In Wisconsin

In Wisconsin #801

Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript: In Wisconsin #801

Original Airdate: 1 October 2009

Patty Loew:

Welcome to the statewide news magazine program “In Wisconsin.” I’m Patty Loew. This week we begin our eighth season on Wisconsin Public Television with a report about a unique outdoor classroom on the Apostle Islands. Plus, a Wisconsin astronaut lifts off on a mission to the space station. You’ll meet this hometown hero. They’re jumping, vaulting and flipping their way across the Madison campus.

Man:

You see the world as a playground.

Patty Loew:

The unusual way to get from here to there. Those reports this week on “In Wisconsin.”

Announcer:

Major funding for “In Wisconsin” is provided by the people of Alliant Energy, who bring safe, reliable and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhood and life in Wisconsin running smoothly. Alliant Energy, offering energy-saving ideas on the web and by the Animal Dental Center of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary specialist working with pet owners and family veterinarians throughout Wisconsin providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small companion animals.

Patty Loew:

We begin this week with the No Child Left Inside Act of 2009. A new 500 million dollar initiative to strengthen environmental education. Many kids today are attached to their computers, phones and iPods, but those modern tools are out the door. As “In Wisconsin” reporter Liz Koerner discovers, there is already a classroom that connects kids with nature at Wisconsin’s one-of-a-kind Apostle Islands School.

Liz Koerner:

This outdoor odyssey starts with introductions, including the alter egos of the team leaders.

Woman:

All right, I’m Melanie. Eagle!

Liz Koerner:

On a dock in Bayfield, undergrad instructors from the outdoor education program at Northland College introduce themselves to seventh graders from Westfield Middle School. Then they climb aboard a ferry that takes them to a place where cell phones and video games are not allowed. It’s called the Apostle Islands School and it is held on Stockton Island, a 15-mile journey across the frigid waves of Lake Superior.

Steve Sandstrom:

The beauty of this program is it offers an incredible opportunity for sixth or seventh graders to visit just a gorgeous place and really connect with nature.

Woman:

Take a deep breath in and let it out.

Liz Koerner:

It’s no secret that kids don’t connect with nature as often as their parents did. And this connection is critical for a generation charged with addressing problems like global warming. The Apostle Islands School was started in the mid 80s to teach kids about the environment and why it’s important to preserve it. It’s the only program of its kind in the national park system.

Damon Panek:

I think that we’re kind of creating the sense of stewardship and the sense of like the environment being an important thing in their lives and I hope that carries on with them.

Damon Penak:

I am so happy to see you all out here. So glad you all made the chance to get out and be on Stockton Island.

Liz Koerner:

The lessons in stewardship start by getting the kids out on the trail, tuning in to all of their senses.

Woman:

Why do you think it’s important that we have these senses?

Laura Schoepehoester:

I think kids today just don’t have that experience and to be able to give them that experience is just really amazing.

Boy:

I have learned that you have to use your senses when you’re walking through the woods and listen and pay attention to all the birds and like everything that is going on around you.

Liz Koerner:

They also learn a lot by facing their fears.

Steve Sandstrom:

For many of them they’ve never camped before and so just the experience of being outside and sleeping in a tent. There is a lot of fears of every little sound at night, you know, wondering what it is. And so that is a real learning experience.

Woman:

You think we need them for survival?

Liz Koerner:

The students are taught to face their fears by respecting the wildlife that lives here, even the creepy crawly kind.

Damon Panek:

We talk about wood particulars a lot because they’re out there. Kids freak out about that but we teach them how to deal with that.

Liz Koerner:

But it’s not just the island wildlife that offers lessons in living in the great outdoors.

Jeff Steckbauer:

We had rain for three days we were here last year and it was amazing. Out of the 34 kids pretty much the 34 kids wanted to come back this year.

Liz Koerner:

In one of the breakout sessions a Native American instructor teaches the kids about his Ojibwa ancestors. Ancestors who considered how their use of this land would affect generations to come.

Leo Gordon-Jourdain:

The people that were here first respected the land and respected one another and that’s what the land teaches you.

Leo Gordon-Jourdain:

What is the drum telling you to say?

Liz Koerner:

As part of the history lesson Gordon-Jourdain explains his ancestors were both Ojibwa and French. Their common language was music when they first met here.

Leo Gordon-Jourdain:

I go through all of that with my students here and then finally I just say play something that you feel like inside.

Liz Koerner:

At the Apostle Island School, the kids learn about nature and history. They also learn about each other.

Woman:

I wouldn’t want to mess with you two. Anything else you would like to say about yourself?

Emily Wagner:

I really like bonding with the kids out here. It is way different than being in school with everyone else.

