Category: Nonfiction
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The Wisconsin Writers Association (WWA) Jade Ring Contest opened May 1, 2016, accepting unpublished material only. Entries close July 31, 2016. Three categories are offered: Poetry: All poems, from free verse to formal and everything in between. If it’s a poem, submit to this category. The maximum length is 75 lines. Fiction: All fiction, from […]
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Isherwood: Love Your Neighborhood Lady…Bug
My desk it seems is the natural habitat and reserve for the Asian lady beetle, a.k.a. Harmonia axyridis. If you Google “Asian Lady Beetle” the first site to appear will be for Asian Lady Beetle control…including the gallon size Asian Lady Beetle and Boxelder bug killer, $15.97 at Home Depot, the Ortho Pest Control Home […]
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Lockwood Gallery Opening, Orchid Propagation & More Weekend Plans
The Door Peninsula is alive with the sights and sounds of spring. While you wait for the temperatures to catch up, why not fill your weekend with celebrations of art, orchids, music, Arbor Day and the month of May? We’ve got all of that and more in our top picks for the weekend ahead. Friday, […]
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Isherwood: A Smidgeon, A Tad, A Touch
Some people don’t know a smidgeon is a real unit of measure. Same for a touch, a tweak, a trifle. Add a tad, a freck, a bit. Most people don’t know tape measure units come in inches and smidgeons, kinda depends on how dark it is, or if you’re wearing glasses, or if hurry counts. […]
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Isherwood: Interest, As Huck Finn Understood the Business
The fans of Mister Mark Twain hold Mark Twain ought have stood for the presidency, if for no other reason than to establish an historical precedent. An alternative to the tired tradition of advancing ex-generals, ex-senators, career politicos, along with miscellaneous capitalists and movie stars to that office, that a decent nation ought occasionally favor […]
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Book Review: ‘Ship Captain’s Daughter: Growing Up on the Great Lakes’
The jacket of Ann Lewis’ memoir Ship Captain’s Daughter features a photograph of a little girl standing on a dock waving at a Great Lakes cargo ship, an appropriate image to capture the life of a daughter whose father, Willis Michler, each year spent the season from early spring through late fall sailing on a […]
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Introducing the 2016 Hal Prize Judges
The Peninsula Pulse proudly introduces the judges for the 2016 Hal Prize, offering publication in our annual Literary Issue, cash awards and other prizes, a week stay at Write On, Door County, and a class at Peninsula School of Art. Poetry Judge Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry, […]
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Fire & Ice, Short Film Fest & More Weekend Plans
Sturgeon Bay will take its turn hosting a winter festival this weekend as they celebrate their annual Fire & Ice Festival. Staying up north this weekend? Between Newport State Park’s winter programs and the Door County Short Film Fest, you’re sure to find something that suits your fancy during Valentine’s Day weekend. Friday, February 12 […]
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Been cool lately. To admit I don’t use the word cold for sake of dignity and a certain northern cockiness about this business other people call cold. Spell that word with caps if it makes you feel better. COLD. Underline it if you want, COLD. Add italics, COLD. Basically what winter is made of. I […]
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Announcing the 2016 Hal Prize Contest
The Peninsula Pulse proudly presents the 2016 Hal Prize. The Hal Prize is open to writers of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and to photographers throughout the United States. The contest offers publication in the Peninsula Pulse’s annual Literary Issue, reaching a readership of 17,000. Cash awards of up to $150, a week stay at Write On, […]
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Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy is both a memoir detailing the author’s experience as a lawyer and an indictment of the failings of the justice system in this country. As a college student the author had studied philosophy, but during his senior year realized that “no one would pay me to philosophize when I graduated.” […]
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I wasn’t the only Boy Scout to attempt an igloo. It seems like there was a merit badge involved, like you weren’t a bona fide Boy Scout until you had attempted that igloo, like a real kid – make that a real winter kid. Better for the attempt if school was called off because of […]
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A simple ritual it is, our evening walk down to the creek before supper with the dogs and the chance of a ball or stick. To suspect this has been a well-worn human routine ever since Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal, our collective habit with dogs that old. Something distinguished happened to our species when we married […]
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Mabel Peterson Shares Door County, Life History in New Book
When Mabel Peterson was invited by her neighbor, Gretchen Maring, to join her in Barbara Larson’s writing class at The Clearing, the first two sessions convinced her she wasn’t a writer. A chance meeting with Larson at the Piggly Wiggly encouraged her to return. That was in 1998. Sometime after that, Mabel became excited about […]
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To love storms is a sick and criminal attitude, up there with picking your nose, scratching your butt and sleeping with dogs. How I acquired my sense and love for storms is self-explanatory, to confess being a farmkid. A farmkid is somewhere between a juvenile delinquent, a reform school graduate, a biker and a thug, […]
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Behaviorally I am a “holy cow” sort of person. It began with that liberal education, of being a farmkid in the first place, driving tractors by the age of eight, milking cows regularly by fifth grade, learning to weld when others are tutored in flag football. There were other tasks, butchering, haying, driving a pickup […]
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Life after Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia requires emotional healing. Surviving the valley of the shadow of death is no instant triumph. Two years following my bone marrow transplant, I was walking on the beach at Wisconsin’s Newport State Park and saw my shadow.
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How Norb Blei Found the Internet
At the age of 72, 50 years into his writing career, Norb Blei turned his eye from the printed page to the web, and loved what he found.
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The universe has six magical aromas, just six, only six: perfume is first preferably on women, followed by fresh bread, bacon frying, birch burning, toast cooking and/or coffee brewing.
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We had only been dating for about six weeks. New to each other and still unfurled in each other’s spheres of friends. It was a house concert – a guitar party of sorts.