- This week on "Wisconsin Life":
Meet a teen who leads on and off the court,
a biologist in search of the elusive elk,
a designer who weaves science with textiles
and a music director
who marches to the beat of his own drum.
It's all ahead on "Wisconsin Life!"
* *
- 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.
Sound the alarm [bell dings]
because we're exploring the Milwaukee Fire Museum.
Located in the south side of the city,
this historic Milwaukee building was an active firehouse
from 1927 to 1996.
When the building was decommissioned,
it was converted into a museum
that is now open and free to the public.
The museum is supported solely by the community
and maintained by active and retired firemen,
a dedicated group.
Just as dedicated as the Milwaukee teen
in our next story,
who takes on leadership with a full-court press.
[ball bounces]
- Leadership is often an underrated skill.
- Stay strong now! Stay strong now!
- That's certainly true at Solomon Juneau High School
in Milwaukee.
[bouncing ball thuds] [sneakers squeak]
They've seen their share of bumps in the road
since starting their basketball program in 2013.
The Pioneers didn't just struggle to win games,
they barely had enough players to field a team.
In 2014, Juneau teamed up with Ronald Reagan High School
to bring in some extra players.
- Let's go, Tyler!
- One of those players taught everyone
why people should never judge a book...
[Marcell clapping] - Yeah, Dom!
- ... by its cover.
- Yeah, Dom.
- I had Marcell at 19.
When I delivered, he came out
and they washed him off
and whisked him away to the newborn nursery
and as the doctor was finishing with me,
I heard them say,
"Oh, there's something wrong with his hands."
- Marcell Dinsmore was born with a birth defect
that stunted the development of his hands.
- He has three fingers on the right:
his index, his pinky, and his thumb.
And then, it's just thumb on the left.
- It made Marcell a target growing up.
- I got bullied in elementary school.
"You're weird.
"You're not like me.
"You're not normal.
Why did God make you that way?"
- His mom Marcella made sure she had the last word.
- You are something special.
You're going to turn out to be something one day.
And so he kind of took to that and he was--
always had this determined personality.
- He directed that determination
into his favorite sport.
- He has always had a passion for basketball.
- I'm a very competitive person
so it's very fun.
- Passion didn't equal playing time.
Marcell often spent more time on the bench than in the game.
- It's all about the whole concept
of judging a book by its cover.
They see me and say, "Oh, he can't do that.
He won't do this."
[physical exertion]
- Undeterred, Marcell went on to Reagan High School.
His sophomore year, students had the opportunity
to join Juneau's one-year-old basketball program
and play under Coach Aaron Spiering.
- I'd never seen him work out.
I'd never seen him play.
I didn't know his work ethic.
I just know he was a kid from Reagan that wanted to play basketball.
- Coach Spieling gave Marcell exactly what he needed:
A chance.
- It's like, "You know what you need to do
"and I know that you have the ability to do it,
so just go out there and really just do it."
- Marcell finally felt like
he could spend more time shooting hoops
than jumping through them.
For an upstart basketball program...
- Good talking, Wayne. Good talking.
- Marcell's work ethic was a gift.
- Oh, yeah. [sneakers squeaking] Ball, ball.
- When you think about starting a basketball program,
if you get called up tomorrow and somebody would say,
"Hey, we want you to be our head coach,"
you think you want a 6-foot-5 shooting guard.
Oh, I want a 7-foot center.
You know, those are all positions,
and those are all body types.
- Go ahead and force them to the middle, J.
- But you never think, "Where's the leadership going to come from?"
- Good D.J. You're on, you're on. [clapping]
- It came from
a 5-foot, 6-inch guard from Reagan High School.
- If the drills get a little slow in practice,
he picks them up.
If we need that little extra intensity,
he brings it to the floor.
It's just what he's done.
And as a program, you need that guy.
- The team followed in his footsteps.
Marcell had worked hard to develop his game,
and his leadership skills.
It paid off his senior year
when he was named team captain.
- Referee: Good luck.
- Marcell had silenced any doubters on the practice floor.
