- Coming up next on Wisconsin Life .
- Finally, I made an offer.
Two weeks later they call me up and say I own the theater.
I love the place.
This is the perfect time of year
to eat basswood leaves.
I call this "giraffing" it.
- Not just my story, there's a collective story being told.
- People are always walking up and they say,
"Oh, are you guys starving artists?"
We're like, "No, we're the starving carvists.
(upbeat music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life
is provided in part by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hi, I'm Cecilia Eslinger and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(country music)
- Hello folks. - Hi.
- [Cecilia] Here we go, honey, thank you.
Out of 20, thank you.
- It's a Sunday night in Stanley, Wisconsin,
population 3600.
- All right, that's 75 cents.
- And the Stanley Theater is hopping.
- Could I have some butter on my popcorn?
- [Cecilia] We use real butter.
Everything we have is quality, we don't skimp.
Here you go, thank you.
- Cecilia Eslinger has been standing in this lobby
selling movie tickets for nearly 50 years.
- Two adults and, what? Three?
One, two, three, four kids?
- In 1968, Cecilia and her brother drove
from Milwaukee, to northern Wisconsin,
looking for a small business to buy.
A realtor showed them the Stanley Theater.
- Make and offer, make an offer.
So (laughs) he said that about 10 times,
finally, I made an offer.
Two weeks later in Milwaukee, here they call me up
and say I own the theater.
Let's see.
- She'd never run a business,
wasn't even much of a movie buff,
but she learned.
- If I'm wrong, let me know.
I did everything; I did all the booking
and the books and the advertising and the ordering.
I know.
- Back when she started, prices were listed
in cents, not dollars.
- First took over, it was 40, 60, and 75,
that was the prices,
and I sat in the outside ticket office to the street
and that was very cold in there. (laughs)
(jazzy music)
- Cecilia lived in a little apartment
above the theater, but not for long.
She soon met an old bachelor farmer, named Daniel.
- And I met him and he was nice and this and that.
He said, "I really need help, I'm alone."
He was a bachelor.
He had dishes up to the ceiling
and they were very, very, very dried and dirty.
And he says, "Well, how much do I owe you?"
I said, "Nothing if you'd like to take me out for dinner,
"or something, that'd be great."
I had bought the theater in September.
We were engaged in November.
We were married in February.
- Cecilia moved out to the farm and Daniel
came into the theater to begin running the projector.
- [Cecilia] And every time it would break down,
he knew how to fix it and at that time it broke down a lot.
(laughs)
- Daniel would start his day at 4:30 in the
morning with the cows and end it around 11 PM
when the show was over.
- And we was 87 when he passed away
and he worked 'til the day he died.
- His image still watches over the projectors.
- [Cecilia] This was his place, mmm-hmm.
- And a memorial hangs in the lobby,
where he welcomed so many friends to the show.
- My husband was the main person
and he was a meeter and greeter, and he loved people
and people loved him.
- Daniel and Cecilia had six children
and they all worked on the farm and in the theater.
(popcorn popping) - [Cecilia] As the kids
grew up, as soon as they knew how to make change,
they were in here working.
- As the years went by,
most small town theaters closed down.
- [Cecilia] Thousands of them went out, you know?
That's why we're very fortunate that we can stay open.
- All right, so that's two?
- Eventually, they stopped taking a salary
and just focused on keeping the doors open
for the community.
- [Cecilia] There's so many people that don't have
a lot of money and can't afford to bring their families.
- Cecilia says community is what's kept
the Stanley Theater alive.
They have free shows around Easter and Christmas.
- [Cecilia] We'll have 400 to 500 people in here,
two shows in the day, first to come and see Santa Claus.
- And Stanley has returned the favor.
The community raised $65,000 to help buy a digital
projector and upgrade the sound.
Cecilia has turned over operations to her children
and their families, who all work for free
to keep the doors open.
- We loved it and my kids all grew up in it.
They love it and they still come home.
There you go, thank you.
They all said they'd like to keep it going
as long as they live.
- Many years ago, Cecilia drove north lookin
for a business and she found a home.
- I love the place and it's...
It's home.
(laughs)
(car engine roaring)
(upbeat music)
- I'm Sam Thayer and this is my Wisconsin Life .
Who is excited to be here?
Cool.
I present this as something that you should want to do
because it's fun and the food is good.
- Sam Thayer sees the green things of the world
in a different way than most people.
- [Sam] This is wild leek, also called ramp.
This is a basswood.
This is the perfect time of year to eat basswood leaves.
I call this "giraffing" it. There's no hands, see?
- Sam is a forager.
He doesn't divide things between plants and trees
or flowers and grasses, for him it's edible and inedible.
