Author: Dominic Inouye

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I hiked with my family every late summer and early fall to scan the forest floors of places like Port Townsend and North Bend for matsutake and warabi, “monkey chairs” and chanterelles, our feet sometimes cushioned by blankets of drying pine needles, other times by pungent quilts of rain-soaked mosses. We would lightly cane the ground with our forked walking sticks, pushing up a little mound of dirt that we anticipated would reveal a cache of Japanese pine mushrooms or brushing back a berry bush that just might reveal a patch of bracken...

In anticipation of the month-long series of free, citizen-led neighborhood explorations called Jane’s Walk MKE that I am helping to coordinate this May, I have been contemplating how and why Milwaukee walks by considering how and why humans have walked in the past. This exercise has led me down a rabbit hole of research that I have only begun to scratch – as far back as Homo erectus on the plains of Africa, as unexpectedly as 1920s France, and as recently as the March for Our Lives – but one that has provided me with new pathways for my...

I used to tell my English students that metaphor was the most important rhetorical device humans had ever created. Metaphor compares two seemingly dissimilar things in a new way. It’s a big powerful equal sign (that, in itself, was a metaphor). But metaphor is so much more than poetry to be appreciated or studied in a class–“All the world’s a stage,” “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” “wine-dark sea” or “I know how the caged bird sings”–though these are certainly timeless and lovely parallels. Without metaphor, I would insist, there would have been no Hammurabi’s Code or...

“I came onboard in October, and I already see how important it is, by bringing awareness of the goodness and kindness and fabulous diversity of Milwaukee to its citizens. We only hope that will continue in the form of bringing people together from different parts of the city, to promote positive change and exciting growth for Milwaukee.” – Tracey Thomas Dear Milwaukee, Since the end of September, you have shown me what I already knew, but had not fully seen. You are certainly a sunset skyline with domes and steeples, new high rises and a white-winged museum. But you...