Generation Lockdown 📚

Madison Magazine's Sunday Reads

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This issue was a tough one. When contributing writer Jeff Oloizia first pitched us a story about the impact and efficacy of school safety drills, my immediate gut response was YES. I didn't even know what that meant, necessarily, just that this was a subject I'd spent so many years feeling conflicted about. As Andrea Behling writes in her Editor's Note about April's cover story, my oldest child was born the same year as Columbine. All throughout my kids' lives — like so many of you — I've watched schools grapple with how to prepare for the possibility of a school shooting. I've seen various approaches change over the decades. I've watched my kids grow up almost desensitized to it. Maybe I became desensitized myself. But I will never forget the day 10 years ago when my then-8-year-old daughter came home from school (not in Madison) terrified because they'd had a drill she didn't know was a drill. For those agonizing minutes — was it two? Was it five? — she huddled beneath a table while someone banged on her classroom door pretending to try to get in. Did the school not tell her it was a drill, or did she somehow miss the memo? In that moment, my takeaway was this: It didn't matter. Thank God she was safe, but her little brain believed there was a shooter at her school. She experienced a trauma. Another time that stands out happened a couple years ago — maybe before COVID? — when I'd gotten one of those vague emails from the school about a "threat to safety." All was well now, it said. The kids were fine. I texted my daughter right away — and she didn't even know what I was referring to. That night, I asked her what the school was doing for safety drills these days. "We don't practice anything specific anymore when we lockdown," she said. Why not, I asked? "Because if the shooter is one of us," she said, "we're training them, too." What I love about Jeff's story is that it centers the kids. And it doesn't indict the schools — they are doing the best they can under incredibly stressful and complex circumstances in a country that can't even agree it has a gun problem. It is a meticulously researched deep-dive and a difficult, sometimes painful, but ultimately necessary read. It's not about school shootings themselves, but what the threat — specifically the preparation for the threat — is doing to our kids. Here's how one of them puts it in the article: "We've become this Generation Lockdown. This is something we've grown up around. It's normalized." Senior Editor Maggie Ginsberg curates this monthly newsletter for Madison Magazine.

Hot off the press from the current issue of Madison Magazine Coming to newsstands Inside the new April issue, you'll find a story about a newer family foundation that is quietly granting millions of dollars in trust-based funds to local nonprofits; a father-daughter music duo making big moves; a colorful art gallery in Stoughton; a community effort to give Madison a lakefront porch; a poignant essay remembering a candy-loving dentist; a pioneering transplant surgeon; green eats on State Street and other sustainable eateries; seed swapping, a geothermal greenhouse, and more. Subscribe April cover story On a dreary fall afternoon in 2019, Sun Prairie High School sophomore Brooke Bandli found herself not at school, as she should have been, but in an unfamiliar home surrounded by schoolmates. They covered every surface, chatting nervously. How many were there? A couple dozen? More? It was late September. They should have worrying about the fall musical and asking each other to the homecoming dance. Instead, a different kind of question troubled Brooke: Where was her teacher? How had she even gotten here? Find the issue

Favorites from past issues Last month we gathered on frozen Lake Mendota to recreate an iconic photo of legendary folksinger Joni Mitchell. Associate Editor (and Joni doppelgänger) Emma Waldinger donned her dad's ice skates, and award-winning photographer Patrick Stutz snapped an uncannily similar image. It was a frigid, fun, magical day. Editor Andrea Behling told the behind-the-scenes story of how it all unfolded in her Editor's Note, and that final product became the subject of my Looking Back write-up in the March issue.

Don't miss these web-exclusive articles

From the web Madison Reading Project's new Big Red Reading Bus aims to deepen community engagement. With new accessibility and other upgraded features, it will reach a broader span of emerging readers. Madison Magazine editorial intern Celia Hiorns has the web-exclusive story. Doug Moe's Madison New from the Doug Moe's Madison web-exclusive blog this month: Colorful fitness hall-of-famer Bobby Hinds has died, a Former Rennebohm president — and drug store dish washer — looks back, and Mark Golbach finds a post-retirement avocation as a fine arts photographer.

New book releases, author events and other local literary news A few tickets are still available for Madison Public Library's annual Lunch for Libraries fundraiser, which is expected to sell out. The keynote speaker for the April 17 event is Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility and Station Eleven. "Musky Run," the fourth book in Jeff Nania's Northern Lakes Mystery series, is now out. Dean Robbins' new picture book biography, "You Are a Star, Jane Goodall" will be released on April 4. "A Girl Can Build Anything," written by Pat Zietlow Miller and illustrated by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo, comes out on April 15. Jesse Lee Kercheval launches her new collection, "I Want To Tell You," with a Wisconsin Book Festival event on March 30. Other in-person WBF events forthcoming in April include writers Clint Smith, Ross Gay, Michelle Zauner, Tommy Orange and others. UW–Madison MFA alum Hanna Halperin's second novel, "I Could Live Here Forever" (set in Madison), comes out April 11. Meet a Wisconsin author Q&A with Sara Alvarado, author of "Dreaming in Spanish" Sara Alvarado is probably best known for her real estate business, and more recently as the co-founder of non-profit OWN IT: Building Black Wealth. But she's also a writer who dreamed of publishing a book since her early 20s. "I always loved writing, but from 2002-12 I was head-down running our real estate business and raising little kids," Alvarado says. When her kids got a bit older, she enrolled in her first writing retreat and began blogging. She also started writing a memoir, but got sidetracked working on a business book — and then suffered a series of life's blows. The harder things got, the clearer it became how fragile it all was. "In 2020, after recovering from a fire accident and watching Alzheimer's slowly take my mom away, I decided not to wait any longer," Alvarado says. In March, Alvarado published her memoir, "Dreaming in Spanish: An Unexpected Love Story in Puerto Vallerta." It is a journey through Alvarado's experiences with substance abuse, sexual trauma, unexpected partnership and a multicultural marriage. "This is the story I didn't want to die with me," she says. Read the Q&A Interested in advertising in our e-newsletters or on madisonmagazine.com? Send an email to mmcsherry@madisonmagazine.com. Sign up for other newsletters from Madison Magazine.

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