Schuettpelz explores a Native American person’s questions about belonging.

Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz MFA’18 is an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and she has the card to prove it. But for some Native Americans, claiming their tribal identity can be far more complicated. In The Indian Card: Who Gets to Be Native in America, Schuettpelz examines the disparity between the number of Americans who claim Native heritage and those enrolled in tribes; the qualifications for tribal membership according to federal guidelines; and the challenges of identity within Indigenous communities.

Schuettpelz analyzes the ways in which the federal government controls membership in sovereign tribal nations by imposing standards, such as blood quantum, that effectively serve as tools of Native erasure. She interviews other Indigenous people about their efforts to develop their Native identity outside of the bureaucratic definitions of belonging and reflects on her own experiences with enrollment for herself and her children.

“Every person carries multiple identities. … And I know that blood cannot be divided into fractions like an apple — clean-cut and cored; separate and distinct pieces of a whole,” Schuettpelz writes. “But the validation; the evidence: I can’t shake the feeling that this is unique to Native people. That we, uniquely, have been forced into needing to constantly prove our identities to ourselves and others.”

For her work on The Indian Card, Schuettpelz was awarded a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, which recognizes ambitious and essential nonfiction book projects. She is an associate professor of practice and director of undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa’s School of Planning and Public Affairs and was previously a policy adviser in the Obama administration focusing on homelessness and tribal policy.

The book sheds light on the enduring consequences of slavery and systemic racism.

When Lee Hawkins was young, he witnessed his father’s rage in response to wrongdoing. Thirty years later, Hawkins recognizes it as a product of the fear and violence that have followed his family for generations. In I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free, Hawkins identifies the brutality and oppression imposed upon each generation of his family and their undeterred pursuit of the American dream.

As a child in suburban Minnesota, Hawkins knew about the hardships his father faced growing up in Jim Crow–era Alabama. But his research uncovered the violent deaths that occurred in every generation of his family since slavery, including the murder of his great-grandfather when his grandmother was just nine years old. Using genetic testing and historical data, he saw how systemic racism and chronic stress shortened the lives of his ancestors, how the weight of these collective tragedies was passed down, and how his family forged a life in America despite it.

“It was really the ancestors, people who are now ancestors who passed away after giving these interviews, that pushed me along and said it’s important for you to do this,” Hawkins told Minnesota Public Radio in May 2024. “And mainly because of [my great-grandfather] and the fact that he was murdered 100 years ago … by a white man who was never brought to justice. Now I’m a journalist, and I have the power to tell this story.”

Hawkins is also the creator of What Happened in Alabama?, a limited-series podcast in which he examines the intergenerational effects of slavery in his family and his efforts to heal from them. He spent nearly two decades with the Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently a news editor and on-camera reporter. In 2022, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist as the lead reporter on a story series about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.

From rambutan to waffles, the book’s bounty invites readers to a feast of food for thought.

In her latest essay collection, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, Aimee Nezhukumatathil greets her readers, takes their coats, and pulls up a chair. She welcomes them to indulge in a smorgasbord of stories that start with food and that spill into every other facet of life that’s nourished by it. Naturally, she starts at home.

“For what is home if not the first place you learn what does and does not nourish you?” Nezhukumatathil asks in the introduction to Bite by Bite. “The first place you learn to sit still and slow down when someone offers you a bite to eat?”

From here, she guides her readers through a gastronomic examination of the unparalleled power of food and flavor to create associations, evoke memories, trace histories, and tell stories. Rambutan is unruly, much like the author’s curly tresses and her teenage rebellion. Mango is a family tree with roots that cross oceans. Through vignettes steeped in sentiment and finished with thoughtful reflection, Nezhukumatathil invites us to eat, taste, and remember with her.

“[Bite by Bite] uses food to talk about what it means to be human — to love, to learn, to laugh, to lose,” writes Clint Smith, author of the 2022–23 Go Big Read book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America. “Nezhukumatathil’s writing has changed the way I look at food and made me infinitely more grateful for those whom I share it with.”

Nezhukumatathil was the 2000–01 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow in the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and is the author of the New York Times best-selling essay collection World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi.

Despite major changes to Madison’s transportation system, the good old 80 bus continues its traditional route through campus. Bryce Richter

Whether it’s to avoid walking up Bascom Hill, to evade the worst of Wisconsin weather, or to get home safely at night, one thing is certain: Badgers love to take the bus.

