Our current issue features:

Beaches: Treasured Resource
By Myles Dannhausen Jr.

In an era of growth pressure, private development has dominated the battle for access and control of Door County’s treasured shoreline over the past two decades. But the county’s public officials have mounted a powerful rebuke in recent years, launching an 11th-hour effort to secure and protect the peninsula’s beaches for generations to come.

After a 2002 water quality scare sent shockwaves throughout the community, the county undertook an extensive beach monitoring program and, in 2007, the communities of Sister Bay and Egg Harbor decided it was worth a tremendous investment to secure its beaches for the future. (more)

Door County Cottages: Everything Old is New Again
By Melissa Ripp

Cottage and home rentals, and the traditions that surround them, still abound in Door County.

The old adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is true of many things in Door County, but is especially true about the history of cottage and vacation home rentals on the peninsula. Around the end of the 19th century, when Door County was just gaining recognition as a potential tourist destination, it was homes and cottages that accommodated these early visitors. Before the era of large-scale hotels, bedrooms or portions of resident’s homes were rented to visitors, sometimes for an entire summer season. (more)

Creative Concrete: Poetry in Non-Motion
By Jacinda Duffin

“Boredom, really, is what started it all,” he says with a laugh. “Sheer boredom.”

This is how Dylan Lauger, founder, owner and operator of Lauger Concrete of Sturgeon Bay, answers the question that everyone asks.

Well-known for high quality, dependable, utilitarian flat work (that’s insider-speak for what we laypeople think of as concrete: gray sidewalks, gray driveways, gray garage floors), Lauger Concrete has boldly moved almost exclusively into the arena of artistic, creative concrete involving elaborate patterns, stains and textures. What happened to inspire the switch? (more)

Pioneer Store
By Patty Williamson

The sign above the front porch has read Pioneer Store for 40 years, but if you ask almost any resident of Ellison Bay if you could find a needed item at Ruckert’s, they’d know just what you meant.

And the answer would likely be “yes” – whether you were referring to the store of 2008 or the one established by Charlie Ruckert in 1900. The original store, by the way, was to have had two owners – Ruckert and Hans Hanson, but the partnership dissolved before the business opened because the gentlemen couldn’t agree on whose name should come first on the sign. Because of the cost of buying out his erstwhile partner, Ruckert had to borrow money to stock the shelves. (more)

Racing the Sun: The Door County Plein Air Festival
By Kay McKinley Arneson

Caution: Taking in the second annual Door County Plein Air Festival could leave you breathless.

First, there’s the beauty of the work of highly-regarded plein air (outdoor) painters. Next, there’s the dizzying schedule of events, from July 20th through August 2nd, hosted by the festival’s sponsor, Peninsula Art School, in Fish Creek. And then there’s the swiftness required of the painters, who are trained to “race the sun” in order to capture the changing light on a landscape. (more)

Where Trinidad and Tobago Meet Door County
Birch Creek’s Percussion Session
by Emilie Coulson

“Have you ever heard the music of the steel pan? It’s something that goes right through your chest.” That’s how Kate Rericha, Director of Marketing, PR and Grants, describes the intensity of the sound coming from more than a dozen young students playing steel pan and other percussion instruments in a milking shed on a 100-year old farm outside of Egg Harbor.

Hard to imagine? Only if you are not familiar with the percussion program at Birch Creek Music Performance Center, a concert venue and summer music school for students ages 12 to 19. To attend an evening concert at Birch Creek for the first time is to stumble on something almost magical. And while there are jazz, symphony and percussion sessions each summer, the percussion program may be the most unexpected in Door County, with its diverse sounds created by top instructors who have studied and played in several different countries and by talented and eager students, who bring back adoring audiences year after year. (more)

Ingert and Al Johnson
By Mariah Goode

I call Al and Ingert at home to set up an interview. Al answers, saying simply, “Al Johnson” – as always, no “hello,” nothing at all prefacing his name, his tone making you wonder if you’ve somehow already irritated him.

(Which, maybe, you have: he doesn’t like interruptions and he prefers dealing with people face-to-face – he really dislikes cell phones, e-mail, and answering machines. I personally suspect his favorite thing about telephones is hanging up when he is done with the conversation – although you may still be talking – his customary closing, if you get one, being a loud “yeah, good-bye”.) (more)