(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people, places,
and issues in our state.
This week, a dilemma.
This Chippewa County landowner needed to protect
the wishes of her parents who have died
while facing the economic realities of
land ownership today.
Learn how she created a future for her family farmland,
land no longer used for a dairy herd.
(upbeat music)
We'll also learn more about the spiritual practices
that the man thought to be the youngest practicing
shaman in the mung world.
And find out how a Milwaukee woman using a sewing machine
and tiny donated clothing labels creates artwork
with a message.
We'll also go for a fast ride on hard water in Wisconsin.
(upbeat music)
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lient energy, who brings safe, reliable, and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
A lient 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.
- We begin this week with the third
in our series of reports about land trusts.
Over the past few months, we've brought you
a number of reports about people who have used
various types of land trusts to protect their land
from future development.
Last week, we met a Douglas County man
who must keep his rural riverfront property exactly
as it was decades ago when his mother signed
a conservation easement.
He can't so much as clear the brush
for a better view of the river, and he likes it that way.
But what happens when you want to preserve
just some of your land, work some of it,
and maybe even allow some commercial development?
That's what Chippewa County landowner Sally Lewis
needed to find out.
Producer Joanne Garrett shares her story.
(audience cheering)
- Just off Highway 40 in Chippewa County,
is the Lewis Farm.
It looks tranquil, peaceful.
But this place is in transition, wrestling with the question
of how to preserve the past and move into the future.
This used to be a dairy farm, some 250 acres,
lovingly tended by Thomas and Doris Lewis.
They brought their young family here,
and for decades, this was home.
When they died, they left the farm to their daughter Sally.
Being left with a responsibility of its future
from my parents, I just feel it is a big responsibility
to be a good steward of the land.
They've put so much hard work and energy into it.
I just feel like I have to take good care of it.
- There are memories to this place.
- Catching frogs at the pond, getting the cows home
for milking, hunted a few deer out here.
I missed a few deer out here.
Am I supposed to admit that?
(laughing)
Okay, I just did.
- But most importantly for Lewis,
are those parts of the farm that form a special legacy.
Take a look.
- This is the prime section that I wanted
to protect and preserve.
I know my dad wanted to see this preserved and protected
just because of his natural beauty.
I've seen how development is cropping up everywhere.
It used to be around big lakes, but now people are even invading
the natural wild pond areas.
- How to save what her parents had worked so hard to conserve.
- Enter an easement, a conservation easement.
- The word easement all I'd heard before
is like for a driveway purpose across somebody's land
that you can get permission that way.
- To protect her property from subdivision,
Lewis got a conservation easement placed on the farm.
- So then this yellow border defines the property line
as well as the easement boundaries.
There's one of the larger wild ponds.
- Lewis sold the right to develop this land.
She sold it to a land trust, and an easement, a
conservation easement, that this land can't be
subdivided or developed was placed on her deed.
In return, Lewis got some tax benefits,
and the land stays as it is.
- It gives me a piece of mind knowing that it's permanently
protected from being subdivided and developed
even after I'm gone.
- Lewis worked with the West Wisconsin land trust
for her easement.
- There are 55 different land trusts in Wisconsin.
Vicki Elkin is the head of gathering waters,
a consortium of all the different land
trusts in the state.
- A lot of these people find their way to a land trust
because they're interested in protecting their land
in the future.
A lot of them are worried about what's gonna happen
when they pass away, or if they ever have to sell the land,
they don't want to see it developed in the future.
So there are different ways a land trust can work
with a private landowner, and it really depends on
the interests and needs of the landowners.
Once the landowner signs this agreement, it's permanent.
And so it runs with the land, all future landowners are
bound by the restrictions in that easement.
But it's really a great tool because when you're working
with the land trust to negotiate the easement,
it's very flexible.
You can talk about whether or not you want to retain
a home site or two home sites for your kids.
You can do that.
You can include that in the easement.
- The actual home site is in this triangular piece
right here with the buildings and the barn.
- Easements can be customized.
