To The Best Of Our Knowledge; The Wisconsin Idea (Special)

It's to the best of our knowledge today, the Wisconsin Idea. If you live in Wisconsin, you've heard that phrase, the Wisconsin Idea. It's the century -old dream of sharing the best of higher education with the entire state, bringing the values of the liberal arts, scientific knowledge, and the search for truth to everyone. But is it working? I love this place, but if the idea is that the resources of this campus belongs to the community, how is it that I grow up two miles south of here in Park Street, and my friends and I don't know this campus? I'm Anne Strange -Champs. Today, a special episode recorded in front of a live audience exploring the Wisconsin Idea. First This. If you live in Wisconsin, sooner or later, you'll encounter this phrase, the

Wisconsin Idea. But what does it mean? Or what could it mean to you? I'm Anne Strange -Champs, with a special edition of to the best of our knowledge, recorded a couple of weeks ago on stage in front of an audience at the University of Wisconsin. I think the Wisconsin Idea. When I first moved to Wisconsin and started working at Wisconsin Public Radio, I kept hearing about this thing called the Wisconsin Idea. I didn't know what it was, but it sounded totally cool. Because I remember thinking, you know, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, they've got their state birds, their state crops, their state flags. We've got an idea. However, I was really hard to put an idea on a license plate. So, especially a really big idea, and the Wisconsin Idea turns out to be huge. You know, it's a philosophy. It's a vision for public enlightenment. And the description that I really like, this is what Adelaide Stevenson said, the Wisconsin tradition meant more than a simple belief in the people. It also meant a

faith in the application of intelligence and reason to the problems of society. I meant a deep conviction that the role of government was not to stumble along like a drunkard in the dark, but to light its way by the best torches of knowledge and understanding it could find. So, basically, how I interpret that is we live in a state that is historically valued, seeking truth and sharing wisdom so greatly that it's a core mission. Now, as we know, lately, there are people who find the Wisconsin Idea elitist. There are people who would like to challenge it. There are people who feel excluded from it and buy it. And that's the thing about big ideas and big dreams. They have to be constantly in every generation reinterpreted, reimagined. So, each of our guests tonight embodies some aspect of the Wisconsin Idea. They are each people who, in their own ways and their own

professions, are pushing the Wisconsin Idea forward into the future. So, let's welcome, first of all, our executive producer, Steve Paulson, who is also, by the way, my husband, which means that he not only produces great radio, he also walks my dog and does my laundry. Sorry, honey. Also, UW -Madison's Kathy Kramer. She's a political scientist, director of the Margaret Center for Public Service, and author of a new path -breaking work on politics, power, and rural identity. It's called the University, or the boundaries of the state, then Kathy Kramer is a perfect example of how to put this idea into practice. Kathy's research for the last decade has taken her to the far corners of the state where she's been talking with as she puts it, ordinary people, not politicians or academics or experts. And her new book, The

Politics of resentment, is not just a fascinating portrait of what she calls rural consciousness in Wisconsin. It's also a new lens for how we can understand the deep political divide in our state. And I have to say, as a long -time resident of Madison and a public employee, it's a sobering portrait of what people in small towns and rural areas think about people like me, because we're often seen as privileged, elitist, and the beneficiaries of taxpayer money. So, I think it's fair to say that all of us in Wisconsin have a lot to learn about each other. Kathy, it is great to have you here. Thank you. It's really my honor. When you started meeting with these people, and I know you met with lots of different groups around the state, were you surprised by what they said? Oh, absolutely. I grew up in the state just north of Milwaukee and thought I knew the state very well and designed a study that would get me out and about around the state, because I loved the state. I wasn't looking

for divides in the state. I wasn't even aware of a rural versus urban divide. And it very much surprised me, the level of resentment that I heard in some of the smaller communities in the state towards Madison and Milwaukee and public employees. And the university. And the university. The UW professors are not that well liked in some parts of the state, right? That is true. So, yes, you have to understand that I was walking into, say, gas stations early in the morning and saying, hi, I'm Kathy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Do you mind if I join you this morning? And they would laugh a little bit and then invite me in. And I would give them a car, you know, a business card saying it was very clear. I'm a professor in the political science department at UW -Madison. And in general, they were very kind to me, but they also made it very clear when I got around to asking about their ideas about the university that faculty, including you, Kathy, are, you know, kind of lazy.

