It’s been almost 2 years since my family and I moved to Appleton, Wisconsin. It has been a good move, though I haven’t written about it much, save the local obsession with roundabouts.

What makes it a good move is that I like to embrace where I am, and have enjoyed the process here. I learned to do this many years ago when I was frequently traveling for work, spending long periods of time away from home in exotic locales like Louisville, Kentucky and Phoenix, Arizona. A large part of that embrace was doing things that people local to the area would do… well at least the positive things!

Looking back on this near biennium, 3 things come to mind that I am doing differently since relocating to Appleton from Chicago, all which have been a good thing.

Eating and Drinking Locally-Produced Products – As my license plate says and I see all around me, Wisconsin is America’s Dairyland. When I found Lamers, a local dairy that sells milk from local cows in glass bottles in a store in front of where they bottle it, I was all over it. We now get all of our milk from there, and their milk makes great soft-serve ice cream which is sold in their dairy store. In addition to milk, I try to buy other dairy products – namely cheese – made as close to home as possible.

On the protein front, locally hatched eggs as well as meats from my new favorite local butcher shop Jacob’s Meat Market, are often on our dinner plates. It not only makes sense to buy bacon cured from local pigs about 20 feet from where it is sold, but additionally with all of the recalls on mass-produced meat products, knowing the source is very important.

Where one cannot live on meat and dairy alone, the Fox River Valley of Northeast Wisconsin is also home to great breweries like Stone Arch and the Appleton Beer Factory. There’s much, much more than Miller Lite in Wisconsin!

Reading Local Newspapers and Listening to Local Radio – Coming from such a large city as Chicago, most news stories there were on a grander, city-wide scale. It was hard to find coverage of stories specific to a neighborhood, which drives the term “hyper-local” news. As someone who is now on a decade of being without Cable TV, when I moved here I sought out local media outlets online on Twitter to help me understand the happenings of my new surroundings.

In the process of finding these, I dove deeper into their coverage. We have a subscription to the Appleton Post-Crescent, the local newspaper which, like most other mid-sized papers in the state, is owned by USA Today’s parent Gannett. Our subscription is only a digital one, which is fine since the local printing plant closed and the papers are printed over an hour away, guaranteeing most late sports games and other events will not make the print edition. The coverage by the small (and increasingly smaller) staff of reporters helps keep me informed of happenings I otherwise wouldn’t otherwise know of.

I have also re-embraced a medium I haven’t engaged with in a long time, local radio. For someone whose college experience was tied to the campus radio station this has been welcome. As outside of my car I don’t own a radio, fortunately I can stream radio shows and coverage by computer and mobile app, and listen to them as podcasts. In addition to the ease of the medium, the depth of coverage has been tremendous. One show specifically, Fresh Take with Josh Dukelow on WHBY, not only covers a wide breadth of topics from politics to culture, but also goes into great depth on them as well. I have been exposed to a lot of nuances of the area I would not have otherwise known about if it wasn’t for Fresh Take.

Using Ride-Sharing Services – Though certainly not something unique to this area, prior to moving to Appleton I never used services like Lyft and Uber. Coming from Chicago, where I lived steps from subway stations, major bus routes and plentiful taxis, I had no need for them. I must also admit I knew many cab drivers in Chicago who were being negatively impacted by these services as they started, and those were a deterrent to me using them. Though there are taxi services here, they are not as plentiful or to the demand-level that I am used to. This has made using Lyft in particular a great addition to my routine.

Where these are some great additions to my routine, I hope in the future I can add more to this. If you have any suggestions of other things I can do in the Appleton area, please share them in the comments to this post. And be nice!

Deconstructing Embracing What is Local

As I have traveled across the country and around the world, I have always sought out what is unique or local to the area, and tried to go beyond what is simply touristy. I have taken the same approach here in Appleton, Wisconsin and have been pleased with the results. Embracing the best of what is around you can enhance your life.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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