[Music]
Hello and welcome to our summer season of In
Wisconsin. I'm Patty Low.
This week I look at some of
the more popular passions in Wisconsin.
Take a front row seat for the
story of how Green Bay residents inspired by a love
for the performing arts, restore the community
icon, catch the fever for fishing, where the man who
turns his enthusiasm for the past time into art, and
put your laments about those hot summer days on ice as
we take a look at one of Wisconsin's most popular
wintertime sports.
We'll have all that plus is the
grass really greener on the other side of the fence.
It may be.
We'll tell you why in Wisconsin.
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of a
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Institute, information available on the wind.
Anyone who's ever fished probably has a fish story
or two, but Roger Newhouse doesn't have to make up
stories about catching fish because he's able to carve
the perfect fish.
We traveled to Niagara in Maranette
County to take a look at Newhouse's work and
found there's nothing fishy about his talents.
I'm going fishing.
I've been a wildlife fisherman
my whole life.
I love fish.
Roger Newhouse loves to fish.
He also loves to tell fish tales.
My mother said that when I was born I had
a fish pull in my hand.
Newhouse followed his first love since he was a child.
At the age of 55 he fell in love again in love
with fish carving.
Now I have the best of both worlds.
I can fish when I'm not carving and I can carve
when I'm not fishing.
Newhouse taught himself out of carve these highly realistic
fish. He remembers learning a few lessons the
hard way.
In the beginning I did a fish and I started at the tail
and it looked beautiful all the way up to the head.
Then I found out I had some problems with the head.
Had I did the head first I didn't have all that work
that I had the throw away preceded so my best advice
is for anybody carving or learning to carve.
Always do the head or face first.
Frozen fish pose as models for his art.
I've just fallen carbon from real cadavers.
I just have made a lot of mistakes.
Fish don't lie to me.
I try to get as much detail off of a real fish
into a pattern to incorporate that into
my fish carving itself.
Newhouse hooks ideas for his work everywhere.
Last Ben Franklin one time, were you get all your ideas
for all your inventions and he said I just pluck them
out of the air and that's kind of the way it is with
me with my carving.
I see something and it
connects to a carving and then I'm on my way.
Yeah sounds like a wonderful idea.
Newhouse took to fish carving like a fish to water and
in 2001 entered his work in the World Fish Carving
Championships in Illinois.
He brought home a row of intermediate level ribbons.
Two years later at the World Championships
he snagged an even more impressive prize at the
expert level.
He won Best of Category for his realistic
bluegill. Well I was just so flying so high I
just couldn't believe it.
I couldn't believe it was happening to me.
Inspiration for the winning entry came from the scene.
That was really inspired by the movie Mutant Yana
Boney with Marlon Brando.
I was watching that film one day and I seen an old sailor
at a helm of a ship and I thought you know it
would really be cool to do a wall mount.
Make a ship's wheel and then in
the center of that wheel display a wall mount carving.
The bluegill was a knot or a burl on a butternut
slab that I picked up free from the mill over here.
So I came home and I cut that knot off and
it was large enough.
I got into it and found out it was a lot of pretty crazy
screen running so that was what I carved my bluegill out of.
Winning top honors at the fish carving show was a
dream come true for Roger Newhouse but his real reward
comes from pleasing the people.
When people come up to the show and they see
your carvings and they they really admire them.
They say she's it looked like it could just swim off by
itself. To me that's more important than any
ribbon I could win or anything like that.
It's just a joy to see the expression
on people.
It's a great gift to be given and to
share with the public.
I'm a gone fishing.
Yes I'm going fishing.
I'm a gone fishing too.
Wisconsin residents are passionate about fishing but
there's another sport that people here can get pretty
excited about.
It's the wintertime sport of curling.
Wisconsin is king when it comes to curling with the
most curling clubs in the country.
We take a look at this ancient sport
by taking you to the curling-est county in Wisconsin.
Whether at a limbic level, Pewie or senior curling
is catching.
Oh it's such a great game.
It's a finest winter sport.
Team sport there is.
Any age could curl it from six, seven years old up till 95.
Like the Portage Clubs, Forest Mosley.
At 95 he's still competing.
Still keen on curling and he'd have to be.
Strategy is 100 percent of it.
In fact curling is often called Chesson Ice because it
takes critical thinking and multiple moves to get the
rocks to land in the big score zone in the middle of the ring.