Nearly 30 percent of UW–Madison students report riding the bus to campus on nice days, and that percentage doubles during bad weather, according to a 2023 survey by Transportation Services. It’s hard to beat the convenience and cost: the four campus routes serviced by Madison’s Metro Transit — 80, 81, 82, and 84 — are free to use for all riders. Students can also acquire special bus passes, funded by segregated fees and other sources, that allow them to hop on other city routes at no additional cost.

On a university sandwiched between lakes, access to public transportation is all-important. There are only 13,000 campus parking spaces for some 80,000 students and employees (and even more visitors), which means that most students can’t keep cars.

The UW has been encouraging students to use other modes of transportation — including their legs — since at least 1924, when massive traffic jams behind Bascom Hall resulted in the university’s first parking restrictions. The rules forbade students from parking on campus east of the Stock Pavilion, freeing up space for faculty and visitors.

By 1963, campus bus lines were carrying more than 1.5 million passengers during the academic year. But UW students briefly revolted against their favorite motor vehicle. In fall 1966, the City of Madison converted University Avenue into a one-way street pointing west while allowing buses to use a “wrong way” lane heading east. A female student was soon struck by on oncoming bus. That spring, hundreds of UW students — already mobilized by the Vietnam War — protested the wayward lane by blocking an approaching bus with their bodies. The event led to a brief suspension of citywide bus service.

In the late ’60s, some feared that the city would lose its bus service altogether, with ridership rates dropping and the private Madison Bus Company nearing insolvency. The City of Madison purchased the business and formally took over the operation of the bus system in 1970.

Metro Transit has been a steady caretaker of the campus lines ever since. The unlimited-ride student bus passes arrived in the 1990s, and the campus bus routes became fare-free in the early 2000s.

Preparing for its Bus Rapid Transit program, the city launched a massive network redesign in 2023. Most of its routes were reconfigured and renamed with letters instead of numbers, but not the campus lines. So the 80 bus — reliably running every five minutes at peak times — lives on.

The contents of a kid’s pockets after a day of play become works of art.

For Mary Jo Hoffman ’87, morning walks aren’t times to zone out, but rather to pay attention. In Still: The Art of Noticing, Hoffman compiles more than a decade’s worth of found objects and keen observations in a volume that invites readers to stop and stay a while in its pages, and to do some noticing of their own.

Still began on January 1, 2012. After leaving her 17-year career in aerospace engineering, Hoffman committed to capturing one image per day of an object in nature, which she shared on her blog, stillblog.net. Her photos celebrate the varied ecosystems of her Shoreview, Minnesota, home: a radiant ladder of sumac branches, a summer windowsill’s worth of dead insects, a gradient of dried flowers, and a mesmerizing arrangement of fruit pits.

“Dear Universe,” the pit post begins, “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. And you seem to want to keep adding more. Please know that I will do my best, but that [at] the moment my plate [is] full. … If your needs are urgent, you may want to find another solution.”

Over 12 years, Hoffman’s blog has garnered the attention of Martha Stewart, Better Homes & Gardens, and Midwest Living. It has inspired collaborations with Target, West Elm, the United States Botanic Garden, and the Scottish National Opera. Now in print, Still brings Hoffman’s sharp eye and earthy wisdom to home libraries.

“What four thousand images (and counting) have shown me is that the daily discipline of looking at the world eventually becomes the habit of living in the world,” Hoffman writes.

In Still’s insightful essays, topics range from the philosophies behind her work to “The 72 Microseasons of the North,” based on a concept from an ancient Japanese seasonal calendar.

“The images are stunning. … But don’t skip past the words,” writes Hannah Agran of Midwest Living. “Hoffman’s intimate, engaging essays opened my mind to new ways of thinking about the natural world and the creative process.”

“It’s like every difficulty you might be having in your own life completely melts away,” says Cecil x’26, a third-year Bucky who is pursuing a teaching degree. “Your only job is to be a giant magnet of love.”

This year, eight students get to be that giant magnet. For these select few — chosen during three days of intense tryouts each spring — nothing tops the thrill of a home football game at Camp Randall Stadium. It’s the marquee event, a massive canvas for Bucky’s wildest stunts, best dance moves, and most inspired improv shtick.

“It’s your own playground you get to goof around on,” says Nolan x’26, a biomedical engineering major and a third-year Bucky. “You just try to forget that you’re doing it in front of nearly 80,000 people.”

