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“We just want to be part of the American dream”: Cuban exile talks troubled past and hopeful future

(This story is an excerpt from the podcast, “WPR Reports: Uprooted.”) Osvaldo Durruthy was sitting in a Wisconsin prison in the mid-1990s. He was in his 30s and he was desperate to get out.

‘He made the best of life’: How a family turned a tragedy into hope with nonprofit Joey’s Song

Mike Gomoll is not a rock star, but he knows how to get them to rally around a cause.  “You start out an email or a phone call with, ‘My five year old son died and I need your help,”’ he said, adding, “it doesn’t cost anything to ask people.”  

Why is Mount Horeb the ‘troll capital of the world’?

Trolls are everywhere you look in the Dane County Village of Mount Horeb: troll cartoons on the street signs, troll footprints on the sidewalk, sculptures of trolls lining Main Street. The sheer number of trolls in the community prompted a WHYsconsin listener to ask, "What’s the deal with all the trolls?"

A Room of One’s Own co-owner shares the power of books

Gretchen Treu has always had a passion for literature. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, books gave them a chance to experience worlds beyond imagining. “I was always pushing whatever I was reading onto my close friends, and we would forge kind of a little community around the stories that we were bringing to each other,” they said.

‘Wouldn’t you help your relatives survive?’: The return of the Ojibwe horses

Emily Loerzel’s horse, Dimii, neighs while other Ojibwe horses munch on hay during one sunny, fall day in October 2022. These rare breed of horses live at a farm where Loerzel and her husband live in Spring Valley, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Life # 910: Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center

Angela Fitzgerald visits the Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center in Manitowoc, an interactive museum celebrating our state’s agriculture industry. She speaks with Patty Lehr, executive director, about the goal of teaching people where their food comes from so they better understand and appreciate Wisconsin agriculture.

Eat. Share. Grow.

For every feast, there is a farm that grows it. Christy McKenzie knows this well, and has put this idea into practice with her unique style of food service. McKenzie opened Pasture of Plenty in 2017 with the goal of engaging the community in every way possible, “We built the business to create and celebrate local food, and to intentionally purchase as much as we could from as close as we could.”