- Coming up next on Wisconsin Life :
- I just got the itch to go back sailing.
I never looked back, I've been here ever since.
- I'm German and from Wisconsin,
so I guess it's kind of hard not to become a brewmaster.
- You got a two-century old piece of wood.
It's old wood with all that character
and it still has a story to tell.
- When you get out in front of a crowd,
the crowd wants to be dazzled.
(upbeat music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by:
Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hi, my name is Kevin Diedrich.
I'm First Engineer on the S.S. Badger Car Ferry,
and this is my Wisconsin Life.
- They come on wheels. They come on foot.
- All set, thank you, enjoy your trip.
- Thanks, have a good day.
- And come to experience a maritime tradition.
(boat horn blows)
This is the S.S. Badger, the only remaining coal-powered
passenger ship in North America.
It's the largest car ferry ever to sail Lake Michigan.
Longer than a football field, its belly can swallow up
massive amounts of cargo.
And nearly unnoticed, Kevin Diedrich arrives home
and arrives for duty as he steps on board.
- I get up around 3:30 in the morning and I go on watch,
and I stay on watch from 8 o'clock in the morning.
- Four hours on duty, eight hours off
around the clock, charting a course across Lake Michigan
nearly 450 times in a season.
(boat horn blows)
- [Kevin] These boats have been sailing the lakes
for many, many, many years.
- Many, many years dates back to 1953
when the S.S. Badger out of Wisconsin and the S.S. Spartan,
representing Michigan, set sail, ferrying passengers
and railroad cars across the great lake.
Entire trains could drive on board, with the rails
cutting a path straight onto the ship.
As a boy growing up in Manitowoc, Kevin recalls
how this queen of the lakes was an awe-inspiring sight.
- My sister and I would ride our bikes down to the dock
in the summertime when school was out,
sit there for a couple hours and watch them
load up the railroad cars.
(boat horn blows)
- 6,650 tons of hulking steel.
- [boat intercom]: Steering 015 degrees.
- [Kevin] I always just was amazed at how
they would maneuver in the harbor.
They're just fascinating.
(light string music)
- Maneuvering in the harbor is still done
from the pilothouse with the ship's big wooden wheel.
(soft music)
- I never thought I'd sail on one.
I did go into the service, the Coast Guard,
and I sailed for about two and a half years
up in Alaska on a boat.
I came out and worked in a factory for 23 years.
One day I just got the itch to go back sailing.
I never looked back, I've been here ever since.
- Kevin traded in his factory job for this:
steam, grease, gears, and camaraderie.
- I'm the First Assistant Engineer.
My duties are to maintain the operational level
of the engine room and the boiler room.
There's a dedication that this crew has to this ship
that I never found anywhere else.
As far as the engine room, they are all original equipment
from the day the boat was built in 1953.
You have to know where every valve is
and know what it's for.
It's like sailing back in the '40s.
(soft orchestral music)
- The pioneering system is recognized
as a national mechanical engineering landmark.
The engines create steam to propel the S.S. Badger
across Lake Michigan, leaving history in its wake.
- [Kevin] These engines are very, very unique and they run
just as good if not better than they did in 1953
when the boat was new.
- For seven months, Kevin lives
onboard the S.S. Badger.
- [Kevin] This is my humble home.
I enjoy the quiet of going back in my room
after I get done with watch and reading.
I do most of my reading in the summertime
'cause that's what I do in the off hours, I sleep or I read.
(light jazz music)
- For decades, the S.S. Badger and S.S. Spartan
ferried passengers and cargo from Manitowoc
to Ludington, Michigan.
The sister ships remain icons for both port cities,
but today the Spartan is only used to salvage parts
to keep the mighty Badger up and running.
Even so, for Kevin their sibling rivalry
still hangs in the air.
- Down in the engine room there is
because I'm the only Wisconsinite on board.
- N-40.
O-61.
- The speed of life onboard is 18 miles an hour.
The four hour voyage is an historic salute to the past.
- [Kevin] Seeing the sunrise over the lake every morning,
seeing the sun set, just the beauty of being out on a lake,
you don't see that out of a factory window.
There's no place else I'd rather be.
(boat horn blows)
(upbeat music)
- I'm Jamie Baertsch, and I'm the brewmaster
of Wisconsin Dells Brewing Company,
and this is my Wisconsin Life.
(light guitar music)
This will be our product line today.
- Jamie Baertsch brews beer.
- Well, I'm German and from Wisconsin,
so I guess it's kind of hard not to become a brewmaster.
I'm gonna shake it about 30 seconds.