Liz Koerner:

And as most teachers know, an essential element in any lesson plan is fun. Each evening the group gathers around the campfire to play games, tell stories, and create memories that are too fun to forget.

Boy:

I can do sticks, dance sticks.

Patty Loew:

That’s an experience they’ll never forget. Studies show when environmental education is taught, students perform better on standardized tests in reading, math, writing, social studies and science and it also encourages kids to care about environmental stewardship. Researcher Amber Roth may be on track to find a win, win, win solutions to three environmental concerns in Wisconsin. It may provide a new market for loggers, habitat for songbirds, and a new biofuel source. Jo Garrett shows you why the answers might be found in the northwoods of Vilas County.

Woman:

Watch your step. There is a hole in that log. Let’s go this way.

Jo Garrett:

We’re in what’s called young shrubland. In Vilas County.

Woman:

You’re good at this.

Jo Garrett:

We’re following avian researcher Amber Roth who is in pursuit of her doctoral degree and a solution to weighty world problems. She’s right in the middle of it.

Amber Roth:

This is aspen clear-cut that’s about seven years old and we have a golden warbler nest in front of me.

Jo Garrett:

Here is the important takeaway from what Roth just said. It’s the tie between this young scrubby aspen forest that grows up after a clear-cut and this golden wing warbler nest. The nest was abandoned because of predators but the fact that the golden wing nested here says that this type of forest is ideal for this sort of bird. And golden wings aren’t the only ones.

Amber Roth:

A male warbler.

Jo Garrett:

There are many birds that prefer this kind of place.

Amber Roth:

We have got a black and white warbler. This is a place that attracts birds that like a dense shrub layer. This is a morning warbler.

Amber Roth:

They have a lot of cover for their nests.

Jo Garrett:

Roth and her assistants, Sarah and Chad, are mist netting and banding birds.

Amber Roth:

The white leg is light pink over light green.

Jo Garrett:

All to gather information about these birds and this place.

Amber Roth:

And we do have a bird on the nest. We’re evaluating habitat quality for birds. There she goes. You can see it. How successful are the birds at nesting and producing young.

Amber Roth:

It was a female eastern towy sitting on her nest.

Amber Roth:

How much different species are there? In particular, how many species are there of conservation concern?

Jo Garrett:

Roth’s work is not just about saving birds.

Amber Roth:

Okay. There you go, dear.

Jo Garrett:

She has loftier goals.

Amber Roth:

We’re part of a cellulosic ethanol project, with a variety of researchers who are really interested in the potential for using aspen and grasslands as potential sources for it.

Jo Garrett:

Fill er up. With aspen.

Amber Roth:

You can make ethanol from any kind of plant material. That’s what we’re looking for is a win/win scenario between our economic needs and the needs of wildlife. Is there a way that we can help with our fuel prices and can we also create better habitat for wildlife at the same time? There you go.

Jo Garrett:

Logging is big business in Wisconsin. And one that has faced rocky times.

Amber Roth:

They’re very interested in new options especially with the way prices are in the timber industry. Cellulosic ethanol is an industry that has a lot of potential. When the contractors cut a site like this there are a bunch of branches and twigs and portions of the trees that aren’t used. It could be they use more of the forest when they cut. There is a potential of using what we call waste wood for cellulosic ethanol.

Jo Garrett:

Could these loggers get a new market and these birds a better home?

Amber Roth:

This is what these birds like. Golden wing warblers and chestnut wooded warblers, this is one of their favorite places to be. He has a nest he needs to get back to. I’m amazed by how many avid birders or even bird experts haven’t seen a golden wing warbler before. You come to a site like this and they’re all over the place. There you go.

Jo Garrett:

Golden wing warblers may be plentiful in this patch of forest but these birds and others are threatened. And they face enormous pressures in their wintering grounds in Central and South America and their migrations to and from our state.

Amber Roth:

They have thousands of miles that they’re traveling and it’s a long way for those little wings.

Jo Garrett:

They’re working to find a way for these forests to provide fuel for us, jobs for the future and continued sustenance for these birds.

Patty Loew:

This winter Roth and her team will join an international effort to map golden wing warblers. They’ll take feather samples and by genetic analysis determine where the birds travel. Soon we may know the exact spot where Wisconsin’s golden warblers spend their winter. Our next report features a man who is well-grounded even though his job has him flying high. This week astronaut Jeffrey Williams blasted off from a desert base in Kazakhstan.

:

NASA:

Lift-off of the Soyuz rocket.

Patty Loew:

His third trip into space, his second on board a Russian Soyuz rocket. Art Hackett shows you how Williams became a hometown hero “In Wisconsin.”

Art Hackett:

During the Fourth of July weekend in the Chippewa County community of Bloomer the town gathered to dedicate a veteran’s memorial.

Jeffrey Williams:

It’s an honor to be here with you today.