Curling has a long and enduring history.
It started 500 years ago on frozen
ponds in Europe.
The Scots formalized and
developed the modern game and as they moved across the sea
to America curling came along.
It landed in Wisconsin in their early 1800s and Milwaukee
boasts the oldest continuously operating curling club in the US
founded in 1845.
Well this is this is the picture of the old Portage
Club that was on the canal that goes
through town here.
By 1850 the city of Portage swept into the game.
It's earliest sheets of ice along the frozen Portage Canal.
Today that city's modern curling club is one of
five in Columbia County making it the Curlingness
County in the state.
The Scottish Heritage and the number of Scots that
settled in this area was predominant factor in
in the growth of it.
And this is a picture of some of the the old time curlers.
Except for replacing the old barn broom with a modern brush,
not a lot has changed over the years.
The reason it's called curling is because
when the lead-off player throws the rock it either
curls right on the ice or curls left.
The rock or stone is 42 pounds of smooth granite.
There are eight of them for each four person team.
The object is to get the rocks closest to the
center of the circle to score points.
The brush or room is swept in front
of the rock to help it go further and straighter.
Well I got outside Bob.
While curlers are serious competitors they are
also seriously collegial.
We don't need referees, we don't need people looking to
see if you break the rule.
It's a gentleman's game.
You go on the ice, you shake hands with your opponent,
shake hands when you come off and there's
never a argument over anything.
And socializing, eating and drinking are
built into the sport.
Every curling club has a claw broom for
post-game food and drink.
It's great.
It really is.
You're just talking to all these people
and no matter where you go if you're in trouble
call a curler and nobody right down the way.
And the love of the game passes from generation to generation.
I curled my father and my grandpa.
Use the interim there.
Take about a foot of ice.
LG Noble, a two-time national champion and
curling hall of famer, can't help but give
tips to his grandson.
17-year-old Chris Noble is the captain of the Point at High
School team in Columbia County.
Passing the curling torch keeps it lit.
And while Chris Noble has curling in his blood,
he did his own outreach.
Rounding up schoolmates who never played the game
and helping them make the team.
I definitely feel it's growing.
Not exponentially but little by little.
I think it's growing on people.
And that's saying a lot in a place where
curling is already king.
Oh!
[Music]
And now onto another topic people feel
passionate about the arts.
There are more than 1,000 performing art
spaces around the state.
Many of these centers were built in just the past few years.
And then there are cities like Green Bay where city
residents decided not to build a new art center
but instead chose to renovate a beloved old icon.
[Music]
People kind of had a dream.
I won't say vision but we're driven to
not have this be right.
This theater was built as a centerpiece.
The newest latest greatest technology at that time.
The Bell of the Ball.
The Fox Theater built in Green Bay in 1930.
It wasn't Jim.
A city treasure.
They packed them in at this movie palace.
But the Fox fell on hard times and changed hands
during the Depression.
It became the Bay.
Throughout it all, this theater has been a fixture in this
town for nearly 70 years.
[Music]
It's designed to take you away from your normal life
and bring you to another exotic beautiful place
just for a small period of time.
Liagering of PMI.
The Theater's current management group.
The style of the theater is called Spanish atmospheric.
The gardens of Seville at twilight.
That's what it's supposed to be.
You can imagine Kingford Manon, Queen Isabella
strolling through.
You could ask yourself a question.
Do I feel lucky?
I'm repeating we're not in Kansas anymore.
What about us?
We'll always have that.
This is George Bailey.
Don't you know me?
This place made for memories.
Memories. For all the thousands
who made their way here.
To meet, to mingle.
To have a little fun.
A few hours of pleasure.
I've helped memories of as a young child taking the bus.
Downtown to come to a movie here.
I have spoken to people who speak of their first date.
A high school graduation.
The Theater was an integral part of the city, a
part of people's lives.
But over the years, the bay lost its luster.
These beautiful walls were painted black.
Fictures like these, Juliet balconies and
lights were drywalled and painted over or taken down.
I remember it as a theater when it was all painted black
and the chairs and your feet sticking to the cement floor
and the glory days were gone.
The bay couldn't compete with the multiplexes in the malls.
And in 1998, after nearly 70 years, the theater went dark.
Enter Kramer Rock.
Leader of a dedicated group formed to save
their dilapidated gym.
Board President of what became the Meyer Theater Corporation.
It looked like hell.
