Wisconsin Public Television

Transcript: Here and Now #904

Original Airdate: 28 October 2010

Patty Loew:

Welcome to “In Wisconsin.” I’m Patty Loew. This week…

Man:

I was so scared of needles like growing up and I snorted it and snorted and snorted.

Patty Loew:

Heroin use has spiked nearly 400% in Wisconsin. Find out what’s fueling the demand. And a monster in the northwoods, just in time for Halloween.

Art Hackett:

Hodag or not a hodag?

Man:

That’s a hodag, definitely.

Patty Loew:

Michael Perry returns to show you how his chickens are living the high life.

Michael Perry:

Welcome to the rolling poultry palace.

Patty Loew:

It’s all next 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, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin running smoothly. Alliant Energy. We’re on for you. And the Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery Specialists of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary team working with pet owners and family veterinarians throughout Wisconsin, providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small companion animals. With additional funding provided by Bike Wisconsin.

Patty Loew

We begin this week with our continuing coverage on heroin use in Wisconsin. It’s spiked nearly 400% during the past five years, leaving law enforcement on the run and lives shattered. “In Wisconsin” reporter Frederica Freyberg shows you how legal drugs used illegally are fueling heroin demand across the state and in Rock County.

Police officer:

Frederica Freyberg

Sergeant Jay Wood traverses the interstates one recent summer evening as part of Rock County’s new inclusion in a federally designated, high-intensity drug trafficking area. Part of the effort to stop the movement of narcotics, particularly heroin, into the area.

Jay Wood:

I think the community needs reassurance that we’re doing something out there. This is a serious problem and we’ve got deputies out here that are concerned about interdiction as far as what we can do to stop it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Off the highway and in town, agents search a car, finding evidence of heroin. The location? A Janesville trailer park where police say a vacant mobile home is used as a place to do heroin.

Man:

She basically went there and shot up at the trailer.

Jay Wood:

This is the remnants of a whats called a gem pack. She is a known heroin user.

Frederica Freyberg:

Among those on this investigation, Deputy Chuck Behm, who has worked narcotics for more than 30 years, but has special insight into the growing problem of heroin.

Chuck Behm:

I first became aware of it five years ago, with it being in my home. My stepdaughter started using OxyContin, snorting it, and that progressed into heroin usage.

Frederica Freyberg:

Behm says the drug has infiltrated all walks from urban and rural to professionals, even school kids.

Chuck Behm:

We don’t quite have the manpower and how can you ask for manpower when jobs are out of the county? You don’t have the tax base. Were not even keeping abreast of it, in my opinion. It’s beyond us right now.

Dominic Iasparrao:

I’ve been around a long time. I’ve been doing this for many years. One thing is pretty clear to me, is that law enforcement is not the answer. From a law enforcement standpoint we have to be very aggressive to put the bad guys in jail, but the real key to stop this is there’s a generation that’s lost. To make them aware of how devastating it is to use narcotics of any type.

Adam:

I was so scared of needles like growing up and I snorted it and snorted and snorted.

Frederica Freyberg:

Adam has been clean for nearly three years, but he began snorting heroin after starting with oxycodone pain prescriptions pilfered from medicine cabinets. His addiction dovetailed with the entry of a new pure heroin on the market.

James Bohn:

About ten years ago, many of the Mexican and South American drug trafficking groups made an effort to increase the heroin in the market by increasing the purity levels. By doing that you’re able to snort the heroin as opposed to injecting it with a needle. So it opened up a whole new user community out there.

Frederica Freyberg:

Authorities say, often, users start with prescription pills.

Robert Spoden:

What ends up happening is that as the availability of those prescription drugs diminishes and as they have a more difficult time to get it, it’s much easier to get heroin and heroin is actually fairly inexpensive.

Frederica Freyberg:

As cheap as $10 a dose. And so drug enforcers are facing battles on two fronts, illegal use of precursor prescription drugs and the cheap and plentiful supply of heroin.

Robert Spodon:

We have far too much prescription drugs that are being passed out and we have far too many people that are getting pain medication that maybe could use something else. And we as citizens need to do a better job of controlling our prescription drugs.

Woman:

Yeah. It really hurts. I just picked up a new prescription today.

Frederica Freyberg:

The Wisconsin attorney general recently started airing public service announcements warning parents about keeping prescription opiates out of reach.

Woman:

Doctor, telephone.

Frederica Freyberg:

And the federal drug enforcement administration is working with the medical community.

James Bohn:

We don’t tell doctors how to practice medicine, but we try to raise their awareness level of some of the prescription abuse that’s going on out there. Currently there’s an estimated 7 million prescription drug abusers out there, which is more than all other drugs combined.

