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Tonight in Wisconsin, sled dogs pull a stouten woman
through a fight with cancer.
A lady smith deadass draws patients from
more than half the state and a medicine man makes
music out of thin air.
That's tonight in Wisconsin.
Good evening and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
We have a diverse mix of reports for you this evening,
including a creative solution to a dental care crisis
in Northwestern Wisconsin.
But before we get to that, we start with something
a little more well eerie.
Imagine making music simply by waving your hands in the air.
Well, that's actually how you play the instrument
called the "theraman."
The "theraman" was invented decades ago and was a flop.
But producer Art Hackett has discovered that this strange
instrument is making a comeback.
Jeff Brady is a percussionist at the Farms with rock
bands as well as with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
As a percussionist, Brady says he's always searching
for new things to bang on and new sounds to create.
I wish I got more interested in improvising and doing more like
kind of irritating weird sounds.
Whether the sound of the "theraman" qualifies as
irritating is a matter of taste.
But the story of the "theraman's inventor" definitely is weird,
weird enough to rate a feature-length documentary.
"theraman" invented the "theraman" in
Russia in the 1920s.
After a series of highly publicized concerts
in New York City, it disappeared, apparently
abducted by Soviet agents.
The documentary interested Brady in "theraman's"
"You would set it for about an arm's length and stand
in front of it like that."
The search of the internet led him to Chuck
Collins of McWanago.
It's just incredible that this would be in a 1929 home.
It just seems too futuristic to me.
It's a highly unusual.
Collins has a whole "reck room" full of "theraman" things,
including an original 1929 RCA "theraman" just
like the one in the movie.
But first you ask, what's a "theraman"?
To understand the "theraman" you have to imagine listening
to a weak, distant station on an old AM vacuum tube radio.
If you got your body too close to it trying to tune
it, you'd hear a "howl".
That is the principle behind "theraman".
"Atheraman is essentially a radio.
Two big coils generate electromagnetic fields.
You make the radio howl by moving your hands
past two antennas, sticking out of the box."
"So in theory, you should be able to create any melody you
want by just moving your hand."
But Collins can't make a melody.
He's not a musician, but he does design and build "theraman's".
He sold one to percussionist Brady.
It's a wonder there is a market for "theraman's" today.
The original instrument, despite promotional efforts
like this record, was a flop.
RCA built only 500 "theramans".
Collins blames the instrument's high price and the fact
that "theramans" are almost impossible to play.
"theraman's" made a reappearance in the late 1940s in sci-fi
movie soundtracks and laced into cocktail lounge music,
which was kind of sad for an instrument which was promoted
as a means of popularizing gentile classical music.
"We don't know what left "teraman" would think of
Brady's band, "theramans" as in "theramans".
"The "remones" were one of the founding punk entities.
They were doing what probably people couldn't even figure
out to call punk yet."
"I'm going to join with this stipulation that I could play
"theraman" all I wanted."
This Sunday afternoon, outing at a copy house on
Madison's East Side was the "theramans" first performance.
And given the puzzled looks from the audience, it may
be the first "theraman" concert they've ever attended.
Or maybe they just aren't sure why the music is
there in the first place.
"I've never had the whole idea of just since you don't
touch it, you're kind of drawing music from out of
the very air around you."
Brady got his "theraman" two years ago, but only recently
started playing in public.
Even with musical training, Brady describes playing the
"theraman" as disorienting.
"I don't have any tactile point of reference.
If you play a keyboard instrument, which is
what I'm used to, you have a bunch of notes sitting there.
If you hit the A flat, then the B flat, you're going to
get a certain kind of sound.
But with a "theraman" you're just like "theraman" you have
to try to find the point and you're just kind of in space."
Which may explain the frozen faces of "theraman"
players, old and new.
You have to concentrate really hard on a lot more
so than other instruments.
On the most kind of minute movements that your hands
are making, you have to stand totally still,
especially to you high notes.
If you remember notice when you're standing there,
you're actually swaying back and forth ever so slightly.
So you have to be conscious of that and everything.
You really have to be conscious of your whole body in a
sense, which might account for the kind of "pained look"
that "theramanists" get.
Jeff Brady may or may not be at the leading edge of a
wave of a "theraman revival."
As we produce this segment, we ran into three other people who
not only knew about "theraman's" but claimed "own one."