You're not, you're never in the classroom. You have your summers off. You're liberal, probably you as a political scientist. You're probably on the left end of the spectrum. And you're kind of elitist in the sense, you know, you have healthcare insurance, don't you, Kathy? And you have a pension, right? And you probably make a pretty good salary. And you have really little idea about what small town life is like. So, they just said that to you, just straight to your face. Yeah, that's a, that's a paraphrase, but it came in many different, yeah, you know, it came in many different versions. I mean, people, I mean, imagine, I'm laughing. And I truly want to convey that these conversations were delightful. So at the same time, they were delivering some pretty hard news to me that was very sobering, as you say. They were also very nice about it, but they would say things like, okay, so your professor at the university

and you're here five hours away from the university. And how does this work that you're driving around the state, having coffee with people like us, aren't you supposed to be teaching? Aren't you supposed to be working? Yeah, right. I say, well, I'm on a sabbatical here and then trying to explain what a sabbatical was like, you know, I mean, you can imagine people were critical. So what did you say when, when people said that to you? Well, I learned pretty quickly that it wasn't my place to say, no, seriously, I do work hard. I work really hard. That, you know, that just reinforces perception that there, you know, there goes another Madison person. I think as though he or she knows what the real deal is and our point of view isn't valid. So I honestly, I just listened. I mean, I tried to take it in and convey that it was important to me to understand where they were coming from and to not necessarily discredit myself for the work that I was doing, but to not to not make it my place to say, no,

you're wrong. This is what is reality, but in to said to acknowledge that they have perceptions and it's, it was important for me that I take the time to listen to them. Did you have to do some soul searching in this whole process as you were making these people? What, what, what, what was hardest for you? The, the resentment towards public employees was hard to hear. This perception just becoming aware that there were so many people who I came across relatively randomly, who felt as though they were not being listened to by any institution, any set of elites. So the university is partly in there, but also the government, the healthcare industry, corporations, I mean, there was just this very pervasive sense of loss that came through in these conversations and in a sense that something was seriously

off with our state. So was the, was the criticism, was the resentment that we public employees and, you know, we're both part of that system, we're both public employees that we're getting more than our fair share, we're, we're getting paid too much. Was that a piece of this? Absolutely. So there were, the resentment that I talk about was partly about who's getting public dollars, federal, state, county, whatever level of government, and that some people are getting more than their fair share. It's also about who has power in the state who's getting listened to, and then also just who has respect. So it was all of those different things together. And in terms of public employees, one of the things that I think was hard is for me to hear was this notion of who works hard in a population, in our population, and therefore who is deserving. So the notions of who's getting their fair share and, or more than their fair share, and who isn't, were very intertwined with these notions of who is working hard. How was that defined? I mean,

hard work. I mean, why was the assumption that people in Madison, public employees don't work hard? A lot of it had to do with manual labor, and most of the conversations I was taking part in. So to put it bluntly, I mean, sometimes people would say to me, so, okay, when do you take a shower, Kathy? And I'd say, I mean, you have to understand many of these groups were predominantly men. And so the question like that made me wonder at times where the conversation was going. But I would say, you know, before I go to work, and then they would say, well, see, we work so hard during the day that the first thing we have to do when we come home is take a shower. And so in their mind, how could it be that if I'm sitting behind a desk all day, or if public employees are sitting behind a desk all day, that's hard work. So a lot of times it was defined in that way. But to be honest, a lot of these conversations about who works hard and who's deserving were very intertwined with race and the sense of, you know, the long time stereotypes of which groups of people in the population are lazy, or which groups are

hard workers. And that was in the conversation too. What did you say to that? Did you respond at all? At times. I mean, yeah, how do I describe this? So, yeah, imagine that I'm there with the purpose of listening and acknowledging perspectives and trying not to correct them. And then hearing at times some disturbing perceptions, usually what happened is just as I was about to step in and say something, someone else in the group would offer a slightly different perspective. And then I was able to build on that some, but, you know, stereotypes of laziness are pervasive. And I can't say that I was ever successful in any given conversation of correcting or changing someone's point of view. You said respect wasn't issue as well. I mean, that a lot of these people had to say, and again, we're talking about people in small towns and rural areas that they feel like they're not being listened to and they're not being heard. But

