- This week on Wisconsin Life ,
meet Madison's Poet Laureate,
who's trying to change the world with his words.
A group of longtime friends kayaking Wisconsin's waterways.
A Green Bay teen with a knack for competitive reading.
And a couple who could run circles around you.
It's all ahead on Wisconsin Life !
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- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hello, and welcome to Wisconsin Life .
I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald.
Murals in Milwaukee are popping up all over.
I'm traveling throughout the city
exploring some of the street art
and meeting the artists that create it.
Our first stop is here.
An alley off of 33rd and National,
where street artist Ramiro Sandoval is creating a mural
that celebrates Mexican culture and the Day of the Dead.
How's the mural going?
- Coming along good.
- Coming along good? That's good to hear! - Yes.
- What's your favorite thing about doing murals?
- For me, it's like, when I'm painting in the streets,
especially here in Milwaukee, in this city,
you feel, like, a connection with everyone:
kids, old people, young people, everyone.
Everyone pass by you and ask you something
and they give you a hug or they give you good vibes.
- Thank you, Ramiro. - Thank you so much.
- We'll explore more murals in a bit, but first this:
Our team meets Madison's Poet Laureate,
who uses his love of language to lift others in his community.
- If a poet is only as good as his poems...
- I'm going to read some poetry,
but I'm also going to tell you a little bit about my life.
- ...Oscar Mireles could be considered writing royalty.
Today he's sharing his story with 4th graders
at Nuestro Mundo Elementary in the city of Monona.
- Which one do you think I am in this picture?
- Raised in Racine, Oscar's first love was wrestling.
- In 8th grade,
I was 4 feet 10
and I weighed 85 pounds.
So I was probably shorter
than the shortest person in this room.
- Eventually he began wrestling
with the written word.
- Because I was so little, that probably made me a poet
because I had to listen.
Because when you're little sometimes people don't listen to you.
- The long-awaited growth spurt eventually materialized
and Oscar moved to Madison.
Poetry remained his passion.
He'd continue to put his most personal thoughts to paper.
No rhyme, just reason.
- "Why did you name me Javier, Dad?"
My son Javier asked me this question.
I have poems that talk about identity.
Talk about me trying to,
you know, as a father, as a male,
as a Latino, trying to find my place in the world.
I think that I write poems about that.
- He published some of his best work
in an aptly titled anthology.
- As I was traveling in California, someone asked me,
"I didn't know there were Latinos in Wisconsin."
- The book highlighted more than 40 Hispanic writers
throughout the state.
Oscar believes storytelling can be a powerful tool.
- If you think with your heart,
then you really have an opportunity to move people
and get them to look at things just in a little different way.
- That's why he's here at Nuestro Mundo.
It's his first chance to bring his message to these students.
- I want to encourage all of you
to be the best "you" you can be.
- He'll also be there if they ever need a second chance.
- So when someone says the word "drawback,"
what it means is "what's a negative."
- This is Oscar's day job.
Since 1994, he's been the Director of Omega School,
an alternative school in Madison
that helps people obtain their GED or high school equivalency.
- When you're a high school dropout,
there's not a lot of options.
There's not a lot of hope.
And what we do is provide an opportunity
for them to kind of move on
to the next part of their life.
We have individual rooms.
It helps the students kind of concentrate
and focus on their studies.
We shut the doors.
It's a pretty quiet place
to focus and start to learn
and build your skills and confidence.
It did just that for Louis Bentley.
He attended Omega School in 1996.
- Well, at that time, I was very rebellious as a teenager
and not too many people could reach me.
I think what he did was he took that aggression and molded it
and showed me how I could use it
to create a positive impact in my life
instead of ending up in jail.
- Louis earned his high school equivalency
and success soon followed.
Today, he has a family, a home, and a full time job.
He's a branch manager at an insurance agency.
- I couldn't ask for anything better.
I love my life right now.
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- These are the stories that move Oscar.
Scan the walls of Omega School
and you'll see dozens of them.
Oscar estimates that he and his colleagues
have helped more than 3,000 people
earn their high school degree.
- You see how proud they are.
You see how proud their families are.
You see how proud their children are.
I'm proud to be a part of that,
but I'm more proud of their success.
I think some people are drawn
to the work of helping people.
I think I'm drawn to the work of helping people help themselves.
My challenge to you is to find what works for you.
- In 2015, Oscar was named Poet Laureate,
the official poet of the city of Madison.
It's one of the most distinguished honors
a writer can receive.
It's given Oscar more visibility to share his story.
- As I walked away, I knew what they were thinking.
"Who is this guy?