Maybe "theraman" players have been all around us all along,
kind of like the music they draw from seemingly thin air.
What can you do with a brand like that when we saw you back?
What can you do?
With a brand like that, when we
saw you back?
What can you do?
[Music]
Still ahead tonight in Wisconsin.
Another form of entertainment.
This one centuries old takes center stage.
That's coming up later in Wisconsin.
[Music]
In our next story, we went looking for a solution.
The problem?
Access to dental care for low-income families
in northern Wisconsin.
The states poor are in a double bind.
They have a higher rate of dental disease and they
visit the dentist less often than the general population.
One reason for this is low-income patients often
have difficulty finding a dentist who accepts Medicaid.
And on top of that, there's a shortage of dentists in
Wisconsin, especially in rural areas like Lady Smith.
[Music]
Well, I would not have been able to pay for dentures
if it weren't for the fact that the payments
were based on my income.
Gertrude McBain doesn't have dental insurance, so the cost
of care is a serious concern.
It's a concern shared by many low-income Wisconsin
residents who may put off visiting a dentist until
they're in extreme pain.
We have come across people who have, for example, taken up
pliers to their mouth to pull teeth out with vinescripts.
I can't imagine what kind of pain drives someone to do that.
Lack of insurance isn't the only problem.
In many parts of Wisconsin, particularly
in rural areas, there's a shortage of dentists.
Dr. Blaine Christman of the Lady Smith Dental Center has
seen both problems up close.
There are times you would walk out in your waiting room
and there are people that were in dire need of help
and could not find a dentist.
If you look at a map of dental health professional shortage
areas, ladies Smith is kind of in the center of a huge
area in northwestern Wisconsin.
In addition to the problem of the shortage of dentists,
80% of primary care dentists in Wisconsin will not
accept new Medicaid patients.
In 15 counties, there are no primary care clinics willing
to accept Medicaid patients.
The main reason for this limitation, according to the
Wisconsin Dental Association, is that Medicaid reimburses
only about 50% of what a dentist normally charges.
It's very, very tough when you get a caseload of Medicaid
patients to cover your basic office overhead, much less
have anything left over to take care of your own family.
So it's been a huge problem and it's only getting worse
as the state is undergoing its fiscal woe right now.
For a lot of dentists who do participate in the program,
they are giving away their time and their effort in that.
One of the problems though is that charity is not a health
care system and we have a program here where the state
has promised care to almost 500,000 people and unfortunately
it's just not being delivered at the present time.
So we started seeing more and more of our patients
coming into emergency rooms, urgent care settings with
problems that can't really be addressed there that needed
basic general dental care.
So Greg Nitch proposed a unique solution, one that's been
put into place in Lady Smith.
He convinced Lady Smith dentists Christman to sell
his practice to Marshfield Clinic and the Family
Health Center of Marshfield.
Christman took a cut in pay but in exchange Marshfield
handles all of the dental clinics operating expenses.
The sale converted the dental practice into a non-profit
organization, making it eligible for federal and state
grants earmarked for health professional shortage areas.
In return, the clinic provides care based on need, not on
a patient's ability to pay.
So we have a sliding fee and if you're under poverty for
example and you're not on any public programs, it's a nominal
payment of $5 no matter what we help you with and then
we slide the fee from there.
The plan was just about in place when nature
dealt a tragic blow.
One month before the agreement was to take effect, a
tornado destroyed Christman's dental clinic, along
with many other buildings in downtown Lady Smith.
So that through a big monkey wrench and our planning, but
through Dr.
Christman's kind of heroic efforts trying to pull
the practice together, get all of his staff back working.
It took almost a month after the tornado, but
Christman managed to open his practice in the cramped
quarters of a former school building on the edge of town.
I'm so happy that we are seeing patients now and I'm
really proud of our staff of what they've accomplished.
It's really like the field hospital and the people there
are doing heroic work in very difficult circumstances with
people with tremendous needs.
Since the dental clinic opened in November of 2002, it
has drawn patients from 37 counties and has had a waiting
list of more than 1,000.
People are coming from its far-ways Manel and Island.
And people don't come from that distance unless they're
in pain and there's no other alternative closer to home.
Dr. Christman hopes to trade the temporary quarters for
a newly constructed dental office in the summer of 2003.
The construction is being paid for with government grants
and private contributions.