- The whole world is an incredibly bountiful garden
and it really does look different
when you know what you can eat.
Look at this basswood you all walked by.
Who didn't get a chance to taste?
Perfect basswood right there.
Salad on a stick.
- Sam is leading a group of students
on a field trip to show them
all the edible plants in the woods.
- It's really good.
- Spring Beauty, this is another plant
that is quite foolproof to learn.
I never separated wild food from cultivated food.
It wasn't until I got older that I realized that
in a lot of people's minds, there was this real important
dichotomy between what's wild and what's not wild
and I didn't grow up with that.
They were just plants.
- Sam started foraging as a young child.
- [Sam] It was exciting to go and to be able to find food.
- First berries, then plants.
- [Sam] Sometimes I tell people that I got into this
because I was hungry and I'm mostly not joking, you know?
- Bored with peanut butter and jelly,
Sam made lunch outside.
- [Sam] When I was about, maybe 10, I discovered
there were books about edible wild plants
and from there, I was just reading and identifying
through books, primarily.
It was my escape.
- He doesn't recall getting sick
from eating the wrong plant.
- [Sam] Oh, you guys want to see a poisonous plant?
- While Sam encourages kids to get
educated about what's safe to eat,
he wants to make sure they don't have irrational fears
over foraging.
- This here is called baneberry.
It just sits there, it doesn't sneak into your food,
it doesn't jump into your mouth.
- The bigger issue in foraging
is knowing how to eat an edible plant.
- [Sam] The trial and error is, in terms of,
when does this taste good, what's the best part,
what's the best time of year to get it?
How does it look when it's perfect to eat?
It's beyond the stage here that I would actually eat it.
A week ago, it would have been perfect.
There's about 30 ferns that you'll find
in northern Wisconsin.
- Sam led his first edible plant walk
at age 19.
- I didn't think of it as a monumental occurrence
in my life.
And that's good that you asked that.
You should cook the fiddleheads.
It just naturally grew out of my interest
and people asking me questions and wanting to show people.
The leek plant has two leaves.
Pick one of them, not both.
- Foraging went from finding lunch
to a career that has taken him around the country.
- [Sam] I love to see the kids get excited.
It brings me back to when I was their age.
- This is really good.
- But also, it brings me back to last week
when I first learned a couple new plants in Georgia?
- It tastes a little bit like salad.
- [Sam] I mean, it's just exciting and it's fun to see
other people share that same excitement.
- In recent years, the natural food movement
has brought him more people who want to learn
what else nature has to offer.
- Wild foods get elevated as gourmet status,
like morels and wild rice and maple syrup.
Well, that's just like the tip of the iceberg.
- Sam wants people to think of foraging
as more than just a survival tactic
or a way to spot a trailside snack.
- [Sam] When you eat something, that's the most intimate way
you can relate to that plant or animal.
- Even if this wasn't a profession,
Sam would still be doing the same thing.
- I like food.
I mean, as a forager, you get to try foods
that you absolutely would never have the opportunity
to eat otherwise.
Just gonna collect some basswood and Spring Beauty
for a salad.
I don't wake up and think,
"I need to find a wild plant to eat today."
It's just what I do.
- Still to come on Wisconsin Life ,
while some dream of life in the spotlight,
Fred Foster dreamt of life behind it.
- People go to a Broadway show and you look up
and see all the lights and you don't think
that somebody has to make them, we do.
- Meet the Wisconsin man that lights up the world,
later on Wisconsin Life .
(upbeat music)
- My name is Althea Rene Miller
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(slow, dramatic music)
Ready?
I got this.
- Althea Miller gives you the sense
she's about to do something remarkable.
- This is for the queens.
Yes, that's us--
- Whether it's a performance as a spoken word artist--
- Caramel latte swirl.
I need to be on stage.
If I'm not on stage, then I am denying myself joy.
- Or, as she pursues an advanced degree.
- I'm currently a master's student studying
multi-cultural education in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
Whoo, what all am I involved in?
A lot (chuckles).
(drum music)
- That includes sharing her passion for
West African dance at Madison's Woodland Montessori.
- I love this idea of Sankofa,
that's from the Akan people.
They have several beautiful symbols that mean
a host of wonderful, spiritual things.
And that's the one that myself and a lot of my friends
we to connect to is Sankofa, which means that it's not taboo
to go back and recover that which is lost.
- Going back and recovering what's lost
includes digging into African roots through dance
and reconsidering her own story
as the child of a single mother and an absent father,
which she does in her poem, "We Be."
- Sometimes, we be left lonely with children that took more
than ourselves to conceive, but we be pink sidewalk chalk.