How can he not speak his mother's tongue?"
- It's also allowed people to learn more about a man
who's spent decades making a difference in his community.
- Plants need carbon dioxide and water
to carry out photosynthesis.
Every person I helped,
I feel that I'm blessed
that I had the opportunity to help them.
- Ask Louis and he'll say
that Oscar Mireles isn't as good as his poems.
- Oscar is the reason why I graduated.
You're the reason why I graduated high school.
- He's even better.
- He should be very proud of,
of the impact that he made in his community.
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- We've traveled from 33rd and National to Bay View,
home to a mural project located on Milwaukee's south side.
Five female artists were commissioned
to create giant artworks throughout the neighborhood
in an effort to beautify the community.
All the murals are within blocks of each other
which makes the art easy to access.
The collection includes these murals:
a portrait of women at Lulu's Café,
a modern mural at Mr. P's Tires,
an artistic self-portrait at D-14 Brewery and Pub,
a colorful abstract at the Shape Up Shoppe.
And finally, there's this mural
created by another local female artist.
I'll head to the next stop on our mural tour,
while you watch this story.
Our team heads to Manitowish Waters
to meet up with a group of women
who have formed a special bond
around their shared love of kayaking.
- Right side again?
- There are many ways to explore nature
in the North Woods.
- I'm part of the Lady Yakkers.
- And paddling a kayak down the Manitowish River
is one of the best.
- It is an absolute delight.
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- Especially when you're joined by 20 of your best friends.
Every Thursday in summer,
this group of women known as the Lady Yakkers
[laughter]
finds a new section of water to kayak.
- That is true.
- Melinda Pearce joined the group in 2003
when a neighbor invited her to come along.
- It wasn't so much the paddling.
It's the ladies that were so awesome.
They just are genuinely so nice and...
It's the ladies that makes the group.
- Now Melinda helps organize and schedule their trips.
And they're not afraid to tackle some rougher water.
- I think ours is the adventure group.
They're always up to trying more rivers.
- There's always an opportunity to see some wildlife.
- Hi, tree eagle.
- Is he still there?
- There's certain people that are bird watchers
and they can identify when they hear something.
But if you want to see the wild life,
you have to get in the front of this group
because some of the people in this group just like to yak.
That's why we're Lady Yakkers.
[background chatter] - It's even dangerous for them boating.
- There have been times when we've had a leader
take us somewhere
and half of them aren't paying attention at all
to the interesting things we could be learning.
We're just busy chattering the way we usually do.
- Not that I want to admit that too much, but it is well-earned.
[laughing]
Great stories are told.
What happened last week, dot-da-da-da,
or the grandchildren have been visiting...
Tell me what happened.
- Sounds like a bunch of geese coming across the lake
when we come.
[chattering]
- Well, it sounds like they're all having fun.
- Melinda says they put a new twist on the definition
of "silent sport."
- Because we're not motorized, it's considered a silent sport.
And I understand that we do like to yak.
- So, it wasn't me. - But it could've been her.
- But this is more than just a social outing.
- Hey girls, let's put our paddles up.
One, two, three.
Whoo!
- Melinda says there's empowerment
in an all-women group.
- There's some women who
are very strong women of the North Woods
and they want to be able to do these things
without the help of men.
They're in, a lot of the older ones,
are in the generation of "the husband is always there to help"
and they are finding that they can do this
without them.
It's kind of nice for those ladies.
- Sometimes, I have asparagus in there.
- Melinda is one of the few Lady Yakkers who isn't retired.
- Even working, I made the condition of
I have to be free on Thursdays.
So, no.
Doctor appointments
will never get in the way of my kayaking.
- And she has no plans
to give it up.
- I use it as a decompression time.
It's like, relax,
breathe in,
look at the scenery,
enjoy friends and it's just--
I'm totally relaxed at the end of the day.
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- There are all sorts of murals to discover in Milwaukee.
Some of them are historical in nature.
Others are meant to make a statement.
All of them showcase unique forms
of artistic expression.
Still more to see on our tour of Milwaukee's murals,
but first we meet a Green Bay teen
whose love for reading takes a competitive twist.
[keys clicking]
- A good writer
starts every decent story with a hook.
- So close.
- Meet Baylee Alger.
This Green Bay 16-year-old loves playing video games.
A teenager playing video games isn't unusual though.
The main character needs to be tested,
an obstacle to overcome.
In Baylee's case...
- X-Box, turn on narrator.
- X-Box voice: Starting narrator.
- It's that he can't see the TV screen.