Last season, the September 7 matchup between the UW and the University of South Dakota Coyotes showed the complex Bucky Badger operation in action, from planning to execution to last-minute tweaks. It provided an object lesson in being Bucky: on the one hand, the overwhelming physical demands and performance anxiety; and on the other, the indescribable joy of pleasing a stadium’s worth of cheering UW fans.

“Bucky gets away with a lot”

A Badger football home game activates the entire Bucky squad — all eight students are required to be at Camp Randall. Three will take turns portraying Bucky during the game (a nod to the exertion required), while the others will retrieve props, run interference, film Bucky for highlight reels, or help hoist the “Bucky board” for the mascot’s popular airborne push-ups.

Bucky’s workday starts hours before kickoff at tailgate parties across campus. On this day, five students fan out to groups that have requested a Bucky appearance, including the ROTC Badger Battalion and the School of Veterinary Medicine. The students are careful never to intersect. (If you ever see two Buckys at once, something has gone seriously wrong in the universe.)

Later, in the warm-up to kickoff, Bucky works the crowd at Badger Bash, the rollicking tailgate party at Union South. Today, Cecil is in the suit. New Buckys revere the veteran. “He’s a blueprint for what Bucky should be — very animated, never still, great with props,” says Charlie x’27, a legal studies major and a first-year Bucky.

Despite the costume’s limited vision, Cecil careens full throttle through Union South, high-fiving fans. He arm-wrestles a burly guy, gives a grumpy man a back rub, seizes a plate of food and balances it precariously atop three soda cans.

“Bucky gets away with a lot,” says Zach x’27, a pre-nursing major and first-year Bucky. All the while, fans beseech Bucky for attention, some grabbing and jostling him as if there isn’t a real person inside. Michelle Brayer Gregoire ’95 of Milwaukee couldn’t be more respectful. She asks Bucky to pose for a photo with her and her mother, Mary Kathleen Conway Thurow ’65, age 81, of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Afterward, Gregoire squeezes Bucky’s paw. “Thank you for bringing so much happiness to so many people,” she tells him.

The scene repeats itself about 1,000 times on this day.

“Bucky pool party!”

Once Bucky finishes his Badger Bash duties, all eight students gather an hour before kickoff at the McClain Center, the indoor training space next to Camp Randall. It’s a high-stakes moment. During the fourth quarter of each home game, Bucky gets to put on a skit in front of the student section. But first, Bucky must perform it to an audience of one: Josette Jaucian ’97, director of the Wisconsin Spirit Squad.

Think of her as Bucky’s overlord, in a good way. (See sidebar.) She manages everything from the tryouts to requests for appearances. She’s not Bucky’s coach — there isn’t one; the veterans show the ropes to newcomers — but she is his protector.

“I remind the students that they’re not just representing the athletic department, they’re representing the university and the entire state,” she says. “They need to be family-friendly and smart about their choices.” That’s all to say that if there’s any controversial or questionable content in the skit, it’s not going to happen.

The eight students have a lot of autonomy in coming up with skit ideas, and they throw everything they have at it weeks before each game.

“It’s our two minutes during the game to really shine, to show off what we can do — props, crowd involvement, a well-crafted storyline,” says Jacob x’26, a mechanical engineering and data sciences major and a third-year Bucky.

At a brainstorming session for the Coyotes game, Zach, who will be the primary Bucky, pitches his skit idea to the rest of the Buckys.

“The weather is likely to be hot,” he tells them. “I think we should take advantage of that: Bucky Pool Party!”

The others love the idea. The next 30 minutes are electric. Ideas fly back and forth and build off each other. It’s decided: Bucky will wear a swimsuit and goggles and dive from the top of a milk crate into an inflatable kiddie pool filled with real water!

Two days later, it falls to Jacob to run the idea past Jaucian for preliminary approval. The other Buckys are there, too, anxiously awaiting her answer.

“No water,” she says immediately.

The Buckys are deflated but take it surprisingly well.

“We learned early on that when Jo says no, stop talking,” Jacob says. “You do not change Jo’s mind.”

There is grudging respect for her authority.

“She’s like our parent,” Nolan says. “There has to be a person who says you can’t have 10 lollipops for dinner.”

The skit is revamped — Bucky will jump into a dry pool filled with pillows. At the McClain Center before the Coyotes game, Jaucian gives the revised skit the thumbs up.

