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Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a lion to energy who brings safe, reliable,
and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
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A spectacular show of nature, bald eagles enjoying a
winter day in Wisconsin.
Hello, I'm Patty Low.
The majesty of bald eagles over
the Mississippi River will be our first report tonight.
We'll also head to a boarding school that has
a conservation theme.
We'll meet a couple searching for tools to cope with the
effects of Alzheimer's disease.
And we'll meet a man who brings us the news by
way of our funny bone.
But first, more about our national symbol, the bald
eagle. The species has made an amazing comeback in our
state, and a dramatic display can be seen near Casbell.
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Winter in Wisconsin.
It can be a tough time.
A testing time.
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But every season has its sweet compensations.
And this is one of the upsides to winter.
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As the ice steals in, eagles gather in greater numbers near
open water.
They congregate, concentrate, and put on a show.
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You're looking at a success story.
30 years ago, Wisconsin's eagle population
was in serious decline.
Nesting pairs numbered just over 100.
The state recognized their peril and responded with
a recovery plan and the number of bald eagles soared.
At last count, the nesting pairs numbered 831.
A very fine place to view eagles is in Casbell just
below the power plant.
They like to fish the waters there.
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You can see them, perched in the trees on the shore,
or watch them walking, so ungainly on the ground.
So graceful in the air.
These dancers are one of the delights of winter.
It's one of the joys of the season.
Eagle watching in Wisconsin.
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This is how a brand new school with no traditions acquires
them. Although conserved school didn't enroll students until
the fall of 2002, the school has been in the works since the
death in 1996 of Chicago's steel distributor, James Lewinstein.
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Lewinstein had left hints as to what he had in mind for his 1200
acre summer estate.
The wheels and instructions meant the
board of directors of a company running big warehouses like
this one just off the interstate south of downtown Milwaukee.
Also became the board of directors of a school
for the gifted on the Wisconsin Michigan border.
It's really been a long time since anybody's done
anything on this scale.
The facilities all brand new
are valued at $45 million.
Conserved school's tuition is about the same as Wisconsin's
longer established boarding schools, $25,000 a year.
Although with scholarships Anderson says the actual
tuition at conserved averages around $8,500.
So far most of the students have come
from the public schools.
Here you're asking parents to cough up a lot of money
for something that has absolutely no track record.
Well it's a challenge.
I spent my first year as head
of admissions here and our slogan was the dream,
the school, the future.
And really to a large part what we were selling was the dream
and Mr.
Lewinstein's dream.
But we were supporting that dream
by a high quality teaching staff, a high quality facility.
Some of the staff like Anderson and Principal Mary Ann Athorton
come from other private schools.
Some come from colleges, some come from private business.
As for the students, some were recruited at summer
camps for the talented and gifted other students found
the school on their own while searching the internet.
I actually heard about it through public radio.
I was just driving around and
heard it and decided to come because it was so close and it
was just a wonderful campus.
Not many teens cruise while listening to public radio, but
these aren't average teenagers.
Here you're totally free to be intellectual and in the
small rural public school in Wisconsin, it really was
frowned upon.
It was just so for faux pas, totally
to be at all intellectual.
And it's really nice to be free to have conversations
about something other than football or girls or drinking.
Well as bad as the sounds when nerds get together we can all
be normal and it's a really nice experience to be with
other people who like to talk about the same things and
do the same things and are concerned about the same issues.
The average Wisconsin public high school spends about
$11,000 a year per pupil.
Headmaster Anderson says per pupil spending at conserve
is around $35,000 a year.
Start up your computers, connect the probes to the
interface and to the computer and yeah, get started.
That means these chemistry students are doing gas
law experiments using the personal laptop computers,
the school issues them.
New harvest of heart, it has to be in the recipient's body
within four to six hours.
Students like Laura Winkler of Nina do class presentations
using PowerPoint and a touch sensitive smart board.
The classes run from the usual chemistry and Spanish
to the more unusual.
Chinese to the esoteric this class was entitled Frankenstein
and the ethics of invention.
The class looks at fictional works dealing with technological
discovery and ponders the ethical implications.
What should inventors look at when they're making an
invention or a discovery?
We include discoveries under the category of invention.
The teacher, Wenda Sheard, is a former attorney who's
working on a doctorate in educational policy.
She sees too many public schools bogged down due to standardized
testing mandated by legislators grasping for accountability.
Unless you see that child and value that child as
an individual and realize that child is not a cookie
cutter mold but that child is an individual.
You're not going to successfully educate the child.
Unlike some other boarding schools which attract
students who are having trouble academically,
conserve aims for students who aren't getting enough
work thrown at them.
It really pushes you.
I mean, back home, there was no drive to excel beyond what the
teacher was teaching you here.
It's almost competitive in class.
To push yourself harder in each class and do better in each
class than everyone else because you know everyone else is.
