'- Coming up next on Wisconsin Life :
- But I was also missing what's right under my nose.
The Wisconsin Northwoods is as beautiful a place
as there is on the planet.
- This isn't something that we could ever walk away from.
Your heart and your soul, you've got blood,
sweat and tears here.
- The real kick I get is restoring the old signs.
I just thought they were cool.
(uplifting instrumental music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- I'm Jeff Rennicke
and this is my Wisconsin Life .
"He plunged in among the big Spruce trees,
"the trail was faint.
"A foot of snow had fallen since the..."
- At the Conserve School in Wisconsin's Northwoods,
this is a classroom.
- "He carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in a handkerchief."
When you go outside and you sit in the wind,
and in the cold, and in the snow,
you feel the story.
- This story is "To Build a Fire."
A man alone in the wilderness struggles for survival.
Jack London wrote it, based on his time in the Yukon.
- [Jeff] He lived the literature to create it.
And so I want the students to live the literature
to comprehend it.
You can come in and get warmer by the fire, if you'd like.
We have a fire, unlike the man.
- Literature teacher, Jeff Rennicke,
uses the story to teach a lesson about respecting the wild,
taking responsibility for it and for yourself.
- "Freezing was not so bad as people thought.
"There were lots of worse ways to die."
At the end he says, "It was my mistake."
So, he's starting to take responsibility for his actions.
All great literature is about transition.
- Jeff knows about transitions from his own story.
- A good story should have an arc:
a beginning and an end.
- The beginning for Jeff's story
is a Kaukauna High School classroom
and a teacher who encouraged the class
to look out on the Fox River as he read them poetry.
- And he was reading a poem by Carl Sandburg
that says "I know now it takes many, many years
"to write the river.
"A twist of water asking a question."
And I heard that, and my love of language
and my love of nature came together.
- Love of nature and language led to magazine articles.
- [Jeff] Backpacker and Sierra and National Geographic.
I traveled all over the world.
- Books, too, including one dedicated
to that high school teacher.
- To be a great artist you need to make mistakes.
- But Jeff didn't imagine joining the profession.
- If you're not making a mistake,
you're not trying hard enough.
- Then Conserve School invited him
as an Earth Day speaker.
- Get out there and make mistakes.
- The headmaster was so impressed,
he offered Jeff a job.
- One of the things that I really value
is teaching through story.
I think that when people can make a connection
with a place, with a person, feel it in their heart,
that's what I just felt from day one that Jeff had.
- Pretty much got to that point?
It was cold.
I just fell in love with the place, obviously.
- Deeply in love enough
to give up his career as a traveling nature writer.
- I realized then that I was gaining a lot
by traveling to all of these wild places,
and it's a wonderful life,
but I was also missing what's right under my nose.
The Wisconsin Northwoods is as beautiful a place
as there is on the planet.
(dramatic music)
- Capturing that beauty of his home
has become his new passion.
- [Jeff] I couldn't write about traveling anymore
because I wasn't traveling.
So, in exchange for that, I picked up a camera.
And the camera has become my new way to tell stories,
my new way to develop a sense of place.
- So now, instead of traveling widely,
Jeff and his camera are exploring deeply.
- [Jeff] A sense of place in the Northwoods of Wisconsin
and Lake Superior is like sinking down deep.
- When he traveled as a writer, Jeff didn't take the pictures.
- I was traveling with, literally,
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers.
- But now his photographs are receiving prizes.
This image was seen in a Smithsonian exhibit.
It's a favorite spot of Jeff's,
Honeymoon Rock in the Apostle Islands.
- I jumped out of the boat
'cause I knew the water was shallow right there
'cause I've been there so much,
water up to my chest, set up my tripod
(camera shutter clicks) took a thirty-second exposure.
(camera shutter clicks)
We were out there at exactly the right moment
for that picture.
(serene music)
- It's not traveling to some exotic place
and going to a once-in-a-lifetime trip.
It's a place I've been to, literally, hundreds of times.
And I just happened to catch it at a magical moment.
In Wisconsin's Northwoods, it's not too hard
to find something beautiful to photograph.
(camera shutter clicks)
- Jeff Rennicke's Conserve School classes
are learning what their teacher learned long ago.
When a love of nature and a love of story come together,
it can be a revelation.
- [Jeff] I'm telling the story of, "Open your eyes,
"look at what's around you,
"see the beauty right under you."
(gentle wind blows against snow)
(uplifting instrumental music)
- I'm Jill Carnegie.
