Ragweed
If you suffer from hay fever, you may be feeling the first sniffles right about now. It’s time for ragweed to come into bloom. Today, Anne Strainchamps and science historian Gregg Mitman take a closer look at the weed so many people hate.
Lakes
Summer’s not so much fun when the heat index soars and your clothes stick to your skin. Luckily, when you live in Wisconsin, you’re never very far from a lake. Writer Jill Sisson Quinn moved here from Maryland a state with many streams, but no lakes.
Wisconsin Co-ops
When you turn on your air conditioning this summer or pick up some cheese for a picnic, a cooperative business may be behind it. Cooperatives have played an important part in Wisconsin’s history.
Blackberries
The lush foliage of summer often holds bright and delicious summer treats: wild berries. Commentator Mary Ellen Gabriel tells us about one of her favorite and unexpected places to find blackberries.
Backyard Beekeeping
Backyard beekeeping is on the rise, and not just in rural areas. In towns and cities all over the country, urban beekeepers are tending hives and harvesting honey. In Madison, commentator Erin Clune checks out the new beehives in her neighbors front yard.
Wisconsin’s Story Through Geology
To many of us, Wisconsin’s summer landscape is a haven for swimming, hiking, biking, and boating. But to a geologist, the land tells a richly illustrated narrative of cataclysm and rebirth.
Salamanders
The Badger Army Ammunition Plant was the war machine at the heart of the Sauk Prairie near Baraboo that’s now being dismantled. Although built for war, the plant also sustained a thriving community and not all of it human.
Poisonous Plants
Farmer’s markets are full of summer produce right now, but so are the state’s wild woods and streams. From milkweed pods to black nightshade, there are all kinds of edible wild plants out there.
Civil War Week: Slavery Memories
Today, we mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War with a story from Madison’s Joyce Salter Johnson. The institution of slavery is a living memory in her family.
The Letters of Chalmers Ingersoll
The Civil War split families. But it also brought people together. Commentator Sarah Covington shares her family’s story of love in the middle of war.
This story commemorates Wisconsin’s role in the Civil War on its 150th anniversary.
Civil War Week: Nathaniel Rollins, POW
Nathaniel Rollins was a Captain in Company H of the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry. Taken prisoner at Gettysburg, Rollins spent much of the remainder of the war in Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia.
Civil War Week: 1st Brigade Band
In 1864, eighteen men from Brodhead enlisted in the Union Army as the band of the 1st Brigade. Today, the sights and sounds of that original band live on in a modern 1st Brigade Band, the oldest recreated Civil War brass band in the country.
Civil War Week: Emilie Quiner’s Diary
Emilie Quiner was a 21-year-old Madison schoolteacher when the Civil War broke out in 1861. Wanting to feel more useful to the war, Quiner went to work as a nurse in a Union hospital in Tennessee in 1863.
Traveling Medicine Show
Before movies and radio were widespread, rural communities had few opportunities for entertainment. It was here that traveling medicine and tent shows thrived in the early 20th century. Commentator Michael Fedo tells us about the theatrical career of his wife’s grandfather.
White Coats
In the late 1950s, medicine was primitive by today’s standards. Retired internist, Philip Dougherty, of Menomonee Falls, recalls having very few medical treatment options to offer patients soon after completing medical school.