Zach and Cecil grab each other and jump up and down. “She said yes! She said yes!”

The Boss of Bucky

She’s known affectionately as “Bucky’s Mom.” And sometimes “Bucky’s Parole Officer.”

Perhaps no one loves Bucky quite as much as Josette Jaucian ’97 — or reins him in quite so expertly when he strays.

“Sometimes, as Buckys, the students think they’re invincible,” she says. “They’re not. There are rules.”

Jaucian, as director of the Wisconsin Spirit Squad, oversees the cheerleading, dance, and Bucky teams. She handles all the behind-the-scenes administrative tasks for Bucky, including coordinating some 600 appearances a year. She’s celebrating her 25th anniversary in the role.

“Day in and day out, Bucky’s all around me all the time,” she says.

Jaucian, a kinesiology major, was a Badger cheerleader throughout her undergraduate years, then stayed on as an assistant and rose up the ranks.

She fields complaints about Bucky (“He broke a table!”) but also gets to hear the praise — for example, “Bucky got my child to come out of his shell.” She zealously guards Bucky’s image. Once, when a fan from an opposing team tried to claim that Bucky had flipped him off, Jaucian enjoyed letting him know that the UW–Madison mascot has only four digits on each hand. It is mathematically impossible for Bucky to give someone the middle finger.

The Buckys speak of Jaucian with immense respect and a wee bit of fear.

“She’s the boss,” Nolan says. “You don’t want to get on Jo’s bad side.”

“As much as Jo is the person who has to say no,” adds Cecil, “she’s also the one who fights for us when we need something.”

Jaucian has done the job so long that she must occasionally remind herself of its specialness.

“If I step back a bit,” she says, “I realize how amazing it is to be able to make sure Bucky is out there making people happy.”

— D.E.

“I’ve experienced so much as Bucky”

The game clock reads seven minutes to kickoff. Bucky is waiting in a tunnel on the back of the Bucky Wagon, the restored fire engine that will take him onto the field. Zach is now suited up. (For logistical and sanitary reasons, there are eight suits, one per Bucky.) This is his first home game, and he has the biggest role of the day.

“When you hit the field on the Bucky Wagon, the whole world goes quiet,” Cecil says. “It’s like someone has put the volume on mute. Nothing else matters for a span of four hours.” Despite the pressure, Zach has been calm in the days leading up to his Camp Randall debut. He was a three-sport athlete in high school and thrived off the energy of crowds. That’s part of the appeal of being Bucky. “I was missing that feeling of a big game,” he says.

The Bucky Wagon zooms onto the field, sirens blazing and faux smoke billowing. Bucky disembarks at the 50-yard line and makes a figure eight with a giant W flag. He beelines toward the opposing sideline, then takes a sharp turn and heads to his rightful home in front of the Badger student section. The Buckys practice this maneuver many times, partly because they need to be prepared for the physical toll of carrying a massive, drag-creating flag while sprinting in a suit that weighs 33 pounds. “Brutal,” Nolan says.

Another physical test comes just minutes into the game when the Badgers score a touchdown. Zach cranks out seven push-ups atop the Bucky board as fans yell each number: “one … two … three …”

“The crowd will try to make you go faster,” Cecil had warned Zach before the game. “Don’t fall for it.”

The push-ups become cumulative as the Badgers continue to score. Once, Bucky had to do close to 600 at a single game. To prepare, each Bucky commits to doing at least 100 push-ups a day. They are also required to lift weights twice a week with the rest of the Spirit Squad.

By the end of the first quarter, the air temperature has climbed to the mid-60s — mild for fans but hot for Bucky. “It’s an extra 20 to 30 degrees inside the suit,” Nolan says.

In a seamless swap, Jacob wears the suit for the second quarter. He’s a pro, unflappable. “I’ve experienced so much as Bucky that nothing really fazes me anymore,” he says. “I went skydiving and felt no adrenaline.”

“Bucky is the gold standard”

Halftime finds the crew in a locker room taking a lunch break and consorting with “the enemy” — Charlie Coyote, the mascot for the opposing team.

“We try to be very hospitable, because we’d want that, too,” Jacob says.

Charlie Coyote is portrayed on this day by Caleb, a University of South Dakota law student. Turns out the Buckys know him from college mascot summer camp. Caleb is the opposite of a trash-talker.