Frederica Freyberg:

To combat this, the state legislature approved a bill that the governor has signed into law that tracks prescriptions for opiate painkillers, a new law that aims to deter doctors from over-prescribing and patients from doctor shopping to get the drugs. But the street price of prescription pills is way higher than heroin, encouraging the drug’s spread across the state.

Dave Spacowicz:

There’s an increase in availability and demand because it’s economics, that competition forces the price down.

Adam:

I remember the first time I snorted heroin. You know, I knew that — that I was in trouble, you know, because it took away all the pain that I ever knew in my life.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet Adam will never forget the pain heroin itself caused.

Adam:

I was in and out of consciousness.

Frederica Freyberg:

Including nearly dying twice of an overdose. That pain, that hope, is what keeps enforcers like Deputy Chuck Behm working against the odds to stem the flow of heroin in his community.

Chuck Behm:

How can you die, pretty much, be brought back by medical teams, and still go back to use? That’s the control the drug has on people. That’s why I hate it so much. I hate heroin.

Patty Loew:

If you’d like to see part one of Frederica Freyberg’s series on heroin in Wisconsin, just go to our website, wpt.org and click on “In Wisconsin.” In Wisconsin’s northwoods the quest is on to find a monster just in time for Halloween. It has a reputation as a fierce beast with a mysterious past. Art Hackett may have uncovered the truth about this mythical or not so mythical creature in Rhinelander.

Art Hackett:

The hodag permeates the culture of Oneida County seat. The critters are all over downtown. It’s the high school’s mascot. Souvenirs? Rhinelander’s got them. Then there’s the big hodag in front of the chamber of commerce office. On a foggy day the hodag can look like the fierce creature it was when the legend began.

Woman:

We’ve been cross-country skiing when all of a sudden something big crossed the trail.

Art Hackett:

The legend is spoofed in ads aimed at attracting tourists.

Man:

We saw it.

Man:

When I went to get the fish, something had eaten it.

Kid:

It ate half a doughnut.

Art Hackett:

The official story is that the hodag is the product of the imagination of an early logger in Wisconsin. However, “In Wisconsin” has discovered what may be the real story of the hodag. First, the traditional version. We tracked down Chris Dries. He’s a local photographer.

Chris Dries:

I am the unofficial hodag researcher.

Art Hackett:

He also played a bit part in the hodag TV commercials, at least we think it’s him. There’s a lot of elusive elements in the story.

Man:

But this morning someone took my eyeglasses.

Art Hackett:

Where did it come from?

Chris Dries:

Well, pretty much went back to 1893 with Eugene Sheppard, a lumberman, businessman, had heard rumors of the hodag and they developed the story accordingly.

Art Hackett:

Pay attention to the words heard of the hodag. That will be important later on in this story.

Chris Dries:

It developed over a couple of years and then they actually had an official showing of the hodag and a public exhibition, as it were, of the creature in about 1895.

Art Hackett:

The official historical society plaque notes this was a wooden puppet controlled by wires. There is this picture of the capture of a hodag. Its the basis for occasional pageants where the event is recreated. This one was in 1950. An actual hodag? No one claims it is.

Art Hackett:

This was just basically a tall tale told by loggers?

Chris Dries:

Well, apparently there had been prior to Eugene Sheppard’s discovery, it had been rumored that there was a creature in the woods similar to the hodag.

Art Hackett:

Dries runs a website, hodagsightings.com, so for purposes of this story he is our guy.

Art Hackett:

We have what we think may be a hodag sighting.

Chris Dries:

Oh, my goodness. That’s wonderful.

Art Hackett:

This is an actual photograph. A photograph taken about 350 miles northeast of Rhinelander in Lake Superior provincial park in Ontario. It was taken right at water level on the shore of the Great Lakes’ greatest lake.

Art Hackett:

Hodag or not a hodag?

Chris Dries:

That’s a hodag. Definitely.

Art Hackett:

Actually, it is missepehieu, a figure drawn by an Ojibwa.

Bob Birmingham:

To draw upon the powers.

Art Hackett:

Bob Birmingham is a professor of anthropology at UW-Waukesha.

Bob Birmingham:

It’s part of a tradition that extends throughout the eastern part of the United States and even going into the Great Plains of a great manitou or spirit being or beings that inhabit water.

Art Hackett:

The Ontario ministry of natural resources estimates the pictographs were created between 150 and 400 years ago. The representations of the spirit are common enough that one is seen in an effigy mound near Bob Birmingham’s home in Madison.

