out of chronic pov- He decided to major in history when he there was a hiring freeze on, so I became erty. But while Espada was practicing tallied up his credits one day and saw that the patient rights advocate by default,” tenant law in Boston, budget cuts put it offered the quickest path to graduation. he says. “I had no legal training, I was his job in jeopardy. Instead of playing Madison was “all about education,” says twenty years old and in my first semes- hardball office politics to squeeze out a Espada. “By some miracle, some of the ter at UW, yet I was doing legal work more junior member of the legal staff, education actually happened on campus, representing committed mental patients he applied for an opening in the English and the rest happened in the street.” at administrative hearings at hospitals Department at the University of Massa- He calls his time in Wisconsin “five throughout the state of Wisconsin.” chusetts in Amherst, and began teaching of the most valuable years I’ve ever spent He got a second dose of paralegal there in 1993. anywhere.” He became active in the experience toward the end of his time He and his wife, Katherine Gilbert- Latin American solidarity movement, in Madison when he went to the Dane Espada, had a son, Klemente, who is now and he also happened upon Pablo Ner- County Welfare Rights Alliance to obtain a high school senior. But several years uda’s work in a used book store on State emergency food stamps for himself. He ago, Gilbert suffered a massive stroke,

46 ON WISCONSIN FRANK ESPADA

and she has since been susceptible to debilitating seizures. Though they have insurance through his university position, all the attendant expenses of her illness have pushed Espada to spend more time on the road to give readings. “They pay me to go away,” he smiles ruefully. The mementos Espada surrounds himself with in his home office include an envelope with the face of the poet Julia de Burgos exquisitely painted on the front. A gift from an inmate at a Connecticut prison where he gave a reading, it became the subject of a poem. There is also a platter honoring Espada as the 2007 winner of the National His- panic Cultural Center Literary Award. It is one of many accolades, includ- ing the Robert Creeley Award, the Pat- erson Poetry Prize, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the American Book Award, two NEA Fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In his office there are also count- less knickknacks. The short list includes a photo of a downed boxer; a bust of Charles Dickens; a vejigante mask, which is a Puerto Rican mythical figure that fuses elements of African, Spanish, and Caribbean cultures; and a political button for Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate who, Espada notes, won a million votes in his run for president of the United States from a jail cell. Also in what he calls a “little museum that reflects the traveling life,” Espada’s paternal grandfather, Francisco Espada, planted a seed by reading nursery Espada keeps some of the cremated rhymes to the future poet at the family apartment in Brooklyn, New York. ashes of his dear friend and mentor Sandy Taylor, a co-founder of Curb- the possibilities of his craft to clarify and lost cities and rivers of the dead ... poets stone Press and one of Espada’s early heal. Of his approach to poetry, he writes: continue to speak of such places in terms publishers. “[T] he unspoken places in poetry [are] of history and mythology, memory and Espada has never sought to banish hidden or forgotten places and the people redemption, advocacy and art. They n sorrow from the things and people he who inhabit them: prisons, psychiatric make the invisible visible.” surrounds himself with. On the contrary, wards, unemployment lines, migrant Eric Goldscheider is a freelance writer based he embraces pain with a spirit guided by labor camps, borderlands, battlefields, in Massachusetts.

SPRING 2010 47 traditions

A visit with the Abe Lincoln statue is a high point of any UW commencement weekend, when graduates — not deterred by caps and gowns — clamber up into his lap for photos. BRYCE RICHTER Abraham Lincoln Statue

For one hundred years, it has watched over campus from atop Bascom Hill. And during that time, UW-Madison’s Abe Lincoln statue has worn a lot of hats — literally and not voluntarily — to mark various holidays and protests. The looks have ranged from red earmuffs to a Santa cap to a St. Patrick’s Day topper. For some student athletes, a quick tap on Abe’s foot powers them up and down the hill during exhausting work- outs. As one former crew member says, the gesture is “a little nudge from the big guy to keep on keepin’ on.” In other situations, memory conjures a bawdy legend about what it means if Abe remains seated when someone walks in front of him. Consider the case of one then-under- graduate who ran into his soon-to-be stepmother at the top of Bascom Hill. Abe did not stand up for either of them, an implication they both understood — awkwardly — but still laugh about to this day. But for most, a visit with Abe is a high point of graduation weekend, when camera-toting families tread up the hill, and graduates clad in caps and gowns clamber up into his lap. While they’re there, they whisper their hopes and dreams into his bronze ear, sometimes capping the one-sided conversa- tion with a peck on his well-worn cheek for luck. Some don’t wait for graduation day, opting to climb up after a last exam — and fueling the debate over the right time to bend Abe’s ear. Another legend says you won’t graduate if you visit Abe too early. So why is Abe such a magnet for graduates? Perhaps it’s because the entire time they’ve been on campus, he’s watched as they found their way around, transitioned from undecided to majors and back again, or took solace in a game of Frisbee on the grass after a bad exam. Abe is a constant in the UW experience, and when life as you know it is about to change, that’s pretty comforting. Jenny Price ’96

What’s your favorite UW tradition? Tell On Wisconsin about it at [email protected], and we’ll find out if it’s just a fond memory — or if it’s still part of campus life today.

48 ON WISCONSIN SPRING 2010 49 gifts in action

Great People Helping medical students with debt allows them to serve where the need is greatest.

Maybe it just comes with the biggest advantage while growing JOHN WINGREN territory — the impulse to care up was being financially disad- for others, that is. vantaged,’ ” he says. “I quickly For Jeffrey Rosengarten learned the value of hard work.” ’80, MD’86 and his family, pro- In his young adulthood, two viding for coming generations of close friends died, including students is just part of the car- one who was murdered. “Those ing equation. Rosengarten is tragedies taught me how frag- the president and founder of ile and precious life could be,” Global Medical Imaging. He and Rosengarten says. He looked his wife, Marcia, of Northbrook, up his college adviser and Illinois, have established the expressed interest in being a Rosengarten Family Great People physician — but was told that Scholarship. Their fund will ben- his grades weren’t good enough. efit UW undergraduates and stu- Undeterred, he transferred to dents in the School of Medicine UW-Madison, applied himself, and Public Health (SMPH). and was added to the wait list for “I firmly believe that over the School of Medicine before the course of your life, there are finally being accepted. He took Gathering in the Health Sciences Learning Center before a certain people and institutions out loans and worked for a siding Badger game last fall were, from left, Bob Zemple, second-year who do good things for you, and roofing company and as a medical student and president, Medical Student Association; and it is then your moral obliga- pharmacy technician his first two first-year medical student Carly Kuehn; Jeffrey Rosengarten tion to return the favor in what- years of medical school. ’80, MD’86; and John Kryger ’88, MD’92, president, Wisconsin Medical Alumni Association. Rosengarten and his wife have ever way you can,” Rosengarten After finishing his internship established the Rosengarten Family Great People Scholarship says. “Wisconsin decided to take and residency requirements, to benefit UW undergraduates and students in the School of a chance on me, and it laid the Rosengarten joined Michael Medicine and Public Health. foundation for my life and career.” Reese Hospital and Medical Robert N. Golden, SMPH Center, serving as an assistant After starting his life in Slovakia, says. An American Association dean, praises the gift. “We are professor of radiology, then as Lazar spent his early years in the of Medical Colleges study found committed to educating future an associate professor, and as Washington, D.C., area; moved that 80 percent of medical stu- physicians who will serve where director of MRI and body imag- with his family to Brookfield, dents graduating in 2008 had the need is greatest,” he says. ing from 1991 to 2000. He left Wisconsin, for his senior year of student loans totaling more than “Unfortunately, many of our stu- to form Global Medical Imaging high school; and became a U.S. $100,000. dents take on very high levels and Gurnee Radiology Centers citizen. After earning his under- “It’s most important to be of debt, which can make it diffi- in Lake County, Illinois, a prac- graduate degree at the UW, grateful and give thanks to these cult for them to pursue their orig- tice that now operates many he says, “I loved it so much I enormously generous people,” inal intentions. Dr. Rosengarten’s centers in multiple states. decided to stick around another Lazar says of donors such as family gift, coupled with the Great The Rosengarten family is four years.” the Rosengartens. “I also think People Scholarship program, will deeply connected to the UW: Lazar is grateful for the the donors would be proud of help our medical students pursue their eldest son, Zach, is a senior; scholarship that has eased the people who are receiving their dreams of public service.” daughter Mikala is a freshman; some of his financial strain. “The these awards. As a student body Rosengarten, who spent his and Joshua, a high school junior, cost of tuition keeps going up and as individuals, we have pro- boyhood in the Milwaukee area, hopes to be a Badger, too. every year — and our tuition vided some remarkable service attended UW-Milwaukee for six For third-year medical is reasonable, compared with to the community and made gifts semesters while working full student Joe Lazar ’07, a schol- many schools of the same high of our own.” time. “I tell my children, ‘My arship is making a big difference. caliber across the country,” he Chris DuPré