“Bucky is the gold standard for Big Ten mascots and mascots in general,” he says. “No one beats Bucky in keeping the energy of the fans going.”

Caleb is also a little jealous. He points to his costume’s massive lower paws.

“Bucky gets to wear regular shoes. I’ve got these clunky feet. They’re awful. I can’t do push-ups with them.”

For the third quarter, Charlie is in the Bucky suit. Together with Zach and Jacob, the three have displayed an impressive range of creativity during the game. Bucky rides a cooler like a horse, bumps bellies with a member of the event staff, pretends to vacuum the end zone.

“The best part of Bucky on a game day is the unpredictability of it and the sheer spontaneity,” Cecil says. “Sometimes you think you’ve seen Bucky do everything, and then you see something new.”

Zach, back in the suit, performs the skit during the fourth quarter. Atop the milk crate, Bucky cannonballs into the kiddie pool after getting fans to clap wildly and yell, “Jump! Jump!” Five front-row fans raise scoring cards giving Bucky across-the-board 10s. Snippets of the skit appear on the jumbotron, visible to the sellout crowd of 76,061. This is the Holy Grail for a Bucky skit. The game ends with the Badgers triumphant: 27–13. During the postgame Fifth Quarter, Bucky is joined on the field by the other seven students out of costume. They release the stress of the game by roughhousing and tackling each other. All eight do headstands together and sway back and forth to “Varsity.”

“There is so much that goes into being Bucky that you can’t tell other people about,” says Cecil, who lives in a house near Camp Randall with four other Buckys. “To be able to share life with these guys inside and outside the suit is so special.”

“Sometimes when we’re together, we talk about Bucky way too much and have to say, ‘Okay, let’s cut it out,’ ” Zach says.

“Making Bucky better”

Back in the locker room after the game, the Buckys sit in a circle and debrief. There’s universal agreement that this performance was among the all-time greats.

“That was what I would want every game day to look like,” Jacob tells the group. “Every single one of us was in the suit at some point today. The amount we did, and the cohesiveness on the field, felt amazing.”

“In my three years here, I’ve yet to see a moment like what I witnessed during the skit,” Cecil says. “The whole crowd was into it. The chanting started at the bottom of the stands and went all the way to the top. Zach, I was so proud of you.”

Everyone wants to hear from the first-timers.

Charlie cops to having been nervous before the game but says he “became entranced in a flow state” by the end of his quarter. Zach feels like he started off a little stiff during the first quarter but gradually improved.

“Every time we have an event like this,” Zach tells them, “it shows the dynamic we have together and why I want to be a part of this and keep making Bucky better and better, because it’s all about Bucky.”

Not all games go this well. Sometimes there are communication problems or suit malfunctions. Regardless, every home game ends the same for the Buckys.

“No matter what happens during the game,” Jacob says, “we leave it in the locker room and walk out together.”

Doug Erickson is a writer for the UW Office of Strategic Communication and — full disclosure — a South Dakota native, ever so slightly sympathetic to the Coyotes.

Published in the Spring 2025 issue.

Doug Moe, left, chats with Leckrone about their new book on the 50-year evolution of UW bands. Andy Manis

The Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA) hosted a special Wisconsin Idea Spotlight event in December featuring former UW–Madison director of bands Mike Leckrone and Madison author Doug Moe ’79, celebrating their new book, Moments of Happiness: A Wisconsin Band Story.

The event gave attendees an intimate look into Leckrone’s 50-year career and the evolution of the university’s bands, which the legendary director transformed into the celebrated institutions we know today.

The book’s title stems from Leckrone’s speech to band members before his first Rose Bowl (1994), encouraging them to cherish positive moments to help them through challenging times. “ ‘There are going to be some bad times, but think about the moments of happiness.’ And it’s just kind of stuck with me ever since,” he reflected. This philosophy, along with lessons learned from his father about pushing beyond perceived limitations, shaped Leckrone’s transformative leadership of the program.

That first Rose Bowl is among Leckrone’s most cherished memories. “It wasn’t just a moment. It was everything that was going on at that time. The whole state came together,” he remembered.

Leckrone explained that he credits his grandfather for part of his philosophy of life. “My grandfather used to say, ‘If you think you can’t, you can’t.’ And I firmly believe that, so I used that philosophy to push the kids.”

Throughout his tenure, Leckrone developed lasting traditions, including the band’s motto, “Eat a rock,” which emerged from an impromptu pep talk about toughness. Even during the football program’s challenging years, the band maintained its reputation for excellence and became a main attraction at games.