Finding dentists and other professional staff who want to
work in rural areas is still a challenge, but since the
partnership with Marshfield Clinic was announced, Dr.
Christman has been able to hire five full-time
dentists and five hygienists.
I said, "You build it and they will come."
And we're seeing not only the patients, but the
dentists and the staff coming.
We move now from the serious to the sublime.
Richard Kippling wrote, "East is
east and west is west and never the twain shall meet."
But then Kippling never met Professor David Furamoto.
Producer Andy Soeth caught up with Professor Furamoto and
discovered how he built a bridge across both cultures.
On the banks of Lake Mendoza, the pipes are sounding from
this wee cottage.
Inside, you might be surprised
to meet David Furamoto.
But his mother was a ferugasem, his father,
second-generation Japanese American.
The bagpipes are his hobby.
And this is his work.
At the UW-Madison, Furamoto leads classes in Kabuki Theater.
There's this amalgamation of music, dance, and the acting
things that happen in Kabuki that you don't find it very
often in Western Theater.
When Shakespeare was writing in England, Kabuki was
becoming popular in Japan.
Drawing on traditional dance, religious ritual, and samurai
practice, Kabuki developed its own stylized language
of gesture and movement.
There's a saying in Kabuki that all the actor really
needs is a fan, and the fan can become every single prop
that he would ever need.
For students used to the realism of Western
Theater, it is a challenge.
How can you be carrying something on a tray if
it's like this, right?
It's gotta be flat.
Furamoto is a master of introducing East to West.
His master's thesis at the University of Hawaii was a
Kabuki staging of Richard III.
More recently, he's taken on Gilbert and Sullivan's
operetta, the Makato.
As Gilbert and Sullivan might say of David Furamoto,
he is the very model of a modern multi-culturalist.
"One more reason we need to take one more way."
"Two little things we need to
take." "One more reason we need to take one more way."
What I've tried to do with this production is bring it
back into a more authentic Japanese style as far as
the movements of the people on stage, the choreography,
even some of the ideas.
The Makato is an Englishman's fantasy of Japan.
Many critics see it really as a
satire of British society, all dressed up in a kimono.
But Furamoto sees real links between the two cultures.
"There's a lot of similarities between British and Japanese
society. In fact, probably I think the British and
the Japanese are probably closer to each other than
we Americans are to either of them at this point."
Written in Japan share a rigid class system and bureaucracy.
Kabuki techniques, like this exaggerated reaction, called
a "mei" and woodblock sound effects, reinforce the action
and emotions of the play.
"It's a theater form that is not afraid of being theatrical.
It goes over the top."
"The energy just comes crackling over the stage."
"That's the thing that attracted me to Kabuki in the first
place. When I first saw my first production, I was just
amazed that the not being not afraid of the emotions."
By being so attuned to the emotions, Furamoto can draw
more parallels between Eastern and Western thought.
"My favorite song out of the whole operetta is a thing
that is labeled a madrigal."
"It's a leap forward for who we think."
"It's very English-sounding, madrigal.
But the statement that's been expressed in that
song is of this fleeting moment of life.
That life doesn't seem to really last that long."
"All matters to not love, love to a role, and just
calmness, love, love."
"We have a very beautifully phrased song that's talking
about a very Japanese outlook on things.
The female main romantic character in this
story has a line which some people would think of as
being very narcissistic."
"Why is it that I'm so much more attractive than anyone else in
the world?
Can this be then?"
"We have big discussions about this.
I must remember a very important Japanese concept,
the concept of "yugen," which is this beauty tinned
with sadness as the best way that I can describe it.
"That goes in part with a philosophy which is very
Buddhist in a sense about how even the most beautiful thing
that we have is really very short-lived and that beauty will
eventually fade and die away."
"The sun who's free, the role of peace, with everlasting glory."
And yet, as David for a moto well knows, the expression of
beauty, whether in centuries old Kabuki, or 19th century
operetta, still endures.
"It does not deny its majesty, it's going to tell us glory.
He won't explain my question so quickly into our dreams.
A few simple, if I regrouping, or reknowing all of us."
"We're enjoying the beauty of spring now, but as you
know, long Wisconsin-Witters can lead to a sickness
known as "Cavinfever."
"In our next story, we meet a woman who's pretty
sure she has a cure."
"Candy Bradley took up dog sledding almost a decade ago.