I'm guessing the respect goes beyond that. I mean, how they felt disrespected. Yeah, so it's partly about whether or not they felt listened to, but also whether or not they felt as though their values and their concerns and their lifestyles were taken into account when important decisions in the state or the nation were being made. So there, you know, I had many conversations about different policies that to certain people in certain communities seemed as though they were designed for people in urban settings and were made in a way that was pretty clueless about rural life. So for example, I remember one municipality and people were talking with me about these regulations that were supposed to fill out all this paperwork with respect to gutters. Well, we don't actually have gutters in this town because we don't have sidewalks and we don't really even, you know, we have rows of some of the gravel and such. So conversations like that people felt like see, like we're just

not even on folks radar. Well, no, you were just saying that there was a lot of resentment about public employees and, you know, getting too much from the government. What about, what about their local schools? What do they think about them? It's a complex issue for sure. So on the one hand, people, I mean, I found many people across these different groups very much valuing education and oftentimes would be talking about their school consolidation, for example, as a real threat to their identity in the community in the sense that, you know, when our schools go, what's left in this community? That's kind of the end of the community. But at the same time, telling me things like, we're not opposed to spending on education in general. But, you know, if our taxes go up for education, that money is going to go to Madison and Milwaukee, not to hear. So at the same time, people valued education. They were reluctant to believe

claims that higher taxes would mean improvements in their own local education. So you've been laying out the problem here. I mean, there's this huge political divide. I mean, not just, I mean, we haven't really gotten into the politics of this, but cultural divide, what can we do? I mean, is there a way to bring people together when, I mean, just some degree, you're talking about living in almost different countries? Yeah. Well, my experience of having my eyes opened so much. I mean, I consider myself a lifelong Wisconsinite. I thought of myself as a small town Wisconsin person. I learned pretty quickly that my hometown 7 ,000 people now 9 ,000 or 10 ,000 is not small town Wisconsin, right? That there is so much to be gained from listening to one another. So in our everyday lives, it may be that the rural versus urban divide is difficult to bridge because it is a geographic one. And those of us who say

live in the Madison metro area don't have a lot of experience who are living with people who are living in other parts of the state. And yet we do, right? Some of us travel and we go elsewhere in the state. I think it's worthwhile to go to places not as a tourist, but as someone who truly wants to learn. So how do you do that? I mean, it's one thing to say we need to talk to each other. Any suggestions of how? If I can do it, anybody can do it. I really think, I mean, I'm a very shy person. I mean, just walking into the local gas station, to the local diner, where people gather. Yes, I actually do. I actually think when you're in a grocery store in another community, no, gas stations are easier, honestly, because everybody in town sort of knows that at a certain time of day, that's where this gas station is where people are gathering. To walk in and say, I'm so and so from such and such, do you mind if I join you this morning? You

don't have to be a professor to do that. People, yes, we'll think you're nuts initially, but within seconds, people, if you can convey the sincerity in that, then I'm not doing this for a game. No one's put me up to a bed and I'm not here to tell you something or tell you something, but that you actually want to learn from them. People love to tell you about themselves. How often are we asking each other in our daily lives? I want to know what's on your mind. I want to know what you think. And when you ask that, it's a really wonderful experience. So I don't know if you're going to ask me another question that will allow me to make this plug, but I was not primed to do this, but public radio, right? I mean, really, I sincerely mean that, that I think it's just, it is one of these great public institutions that enables us to listen to one another if we can't travel or we do think that I'm actually nuts and I'm not going to go and walk in

randomly to some gas station and introduce myself, right? But public radio is an opportunity for us to listen to one another. Well, thank you for the plug and thank you for joining us. You're welcome. It's Steve Paulson talking with Kathy Kramer. Kathy's a political scientist and the director of the Margaret Center for Public Service at the University of Wisconsin. She's the author of the Politics of Resentment. Coming up, how to push the Wisconsin idea across class and racial divides. I'm Ann Strangehamps and you're listening to a special broadcast of To the Best of Our Knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio and PRI Public Radio International. It's the Wisconsin idea edition

of To the Best of Our Knowledge recorded in front of a live audience in Madison and I want to introduce you to our next guest. Reverend Alex G grew up in the shadow of the UW campus in Madison. As a boy, he had a paper route. He went to Cub Scouts. He graduated from high school and later from the university and today he's one of the city's senior ministers, pastor of his own church and well -known community leader. And yet, like many black men, he has been the victim of racial profiling right here in his own hometown. He's been pulled over and stopped by police more than once, including in the parking lot of his own church. So two years ago, Alex wrote an electrifying column for a local paper. It's called justified anger. And in it, he challenged his own city, Madison, to wake up to the kind of everyday realities of racism and classism that a lot of people don't see because they don't have to. So how can we talk about the dream of the Wisconsin idea with walls of institutional racism still keeping people