Bob Birmingham:

Head, leg, and then another leg here, body coming across here and then terminating in a very long tail.

Art Hackett:

Dr. Theresa Schenk of the UW-Madison American Indian Studies department is Ojibwa. She agrees it was a powerful spirit.

Theresa Schenk:

Translated as the panther or lynx, even a lion who lives at the bottom of the sea and this could be Lake Superior, Lake Winnipeg or Lake Huron, who draws men down to their deaths.

Art Hackett:

But she had to look up a picture of the hodag.

Art Hackett:

Did the pictures of the hodag you saw remind you of missepehieu?

Theresa Schenk:

No way. He was composed of too many animals.

Art Hackett:

Schenk says people are thrown off by the projections on the creatures back.

Theresa Schenk:

I know that everybody wants those things along his back to be something connected to a lizard, but it’s really the way they’ve depicted the hair.

Art Hackett:

But Birmingham, a former state archeologist, says Sheppard likely did meet Ojibwa.

Bob Birmingham:

It was certainly possible that they came across paintings of this image. Many of the loggers themselves were Ojibwa.

Art Hackett:

They might have told an European there was this cat-like being.

Theresa Schenk:

On the lakes, but not in the forest.

Art Hackett:

When we showed Chris Dries the photo, he was intrigued.

Chris Dries:

That indicates some of the research I’ve done as well, Art. I have some manuscripts that go way back by the French explorers that indicate in French, the language, that there was a creature, as rumored when they came through here.

Art Hackett:

After all, when you’re in the business of promoting Rhinelander to visitors, an exotic cultural connection sells. If there is one.

Theresa Schenk:

Oh, no. I think they created their own hodag.

Patty Loew:

To add to the mystery, after our interview Theresa Schenk did some more checking and did find references to a water spirit that had serpent-like qualities, but she did not find anything in Native American tradition like the hodag that combines serpentine and feline characteristics. We have an update now on a young musician we featured last spring. You may remember seeing trumpeter Ansel Norris two years ago. This teenager is making quite a name for himself, and, as “In Wisconsin” reporter Liz Koerner reports, he’s making national news from his home here in Madison.

Liz Koerner:

Ansel Norris used to have time for cool cars.

Ansel Norris:

Especially Audis, those are my favorite cars.

Liz Koerner:

Now with college around the corner, music is taking a front seat in his life.

Kathy Norris:

He just works super, super hard. He does stuff over and over again.

Liz Koerner:

His mother Kathy got Ansel and his brother Alex started on violin at a young age.

Kathy Norris:

But he wasn’t suited to the violin, so I had to cancel his lessons after a few years. Then we tried piano. Then he found the trumpet.

Ansel Norris:

This is the trumpet I use most often.

Liz Koerner:

That helped him at a critical point in his life.

Ansel Norris:

I wasn’t heading down the best path as a 6^th or 7^th grader. I was hanging out with people I would consider to be the wrong people at the time. Music kind of helped me through that.

Liz Koerner:

Music helps him in other ways as well.

Ansel Norris:

If I ever feel bad about something, I go play trumpet for a little while and it’s all right again.

Liz Koerner:

Since he started on trumpet, he’s had teachers who both challenge and inspire him. Scott Eckel at East High School in Madison is one of them.

Ansel Norris:

I asked Dr. Eckel, what do you think I should play for solo and ensemble? This is my freshman year. He said, you should play this. He gave me the Haydn concerto. I said, I can’t play this. He said, you can play it. You will play it. And he inspired me to keep going.

Liz Koerner:

Ansel also gives credit to his trumpet teacher John Aley.

Ansel Norris:

He’s totally influenced my playing. He’s totally helped me get to where I am and probably where I will be.

John Aley:

When you get to that dotted quarter…

Liz Koerner:

Ansel has been winning awards at the local and national level. In 2009 he performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra as part of the Final Forte.

John Aley:

He even has aspirations to be a soloist, which I think are remarkably realistic.

Liz Koerner:

Recently, Ansel won admission to a competition in Miami offered by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. It’s open to 17 and 18-year-olds in nine disciplines. More than 4,000 applied. Only 143 got in.

John Aley:

The total organization is just total music performance, but it’s visual and writing and dance and all these musicians have the opportunity to interact with each other, learn about each other’s disciplines, how they might identify themselves with the talent of the students in their disciplines. And it’s fantastic.

Liz Koerner:

Young Arts Week was a whirlwind of activity, like a recital, where Ansel was paired with another young artist he just met.