Now retired, Leckrone told the audience that what he misses most is daily interactions with band members, whom he still views as “kids” even decades after their graduation. “I still can see that kid in them, even if they come back and they’ve been out of the band for maybe 20 years,” he said.

The difficulties of a long-distance relationship made the bond between Shaver and Kunin grow stronger. Lauren Page

How do two professional hockey players on separate teams make a romance work? For Luke Kunin x’19 and Sophia Shaver ’19, the difficulties of a long-distance relationship made their bond stronger.

The two met in the summer of 2015, when Kunin, from suburban Saint Louis, and Shaver, from suburban Minneapolis, arrived at UW–Madison. Housed in Merit Hall, they started hanging out and quickly became friends. She was drawn to his goofy, easygoing nature. He liked her kind and caring manner. The friendship deepened in the fall, when he asked her out on their first proper date. “I finally figured it out and took her someplace nice — the Tornado Room,” Luke says.

Their relationship blossomed alongside their success on the ice. In 2016–17, Luke captained the UW men’s team — an unusual accomplishment for a sophomore. After that season, he turned pro, splitting time between the Minnesota Wild and their minor league affiliate in Iowa.

Sophia stayed at Wisconsin two more years, captaining the women’s team her senior year, 2018–19, and scoring the winning goal in the NCAA championship final. After graduating with a major in real estate and urban land economics, she turned pro, making her and Luke the only NHL_PWHL couple in professional hockey. (Marie-Philip Poulin and Laura Stacey, both teammates for the PWHL’s Montreal Victoire, are another prominent hockey couple who married in 2024.)

Sophia played four seasons with the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) and this last year with the Minnesota team of the newly formed Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL).

Luke was traded to the Nashville Predators in 2020. Sophia was able to join him for a period when the Olympic schedule put the PWHPA season on hold. But when she resumed her career and he got traded to the San Jose Sharks in 2022, it was back to FaceTime calls and sporadic visits. “It’s not easy,” Luke says, “but if you get through it, it makes your relationship stronger.”

After eight years of dating, they got married in July 2023. Going into the 2023–24 season with the Minnesota PWHL team, Sophia knew it would be her last. So it was extra special when her team won the season championship and Luke was able to be there to watch in person.

In June 2024, Sophia announced her retirement, and two weeks later Luke signed a one-year, $2.75 million contract with the Sharks. “I’m ready to settle down, live in the same area, and start a family,” Sophia says.

They’ll spend the season together in San Jose and eventually settle in Minnesota, where they recently bought a home — so they can live in the same city at last.

Nature Calls is legendary for quirky touches such as a prairie-grass wall design and scrap-metal animal sculptures. Photo and Video by Althea Dotzour

At UW–Madison, you can spark a debate by asking about favorite study spots or local hangouts. But there’s broad consensus when it comes to the best place to freshen up between classes: the wryly named Nature Calls bathrooms on the first floor of Nancy Nicholas Hall, home to the School of Human Ecology.

The topic of the most pleasant lavatory on campus pops up with amusing frequency on the UW–Madison Reddit channel. Invariably, the top commenters nominate Nature Calls, with praise that seems over the top for a washroom.

“The cans … are legendary.”

“It’s a tropical experience you’ll not soon forget.”

“It is truly a magical experience.”

Once you walk into the facilities, you can see — and hear — why. The soothing sounds of nature, from chirping birds and a babbling brook to rain and thunder, emanate from overhead speakers. The sights are equally captivating: a swirling, stream-like floor design embedded with river rock; a tree stump propping up a pebble-filled countertop; resin-paneled walls wrapped with a prairie-grass design; a deep blue ceiling with twinkling fiberoptic lights that mimic a starry midnight sky.

Quirky touches round out Nature Calls, including bright red stalls that imitate English telephone booths (a droll reference to “calls”). Mounted above each stall is another artistic spin on nature, with scrap-metal sculptures of animal heads. The men’s and women’s bathrooms have identical layouts, save for a urinal replacing a stall in the former.

