Ed Janus— Biography

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ed Janus, and I have lived in Wisconsin since 1971. In the early 1970s, I worked for two years on a 30-cow dairy farm in Crawford County. During these happy years, I learned to appreciate manure on my boots and the smell of warm milk. And I learned, with no difficulty whatsoever, to appreciate my neighbors, how they lived and who they were.

After my stint in barn and field, I helped to found the Madison Muskies professional baseball team. I even got to be Bob Feller's catcher for three innings in an exhibition game. Then I also helped start the Capital Brewery, one of the first new small breweries.

Since 1989, I have been a freelance audio and radio journalist and occasional writer. I've created at least 100 hours of audio stories and edited conversations for CDs, Web sites and public radio in the United States. and Europe. I specialize in what I call "first person audio books." My audio book on breast cancer features moving and informative conversations with women and their husbands living with this disease. The book won an Audie Award from the Association of Audio Publishers as best original production in 1999. Thousands of copies of my series of first person audio books on education reform have been distributed to education leaders and legislators as well.

I have created stories for public radio programming including "Marketplace," "Living on Earth" and "Voice of America" on the environment, language and business. My program "Living in the U.S." was published by Langenscheidt, a European publisher.

Over the past year, I have been very happy engaging in long conversations with today's Wisconsin dairy farmers. I hope you enjoy hearing these stories straight from the heart of America's Dairyland as much as I've enjoyed producing them.