- Truth be told, it took a lot of hard work
and one major milestone.
- Beer has been so taboo for women.
I was at Madison Area Technical College studying biotech.
I didn't know anything about beer.
And my teachers were all home brewers and were like,
you're really good at this.
You should be a brewer.
I was just like, what!?
Like, this is a job?
Back up to the line.
After being rejected from every brewery in Wisconsin,
I came here.
- Here is the Wisconsin Dells Brewing Company.
- [Jamie] Everybody ready?
(mechanical click) Start.
- On this day, Jamie is running a small
canning line for her newest craft beer.
(metal clunking)
- [Jamie] Oh! First casualty.
Kevin, how's our weight?
We've nicknamed this thing Jack the Ripper.
Whoops, lost that one.
Blooper reel.
I think Miller spills more beer on the floor
during a shift than I make in a year (laughs).
- Nothing seems to have come easy for Jamie.
- I think they just thought I'd leave some day
'cause all I did was scrub floors, polish tanks.
- Jamie became the first female brewmaster in Wisconsin.
- And I got like the luckiest break in the world.
So, I was the last person that was willing to work this hard
for that little of money and free beer (laughs).
And lid ended up upside down.
It's really dangerous work.
I work with chemicals, high pressurized tanks,
things where you can lose a finger on the canning line.
All this equipment: it'll kill you.
Ripped the top right off.
You're off just a hair and it makes you pay the price.
Jack the Ripper strikes again.
So it is not a party.
You need a level of professionalism.
This is the record of everything
that ever happened to this beer.
- And for the record, as a female brewer
in the big boy beer industry,
Jamie's making quite an impression and for good reason.
- I've won a silver medal for my Rustic Red
at the Great American Beer Festival.
I was chosen to speak at the 2008 Craft Brewers Conference.
I'm literally here because I'm standing on the shoulders
of all the guys in Wisconsin that helped push me up.
The guys have always been so supportive,
and that's really nice.
And we should get a giant air bubble coming through.
How's it look on your end?
Besides her biotech degree from MATC,
Jamie graduated from a master brewing program.
- [Jamie] And it is hard 'cause women aren't normally
pushed towards the sciences and math,
and that's what I use every day here.
And I am at 2.5 volumes of CO2.
It wasn't until 2012 there was another woman,
and actually for a long time I was the only one
in the Midwest.
- Jamie is a founding member
of the Pink Boots Society,
supporting and encouraging women in the brewing industry.
- It makes it a whole new game.
(chatting)
- She no longer stands alone.
Other Wisconsin women are following her lead.
- One, two, three!
- They celebrate the tapping of a new beer
called Common Thread.
It's a batch of brew these women made together.
- Cheers!
Now you're seeing women being brewers,
assistant brewers, running packaging lines.
These are things that you didn't see 10 years ago.
Cheers!
- Cheers.
- Wisconsin's first female brewmaster
has an optimistic and positive attitude
where the glass is always half full,
and she can't imagine brewing beer anywhere else.
- It is something about culture and family and beer brewing
that ties us all together here in Wisconsin.
- And as a German-American,
Jamie embraces the tradition.
- [Jamie] It's like, who doesn't want to be a brewmaster?
(soft music)
- Still to come on Wisconsin Life ,
join Josh Mayer as he searches the state
for natural treasures.
- People think you have to go to exotic places
to see beautiful things, but I mean,
I think Wisconsin has a lot to offer.
- Enjoy the adventure without the mosquitoes
later on Wisconsin Life .
(upbeat music)
- I'm Dan Sullivan, also known as D.S. Sully,
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(sanding wood)
- For Dan Sullivan, creating something new
means starting with something old.
- [Dan] It can be old barn beams,
cabin timbers, pier pilings.
Even the first of them were fence posts.
- It means looking past the superficial
and finding potential.
- People look at that and say, "Well it either goes
"into the landfill or it goes into a campfire."
And to me that's just a shame.
It's old wood with all that character and all that history,
and it still has a story to tell.
- This story begins a few years back
when Dan was cleaning out his garage in Wausau.
- I had a bunch of pieces of old wood
that I was going to use for landscape timbers,
and I just didn't want to throw them away.
I felt that they had some purpose to them,
so I started kinda playing around with them.
Started doing a little bit of carving on them.
Just I thought, let me see if I can do some kind of decoy.
- A duck decoy.
He called them Boonducks.
- The name Boonducks evolved from the fact that they're made
from wood that's recovered out of the boondocks.
Who doesn't like a duck?
I mean, you take just a pond and you look at that
and say that's a beautiful pond, but the minute you put
a duck on it, it becomes a whole different environment.