Nature Calls debuted in 2012 with the opening of the new wing of Nancy Nicholas Hall, designed by Sasaki Associates in Boston and local architect Diana Dorschner. But its inspiration dates to the School of Human Ecology’s original building. After an orange velvet couch and an inflatable cow mysteriously appeared in the women’s bathroom, visitors started to leave behind their own whimsical decorations. It became such a source of pride that Professor Beverly Gordon ’68, PhD’84 wrote a nearly 10,000-word academic article on the phenomenon in 2003, titled “Embodiment, Community Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in ‘Restroom World.’ ”

Nature Calls preserves this communal spirit and even includes a wall of shelving in the entryway, inviting visitors to continue the tradition of creative contributions.

As the entry sign reads: “A touch of humor. A play on words. A destination for all.”

Wells: “If you’re a food lover, you get something out of every meal.” Photo courtesy of Patricia Wells

In the introduction to her James Beard Award–winning cookbook Simply French, Patricia Wells MA’72 describes the cuisine of acclaimed chef and restaurateur Joël Robuchon as cuisine actuelle, an approach to cooking that celebrates and elevates the essential flavors of seasonal ingredients.

“His rule was that our jobs as cooks — as chefs — is not to make a mushroom taste like a carrot,” she says. “Our job is to make a mushroom taste as much like a mushroom as it can.”

Wells credits her time shadowing the late Robuchon, considered one of the greatest chefs in the world, with a profound influence on her own cooking. But her reverence for simplicity and her thoughtful appreciation of seasonality — in food, in places, and in people — can only be described as Wells actuelle.

Over the course of almost 50 years, most of which have been divided between a chic Paris apartment and a charming Provençal farmhouse, Wells has traversed the culinary world with elegance and humility, regarded it with admiration and fascination, and rewarded it with sparkling homages to the life’s work of people who, like her, know what it means to truly love food.

“If you’re a food lover, you get something out of every meal,” Wells says. “Food offers so much pleasure every single day.”

In Wells actuelle, loving food is a timeless art form, and throughout her career, Wells has become an international authority on both fine cuisine and simple pleasures.

Well-Read and Well-Fed

Wells didn’t set out to be a food journalist, but Wells actuelle was in the works long before her first culinary byline was published. Growing up in Milwaukee in the 1950s, Wells (née Kleiber) can’t recall a meal that came from a freezer or a takeout bag.

“I grew up thinking I’d always have great food to eat,” she says. “Everything was homemade, and the cookie jar was always full.”

Wells’s mother, Vera, was a first-generation Italian American. Her maternal grandfather, Felix Ricci, came to the United States from the Abruzzi region of southern Italy in 1915. After landing in New York City, he traveled to Wisconsin to join a growing population of southern-Italian immigrants and established a dairy farm in Cumberland. Wells and her family paid regular visits there throughout her childhood.

Wells was also as well-read as she was well-fed. Her father worked for Gimbels department store and returned from buying trips in New York City with stacks of daily newspapers that his children pored over. “When I was in third grade, I remember we were writing on the blackboard, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ ” Wells says, “And I wrote, journalist.”

She followed the scent of newsprint to the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee for an undergraduate degree in journalism before heading to UW–Madison for a master’s in reporting, specializing in art history. She moved to Washington, DC, where she was hired as a part-time editor at the Washington Post (the very same week as the Watergate break-in) and was given a column on art galleries.

It didn’t take long for Wells to tire of the art beat. In 1976, she moved to New York City to work as a copy editor for the New York Times, where she landed her first gig as a food writer under editor Craig Claiborne. It was also at the Times that she met her husband of nearly 50 years, Walter Wells.

In 1980, the couple moved to Paris for Walter’s new job as managing editor of the International Herald Tribune, an English-language newspaper with readers in 164 countries. Wells joined him as the Herald Tribune’s global restaurant critic. The move, a two-year sojourn that’s lasted 45 years, marked the beginning of Wells’s storied career as one of the world’s foremost voices on French cuisine.

An American in Paris

If Julia Child brought French cuisine to American kitchens, Wells actuelle teaches Americans to think like French chefs.

In addition to penning her restaurant column in the Herald Tribune, Wells became a prolific author. Just four years after moving to Paris, she released The Food Lover’s Guide to Paris, a robust collection of eateries and culinary storefronts that has gone through five editions and turned into an app. Paris was followed quickly by A Food Lover’s Guide to France (1987), Bistro Cooking (1989), Simply French: Patricia Wells Presents the Cuisine of Joël Robuchon (1991), and 14 more cookbooks and memoirs.