As capable or more capable than you are so it's really a driving
force behind your academics.
Go home!
Despite the academic workload, the students do have their
own bent sense of humor.
The school's sports teams are officially known as
the Steelers after James Lowenstein's business.
But the unofficial cheer at the first home volleyball game
last fall was, fear the leaf.
It's on all our sweatshirts that we had and all
the little panthers that had that leaf design.
It's the same one for every single thing.
And so I guess you guys just went from there.
And people started bringing leaves from outside and
waving them around and it kind of went a little bit crazy.
Conserve school enrolled 75 students its first year.
This year there are 135.
Headmaster Anderson says they could grow more
after four or five years.
If we grow too quickly or if we grow to a size where the
impact of the students on the grounds exceeds the grounds
ability to sort of recover over the summer, then it won't
be the experience that we want to have for the students.
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We move now to the difficult topic of Alzheimer's and other
diseases that affect memory.
Alzheimer's alone afflicks an estimated 20 million Americans
and can be devastating for their families, especially family
members who provide full-time care for their loved one.
This report is about a statewide program designed to provide
care for those caregivers by giving them powerful tools.
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John and Nancy Becker take time for an autumn stroll
in the neighborhood near their two rivers home.
The couple had hoped to travel after John retired,
but Nancy developed some troubling health symptoms.
An Nancy was having, you know, difficulty with memory,
particularly short-term.
Nancy's memory problem was eventually diagnosed
as Alzheimer's disease.
She's still in the early stages but already experiences the
frustration of forgetting.
I can read it but it doesn't stay.
It just either forget it or sometimes
it's really frightening.
You can't believe that you can't remember it or it's gone.
Nancy can cut up some carrots for me.
John now takes the lead in the kitchen because Nancy has
trouble following recipes.
I enjoy doing that so it's easy for me to get into that
and I think it's easier for her to relinquish that.
Anything he makes, it's excellent.
While memory loss is frustrating for Nancy, John sometimes
feels his own frustration.
The difficult part is short-term memory problems and
then the repeated questions.
OK or more?
Cut a little more.
John is slowly learning what it means to be a
caregiver and he's not alone.
In the United States, nearly one out of every four
households is involved with caregiving for a family member
who is over the age of 50.
Caregiving is something that all of us need to be
concerned about because we will be caring for an aging
parent and an aging spouse.
Another family member, a neighbor, all of
us care for people.
Because caregivers like John Becker have strong
emotional ties to those who need care, they often lose
sight of their own health.
Many times a caregiver will give of themselves 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, especially if it's a spouse.
They think it's till death to us part and they neglect
to take care of themselves.
It's for this reason that the University of Wisconsin
Extension has partnered with AARP and the Southeastern
Area Agency on Aging to create a six-week class called
powerful tools for caregivers.
Thank you all for coming this afternoon to our first
class of taking care of you powerful tools for caregiving.
They give so much to the person that they're caring
for that this really really helps them understand the
importance to them and to the person they're caring
for of caring for themselves.
The powerful tools class offers an important tool to caregivers.
It's called the action plan.
Let's talk a little bit now about what some of the
stress reducing are that you have used in the past that
have been helpful for you.
Exercise, meditative, meditative, good.
It's easy to forget to do some of these things and even
though they may be pleasant.
So an action plan is you identify something that you want
to do, not something you have to do, something you want to do.
There's a very big difference between have to and want to.
Maybe it's taking a bubble bath, maybe it's reading a
book, maybe it's watching a TV program, maybe it's even
making a phone call or setting down on the internet and
playing a game of solitaire.
Whatever it is but something that you as
a caregiver want to do.
Give yourself permission to take the next few weeks.
The class teaches another technique for stress
reduction, listening to a relaxation audio tape.
Another powerful tool is found in fellowship.
This class actually gives you the opportunity to be in a
room with other people who are in the same situation.
They realize they aren't alone, they realize
they've got support.
We link them up with one another and try to get them to buddy
up and call a friend and see how that friend is doing.
Support can come from friends or family.
The beckers have five adult daughters.
They're too far away to help in person.
But John reaches out by phone.
Don't be good.
Also teaches them how to ask family members to help them.
Ask neighbors how to help them.
I think the best one I heard yet is one of the
ladies in our class that, oh heck I can get that done
by my neighbor for a beer.
So it really is in the best interest of you and the
individual you're caring for to be healthy and to really
learn some coping strategies.
These are difficult times providing care.
And so what we try to do through powerful tools is help
people recognize they're not alone, the feelings that they
have, other people have, and that they're normal and part
of the caregiving process.
And to give them some strategies to help themselves and that's
what's really important.
Another strategy to help full-time caregivers
is taking time to be alone or taking respite.
During this class held in Manitawak, respite care
is offered at the adult day facilities of the Holy
Family Memorial Hospital.