- And I'm Jim Tomasi,
and this is our Wisconsin Life .
- Jill Carnegie and Jim Tomasi
are described as "cat people."
Yes, the domestic feline,
and the exotic.
- [Jim] We have lions, tigers, cougars, leopards,
smaller cats like lynx and bobcat.
- And, that's not all.
- [Jill] We have a wolf hybrid, a camel, llamas,
donkeys, cows, horses.
We have a big Scotch Highlander with huge horns.
We have a big tortoise.
You never know what you're going to find here.
- "Here" is the Valley of the Kings Sanctuary and Retreat
in rural Walworth County.
- Well Valley of the Kings is a home for unwanted,
abused, retired, injured exotics.
And they come from all over the country
and live out their days here.
- For more than 43 years,
the unwanted, unclaimed and unattended
have found their way to this 10-acre sanctuary
in southern Wisconsin.
A retirement home for animals who've had a difficult life.
- And each one is so different with their personalities.
They're just like your house cats,
just on a bigger scale,
but they think and act exactly the same way.
They love their swimming pools.
They're always happy to see you.
Well, when I was little,
I was always dragging home animals
and driving my mother up the wall
because she's not an animal lover by any stretch.
And I had married early in life, 17 years old,
basically just to get out of the house.
And my husband, who I had married, had a horse, hah,
which is the wrong reason to get married.
And it just led to a calling
because I love the elderly, I love the misfits.
That's where my heart is.
(tiger breathing heavily)
- Each of these exotic cats
comes with a heartbreaking story.
- [Jill] They come from governmental seizures,
people's ex-pets,
retired circus animals.
- Surprisingly enough, a lot of our cats
come from drug dealers who purchased these cats
to guard their drug stashes.
And then they're seized by the police,
and then we usually get them.
- [Jill] Charlie!
- Despite their troubled past...
- Come here Charlie.
- These animals are welcomed with open arms.
- Oh, I know. It's so rough.
- Charlie, he was declawed
and all his teeth were removed
by a movie producer in California
because he used to have that cat
pose with movie stars.
- Who's pretty?
Come here, come here, Ivy.
Ivy is from some people that lost their permits in Arkansas.
We went down and got her.
And she was living outdoor in an igloo
and this was the dead of winter.
It's okay.
He's not going to hurt you.
- To keep warm in Wisconsin,
both Charlie and Ivy now have shelters
that connect to the home of Jill and Jim.
- Hi Lena. Hi Lena.
- For the first years of her life,
this big cat was housed in a small crate.
- Yeah, baby doll.
- As a result,
this Bengal tiger, named "Lena", walks with a limp.
- Oh, cool.
Festie, come here.
Festus!
Festus has a crooked face from birth.
He is mentally challenged.
Did you have a big dinner?
You're a lazy boy, you.
- A lot of them have issues when they first come here.
But after a few months, they seem to calm down
and realize that they don't have to fight for their food.
- We feed about 1,500 pounds of fresh meat every single day.
- We have vendors that have contracts with the DNR
to pick up roadkill deer.
- You can give 'em a 165-pound deer
and they'll play with it like a mouse.
- The thought is a full cat is a safer cat.
- Yes, they tend to be overweight,
but we also have the longest longevity record
in the United States for big cats.
We had a tiger that lived to be 36.
Where a zoo cat, 18, 19, that's usually the end of the road.
- Having an animal sanctuary in your backyard
can have its risks.
- Amazingly enough, our neighbors really supported us.
Our neighbors have always watched out for us.
They see that the animals are all in safe enclosures.
And in 43 years, we've never had an escape.
Good girl, this is a really good bear.
She's so kind.
She doesn't have a mean bone in her body.
(tiger growing)
I've never ever had that fear of them.
You always have the utmost respect.
You always have to be able to read them.
And most importantly, you have to have common sense.
If you don't have common sense,
those are the people that get in trouble with them.
We would go in with them every day and love on them.
And since I had my ankle fused,
I no longer have that option because I gimp when I walk.
And you can't show that you have a weakness
with the big cats.
Good girl.
- Our mission is to take care of these animals
as long as we possibly can.
We give them the best veterinary care,
the best diet and a lot of personal attention.
- We can't possibly save them all.
I've come to that sad realization years ago.
The hardest part, I would say,
is you always run on a prayer.
You either have funds to do what you need
or you're scraping the cupboard.
- The sanctuary receives no government funding.
- [Jill] It's feast or famine.
And for us, it's been that all through the years.
