Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript: "In Wisconsin"

Original Air Date: August 24th, 2006

Patty Loew:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our summer season of "In Wisconsin." I'm Patty Loew. This week we're at Governor Dodge State Park in Iowa County. That's Stevens Water Fall right behind me. We'll show you more from the park a little bit later on in our program. But first, take to the lake with a couple that's trying to chart a wild life story one loon at a time.

Woman:

I think they're kind of a symbol of the wilderness.

Loew:

Watch as these teams build on life lessons and work toward a fresh start.

Man:

It's hard to imagine how someone could change their life by pushing a rake around or slinging a hammer. But it works. They see this program as being a life change or in some cases a life safer.

Loew:

And join this family on a high-tech treasure hunt.

Man:

It's like, whoooooo. A lot of times people will do a little happy dance when they find it.

Loew:

And celebrate the 50th anniversary of an event that linked us culturally and economically, "In Wisconsin."

Loew:

For many people, the common loon is the symbol of pristine Northern Lakes, but loons are being challenged by lakeshore development and growing numbers of people using the lakes. A group called "Loon Watch" is tracking the birds by doing loon counts every five years. We joined a couple of volunteers on their assigned lake in Douglas County.

Woman:

Right off that grassy point there's one.

Man:

To the left or the right?

Woman:

To the left.

Woman:

Their population is shrinking away, and I think they're kind of the symbol of the wilderness. If a loon is there, you know you're out in the wilderness somewhere. Do you see that floating log out there? To the right.

Man:

There's two of them.

Woman:

To the right there's another one.

Man:

Do you want to go out there?

Woman:

No, I don't want to go out. I want to go to the right.

Woman:

What we're doing today is the five-year loon census. They just pick certain lakes, and it has to be during certain hours. It goes from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., and you survey the entire lake, whatever lake you've been assigned to, and they use the same lakes each five-year sequence, so they can sort of monitor what's going on. By the counts and the observations that we made–

Woman:

Okay. There's another adult. Now there's four.

Man:

There's a chick right next to him that just dove up to the right of him. If we get lucky, we can see them feeding on fish.

Woman:

Then we write it all down, fill out forms, pass it on to "Loon Watch" and they can do their work from there.

Man:

We started here, and the first two we saw were here and one added to it. This one adult, they're now out in front of this island somewhere. As long as we do it around the same time, same date, we can project those numbers. We work together pretty well. Lorna, are you sure that one in the center is not a big chick?

Woman:

Positive.

Man:

Okay. You're the expert.

Woman:

It's just that little one is a really dark one.

Man:

Oh, yeah. I see that white now. We've been involved with loons for 30 years, I guess. We did some banding of loons in the boundary waters back in the late 1980's. One of them is taking off.

Woman:

They need a quarter of a mile to take off because they do their running take-off because they're so heavy.

Man:

They need a lot of space.

Hey, guys, try to stay a couple of hundred feet away from the loons, would you? That's a regulation. Don't get too close to them because they've got two chicks there.

Man:

All right. No problem.

Woman:

That's really a disturbance. If they do that noise, then you know something's bothering them. Yeah, they're right in front of the boat. That's why the loon's upset.

The chicks were a little ways away from the adults and then a motor boat came along, and it went between the chicks and the adult, and it got really upset, the parents. They started to do the tremolo, the more upset they are, the more wing flapping, because they were trying to warn off the motor boat because it was coming right for the chicks. And what can happen, in some cases, is if they get separated from their chicks, maybe you don't hurt them or the boater doesn't hurt them, an eagle could swoop in and grab a chick then when they're separated from the parents.

Did he get it?

It's predators and lakeshore development which are two of the biggest impact on loon populations. So that's why we're trying to get people or DNR or forestry, they're trying to turn their lakeshores back into a natural habitat.

There you go.

Man:

They go south in the winter and back up here in the summer. In the winter they don't have the red by, they just have the black and white color, they're just a brown bird that makes no noise. I couldn't understand why people liked it so much until I came up here and saw it and heard it. It's really a symbol of the wilderness. The breeding population of loons keeps moving north because people are moving further north. They're beginning to stay where people are, like this lake. This lake didn't travel very much because there's no water skis and no personal water craft on this lake so they don't get harassed as much. It makes a big difference.