50 ON WISCONSIN Badger connections JEFF MILLER

52 Alumni Association Cramming and Crashing News Jian Li Zheng x’11 (right) hits the books while Jim Liu x’11 hits the sack in the School of Library 54 Class Notes and Information Science in Helen C. White Hall. The long days and nights of studying and sleep deprivation have only just begun for UW-Madison 60 Calendar students — finals don’t start until May 9, meaning there’s a long haul yet to go. 61 Bookshelf

62 Sifting & Winnowing

SPRING 2010 51 alumni association news

Making UW-Madison More Affordable Alumni chapters step up need-based scholarship efforts.

As 2010 gets under way, The chapter efforts dove- are making efforts to talk with ing incoming students and local Wisconsin Alumni Association tail with a larger push by the UW guidance counselors, be present alumni as Bascom Chapters, a chapters are expanding their Foundation — the Great People at college fairs, and reach out to designation that entitles them to efforts to award need-based aid, Scholarship campaign — to local community centers and civic a $1,000 award for a local stu- a priority in Chancellor Biddy increase gifts to support students organizations. dent via WAA’s Matching Dollar Martin PhD’85’s Strategic who might not otherwise be able WAA chapters awarded Scholarship account. Starting in Framework, which calls for the to afford UW-Madison. $617,000 in scholarships to 357 2011, the awards must include a university to improve access for Many chapters are work- students from Wisconsin and need-based component. students in need. ing to incorporate a need-based nineteen other states in 2009 If your local chapter has a “Need-based aid is an inte- component in their scholarship as part of the Matching Dollar Matching Dollar scholarship pro- gral part of the campus’s vision programs, and WAA tips and Scholarship program, through gram and you’d like to donate, to increase access to the UW guidelines help them to iden- which the UW Foundation visit tinyurl.com/waascholarship. for students of all backgrounds,” tify eligible students in their matches alumni donations dol- If there is no local chap- says Paula Bonner MS’78, communities. lar for dollar. WAA chapters have ter in your area, you can learn WAA president and CEO. “We’re Chapter leaders are encour- awarded more than $10 million more about need-based scholar- confident that our chapters will aging all students to fill out the since the program began in 1967. ships and make a contribution at play an important role in advanc- Free Application for Federal Each year, WAA recognizes uwgreatpeople.org. ing this strategic priority.” Student Aid (FAFSA) form, and chapters that excel at support- Ben Wischnewski ’05

Paying It Forward WAA honors third group of outstanding young alumni. At seventeen, Angela Rose ’02 Rose is one of twelve ’92; Brian Riedl ’98; Elsworth of fellow honoree Janet Olson was kidnapped near her home, UW-Madison graduates hon- Rockefeller MA’06; Susanne ’92 to rescue animals that she bound, and sexually assaulted — ored with 2010 Forward under Rust MS’99; Ahna Skop wrote an article about Olson and a crisis that would have broken 40 Awards. These outstand- PhD’00; Chad Sorenson ’99, got it published in a national many people. But she took that MS’01, MBA’02; and Nelson magazine. pain and turned it into a move- Tansu ’98, PhD’03. Current award winners ment. As a UW-Madison student, FORWARDunder<40 Ever since the Wisconsin are being featured in Forward An awards publication of the Wisconsin Alumni Association® | March 2010 | forwardunder40.com she sought out student organiza- Alumni Association created the under 40 magazine, mailed in tions that work to combat sexual Forward under 40 award two March 2010 to eighty thousand assault, and though she found a Meet 12 years ago, great things con- UW-Madison alumni. The publi- Wisconsin graduates variety of services, she didn’t find on the move. tinue to happen: 2008 and 2009 cation is part of a special issue the group she was looking for. award winners have heard from combined with Badger Insider, “There was a lot of great former classmates and profes- the magazine exclusively for one-to-one counseling for vic- sors inspired by their stories, and Wisconsin Alumni Association tims, but nothing that did grass- some have returned to campus to members. In addition to receiv-

roots organizing or that tried to SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE — turn over for Badger Insider magazine! speak with students. ing Forward under 40 and Badger engage men in the effort to stop One of them is 2009 honoree Insider, WAA members can take sexual assault,” she says. ing graduates live the Wisconsin Neil Willenson ’92, founder advantage of a variety of ben- In response, Rose founded Idea — the 106-year-old guid- and CEO of One Heartland, a efits such as access to the UW Promoting Awareness, Victim ing philosophy behind UW out- charitable organization for chil- Libraries database, event dis- Empowerment (PAVE), a grass- reach efforts to help people in dren and families affected by counts, and more. roots organization that spreads Wisconsin and throughout the HIV/AIDS and poverty. Willenson For profiles and photographs awareness of sexual assault and world. Rose is joined by Aaron was invited to be the featured of this year’s winners, and for promotes measures to aid vic- Bishop ’94, ’95, MS’00; Phillip speaker at the 2009 winter com- information on nominating a UW tims. Ten years later, PAVE has Chavez ’94, JD’98; Jerry mencement ceremonies. Another graduate for next year’s awards, now established chapters in fifty- Halverson ’94, MD’99; Megan 2009 recipient, Leslie Goldman visit forwardunder40.com. five cities in three countries. Johnson ’00; Britt Lintner ’98, was so moved by the efforts B.W.

52 ON WISCONSIN ANDY MANIS

Badgers for Life WAA prepares students of today to become alumni of tomorrow.

With academic responsibilities to registration fee, drew nearly contend with and Badger games three hundred participants who beckoning, today’s UW-Madison donated an estimated five hun- students are focused on being, dred pounds of clothing to the well, students. At the same time, Society of St. Vincent de Paul. however, WAA gives them a “We weren’t sure what to glimpse of what it will feel like to expect with this being a new carry their Badger spirit into the event,” says WASB member Tom world as alumni. Llaurado x’11. “But alumni and Thanks to a variety of WAA members of the Madison commu- student initiatives, these future nity really stepped up and made alumni get to experience firsthand the run a great success.” Bucky Badger was on hand to help students at Gordon Commons the value of being a Badger — on Senior Week, held in early celebrate UW-Madison’s 161st birthday on February 5. Each year, campus and beyond. That was April, is another way that WAA WAA staff serve cake to students in the residence halls to raise awareness of Founders’ Day, which commemorates the founding definitely the case when WAA’s lets students know that their con- of the university. registered student organization, nections to campus never end. the Wisconsin Alumni Student The week is filled with educa- summer that bring together the programs and events that Board (WASB), held the first-ever tional, financial, and career-related incoming students, their parents, WAA sponsors to motivate stu- Bare It All for Charity 5K Run/ events designed to prepare and local alumni to learn about dents to stay involved with the Walk in November 2009. seniors for life after the UW. the university and share some university. You can learn more The run, which encouraged Outside of campus, WAA Badger traditions in a casual about WAA’s student initiatives by participants to donate gently alumni chapters across the coun- atmosphere. visiting uwalumni.com/students. used clothing instead of paying a try hold student sendoffs each These are just a sampling of Brian Klatt A Taste of the Future Food Summit headlines changes to Alumni Weekend. Maybe this means there will be Riesch, and consumer science est honor, these awards go to UW Kathryn Oberly ’71, JD’73, an snacks. professor Lydia Zepeda) and grads who have shown particu- associate judge on the District of When Alumni Weekend 2010 Madison food writer Michelle lar devotion to the university and Columbia Court of Appeals; and kicks off in April, it will do so with Wildgen ’97. whose careers have exemplified Arnold Weiss ’51, LLB’53, a a new event — the Food Summit The summit is just one of the the Wisconsin Idea. This year, five retired investment-bank attorney — and a headline speaker: former new events at this year’s Alumni graduates will receive the award: and decorated World War II senator (and 1972 Democratic Weekend, which will also include Robert Barnett ’68, a leading veteran whose efforts led to the presidential nominee) George the launch of Crazylegs World, representative of authors, televi- capture of Hitler’s last will, now McGovern. an effort to get Badger enthusi- sion news professionals, and in the National Archives. Held at the Memorial Union, asts everywhere out and running government officials; Rita Braver Alumni Weekend kicks off the Food Summit offers a series in support of UW athletics. The ’70, an award-winning senior cor- on April 22. For more infor- of lectures and discussions on a Crazylegs Classic has been an respondent at CBS News Sunday mation, visit uwalumni.com/ wide variety of topics surrounding annual road race and fundraiser Morning; Haynes Johnson alumniweekend. food. McGovern, who was instru- for the athletic department since MS’56, a Pulitzer Prize-winning John Allen and mental in passing federal school 1982. This year, WAA is work- author and commentator; Kate Dixon ’01, MA’07 lunch legislation, will deliver the ing with alumni to create parallel keynote address. Other speakers races in cities around the globe. at the daylong event include UW Alumni Weekend will also faculty (such as biochemist Dave include traditional events, such Continuing to Keep Badgers Connected Nelson, food scientist Scott as the Distinguished Alumni uwalumni.com/sustainability Rankin, nursing professor Susan Awards ceremony. WAA’s high-