- As a private, non-profit charity,
Valley of the Kings is solely supported
by memberships and donations.
- There is that old saying
that you may not get what you want,
but you'll get what you need.
If I get discouraged and I feel really down,
and I don't think I can go on.
You know you have moments like that,
and what are you going to do?
It's just, things fall into place for us,
and they always have.
C'mon Earl.
This farm is my entire life.
Until the day I die I'll be doing this.
This isn't something that we could ever walk away from.
Your heart and your soul.
You've got blood, sweat, and tears here.
And that's all we live and breathe, 24/7.
Even when we watch TV, it's always "Animal Planet!"
(laughs)
Are you a good girl?
Who's a good girl?
(acoustic music)
- Still to come on Wisconsin Life ,
get to know the grimy, grueling sport of cyclocross.
- I think this is insane.
I don't know why you'd ever do this to yourself,
but it's really fun to watch.
- Find out what makes this extreme sport worthwhile,
later on Wisconsin Life .
(uplifting instrumental music)
- Hi, I'm Jed Schleisner and this is my Wisconsin Life .
(electricity buzzing)
? Spread your wings and fly away
? Fly away with me ?
- They're monuments to commerce.
Vintage fantasies written in fluorescent glow.
From small-town gas stations to the Las Vegas strip,
neon has been lighting the American landscape for decades.
But keeping the lights on takes know-how, hard work.
And in the Fox Valley, Jed Schleisner.
- I'm from Appleton originally.
I went to college at Northland College up in Ashland,
and I got a degree in Biology.
And my wife and I, she wanted to move
to the University of Minnesota.
Long story short, I couldn't find a job in biology,
and I was working at a department store,
and I had a friend there that said he was going to go
to a neon school and I'm like, "What's that?"
It was actually just a night course.
It just was for a hobby,
and I ended up being good at it and found it as a passion
and went to the school for a professional course.
At the time, Hawaii was on a big upswing commercially
and they were needing neon people,
and I got called, head-hunted basically
and they said they wanted me to start a shop for them.
- Gradually, Hawaii's neon boom turned bust.
(guitar twang)
Jed and his wife returned home to Appleton,
and Jed set up shop.
- There were guys in the neon shops in the area
and they were pretty much stalwarts
and they weren't leaving their jobs anytime soon,
so I pretty much had to start my own studio
in order to make a living at it here.
I have to do all the different facets of it.
There's wiring and it's just not artistic.
You gotta do the artwork,
you have to do the actual glass-bending,
and then you also have to do the wiring
and hooking up the transformers to the sign,
and going out and installing it,
is all part of wearing the hats of a neon person.
- Some of Jed's work involves
creating new signs and designing them himself.
- I actually draw the tubes out and from there,
I have to actually take the four-foot lengths
of glass tubing of the different colors
and fashion the glass to the actual pattern,
so you actually heat with torches to the actual pattern,
and that's just all hand-manipulated.
So, once that's done,
then I have to actually mount it to some type of substrate.
- If Jed's work is an art, it's also a science.
After shaping specially-coated glass tubes,
Jed inserts electrodes into each end.
With special equipment, he runs an electrical current
through the tubes to remove impurities,
and vacuums air out.
When the tube cools, Jed fills it with neon or another gas,
and runs electricity through the tube, causing it to glow.
- The colors are from phosphor-coated glass.
They come in four-foot lengths.
You can get blues, greens, yellows, purples,
depending on what gas you use with it.
If you're trying to get, like, a salmon pink,
you would use a blue phosphor with a neon gas,
and that would give you salmon pink.
- But Jed's real joy isn't making something new.
It's rebuilding something old.
(majestic music)
- The real kick I get is restoring the old signs.
And that's kinda' always been my push
and my motivation to stay in the industry.
They're old signs from the '40s, maybe even earlier.
They're porcelain enamel, and neon was the heyday of signs.
They were real high-quality,
and porcelain enamel is highly-collected.
- Of course, not all those restorations
are for clients.
Jed's been collecting signs himself since he was 21.
- I just thought they were cool. I liked the old Americana stuff.
I grew up during that period,
seeing some of the old signs that were still up.
- Jed's collection has grown dramatically
and includes some unique pieces.
- I would say the "chicken in the rough" is a favorite
because it has probably nine colors in the porcelain.
It's a rooster with a cigar in his mouth, and he's golfing.
It's pretty impressive.
I would say the funeral home sign that I have,
a neon funeral home sign?
That's kinda' cool.