Each landowner can specify what goes in,
what stays out, what's to be done
in the various parts of the property.
- The home site is going to remain the home site.
I can make improvements, build structures,
do what I want on that residential zone that's defined.
Around the buildings, there's an agricultural zone
where my brother rents the land from me
and continues to grow crops.
Not only can she still grow crops.
- This part was left out because it has potential
for commercial site being at the intersection
of highway and state road 40.
- Lewis's easement even allows for commercial development
on a portion of her property.
- Essentially, I can still plant, you know,
restore peres, I can still cut timber,
I can plant trees.
I can do a lot of things, but what can't happen here
is it can't be subdivided.
It can't be turned into just a commodity
where you're demolishing the landscape
to wring out every last dime you can of its value.
- Lewis still owns this land.
It's not a park, it's still her property.
- There's no need for public access
and that's something landowners ask us a lot.
If they enter into this, is the public gonna be
able to come on their land whenever they want
and that's not true?
They can allow public access if they want to,
but it's not a standard part of these agreements.
- For Lewis though, public access
to at least part of the property was important.
It was a way to honor her father's wishes.
- He got talked about creating an ice age park here
at one time even.
So I knew that that was his future wish and goal
for the property.
- Plans for this part of the property
will allow for some public access, hunting,
snowmobiling and some no trace camping may be allowed.
Places as beautiful as this face enormous pressures.
The Lewis farm was no exception.
- Supported land company has approached me
at least twice a year with a little mailing
in a business card and now they've resorted to phone calls
but I had the pleasure a few weeks ago of telling them
to take me off their list because I've signed up
for conservation easement.
- The farm was not for sale.
The reaction of the realtors?
- Oh no, they said and I said, oh yes.
(laughing)
So I kindly asked them to take me off their list.
- It's just comforting to know that
that it'll always stay the way it is.
A lot of childhood memories.
- I feel like riding on the tractor maybe
or coming back to get the cows, picking blackberries,
and build little bonfire nicely down the con-run.
But just appreciating the beauty of it.
Just appreciating my parents.
Even though they've physically loved me.
- These are still here.
(gentle music)
- You can find out more about land trusts
and watch all of the reports that have been part of
our land trust series.
By logging onto our website, the address is
www.wpt.org/inwisconsin.
(gentle music)
- One of our goals here on in Wisconsin
is to introduce you to the interesting array of people
who live in our state.
The fact is almost everyone has a story to tell.
Our next report is a great example.
Chang Wang is believed to be the youngest practicing
the Shaman in the Mung World.
Yet you'd never guess that he's a Shaman.
If you saw him walking on campus at UW-Madison,
wearing the typical collegiate Bucky Badger hat and gloves,
it's that merging of modern America
and traditional Mung culture that has prompted Wang
to work with even younger members of the Mung community.
Producer Andy Soath gives us a look
into the world of a Shaman.
(gentle music)
- It's a Friday evening in Madison
and a group of Mung boys and sneakers and t-shirts
are practicing the Kang.
The contrast of the ancient instrument
and the contemporary attire symbolizes
how young Mung Americans live in two worlds,
modern and traditional.
Their teacher, Chang Wang, knows all about
straddling different worlds.
He's not only an expert on Mung culture,
he's also believed to be the youngest practicing Shaman
in the Mung World.
I'm happy to be the youngest Shaman for the Mung people.
It's just like a gift.
(gentle music)
- Traditional Mung people believe the Shaman
is an intermediary between this world
and the world of the spirits.
Usually a person only becomes a Shaman in middle age
after a long illness.
But when Wang was ill as a baby, in a tie refugee camp
in the late 1980s, his mother brought
him to a Shaman.
She told my mother, "I still don't believe myself,
but I think your baby's a Shaman."
And so that's kind of like shocked everyone in the village.
But the villagers in the refugee camp
soon came to the young Shaman for healing ceremonies
and Mung people continued to do so
even after Wang's family emigrated to Wisconsin.
This young woman has come all the way from St.
Paul for Wang's help because her hair
had been mysteriously falling out.