Now he'd do it during the games.
- Marcel: Defense on three. One, two, three.
- Team: Defense!
- When you see him, you are just amazed.
- Oh, it's amazing.
It's amazing to see people underestimate him,
and then he gets on the floor and just kills you.
It's just fun to watch.
- Marcell made his mark on defense.
[percussive pops]
- He gets in your space.
He gets in and makes you uncomfortable
so you have to react to him.
- It's defense that wins championships
and defense that wins games, too.
You have to have that.
If you don't have that, you won't have a good program.
- A Juneau program that once struggled to win a single game
finished with 10 victories during Marcell's senior year.
[cheering]
Marcell was voted Second Team All-Conference,
one of the ten best players in his league.
[cheering]
- It's great because I've seen where he started from,
which was the bottom, and I feel like now he's at the top.
- Five years from now, ten years from now,
if I'm still here and if the program's still running strong,
it's going to be a result
of what Marcell has done to this program this year.
The kids who are going to come back next year
have been instilled with that work ethic
that Marcell has brought every day.
They've been instilled with that 'this is what a leader is
and this is how a leader acts.'
- Stand above the free throw line so you ain't in the paint.
- He's going to use that same ability in the workforce,
in the classroom, and everywhere he goes.
He's going to be the leader.
He's going to be the person people want to follow.
- Good bucket, Neil.
- Marcell plans to major in sports marketing
and minor in athletic training at UW-Milwaukee.
Wherever his career takes him, he'll be near the game he loves.
- I realize the importance of actually graduating,
having a degree in school
with whatever field I would choose to go into.
That's way more important
than being the star basketball player.
[sneakers squeaking] [ball bouncing]
- Marcell also realizes that some people
will always judge a book by its cover,
but he's the only one writing his story on the pages inside.
- Yeah. I am.
If people look at me funny or something,
I just keep it moving, keep it straight, 'cuz like...
It happened. I can't change it.
It's not like I can go put on a mask
or put on a regular arm and fingers.
It's like, no matter how you look at me,
tomorrow will be the same.
[clapping]
Don't let others really, like, knock you down or...
Good shot, Brennan!
...get you, like, off your path, the path you want to go in.
[sneakers squeaking]
- The Milwaukee Fire Museum is so well preserved,
it feels like we're stepping back in time.
Come on. Let me show you around.
To my right is the original alert system
that was in use until the mid-1990s.
Firemen had to physically decode the signals that came in
to see where a fire was located.
They were so good at their work,
that when computers were ushered in,
the response time increased by only 30 seconds.
That's impressive.
The firemen bunked together in this room.
Today it's used as a meeting and educational space.
To my right is a timeline of the Milwaukee Fire Department
and to my left is a display of the major fires in Milwaukee.
The kitchen is located off of the garage
and really gives us a taste
of firehouse living.
I wonder if they had things out of the Settlement Cookbook.
Well, that wraps up this part of our tour.
We'll look for more of the artifacts found here.
But first, let's take a look at life in Wisconsin.
Our team follows a Clam Lake wildlife biologist
as he works to bring back a population of animals
that once roamed our state.
* *
- Trekking into the wild, DNR Biologist Laine Stowell
is at home covered in camouflage.
- They're out in that direction.
Getting closer.
Once we can get up to where we can see,
I'll start calling to see if we can draw him to us.
But he's not very far away.
- In early fall,
under gray skies and a steady rain,
Laine is trying to lure into the open an elusive bull elk.
[high-pitched elk bugle call]
It's mating season and this call of the wild
echoes through the Chequamegon- Nicolet National Forest.
[high-pitched elk bugle call]
On this morning, the bull elk that Laine is pursuing
is a no show.
But that doesn't stop Laine from trying.
- A lot of hard work, a lot of hours, persistence.
When we were calf searching, it's a 12-hour-a-day job.
Seven days a week, which you only get paid 40 hours a week.
So it's a labor of love.
