Year: 2018

For August 8, 2018     Hi WN@TL Fans, In Fall 1977 I took Professor Harold Willis’s course in entomology at UW-Platteville.  It was a lecture/lab class, but Dr. Willis also required each of us …

For August 1, 2018     Hi WN@TL Fans, In February 1994 I moved in to 210 Campbell Street, about four blocks south of the UW campus and three blocks north of Henry Vilas Zoo.  …

For July 25, 2018     Hi WN@TL Fans, Biochemists get to work with at least four types of polymers:  proteins, carbohydrates (eg, starch, cellulose), lipids (eg, long chain fatty acids), and nucleic acids. Figuring …

For July 18, 2018     Hi WN@TL Fans, It is High Summer.  We drive through betasseled corn canyons and past wheat fields ready for the combine or spotted with golden bales worthy of Rumpelstiltskin.  The …

For July 11, 2018     Hi WN@TL Fans, My personal sample size is pretty small—two kids of my own, plus about a dozen nieces and nephews I’ve known since they were born—so I will …

For July 4, 2018     Hi WN@TL Fans, This week, for the 4th of July: a hiatus, a break, a pause.  WN@TL goes dark on a day when little towns all over the country light …

For June 27, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Madison is about 850 miles from the closest salt water—the Inner Harbor at Baltimore—and about 1000 miles from the warm sea water of the Gulf of Mexico.  So …

For June 20, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, As I mentioned two weeks ago, the story of my hometown is driven in no small part by the changing tides of energy production.  Dixon was founded in 1828 as …

For June 13, 2018       Hi WN@TL Fans, I don’t know how many trees were in the Garden of Eden, but for me the two with names — the Tree of Knowledge of Good and …

For June 6, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, I grew up at 118 College Avenue in Dixon, Illinois, two blocks south of Commonwealth Edison’s coal-burning electric power plant on the Rock River.   A spur of the …