(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
Each week we bring you stories about the people,
places and issues in our state.
This week, spiritual leaders of the world's major religions
come together to foster peace.
- My name?
- A family torn apart by Hurricane Katrina
has reason to celebrate in Milwaukee.
- You're a man.
- Come to camp and hear a yarn or two.
It's the annual knitting camp.
And kids in need get hugs and hope for the holidays
in Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
A lion's energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center
providing cancer research, education, and treatment.
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, Comprehensive has designated by
the National Cancer Institute, information
available on the web.
Wisconsin's technical colleges, providing local education
for the crucial occupations essential to our communities.
Wisconsin's technical colleges, communities first.
(upbeat music)
- Think for a moment, how would it feel
if you suddenly had nothing?
I mean nothing.
No home, no job, no belongings, no bank account.
No way to even prove you are who you say you are.
That's what life is like for tens of thousands of people
evacuated after Hurricane Katrina.
Hundreds of those people now live in Wisconsin
and have virtually nothing.
But Frederick of Freiburg met one family that says,
in spite of it all, this holiday season, they have everything.
- Commercial airplanes hired by FEMA
delivered some 200 evacuees out of the Hurricane Katrina
devastation and into Milwaukee in September.
Many carried all they had left in garbage bags.
Many were separated from their families.
That's when we first met the brew family.
- It was hard to know that I didn't know where he was
and what his condition was.
- Torn apart by wind and water, Sherry Underbrew arrived
in Wisconsin without her five-year-old son,
her sisters, or her mother.
But one man changed all that.
- It was touched by her story when she got off the airplane.
- Wisconsin air guard pilot Jim Pelagrin
helped reunite the brew family, arranging commercial
flights and bus rides to get them out of scattered
shelters across the South and all together in their
new northern hometown.
At first, the family stayed at the Red Cross shelter
at State Fair Park.
They now live in apartments in and around Milwaukee.
- I don't remember trying to find my sister's
allergies so worried in my mom when I found
my mom was so happy.
- The two teenaged brew sisters, their mom and her fiance,
live in a tidy two bedroom, not far from the older sister's
apartments. There's room for all the
grandkids to visit and play.
FEMA pays the rent and it's furnished with the help
of the Pelagrin family, including the Christmas tree.
- Beautiful people.
Milwaukee has beautiful people here.
People with very kind hearts, giving people.
- But it's been a struggle.
14 year old Ray Netbrew has attended four
schools in four months.
First in Houston, then Milwaukee near the shelters.
She was at Greenfield High for homecoming
when the family lived in a hotel.
Now she's at Cutter Hay High in a 10th grade biology class
as a ninth grader.
- Was it hard to go to so many different schools?
- Yeah, because I had just met some people and I was just
getting in, but didn't have to go to another
school and do it all over again and keep
on doing it again.
- For anybody, especially her age, that it's a very
trying and traumatic experience.
But it seems like she's got a lot of willpower,
a lot of drive and I think that she's doing really well.
- 16 year old Viola says they feel safe here.
She says New Orleans felt dangerous.
And even before the hurricane, without hope.
- Before we had nothing, but now we have everything we dream of.
- Everything a young girl dreamed of.
In a new city where the family is trying to put down roots,
they have a place to call home, but they have no income.
- That's what really, what we were really worried about now,
is being able to get a job to keep our little places
until we find out what we're gonna do.
But even with a future full of uncertainty,
this family says this season, they feel blessed.
- So this Christmas, what will this be like for you?
- Blessing.
- You're gonna be there.
- Like a blessing to have our whole family back together.
- That'll be perfect.
It is.
And we don't even have no gifts, it will be great.
- Why?
- 'Cause we'll be what our family will eat
together, pray together.
- I got what I want for Christmas.
Me and my family together.
- A family with very little, but a family that has everything.
- The Federal Emergency Management Agency reports
that about 1900 households in Wisconsin
have applied for assistance as Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Of that number, the agency is paying for housing
just over 100 families.
FEMA has approved reimbursing the state of Wisconsin
and local governments about $2.7 million
for expenses relating to Katrina evacuees.
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Devastation and tragedy are not always
brought on by nature.
We know all too well that there are places in the world
where violence and fear are woven into people's daily lives.
These places and problems often seem too big for us
to do anything about, but one Madison man
decided he had to try.
His idea involves spiritual leaders
from a broad spectrum of religions,
leaders who work together to foster peace.
Producer Liz Kerner found out whether his idea is working.
(upbeat music)
Violence and war.
Hatred and intolerance.
