The weather forecast around the country this week is giving people hope that they can finally begin spring planting.

"Mark Baden on [sister station WISN] Friday said it's time to plant, so everybody came in Saturday said 'It's time to plant. Mark Baden said so last night,'" said Karen Matt, co-owner of Plant Land, located in Milwaukee.

Lisa Laabs, a Wisconsin resident, and her family joined dozens of others Sunday at Plant Land as they made their way through the garden center, letting their eyes be their guide.

"I love the tradition of things starting to warm up and us starting to get ready for that summer weather," Laabs said. "They all get their pots at home and they get to pick out their own colors, and we take time to plant them together."

With the temperatures starting to climb, many are eager to get fill their gardens, but patience is key.

Matt, another shopper, told WISN that not all vegetables can thrive in these current temperatures.

"A few more weeks for sure would be tomato plants, pepper plants and eggplant. Cucumber, melon, squash that's at the end of the month," Matt said.

But there are things you can plant.

"Anything in the cold crop Brussels sprouts, broccoli, lettuces, cabbages, kohlrabi, beans peas," Matt said.

Matt shared the recipe for a bountiful harvest: good soil, plenty of sunshine, water and some tender loving care.

"All of us each have one of our own pots. Then we all plant them, and it looks so beautiful when we put it together," Sarah Laabs said.

Matt advises to wait to plant greenhouse vegetables until nighttime temperatures are consistently 55 degrees or warmer.

You've likely heard of a birth doula. That's a person who provides physical and emotional support to a new mother during pregnancy and childbirth. The same exists for people leaving this world. It's called a death doula and it's growing in popularity.

In American culture, Cindy Kaufman says death has often been seen as taboo. However, for her, it’s intimate and peaceful. She realized caring for somebody in their final moments of life on earth was her calling when her grandmother died.

“I spent the last few days of her life sitting bedside with her," Kaufman said. "I was very comfortable in that space, and I noticed other people were not comfortable in that space.”

Kaufman is now a certified end-of-life doula, also called a death doula. She says she serves as a companion and advocate for someone facing the end of their life. She helps them design a vigil plan for their final hours.

“If they have pets, do they want the pets up in bed with them?" Kaufman said. "Do they want a particular music playing? Is there a favorite scent that we could have in the room so they can smell the lavender that they love? Or is there some things that they would like to have someone read to them, whether it's something spiritual or some poetry or passages from a book? And then we talk about at the moment when they take their last breath. What type of ritual or offering could we do for those who are present?”

Kaufman says end-of-life doulas also play a big role in the lives of caregivers. She assisted Jeff Fountain after his wife Barbara was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

“They fill a gap that the medical people aren't really designed to fill,” Fountain said.

Fountain says Kaufman helped normalize the process of dying so he wasn’t afraid to embrace it. He believes the profession is growing because the attitude toward death is shifting.

“When I was a kid and somebody died, it was the most morose, sad, awful, painful thing," Fountain said. "You know when people would get together for a funeral and everything? And now it's very different. The people are happy for them.”

Happiness is exactly what Mickey Weems wants his loved ones to feel when his time comes. He has stage four terminal prostate cancer and has selected a doula to help guide him through legal, medically assisted suicide. Another term for it is medical aid in dying.

“When it comes to the point where I can no longer take care of myself, I have the turquoise bag," Weems said. "And in the turquoise bag is the substance that will take me to the next world. Whenever I choose, I can take it. And I have a death doula, her name is Joy Rodriguez, who will help me go through the whole thing to make sure I do it right and this is smooth sailing”

Mickey has passed multiple dates the doctor has given him to live.

“He says that I'm surviving by force of will, and he may have a point, but I think it's something else," Weems said. "I'm also surviving because of the love of my friends.”

The love of friends and family is probably what most people would ask for in their final days. That’s what end-of-life doulas aim to accomplish, and the profession is rapidly growing.

According to the National End of Life Doula Alliance, there are nearly 1,300 death doulas across the country. There were only about two hundred in 2019.

“When I did my training in 2017, there were just a handful of training programs," Kaufman said. "This field seems to have kind of taken off and there are many training programs now.”

While death doulas aren’t currently covered by insurance, Kaufman says many have sliding pay scales so anyone who wants it, can have it.
 

Many parents who send their kids to college want to know that their children will be in stable housing.

A 2022 report that surveyed students at historically Black colleges and universities shows that more than half of students said they struggled to maintain safe, affordable, and consistent housing.

Fisk University, an HBCU in Nashville, Tennessee, has a plan to address the issue. Decommissioned shipping containers are being retrofitted into dorm rooms for the 2023 fall semester.

Fisk University Executive Vice President Jens Frederiksen says a trustee brought the solution to the table as an affordable way to help the university house its growing population.

"The reality is we've grown so fast,” Frederiksen said. “Enrollment has grown roughly 41%-42% in four-and-a-half years."

The inside of each container will have a bed, lounge area, kitchen and bathroom.

"I think the beauty of it is you can actually stack them up to levels of four is what we had originally looked at,” Frederiksen said. “These are stacked in levels of two. So you could basically upload two more containers on top and create a total of 200-bed availability."

It's not an entirely new idea. The College of Idaho was the first school in the nation to transform shipping containers into dorm rooms in 2020.

Frederiksen said students like how it's a sustainable solution. Sophomore Gift Eni says sustainability is very important to many students.

"It's repurposing something that was old and making it new," Eni said. “As soon as the videos dropped, like they did the tour of the inside and we were all 'I don't know how we apply to this, but I need to apply to it immediately. I need to be living here like yesterday.'"

Frederiksen said other universities are already reaching out with interest in doing something similar.

With real estate prices continuing to soar nationwide, he said creative solutions to house students are necessary.

"Real estate prices are, at this point, a prohibitive factor, which then means students to live off campus would live 35, 40 minutes away," Frederiksen said.

"I feel like it makes school more accessible,” Eni said. “That's important. And you have to be able to get to school on time when you need to be here."

The only challenge now is deciding who will be the first to live in the shipping containers.

"I think to date, we've probably had 30 prospective students who called and said, 'If I choose Fisk, do I get to be in the containers?’" Frederiksen said. “And we're like, 'No, we can't leverage that as a decision-making tool'. The reality is we're going to end up doing some kind of lottery."

 

The pandemic has turned even more people into gamers. About one in three people worldwide play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

But it’s more than just fun.

“And we've been able to make sure that we were producing things that not only brought people together in ways that made them enjoy the games, but connected them to each other because today 65% of people in America who play games play with other people,” said Stanley Pierre-Louis, President and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association.

Video game popularity was already on the rise before COVID-19, supporting more than 425,000 jobs directly and indirectly related to the industry last year.

It generated more than 90 billion in economic output, according to the Entertainment Software Association impact report.

It includes jobs in engineering, coding, video game design, storyline and even professional players.

“What that's meant is that within schools, you now have esports scholarships and in fact there are over 200 varsity sports programs around the nation, creating new opportunities for people to play professionally,” said Pierre-Louis.

Education and jobs related to gaming can also lead to other opportunities outside the industry. The graphic design and visual elements that go into video games are as in demand in other fields.

“So, if you learn video game design, you're able to also help with airlines simulations and so it's creating opportunities across many sectors,” said Pierre-Louis.

Advancements rooted in the video game industry have found their way into other areas, including medical imaging and robotics, military training and simulation, and education.

Those directly employed by the video game industry make on average $121,000 a year.