- I was diagnosed with cancer and a brain tumor,
which destroyed my optic nerves
so I was totally blind by the time I was four.
[mechanical clunk, clunk, clunk]
- Around that time,
Baylee's family began teaching him to read.
- I started... early childhood,
when I was three and a half, I believe.
And they started teaching me braille right away.
- He fell in love with literature.
- They started giving me small books
and I would just read them over and over and over again.
- By 2nd grade,
Baylee could speed-read braille.
He decided to try his hand at the Braille Challenge,
an annual competition in Janesville,
where his comprehension, spelling and proofreading skills
were put to the test.
[mechanical clunk, clunk]
- You read each sentence.
You see if there's an error
and you just keep it in the back of your mind.
Then you get down to the question and it'll ask you,
"Where's the error?"
- Baylee's entered this regional event
nine years in a row.
The top 60 scorers nationwide
travel to Los Angeles to compete
for a national championship.
How has Baylee fared?
A true storyteller never gives away the ending.
- Stop.
- It's better to develop the main character
by drumming up another storyline.
[ba-dum ching]
- I started practicing on the one at school.
And then my uncle Jason
bought me one that I play on at home.
- Baylee plays the drum kit in the school band.
- And then I just sat there and kept working at it.
And within a couple months, I was really, really good at it.
- That's not all he's good at.
- Someone showed me fighting games.
My friend Dustin, actually, he got me really into them.
And he started teaching me how to play.
- How does a visually-impaired person vanquish a video game?
- Electronic voice: Selected games, one of three.
Game item Mortal Kombat .
- I just navigate everything mostly by sound.
- Stereo sound.
- But, see, I'll go next to subzero,
and it'll [electronic crash]
and that's all the way on the left
so now I know I'm player one.
- And by using a vibrating controller,
Baylee manages to hear and feel his way through a game.
- All right. Let's try this again.
[controller buttons clicking]
- Technology continues
to make Baylee's hobbies more accessible,
but his first love will always be books.
- I'm getting really into this book all of a sudden!
It's Starless Night .
The mercenary hadn't heard of any missing high priestesses
except, of course, Jerlys Horlbar,
and she wasn't really missing.
I mean there's a lot movies that don't have audio description
and there's a lot of games that I can't play,
but there's no book that I can't read.
- As for the Braille Challenge, Baylee's qualified
for the national championship in California
six times and counting.
A good writer might call that a "Hollywood ending."
[soft music]
- I'm actually trying to build a career in writing.
- And a good writer is what Baylee
aspires to be.
- It was on and off.
Back in 7th grade,
I kind of really started getting into it.
And then I'd start a story,
get nothing done with it,
try to move on to the next one.
And that was putting me off from it.
But then I started reading more fantasy books,
which caught my interest,
and then I started wanting to write again.
- And like most writers,
he'll be tested by every scribe's greatest enemy,
writer's block.
- I'm actually starting a story that I keep hitting dead ends on
but I'm working on it.
- And in Baylee's eyes,
that's the only obstacle he needs to overcome.
- I feel like people have this stereotypical thought
that blind people are kind of secluded.
That they don't really talk to sighted people.
You know, I'm not like that.
I'm just like everyone else.
I'm a normal teenager.
[phone's screen reader narrates the icons Baylee touches]
I gotta wait 'til he texts back.
I wish more people would
just look past the fact that I can't see
and just realize that
I'm just trying to be a normal teenager,
like other people are.
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- How do these fantastic murals in Milwaukee come to be?
Some are from artists
commissioned by local businesses.
And some murals are created by young people,
under the guidance of organizations like TRUE Skool.
I'm here with Shalina Ali and Fidel Verdin,
Co-Executive Directors of TRUE Skool.
How are you all doing today?
- Good. - Fantastic.
- Wonderful. Thank you for having us.
- Thanks for coming.
- Shalina, this first question is for you.
Can you tell us about TRUE Skool?
- We're a non-profit organization
and we engage young people,
specifically, high school age,
by using the culture of hip hop in the urban arts.
So they can take different classes here
like music production, video production,
graffiti art,
DJing, art of MC,
live band performance.
We have all these different skill-based arts classes
that they can get involved in.
And then on top of that,
all of our young people get engaged
in something called True Knowledge Workshops.
We do social and emotional development through that
but then also different social justice topics,
especially as they relate to Milwaukee.
- Wow, that's amazing.
So we've been checking out
some of the street murals around the city.
Fidel, why do you think it's important
that youth become involved in the murals?
- Well I think one of the reasons that young people
need to become more involved in the murals is because
these murals generally will stay in our community
from 10 to 15, 20 years.