Woman:

They're adapted for diving. They don't have a lot of air in their bones like a lot of birds, so when they dive, they can dive really deep.

Man:

He just caught a fish.

Woman:

They're still flapping.

Man:

They eat them head first so their fins don't get stuck. It's a pretty good size fish. That's why he's got the problem.

Woman:

Yeah, I think he did.

Man:

Are there two of them?

Woman:

Yeah. There's the little ones. Oh, they're just Downey.

Man:

I would do this every day if I could.

Woman:

We're just one lake, and one section of Wisconsin, but it all goes together.

Man:

We love it.

Woman:

I feel like we're helping in some teeny little way.

Loew:

"Loon Watch" also supports a group called "Get the Lead Out." That encourages fishermen not to use lead fishing tackle which kills loons and poisons them when they swallow it.

From the wilds of Wisconsin, our next report takes us to the city. There's a Madison-based program designed to protect teens from continuing down a troubled path. The program organizers hope to give these young teens a fresh start. Our production intern Lindsey Weiss has our report.

Woman:

I feel very lucky to have been introduced to such a program. "Fresh Start" is one of the most unique, enlightening, and entertaining experience I've ever been involved with. Thank you. [A

Lindsey Weiss:

Today is a good day for "Operation Fresh Start." It's the first time in the Madison's program 35 years that it's celebration the completion of three houses at one time. "Operation Fresh Start" combines basic education and practical job skills. Students work on both obtaining their high school equivalency and building houses for low income families.

Connie Ferris Bailey:

"Operation Fresh Start" serves about 100 young people a year, and those young people may stay with us up to two and a half years. For each of them, they are trying to gain some good work skills. They're working on education skills, and every young person has certain parts of their life that they'd like to change. Most of them will have significant education needs, meaning that they may have dropped out of school or they may be in an alternative school program.

Karen Ball:

I would say they-- a lot of them are at this place in their life where they have this identity that they're looking for, like who are they? Who are they going to be? And on top of it, unfortunately, a lot of our people bring a lot of things with them, things in their lives that were not good, anything from family problems, drugs and alcohol.

Weiss:

Dao Vue is one of the students at fresh start. He said working with her has changed his attitude about school.

Dao Vue:

When I was younger when I was a student I didn't like school very much. It wasn't very interesting. It was boring. I thought it was a waste of time. And now I consume as much knowledge as I can. Knowledge is the power right there. I completed my HSED before my class graduated knowing that I achieved something that I wouldn't have achieved without this program. It felt great.

I'm stuck. How about you?

Ball:

How much does it cost per pound?

To be a part of someone that's achieving, you know, an educational goal is, you know, it's what a teacher strives for, and it's really exciting here on the days that students get a diploma or they graduate from the term or they get into a college or they start that first class.

Vue:

They actually really do care about you and they actually want you to succeed in life.

Weiss:

According to Ball, Vue's change in attitude has been accompanied by an increase in self-confidence.

Ball:

I think you can definitely see his confidence growing. You can definitely see him more willing to take chances that he probably wouldn't have taken when he first got here. Applying to MATC has been a really big thing for him, and sort of getting back into that, you know, regular type of classroom at the college level. It's scary, and it's all brand new to him, but he's definitely willing to take that risk.

Mike Carlson:

Dao's an interesting character, because he's extremely motivated. He's moved by ideals and by very noble ideas, and he kind of exudes a lot of confidence just in his day-to-day interactions. He comes across as very articulate and mature, and what I noticed about him when we came out here is that he would-- he would get very worked up and kind of upset about mistakes that he would make, I think because he took them, kind of internalized them. And I think since he's been here, we had to work on that quite a bit actually. I think he's willing to work through mistakes a bit more.

Weiss:

Working through mistakes in the pursuit of a greater goal is one of the many lessons students learn at their job sites.