And so she did everything that she could to make me
not feel that absence and that's kind of what
I was hitting on like, "We be pink sidewalk chalk."
Draw hopscotch to jump past struggles,
we be that: resilient.
- Resilient, it's an often overlooked characteristic
that "We Be" speaks to.
- We be mustard seeds moving mountains, mighty.
Making valleys, level grounds for our children to play on.
It's not just my story, there's a collective
story being told.
We all share some part of history,
some part of trauma.
We're all connected somehow and so to be able
to get on stage and share that connection
is very important.
- Althea also makes those connections
in the classroom as a champion of multi-cultural education.
- Education is liberty, so I want to make
education more accessible.
That's what we should be focusing on,
making sure that education and the way that
we teach all students of all ages is relevant
to who they are, the context that they live in.
We are giving something to our friends
and we are receiving something.
- The context Althea lives in
continues to shape who she is.
- The more that I dance or read or study
or work in the community, the more that things
come together and the more the picture of my life
becomes clear.
- Like many students, Althea doesn't know
exactly where she'll end up,
but chances are it will be someplace remarkable.
- Education, as a form of liberty.
Art as a mode of healing,
these are things that I'm working toward.
I don't have a particular, like a specific idea
of what I'll be doing, but I see it converging to a point
and that's what I love.
(applause and children cheering)
(upbeat music)
- My name is Fred Foster,
I'm the CEO of Electronic Theater Controls
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
People go to a Broadway show and look up and see
all the lights and don't think that somebody
has to make them, we do.
- Fred Foster is the CEO
of Electronic Theater Controls in Middleton,
Wisconsin Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013
and chosen as one of the 10 most powerful people
in the entertainment technology industry.
- [Fred] So we have about 700 people who work in Dane County
and it's the center of our product development.
- From the world's tallest building in Dubai
to Main Street Disney in Orlando
to the lights on Broadway in New York City,
it's a Wisconsin company that's lighting the way.
- [Fred] The flags represent the companies where
we have operations with the exception of the Wisconsin flag,
that went up when Bucky Badger came to visit one day.
- And to think all of this is the brainchild
of a University of Wisconsin dropout.
Born from the curiosity of college kids.
- There was an early computerized lighting board
at the University of Wisconsin at Vilas Hall
and my brother, two years older than I am,
was studying physics and I showed him this big machine
that cost a fortune in 1973.
- The cost for that one piece of equipment,
$150,000.
- [Fred] His direct quote was, "Gack, this is disgusting.
"We can do it for $5,000."
We built our first production light boards
in my brother's bedroom at my parents' house.
Then we moved into our first garage
in about 1979.
- Just like Walt Disney, Harley Davidson,
and Bill Gates of Microsoft,
they all started their companies in a garage.
- I think we were one of Bill Gates' first customers.
We bought a development software package from them
and I think we called for technical support
and, likely, talked to him on the phone.
- ETC went on to create the first computerized
lighting console.
- [Fred] It was right after the microprocessor had come out
into the market.
That was a big step.
- A revolutionary step, but the early years
were not easy for Fred and his brother, Bill.
- There have been many times when we've been challenged
during that time, when we couldn't make payroll.
It's not wrong to be too stupid to quit.
- But Fred did quit college.
That's not to say he doesn't value his time
at the UW.
- I have a tremendous respect for the University.
I regret not being patient enough
to take advantage of school.
And so, looking back, I suppose I do regret it,
but I can't imagine that I ever would have been able
to finish it.
- But what he did learn at UW-Madison
is immeasurable.
And if there was a degree in passion,
Fred Foster would have earned it.
(actor reciting lines)
- I think my favorite theater is the Memorial Union Theater.
The large proscenium house
and not only that, but when I was a student,
I learned my stagecraft.
So there's a really strong emotional tie,
the number of all-nighters I worked there.
- And years later, work would bring
Fred back to the Union Theater again and again.
Like so many great theaters,
ETC lighting hangs from the rafters.
When the Memorial Union underwent recent renovations,
Fred forged a new partnership
with the University.
- [Fred] In the Play Circle, we said that we would donate
an entire lighting and stage machinery package
on the grounds that we could put in anything we wanted.
- In essence, creating a theater lighting lab
for students to learn their stagecraft,
just like Fred had done years before.
And every night there's a light show
outside of ETC's seven acre headquarters.
The color array isn't just for looks,
these lights are being tested.
The mood lighting continues when you step inside.
- [Fred] Now we're entering Town Square.
- A space inspired by the famous Edward Hopper painting,
called Nighthawk .
The lobby resembles a 1940s stage backdrop.
- [Fred] So across the way is the ACME Office Machinery,
which actually houses our computer help desk.
The Richard Kelly Insurance Company, over here,
is our Human Resources help desk.