- I have to start with the drum.
The drum will be able to help me gain my power
and to have connection with my spirit.
So the first day I was gathering all my spirits,
you have a meeting, tell them what's going on.
(mimicking sound)
- What's going on is that at an earlier ceremony,
Wang promised an offering to spirits if the girl was cured.
Her hair has since returned, so the spirits must be rewarded.
Symbolic paper money is burned and chickens sacrificed.
In Mung Shamanism, it's thought that illnesses
can be caused by an evil spirit capturing
one of a person's 12 body spirits.
Wang uses a rope that gathers the girl's body spirits
to journey with him into the spirit world
to retrieve the captured spirit.
(mimicking sound)
- The meaning of bone, the water to her,
to scare the evil spirit away from her body.
My spirit has a power to watch all evil spirits
away from your body.
(mimicking sound)
- Wang puts a black cloth over his face
to block out this world and prepares
to enter the spirit world.
He travels there on a wooden bench,
which in the spirit world becomes a horse.
- Every Shaman had to have a horse
'cause I cannot go without my horse.
(mimicking sound)
In the spirit world, Wang travels to the girl's home,
where he reminds evil spirits there of the deal they've made.
They release the hostage body spirit,
but to return that spirit to the girl,
Wang has to capture it.
- It's kind of like exciting moment too, you know.
- He does this by using a metal ring like a lasso
as the ceremony climaxes.
(mimicking sound)
- It's kind of like after you call the play, right?
And then you, after you handle it,
and then you go and you kind of make the play work.
So.
(mimicking sound)
- Wang often uses sports analogies
to explain the relationship he has to his spirits.
- I'm like the coach.
I don't know to play football, but I can coach
him, call the play.
I'm the one that call the play, you know?
The play that Wang is working on now
is being the first in his family to go to college.
He attends UW-Madison and plans to study anthropology
to continue his work, preserving monk traditions.
- I believe that what's all my spirits?
I will not be here today sitting right here,
talk to you, or go to UW-Madison,
or, you know, educate monk culture very well.
Because since I remember my heart, my heart always think
that what can I do to help the monk
who has a good, better life?
That's like my dream.
(mimicking sound)
(upbeat music)
- We move now from a consideration
of spiritual expression to one of artistic expression.
Milwaukee artist Theresa Agnew creates moving images
with a sewing machine and tiny scraps of cloth.
The cloth is actually thousands of labels
from brand name clothing.
The image they combine to create tells the story
of sweatshop labor.
Producer Lori Gorman reports on Agnew's work
to put a public face on those nameless workers.
Milwaukee artist Theresa Agnew is on her way to get the mail.
She gets a lot of mail.
All right.
I got one of these, the article is too large for your box.
I love those.
This is so fun.
Hey, Australia, Nova Scotia, cool.
How did they find out?
- That was a good day.
- And once in all these letters and packages
from Nova Scotia, Australia, and other locations
across the globe, labels, clothing labels to be exact.
For customs, contims, little fabric labels, no value.
For US customs, these labels may have no value,
but for Theresa Agnew, they are the precious
raw materials for her latest work of art.
Wow. Very organized.
Great. Black, excellent.
This is a little more involved than just like,
going to the,
you trap art supply store.
It's a lot more fun.
This is just what I need today.
This is like what I need today.
Although she works alone, this piece is an
international collaboration.
Portrait of a textile worker, a quilt made entirely
of garment labels, has been two years in the making
and would not have been possible if not for the hundreds of
these letters and packages filled with labels.
All right.
Little contrast black.
I'm just kind of floored that people are this generous.
They're time and energy.
And it, but it's so cool.
It's like I want to meet, I feel like I know them, you know?
The last of the labels I have to send you.
Thanks for honoring labor.
Cool. Theresa Agnew is no stranger
to what could be called art with a message.
Previous works include the DOT straightness things out.
The Wisconsin workers memorial at Zyde their union square
in downtown Milwaukee.
