Last week I was putting together an early draft of a new essay, and I wrote, “In spite of my blind spot when it comes to Clare, I do not think that my daughter is the best thing to ever come out of Wisconsin.” The sentence was to be the lede for a description of the one thing I do consider the best thing to ever come out the state. That one thing the Wisconsin Idea. In a nutshell, the Wisconsin Idea is the belief that all the teaching and all of the research taking place at public universities need to be shared with more than those fortunate enough to attend college. As a result, the first extension agent in the country, maybe in the world, was hired in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Idea might be the most egalitarian concept to ever come out of higher education. The Morrill Act was designed to allow the common man (and eventually the common woman) to go to college.* The Wisconsin Idea says that the Morrill Act didn’t go far enough.
Composing the sentence about the best things to come out of Wisconsin led me to wonder what other noteworthy accomplishments and ideas had originated in state, and I decided to create a Top Ten List. In a matter of seconds, I came up with six “bests.” Those six, in the order that they popped into my head, were the Wisconsin Idea, my daughter Clare, Les Paul’s solid body electric guitar, John Muir, Earth Day, and A Sand County Almanac. I hesitated for several seconds, but then added the Republican Party. It makes the list because of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, not for any of the regressive politics of the past forty years.
I thought a little longer and then added the Green Bay Packers. The Packers make the list not because so many Wisconsinites live and die with the on-field success of the team, but because the organization is owned by the community and not an egotistical billionaire. In some ways, Packers’ ownership springs from the same value system as the Wisconsin Idea.
That left two slots on the list that I had trouble filling. There are several towns in Wisconsin that lay claim to certain firsts, but I doubt the veracity of any of them. As you drive around the state, you may encounter billboards on the outskirts of towns that welcome you to the home of the ice cream sundae, the home of toilet paper, and the home of the hamburger. If I actually believed that any one of these basic joys of life actually originated in Wisconsin, it would be on my the list. I, however, am skeptical.
I do have two placeholders for the last two slots in my Top Ten List. I am ready to replace either of them as soon as something better comes to mind. One is the first American kindergarten, and the other is the first rails-to-trails bicycle route. If Wisconsin had had the first kindergarten in the world, that would merit a permanent place on my list. Even the first one in the country deserves recognition, but if Margarethe Meyer Schurz hadn’t established the first kindergarten in 1856, someone else in Iowa or Pennsylvania or Kentucky would have replicated the German idea a year or two later.
And as far as rails-to-trails, converting abandoned railroad beds into recreation corridors is one the least appreciated good ideas in all of outdoor recreation management. Someone sometime must have had a revelation and realized, “Hey! Much of what people do in nature is linear. Why do we need to set aside a hundred thousand square miles of land so visitors can hike and bike in a straight line?” That realization was a small and simple stroke of genius.
So here, in alphabetical order, is my list. As a Top Ten List, it’s not particularly impressive, but it shouts Wisconsin.
Clare (my daughter)
Earth Day (thanks to Gaylord Nelson)
the Electric Guitar (Les Paul’s solid body design)
the Green Bay Packers (and their 500,000+ owners)
Kindergarten (the first one in America)
Muir, John (America’s greatest naturalist)
the Republican Party (the early years)
A Sand County Almanac (Aldo Leopold’s environmental classic)
the Sparta-Elroy Bicycle Trail (first rails-to-trails)
the Wisconsin Idea (a surviving remnant of Wisconsin’s Progressive Era)
* Women were not allowed to attend Harvard until 1963. Instead women went to its sister school, Radcliffe. The University of Wisconsin, which had no sister school, opened its doors to women in 1863.
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