He was our insurance agent
when we were a joke in a garage.
- Fred Foster has come a long way
from those early days in a garage.
- We have grown from garage to garage
and arguably we are still in a garage,
it's just a whole, well, they're just bigger garages.
I don't think any of us ever saw ETC
turning into what it has become.
- You don't have to look any farther than
Fred's office door to see he's never forgotten
where he started.
- [Fred] It's been a great ride
and I don't think we're done with it.
(upbeat music)
- I'm Steve.
- And I'm Jason.
- [Both] This is our Wisconsin life .
(gentle music)
- Winter can seem bleak.
Barren, even bland.
- [Jason] I mean, here if you look at the model,
I have it just kind of lined up with--
- [Steve] Oh, the dorsal fin?
- But through the eyes of an artist
winter is a blank canvas waiting to come to life.
- We can do political pieces,
we can do abstract pieces,
but really, we're just up to
creating original pieces,
coming up with our own ideas.
- Jason Anhorn and Steve Bateman
are snow sculptors, part of a team that began
when they were students.
- Steve, here, had a friend, Steve Hargash,
at Minneapolis College of Art and Design,
where we had attended college.
He was from Frankenmuth, Michigan
where they have a long standing tradition
of this competition there.
Anyhow, got Steve involved and then Steve asked me
if I wanted to get involved and it was as simple as that.
Once you try it, you're just doing it for fun
but then, it gets pretty serious
when you realize you can make some large object
in the middle of a public park
and inspire people, hopefully.
We're called the Starvin' Carvists
because people are always walking up and they say,
"Oh, are you guys starving artists?"
And we're like, "No, we're the Starving Carvists,"
so we just took that name.
- Their tools?
- Drywall saws are nice,
horse brushes, just regular painter's brush
to clear away some of the snow after you make some cuts.
You know, joist hangers, aluminum saws.
Ice chisels and just a lot of hard work,
or play, however you look at it.
So we like to start with the larger tools
and take off major shapes first.
(saw scraping ice)
And then work our way toward finer detail
with smaller tools.
- On this day, Steve and Jason are carving
the latest in a series of pieces at Boyd Park
in Eau Claire.
- [Jason] For eight weeks we come down here and create
a new sculpture each week.
- Their masterpiece this week?
- We just have to find the shape of the shark here
and then once we kind of square away
where all the parts will go,
we can just add some final details to the surface.
Maybe make it look more rippled
like there's fish skin rippling as it's curving.
I'm excited about adding teeth.
- These Starvin' Carvists have sculpted snow
in cities around the world.
- [Jason] There was a competition in downtown Chicago,
Chicago Snow Days and we were on the cover
of the Chicago Sun Times that Saturday
with "Snoprah."
We made a giant Oprah out of snow.
(laughs)
Well, we won first place in Italy
at this competition with a sailboat.
It was "Fool of the World," was the title.
We carved it all out, it was on clouds.
The last two years, 2013 and 2014,
we won a national competition.
In 2014, we also got People's Choice,
which was, you know, it's always an honor to get that.
- That national competition is held
at Lake Geneva and this year the Starvin' Carvists
returned to defend their title.
With them was teammate, David Andrews.
- Well, we are waiting for the awards to be announced.
The name of this piece is "Arbor Amour."
It's about togetherness, or connecting.
The two trees that are growing together,
intertwining and almost creating,
kind of a Irish knotwork, completely hollow on the inside.
It was a real technical challenge.
- Still, the competition was intimidating.
- It was tough competition this year.
They're all great pieces.
"Praying Mantis," I really like that one.
- "The Bee" is just so geometric.
That's complicated to do.
- Soon the results were in.
- US Champion winner,
for the seventh time, Mr. Dave Andrews
and Steve Bateman and Jason Anhorn.
(cheers and applause)
- But whether they're carving at a
national competition
or decorating a snowy city park,
the carvists say their muse is the same.
- Just a creative challenge to create any artwork,
especially in public where everybody sees it
and you're basically critiqued by society.
But the love of art really just motivated
by making stuff.
(jazzy music)
- Curious to know more about
the people featured in this week's stories?
Go to WisconsinLife.org to learn more about
Cecilia Eslinger, Sam Thayer,
Althea Miller, Fred Foster,
and the Starvin' Carvists.
We want to know, what's your Wisconsin Life ?
This week, our production assistant, Yao Liu,
shares a video she took when she was able
to take a flight with the UW Badger Aviators Club.
Thanks to pilot Bill Ryans for the ride.
Visit WisconsinLife.org to find out how you
can have a chance to see your Wisconsin Life moment
featured in an upcoming program.
(gentle music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part by
Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.