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Deeply rooted conflicts that seem impossible to resolve.
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But a Madison man set out to do just that.
Daniel Gomez-Ivanya's formed an international organization
called the Peace Council.
What's happening in Japan and China particularly?
Gomez-Ivanya's pulled together a board of trustees
10 years ago.
In the beginning most of the members lived in Madison.
- Naturally I turned to people who are nearby
if only to minimize travel costs to meetings.
And I knew that we could find people
with international experience, with peacemaking experience,
with interfaith experience, who could be very helpful.
- The board members bring together
influential spiritual leaders once a year.
A leader like the Dalai Lama is known around the world.
Most are well known only in their homeland.
- Well Mahagosananda for example,
the Buddhist patriarch of Cambodia,
not well known outside of Southeast Asia,
but enormously respected within the Buddhist communities
of Southeast Asia.
- Mahagosananda led peace walks into combat zones in Cambodia
during the war with the Camerruj.
Gosananda and other Buddhist monks and nuns
sometimes walked single file into the line of fire.
- But both the Camerruj and the government soldiers
had too much respect for the Buddhist monks
to do anything that stopped.
- Another spiritual leader, well known in Israel,
is Rabbi Levy Wyman Kalman.
- Rabbi Levy Wyman Kalman is one of the founders
of a group called Rabbis for human rights.
That works primarily to ensure human rights for Arabs
and the occupied territories especially.
- There are 20 spiritual leaders on the council.
Six are women.
Salah Mahmoud is the director of the Institute
of Muslim Minority Affairs.
The Institute works to improve relations
between Muslims and others in countries
where Muslims are the minority.
- Again, she's very well known within
the Muslim world, not very well known outside of it.
But because we have people like that,
the peace council has a lot of credibility within Islam.
- The peace council brings together people
from many different religions to work toward peace.
Sister Joan Chetister is a Catholic nun
who serves on the council.
- Interfaith work is not only possible
and is absolutely imperative now.
It is the only antidote we have to run away fundamentalism,
a fanaticism that somehow or other,
apparently sees itself under threat
and so threatens everybody else.
The fact of the matter is we have got to honor,
to respect and to showcase why is the depth
of every great tradition on this globe.
The spiritual leaders of the peace council
came together for the first time in 1995.
A Catholic bishop from Mexico asked for their help
at that meeting.
- Bishop Samiris Garcia, when he was the active bishop
in his diocese of San Cristobal, was under constant death threats
from paramilitary squads.
So much so that this man who's known as a man of peace
had to be provided with an armored car
by the Mexican government.
- Bishop Garcia asked the peace counselors to come to Mexico.
He wanted to shine an international spotlight
on what was happening to the Indians who live there.
- It did put an international spotlight
on what was happening in Chiapas and what is happening in Chiapas
is essentially the same thing that happened here
during the 18th and 19th centuries,
namely the wealthy European landowners
are taking the land away from the Indians.
- The national media in Mexico broadcast
Bishop Garcia's message for the first time
during the peace council's visit.
- I think anytime you can bring international attention
to the most backward of situations.
Anytime you expose what has always been hidden,
the effective hostility on the most vulnerable
of any society, you draw the attention of
good people everywhere.
- We were told that our very presence was saving lives.
- Saving lives by simply being there.
- It's very simple.
You don't have to bring anything.
You just have to be with them.
And here in our very affluent society
where we have everything we need and we don't suffer,
it's hard for many Americans to understand
how powerful such a thing can be.
- Since their first mission to Mexico,
the international peace council has been invited
to areas of conflict like North Korea, Israel, Palestine,
and Northern Ireland.
And while anger in these areas won't be resolved overnight,
the peace council believes in a policy of persistence.
- One I believe with the Chinese that water wears away rock.
I don't do what I do in order to succeed.
I do what I do because I see myself
as just one more drop of water.
- It's like planting seeds.
You're not quite sure what's going to come up.
So the success emerges only with the passage of time
and often in a different shape than what you
had imagined at first.
But I think that even if we were to fold up
our activities now and go away, we would have done
something useful because we have shown that
this kind of interface work can be helpful, it can
happen, it can work.
- The peace council gathered in New York this year.
A major theme of the meeting was how to address
the increasing influence of religious
extremists in the world.
If you'd like more information about the peace council,
log on to our website at www.wpt.org/inwisconsin.
We turn now to a peaceful gathering with
very different goals.
Warm, cozy, and colorful might be proper adjectives.
It's called knitting camp and devotees come
to learn new techniques and renew old friendships.