And it's important that young people have a stake
in ownership
of what is seen visually in the community.
And it's very important also that adults
and different arts organizations recognize that
young people can take leadership in designing the future.
It's kinda metaphorical,
but it's really, really, really that serious for us.
- I love that 'cause they're getting that investment,
like you mentioned, into their own community.
- Absolutely, and they get to vision
what people will see for years to come,
whether it's on a wall or a canvas,
our murals generally have a lot of messaging
that go along with them.
So it's a conversation starter.
We are always doing murals.
That's one of our services that we provide at TRUE Skool.
So if people are looking for murals,
if people are looking for office artwork, any of that thing,
they can reach out to us.
- Wonderful. Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- This next story has us spinning.
We meet a Middleton couple
who have mastered an unusual sport
that was once shown off at the Olympics.
- A daily trip to the dog park is routine for Carly Schuna.
- Ready? Okay. [ruff, ruff, ruff]
- As a freelance writer, she comes here to clear her mind.
- Good girl!
- At the same time, Jeremy Perkins arrives for work
at a medical software company.
When most people are getting "out of work"
Jeremy and Carly's "work out" are just beginning.
- Work it, Jeremy.
You've got it.
Yeah! Whoohoo!
- I thought it looked really interesting
and I gave it a spin.
I find
I'm completely in another world when the wheel is moving.
- I had never seen one before. I was fascinated,
so I stepped on and I never wanted to get off.
-I usually describe German Wheel as a human sized hamster wheel.
- It was invented in 1925
by a German railway worker named Otto Feick.
He became a prisoner of war.
And he had these ideas when he was sitting in prison
about this new gymnastics device
that he could roll along the railroad tracks.
When he finally got out of prison,
he built a prototype and it caught on.
- It was premiered at one of the Olympics
in, I think, the 1930s in Germany.
It has stayed kind of a niche sport ever since then,
and has also spread into the circus world
as a performance art.
- This art form spread in Wisconsin
when it rolled into Madison
only during the last decade.
- We found this place,
which at the time was a used car dealership.
It became the Madison Circus Space.
- "This space" set the wheels in motion to make Madison
a mecca for German Wheel in the United States.
- There are really less than half a dozen places
in the country where you can even train German Wheel.
We have one of the most popular
German Wheel programs in the U.S.
We have many more participants and classes than Chicago.
There are probably fewer than 300 people in the U.S.
who are wheeling.
Whereas there are thousands and thousands in Germany.
- Jeremy trained at the Madison Circus Space
and won his first U.S. Men's title in 2016.
- That felt great. It was a blast.
I love competing and performing German Wheel,
and winning the United States competition
gave me the opportunity to compete
in the World Championships.
I am a performer.
When the actual competition comes,
the adrenaline is pumping.
You go out.
You do your thing.
- Carly is a three-time national champion
and has other motivations for competing.
- So, I'm just trying to get through it,
trying to not freak out, trying to stay focused,
and trying to enjoy as much as I can.
I hate competing.
It's very stressful.
Honestly, the main reason I do it
is because I get the best coaching
from the best coaches around the world
as a competitor.
- Jeremy and Carly make it look easy,
but the sport can be dangerous at every turn.
The more daring the trick,
the more risk involved.
- It can be really dangerous.
It's very different from a lot of circus arts
because you can't use mats
because it's a dynamic apparatus.
You kind of get into the danger zone when you're at a point
where you can do some tricks
that involve inversions and flips by yourself.
You can get into some pretty hairy situations that way.
- Carly hopes to forego freelance writing
and to turn the German Wheel into a teaching career.
- Pull up, good.
Well, it's kind of changed my entire life.
- Extend good, tuck, nice, yes.
I love everything about German Wheel,
so to be doing what I love
and getting paid to do it every day
is just awesome.
I feel so lucky.
- At the end of the day,
I would really like to have been part of starting a community
that will exist long after I stop doing German Wheel.
Like, I finally found this thing
that I had been waiting for my whole life
that I didn't even know I had been waiting for.
- We've seen so many cool murals today.
And there are still so many more to see!
If you're inspired to hit the streets
and explore for yourself,
there are several resources available
to help you map out your own car or bike tour.
We collected a number of them to give you a head start.
So hop online and go to our website WisconsinLife .org
and check it out.
And, as always, we'd love to hear from you!
What's your Wisconsin Life ?
Tell us by sending an email to WisconsinLife @WPT.org.
Thank you for joining me in Milwaukee
for our street art tour today.
Until next time, I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald,
and this is our Wisconsin Life .
Bye!
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- Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.