[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of Alliance Energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]
Bald Eagles over the Mississippi River on a winter day.
A rare, up close view of wildlife in Wisconsin.
Hello, I'm Patty Low.
We'll bring you more about those majestic birds later tonight.
We'll also introduce you to a woman who gives
domestic abuse survivors an outlet for expression.
A reporter, Art Hackett, brings us to a small town
in northwestern Wisconsin where more than 10%
of the residents are originally from a civil
war torn country in Africa.
But first, he's called the Birdman of Muscaday.
Artist Ellis Nelson uses metal to create sculptures that allow
the imagination to take flight.
[Music]
He pounds.
He grines.
He welds pieces of scrap metal.
The end result is Ellis Nelson's unique form of art.
One guy says, "You know what you should do?
You ever run out of ideas?"
And I says, "You know, I probably get
50 out of you today.
I only use one."
That's about true.
Ellis Nelson created his first metal sculpture when he was 57.
That was almost 18 years ago.
Almost from the beginning, Nelson's scrap metal sculptures
caught the eye of the media.
He's been featured on CNN, Good Morning America.
And in 1987, on Wisconsin Public Television.
This is the thing that when I go to a salvage yard, I visualize
this would be a great thing for feet for our structure.
Metal sculptures soon edge to side, Nelson's work as an auto
mechanic at his service station on the main drag in Muscaday.
His gallery was out front and his style was influenced
by visions of a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
I kept thinking about it all the time and all.
And I could see the thing in
my dreams and as a vision.
So about four or five days of it, I decided, "Well, I'm
going to build it to be able to satisfy myself on it."
Nelson still displays his work in front of his
former service station.
But since our first visit more than 15 years ago, his
style has continually evolved.
He does so many different things in so many different ways.
Nelson has a long list of loyal customers, including
Dennis Bindley from Middleton.
That's the bell.
Bindley and his wife have purchased more than 100
Ellis Nelson sculptures.
The reason is that it's just good honest work.
It's self-taught.
I admire that.
I admire him.
And they're just fun.
This one is cool.
This one is the sundial.
And it actually works, by the way.
And the owl is kind of special.
It's kind of cool.
His works have action.
They're made out of metal, but they
look like they're moving.
And that one's called the hunter.
What was new on that is the hands, our screws, and nuts.
Well, they're together.
He hadn't done that that I'd seen before.
One piece in particular has brought Nelson
national recognition.
The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore
commissioned a sculpture for the end is near the grand
opening exhibit in 1997.
It's called the Grim Reaper.
There isn't many people in all this story of a Grim Reaper.
They're all afraid of it.
But actually, the Grim Reaper is really a good thing.
And the falls here when the weed is griped.
Why the Grim Reaper would be harvesting instead of
the weed, but it however harvested the souls of the
old people, bundled them up and sent them to heaven.
There's nothing bad about that, but that's what
the Grim Reaper does.
Some of Nelson's work has had a surprising impact on his life.
I'm going to state this and my wife could verify it.
I have built a number of crosses.
And I have never built a cross yet to what?
That I've had some mystery good luck.
Very much so that followed it by a week or less.
And it has never failed me.
Nelson found inspiration a few years ago in the
symbol for peace displayed at the United Nations.
It depicts a biblical reference to beating
swords into ploughshares.
They have a big one in front of that building and it's
probably 10, 12, 15 feet higher.
And I thought there was so much artwork about
that that I made them.
It's a blacksmith with an anvil and he's holding a hammer
and he's going to pound the sword into a ploughshare.
It's mentioned right in the Bible, I wrote it right on the
sculpture. It's Isaiah 2.4.
Over time Nelson has scaled back the size of his sculptures,
a concession to his 75 years and health problems.
People now call him the "bird man of muskete" because
he specializes in simple elegant shapes like the eagre.
While the scope of Ellis Nelson's work has changed
over time, he still draws the interest of people who drive by.
And when asked what fame has done for him, he replied,
"I got a joke about that.
