(upbeat music)
- Hello and happy new year.
Welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Kathy Beeson, filling in for Patty Low.
Each week in Wisconsin brings you stories
about the people and issues in our state.
This week, find out how residents of the Kikapu Valley
turned a failed federal works project
into a successful 9,000 acre recreational area.
Be there when hundreds of citizens descend
on the capital city in a grassroots effort to
reform state government and celebrate the age of
exploration, the renaissance, by traveling the wasp off
or a pair of woodworking exhibits
where cabinets are much more than drawers.
We'll have those stories and a trip to Iron County
to enjoy a winter day in a state natural area.
That's coming up in Wisconsin.
- 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.
(upbeat music)
The birth of a political movement
sometimes yields a landmark.
A little white school house in Ripon is famous
because that's where the Republican Party was born
at a get together there.
We'll know someday if Madison's Alliance Energy Center
will also achieve historic status.
Producer Art Hackett says more than 1,000 people
who describe themselves as politically homeless
gathered at the center's expo hall
to launch an effort to reform Wisconsin's political system.
- The 97th session of the Wisconsin legislature
began with a flourish on Monday.
(people chattering)
Members took their oaths, family members watched,
but despite the collegiality of the occasion,
the newspaper headlines revealed this session
may follow in the rank-risk footsteps of previous sessions.
The party in power imposes policy on the
party out of power.
One day later, a few miles away, another legislature
calling itself the people's
legislature convened.
The people in this legislature feel
left out of the process all together.
- How many of you here are from neither Madison, Milwaukee
or their surrounding communities?
Please raise your view.
(audience applauding)
- Some came with Slates of Issues.
- One of them is Campaign Fonant Reform.
The second is financing education.
The third is government financing,
which refers to our taxation system.
- Some came with just one.
- I'm here today to ask that medical marijuana
be a part of this.
- All, we're welcome.
- Why not?
- I'd like to welcome the environmentalists
elected and appointed town village county city
and state officials, small business owners,
farmer students, faculty members, young people,
all people in those in between, beef lovers and vegans,
but most of all, welcome to all of you who have
and happen to fit the title politically homeless.
Welcome to the-- - And all came.
Ed Garvey ran for governor as a Democrat.
Ed Thompson ran as a libertarian.
It's the failure of our society that we the people
have lost control of our state government.
The shame is not on us, but the shame is on the
professional politicians that we trusted to
represent us in the capital.
(audience applauding)
- And Carol McKee worked in the administration
of someone who actually was elected governor,
Lee Sherman-Dreypiss, who was a Republican.
- I really am a moderate Republican,
but my party moves so far to the right that I'm lost.
- But the event also attracted Fred Moes of Madison,
who until recently was one of the most conservative members
of the University of Wisconsin, Board of Regents.
- This is not to say that there isn't a place
for those interests to have input,
but a healthy democracy requires
individual voters without substantial assets
to also be effective in reaching the government.
- There was even a registered lobbyist.
- None of us will be satisfied with what government does
until we do something about how our government
conducts business.
And right now our state democratic process is broken,
and we must find a way to fix it.
- Not all agree, it is broken.
Assembly majority leader, Mike Hipsch of West Salem,
who's seen his party's majority increase
election after election, is happy with the way things are.
- We will always hear from people,
whenever we're doing something they disagree with,
rather than have a legitimate discussion on the issue,
they'll just say we're just some franchise,
they're not listening to us.
We just disagree with them in some issues.
I mean, and so their issue is not going to come up
or their issue is not going to be solved
in the way they'd like it to happen.
That's democracy, that's the way it works.
And as they're able to get more support for their issues,
they will have a stronger voice.
But that's the way the founding fathers set it up.
And I think it's working out pretty well.
- But the longest serving member of the assembly,
Wisconsin Rapids Democrat, Marlon Schneider,
says the people's legislature has every reason to complain.
- The legislature today no longer is engaged
in problem solving.
It is today engaged in partisan ranker,
political bickering.
It doesn't represent, in my view,
the overwhelming views of the people of this state.
Instead, it tends to pander to special interests
and I think that's important.
- And as far as our individual issues,
those take a back seat.
It's getting the legislature to be responsible.
That is my understanding.
- The only issue specific resolution approved
opposed state limits on local government spending.
- These people see a chance to make a difference.
1100 people showed up.
There were more people than seats.
Many war-orange arm bands modeled after those worn
by protesters in Ukraine who overturned the results
of a fraudulent election.