(laughs)
- In 2014, many of his favorites went on display
at Appleton's History Museum at the Castle.
- The coolest part, like, at the museum,
there's a little bulletin board where they have little kids
or anybody can put little stick-it notes on there
saying which ones they like.
And to see that kids are actually interested in it
is pretty neat.
- "Neat", Jed says,
because some people see neon signs as a thing of the past.
Those people might have a point.
- Almost everybody I know in the industry,
because I had gone through the school
I know quite a few people, they're out working,
either moved on to other endeavors
or they kept their shop and they're doing
small window signs.
- Still, Jed says, this work does have a future.
- If you look to any historical town,
they always have a neon area, like Memphis,
or Albuquerque has the Route 66,
that's on the National Historical Register.
I mean, it's incredible signs.
It'll always have its place.
? Back in my home town ?
(uplifting instrumental music)
- I'm Brian Matter, and this is my Wisconsin Life .
- It's not your typical day at the beach
unless you're Brian Matter.
- I live in Sheboygan,
so it really is a great place to train.
And I can ride 20 miles south, 20 miles back north,
not a single stop light, not a single person,
not a single car.
- Brian is one of the state's top professional cyclists.
- Yeah, it's pretty much what I do,
both mountain bike and cyclocross.
(crowd cheering)
- Cyclocross is the fastest growing form of bike racing.
- Yeah, let's go! Nice job!
- Attracting riders and spectators.
- It looks grueling, it looks crazy.
- I think this is insane.
I don't know why you'd ever do this to yourself.
But it's really fun to watch.
- It's just a little bit crazy out here.
- Crazy or not, Brian makes his living
as a pro on the cyclocross circuit.
- [Brian] For me, cyclocross is just a lot more intense.
(upbeat music)
It's kind of a combination of mountain bike racing
and road racing,
kind of like the Steeplechase of cycling.
(cheering)
- Riders dismount to get over barriers
and negotiate other obstacles.
- [Brian] Anything from sand pits to mud pits.
(crowd chanting)
- It's pretty gnarly.
It's sloppy and muddy and gritty.
(laughter)
- Look at this weather, it changes the course each time,
so you don't know what you're getting into.
- You never know for sure who's going to win.
(cow bells clanging)
- [Brian] You can crash, you can break a chain,
you can get a flat tire.
(cheers and cow bells)
- Twisty corners with any kind of obstacles
that you can find.
We race in any weather.
- I think it goes with the kind of crazy winter mentality,
Wisconsin toughness, you know.
(waves crash)
- Wisconsin-tough Brian now lives
just two blocks from the beach,
but he grew up across the lake in Michigan,
dreaming of a pro-cycling career.
- It was a goal from, you know,
when I was maybe 16, 17, 18 years old,
that I want to be a professional cyclist.
Turning pro means you get a piece of card in the mail,
and it doesn't really mean anything,
except you have to race against guys who are way faster
than you now.
So it was 20 years of hard work
that now I actually feel like I'm living the lifestyle
of a pro.
- Now, that lifestyle of a pro
includes training in Arizona and touring the world.
- [Brian] I raced across in China last year.
I get paid to win races.
Everything that I do on a daily basis
is built around cycling.
- Built around always getting better at cycling,
which means always pushing himself.
- My training philosophy is
kind of finding my limit and just going past that limit.
It's that willingness to go to your limit,
or maybe above the limit that really makes the difference.
(cheers)
- Going above the limit
may be what looks so crazy to some.
But cyclocross is all about having a good time
while you do it.
- Oh, I love it.
I don't even mind that it's freezing.
I feel like it's a little less serious than road cycling.
There's a lot of heckling, you know.
There's a lot of cow bell.
I love it.
- It's a cow bell ringin' good time.
But it's fun, man! It's fun.
(cheering)
- [Brian] You're fierce rivals out on the racecourse.
- Up, up, up, up, up!
Whooo! (cow bells clang)
- [Brian] But as soon as you cross the line,
you're buddies again.
(cow bells clang)
- Curious to know more about the people
featured in this week's stories?
Go to WisconsinLife.org to learn more about Jeff Rennicke,
Jill Carnegie and Jim Tomasi,
Jed Schleisner and Brian Matter.
We want to know, "What's your Wisconsin Life ?"
(instrumental music)
This week, Erika from Madison shares video she captured
during a unicycling obstacle course.
Go to WisconsinLife.org
to find out how you can have a chance to see
your Wisconsin Life moments featured in an upcoming program.
(instrumental music)
- Funding for Wisconsin Life
is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.