Producer Art Hackett went to camp to find out
what keeps these knitters coming back.
- You will recognize them by the bags they carry.
Bags filled with projects in progress.
- Hi, what can we have stuck in here?
Everything is my same one from all the past.
- Oh, there's a lot of them.
- Knitting projects.
It is called knitting camp.
- We live in a tanner.
Do roast marshmallows, you know the whole idea of camp.
- Well, it started as a camp, you know.
They were up at Shell Lake, actually in camp grounds.
- But it's grown beyond that.
- Oh, welcome to camp.
I name it's Chris T.
Jacobs and I'm the camp administrator.
- There are reminders of camp.
- Camp T-shirts.
- Like T-shirts.
- Here they are.
Gee, who picked out the color for the camp T-shirt?
One, two, three.
Gee. - Group photos.
- And I hope I have enough yarn and craft projects.
- In fact, the camp is pretty much a non-stop craft project.
- Good morning.
- Make Swanson is the lead teacher at the camps.
She's the owner of Schoolhouse Press in Pippsville.
They publish and sell knitting books and videos.
The first camp teacher was Swanson's mother,
Elizabeth Zimmerman.
- Are a lot of these people, your mother is a disciple?
- Absolutely, yeah.
She was mesmerizing.
She wrote five books and had a couple of television programs.
Those were wonderful and they were shown around the country
on public television.
- This is Elizabeth Zimmerman doing a little tady
bees of knitting just to get myself started.
This is called the knitting workshop and I'm going to wait
to work like mad.
- Elizabeth Zimmerman died in 1977.
Her picture hangs on the wall of the classroom.
Swanson says the first two sessions are closer to the camps
her mother taught.
- A lot of people will make a bunch of scarves and they'll
go on and do something else and that's fine.
But a lot of scarf knitters have become caught by the concept
of what is possible in knitting and they came to camp and
they're just ravenous for technique.
- But the last two sessions in the series have shifted
towards social events.
- I keep coming back because I find it, I look forward now
to it as a retreat.
- But there is also teaching.
- Other people instead of tightening the last knit stitch
will purl into the back.
- When I first came I was in the beginners and I learned a
lot of things.
I thought I knew how to knit.
Wow, the things you relearn.
- Meg Swanson is why Linda Padoka came all the way from
Oklahoma. - Meg, absolutely Meg.
She's, she and Elizabeth her mother are,
- Everyone.
- Goddases, knitting Goddases.
- Zimmerman kept people from getting sewn
knotted up over knitting.
- Elizabeth was just an amazing knitting architect.
So she helped people understand that first of all,
they think to become thinking knitters not
just blind followers.
- There's no wrong way to knit was one of the things.
And so much of our lives now are, well you
have to do it this way.
Because you have to and with her it's the process and it's the
what you get out of it.
- The knitting goes on from Thursday night to Monday noon.
Even those adopting Zimmerman's relaxed attitude need relief.
There are show and tell sessions.
[music]
- Some of the items displayed have been years in the making
inspired from a camp session from years before.
- Two years ago I met Greg for the first time at camp.
- And Maloo Bayber noticed Greg Cotton's pie-died t-shirt.
- He took lots of pictures, went home and charted it.
And a tie-dye sweater.
- And this is the first time you've seen it.
- I saw a photograph of it last year but it's the
first time I've seen it.
- And your reaction.
- Wow!
That's amazing.
- And it's not plastic.
You get to knit with real wool from real sheep and you get
to knit a real sweater for some and you love and you know
that there's a part of you in every single stitch.
And if you're knitting specifically for someone
you're thinking about them the whole time,
you know, and it really is an active love.
- And I'm going to give it to him to let
his daughters wear it.
- I think it's tangible and it's soothing.
But it's not always soothing.
When I'm in the middle of a new design, for instance a
color pattern or something, I get very excited.
I get up early and stay up late to watch this stuff
come out of my needles.
- Knitters are these wonderfully compulsive, obsessive people
and you're in a room with everyone just like
you and it was great.
- Someone said it's cheaper than a shrink.
You know, when you're finished with a round of golf,
you have to show for it.
Oh, we have a sweater.
- Good morning, Knitters.
Good morning, Kristi.
- It's our last day.
- Thank you.
- Oh no!
- I don't know.
- A summer camp for kids might come to a close with a swimming
contestor at Talent Show.
Knitters camp is no different.
One year ago the campers picked a theme for this
year's contest project.
The theme was masks.
- Knit in one piece from the front back I staked it.