SPRING 2010 53 classnotes

’40s-’50s Whether you love or hate Class of ’61, who among Madison’s blue federal court- you is a California Artist of the Bring out Your News! How and why medicine has house, its metallic UW Foundation Year? It’s Clayton Bailey ’61, Please share with us the (brief, changed during the sixty years building, or its cement-centric St. MA’62 of Port Costa, who please) details of your latest that Norman Makous ’45, Paul’s University Catholic Center, received the Golden Bear Award achievements, transitions, and MD’47 has been delivering “per- you must give the visionary, mod- that goes along with the title major life events by e-mail to sonal-care cardiology” is the sub- ernistic architect Kenton Peters during the state fair in August. [email protected]; by ject of Time to Care: Personal ’54 his due for creating some Bailey is a professor emeritus mail to Alumni News, Wisconsin Medicine in the Age of Technology of the city’s most recognizable of ceramics at California State Alumni Association, 650 North (TowPath Publications). The and controversial buildings. And University-Hayward. Lake Street, Madison, WI Coatesville, Pennsylvania, res- he’s showing no signs of stop- It was a fond farewell, but 53706-1476; or by fax to (608) ident was on the faculties of ping: Peters told a Wisconsin not goodbye to Judy Thielmann 265-8771. Our submissions far the University of Pennsylvania State Journal reporter this fall, Fraser ’61 in October as the exceed our publishing space, but Medical School and Thomas “I’ve never had so many interest- popular Champaign, Illinois, we do appreciate hearing from Jefferson Medical University. ing thoughts, such a rich flow of WCIA-TV weathercaster made you anyway. Patrick Lucey ’46 of visions, sort of culminating after her last regular appearance on Milwaukee, the Badger State’s fifty years of practice.” the 6 p.m. news before retiring Please e-mail death notices governor from 1971 until 1977, and all address, name, tele- has a new tribute: the Governor “I’ve never had so many interesting thoughts, phone, and e-mail updates to Patrick Lucey Historical Marker [email protected]; such a rich flow of visions …” was dedicated in September at mail them to Alumni Changes, — Kenton Peters ’54 the River View Park observa- Wisconsin Alumni Association, tion area in Ferryville. Among his The honor that’s known as after thirty-three years with the 650 North Lake Street, Madison, proudest gubernatorial accom- the “Nobel of the East” — the station. She began her career at WI 53706-1476; fax them to plishments, he says, was the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Madison’s WMTV as the Romper (608) 262-3332; or call them in merger of the two university Medicine — has gone to Doug Room lady and as hostess of the to (608) 262-9648 or toll free to systems. Coleman MS’56, PhD’58 of afternoon movie. And — long (888) 947-2586. A reminiscence titled Lamoine, Maine. The Jackson story — Monaco’s Prince Albert Most obituary listings of WAA “My Stay at the University of Laboratory emeritus professor used to babysit for her kids. members and friends appear in Wisconsin in Madison,” sent to and retired researcher traveled to Charles Leroux ’63 surely Badger Insider, WAA’s member us by Elmer Junker ’48, MS’52 Hong Kong in October to accept takes the prize for the shortest publication. of Big Rapids, Michigan, echoed half of the $1 million award for his Class Notes submission of this fond and familiar Badger mem- pioneering work in obesity and issue, reporting simply that he x-planation: An x preced- ories: World War II army service; diabetes research. That research has “retired as senior writer for ing a degree year indicates that running on the UW track team; his led to the discovery of leptin, the Chicago Tribune after a forty- the individual did not complete, roommate Art Omholt, “one of the a hormone that regulates food two-year career in journalism.” or has not yet completed, the funniest men at the school”; mar- intake and body weight, by the Leave it to a seasoned newspa- degree at UW-Madison. riage during his senior year; sum- Shaw Prize’s co-recipient, Jeffrey perman to be so succinct. mer school on the GI Bill; and life Friedman. Attorney Joel Hirschhorn in Badger Village. JD’67 has been elected to fel- The Wisconsin Alumni Association® In January, Milwaukee’s ’60s lowship in the Litigation Counsel (WAA) encourages diversity, Yeshiva Elementary School of America, an honorary society inclusivity, nondiscrimination, and bestowed its Builders of Com- In his youth, Theodore Cohen for trial lawyers. He’s in practice participation by all alumni, students, and friends of the UW in its activities. munity Award upon Sheldon ’60, MS’61, PhD’66 of Lang- with Hirschhorn & Bieber in Coral ’51, LLB’53 and Marianne x’54 horne, Pennsylvania, was an Gables, Florida. Lubar, hailing them as “two of our accomplished violinist who also The 2009 Abraham Lincoln longest-standing and most gener- felt a strong pull toward a career National Agricultural Award for ous supporters.” Sheldon is chair in engineering and science in the Education has gone to Mike of Lubar & Company, an invest- defense industry. Then, after a Hutjens ’67, MS’69, PhD’71 ment and capital-management fifty-year hiatus, he returned to of Savoy, Illinois, for his work as firm, and he has served as pres- the instrument and has now writ- a University of Illinois Extension ident of the UW System’s board ten Full Circle: A Dream Denied, dairy specialist. His award of regents. Marianne is an active A Vision Fulfilled (AuthorHouse), nomination called him “… truly community leader in Milwaukee. based on the events of his life. a legend who will be long