It was a mess.
This thing looked like the wreck of the haspers.
How bad was it?
I actually called, you know, public television looking
for Bob Vee's phone number.
It looks gorgeous now.
But in the beginning, Rocks Group didn't even have the
funds to turn on the furnace.
We rigged a furnace upside down to keep heat moving.
I mean, we won't tell the code people right
now about Green Bay.
But just to keep heat in the main part of the
theater, because obviously they shut everything off.
So it truly was touch and go.
Over the next four years, this resourceful group
found the resources.
Eight million dollars, including a million dollar bequest from
the Meyer family of Green Bay.
And a mountain of blood, sweat and tears later.
The jewel has been reclaimed.
It's been really trying, but Jesus been satisfying.
This place that has been such a fixture here did not fade away.
In fact, it's hoped that the effects of its renovation
will fan outward and illuminate a path for the city,
providing a beacon for the performing arts in Green Bay.
I get excited when I think about what this could be
in terms of a cultural hub, not only for theater
performing arts, but what you could do if we could
get an adjoining building turned into an arts incubator.
Think what could happen if you could bring the symphony
that is housed somewhere else.
And if you could bring a community theater and those
other entities that are working on the trunk of the car,
and have the next door.
And everything would be here.
What a dynamic that would be.
And I think this is going to be the catalyst.
And if you bring people downtown,
capitalism will follow.
I know that sounds mercenary, but if certainly the
restaurants in this area have found a distinct
uptick in their business whenever we're open.
When the lights are on, they're busier than the one we're not.
When the lights are on, the lights are back on in
this beautiful theater.
Cue the applause.
[Music]
Time now for our Wisconsin Retro segment.
It comes to us from 1984 and again deals with a very
emotional issue, lawns.
Some people want a perfectly manicured carpet of grass
and others like a wilder.
They want something that essentially looks like this.
Nothing gets people more riled up than
disagreements over lawn care.
This week's Wisconsin Retro selection highlights the
lengths that some will go to in the fight of the lawn wars.
I was a child of suburbia, but lawns were not a big priority
in the hack at household.
Each spring we'd laid on a bag of fertilizer, but
if the lawn dried out and turned brown, so be it.
Our neighbors would water their lawns and spray for bugs.
I'd sprinkle a little chloridane that's banned now on
antials, but that was chemical horticulture as I knew it.
It wasn't so much concern for the
environment as it was apathy.
If my father taught me one thing about lawn care, it was,
don't encourage it, you'll only have to mow more often.
Some say a lawn is weakened by weeds.
I say it should grow in spite of them.
Show me grass that needs to be weed free to thrive and
I'll show you Wimp Grass.
I'm not proud of my weeds.
I just refuse to apologize for them.
Some people try and get buy by saying, well these aren't weeds.
This is a prairie restoration, but that only works if
your adjusted gross income is over $40,000 a year.
It's in the IRS rules, you can look it up.
In my kind of neighborhood, these are weeds.
Well, to me they look ugly.
From the street, you can see it that much, but I
noticed that it bothers me.
Between this year and last year, they've got
not a hand, even worse.
So I figured something had to be done.
A lot of people, Jim Stewart of Madison included, get
really worried about weeds.
He called in a team of experts from the University of Wisconsin
Extension to advise him.
Rose Cachadorian says the two-year-old turf integrated
pest management program, we promise to use that full
name only once in the story, is literally swamped with
people in need of help.
If you did use a weed killer on a lawn that had this
intense of a level of weeds, then you'd have a lot
of bare areas left.
Given the name's weeds get stuck with, it's no
wonder stood is worried.
It wouldn't sound so bad if they stopped with the
official name Ground Ivy.
We have quite a bit of shade and I think that that's probably
why all this creeping Charlie, especially has been able
to overrun the area.
The creeping Charlie is much more shade tolerant
than the type of grass that you have back there.
Creeping Charlie, isn't that why we had to use
Agent Orange and Vietnam?
No really, the war analogy is not my idea.
This is a brochure from Springgreen, they're one
of many companies who'd like to come out and spray
your lawn on a regular basis.
Right now your lawn is fighting for its life.
Inside it says the battle lines are drawn.
Win the battle for your lawn.
Maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel.
It is a growth industry.
Mark Mum is the manager of the Kimlon franchise in Madison.
We're looking at in the neighborhood of 25% a year as
far as revenue and sales go.