I really can't call myself a wood carver
because what I do is more wood sculpture.
I use no knives.
I use a saw to get the rough form,
and then I start chiseling around at the sides
and the shoulders.
From that point on, I use what are called shaping rasps
to get all the different contours.
- Instead of smoothing the surface though,
Dan leaves chips and cracks in the wood.
He even hammers the surface to add texture
before coating the wood with beeswax.
- Time to get down and dirty.
It's kind of the opposite of the fine art ones
where you want to have everything perfect.
Mine are kinda perfectly imperfect.
- In all the process,
there's one thing he doesn't use, electricity.
- I start using power tools, I'll be without fingers.
It's just plain and simple.
- That's not because Dan
doubts his craftsmanship.
It's because he relies on different senses
than other woodworkers.
- I have had macular degeneration
for almost 50 years, now.
It's normally an eye condition that hits people
in their 70's and 80's.
Well for me, I got it at age nine, and it slowly diminished
my central vision.
This'll be the 50th year since I've been diagnosed with it.
And I can't read a newspaper anymore,
I've never been able to drive, things of that nature,
but I can use the peripheral to do some of these things.
- Dan's vision affects more than his methods.
Because he sees living ducks differently,
Dan carves wooden ducks differently too.
- As I explain to people, because of my unique acuity,
you take a duck for example,
the average person sees the feathers.
I see the flutter.
And that's the best way I can describe that.
I see the ducks in kind of a folk art version.
Because I can't do the details,
so I do emphasize those different caricatures of a duck.
- Dan's unique perspective has inspired
another craft: writing.
He's written three books under the pen name D. S. Sully,
and he's helped other budding writers as well.
- Due to things called the Writability Workshop,
where I teach people with disabilities
how to write about their experiences.
- Dan has also gotten involved with VSA,
an organization that supports artists with disabilities.
With their help, Dan's ducks have taken flight,
turning up in art shows first around Wisconsin,
then around the country.
- They've been in shows last year in California,
Minneapolis, Louisville, Steven Points, Madison.
One even ended up in Nixon Library in California.
- As each new duck finds a new home,
these cracked old timbers find new life.
- [Dan] That's kinda what art is all about.
It's that perspective.
How each of us can look at something
but see it a little differently.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Joshua Mayer and this is my Wisconsin Life .
How's it going in there?
Starting to get a little wet in here.
- Josh Mayer likes to walk off the beaten path.
- [Josh] No trails, no signs telling you where you are,
or this is it, this is not it.
You know, just GPS and away you go, so (laughs).
- Don't get him wrong, he'll use a beaten path
if it's where he wants to go, but he's also comfortable
walking across a bog that sinks
if you stand in one place too long.
- [Josh] It all started with just getting a camera
for a gift for my graduation from my doctoral studies.
- He took it with him on a trip to a state park
and photographed a flower.
- [Josh] I didn't know I could take such a pretty picture.
- That drove him to visit more parks
and take more photos.
- I happened upon Natural Bridge State Park.
I learned that it was also a state natural area,
so I went to the DNR's website and looked that up
and found out that it's this big program where they protect
important sites around the state either for
endangered or threatened plants or animals.
Often, there's remnant landscapes
of what used to be in Wisconsin before all the people came.
- Each State Natural Area, or SNA,
has a name and a number.
- This is called Olson Oak Woods,
State Natural Area number 157.
Now there's 673, and they keep adding them
faster than I can go see them all.
- Most natural areas are on state property,
sometimes within a state park.
- [Josh] So then I just got hooked.
I wanted to see more of these special places
around the state, and then it kind of mushroomed from there.
- Josh set a goal,
visit every state natural area in the state.
- Red I've been to.
White I have not yet.
- He's more than halfway there.
- [Josh] Step one is finding out exactly how to get there.
- Some State Natural Areas are on land
owned by conservation groups or private citizens.
- I absolutely have to see this place
because there's no guarantee it will be in the MFO program
next year and then it will just be totally closed.
- [GPS] Drive point three miles then turn left.
- Few of them are well marked.
- [Josh] 0.18 miles.
My friend and I mapped them all, like in Google Earth.
Like drew, hand drew, the boundaries.
- Josh started by visiting three or four
in a weekend, hiking and taking taking pictures.
Now he plans longer trips to the northwoods
with his friend Aaron.
- So if we keep following this-- - Oh yeah.
- Unless we wanna go see the creek,
in which case you'd take a left.
I pick a cluster that are close together
so I'm not zigzagging all across the state.
So seven today, 10 yesterday,
I think four on Thursday.