I always wanted somebody to ask me about you.
You just did.
I always said, "Well, you know something.
When I get up in the morning, my back hurt just bad
nose before I was famous."
So you see it didn't do me any good.
A post script to our story, Ellis Nelson has a son
named Tom who has taken up his father's torch.
Tom Nelson is creating and displaying his metal
sculptures side by side with his dad's work.
Artistic expression can take many forms.
In fact, that's the beauty of art.
It allows each individual the freedom to create work
based on unique perspective.
Sometimes art can even be a tool to work through
different experiences.
Former UW-Ashkosh professor Karen Mench found painting
was a catharsis for dealing with her own painful past.
And she now uses her passion for art to help
others find healing.
It's Dr.
Karen Mench's final day of teaching at UW-Ashkosh.
"They are first single one of these major groups.
And you already have."
The last time future social workers and police officers
in her domestic violence class will present their project.
"And we created a child care package for police officers,
which includes a teddy bear."
"I just thought it pretty much opened my eyes,
you know what I mean?"
Dr. Mench is retiring to spend more time with her
passion and joy, painting.
"This painting just gives me great joy.
The first thing I do in the morning is come
in and see how it looks after I painted to see how
the colors have settled.
I just would smile and smile."
Smiling may be an unexpected reaction to these paintings.
In her very expressive way, Mench is telling her
own story of years spent victimized by abusive partners.
"The more abusive the person is, the more you
try to police the person.
Because you don't want to get abused.
So you try to think of all kinds of
different ways to take care of that person's needs."
"And then your needs are gone.
One of the things about painting is I can
do whatever I want here."
What she wants is to reclaim what had been a hidden
and for her shameful part of her personal history.
In my marriage, when I was thinking about leaving, there
were threats with knives.
And so there's this knife here.
And that was a very scary time for me.
And these flowers are blooming here.
These were represented by my two daughters in me.
That once I would get out of this relationship, hopefully
I'd be a good example for them.
And if I found my strength and my identity and learned to take
care of myself and be on my own, that maybe they would too.
She did find that strength and identity.
She found it by painting.
Starting with this very first work, Deep Down Dark Pain.
I felt terribly alone.
So when I turned to my painting, it was always there.
It was there on a Friday night when everybody else
was out having a good time with other people.
It was there in the morning when I woke up.
It was my companion.
This is why the support you have as an abused woman or anybody
in their life going through any difficult time is what
really helps you get through.
And so if you don't have that, I think the creative process
is like that support person.
Convinced that art saved her life, Minch set out to bring it
to the lives of other victims.
She led classes here at the Christine Anne Center,
a domestic violence shelter in Ashkash.
Jennifer Grant was in the first class.
Honor return visit to the shelter.
She showed us the basement room where it met.
When I came to the very, very, very first class of art
that Dr.
Minch did with us, I think I was filled with a
lot of anxiety.
I came in.
I believe that I was very, very
quiet, very kind of in a corner.
Didn't really want to be there.
So, and I'm so glad I did.
Jennifer is one of the people that has a lot
of creative abilities.
She's not afraid to express herself creatively, which
is really the courage you have.
The fact that she can talk here is part of that.
I think it gave us the ability to all find our little niche
and how to express ourselves.
She expressed herself starting from that first class,
creating this self-portrait called, "Who am I?"
And self-expression continues to be a part of Jennifer's life.
Without Dr.
Minch, I would not be painting today.
I would not be drawing.
I would not be writing.
I probably, I know I would still be in fear.
Living in fear is what these self-portraits represent.
But doing the portrait can be a path out of fear.
So we did self-portraits.
And in those self-portraits, most of them are very
pale. They're crying.
You can tell they're very unsure of themselves.
And over time, they just, they got bolder.
And for those who I think really wanted to move forward in their
lives, I think the art helped them.
It was amazing to me.
[Music]
Our next story takes us to Beron County in the
northwestern part of the state.