54 ON WISCONSIN his life trying to change that Remembering Earth Day through recruiting and mentor- ing minority students. President HOWARD SHACK Filmmaker Robert Stone ’80 remem- Obama has recognized Kutzko’s bers crushing cans in his suburban efforts with a 2009 Presidential New Jersey hometown during the very Award for Excellence in Science, first Earth Day forty years ago. “Twenty Mathematics, and Engineering million Americans took to the streets Mentoring — as did former demanding action that day,” he says. “If President Bush, with the same that happened again today, you could award, in 2005. get anything you want done.” In his new documentary Earth Days, airing April 19 at 9 p.m. EST on PBS, Stone revisits the ’70s eco-activist movement that took root in After more than thirty years as the sixties and led to the formation of the a faculty member and adminis- Environmental Protection Agency. trator at Virginia Commonwealth Stone’s film features interviews with University, Joe Seipel ’70 has veteran advocates, including former Robert Stone films shots for Earth Days on a wind farm outside of Seattle, Washington. made a move to the Savannah Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall [Georgia] College of Art and and Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich. On camera, astronaut Rusty Schweikart remembers his green- Design to become its vice pres- planet epiphany as he gazed at the Earth while floating above the surface of the moon, and Stewart Brand ident for academic services. A describes the rooftop LSD trip that inspired him to create the Whole Earth Catalog. sculptor who has exhibited world- Earth Days serves as a sequel of sorts to Stone’s The 1930s: The Civilian Conservation Corps, which wide, he’s also a member of the aired last fall on PBS and is now available on a five-DVD package titled The 1930s. Illustrated with stel- UW School of Education’s art lar black-and-white footage from the National Archives, Corps is narrated primarily by former CCC workers, board of visitors. now in their nineties. Coincidence, destiny, or just Introduced by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, the public-works program represented a new plain talent? Chris Core ’71 of approach to environmental stewardship, Stone says. “Beyond preserving wilderness areas, Roosevelt Chevy Chase, Maryland, wrote created the Corps to address how we work the farms and manage forests. That, in turn, begat what I think his senior thesis on broadcaster Earth Day is really about: a broader understanding of our relationship to the ecosystem.” Edward R. Murrow, and now he’s Stone traces his passion for activist filmmaking to a life-changing UW history course taught by the late won one of radio’s most presti- Harvey Goldberg ’43, PhD’51. “I fell under the spell of Harvey Goldberg, who was this brilliant, extremely gious honors: the 2009 National left-wing history professor. His classes were outrageous, incendiary, and just fantastic.” Edward R. Murrow Award for In place of term papers, Stone and classmate Paul Holahan produced a Super 8-format short film, Writing. Core’s Core Values pro- Wake Up!, as their final project for Goldberg’s course. Stone recalls, “We snuck cameras into an assembly gram is heard on WTOP Radio in line, and we broke into Standard Oil headquarters in Chicago and tried to see the executives — it was like Washington, D.C. “Had I not gone Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, but way before that film came out.” to the UW,” he says, “I would not Already immersed in Madison’s film-society culture, Stone routinely watched three movies a day. be where I am today … for sure.” Creating his first short documentary transformed him from audience member to filmmaker. “We’d stay up Let’s hope that the altru- all night editing, had a great time, showed it to Goldberg’s class of five hundred people, and got a standing ism of Paul Liegeois ’72 is con- ovation,” he recalls. “I knew right away, making that movie, that I never wanted to do anything else.” tagious. Retiring in 2005 from After graduating with a degree in history, Stone used his senior thesis about atomic-bomb testing in the his executive position with a South Pacific as the foundation for his first feature-length documentary, Radio Bikini. Nominated for a 1988 Wisconsin utility after thirty- Academy Award, it inaugurated a body of work, including Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, and Oswald’s three years, along with living with Ghost, focused on twentieth-century American culture. Stone says, “There’s a common thread running Parkinson’s disease, he spear- through all my films. I take subjects that people might have heard of, but turn them around a little bit. My headed the effort to build a fascination with history, my love of cinema, and my kind of oddball view of America — it all comes together.” special, rubber-surfaced base- Hugh Hart ball field and to found a base- ball league exclusively for children with mental or physi- remembered.” Quite so: Hutjens’s 2009 American Dairy Science Philip Kutzko MA’68, PhD’72 cal challenges in the Green Bay, previous honors include the Association Honor Award. sensed that the world is not equi- Wisconsin, area. The inspirational 2008 World Dairy Expo Industry Growing up in an interracial table for all, so the University of tale is told in Liegeois’s new Person of the Year and the housing project in New York City, Iowa math professor has spent book, The Making of a Miracle …

SPRING 2010 55 classnotes

League: The Miracle League of Green Bay Story (iUniverse). Pioneering Journalism’s New Frontier

Congratulations to these JASON REIF Badgers who have been named The blog called Talking Points Memo (TPM) is forging new path- Teachers of the Year: Maureen ways in online journalism, and Eric Kleefeld ’04 is part of the McGilligan-Bentin ’72 is a revolution. Most mornings, the staff reporter is at his desk in a Wisconsin co-elementary win- room full of computers in midtown Manhattan in time to post a ner for her work at Marquette roundup of top political stories by 9 a.m. He devotes the rest of Elementary in Madison, while the day to tracking and commenting on the interplay between Rachel Rydzewski ’05 of events and how the media are covering them. At the same time, Waunakee Community Middle Kleefeld does original reporting: cultivating sources, following School is the state’s middle/ up on leads, and bringing fresh information to bear on news that junior high recipient. Both have may not be news until TPM breaks it. received $3,000 awards from Until recently, the blogosphere was little more than an Eric Kleefeld says the TV cable U.S. Senator Herb Kohl ’56 echo chamber for stories generated by established media out- news is always on at TPM’s office in Manhattan. (D-WI) through his educational lets and then endlessly recycled by people with axes to grind. foundation. Meanwhile, Michael Now, TPM is at the forefront of breaking that mold, according to Charles Franklin, a professor of politi- Fryda ’99 was named Nebraska cal science at UW-Madison and a founder of pollster.com. “[TPM] represents a major move in new media Teacher of the Year for his sci- with an actual staff, and Eric is one of the earliest staff members there,” says Franklin. “It is really taking on ence instruction at Omaha’s the role of the traditional investigative newspaper.” Created by Josh Marshall in November 2000, TPM has Westside High School. become a “must-read for news junkies,” as Franklin describes himself. He visits the site several times a day. Glenn Silber ’72 made a Kleefeld admits to being “obsessive” when he gets his teeth into a story — something that the Internet, return home of sorts when he vis- with its low overhead, makes possible. He’s always looking for details that other journalists have either over- ited Madison in October to attend looked or minimized. “If I find something that should be enlarged,” he says, “I’m going to post on that; I’m a thirtieth-anniversary screen- going to make some calls; I’m going to get a comment.” ing of The War at Home, the On any given day, Kleefeld may solicit perspectives on a politician’s outlandish statements, bore into iconic, Vietnam-era film that he the inner pages of a legislative bill, monitor a hearing on C-SPAN, and observe how a breaking story is being co-directed. While in town, Silber spun. When he has something to add to the national conversation, he does it with lightning speed. Within also attended the world premiere minutes, thousands of people will read his words. of his new feature documentary, Kleefeld chose the UW in part because his father, Kenneth Kleefeld ’65, MS’67, PhD’72, has a great Labor Day. In 2007, he left the TV affection for the school. The younger Kleefeld’s time in Madison prepared him well for a vocation in political series 20/20 after thirteen years of intrigue. “The UW was a great place to learn about politics,” he says. “I could have an apartment that was three producing for ABC News to found blocks from the [Wisconsin state] capitol and three blocks from campus. I was in the middle of a lot of action.” Catalyst Media Productions in It also helps that, as Franklin says of his former student, Kleefeld “has an amazing memory for every Bloomfield, New Jersey. political name and event he’s ever heard of — he’s like a human database.” Sharon Gallagher ’73, Kleefeld combines that talent with what he calls his “eye for the weird.” Part of his niche in the blogo- JD’76 of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, sphere, he says, is “a matter of finding what you can do within this landscape.” has been inducted into the Eric Goldscheider National Academy of Arbitrators, an organization of labor-manage- ment and workplace-dispute arbi- Mandolin Uff Da! Let’s Dance: posts in his administration. He’s Butler, Jr. JD’77 as U.S. District trators. Now in private arbitration Scandinavian Fiddle Tunes & nominated Susan Carbon ’74 Judge for the Western District of and mediation practice, she had House Party Music is just the lat- as director of the Department Wisconsin, and David Nelson spent the last twenty-five years est of nearly fifty books, CDs, of Justice’s Office on Violence ’78 as ambassador to Uruguay. with the Wisconsin Employment and DVDs that Dix Bruce ’74 of against Women and Marvin New to the CEO’s seat at Relations Commission. Concord, California, has authored Johnson MS’74 as a member Church Mutual Insurance Company The November inaugu- for Mel Bay Publications. It’s a of the Federal Labor Relations in Merrill, Wisconsin, is Michael ral exhibition at the new Florida collection of mandolin arrange- Authority’s Federal Service Ravn ’74. He’s been its chief Museum for Women Artists in ments of old-time tunes that have Impasses Panel; and tapped operating officer since 2007. DeLand included a work in ster- been played by upper-Midwest- Alexa Posny MS’76, PhD’88 as Charles Schudson JD’74 ling silver and vitreous transparent ern immigrant farmers at gather- the new assistant secretary for the of Milwaukee has received a five- enamel, titled Dawn Beach Walk, ings since the 1880s. Office of Special Education and year senior specialist Fulbright by Kristin Anderson MFA’74 of President Obama has cho- Rehabilitative Services. As well, fellowship teaching law abroad. Apalachicola, Florida. sen five seventies grads for Obama has nominated Louis He’s a Wisconsin reserve judge