Carlson:

It's hard to imagine how someone could change your life by pushing a rake around or slinging a hammer, but it works. They see this program as really being just a life changer and in some cases a life safer. I think it works because we're all out here together working. I don't think it would matter, what the actual labor is. I think it's just the context and the environment as a whole, where we're all out here working together and able to draw strength from one another and to share problems and to discuss problems, and there's time to make mistakes.

Vue:

You can go inside.

Weiss:

Since joining the program, Vue has been inspired to pass on the lessons he learned at "Fresh Start" to younger members of his community.

Vue:

I'm working with a boys youth support group called Free Men. I'm one of the founders of it. I know boys have a hard time growing up, I know I did. Growing up as a young boy, you have to be tough and what not, and you can't really cry or you can't really lean on to somebody. You have to be tough, stand your ground. So I think that that's really kind of like lame. This boys support group, it pretty much lets them come hang out, chill, relax, you know, come talk to us if they need to.

Weiss:

Vue graduated from "Operation Fresh Start" in August. He says he will continue to help younger teenagers the way "Operation Fresh Start" has helped thousands of young people like himself achieve a new beginning.

Vue:

So thank you for coming, guys.

Loew:

Since our intern, Lindsey Weiss, first produced that report, Dao Vue has found a job at Northern Engraving in Onalaska, and following Hurricane Katrina "Operation Fresh Start" took a group of teenagers down to Mississippi to help rebuild homes.

And now for some summer fun that's high-tech in style. More and more people are using a relatively new technology to engage in a different kind of treasure hunt. Here's that story.

Andy Soth:

It's a summer day in downtown Green Bay, but it's clear these are no ordinary pedestrians. For one thing they're taking an unusual interest in trash cans and dumpsters. They're among 150 participants in a city-wide geocaching event.

Woman:

This has all your coordinates and what you need to do for each cache.

Soth:

It's kind of a high-tech scavenger hunt with caches hid all around Green Bay. Geocaching is possible due to the popularity of products like this, a hand-held GPS device capable of receiving signals from multiple global positioning 15eu89s. The GPS device triangulates signals from the satellites and can give you your exact location on earth, or it can help you find something hidden by another GPS user, a geocache. Enter the coordinates of a geocache into a GPS, and it can tell you how close you are to it. Once you've found the cache, you can take a souvenir in exchange for something you leave. There's a log book to sign, and it's also logged on the web. That's where you can learn the coordinates of caches hidden near you. There are also virtual caches where the assignment is to take a picture. The hobby has developed its own culture with teen names, nicknames, and special events like the Green Bay challenge. For many it's become a fun pass time.

Woman:

This is a decoding key.

Soth:

For others it's treated more like an addiction.

Tami Janzen-Mauland:

We were just in Ohio last weekend, Missouri the weekend before, so that's what we do.

Soth:

Meet the Janzen-Mauland family, better known among geocachers as Earth Angel, Duelist, Princess, and the Professor. Together they are the Ecorangers.

Man:

Yeah, that's us.

Soth:

And in over a short time they've logged over 4,000 geocache finds, more than anyone else in Wisconsin, and they're ranked 18th in the world.

Tami:

It will be two years in October. So we're at a rate of finding 6.5 caches a day since the day we started.

Soth:

I spent the day following the Ecorangers and their friends on the Green Bay challenge, and it was clear they were on a mission.

Woman:

There's one up here, so if we head north and go up around -

Soth:

What's your goal for today?

Woman:

To get them all, get them all.

Soth:

Diane Sexton is also known as Bushwhacking Queen. Getting them all together will add 58 to her goal of 2,000 in one year.

Diane Sexton:

So do you want to take a look and see where it was?

Soth:

That's 2,000 times feeling like this.

Why don't you tell me how that felt?

Diane:

Awesome.

Man:

People are wondering what we're doing.

Wade Mauland

It's the thrill of the hunt. You're hunting a tough one and you find it and it's like, whoooooo, you know, a lot of times people will do a little happy dance when they find it.

Dane Mauland:

It's so good we can't explain it.

Tami:

It's still going.

Soth:

Earth Angel of the ecorangers said geocaching has provided the satisfaction she used to get from doing triathalons.