That's where an unusually large number of refugees
from Somalia have settled, leaving a country in
Africa where life was both uncertain and dangerous.
Now they found a new home in Wisconsin, raising
families and pursuing jobs.
Art Hackett traveled to the town of Beron a few months ago
to report on how the newest members of the community
and long-time area residents are adjusting to change.
Track practice after school is an everyday ritual for
15-year-old Muhammad Deary.
It's a ritual shared with countless other high school
students in Wisconsin.
But here's another daily ritual for which the Beron schools
have had to make accommodation.
Every day, shortly after lunch, Somali students make
their way to a small room filled with study corrals
to fulfill the prayer obligations of Islam.
While Muhammad Deary is alone at prayer, he is
not alone at the school.
When Beron High School held its graduation ceremony last spring,
142 students crossed the stage.
33 Golden Bear Grads were Somalian.
In three years, Muhammad hopes to be a graduate of Beron
High, a world very different from his homeland in Somalia.
Muhammad left that country when he was two and a half years
old and spent the next 10 years in refugee camps in Kenya.
He eventually wound up in Minneapolis.
In the cities, always you get trouble without a
kid. And this small town is good for our family.
I know the kids don't want to get in trouble.
So my mom said, "I don't want to get
in trouble.
My kid doesn't want to get in trouble."
The next person moved in here.
Beron is home to about 3,000 people.
But Mayor Pete Olson says the town's ethnic makeup began
to change several years ago.
Today, better than 10% of his constituents are Somalian.
Have they tried Lutifist yet?
Not that I'm aware of, but I'm sure they'll be encouraged to.
What brought the Somalians to Beron wasn't Norwegian codfish,
it was Turkey, processed at the Jenny O Turkey store plant.
Nasrassashi moved to Beron six years ago after a
friend told her about jobs available at the Turkey plant.
She told me that this is small town and they have
a job so you can't able to work.
I mean, overtime, it's not as you want it.
So that was the other reason that I came to Beron.
We're worried about the jobs spread among the Somali
community in Minnesota.
Soon, Sashi was running Beron's
newly created International Center, where Somalians
come for help with jobs, housing and other needs.
On any given morning, the center in the basement of the county
extension office is filled with Somalians crowded around
computer terminals, seeking news from their homeland.
Okay, so why did Kledina move to this country?
What are we going to say?
English is a second language classes are offered twice a day.
As Beron's Somalian community grows, there's talk of opening
businesses to cater to it.
We're planning to get opportunity to open some
business like Somalia and Ristran.
Also, some people looking to open some
Somalia and closed shop.
Some Somalians are starting to move to jobs other than
those at the Turkey plant.
47-year-old Osman-Losea works as a translator at the Beron
Medical Center, providing health care and other services
to a non-English speaking population is one of the
greater challenges Beron faces.
When you ask a Somalian why they're in Beron, you'll hear
about the advantages many would find in small town life.
They're getting close together, a grocery shop, a house, a
home, a school, everything.
And you'll also hear about why they're not in Somalia.
Not safe there.
Civil war going on.
If you don't want to kill somebody or somebody kill you,
you have to get out of there.
While an influx of immigrants can create strife in a small
town, so far there have been few conflicts in Beron.
We have different, you know.
So it was a little bit intention, but I mean, getting
better all the time.
Right now we have, I mean, to get
community are welcoming and we don't have any problem.
They came here for jobs, I think that was important for
people to understand.
They came up their own free will,
transferred in here, you know.
There was no effort to bring groups of people here.
My thinking was let's see if we can do some things on a
proactive basis, build some bridges so that when those
conflicts inevitably they're going to arise when they do come
up that we can deal with them.
One thing the people of Beron did realize was that if
you've got Somalians, you need to have a soccer team.
And I started playing soccer when I was like four years old,
honestly, I love playing soccer.
It's the only sport that we play in Africa.
Beron High School didn't have a soccer team until last fall.
Muhammadiri is one of four Somalian players on the team.