Art Hackett:

A famous veteran, retired US army colonel Jeffrey Williams returned to the town in which he lived as a child.

Jeffrey Williams:

I also think of Bloomer every time I’m working on rehab or training with one of our trainers when he says go pick up that jump rope and do some jump rope. I think of Bloomer, the jump rope capital of the world.

Art Hackett:

An athlete? No, an astronaut. Jeffrey Williams journey from Bloomer to the blue yonder isnt the one chronicled in The Right Stuff, though he was inspired by Tom Wolfe’s book. Williams didn’t fly fighter jets or experimental rocket planes. He was only the ninth US astronaut to start out in the US army.

Jeffrey Williams:

I started as a helicopter pilot. Got a fixed wing transition, flew a little bit of everything. All types of aircraft, through the experience at the naval test pilots school.

Art Hackett:

Williams’ hometown is Winter in Sawyer County. His family moved there when Jeffrey was still in elementary school. He wound up living in the farmhouse built by his grandfather.

Jeffrey Williams:

Taught me carpentry since the age I was old enough to swing a hammer.

Art Hackett:

He also builds things in space and performed multiple space walks to assemble sections of the international space station.

Jeffrey Williams:

I said, Grandpa, NASA is looking for some construction workers on a space station and they’re planning on building it. I thought I would try to apply for a job. He thought it was, you know, a neat thing but he could never understand why anybody would want to climb on top of a rocket.

Art Hackett:

Williams has climbed on top of a rocket twice. In March of 2000 Williams was flight engineer on the 101st shuttle mission. The flight hauled 2 1/2 tons of equipment and supplies to the space station.

Jeffrey Williams:

When the actual lift-off occurs, we jokingly like to say you know something significant just happened in your life. Of course, that’s an understatement. To lift off the pad, to get that kick in the rear end. We have mirrors on our wrists that you can look out an overhead window over my head in that seat and watch the beach drop away below the shuttle, feel all the vibration and the sound and the energy is just an incredible experience.

Art Hackett:

NASA and the manned space program just turned 50. More than 300 people are or have held the title of astronaut. The gee whiz factor is fading.

Art Hackett:

Do you still get that?

Jeffrey Williams:

You still get that if we’re recognized as an astronaut. Fortunately for us we’re not typically recognized in a public setting unless we’re there for that purpose and dressed in the blue flight suit.

Art Hackett:

The original Mercury 7 astronauts were so popular life magazine signed them to personal promotional contracts. Astronaut Jeffrey Williams has a smaller, but no less intense fan club, namely the 400 or so people who live in Winter, Wisconsin. They include, quite naturally William’s parents, Lloyd Williams is Jeffrey’s father.

Lloyd Williams:

He was a good student. And a very early interest in science. He used to go down in the basement and make rockets. That type of thing. Bring them on the concrete and they would all blow up. He got appointed to West Point. He met astronauts, listened to them and one day he said, I think I can do that.

Art Hackett:

What did you say then?

Lloyd Williams:

Great.

Art Hackett:

But watching her son lift off into space has been more difficult for Jeffrey’s mother, Eunice.

Lloyd Williams:

Actually when those rockets went off her head went right here.

Eunice Williams:

Right. I never have seen him actually go up.

Art Hackett:

You couldn’t look at it.

Eunice Williams:

Right. Because there is fire under there and whatever you call it.

Art Hackett:

Williams goes places but comes back to Winter. He’s made numerous visits to the local school. Remember how Williams said people don’t recognize astronauts unless they’re wearing jump-suits? He was greeted by multiple visions of himself when he was in elementary school. When Williams talks about his missions, he brings something other astronauts may not have. A huge collection of personal photographs taken from space.

Jeffrey Williams:

I think everybody gets a different hobby of what they enjoy. For me it was photography. It is what consumed any free time I had. I squeezed photography in and between the work that I was assigned to do on a daily basis when I knew I was passing over a place of interest.

Art Hackett:

Did you ever try and pick out Winter?

Jeffrey Williams:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I took some great shots of Winter that I showed here when I came back to Winter a little over a year ago in a community presentation. I met my objective even to get a shot where you could pick out the farm buildings right here where we’re sitting and I was able to do that. You can see the shed and the barn in the photography. This is hand held photography.

Art Hackett:

If your job title is astronaut and you work in space for a six-month stretch, you really need a hobby.

Jeffrey Williams:

I say it’s a long time to be stuck in a tin can. I say it a little bit jokingly but there is some truth in that. Boring is not in the vocabulary. I found that I could not count the days to go or the days I had been there because there were too many of them and they went too slowly so I counted months or I didn’t count at all. It is one of those environments that we have in life’s experience where I think it’s important just to take it one day at a time. Both for you on board the spacecraft as well as the family back home on earth.