Tami:

I was swimming laps at the Y every day, 25-mile bike ride by myself, and I didn't like being away from my family. And then when my husband came across geocaching, it's just like, wow, this is so cool to do where I can be with my family. We can get our exercise and be competitive and go hiking and see the wonders of Wisconsin.

Soth:

Whether those wonders are Lambeau Field or this original 1959 McDonald's sign, geocaching is one high tech hobby that at the very least gets people off the couch.

Renee Vansblow:

You can do it at your own pace, do it at your own level, but it gets people out there doing something, and that's a big part of it. Geocaching gets people out there.

Loew:

Auntie Nae, one of the geocachers featured in that report, recently passed 4,000 finds. Our next report also deals with people hitting the road, or rather the road itself. 2006 is the 50th anniversary of the interstate system. This week's "Wisconsin Retro" report takes us back through the history of how those highways were built in our state and the impact the interstate has had on our lifestyle.

Narrator:

This is a road story, or rather a story about a road, America's greatest road, the nation's highway, the interstate. It's a complex ribbon of concrete that connects this country, that ties us together with a common ground traced out by white lines.

Man:

Gas reserves extra with us, so we don't run it. In fact, I've got it set up so if my tanks run out, then we can feed the carburetor and go another 20 miles. Use it on two gas tanks setting here. I get 400 miles to this tank of gas. This camper's all contained. The only thing it hasn't got in it is a bathtub. There's a full hide-away bed in here, a davenport and a bed.

Narrator:

These folks are happy victims of white line fever.

Woman:

Oh, I love it. I went 8,432 miles last summer. It was really neat.

Man:

This summer.

Woman:

This summer.

Narrator:

Note the small hole the woman tears in her coffee cup lid, the pro's method to prevent sudden spills, the accessories of travel explained by her husband.

Man:

Here's ear plugs for road noise. People get irritation from driving, there is such a thing. You control that with ear plugs.

Man:

It looks like you have several different sunglasses there. One for each day?

Man:

No. It depends on the weather.

Man:

The kind of sun.

Man:

The weather may change. This here is regular Polaroid. This is a low Polaroid with a high Lens, and this here is a direct glare-- this is a direct glare. I'm sorry about that. That's the direct glare into the sun.

Narrator:

All of us have had the urge on occasion to drive off into the sunset. Only a few of us know how.

Man:

As evening comes in if you're going right into the sun, you want a yellow Polaroid. That gives it a certain amount of brightness.

Narrator:

A man, a woman, and a car, a classic American couple.

Woman:

That's the nice thing about us finding each other, I guess, is the fact that we love to travel. We always find new places. We've been married about 10 years and we take two or three trips every year, pretty long ones, and a trip every weekend. We never get tired of it.

Loew:

Before the I-system, car travel was a tough way in this country. Rails still held the road, but the hold was already fading when in 1956 President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act which authorized the construction of a natural system, interstate and defense highways.

President Eisenhower:

Today we're dedicating what may appear to be an isolated section of this great interstate and we're looking forward to next year when this section will be linked to Janesville, and, of course, on to Chicago.

Narrator:

Helped out by an innovative financing plan in which the feds paid 90% of the cost, the interstate bit by bit began to stretch out across the country. It was a time of celebration. In 1961, in just one day, then governor Gaylord Nelson appeared at 14 different interstate dedications in a variety of vehicles. Ribbons were cut, keys were turned, and junior quarterbacks were turned loose. This highway 12 was there, along with the Poynette homemakers, and people had the rare opportunity to mill about leisurely on an overpass.

What I started was the largest public works project this country has ever seen. A land covered by another state is just about to make a whole other state just about the size of West Virginia. A standardized state with two lanes, limited access, blue signs for services, green for directions. East-west roads to end in even numbers, north-south in odd, a state called the interstate.

Loew:

Today there are 743 miles of interstate highway in Wisconsin. And that's our program this week. Join us next time when we'll tell you what bread baked on Washington Island and beer brewed in Middleton have in common. For now, we leave you with more scenery from Governor Dodge State Park. From "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. Have a great week.