And while there is apparently self-imposed separation between
races in the lunchroom, there seems to be easy going contact
as Muhammad passes through the hallways between classes.
I know last year, you know, the year before this, they would
sit and they wouldn't even be out at lunchtime.
They would kind of be in a room together.
It would be at all walking around the halls or nothing.
This year I've seen a bigger change where they're in the
library, you know, they're talking to people and they're
feeling more comfortable.
Yeah, first time.
It was a hard to communicate the
people, to go out with the other kids that you'd know no.
There are some people who chart your color and the
some people that are very nice.
Most of the people are very good and very nice.
Communication has been difficult for Anglo students too.
Because there are some times where we have no idea what
they're talking about and we just have to keep on asking
them and we just go through it and we finally figure out
what they're talking about.
But sometimes it takes a little bit.
Next year, Feron students who aren't primary English speakers
will have to pass a stiffer English proficiency test.
The goal is that graduates be prepared for work
or further studies.
Donna Schuster is one of the ESL teachers hired to meet
the needs of the district's growing Somalian enrollment.
You have students who have had a very disrupted education
due to the Civil War in Somalia who may have not
gone to school since second grade and now they're 19.
And you know, that was due to their parents being killed
in the war, them having to move in with relatives,
moving to a refugee camp, not having access to education.
So you have students like that.
You have some students who have had a pretty rough, a pretty
continuous road on education.
If there's a lesson to be learned from past waves of
immigration, it is that once people come to America,
they tend to stay in America and so do their children.
But Nasrassashi says he still thinks about moving
back to her homeland.
If it gets better, if we get a government and willing
to go back and help them, students may become a teacher
over there and help them establish a three-stat.
It doesn't sound as if this is something you
expect to happen very soon.
I don't know.
It might be who knows.
I only got knows.
A few updates on that report since Art Hackett visited
Barron County last year.
The Somali population has continued
to increase with nearly 450 Somali people now making
their home in that county.
One of the residents featured in that report, Barron High
School student, Muhammad Deary, is still doing well.
He played soccer last fall and was
also on the basketball team.
Meanwhile, workforce development officials in Barron County
report that Somali workers are starting to move from
the turkey store to other businesses as they get more
experience and language skills.
A number of them are working for Anderson Windows.
Some are also working as certified
nursing assistants after going through a course at Indian
Head Technical Institute.
[Music]
We're now at the far southwestern area of our
state. There from the banks of the Mississippi River, you
can see a spectacular sight.
Bald Eagles, dozens of them, dramatically swoop and glide
through the sky over the river.
Viewing such a large number of these birds in one place
would have been unheard of just a few decades ago.
But the Bald Eagle, our national symbol, has made a
remarkable comeback in our state.
And an amazing display can be seen near Casville.
[Music]
Winter in Wisconsin.
It can be a tough time.
A testing time.
[Music]
But every season has its sweet compensations.
And this is one of the upsides to winter.
[Music]
As the ice steals in, Eagles gather in greater numbers near
open water.
They congregate, concentrate and put on a show.
[Music]
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.
[Music]
The Nesting pairs numbered 831.
A very fine place to view Eagles is in Casville just
below the power plant.
They like to fish the waters there.
[Music]
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.
[Music]
These dancers are one of the delights of winter.
It's one of the joys of the season.
Eagle watching in Wisconsin.
[Music]
A bit of advice if you go eagle watching, these birds are
easily spooked by people, but they don't seem to mind cars.
In fact, our Eagle story was shot by videographer Frank
Bull from Inside a minivan.
So if you stay in your vehicle, you'll have a better
chance of seeing the show.
That's our program for tonight.
Tune in next week for a journey through the cultural
history of the Hmong people.
We'll also bring you to one of the national forests in
our state and explain how wildlife experts are working
to bring back a species long missing from our woodlands.
We leave you this week with another look at the
Castville Eagles.
Enjoy and for in Wisconsin, I'm
Patty Low.
Good night.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliance Energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]