out? Here's Charles Monroe Kane, talking on stage with Reverend Alex G. I want to back up before we get into some things that you're doing now. I have a different question for you because we're Facebook friends and I was looking at this on Facebook with you. Your mom, your mom moved here in 1970. Why did she move here? My mother had a childhood friend who moved to Madison to return to college. At the time, there was a program that was called, I believe it was called the five -year program. I believe Mrs. Ruth Doyle began this on campus. And my mom came into it at the campus. Loved it. She saw the lakes, all the grass, and students going to school barefoot. And she loved it. And she packed us up from the west side of Chicago and moved us to Madison in 1972 to begin studying at the University of Wisconsin Madison. And my mother was a high school dropout. She was in an abusive marriage. It was going through a divorce and moved to this city to attend this campus because she believed that we give her and her children a better life.

And she got her master's degree, right? She got an undergraduate degree. She started in stop. She married my stepfather. She took care of her ailing father. I found some of my mother's old transcripts. She was taking 20 and 21 credits a semester. Brilliant woman still is. I've had me dinner with her after this interview tonight. But she dropped out. When I was a senior, I adhered her to come back to school with me. So my mother and I had three classes together at UW Madison. Yeah, ask me about that sometime. My sister was also here. So the three of us had the same undergraduate advisor, Bill Vanderberg in the African -American History Department. So my mother beat me by one semester. She graduated in May of 85. I graduated in December. But she won a full fellowship to grad school. I was actually a dean on the dean's list as a grad student. Now of course you kept going with it. You went on and not here, but and got your PhD and continued through with education and your mother's footsteps. And you've done many things, your pastor of an amazing church here, Fountain of Life. And you also started organization called Justified Anger, which Ann mentioned. And I wanted to have you share with

people why you started that. What was the thing that got that going for you? Well, I really wasn't trying to start an organization. I already have two full -time jobs. I'm leading, as you mentioned, real thriving, multi -generational, multi -ethnic, multicultural congregation is really youthful. I'm the most tenured pastor in this community. My nonprofit, Nia Maya, will turn 25 years old next year. I actually left my job here on campus to start this nonprofit. So I wasn't trying to find another job. I think the combination of being pulled over by the police in my church parking lot. And it showed my ID and I was 10 feet away from my front door. My white associate pastor was in the parking lot when we pulled up. He was not asked any information. He was actually asked to corroborate my story without showing any identification. I think that coupled with my daughter who was a national honor society student at Madison West was told not to apply to Wisconsin because she would not get in. And then calling the police because someone had broken into our church three weeks before

the grand opening. And I call the police, same parking lot. I call the police and describe myself. I said, I'm an African -American male. I'm 50 years old. My car is black. It's an Acura. My license plate is. And when I share it there with my non -black friends, they looked at me and they said, I never think to describe myself when I call the police. And I think that's the first thing I think to do. So I think Charles the combination of all of those things within a short period of time made me take some pen and paper out. And plus a woman congratulating me for not being an angry black man at downtown Rotary. Maybe call some friends and ask where could I go to begin writing my story. Resonated with people. I started receiving communications from men who were in jail, young boys, mothers telling the stories of their of their of their sons. And people started telling me their stories. I couldn't keep up with email. I was getting hundreds of them. My article came out December 18th of 2013. It was the most red story of that week. I got a call from capital times within a week that it was the 11th most red story of the year.

And it only had a shelf life of 12 days. And so I couldn't keep up with all the emails. And so I just flippantly said, I just have a town hall meeting and I'll tell you why I wrote the article. 600 people showed up at our church in a Saturday and February. And then the wheel just began to turn. I realized that people did not just want to talk about this. They wanted to know how can we organize, how can we collaborate, how can we move just beyond analyzing what's happening. So it was really something that I wasn't trying to do but the momentum has really been carrying me. And it's almost it's taken a lot of my time and energy and not necessarily in a bad way hostage. But it's something I think about Russell with process probably almost every waking moment of my life. Let's go back to your daughter for a second. So she was told not to apply to school here. She did. And not only did she apply, then what happens? She was admitted. She was she was awarded the power's NAP scholarship. So her tuition is paid for all four years. She was invited to join the honors program here at Wisconsin.