- Josh and Aaron met online talking about
their photos of State Natural Areas.
- [Josh] Sharing tips on, have you been to this place?
What's this one like?
- Each new visit brought a surprise
and made him marvel at Wisconsin's diversity.
- [Josh] People think you have to go to exotic places
to see beautiful things, but I mean,
I think Wisconsin has a lot to offer.
I didn't know Wisconsin had cacti before.
We've got cacti.
- Josh started sending his photos to
the Department of Natural Resources
to use on their website.
The DNR started asking Josh to report back
on what else he saw.
- [Josh] They told me oftentimes you might be the only one
to visit that place in several years.
- One photo in particular taught him a lesson.
- I sent like this beautiful picture of this
invasive species.
- He decided to study up on
what he was actually photographing.
- Dragon's Mouth Orchid.
It really sort of imprinted on me all the differences
and sort of the wide variety of things that we do have
that you might just never notice before.
How much stuff did I miss?
Did I walk right by?
- Now, instead of walking right by,
Josh is willing to walk miles through mosquito-filled
woods and swamps to hunt a rare orchid
and walk away smiling even though he doesn't find it.
- We saw some pretty beautiful places.
- Josh doesn't think the DNR promotes
the State Natural Areas enough.
He had to make his own T-shirt
- I like to wear long sleeve shirts to these places anyway,
so might as well put something I want on it.
- He uses the shirt to answer
the mo common question.
- People always ask me, "How many you been to?"
So now I can be like, "Well, here you go."
- Josh thinks it will take a few more years
to visit all the State Natural Areas,
and even though he will be the first private citizen
to do so, he's not in a rush.
- I don't look at it as a race, competition or anything.
It's just something fun for me.
Like I said, gets me outside.
I get to take pictures.
I get to see the state.
I mean, what more could you ask for?
(upbeat music)
- Hi I'm Nataraj Hauser and this is my Wisconsin Life .
Being a performance artist probably has more impact
on my day job as a business analyst than the reverse.
So I have fallen into a role as director
of some of our shows in part because I have the energy
and the drive to do it and in part because I don't find it
daunting or complicated to do the whole
spreadsheet work ,and creating a budget,
and figuring out what it's going to cost to do this show.
And how many seats do we have to fill to pay for it?
The apparatus that we're going to start a new rehearsal on
is about a 12 or 14 foot long steel pipe.
It's got two ropes that are rigged about six feet
from the center point.
It still gets a little bit of tip in there,
but has some structural stability.
Cycropia is the longest running, continuous,
collectively-run dance company in the United States.
The company, Cycropia, was formed in the late 1980s
as a result of a performer who was brought in
through the University of Wisconsin.
He was using aerial dance techniques
that were largely unheard of.
They had come out of the Bay area.
A woman named Terry Sendgraff is largely responsible
for dance trapeze and the kind of work that we do.
When you get out in front of a crowd,
the spotlights are on, the crowd wants to be dazzled.
The crowd wants to be wowed.
They want you to show off.
They want to see you shine.
They want to see us be strong.
They want us to wow them.
They want us to sparkle.
(applause)
I was always the kid on the monkey bars.
I was utterly fearless.
When I was about four,
my mom had me at the Kroger Grocery store,
and some woman walked up to her and said,
"Hey, lady! Is that your kid?"
She turned around and there I was,
all the way up at the ceiling, shimmying my way up
the support beam for this grocery store.
I discovered aerial dance in Madison
in 2005 at the Orton Park Festival
where I saw Cycropia Aerial Dance perform an amazing show
in a big burr oak tree.
My jaw just hung open and I said to myself,
"I need to be doing that."
The next year I started taking a trapeze class
and found myself very quickly immersed
in Cycropia and all things involved in aerial dance.
Sort of a profound change in my life.
My wife is fully behind what we're doing.
Aerial dance is an ideal form of recreation.
It is great for strength building and confidence.
The sense of play and whimsy that we get being on
these apparatuses, being upside-down.
Spinning is amazing.
I have loved every minute of it.
- Curious to know more about the people
featured in this week's stories?
Go to WisconsinLife.org to learn more about
Kevin Diedrich, Jamie Baertsch, Dan Sullivan,
Joshua Mayer, and Nataraj Hauser.
And remember, we also want to know
what's your Wisconsin Life ?
This week, Erik from Sun Prairie shares a video
of his son Jaxton singing the UW Varsity song.
Find out how you can have a chance to see
your Wisconsin Life moments featured in an upcoming program.
(Jaxton singing UW Varsity song)
- [Erik] Yay!
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by:
Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.