- We need to keep the momentum going here.
We can't just wait for a big state meeting.
We need to have meetings going.
We can do a meeting in each quarter of the state.
- There was some discussion of creating a shadow legislature
that would operate in parallel with the one in the capital.
- I really don't want to spend too much time
on electing us to fake legislatures
so we can talk about the issues.
We need to get all of you in a real legislature
to make the difference.
- In the end, the group agreed to focus on
the legislative process and the processes that elect
the legislators.
- There is a consensus that the issues of campaign
finance reform, fair district team,
that kind of thing are the process issues
that are so important to having our democracy.
- Issues that sound simple, but somehow a loot action
by that other legislature.
(upbeat music)
- We travel to Warsaw for our next report
to the Lee Yawke Woodson Art Museum for a peak
into some cabinets of curiosities.
It's a national exhibit created by some of the country's
best woodworking artists.
Cabments of curiosities embodies the spirit of the Renaissance,
the age of exploration.
It was a time when it was all the fashion
to display little oddities and curious keepsakes
collected while traveling the world.
The exhibit is paired with a display
from Wisconsin woodworking artists called
More Than Drollers.
Producer Joanne Garrett is our guide.
(upbeat music)
- This is a cabinet.
- Everybody thinks of a cabinet as something
where you got drawers that open up
and they're working outside of that realm.
- A cabinet that's part of an art exhibit called?
- It's a unique way of opening a cabinet.
- More than drawers, Wisconsin cabinets.
Something more than simply brushing your teeth
but an art form, almost like you see people who when they're
playing pool they open up their special case
and they put their pool cue together.
- The man who put this show into motion
is curator and a McGiveron of the Lee Yawke Woodson
Art Museum in Wassa.
It was McGiveron's idea to pair More Than Drollers
with another meditation on how we store our stuff,
a national touring show called Cabinets of Curiosity's.
(upbeat music)
- And that's a theater of a flea circus.
These are wood pedals, like a seed pot actually.
To represent a seed pot and then inside are the seeds.
(upbeat music)
- Is it a cabinet?
I don't know, it's a sculpture as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, it's wonderful.
- Cabinets of Curiosity's is a new take
on a very old idea, dating from the time
of the Renaissance, the age of exploration,
travel was the thing and travelers brought
back treasures.
- The original cabinets of Curiosity's had to do it.
The expanding world as people went out
to parts of the world where people hadn't been before
and brought objects back to Europe.
The early prehistoric version of eBay.
- And they needed places to store and display
all that cool stuff they found, which led to Cabinets
of Curiosity's.
- So that art is gonna do that.
Same on the other side, a man's system manner and
connecting these points.
- Tom Losek is a Madison-based artist
who works in wood.
- There is a lot going on in the woods.
- He's also a professor in the art department
of the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
in the area of woodworking and furniture making.
And his work is featured in the more than drawers exhibit.
- And Loser was one of the churres
of the National Cabinets of Curiosity's show.
He helped them call the best, from artists who were
asked to collaborate, to create current day,
Cabinets of Curiosity's.
- People like having objects for the stories that they tell.
- I think it's something that carries forward
in contemporary culture too.
It just takes different forms and shapes.
- With this one is a lot of fun.
This one's called Round Guy Meet Square Guy.
- The artists were asked to play with the idea
of what a cabinet could be.
And the stuff or curiosities stored inside.
- And there's a ball inside of here.
The curiosity here is the way it's made.
You'd think of a cabinet, is it really meant
to hold anything?
Or is it meant to hold ideas?
- This one is called Giving Adolf His Props.
- You push and the doors go all the way open,
then you just keep going in that same direction.
And they go all the way close.
- Demonstrations like these are held every hour
on the half hour.
These cabinets were meant to be mined,
meant to be explored.
The globe opens up, revealing another globe inside.
And there's like a star system.
Here we have the continental shelves before they broke up.
And here's a porcelain turtle emerging from an egg.
And it all fits down inside the planet,
which harkens back to a Native American belief
that the planets were born on the back of a turtle.
(upbeat music)
- New creations that bend our thinking
about what a cabinet can be.
- But in this idea of little drawers
with some rather interesting woods,
this is Johnny Apple's Seedwood.
- And Harken back.
- The last living tree or known tree that he planted.
- To an old desire.
- This one is Abraham Lincoln Basswood.
- From the fallen tree at Lincoln's tomb.
- To collect.