She just was hired by the city of Madison's public library to be an intern. She's interested in library science. She's majoring in creative writing and Italian. And she's thriving. But I couldn't understand why she wouldn't apply. Now you have to understand I have eight family members with degrees from Wisconsin. We hold eight degrees. And so when my cousin who will finish law school next year and when my daughter graduates will have 10. And so as a former recruiter in fact I used to work here. This was 905 University back in the day. And as a recruiter I always told students apply at home, apply at home. And it was actually halfway through the tour where she told me that I didn't apply because my counselor told me I wouldn't get in. And she later told me that she didn't want me to become involved because she needed a letter of recommendation from the counselor. She felt that if I went to the school she the counselor would withhold support. So no one talks about the students with two parents, where African -American who have what it takes to go to college,

telling their parents don't come to school, I've got this. Because parents come to school and their children aren't doing well. I don't need you to come to school. And she also told me that her counselor made that recommendation without looking at her grades. That when she went in to get a letter of recommendation for another UW system school, the counselor after telling her not to apply to Wisconsin opened her computer, looked at it and said, wow, you have really good grades. Why aren't you in the National Honor Society? And so my daughter found this out after applying to Madison. Now her grandmother, your mom went here. That's a big 45 -year difference. Sure is. How was their experiences different? This is what's so strange to me. And let me just preference my comment by saying this, I love UW Madison. You cut me, I believe, Red. I love this campus change my mother's life. She came here wearing blacks and

grays. She'd been beaten up inside a survivor of abuse. Of course, I'm the product of that very terrible marriage, but she stuck in it for me. This community gave her a gleam in her eyes. She walked Baskham Hill barefoot. She participated in things. She's brilliant. But as a single mom going through divorce with no high school GED or diploma, she dropped out freshman year. This campus said, we welcome you, come on, we'll give you support for your kids. I don't know if they still do this, but I remember sitting in the old commerce building, the old business school building, it's not great, I forget the name, Ingram. I remember watching cartoons there on Saturdays while my mom took exams. For adult returning students, there were services on campus for kids. I felt welcomed here. I came in through a program that was not for students who were not regularly admissible, but I graduated in four years. But the other thing is, I feel that my daughter is looked at with more suspicion as a national honor society student

than her high school dropout grandmother. And what I can't wrap my mind around it is my mother felt fortunate to be here. My wife and I did. My wife came here in a full track scholarship. She's a national national alum, junior Olympic champion, 400 meters. We met here in school. My daughter calls me from campus and says, Dad, if I did not have a scholarship, I would not be at this campus. She says, I don't believe they want me here. My mother never came home from this campus and said they don't want me here. And she was a student in 70 and 71 and they were still thus smoldering from the physics building blowing up. And she felt she belonged here. My daughter feels that this campus doesn't want her here 45 years later. That's so hard to wrap my brain around. Because of our whole family, she's probably the sharpest student. She's got the best grades, but she's having the worst experience. So here we are. You are a leader. You have the critique. If I can put a hat on you and say, here you go, reboot the system, reboot the Wisconsin idea, roll up your sleeves. I mean, I'm not saying you have to solve the entire problem now, but

what should be done? I mean, should we throw the whole thing out? Should we? What should change to make it more inclusive? Wow, that's that is a great question. I think the idea needs to be revisited to see if it still earns the right to be called an idea. When I read of the history, and again, I love this place. But if the idea is that the resources of this campus belongs to the community, how is it that I grow up two miles south of here in Park Street? And my friends and I don't know this campus. When I started as a freshman, I was chosen to be on a scavenger hunt team because they figured he's from Madison. He knows where all the buildings are. I knew the Memorial Union and Babcock Hall. There's almost an invisible force field. So folks from the community don't come here. Now, I also worked here as a minority recruiter, a minority affairs director for the