56 ON WISCONSIN and an adjunct professor of law at After a long career in radio multiplemyelomablog.com. Award — one of four top hon- both the Marquette University and management in L.A., Cleveland, Those of us “of a certain age” ors presented annually — went to UW law schools. Chicago, Detroit, and now St. remember that September day Daphne Johnson Holterman The Thurgood Marshall Louis, Missouri, Dave Ervin in 1979 when a thousand or so ’81. She and her spouse, Lloyd College Fund, an education ’76 has become the exec- plastic pink flamingos flocked to Holterman ’80, own the pro- organization dedicated to pre- utive director of Rebuilding Bascom Hill. So iconic did that gressive dairy operation Rosy- paring new generations of lead- Together-St. Louis. Its mission event become that, thirty years Lane Holsteins in Watertown, ers, lauded Mary Evans Sias is to bring volunteers and com- hence, Madison alderperson Wisconsin. Daphne has served on MS’74, PhD’80 and Charles munities together to improve the Marsha Rummel ’79 sponsored the UW College of Agricultural and Merinoff ’80 at a gala dinner homes and lives of low-income a resolution to make the plastic Life Sciences’ board of visitors. in October. Sias, who’s presi- homeowners. pink flamingo Madtown’s official Barry Lipsett ’81 has dent of Kentucky State University Congratulations go to John bird. The city council voted 15-4 been tasting success despite a in Frankfort, received the edu- Leslie MS’77, PhD’79, who’s in favor. down economy: he’s recently cational leadership award, while received two recent honors. The Sharing a personal loss pub- moved his company, Charles Merinoff earned the community Kansas State University profes- licly is what Jim Swenson ’79 River Apparel, to new headquar- leadership award. He’s vice chair sor of plant pathology has been did after losing his first wife, Jane, ters in Sharon, Massachusetts, to and CEO of the New York-based named a fellow of the American to breast cancer. A columnist and accommodate its growing oper- Charmer Sunbelt Group, a distrib- Phytopathological Society, as the features editor of the Telegraph ations. He and spouse Deborah utor of wines, beer, and spirits. Franks Lipsett ’81 support As the CEO of Goodwill “Had I not gone to the UW, I would not be where the UW through donating active Industries of Kentucky, over the I am today … for sure.” — Chris Core ’71 wear that the company manu- last quarter-century Roland factures and hosting sendoffs for Blahnik ’75, MBA’76 of well as the first adjunct professor Herald in Dubuque, Iowa, he and Bay State Badgers. In May they Louisville has grown it into one in the College of Agriculture and the newspaper have published a were in Madison to celebrate the of the nation’s most successful Life Sciences at Seoul National book of his columns, reflections, graduation of their son, Aaron Goodwill operations, and it ranks University in South Korea. Leslie’s and readers’ responses called Lipsett ’09. fourteenth in the world in donated research interests have led him to A Man in Mourning: God, I Hope Jay Ralph ’81 has gone goods. Blahnik has also been travel to more than forty countries I Did It Right. from leading the UW Marching instrumental in shaping Goodwill’s to collect the fungus Fusarium. Band onto the field for four years national movement. Gerald Peary PhD’77 has ’80s as one of its “front four,” to lead- The “one-man landscape created something truly novel: ing the worldwide insurance project” is how Jeff Everson he’s the writer-director of a new Studies of human and animal company Allianz. Ralph holds a ’75 is known around his part feature documentary, For the cancer viruses at the molecular board of management position of Woodland Hills, California, Love of Movies: The Story of level have earned Patrick Green and has moved from Switzerland because he’s transformed the American Film Criticism, that’s ’80, PhD’88 the Distinguished to Munich to oversee the com- intersection of Topanga Canyon the first work to offer a history Scholar Award at Ohio State pany’s operations in all of the Boulevard and Mulholland Drive of film criticism. Since its March University in Columbus. He’s NAFTA countries. into four lush, horticultural oases. 2009 premiere, it’s been traveling a professor, the director of the Hilary Apfelstadt PhD’83 is A former weight lifter, Everson worldwide. Peary ran the Tar and Center for Retrovirus Research, Ohio State University’s associate is also the publisher of Planet Feather Films movie society while and the co-director of the director of the School of Music, a Muscle magazine, which has on campus, and is now an author, Comprehensive Cancer Center professor of choral studies, and evolved into a program on the E! film critic, and professor at Suffolk Viral Oncology Program. its director of choral activities. cable TV network. University in Boston. Quanterix Corporation in She’s also become only the sec- The Federal Reserve Board In 2007, Pat Killingsworth Cambridge, Massachusetts, has ond woman to join the advisory has appointed economist and ’79 of Weeki Wachee, Florida, welcomed David Okrongly ’80 board of the production com- senior adviser Patrick Parkinson was diagnosed with multiple as president and CEO after twelve pany Distinguished Concerts ’75, MA’79, PhD’81 of Potomac, myeloma, a cancer of the bone years as senior vice president of International-New York. Apfelstadt Maryland, as director of its marrow for which there is no cure. Siemens Healthcare’s Diagnostics will guest-conduct at Carnegie Division of Banking Supervision Since then he’s dedicated his life Division. Quanterix applies single- Hall in April when the Ohio State and Regulation. He had previously to helping other cancer patients molecule analysis in the fields of Chorale performs there. served as deputy director of the by writing a book, Living with clinical diagnostics, drug develop- Middleton, Wisconsin-based Fed’s Division of Research and Multiple Myeloma (Mira Digital ment, and life-science research. entrepreneur Linda Wortmann Statistics, and as a principal staff Press of St. Louis), and daily This summer, the World Dairy Remeschatis ’83 received cov- adviser to the Fed chair. blogs at HelpWithCancer.org and Expo’s Dairy Woman of the Year erage in both the October U.S.