What she didn't know when she started this sport is that her
dogs would help pull her through more than the season of snow."
"We caught up with Candy Bradley last winter at
her home near Stoten."
"It's fun.
And it's fun to watch more.
You watch to see that everyone has a
tight tug line so you know that they're not goofing
off. Good girls!
Good girls!
"Slead dogs are neat because they're so happy."
Candy Bradley loves to take her dog sledding.
It's a passion that her husband Mike shares.
"When they brought my dogs, I asked them to bring a few
more dogs so Mike could get a hook too, so...because it's
always nice to have help and it's nothing better than
having your sweet heart.
Go dog sledding with you."
"The Bradley's have 19 Alaskan Huskies.
They're a mixed breed so they don't all look
the same.
They have different personalities too, but
they all enjoy attention."
"Gertus good puppies!
Yeah! Chew!
Yeah, it's very good puppies."
"These are hooked to each other and then you attach
it to the tug line."
"Snowfall comes too late in the season to get the dogs in
shape for racing so they take to the trails and the fall
with an ATV instead of a sled."
"A few years ago was great snow and we had 10 miles of trails.
Last year there wasn't hardly any snow anywhere in Wisconsin."
"The success of a team in a race depends on the
performance of the lead dogs.
A good leader is essential, but you also have to have a
relationship with that leader where they'll listen to you."
"And Lepper does when she comes to an intersection you
can visibly see her kind of perk up and you don't tell
her ahead of time which way to turn.
You wait until she's right at the turn and then you
just say "Gee, her hawk" and she knows which way to go."
"Each pair of dogs in the line has a job to do, starting
with the leaders who not only have to know which way to
turn but have to run fast enough to keep the line tight."
"Next dogs are called Point.
After the Point Dogs are called Team Dogs and they help carry
the sled and wheel dogs have the dogs in the back and they
have to get the sled around trees and other obstacles."
"Candy bought her first dog team almost 10 years ago.
She enjoyed them for only a few months before receiving
devastating health news.
In October of 1994 she was diagnosed with breast cancer."
"Bress cancer is not something that is cured.
It's something that can come back in 16
years, 20 years.
So it's kind of one of those things
where you could be waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"The other shoe dropped only two years later.
The cancer came back in her lungs.
At that point, Dr.
said she had only two to three months to live."
"They did tell me that if it ever went to my lungs I should
consider taking those trips I've always wanted to take."
"There was a trip she had always wanted to take but could
never afford.
The I did erod dogs letting race in Alaska."
"I wasn't thinking that I'd ever be able to go so when
my friend called and said would you like to go to the
I did erod and like, 'Yeah!'
Her friends collected donations at the Java Junction in Stoten.
They raised enough money to send the Bradley's to Alaska.
And they got her a ride with one of the professional
muskers before the race."
"And the ride was awesome.
Just to see how a real I did erod team ran was
great. It was great.
Yeah!" Since her trip to the I did
erod, Candy has continued to pursue her love of dogs
letting. Her two to three month prognosis has stretched
to almost nine years.
And even though a few years ago the cancer recurred in
her bones and in her brain she remains positive.
She says her attitude comes from
spending time with her dogs.
"It's a great motivator to get up and get out of bed.
I never think about if I'm hurting or
anything when I'm playing with the dogs I'm just having fun."
"They're never in a bad mood.
They're just sweet, lovable dogs that want to play."
"And I think she's pretty."
"Yeah, I think she's pretty."
"And when you're around someone or something that's so happy
can't help but rub off on you."
Since we taped that report last winter, Candy Bradley
has continued to cope with the side effects of weekly
chemotherapy, but still keeps active carrying for her dogs.
And even though she lives with some pain, she maintains
an incredibly positive attitude toward life.
If you'd like to comment on anything you've seen on
in Wisconsin or you have a suggestion for a story you'd
like to see on the program, please send us a note.
You can email your comments to inwisconsin@wpt.org
or you can send a letter to in Wisconsin, Wisconsin
Public Television, 821 University Avenue,
Madison, Wisconsin, 5306.
We'd love to hear from you.
We'll be back again next week with a number of reports,
including a day in the life of a Milwaukee County
Probation and Parole Agent.
We hope you'll join us.
Meanwhile, we leave you tonight with a scenic look
at Whitefish Dooms in Door County.
Good night.
[wind blowing]
[music]