We rebuilt a new visible out of salvaged tools and gears
and things that you would associate with the workplace
and practice bomber range in the Mississippi flyway.
Her work can be found in the collections
of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Renwick Gallery, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
This latest work based on a photo by Charles Kernahan,
executive director of the National Labor Committee,
is a black and white portrait of a textile worker
in Bangladesh.
Inspiration began with an invitation.
How would you like to come to this talk at UWM?
Two women are coming from the Chentex plant
in Nicaragua to talk about working conditions there.
No, it's just one thing to hear all about
how bad sweat chaps are, but it's a completely
different thing to meet the people that
we're talking about here.
And I was so impressed.
I thought they were brave and smart.
And I just thought, these are the hardest working people
on the planet.
They deserve to be treated a lot better
than they're being treated right now.
About six months later, I was walking through
a department store and I was seeing the names
of all these designers, Calvin Klein, Liz
Claiborne, Cathy Lee, Tommy Hilfinger signs.
And I just stopped and I was like,
okay, but what are the names of the workers
that made these things?
And it was just like one of those things
where it popped into my head, hey, I should make a
portrait of a textile worker out of clothing labels.
One of the things about meeting the two women
was that it wasn't a sob story.
I mean, these were like brave smart women
that were working 12 to 17 hours a day
and they were hopeful.
So anyway, I thought this absolutely
cannot be a sob story.
I want an image of a worker that commands respect.
A piece about work, a piece about the hidden
cost behind the label.
Portrait of a textile worker was unveiled in late January
at the Sharon Lynn Wilson Center for the Arts in Brookfield.
How many of these are you going to sign?
I'm going to have a real vision to put that all together.
She's put voice to all those women's whispers
of the work that they do and intertwine the
mentor to one voice.
I just can't believe it.
To see pictures of it is one thing,
but to see it up close, the details, the fingernails,
everything is just unbelievable.
Working on this piece has given Tarih Sagnu a new way of seeing.
Great. Oh, I love these.
These are so great.
What do you see when you-- A gradation, a
ready-made gradation.
So if I was doing a drawing, this would all be like
black crosshatching and it moves over to this light white.
So these are really great for transitions
from light to medium.
This medium has a lot of possibilities.
I mean, one thing that I really like about it is that it's all
about taking pieces and putting them together.
Like, I runnees in the world that we see all the time.
Because I think that's what we do in our minds
is we separate them.
And we put things in categories and we don't connect them.
And I think that's the most exciting thing
about quilting, really.
It's actually a very intimate portrait because it's like she's
in her own little space there, concentrating.
And I always wonder what she's thinking.
I mean, what I want people to do is just
remember her face and work for making sure
that people that make the things that we use every single day
are treated well with appreciation, you know?
From small bits of cloth gathered from around the globe,
Tariq's Agnew has pieced together in image she hopes
would connect with the viewer, an image of the
face behind the label, a portrait of a textile worker.
Agnew is currently working on a new quilt called the Age of Oil.
She clearly enjoys working with tiny pieces of fabric.
Her new quilt will be constructed with
thousands of layers.
Join us next week when we get down and dirty on the floor
of the Shawamagan Nikolay National Forest
looking for worms.
They're not hard to find.
The forest has been invaded, invaded by
seven species of worms that are having a devastating
effect on the soil and wildlife in the forest.
Two years ago, we walked over 4,000 or 5,000 acres
right in this area and tried really hard to find places
that didn't have worms.
And we were unsuccessful.
And our supposition is that it might be only about 10 to 15%
of the forest now without worms.
I'd hate to take a guess on how many worms are here,
but it might be in the hundreds of thousands or millions
per acre.
Next week, find out more about the invasion of the earthworms
in Wisconsin's northern forests.
Finally tonight, we take you for a fast ride on a frozen lake.
It's ice boating on Geneva Lake.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patti Lowe.
See you next week.
Stop flagging.
Hop.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[Fans dialect Minnesota seeking time]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
a Lyon energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life in
Wisconsin running smoothly.
A Lyon 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 www.pictures.com