Art Hackett:

The journey to the international space station will take two days. Williams will be in space the next six months and will see the completion of the international space station. Wisconsin Public Radio’s Mike Simonson is at the cosmodrome in Kazakhstan providing updates on Wisconsin’s astronaut. For more information and pictures, just go to wpt.org/inwisconsin. We move from space travel to a more down-to-earth way to defy gravity. Climbing and leaping are basic elements of parkour, an athletic discipline that combines running and gymnastics. “In Wisconsin” reporter Andy Soth shows you how parkour is played in Madison.

Andy Soth:

This is no quiet stroll through the park. On an otherwise quiet summer day on the UW campus people are jumping, vaulting and flipping. As risky as this may appear they’ll tell you that what they’re doing is far from reckless. It is a discipline like dance or the martial arts. It’s technique of moving quickly and efficiently through space no matter what obstacle is in your path. It’s called parkour.

Woman:

Derived from the French word parcourir that means to run through a course or route.

Andy Soth:

Alissa Bratz would know. She teaches middle school French in Milton and it was her love of French culture that brought her to parkour.

Alissa Bratz:

I saw it in a French film.

Andy Soth:

The film stars the father of parkour. Even before the movie his athletic feats were an internet sensation. Parkour has developed a small but devoted following. Devoted enough that dozens of practitioners from across the country gathered in Madison for a parkour jam that Bratz organized.

Alissa Bratz:

A parkour jam is like a music jam.

Mark Toorock:

Once you’ve vaulted over a railing, jumped off a curb, once you’ve done even the smallest part of it you’re always looking around and saying I could launch off that rock, I could climb up that pole or climb that tree and you just see the world as a playground.

Andy Soth:

They may see the world as a playground, but they’ll also tell you they treat that world with respect.

Mark Toorock:

Our first ethos is leave no trace. When we go to an area we’re not harming it or destroying it. We’re not hooligans.

Andy Soth:

Parkour enthusiasts are mindful of the reputation skateboarders have gotten over the years and the restrictions imposed upon them but they also reject transportation technology, even something as simple as a board with wheels. And see parkour as a way to connect with the most basic, ancient skills of human survival.

Mark Toorock:

Originally we had to run, crawl, jump, climb, swim and do these things just to exist, to either go get our food or to run from something that thought we were food.

Andy Soth:

The flips and spins feed another basic human need, the desire for self-expression.

Andy Soth:

This more playful form of parkour is called pre-running. Both those who do parkour and free running tell you it has to start with the basics.

Alissa Bratz:

There is a strong, strong feeling in the parkour community that you don’t want to practice jumping off of anything higher than one, maybe two feet for probably your first year.

Andy Soth:

The Madison parkour group always starts its weekly practice with a series of warm-ups. Then it’s on to more challenging drills. And soon they’re getting the attention of passers-by.

Man:

Parkour would imply getting from Point A to Point B as fast and fluidly as possible. We train our bodies and minds to be able to move fluidly over those obstacles without hampering us.

Andy Soth:

Even the skateboard dudes are intrigued. Bratz gives one thrasher an impromptu lesson.

Alissa Bratz:

You want to do that same landing on this wall. Get a running start. Awesome, good.

Andy Soth:

But soon he’s wanting to try something more radical.

Alissa Bratz:

The idea is not about how can we be more extreme, it is not about that at all. The idea is how can I make myself stronger, parkour has really taught me to sort of harness my own strength.

Andy Soth:

That’s what happens when you choose to overcome obstacles.

Mark Toorock:

I can find my own path, whether it’s through an area or just through life in general.

Patty Loew:

Alissa Bratz has helped start a parkour group at Milton High School and is working to create a statewide parkour organization. Now, here is a look at some of the reports we’re working on for the next edition of “In Wisconsin.” The flu season is here and reports of H1N1 are coming in from all over the state. But one area is expected to be harder hit than most. We’ll show you why asthma rates have put Milwaukee in the bull’s eye.

Liz Koerner:

The birth of these birds is big news. This is Liz Koerner. See how this Milwaukee man is helping peregrine falcons make a comeback.

Patty Loew:

The secret to their success is in this bottle. It pours out easy and goes down…well? Not even prohibition could stop them. That’s next week on “In Wisconsin” right here on Wisconsin Public Television. A quick note about our interactive blog called the Producer’s Journal. It is updated each weekday with the places we’ve been and the people we’re working with. If it’s in Wisconsin it’s in the Producers Journal. Check it out at wpt.org. We leave you this week with a reminder about our program, National Parks-Wisconsin. It can be seen next right here on Wisconsin Public Television. Enjoy the view from all four of Wisconsin’s contributions to the National Park System and have a great week “In Wisconsin.”