So here's the water.
- Cindy McQuarrie's live North Carolina calls for project Nemo.
- And to shut out the outside world.
- No.
- Work but it's zero comes out of the closet.
[laughter]
- It's supposed to be a sock monkey but my husband said
it's kind of a sock cow.
[laughter]
- And mine is titled, "Just hand over the yarn
and nobody gets hurt."
- Campions with a flurry of photo flashes.
[applause]
- Maybe this is the only time we'll see each other in
a year but yet there's all those memories of having.
- Eating together, knit together, grown and mown
together over the ripping out that goes along with knitting
because if you knit you also rip.
- I tell you knitting it's powerful.
[music]
- It's nice to get together with loved ones over the holidays
but this season of celebration can be difficult if someone
close faces a critical illness.
Especially if the person suffering is a child.
A number of Wisconsin organizations try to make
things a little brighter.
One of them is Hugs and Hope for Sick Children.
Our in-wisconsin intern Laura Kalanowski found
out about the Hugs and Hope Holiday Elf project
and the smiles it brings to children across the country.
- A coat in snow pants.
- Christmas Elves have already been to the
Simpson home in Broadhead.
Elves enlisted by a charity organization
called Hugs and Hope.
- Mom!
- The best part of the day.
- Hugs and Hope was founded five years ago by Marsha
Jordan of Rhinelander.
- She had met a little boy suffering from a brain
tumor. Jordan wanted to do something to help.
That help has grown into a nationwide
nonprofit organization.
- Our goal is just to provide smiles for kids who may and
I have a lot to smile about.
So we do that through several different programs.
Mostly we send a lot of what we call Happy Mail,
thousands of cards each month.
And then we provide birthday parties and of
course at Christmas we provide Christmas presents.
Nearly 3,000 volunteers give children and their families
something to smile about, especially around Christmas.
- We like to make every Christmas special for each of
these kids because we don't know how many more they'll have.
And they go through so much suffering throughout the year.
We really like to see them enjoy the holidays.
- The ELF project, one of Hugs and Hope's many programs, helps
families like the Simpsons.
Caitlin was born without the right side of her heart.
She underwent a heart transplant when she was
just 9 and a half weeks old.
- She did great with that transplant until she was 4
and then she had a tooth that got an infection in it
that we didn't know about.
And that caused her to reject and it was a very bad rejection.
She almost lost her battle and she fought and fought.
Miraculously, Caitlin received a second heart transplant.
Nearly 4 years later, Caitlin is full of life.
But the bills from her medical treatments make
Christmas a difficult time.
That's where the ELF project comes in.
And it helps make your Christmas nicer at least for the kids
because they are assured that they'll get presents.
- In this such a magical fun time of year, the little
kids, you would hate for them to miss out on that.
Due to financial stresses and things.
It's a great program.
- Hugs and Hope uses volunteer alves from groups including
businesses and churches.
- Caitlin construction, mission statement is that
we care for people, our customers in their homes.
- And I saw a five-child family and I thought company like ours
can handle something like that.
So we went around and I posted all around the office, I put
it in our company newsletter and we raised money for them
and we went out and bought all the gifts and everything.
- It's really hard to know that I have really healthy kids
and that they have children that they don't know how long
they're going to have them.
I think it's better than buying for my own family.
It's more of a blessing.
- A blessing.
That's what the Simpson family
calls Marsha Jordan.
- She has the huge heart.
She must to be willing to invest so
much of her time and her life to reach out to families that have
sick children and to try and pull it all together for them
to make it to easier their pain and their stress and to try and
smooth it over as best she can.
She must be a wonderful person.
- A person who cannot believe her simple desire
to help turned into a nationwide nonprofit charity.
I would like to see us help as many kids as possible
throughout the country.
We have limited resources of
course but who knows what the future might bring.
And I don't really think about what I would like to see in
the future.
I just take one day at a time because I had no
idea it would come this far.
- From Rhinelander to Broadhead and coast to coast with
hugs and a wish of hope from some very special elves.
- Thank you.
Merry Christmas.
- That's our show for this holiday week.
As we go we're going to check out the snow
at the state's only designated wilderness park Newport
State Park in Door County.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
Happy holidays to you and yours.
Good night.
[Music]
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
Alliant Energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life and
Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy offering energy saving ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center
providing cancer research, education and treatment.
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, Comprehensive has
designated by the National Cancer Institute, information
available on the web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges providing the people of
Wisconsin with the knowledge and skills they'll need
for the economy of tomorrow.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
[Music]