SPRING 2010 57 classnotes

News & World Report piece Delta-Northwest flight attendant tion to Zambia led Barbeau and Ministry in Berkeley, California. “Entrepreneurship Is the New (and trapeze teacher) who’s put two friends, including Chicagoan The sit-ski — a device Retirement” and one of its June his acrobatic skills to work: in Danny Marcus ’88, to found for physically challenged ski- articles, which also named October, Lund raised money for Spark Ventures. It’s a nonprofit ers — is a UW collaboration. Madison in its top-ten list of breast-cancer research — as part that helps vulnerable children in Jane Sartori Feller ’91, part entrepreneur-friendly cities. In of the airline’s campaign — by impoverished conditions by help- of the sales engineering team at 1998, at age fifty, Remeschatis performing back flips in the aisles ing their communities to become Madison’s Isthmus Engineering & left her position as an assis- of planes before take-off. self-sustaining. Manufacturing, writes that some of tant district attorney to launch The Natural Sciences and Are you ready for a whole the firm’s engineers, including Don Wisconsinmade.com, an online Engineering Research Council new cranberry? Jonathan Smith Becker ’73, MS’76, JD’82, have store selling food and gift prod- of Canada celebrates R&D part- MS’89, PhD’93 — whose PhD been working with UW engineering ucts made in the Badger state. nerships between academia is in cranberry plant physiol- professor Jay Martin to create “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and industry through its Synergy ogy — sells the fruit through his the sit-ski and to connect with the just purchased several pieces Awards for Innovation — and Nekoosa, Wisconsin-based busi- U.S. Paralympic Team. Isthmus is of my recycled art for two of Christopher Swartz PhD’87 has ness, Alpine Foods, and has a worker-owned cooperative that its museums,” began a mes- earned one for 2009. He’s a pro- devised a way to preserve the manufactures custom automation sage from Ingrid Goldbloom machinery and incorporates Bloch ’85. A bustier, garter “Ripley’s Believe It or Not! just purchased philanthropy into its mission. belt, and other uncomfortable- The American Board of looking unmentionables made several pieces of my recycled art for two of Medical Microbiology has certified out of woven soda cans — and its museums.” — Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch ’85 Alan Junkins PhD’91 as a dip- aptly titled Trashy Lingerie — lomate — the highest credential will eventually go on display in fessor of chemical engineering at tartness, but lose the bite. Look that a doctoral-level clinical micro- Ripley’s Hollywood museum, McMaster University in Hamilton, for Smith’s mildly tart Berry Bit biologist can earn. He’s chief of its new venue in Australia, and Ontario, as well as the director of cranberries in stores and in baked microbiology at Norton Healthcare its 2010 book. The Needham, the McMaster Advanced Control goods, yogurt, sausage, and System in Louisville, Kentucky. Massachusetts-based artist is Consortium, on behalf of which he turkey products. The next time you visit the also a career-development coun- accepted the award. Memorial Union’s Rathskeller, selor who owns Mosaic Careers. Gloria Materre ’88 is the ’90s look for the organic burger and We applaud Paul Lambert new executive director of the cheese supplied by K. (Kemper) ’85: he’s the first person to hold Chicago-based Illinois Housing Serge Dedina MS’91 is a Bartlett Durand, Jr. ’92, the the position of national prac- Development Authority. Most hero: one of nine 2009 California managing partner of Black Earth tice director at Point B, a man- recently the deputy chief of staff Coastal Heroes, according [Wisconsin] Meats. The company agement-consulting firm. From for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, to Sunset magazine and the focuses on certified organic, heir- its Seattle office, he’ll oversee Materre’s work in that post also California Coastal Commission. loom, and locally sourced meats, the company’s seven practices created an opportunity to form He’s the executive director of and has achieved humane cer- nationwide. the Minority Business Task Force, WiLDCOAST, an Imperial Beach- tification as well. Durand’s par- China, Indonesia, East Timor, which she will chair. based coastal and marine-con- ents-in-law, Rosemarie and Gary Afghanistan, Iraq, Pittsburgh, BodyMedia in Pittsburgh has servation organization, and the ’68 Zimmer of nearby Otter and now Iowa City, Iowa: such welcomed Christine Moore author of Saving the Gray Whale: Creek Farm, are partners in the has been the geographic — and Robins ’88 to the position of People, Politics, and Conservation business. Gary is an expert in often dangerous — progression CEO. She was formerly pres- in Baja California (University of sustainable agriculture and a pio- that Lisa Weaver ’86 has taken ident and CEO of Philips Oral Arizona Press). neer in “mineralized balanced to pursue her career in broadcast Healthcare and VP of Philips The new associate dean of agriculture.” journalism. She’s now funnel- Electronics. BodyMedia manufac- instruction for Harry S Truman Kerri Martin ’92 is the cho- ing her myriad experiences into tures wearable body-monitoring College in Chicago is (Audrius) sen one at Coda Automotive teaching international journalism systems for improved health, fit- Vilius Rudra Dundzila PhD’91. — the car company’s first chief at the University of Iowa. ness, and performance. An ordained Unitarian Universalist marketing officer, hired as the You might say that Henry After a career in business, minister, he was previously a pro- visionary who will make its prod- “Heinie” Lund ’87 of Fort Scott Barbeau ’89 followed his fessor of humanities and compar- ucts hip and desirable. Her first Lauderdale, Florida, is “flying on passion for music and is now the ative religion at the college, and task will be the launch of Coda’s his strengths.” The former UW keyboardist and back-up singer is also an adjunct faculty member four-door, five-passenger electric cheerleader and varsity let- for the Chicago-based band 16 at Chicago’s Roosevelt University sedan. The Sausalito, California, ter winner in diving is now a Candles. What’s more, a vaca- and the Starr King School for resident was previously one of the

58 ON WISCONSIN marketing brains behind the BMW Pulitzer Prize in 2009, when her PhD’78; and Anna Maria September. Thanks to Shaffer’s Mini and Volkswagen brands. photos were part of a New York Manalo ’89. sorority sister, former UW room- Erasing the Distance, a Times team prize for international The State University of New mate, and fellow Chicagoan Chicago-based nonprofit that reporting. York in Oswego has bestowed Leslie Goldman (Alter) ’98 for sheds light on mental illness “My recent accomplishments its 2009 President’s Award for sharing the happy news. through professional theater, has include being deployed to Iraq for Scholarly and Creative Activity on elected David Strauss JD’93 the past year,” writes U.S. Army Robert Card PhD’97. A spe- 2000s as its new board president. He’s master sergeant Ross Bagwell cialist in biomedical ethics and an also VP, head marketing group ’95, where he’s been part of a associate professor of philosophy, October 8 was a huge day for counsel, and head IP counsel for staff that’s in charge of coun- Card recently served as a visiting singer and composer Steven Experian, based in Schaumburg, ter-IED efforts for nine thousand associate professor of medicine Ebel II ’01. That’s when he Illinois. soldiers throughout the coun- and a fellow in clinical ethics at gave a world-premiere perfor- Dennis Hong ’94 and try. “When I return home in 2010,” the University of Rochester [New mance of his work The Diary of J. (Jonathan) Adam Wilson he adds, “I plan to focus on my York] Medical Center. a Young Poet at London’s Royal MS’05, PhD’09 were named as civilian life as a GIS manager for Gregg Hammann EMBA’97 Opera House, where the tenor is two of the “Brilliant 10” in Popular Global Capacity in Chicago.” has left the helm of the Nautilus part of the Parker Young Artist Science magazine’s November Climbing a mountain in fitness-equipment company and Programme. He was the first issue. Hong is an associate pro- someone’s honor is quite a trib- is now the global chief exec- singer in the opera house’s his- fessor of mechanical engineer- ute. The climber in this case was utive officer of Power Plate tory to perform his own composi- ing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Darin Harris MA’95, a consul- International in Irvine, California. tion under its auspices. where he also develops robots tant and facilitator in the UW’s Its fitness equipment incorporates Janelle Ward ’01 has been with artificial intelligence as Office of Quality Improvement, “advanced vibration technology” busy — in the Netherlands, the director of its Robotics and and the peak was Mount Whitney at programmed frequencies no less — since she earned Mechanisms Laboratory. He was near Lone Pine, California — the during exercise. her UW degree. She moved to named one of WAA’s Forward tallest in the lower forty-eight We think we detected Amsterdam to pursue a master’s under 40 honorees in March states. Harris scaled it on his for- some well-deserved excite- at the International School for 2009. Wilson researches brain- tieth birthday to honor his moth- ment in the tone of Matt Vokoun Humanities and Social Sciences, computer interface technolo- er’s triumph over ovarian cancer ’98 when he shared that he’s and she’s since completed a PhD gies at the Wadsworth Center in and to raise funds for the Ovarian joined Google’s Mountain View, in political communication at the Albany, New York. In April 2009, Cancer Orange County Alliance. California-based Strategy and University of Amsterdam. Ward is he demonstrated an application Adam Reinstein ’95 is the Business Operations team as now an assistant professor teach- of his work by posting an update owner of Heartpath Community a project manager. Previously, ing media and communication at to Twitter using only his thoughts. Acupuncture, a donation-based he was a manager with Bain & Erasmus University Rotterdam. Badger attorneys Jonathan clinic in Madison. He’s recently Company. Studies in the history of Strauss ’94 and Andrew Noel completed his master’s degree in Following his UW years play- science in Western civiliza- ’97 — both with Flynn Gaskins & acupuncture and Oriental medi- ing in a band called Left Undone, tion are richer because of the Bennett in Minneapolis — have cine at the Academy of Oriental Danny Chaimson ’99 became work of Paul Erickson MA’02, received the Minnesota State Medicine at Austin [Texas]. a professional keyboardist in L.A. PhD’06, and in an August cer- Bar Association’s most presti- As part of an initiative called and has performed on national emony in Budapest, he was gious award, the Professional PAG-ASA, created by Madison TV and with many artists, includ- honored for it. An assistant pro- Excellence Award, for their pro oncologist Felipe Manalo in ing Etta James and the Neville fessor of history and science in bono work representing victims of 1997, a group of Badgers has Brothers. He and his band — society at Wesleyan University the city’s I-35W bridge collapse. been making annual humanitar- Danny Chaimson & the 11th Hour in Middletown, Connecticut, A MacArthur Fellowship — ian medical missions to serve — hit it extra-big in 2008 with Erickson received the 2009 Prize also known as a “genius grant” residents of the Philippines. The a record deal for their first solo for Young Scholars from the — has gone to photojournal- trip this past fall marked the album, Young Blood, Old Soul International Union for the History ist Lynsey Addario ’95, one of last one, however, says hos- (Cold Classic Records). and Philosophy of Science. It’s twenty-four recipients for 2009 pice nurse Leon Bernido ’97, Congratulations to Eden awarded every four years. who will receive $500,000 over MA’00. Along with Bernido, Langerman Shaffer ’99: she Paul Tyree-Francis ’04, five years. She’s based in New the other Madison-area partic- was the first Chicago mother co-director of the Golden Delhi, India, where she works for ipants include Glenda Boyd to be featured on TLC’s A Baby Parachutes contemporary art gal- the New York Times, National Denniston MA’66, PhD’73; Story when her family’s expe- lery in Berlin, included the work Geographic, and other publi- Dorothy Mendenhall Blobner riences welcoming their sec- of Cassie Thornton ’04 of Fox cations. Addario also earned a MS’73, MA’98; Maria Manalo ond child were broadcast in Lake, Illinois; the Little Friends of

