Wisconsin Life

Corn has been grown for thousands of years across North America, and tribes have been making corn soup for generations. Each tribe has their own method and strain of corn for cooking this traditional dish. WPR’s Danielle Kaeding caught up with a Red Cliff tribal member who cooks a Potawatomi-style corn soup handed down from her husband’s family. It’s part of the Wisconsin Life series, Food Traditions.

Winter can take its toll on your mind. The walls close in. The sky is grey and the snow piles up. Every morning you bundle up, scrape the windshield, crank the heat, and trudge to work. Then the call comes, “Hey Steve, wanna play poker Saturday night? Give me a call if you can make it.” WPR’s Steve Gotcher takes us to a night of backyard poker inside a tent.

Green Bay Packers fans are a proud community. It’s not just the tailgating in freezing temperatures or the adrenaline rush of witnessing a Hail Mary, but fans love that their team is the only publicly-owned NFL team. Mary Jane Herber and Molly Schroeder, two Brown County librarians, talked about their love of the green and gold as part of a StoryCorps Mobile Tour stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

The simple wholesome act of baking a loaf of bread can fill your kitchen with warm aromas and quiet your mind. That is, unless you’re writer BJ Hollars of Eau Claire. For him, it’s a little more complicated.

The quiet, snowy days of winter have a way of compelling us to reflect on our lives. For writer Jill Sisson Quinn, a sledding excursion in central Wisconsin with her son teaches a bittersweet lesson of growing, and letting go.

Deer hunting is a family tradition for many people in Wisconsin. But what do you do with the venison once you get home? As Briana Rupel tells us, her family in northern Wisconsin gets together to cold-smoke sausage.

Cats are special companions to many people, including Shawn and Hilary Redner. The couple love cats so much they created Redner’s Rescued Cat Figurine Mewseum, where they display thousands of cat-related figurines from around the world. WPR producer — and cat lover — Trina La Susa ventured to Menomonee Falls to check out the collection.

Sports have a special way of bringing a diverse group of people together, even if the fans aren’t rooting for the same teams. Dr. Arif Ahmad reflects on a cricket tournament in Madison where the pre-game jitters were high. It wasn’t necessarily because of the tournament itself, but because of the countries many of the players came from: India and Pakistan — two countries with decades of tension. The writer and cardiologist shares a poem about that day.

People do a lot to make the best of Wisconsin’s brutal winters. Some strap on some snowshoes or hit the sledding hills. The extremists participate in Polar Plunges. As Milwaukee historian and author John Gurda reminds us, the winter thrill seekers have been thriving in the area for a long time.

Ernesto Rodriguez of La Crosse, Wisconsin came to the state in the summer of 1980. That’s after making a treacherous journey on a fishing boat from Cuba to the United States during the mass exodus known as the Mariel boatlift. Forty years later, he’s finally achieving a goal he’s had since arriving: becoming a U.S. citizen. Erne’s story was originally featured on the podcast, “WPR Reports: Uprooted.” We revisit this story as one of our favorite features of 2023.