School of Pharmacy. And I was a special assistant to David Ward for minority community relations. I did part of Everett Mitchell's job about 20, 25 years ago. When I worked on this campus, we didn't know what was happening in the community. And so I love the verbiage of the idea. I even love the way we influenced policy, whether it's workers' comp or whether it's a small business administration or the work of Dr. Steenbach and others in perfecting what happened with Vitamin D and reading rickets. But we're known in this country as ground zero for the treatment of black men. Where's the extension? Where's the university? Where's the knowledge? When I travel during my doctoral studies to northern part of Thailand, there was a place where in Udon Tani, where there were impoverished women who wanted to become entrepreneurs, the University of Thailand helped them to perfect technology that allowed them to rather than selling 2000 fry or baby tilapia a month. They were

selling a million a month. They offered the technology. These women started home businesses and became self -sufficient economically. I stood there watching that thinking, what is the technology of the university in my hometown that will help me to address the poverty, the reentry realities, and the dropout rates to achievement gap of my community. To me, the idea was founded on those principles and I love those principles. I just want to benefit from those principles. I want to see the idea become to humble the university. When does the community become the teacher? What happens when my ideas clash with the ideas of the university? When will the university sit at the feet of people who roll up their sleeves and deal with the issues of reentry, poverty, abuse, sexual assault every day, and ask what we're learning and partnering together? Why is it that I fly to Seattle to be an adjunct professor? Or this past

semester, I've driven a Chicago every Monday to teach a graduate course in Chicago, but I'm only participant, a panelist on issues of diversity here in Madison, but around the country, around the world, I sit with heads of state, Sri Lanka, India, South Africa, asking my opinion, and I don't know what the inside of a classroom looks like on this campus. So I feel that the idea has got to progress more. I think it's beautiful, I think it's powerful, but I think like many things that happen in our community, it's soft and palatable, and it works, it feels nice and the tongue, but living it out and acting it out is different, and I feel like we've become comfortable, we've taken it for granted, and we are ground zero for the treatment of black men in this country, two miles south of here on Park Street, and there is no meaningful relationship. You can hire someone like a black diversity officer and say, you handle this. It was a constant

idea, it was never relegated to a single individual. It was a concept, which means it's not property, so an idea should be able to transcend color in socioeconomics and time, and something's happened that we've either have changed what we think an idea is, or the idea has run its course, but I'm saying I live in work among some of the most depressed, disgruntled, and disenfranchised people I've ever known, and they don't think of the university as the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth place for help. I feel that this place is recognized for its prowess and its experience more around the world than in South Madison neighborhoods. Amen. Thank you very much. I hope I don't make your donors mad. But I want to be part of the solution. Having said all of that, I turned down jobs in Seattle, in New York, in California, because I want to be a part of the solution, but the

university cannot approach me when there are murders, when someone spat on it, when someone vandalized the building. Talk to me about economics, talk to me about access, talk to me about leadership development, talk to me about transformational leadership, but don't just call me up to the big house because there's some problems out in the field, and you want me to talk to the rest of the community. I have something to say. I have things that I've written, and if you don't honor your native sons and by default, by definition, I should say, you've debunked what it means to have an idea. I'm one of Wisconsin's coolest ideas, and products, and I don't have any method for giving back. Thank you very much. Reverend Alex G. Talking with Charles Monroe King. Reverend G is the head of the Fountain of Life Covenant Church in Madison, Wisconsin, and founder of the Justified Anger Movement. This is a special episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge recorded in front of a live audience in Madison, Wisconsin.

Coming up, the Wisconsin idea, as interpreted through poetry, we'll be talking with Wisconsin's poet laureate. It's to the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio and PRI, Public Radio International. It's to the best of our knowledge, and today we're

bringing you a special episode recorded in front of a live audience in Madison, Wisconsin. The theme, the Wisconsin idea. So far, we've mostly been talking about the politics behind the Wisconsin idea, but it's also a dream, a vision of something that is or could be beautiful. So where do you find the heart of the Wisconsin idea? We asked Wisconsin poet laureate Kim Blazer. She grew up on the White Earth Reservation in Northwest Minnesota, and she's a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. She's also the author of three award -winning books of poems. So we asked her to start off with a poem. So this is called Minoman E .K. G. Jesus. Ricing moon when polling arms grown like autumn winds through white pine. Old rhythms find the hands, bend and pound the rice. Rice kernels falling, falling onto wooden