- And it says the Columbus Oakwood.
- And display.
The marvelous.
The amazing.
- The tree was a sapling when Christopher Columbus
sailed to the new world.
It's interesting because the museum is really
an outgrowth of cabinet securities.
They all started with people going out into the world
collecting natural history objects.
- Collecting curiosities.
A passion, a pursuit that continues to present day
with the creation of cabinets of curiosities.
(upbeat music)
(gentle music)
- There's still time to satisfy your own curiosity
about this exhibit.
Cabinets of curiosities and more than drawers
will be displayed at the Lee Yauke Woodson Art Museum
through January 23rd.
You can go to our website at wpt.org/inwasconcent
for more information.
(upbeat music)
From indoors to out, our next story takes us
to the Kikapoo Valley Reserve, North of Lafarge
in Vernon County.
The reserve has many things in common
with Wisconsin's other recreational areas.
It has close to 9,000 acres with hiking trails,
bike paths, geological wonders and gorgeous scenery.
But while the Kikapoo Valley Reserve looks
like other state natural areas, Art Hackett reports that
the creation of the reserve is a story unlike any other.
- The Kikapoo Valley Reserve, North of Lafarge,
has much in common with Wisconsin's state parks.
Pretty scenery, trails to hike or bike,
and some interesting geological formations.
But the reserve's directors has don't expect to
park the camper here.
- Cell phones don't work here.
You have primitive camping where you're not
tent to tent with other folks.
Horseback riders love it because of the rough terrain.
- The reserve folds a winter festival every January.
The Hochunk, which own part of the land in the reserve,
erected a traditional shelter called a Chipotake.
Tribal member Bill Greendeer says the land
was a popular wintering area for his ancestors.
- You have whole villages down in the valley,
near enough water, near enough where you could
do a little bit of hunting.
And it was not easy to be an autumn open marshes.
- But the Hochunk were displaced by farmers,
farmers who eventually were displaced themselves.
(water running)
- Some things you see and find in the reserve don't make sense.
Well spout water, but there's no house or farm nearby.
There's a concrete obelisk.
It's not a silo.
It's not a grain elevator.
It's just there.
And if you wonder into the darkness of the woods,
you'll find stone structures.
They appear to be steps leading to a clearing
surrounded by plants which are out of place.
- There is some day lullies.
Wouldn't be native species at all.
And some pine trees that are not native,
so there would have been a house here.
- Brian Bufton knows the story.
The story of how the houses and the people
who lived in them disappeared.
- Once it started to happen, it just happened very quickly.
People that I went to grade school with.
People used to ride the same school bus as I did.
Suddenly they were gone and not only were they gone,
but their homes were gone.
- The story begins with the Kikapoo River,
which meanders through a valley once filled
with dairy farms and tobacco fields.
- I'm here to see the tobacco, I'm here to see that this
is an excellent tobacco.
- But the Kikapoo frequently jumped its banks.
- This is a brand new channel that guards out the field.
We lost the field.
About two acres of the farm, we were lost going downhill.
It was a sad, sad, sad thing.
See, when you have a flash flood, it gets out of control.
But if we had some dams above, it would have kept
it under control.
- So the people in the valley talked to the US soil
conservation service about a program to build
small flood control dams.
That was in 1962.
- There were going to be six different small dams
in the area spotted small dams.
- Three years later, plans had changed
to one really big dam and a lake.
People thought a lake would spur economic development.
- People like water, they're going up North
for a weekend or so, but it'd be right here.
This would be the development here.
- I think it was about evenly divided.
The people that were looking at this
as a place to make a living and everything,
I think they thought it was exciting.
- Mary Bufton, Brian Bufton's mother,
was teaching school at the time.
She and her husband, Rax, lived in this house
near where the lake would be.
- For some people, this is such a beautiful place to live.
This is where we thought we would always live.
And now, suddenly we can't.
We probably aren't going to have it.
- They wouldn't have that place to live
because expanding the dam to create a lake
would flood most of the valley.
The Army Corps of Engineers bought the Bufton's farm
and 140 others to make way for the lake,
which would form behind the dam.
- It was terrible.
It was terrible to sit and see your husband cry.
- What good is it going to do everybody?
It just, you know, make a playground.
I mean, it's already a playground, you know?
It's like...
- Even though the Ho-Chunk had been moved out of the valley
in the 1830s, the Indians weren't crazy
about the dam either.
Bill Greendeer was a teenager when the dam was proposed.