[radio tracking reciever beeps]
- Back in his truck Laine,
as he's done for more than 16 years,
turns to his big antenna to track Wisconsin's wild elk.
- I'm kind of at an advantage in that
I've got radio telemetry.
A good share of the elk are radioed.
And even, even with my advantage,
maybe one quarter of the time that I go out
do I see elk.
[radio emits white noise and an elk's beeper signal]
This is bull 305.
This is the biggest bull in the group,
in this part of the herd.
He's 900 pounds, probably 900 plus.
This is cow 357.
There's close to a dozen animals in this particular group.
- Elk have a long history in Wisconsin.
They roamed free until loggers and hunters forced them out
before the turn of the 19th century.
- We're bringing back an animal that once was abundant here.
It'll be successful if we have a viable population
and my grandchildren or my grandchildren's grandchildren
are able to come and see and hear evidence
of elk in Wisconsin.
- Wisconsin's elk reintroduction got a boost in 1995
when Michigan donated 25 elk.
- From those 25 elk,
the herd has now grown to about 160, 170 elk.
We are planning to bring 75 elk from Kentucky
over the next two years.
[bugle call]
- Those new elk will help diversify the gene pool
and boost Wisconsin's elk population,
which has been hard hit in recent years
by winter weather and natural predators.
Giving the elk space and also attracting tourists
is a balancing act for the DNR.
- For people coming into that area to view elk,
millions of dollars are generated by that.
They can hear the bull's bugle.
[high pitched bugle call]
We saw their tracks.
We saw their antler rubs.
There were trees that were bent over by a 900 pound bull.
A bunch of them headed out that way.
* *
One of the most important defense mechanisms that elk have
is their sense of smell.
So I was puffing some talcum powder in the air to see which--
where the wind direction was
so that we kept downwind of the elk.
If we got upwind of the elk, game over.
We weren't going to get close to them.
- Even for a trained tracker like Laine,
spotting an elk in the cover of a dense forest can be difficult.
And the area where they roam is enormous.
- The goal for the Clam Lake Elk Range,
which is 1,620 square miles in size,
is 1,400 elk.
- For Laine, working with this native animal is personal.
- I wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't personal.
I feel like I know them pretty good.
You do lose some of those animals.
But... and that's why we don't give them names.
We give them numbers.
It's a challenge to keep perspective.
- With the help of Laine's work,
elk are at home once again in Wisconsin's Northwoods.
- Over the past 16 years that I've been the elk biologist,
we've learned a great deal from this herd.
[high-pitched elk bugle call]
The bringing back of a species that disappeared
is righting a wrong.
And that's probably one of the highest callings
of a wildlife biologist.
[elk bugle call]
- The Milwaukee Fire Museum has so many interesting artifacts.
There are uniforms, large firefighting equipment,
and a display on a fireboat
that was actually used to fight fires on water.
But in my opinion,
the must-see attractions are these two fire trucks.
This is a 1930 ladder truck
with the original ladders and alert system still intact.
To my right is a 1927 fire truck,
which is loaded with 30 hoses that are 50 feet each.
Later in the show, I'll get a chance
to ride in the Fire Department's first ambulance.
You might call it the "Cadillac of ambulances."
It's actually because it is a 1947 Cadillac.
Next up, we head to Madison to meet a professor
weaving science into functional fabrics.
- Marianne Fairbanks has two degrees in fiber arts.
- I call myself a textile nerd.
- She's also an assistant professor
of textiles and design.
[laughter] - Any solutions?
I love teaching this
because everyone has a relationship to cloth.
There are some that say like,
"It's the first thing you touch as a baby."
You're wrapped in a blanket.
Every culture weaves. Every culture dyes.
Every culture creates clothing
to sort of shelter themselves.
- And she's also on to something.
- I love the technical detail.
I mean weaving is, like,
tons of math and tons of...
sort of intensive labor
that pays off in a very amazing way.
[triumphantly] Yes! Yes!
So when it all works out,
you get this piece of cloth in the end
that's like magic.
- The magic starts by learning how to use
200-year-old technology called a loom.