ribs, canoe bottoms, filling with memories. New moccasins dance the rice, huffs of spirit wind, lift and carry the chafe, blown like tired histories from Birch Park winnowing baskets. Now numbered by pounds, seasons, or generations, lean slivers of parched grain, settle brown and rich, tasting of northern lakes of centuries. Oh, that is so beautiful. So that to me, I have to say Kim, that is a moment that perfectly expresses to me what poetry can do. There was such healing in that one short poem. We've been talking about cultural and political divides about pain and heartbreak and somehow hearing

words that ground us in a landscape that set us in a much deeper history feels like the right thing to hear. So thank you. And tell us about that poem. What went into it? What inspired it? So I guess one of the things that I think about poetry is that it's an active attention. That part of what we do is we let the world reveal itself to us and that we search for beauty meaning healing through language. And for me, because of my background, a lot of times that means relationship with place. So my most recent book was called Apprentice to Justice. And it's divided into sections because I believe that we are apprenticed to many things including place and that part of the way we come to meaning is through

relationship. And one of the most important elemental relationships is our relationship with place. And from that, we can learn so many things about reciprocity, the give and take, about respect, about history, about being a good citizen. So I think for me, that particular poem is a reflection of the way that when we see the world, when we do something in the world, we're not only seeing just what's there. It's the history, it's the stories, it's the generations of experience that make us who we are. So I'm sort of alluding to that because poetry is also gesture, right? It's not only about the surface language, but it's wanting to invite us into an imagination of a larger meaning, which is our larger relationship. Well, one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you for this particular segment on the Wisconsin ideas is because I was thinking

that before Wisconsin was a state, before with a capital and a university and problems, it was a place. It was this land of prairies and woodlands and lakes, great and small. And it seems to me that in your poetry, you're continually trying to give some voice to that land. And I was thinking, well, what would a Wisconsin idea be that grew out of the land itself out of this place? So I think it would be vital in the sense of not static. So if I think about the Wisconsin idea and the idea of knowledge, that comes from, as I said, a relationship so that if we think about being engaged in something, there is a process. And it's the same when we're thinking about

learning, right? It's not, I don't take from my little pocket of knowledge and simply give it to you. There's an exchange, there's a give and take, right? And I think that's what we, you know, that sort of way of being in the world is what we learn by our relationship with the natural world. Because our relationship with the natural world is supposed to be symbiotic in that way, right? It's, there's an interdependence. So there's a reciprocity. There's the give and take. There's the, the sense of our smallness in this immense universe. And yet the fact that in our smallness, we still have a responsibility. I love the echoes. This is the thing I love about to the best of our knowledge. You put three people together and you do these separate interviews and there are these echoes and resonances. So I'm listening to you and I'm thinking about Alex and Kathy talking about wanting to feel more humility, you know, coming from an elite system or Kathy talking about traveling the state and trying to

listen and to be there. I mean, they're both in, in their different ways, calling for reciprocity. And what you're saying is that that is an ethic that we can see growing out of the land itself. Did you learn this from growing up on the White Earth reservation? Is it part of, you know, your native heritage, do you feel? Well, the whole idea of reciprocity is very much embedded in a native idea of being in the world, how we how we live in the world. So that was really a part of it. And I think too that just if we think about so poetry, but more broadly the arts, right? That that is also not only an expression of encounters, ideas, beauty, but it is a path we walk. It's a process of coming to further knowledge. You said poetry is, what did you say, an active attention? Yeah. Yeah. So what is that like in practice? I mean, if you're, I don't know, let's ground this to continue the

metaphor. So you're going, imagine you're going out, you know, walking in a prairie or a woodland, a place you love. What does that active attention look like? Feel like. How do you cultivate it? So how you cultivate it, I think, is partly that you lose that idea of having knowledge, right? That you open yourself in a way to becoming or, you know, like having a being filled, you open yourself to being filled by what's about you. And I think the active attention is just a seeing and re -seeing because the moment that you think I get it, I see I know, I own this idea. Then it has to turn over because it's never static, right? And so in a practical way, if you're in a place and you encounter a

creature, okay? So how you learn about that is by basically you disappearing and observing, right? And so it's a, it's a, it can be, it's an investment. It's an investment over time and seasons to have, and sometimes actually develop a relationship with something with another being, but also sometimes just with that sort of gradual accumulation of, oh, and this is what happens in fall. And oh, this is how they do that. And so that's just like a really basic thing, but there's something about, so for example, to go back to the racing poem, right? So how do we, you know, understand sustenance, right? And to acknowledge that our sustenance comes from place, that this is food that grows on water. That's what it really means to a jibwe people, right?