Kimlon is the oldest and the largest of the
so-called lawn applicators.
How popular are these firms?
According to one survey, 43% of all homeowners who have a chance
to have their lawn serviced do.
It's not something the customer couldn't do
himself but for a very small extra sum of dollars
he can hire a professional company to come out and take
take that load off his back and do it for him.
Is it worth it to go out, go to the store, buy
the product, come back, you know go out
and do the thing.
Terry Curth is the manager of the Barefoot Grass
Franchise in Madison.
This company's founder started out doing golf
course management and decided they could do the same
for lawns.
But this involves chemicals.
Some people worry about that.
But it should be noted that most firms use the same
chemicals the homeowner would.
Perhaps they use less of them since homeowners in their zeal
to be weed and past free might overdo things.
The professionals that is contended won't waste
money by putting on too much.
There's hardly anything coming out the right side right now.
This is off in a homeowner just doesn't know and if a little
is good a lot is better you know that sort of thing and so
we're able to keep a little bit more accurate count.
And overdoing things maybe likely when you consider how
much homeowners hate weeds.
If you'd ask probably 60-70% of the people would
say that their number one priority is get rid of my
weeds and of course the dandelion you'll see a yellow
in the spring of the years.
It's certainly a thing that makes the phone
ring off the hook.
You can see the continuity the nice flow of the collar and then
all of a sudden you've got some dandelion or some other die cut
weed sticking up and it just it interferes with the with the
vision you know with that pleasurable vision.
This is what crit calls the perfect lawn.
It is so perfect barefoot grass
used in their commercials.
It does look nice but it didn't come cheap.
The cost of a lawn service for the four or more
visits that takes each summer can run a hundred fifty dollars
or more if you want the deluxe service that includes fungicides
but crit says it is worth it.
Think that you start looking around you now
with a lot of these subdevelopments and they're
like the one right now.
These are beautiful homes you know.
You start coming in here and all of a
sudden you have a weed infested lawn and it's
then that does nothing but detract from the value
not only your personal pride but from a dollars and cents
thing a value of your lawn.
But even if you're not concerned about your house's
resale value there's another factor at work here.
Normally if a homeowner often comes on a program it's because
the peer pressure they have from their neighbors that their
weeds are blown into their yard so that's probably one of the
major reasons why a consumer does come on on the program.
Here pressure makes you start thinking about it then comes the
phone call the brochure in the mail and you too have
enlisted in the ever escalating war on weeds.
Like all wars though this one does have its innocent victims.
No one argues about getting rid of some of the bugs.
The problem is that pesticides aren't all that picky about what
they kill.
These mobs that are sound recorders to Brad
Ray was out chasing spring from the sod web worm which
each lawns we are told.
So does the change bug which is damaged sections of this lawn.
But pesticides also kill the big guide bug that is its real
name. This is an adult right here and these are
closely related to the change bugs and they
actually are quite similar.
But they eat change bugs.
They eat change bugs.
And that is the point of the program Rose Cachadorean
works with.
Don't spray until you see the size
of their eyes.
This particular lawn is just crawling
with big guide bugs and if somebody didn't know
the difference between change bug and big guide
bug they'd say oh it's change bug let's spray this
lawn. And so knowing the difference between the
insects we can probably save an insecticide
application. Cachadorean is reluctant however to
criticize the lawn care firms.
Most of them do a good job and we'll get rid
of bugs and weeds.
And so what we're trying to
do is we're trying to form a working relationship
instead of an adversary relationship with them
and I think that that's actually fairly successful.
We don't want to compete with the lawn care
businesses. In fact what we'd like to do is we like
them to adopt some of our practices.
This lawn over here you can see the
ben lines and the clover coming up and you get weed seeds coming
in and that's probably one of the reasons why we come
out four times during the years to keep up on the
weeds and keep them out along once we take them
out the first time.
Take them out the first time.
The last time I heard that phrase used it was an
international guard pilot talking about the capabilities
of an anti-tank gun on his plane.
So far as we know Charles Carrollt has
never given weeds the sort of treatment at the end
of his program we thought maybe we should.
After all a weed by definition is
not planted.
It is there only through the randomness
that we all are and so it grows.
That's it for us this week.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you to enjoy your holiday
weekend with a look at a festival of flags flying
high in Bayfield County.
For in Wisconsin I'm Patty Low.
See you next time.
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