From 1988 to 1991, Wells was the restaurant critic for newsweekly L’Express and became the first American woman to hold such a position on a French-language publication. She’s won four James Beard Awards and has been recognized by the French government for her service to the country’s culture and cuisine.

But before Wells was embraced as an ambassador of France’s culinary scene, its old guard bristled at the prospect of their new American colleague.

“The French critics hated me!” she says. “They wouldn’t believe that not just a woman, but an American woman, was going to supersede them or compete with them.” Fortunately, Wells could only laugh.

“I remember one of the famous French chefs who was on TV said, ‘Oh, that woman, she’s just a hamburger lady from America.’ ”

None of this deterred Wells, who endured sexist sommeliers and research excursions during which she and her assistant were the sole women eating lunch in restaurants clouded with cigar smoke. As in her cooking, she remained diligent and meticulous in her research. “I would go three times to a restaurant,” she says. “One time with a female friend at lunch; one time with my husband on a weeknight; and one night on a weekend with another couple.” After the third visit, she would introduce herself (having made the reservation under another name) and ask to spend a day in the kitchen.

“Spending a day in the kitchen would teach you a whole lot about the restaurant,” she says. “That was such a luxury.”

It was through these kitchen visits that Wells forged many of her relationships with France’s esteemed chefs, including Robuchon. Observing the preparation and execution of a recipe and re-creating it in her home kitchen was also an invaluable culinary education that, true to her Midwestern generosity, she couldn’t help but share.

In 1995, Wells, along with Walter, opened At Home with Patricia Wells, an intimate cooking school hosted in their 18th-century farmhouse, Chanteduc, in Provence. Wells led small groups in weeklong classes designed to impart kitchen skills and techniques, and to deepen participants’ appreciation and understanding of French cuisine. Later, they opened a second school out of their Paris atelier.

In January, nearly 30 years after the first At Home with Patricia Wells cohort convened at Chanteduc, Wells taught her final class — Black Truffle Cooking Extravaganza, her favorite — officially closing the book on her culinary career.

Always in Season

“I was listening to a friend who’s a singer the other day. And I had thought earlier in the day: I don’t cook the things I used to cook 30 years ago,” Wells says. “And I was wondering, do you still sing the songs you sang 30 years ago?”

While Wells’s skill set may not suffer the strains of age like a vocalist’s pipes, her cooking has nonetheless shed its former extravagance in favor of something better suited to her present lifestyle.

“If I taught the recipes I’m making today, they’d say, ‘Why’d I pay for this cooking class? I’m only learning to steam or I’m only learning to sear!’ ”

But Wells isn’t teaching cooking classes anymore. She doesn’t have any more books coming off the press, and she won’t be reviewing a restaurant any time soon.

“I’m not sure I could be a restaurant critic for the modern cuisine of France right now,” she says. “Those chefs have a totally different palate than mine.”

Instead, her tastes have returned to the ones she knew before France, and the ones that have always endeared her to her adopted country. In a serendipitous antecedent to her later classification of Robuchon’s cuisine, Wells wrote in a 1979 New York Times column titled “Fish Boil: Culinary Tradition in Bunyan Country” that Midwestern meals are measured, in part, on the “unpretentious use of what is fresh and at hand.”

Today, she and Walter sear sea bass in oil, butter, salt, and pepper in their home kitchen and serve it with salad and wine. Dessert, no longer the show-stopping pastries of her heyday, is a homemade sorbet. Meals are prepared with ingredients from the timeless mainstay that has enchanted Wells in every season of the year since she first came to France: the local market. “We were out this afternoon having lunch in France, in Le Marais, and we were passing markets, and I just thought, ‘Thank God France still does everything in terms of season,’ ” she says. “People get excited about the opening of something, and it’s great that there’s a seasonality with everything.”

People includes Wells, who enthusiastically rattles off the bounty that featured in market stalls during their visit: walnuts, grapes, figs, sea scallops, and Vacherin Mont d’Or (a cheese only available from September through March). She laments the merchants who disappeared after markets were disrupted during the pandemic — including the peppercorn vendor who dubbed her “Madame Timut” after her preferred variety — and commends young people for taking up traditional trades like farming and cheesemaking.

“Sometimes I go to the market even when I don’t need anything,” she says. “Sometimes I go to the market and spend five euro just for the experience.”

Apart from the author herself, perhaps her beloved markets are most emblematic of Wells actuelle: gregarious, generous, good-natured, humble, homegrown, and at once both seasonal and timeless. •