- You look around at these floor looms and you think,
"Where were those?"
Mostly they were in women's homes
and they were using them to weave placemats and curtains
and things for their home.
I always make them weave on the floor loom first
because I think there's a physicality
that comes with warping the loom
that's really important for them to understand
before we move to the digital.
Everyone thinks digital loom, computer loom.
They think you push a button
and 'zip zip zip' it just weaves. [Nn-nmm]
The thing that makes that loom amazing
is that you actually still are hand weaving
with this digital technology.
Even though there's 1,760 threads,
I can say I want the third one to lift.
I want the twelfth one to lift.
So you can tell it what to do.
I find it to be a really amazing tool in that way.
And I feel like I'm just starting to scratch the surface.
- Marianne is just scratching the surface
but she hopes to inspire her students
to carve a path into the science of style.
- Part of me is training the next designers
who are going to make the clothing that you wear
or the curtains that we buy for our homes.
But at the same time how can we push towards the future
in a high-tech way or smart textiles?
- Marianne is on the cutting edge
of eco-friendly solution-based design.
She's trying to crack the code of renewable energy,
making it accessible and weaving it into our everyday lives.
- This is what we came up with.
- Around 2003, Marianne infused art with a flexible solar panel
to create a hand bag that could harness the sun's energy
to recharge cell phones and other small electronics.
- We showed it around a bit and people said, "Well, where can I buy one?"
We're like, "What do you mean? This is just an idea.
This is just a prototype."
We didn't invent the solar.
We didn't invent, you know, a handbag, for heaven's sake,
but we invented the way this particular thing was configured.
- The sustainable solar bags were sold
in more than 30 stores across the United States and Canada,
but proved to be a bit ahead of its time.
- You know, by the time the business ended in 2010,
in the back of my mind I'd always wished,
"I wish I didn't have to design around this panel."
- When Marianne came to the University of Wisconsin,
she met a chemist named Trisha Andrew.
- So when I first approached Trisha,
she had made a solar cell on a piece of paper.
And as a textile person, you think,
"Well, paper's actually quite similar to a textile."
- Ever the entrepreneur, Marianne's new idea was to make a weave
so the solar cells and fabric become one.
- I was really nervous at that point she'd think I was crazy.
There's no way.
- I thought that was brilliant.
That is awesome.
I could never conceive that
'cause I don't know how to weave things.
I could barely pickle a cucumber.
- The perspective of a scientist, they're always asking questions.
They're always inquiring.
They're reaching and striving for the next new thing.
I think that's the way that we approach art
in so many senses is I'm looking to innovation.
- There's no one out there.
There's no designer basically working with a device person
trying to do this.
That's us, and that's what really excited me.
- Once Marianne threaded that needle,
the possibilities just kept coming.
- Well, let's say someone needs to charge tons of batteries
in the military or at a refugee camp.
Here's your bolt of cloth.
Unfurl it on the field.
And all of a sudden, you have
a very light-weight immediate power source.
Your running outfit is collecting it
and then reflecting out later when you're running in the dark.
The heated glove potential
is actually just out of part of the research.
I love the idea of it being on the tops of umbrellas.
The sun umbrella becomes your battery charging source
for your small electronic.
I mean let's face it.
Our demand for energy isn't going to go away.
- The scientist and the artist are working toward finalizing
their design for a solar textile.
- I think that smart textiles are just gonna go
through the roof in the next 10 years to be honest.
I want to be prepared for that as a program.
I want to be on the forefront of that
and have my students thinking about that.
I guess at the end of the day it's about innovation.
As an artist, I'm always searching
to produce something new.
I would say as a collaborator, that's the same.
I want to put something new into the world.
So whether it's art or practical like the solar textiles,
I'm searching for the next new thing.
- We've explored a bit more here
and I wanted to talk to a retired firemen
who now maintains the museum.
I am here with Warren Skonieczny,
president of the Milwaukee Fire Historical Society.
How are you doing today, Warren?
- Fine, thank you. Thanks for coming.