So that has to mean that we also sustain that place, right? So everything is interrelated and that we can't treat anything badly because it will affect all of this interdependent universe. And that means ultimately on the most selfish level, we don't get our food, right? But more than that is, is that it's the, it's a whole system and we are this tiny little cog in a system. But as I said, we are a cog. We do have a role. And so I think that's kind of some, it's, it's a balancing act of kind of figuring out that ego lists and yet, you know, responsibility, like I'm nothing, but I'm something, right? And, and I think poetry at, it's, you know, and it's heart is about that ambiguity, right? Yeah, so I was going to ask you about poetry, so personal confession. I

love poetry and sometimes I feel like I don't understand it, it depends on the poet. But it seems to me that the job of a poet or a poem is in some ways to say the thing that is just at the edge of your understanding, the thing that somehow seems beautiful, but you can't quite grasp it. And I've never understood a helpful answer to that. I love that, I love that idea that you could, it's something that's just at the edge of your understanding. Our each life who writes about Haiku says that Haiku is not a poem. It's a door half opened, it's a mirror wiped clean, it's a hand beckoning. So it's that idea of coming to experience and, and that it is indeed that just I'm almost there, but it's a process because you keep following it, right? And as a poet you follow it in language. If you ever think you're there, you can't write anymore, right? I think

Zaborska said that a poet, if they're honest, keeps asking the same, okay, must keep saying I don't know, I don't know, because it's a search, it's a search in language for meaning and understanding and beauty, but it's a cycle, right? Because we write, because the world reveals itself, the world reveals itself, because we pay attention. It's like you're describing a natural history of poetry, because I'm thinking that's that's the experience. If you bring that quality of attention to the natural world, that feeling of the door half open, the mystery there is always there. I think if you have, I mean, I'm not a big outdoors person, but I think that people I respect who have a much deeper relationship with the outdoors than I do have very much that feeling that there's always more that they don't understand. They're always, you know, you look into a wild animal's eyes and you're looking into another mind, you will never grasp that mind. So is that what you're talking about? That, and then also that there's a sense

of there being something that we that we can glimpse, right? And so those smallest little pieces of beauty, knowledge, understanding, spirit, bless us, grace us, and that feeds us, and that gives us the strength to continue the journey. But it's this idea that there are things in the natural world. I think of correspondences, you know, like one thing looks like something else, one thing changes before your eyes. You think it's something and it becomes something else like that, right? You think you've seen something, but you're really seeing something else. And I feel like those are natural symbols. Those are nature symbols saying it's not also simple. Guess what? It's very complicated and there are many sides to the world. And that you, I hear it come along, I'll give you a little glimpse about to that side. And so then as a poet, you want to invite the reader in and gesture as well. You don't want everything contained in that poem.

You want that poem to be an invitation for discovery, right? And so the language invites and leaves gaps for the reader to come to those discoveries. Oh, that's beautiful. Can I ask you to end with one more poem? Certainly. Thanks. So this is a fairly new poem. Can I say it's the first time I've read it in public? It's called What the Rain Remembers. Walk hostage and wait. Somewhere, summer, and thunder, will spill truth. Crinkled corn stalks will talk, cicadas friction their voices, the pattern of sun showers on every water surface, a musical code. Memorize the tiny glyph of bird feet, the ancient braille of the

piliated woodpecker. Each eco fact, a sign or pattern, everywhere beneath the dust of human passing, a secret. Mold from earth's clay, a talisman, walk backwards by fours, and when the skies again break us open and filling like rivers, who knows what flat and buried lies, the mythic wash of rain may bear. Thank you. Kimberly Blazer is Wisconsin's poet laureate and her most recent book of poems is called Apprentice to Justice. That's it for this hour. To the best of our knowledge comes to you from Madison, Wisconsin, and the studios of Wisconsin Public Radio. Our staff includes Charles Monroe Cain, Doug Gordon, Craig Ely, and Raymond Tungicar.

Special thanks to Brandy Funk, Cynthia Woodland, Dan Fallon, Connie Beam, and all of our colleagues at Wisconsin Public Radio, who helped make this event happen. Our theme music comes from Steve Mullin from walk west music. Carilla Owen is our technical director. Steve Paulson is our executive producer and I'm Ann Strainchamps. Thanks for joining us. P -R -I Public Radio International.