SPRING 2010 59 Printmaking (Melissa ’04 and school at St. George University in J.W. [James] ’04 Buchanan) Grenada. Calendar of Milwaukee; and UW assistant “Ned [(Edward) Meerdink professor of art John Hitchcock ’08] is a great example of how in his October exhibition, Get Free students from your university Ongoing %. The exhibit experimented with are making a difference world- Wednesday Nite @ the Lab artists bartering their work. wide,” beamed a fall news release Explore the latest work of UW researchers in the life, earth, and It wasn’t so long ago that from the Washington, D.C.-based social sciences at this free, weekly program held on campus. Kevin Wright ’04 was making Advocacy Project. Meerdink, uwalumni.com/wednitelab beer in his home, and now he’s one of the group’s 2009 peace won one of the brewing indus- fellows, is partnering with the try’s highest honors, the J.S. human-rights organization Arche April Ford Award. It’s issued to the d’Alliance to advocate for at- top scorer in the general cer- risk youth and victims of gender- 15–17 UW Varsity Band Concerts Join music lovers at the Kohl Center in Madison for a live tificate exam that’s given by based violence in the Democratic performance by Mike Leckrone and the Badger band. (608) the London-based Institute of Republic of the Congo. 265-4120 Brewing and Distilling. A graduate Among the elite few who’ve of the UC-Davis Master Brewers been chosen to work with Teach 15–18 Wisconsin Film Festival Program, Wright works his magic for America — during a record- Take your pick of more than 150 films at the twelfth annual at Hangar 24 Craft Brewery in setting applicant year — is Wisconsin Film Festival. www.wifilmfest.org Redlands, California. Crystal Crowns ’09, who’s gone Distinguished Alumni Awards Nathaniel “Chet” Liedl ’06 to New Orleans to teach third 22  Help honor this year’s four distinguished alumni at a program has shared what he and a group grade. The program is a national in the Wisconsin Union Theater, followed by dinner. of other teachers who are work- corps of recent college grads who uwalumni.com/DAA ing in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), commit to teaching for two years Vietnam, did during November: in urban and rural public schools. 22–25 Alumni Weekend they cycled more than twelve More healthful sleep and WAA invites all grads back to campus for a memorable weekend hundred miles from Hanoi to increased productivity through among friends. uwalumni.com/alumniweekend HCMC to raise money for their an iPhone application? That’s the organization, H2H: Ride for goal of Daniel Gartenberg ’09; Vietnamese Children. Among the Justin Beck ’09; their software May cyclists were three other Badgers: company, Proactive Life; and 8 Made in Wisconsin: Birds and Bombs Tina (Kristina) Kjolhaug ’05, their app, Proactive Sleep, which Take an informative, behind-the-scenes tour of the Katarina Kobor ’07, and took first place in UW-Madison’s Badger Ammunition Plant in Baraboo, Wisconsin, before bird- Justene Wilke ’07. Schoofs Prize for Creativity engi- watching on the complex’s recently restored prairies. uwalumni. This has to be a first: news neering competition in 2009. com/learning of a Badger grad excelling in har- Who was the first ice hockey ness racing. Jessica Schroeder player to receive the Women’s Ending May 16 Imaginary Architecture: ’06 has been lauded by the Sports Foundation’s international Photographs by Filip Dujardin United States Harness Racing Sportswoman of the Year award? Explore the art of Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin, whose Writers Association as one of two It was goalie Jessie (Jessica) work combines photographs of numerous buildings into eclectic, 2009 “USHWAns” of the Year. A Vetter ’09 of Cottage Grove, fictional structures, at this Chazen Museum of Art exhibit. chazen. third-generation horsewoman and Wisconsin. Determined by fan wisc.edu licensed trainer, she works for vote, she was fêted for her stellar the U.S. Trotting Association in accomplishments with both the Founders’ Days Columbus, Ohio, as its assistant Badger women’s team and the Commemorate UW-Madison’s beginnings and celebrate fair liaison. U.S. women’s national team. your Badger heritage at one of more than fifty Founders’ Day Zambia has been home to celebrations scheduled across the country this spring. Visit Joe Lassan IV ’07 for the last uwalumni.com/foundersday to find an event in your area. two years while he’s been serv- Class Notes compiler Paula ing the Lunda Tribe with the Wagner Apfelbach ’83 could do For more information on these events, Peace Corps’s medical staff and without mushrooms, monster call (888) WIS-ALUM or visit uwalumni.com. the Zambian Ministry of Health. trucks, and most shades of blue. He now hopes to attend medical