- Thanks for having us.
And so why would you say
this museum is an important resource for the community?
- Well, it provides two things.
One is it provides an educational opportunity
for anybody who comes here.
And the other thing would be it keeps in line the history
and traditions of the Milwaukee Fire Department.
So there's something here for everybody to see,
whether it's respect to the fire department,
the history of Milwaukee,
fire safety, a whole array of things
so it's kind of an interesting place.
- That does sound interesting.
And so when can people actually come to visit?
- We have an open house the first Sunday of each month
from 12 noon until 3 o'clock.
And then we also have tours.
Those are done by appointment.
- What is the thing you like the most about the museum?
- Well, for me it's one way to stay in contact with the people
I worked with.
This is probably the closest
that any of us retired firefighters
will get to the firehouse kitchen table.
At the firehouse kitchen table, all the shenanigans,
all the foolishness took place while we were on duty.
So this is the closest that we'll probably ever get
to that experience again.
- That's good that you are still able to have that here.
- It's great. It's absolutely great.
Same thing happens here.
One interesting thing: is there's no rank,
so anything goes.
[laughs]
- Thank you for sharing that with us today.
- Thanks for coming by.
- Speaking of camaraderie, our team caught up
with a Madison music director
drumming up talent in a group of young performers.
[drumline warming up]
- It's entertainment for a lot of people.
[drumline warm-up exercise]
If people want to get an event
started off with a bang,
they always call us.
[clock ticks loudly]
[tapping off] [tap, tap, tap-tap-tap-tap]
[snare drums]
My name is Joey B. Banks and
I am the founder and director of the Black Star Drumline.
[drumming]
When I started the drumline in 2008,
it was really taking a set of drums that were donated to me
to go to a Boys and Girls Club and start this drumline concept.
[drumming]
Another name for a drumline is a battery, a battery of drums.
[tenor drums tuned to different pitches]
We have four sections.
We have a snare drum section.
We have a tenor drum section.
Multi drums, kids play six drums.
We have a bass drum section and a cymbal section.
[drumming]
There are 20 kids in the group.
The age range of the group is 9 to 19.
We're like a hip hop drumline.
Joey B. Banks: Come on y'all. Y'all know it now.
Here we go. Say it with me.
[yelling chant] Black--Star--Drumline!
[playing drums with metal brushes]
- We really have our niche
and we kinda do our style of what drumline is
but at the same time, they're mastering technique.
They're mastering performance.
They're mastering the drums that they're playing on.
So it's a pretty unique arts education experience
as well as a unique performance experience.
[cymbal groove with stick clicks]
You've got six kids come out there and
they all look like a team and they're like exactly synched up.
And they're all just lined up perfectly.
Then they're dancing together
and there's stick work and they're doing visuals.
You know, I mean, it's entertainment.
[solo on snare and tenor drums]
Hey!
The kids have been on very large stages.
From 25,000 people at Life Fest in 2012
to Bucks games now that are 16,000 to 18,000 people.
Probably done over 600 performances across the state.
[full drumline groove]
There's a lot of leaders in the group.
There's a lot of kids excelling beyond the drum.
I think a lot of it has to do with the discipline
and the focus and concentration
and the regime and the work ethic
they've developed through drumline.
[full drumline performs]
It's a great group of kids.
It's a close-knit family group.
We're really... all really pretty close.
They're going to be friends for life.
[rhythmic drumming]
- Well, that wraps up this week's episode.
For more information on the stories you've seen
or on the museum, visit our website at WisconsinLife.org.
And remember, we want to hear from you.
Send us your ideas at WisconsinLife@wpt.org.
In the meantime,
I'm looking forward to the ride of a lifetime
in this Cadillac ambulance at the Milwaukee Fire Museum.
I'm your host, Angela Fitzgerald and this is our "Wisconsin Life."
Bye!
Let's roll, Allen.
[truck engine rumbles]
* *
- Funding for "Wisconsin Life" is provided in part
by Alliant Energy,
Lowell and Mary Peterson,
and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.