Wisconsin Life

Juneteenth in Milwaukee

Announcer: The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Angela Fitzgerald: Coming up on Wisconsin Life: Meet a Milwaukee curator showcasing art throughout the city.

Curator: Welcome everyone. I will be your guide today.

Angela Fitzgerald: A forager unearthing the wild world of mushrooms in Bayfield.

Forager: Whoa!

Angela Fitzgerald: The family behind a famous fiberglass graveyard in Sparta, and a Windsor woman helping to rescue squirrels.

That’s all ahead on Wisconsin Life.

[bright music]

Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided by: the Wooden Nickel Fund, Mary and Lowell Peterson, the A.C.V. and Mary Elston Family, the Stanley J. Cottrill Fund, UW Health, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[people cheering]

[drumline drumming]

Angela Fitzgerald: We’re in Milwaukee celebrating Juneteenth! I’m your host, Angela Fitzgerald, and this is Wisconsin Life.

The festival is held each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in the historic Harambee neighborhood.

[groovy music]

Festival Attendee: Happy Juneteenth!

Angela Fitzgerald: Juneteenth has been celebrated since the late 1800s and continues to be a day to remember and celebrate Emancipation Day every June 19. A day to commemorate the end of slavery, honoring the lives of those who have sacrificed in the pursuit of freedom and equality. All while celebrating Black culture and heritage.

Hosted by the Northcott Neighborhood House since the ’70s, the celebration in Milwaukee begins with a parade, an opening ceremony, and a day of fun, food, music, and community. With designated areas and activities for kids, teens, veterans, and seniors, there’s something for everyone.

I’ll parade more around the festivities here later, but now, let’s head out around the state for our first story.

We head up north to Bayfield to forage with an amateur mycologist on the hunt for fungal finds.

[jazzy music]

Arne Martinson: There are thousands of different types of mushrooms in Wisconsin. It’s an incredibly diverse area. My name is Arne Martinson. I am an amateur mycologist from northern Wisconsin.

A mycologist is someone who studies mushrooms.

Beautiful Amanita muscaria. This is kinda, like, the most famous mushroom in the world. This is the mushroom emoji in your phone. I love mushrooms. I’ve spent the better part of my life studying and trying to understand them better.

My property is a great spot for mushrooms. Welcome, everyone. I will be your guide today. What is a mushroom? Mushrooms are the fruiting body of fungi, so they’re essentially just the reproductive part of fungi. And, of course, there’s many delicious ones, many poisonous ones. Now we can get in the woods and find the good stuff.

Some of ’em turn bright colors when you cut ’em open, some of ’em bleed milk and all sorts of crazy, crazy features.

[jazzy piano music]

Forager 1: Wow!

Forager 2: Oh, that’s pretty. Is that a…?

Arne Martinson: It’s a web cap, a Cortinarius.

These are cool. These are little coral mushroom. They’re beautiful, and they come in all different colors.

Forager 3: Love the coral mushrooms. They’re so cool.

Arne Martinson: I have a hundred favorites. The amethyst deceiver is a beautiful purple mushroom that only stays purple right after the rain. It’s one of those things that people think is in the rainforest or in a far-off place, but no. There’s, all these things are right here in Wisconsin and they’re incredible.

You know, there’s so many vibrant colors and things that you would not expect to find in amongst the leaves in the Northwoods. This way, sorry for the mud. It won’t be that bad.

This is one of what we call the waxy caps, and it’s not eaten at all. In fact, this one’s a PYP mushroom. So, make you “Poop Your Pants.” You don’t want this mushroom. But all the waxy caps are super fluorescent, brightly colored, orange or yellow or red.

[musical interlude]

Angela Fitzgerald: It takes a special person to volunteer as a wildlife rehabber.

Holly: You have to be incredibly dedicated. I’ve had to turn down lunch dates, I’ve had to not take vacations, I’ve had to, you know, make personal sacrifices because I need to take care of my guys.

Angela Fitzgerald: The feeding schedule for these little critters keeps Holly hopping.

Holly: Your day starts very early.

[microwave beeps]

And our job is to stabilize them and get them trained so that they will eat from a syringe.

Yeah, so he’s scheduled to get 11.6 ccs of formula. If you have 30 animals and they each take 10 minutes, I mean, that’s a lot of time that you’re spending on one feeding. And you have to do up to six or seven a day.

Angela Fitzgerald: When she’s not actually feeding animals, Holly is restocking and preparing their food.

[nuts rattle]

Holly: This is our sunflower seeds. We like to use the striped sunflower seeds, which are much better nutritionally for the animals.

Angela Fitzgerald: They eat a buffet of greens, veggies, fruits, and nuts.

Holly: All the chopped up fruits and vegetables are stored in here. Got watermelon, celery, and apples. Carrots for the bunnies. They’ll eat pretty much anything. We have some greens to top it off.

Okay, well, let’s take the food out for the chipmunks.

[bright music]

I just released a bunch of chipmunks last week. I love to watch the chipmunks pack their little cheeks.

Angela Fitzgerald: Step into Holly’s backyard and step into a wildlife sanctuary.

Holly: This is our pre-release pen. We wanted them to get used to the sights and sounds of being outside.

[airplane engine roars]

We put them out here to basically wild them up. They live in a nest box. Just take that box out of their cage and move it out here. They live in the box as long as they’d like to until they build their own nest.

So many things to admire about the animals. Besides being incredibly cute, they just have such great personalities. They’re fun to work with. They’re really fun.

I feel like we owe it to the animals to help them. I mean, we keep encroaching on their space, you know? Every time we build a new mini mall or a condo.

Angela Fitzgerald: So day after day and night after night, Holly volunteers to take care of these little ones.

Holly: Ah, it’s always hard to let ’em go. I can’t help it, I always get teary when I let ’em go. It’s much harder on the mom than it is on the baby.

[chuckles]

So…

[playful music]

I’m running on very little sleep. I’m looking for some clothespins to hold my eyes open lately.

Angela Fitzgerald: And Holly wouldn’t have it any other way.

Holly: Incredible satisfaction. I mean, it’s just, it’s just a joy. And it just makes my spirit soar. I feel like I’m so blessed that I found something that I love so much and that I feel like I’m doing something so worthwhile. You gotta do what makes you happy. That’s how I spend my money. You gotta spend it on things that make you happy, so I spent a lot of it on squirrel food. [laughs]

So…

[squirrel nurses]

Angela Fitzgerald: It’s a rainy close to this year’s Juneteenth in Milwaukee. I’ve had an amazing time here while getting to know people from around our state.

To find more, visit WisconsinLife.org. Check out our social channels, or share with us by emailing [email protected].

Until our next festive adventure, I’m your host, Angela Fitzgerald, and this is our Wisconsin Life.

Bye!

[drumming and singing]

Emcee: Yes, it is so beautiful to see all you out today. The young people, the elders. Everybody say “community” on the count of three. One, two, three!

All: Community!

Emcee: That’s what it’s all about.

[bright music]

[cheering]

Parade Guest: Happy Juneteenth, everybody!

Announcer: Funding for Wisconsin Life is provided by: the Wooden Nickel Fund, Mary and Lowell Peterson, the A.C.V. and Mary Elston Family, the Stanley J. Cottrill Fund, UW Health, donors to the Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programs, and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.