Ansel Norris:

I had a great pianist in Priscilla Chen. She was the best person to collaborate with. She was like this little girl, but she had so much power.

Liz Koerner:

He also got to see other teams perform.

Ansel Norris:

I was stunned by the fact that like nobody wasn’t amazing.

Liz Koerner:

During the week arts professionals gave master classes. Ansel went to one by Michael Tilson Thomas, artistic director of Miami’s New World Symphony.

Ansel Norris:

The critiques he was giving them, they made sense.

Liz Koerner:

Young Arts Week also included a competition. Ansel won top honors and a check for $10,000. Aley says it’s an impressive credential that will help with college auditions.

John Aley:

If I saw this on his resume, I would go, oh.

Ansel Norris:

On the days where I have a really good performance, I couldn’t find like any little quibbles with, I’m like the happiest person in the world.

Patty Loew:

In addition to the $10,000 cash prize, Ansel won an one-week residency in New York sponsored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Last summer, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and school in Colorado and was the runner-up in a concerto competition. He’s now attending Northwestern University in Illinois. It’s time once again to check in with our country correspondent, Michael Perry. Before the leaves turned, he received a very important package in the mail in Eau Claire County.

Michael Perry:

How you doing? Feed mill called and said, your chicks are in. That’s what I call a twitter message. How was your trip? A lot of folks don’t realize, but these little chicks, they come in the mail. You’ll get a call from the post office or in this case down at the feed mill and they’ll say your chicks are in. It’s one of my favorite things. It’s kind of like Christmas right in the middle of summer. Okay, kids. Going to leave you to it. Put the safety screen over the top. That’s intended to prevent varmints and 2-year-olds from getting to the chicks, weight it down a little bit and then put out the heat lamp, give them a little sun to soak under, as it were. You come back in about 15 minutes and they’ll be all together in one little fuzzy yellow cluster right under that heat lamp. The stock tank is just the first stop. That’s the crib. That’s the nursery. The next stop is the pullet house. Hello, ladies. I call it the pullet house, but it’s actually just our old chicken coop. You may remember this building from the day I remodeled it. That was a long day. All right, ladies. There you go. These are pullets, which means they’re young hens. They should start laying eggs sometime in the fall at which point they can earn their keep. These young ladies will be in this coop for a few more weeks and then when we think they’re ready to go pro, we’ll move them to the big house. How about this baby? Welcome to the rolling poultry palace. A chicken coop on wheels. This is clearly an upgrade on other properties. Take special note of the sill-less construction, which allows hassle-free by-product extraction, centralized food distribution center, detachable porch, handcrafted, portable gate unit with auto lock, fully cleated, detachable ramp, fully interiorized pocket door componentry. Simply remove, raise, and insert to hold. How happy are the residents of the Perry Portable Poultry System? Let’s ask them. What do you think, ladies? Oh, look at the joy. You can feel the joy in their wings. You can hear the joy in their voices. Are you happy? Do you like where you live? Are you happy with that? Are you satisfied? How about you, sir? Are you happy with your Perry Portable Poultry System? From the stock tank to the pullet house to the big house. It’s all about one thing.

Patty Loew:

Author Michael Perry. Michael wants to thank his cousin Ivan without whom the coop on wheels would still just be a stack of lumber. Thanks to producer Andy Moore and photographer Wendy Woodward for that report. Brewing hops, burning pianos and what once was the world’s largest ammunition plant, all coming your way in a brand new edition of “In Wisconsin” next week.

Art Hackett:

I’m art hackett in Sauk County, where 60 years of Wisconsin military history is slowly being ripped apart.

Liz Koerner:

With an acre of farmland and enough of these, you can expect to earn up to $10,000 a year. I’m “In Wisconsin” reporter Liz Koerner. They aren’t easy to identify at this stage, but here’s a hint. These plants hop right out of the ground.

Jo Garrett:

This is “In Wisconsin” reporter Jo Garrett. What’s the connection between England’s World War II pilots and this flaming piano with a turkey on top? Come with us to the Roxbury Tavern.

Patty Loew:

Those brand new “In Wisconsin” reports next Thursday at our new time, 7:30, right here on Wisconsin Public Television. Finally this week, we take you to the shores of Mineral Lake. It’s located eight miles west of Mellen within the Chequamegon Nicolet national forest. It’s owned by the US forest service and was designated a state natural area in 2007. Enjoy the fall view and have a great week 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, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin running smoothly. Alliant Energy. We’re on for you. And the Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery Specialists of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary team working with pet owners and family veterinarians throughout Wisconsin, providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small companion animals. With additional funding provided by Bike Wisconsin.