60 ON WISCONSIN bookshelf

a leader does conveys a message, so those for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in actions and words must be effective. Author Washington, D.C. David Grossman ’87 is founder, president, n Bucky Badger leads and principal “thoughtpartner” of dg&a, a kids on an action- Chicago-based communications firm. packed adventure past n Comics in many beloved Madison Wisconsin (Borderland landmarks in search of Books) traces the the lost — oh, no! — history of this “important game-day football in the children’s book n Enough to Go Around: Searching center of comic art The for Hope in Afghanistan, Pakistan & experimentation,” as Big Bucky Badger Mystery. Author Chris Darfur (SelectBooks) is the inspiring product one contributor called Newbold ’93 is the president and CEO of of photographer and filmmaker Chip (John) it — a “glimpse at the its publisher, University Pride Publishing of Duncan ’77, whose volunteer work with richness of a neglected Missoula, Montana. Save the Children in Afghanistan and Relief political and artistic International in Pakistan and Darfur prompted counterculture.” Author Paul Buhle PhD’75 n The Selma of the him to create the book. He founded the of Madison is a retired senior lecturer at North: Civil Rights Milwaukee-based Duncan Group — a non- Brown University. Insurgency in fiction documentary company — in 1984, and Milwaukee (Harvard n In reading The Nature of Being since then, has captured a great diversity of University Press) Human: From Environmentalism to subjects on film. chronicles the racial- Consciousness, Johns Hopkins University justice movement in n With Gold Fish: A John Austin Press promises “sweeping, interdisciplinary, Milwaukee during the Adventure (iUniverse), you get “adventure, and sometimes combative essays” that will 1960s — particularly mystery, romance, and murder, all at play over “change the way you think about your place in the efforts of African a mentor’s millions” — and all wrapped up in the environment.” The author, Harold Fromm Americans, led by a the first novel in a projected series by John PhD’62 of Tucson, is a visiting scholar at the white Catholic priest named Jerome Groppi, McDermott ’69 of Madison. University of Arizona and the co-editor of the to secure access to housing. Its author is Ecocriticism Reader. n Brookes Publishing Patrick Jones MA’96, PhD’02, an associate calls A Is for “All n In The Six Virtues professor of history and ethnic studies at the Aboard!” “the of the Educated University of Nebraska-Lincoln. first alphabet book Person: Helping Kids n created with children The Master Cheesemakers of to Learn, Schools (University of Wisconsin Press) with autism in Wisconsin  to Succeed (Rowman profiles forty-three active masters who share mind.” It’s a colorful, & Littlefield), J. (John) the tradition, technology, and artistry that go uncluttered, engaging book about trains by Casey Hurley MS’78, into the more than six hundred varieties of the sister team of Victoria Kluth ’90 of St. PhD’89 offers an cheese produced in the state. The book is a Kilda West, Australia, and Paula Kluth ’92, alternative schooling collaboration between Minneapolis foodies PhD’98 of Oak Park, Illinois. model that emphasizes James Norton ’99, a columnist for Chow n Family issues are central to two works understanding, imagination, strength, magazine and editor of Heavytable.com; and by Barbara Taylor Blomquist ’54 of St. courage, humility, and generosity. He teaches photojournalist Becca (Rebecca) Dilley ’02. Louis, Missouri: her novel Randy’s Ride  educational foundations, leadership, politics, n “The history of sexuality is always a history (Tate Publishing), about a young man’s and ethics at Western Carolina University in of politics, the economy, and culture,” writes search to find where he belongs; and Cullowhee, North Carolina. one reviewer of Insight into Adoption: Uncovering and Infectious Ideas: U.S. n Mad about Trade: Why Main Street Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis Understanding the Heart of Adoption America Should Embrace Globalization  (University of North Carolina Press), adding (second edition, Charles C. Thomas Publisher).  (Cato Institute) “challenges the populist that author Jennifer Brier ’92 “disrupts n You Can’t Not Communicate: critics of trade on their own turf,” explaining conventional historical narratives” in exploring Proven Communication Solutions That how expanding trade and foreign investment the subject. She’s an assistant professor of Power the Fortune 100 (Little Brown benefits America and the world. Its author is gender and women’s studies and history at Dog Publishing) shares how everything that Daniel Griswold ’79, director of the Center the University of Illinois-Chicago.

SPRING 2010 61 sifting &winnowing RENEE GRAEF

Rules of the Road Revisited By Tina Merwin ’92

For nearly a decade, I have lived in downtown Milwaukee. By lived, I mean resided, worked, played, and shopped. I have relied on my feet to accomplish these things. It was my des- tiny, I suppose, to become a pedestrian after the self-inflicted marathon training I practiced on the Madison campus. Climbing Bascom Hill and hurrying from one end of campus to another — in all kinds of weather — is not only the stuff of great memories, but also was preparation for my lifestyle today. Because I pound the pavement for a minimum of thirty min- utes each day, I come in contact with a lot of traffic, and a lot of other adventures, too. I have been flipped off, honked at, hit on, threatened, and nearly run over. Instead of becoming discouraged, I view these experiences as a challenge, a game, or a learning tool, depending on the day. Here are some lessons I have learned on the sidewalks of life. Think before you act. One snowy morning, I angrily smacked a car with the heel of my hand because the driver stopped on the side- walk directly in front of me after exiting a driveway. I was forced to walk into the street to avoid being hit. Needless to say, the driver did not appreciate my reaction. She followed me for a block and a half until I reached my destination and we traded strong language. It was not a Notice the scenery. A pretty patio garden, a cute dog, and a rain- pleasant way to start the day, and I regretted letting my emotions take bow are all art exhibits to which you don’t have to pay admission. Even over. Sometimes people will not allow you the right of way because of the urban jungle contains natural beauty. Step outside of your thoughts distraction, self-involvement, or some other reason. Don’t harbor ill to appreciate your surroundings and make discoveries. Just watch out feelings that will affect your blood pressure and spoil your day. Be the for bees, and wear sunscreen. bigger walker (and the bigger person). Keep moving. We all know that exercise, even simple walking, is Be observant. Drivers have so many other things to focus on — good for us. It is better for the environment, saves gas, and helps us cell phones, kids, and lunch from the drive-through — that they some- break in our shoes. Why not use the sidewalks instead of the car? Your times do not pay attention to the people using the crosswalk in front of body, your pocketbook, and your planet will thank you. them. Be on guard and use your instinct to protect yourself. Adults need recess, too. Shuffle through crackly autumn leaves. Pleasant surprises can make your day. When a careful driver Sing. Run. Use your commute to reconnect with your inner child. Who gives me the right of way, even when it isn’t my turn, I feel great. cares if other people are around? You may inspire them to play. The That driver usually gets a big smile. Nice, unexpected little things get road to happiness is sometimes a sidewalk. you through the bad days more easily, and give you some hope for My last lesson isn’t mine. Ralph Waldo Emerson said this about tomorrow. walking: “Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are Defend yourself. But do so in a respectful way, and always keep endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, your personal safety in mind. Advocate for pedestrian rights by remind- vast curiosity, good speech, good silence, and nothing too much.” ing drivers to watch their speed and make complete stops. Even if your I’d say Ralph was right. Lace up your shoes, everyone. Walk request is ignored, at least you made the effort to stand up for yourself. proudly and without fear. Establish your own pedestrian command- Dress for success. Wear a hat when it is cold. Layer clothes so ments during your journey through life. that you can add or remove them according to your comfort level. Be Tina Merwin ’92 resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she works as prepared for changing weather conditions. Following these guidelines a technical writer for an insurance company. can mean the difference between a bearable fifteen minutes and regret- ting climbing out of bed. Choose your battles. If you are aware of a blind corner, cross to If you’re a UW-Madison alumna or alumnus and you’d like the editors to the other side of the street. Or, take another route to avoid it altogether. consider an essay of this length for publication in On Wisconsin, please Let the little things go. You’ll stay in one piece and be happier. send it to [email protected].

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SPRING 2010 63 You can have an impact on the University of Wisconsin-Madison through a planned gift. Your foresight now will benefit a campus program or area that you value far into the future. It also can pay off with tax advantages. To find out more, contact the UW Foundation’s Office of Planned Giving at 608.263.4545 or [email protected].

Your legacY is the universitY’s future.

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64 ON WISCONSIN A New Way To Do RES HALL LIVING

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SPRING 2010 65 flashback UW-MADISON ARCHIVES

Badger Beauty

Last fall, Buckingham U. Badger passed his sixtieth birthday — six says that in the 1970s and 1980s, the firm gave away Becky dolls to full decades as the sole official mascot for the UW. That’s a long time patrons when they opened new accounts. It also dressed an employee to be alone. Why, we wondered, has Bucky never had any feminine (usually a student) as Becky and sent her out to football games to companionship? promote financial services. It turns out, we were wrong to assume he hadn’t. This photo, shot Becky quickly caught on. Capital City Comics declared she was circa 1980, proves that there once was a female badger mascot run- “the Campus Mascot for the Seventies” and sold T-shirts with her ning around Camp Randall Stadium. Who was this fetching creature in image. The Wisconsin Alumni Association and the National W Club the miniskirt and hair bow? included her at their official, annual tailgate party, called the Badger Her name was Becky Badger, a legendary — some might say Blast, where she received billing right alongside Bucky. mythical — figure on campus. Some say she was Bucky’s girlfriend. But bank mascots don’t last forever, and Becky disappeared some- Others claim she was his sister. Let’s hope they’re not both right. time in the 1980s. She’s not entirely gone, though. A mascot-supply One reason for the mystery surrounding Becky Badger’s origins company called Facemakers still sells this very costume, keeping alive is that she was never an official UW mascot. She was the creation of the legacy — and mystery — of Madison’s Mascot for the Seventies. Madison’s Park Bank. Bob Gorsuch, former president of Park Bank, John Allen

66 ON WISCONSIN Invest in Great PEOPLE Ensure that the leaders of tomorrow can afford a world-class UW-Madison education today.

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