His first concern was for the remains of tribal members
buried in the area.
- You know, they talk about different places where the...
You know, people have been moved out of a flood area
and they flood out.
It's like they bring up caskets.
And what are they going to start doing?
They start bringing up bodies all over the place.
We have bodies buried everywhere.
- But it wasn't just Bill Greendeer's ancestors
who were affected.
- There were about 148 different families.
So the population estimates vary,
but with 8,600 acres and 148 families,
it was a significant change to the local economy.
Even the schools report, you know,
losing over half of their students
in some of the grades at the time.
- Construction began in 1970.
The tower, which was part of a dam's discharge structure,
grew as did a long, earthen levy.
An environmental battle developed at the same time.
- To build a road, to build the dam through this area
is like having a hot dog stand in the Sistine Chapel.
I mean, you don't do certain things.
This is Wisconsin's Grand Canyon.
- Buttonist Hugh Elthus was especially concerned
about the rare plants that grow on the cliffs
along the river.
Environmentalists had a new forum for those concerns.
The Kikapu Valley Project had the misfortune
to begin construction the same year,
Congress passed a law requiring projects such as this
to complete an environmental impact statement.
But the project eventually was killed
by a study of soil erosion.
The dam project was justified economically
because the lake would provide jobs.
The soil erosion study showed the lake was in effect
a mirage.
- The silting is going to be horrendous.
If I remember correctly, at some time,
the article in science said it was 40 tons per acre
on the worst farm that they studied.
Now that's one hell of a lot of soil.
And if that gets dumped into the Kikapu Valley,
that dam will be a marsh within 30 years
and a nice wet prairie within 50 or 60.
So the whole thing doesn't hold any water.
- The core of engineers had spent $18 million
tax period on the dam.
Nonetheless, the project was stopped in 1975.
- The community and all the people that lived here
had sacrificed for something that never happened.
- The tower and the partially completed dam
just sat there until 1992.
- It was just a difficult thing to watch it being unmanaged.
It became almost a wasteland.
And people would actually dump trash on it.
- The area of citizens started to put aside differences
over the project in the early 90s.
They felt they could manage the property
better than the core of engineers.
- A group of citizens after 30 plus years of battling
about whether the dam was gonna be finished or not
said we've got to do something.
And so they tell the story of sitting around
in somebody's living room with Senator Brian Rude
and saying we're gonna protect it,
but we're also gonna allow people to enjoy it.
- In 1997, the federal government turned the property
over to the Hochunk and the board of local citizens.
The core of engineers offered to tear down
the concrete tower, but the residents wanted to keep it.
- Got it?
- There it is.
- At the winter festival, the residents shoot half
frozen vegetables at it with a sling shot.
- One, two, three.
(screaming)
- Did it get out of the house?
- No!
- I did!
- No!
- Some people see the tower as a symbol
of a federal boondoggle.
It's a reminder of the people in farms, the valley lost.
- The mothers are glad that the tower is still there.
- You have people now coming to visit the reserve
and it's hard to explain what happened here.
I've told this story to people and had them really,
honestly, not hardly believe me, that this had actually
taken place here.
- The tower is a handy way to prove to visitors
that the story of the Kikapoo Valley Dam
isn't just some tall tale.
- If you want to experience vegetable sailing for yourself,
this Saturday is your chance.
The Kikapoo Valley Reserve will hold its annual
winter festival starting at 9 a.m.
Saturday, January 8th.
You can find more details on our website at
www.wrg/inwasconson. There's also information
about our other reports and streaming video
of past stories.
Before we leave you this week and update on a report,
we first brought you a few years ago.
Back in 2002, the city of La Crosse was sued
by a group seeking the removal of a 10 commandments
monument from a city park.
It was argued that the display violated the separation
of church and state.
La Crosse City officials responded by
selling the monument and a little land around it to
the fraternal order of eagles, the group which originally
donated the monument to the city in 1965.
Fences were erected separating the now privately owned
monument from the public park and
claiming city endorsement of religion.
A federal judge originally ruled the sale was a sham
and had ordered the monument's removal.
But on Monday of this week, a US court of appeals
ruled two to one that the sale was proper and the monument
may remain on land that was formally part of a city park.
And that's our program for this week.
Thank you for joining us.
We leave you with a wintery walk through the frog,
Lake and Pine State Natural Area in Iron County.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Kathy Beeson.
Have a great week.
[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.
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[Music]