You have to make sure that the care recipient is going to
be happy while they're there.
So the caregiver feels comfortable taking them
there and is actually getting some respite.
Over the last three years, the powerful tools class has
been offered in 33 counties in Wisconsin and the list
is expected to keep growing.
And so the bottom line is we're doing it in our homes with
all the resources we can, but we can't do it alone and we
need to reach out for help from others, family friends, but
also community support services that are available there.
Powerful tools hopes to build a positive future for families
by focusing on the caregivers.
It teaches them how to reduce stress and reach out for
physical and emotional support.
Perhaps the most important tool offered to caregivers
is permission, permission to take time for themselves.
I think that's very important.
It helps provide some motivation to do some of the things
that I need to do for myself.
You can learn more about options for care and the
work to discover a cure for Alzheimer's disease by tuning
in to Wisconsin Public Television Wednesday, January
21st for the forgetting.
The 90-minute documentary takes an all-encompassing look at
Alzheimer's and following that show, I'll be here with a half
hour special about Wisconsin resources for dementia care.
Again, that's this coming Wednesday, January 21st
at 8 p.m.
on Wisconsin Public Television.
We're changing gears entirely now and heading to Green Bay.
That's where editorial cartoonist Joe Heller draws
upon his skills to translate the day's news into pictures.
Heller's job takes a combination of news sense and
artistic talent.
And while he creates cartoons, the
subject matter isn't always fit for the funny pages.
It's April 2nd, 2003, and newspapers and morning
news programs in Green Bay lead with the latest
news from the war in Iraq.
This is Night Video of the Daring Rescue of Jessica Lynch.
The POW Rescue is good news in a campaign that at this
moment appears bogged down.
In a back room at the Green Bay Presca Zette, editorial
cartoonist Joe Heller is also catching up on the news.
I go through the paper looking through the topics that
people are talking about.
The SARS, that's the virus anti-Americanism, the
airlines are in trouble.
Despite this list, it's the war that people are
talking about and what Heller has been drawing about.
Yesterday, it was this mother getting embedded in
a flower garden to escape round the clock war coverage.
The day before, Jane Fonda in Hanoi reporting as
Peter Arnet from Baghdad.
I wanted to do a cartoon talking about the cartoon
that people are thinking that the war has lasted too long.
But I want to put it in some kind of context as far as what
we were saying before the war.
For instance, I think a lot of media was complaining,
"Are we rushing to war?"
So that's just naturally a two panel cartoon.
Then I set the cartoon up like a stage.
It is set with a quick pencil sketch.
Today's idea came unusually quickly.
But in 18 years of drawing for the Presca Zette, Heller
has never drawn a blank.
I always have something to draw about.
You always have enough material when you got the whole US
government working for you.
The US, state and local government, even the
packers give Heller ideas.
And it's not just the Presca Zette that carries him.
The website, newspapers throughout Wisconsin and
the country, can subscribe to his syndication service.
This image of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il just ran in
Newsweek's Japanese edition.
Heller's rust-gatch of Uncle Sam reacting to newspaper
headlines is ready to be shown to his colleagues.
If I get it and they don't get it, then the
reader won't get it.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this cartoon out
and start showing a few copy editors and editors and people
I can get some good feedback.
A rush to war and then now it would be,
why's it taken so long?
Would it work better if I substitute a bush?
Carol Hunter is the Presca Zette's executive editor.
I think that's a little bit tougher read because I
mean, bush isn't surprised it's taking so long.
It's public opinion that it's so.
So Uncle Sam stays in the picture.
Every cartoon has got their standard Uncle
Sam and how they draw.
I don't have to put United States or American
public or anything on him.
After the cartoon is fully penciled in, Heller dips
his pen in the ink well.
I like drawing, I like the cross action, I like the work.
Use the pen and ink to really make a statement in itself.
Inking is the most relaxing part of the day.
An hour or two accompanied only by the sound of
pen scratching paper.
But Heller may be too relaxed.
He wrote the headline, why is it taking so
long as talking so long?
Cartoonists are notorious for typos.
It's an easy fix for Heller in the next step.
As the images scanned, colored in and ready for electronic
delivery to the presses.
So on the next day, April 3rd, Presca Zette readers
could open the paper to this.
And Joe Heller could start on tomorrow's cartoon.
A day in the life of Green Bay Presca Zette
cartoonist Joe Heller.
That's our show for tonight.
We'd like to invite you to tune into a number of
special Wisconsin public television productions
during this upcoming week.
On Monday at 7 p.m., we'll bring you coverage of the Martin
Luther King Day celebration at the State Capitol.
Then on Wednesday, we'll bring you live coverage
of the governor's State of the State address.
That's at 7 p.m.
Then immediately following
the State of the State, you can see the forgetting
followed by our special on Wisconsin resources for those
dealing with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Patty Low.
Good night.
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