The Wisconsin Magazine; 1518

A. On tonight magazine a look back at the Menominee Indian takeover of the Gresh I'm having. Also tonight the state assembly chamber is restored to its original glory and tonight's closer look report. The detective's eye an art exhibit about the world of art copies and forgeries. The idea of uncovering certain hidden clues or looking for those clues and then making sense of them. Is what we're. After. I'm Dave Iverson. Welcome to this week's program. Also tonight Dr. Ted good friend on Aging

and a profile of a man who has a unique solution to society's future energy needs. We begin though with a phrase that first came into use some 10 years ago and since has become part of our public consciousness. The phrase is PNAS. Today you'll hear people talking about it at the office joking about it at home. There are even songs about PM asked the now familiar anagram for pre-menstrual syndrome. We did our first story on this topic almost 10 years ago when PM was first hitting the headlines. Reporter Carol Arsen produced our report then and present this update. Now one of the things I say to them and conferences is think of how your body feels when you know you're pregnant. I think it's difficult because you want to help but you couldn't. When you live with those types of symptoms for so many years it is really a relief to know

that there is there was some physiological cause for. Me. As. Reverend a little but the joke books and the cartoons are born of relief. And you hear a lot of women talk about relief nowadays relief because unlike what we had been told for so many years female complaints were not all in our heads. Finally 10 years ago we got a name for something we had long felt but not understood. I don't know about you but I saw a Mickey Mouse film when I was 12 years old and that's when I learned about menstruation until I was in nursing school.

Peg my Yoda is a nurse and social worker for the Milwaukee psychiatric hospital researching and treating the age old complaints of today's women. This is the first time in history that we are able to define ourselves outside of a role as mother and wife. Think about it. And yet our biological rhythms function to remind us in our subconscious that once our body is preparing for pregnancy. A woman's monthly cycle isn't like clockwork. It is clockwork every month or so a woman's body goes through 30 to known physical changes. Preparing for pregnancy 32 changes. No wonder fatigue is one of the main symptoms of premenstrual syndrome. You know with. With the bloating and the fluid gain and the fatigue and the mood swings and the food cravings.

Kieran Clark has called herself a classic case of premenstrual syndrome a nursing instructor. Clark always knew her symptoms were cyclical but didn't know what it was until reading a news article and going aha with my PM. It's very cyclical. Not only is it cyclical on a monthly basis but it's cyclical within a yearly basis. Like I may have a very mild month and then it may progress and my symptoms get a little worse the next month. And then by the third month they get worse and then again they become not as severe as they had been. The the trick to identifying PM is not the symptoms but the cycle starting after mid-month population and ending two weeks later with menstruation one period the end of the cycle within two weeks. A woman could experience up to 140 possible symptoms that vary from month to month

from mild to severe from one or two to all of them at once. When research discovered that all those symptoms were related by cycles and that 90 percent of all women experienced some symptoms. Some people yelled epidemic. Run for your life. When the excitement of discovery was over. However cooler heads decided that if all those women were experiencing the same thing it wasn't an epidemic it was normal. What the challenge is what are the emotions and the behaviors that a company of those physical changes. Well for a person who is catalyzing this fish trying to understand it it certainly is frustrating. Dr. Sandra Shapiro of the University Medical School in Madison has also studied PM and its infinite varieties variants that makes predicting M-S difficult at best. We have tests that will suggest that if a person has had less but there is no single test that everyone agrees

is absolutely diagnostic of any entity. Even after 10 years of discovery medical experts can only say PMS is somehow hormonally related. As of yet there is no accepted test and no way to explain why one woman's monthly changes are unnoticeable and another is severe between the feelings of feeling suicidal or just saying forget it I'm just leaving this mess. Who knows if that would have overcome you know Lynn Meyers is not a classic PMS case. Her physical and emotional symptoms range from severe to incapacitating. My mother remembers calling me some mornings and I would still be in bed. So why are you in that. Because I just don't tell her about getting up today. I don't care Lynne Myers symptoms place her in a suspected 4 percent of all women who have a severe PM mess whereas most have slight

symptoms and others are slightly or sometimes incapacitated. Had you been on the birth control pill that entire time. When news of PMS first came out Dave Myers investigated. He happens to be a pharmacist and is now co-founder of medicine pharmacy associates sort of the national clearinghouse for PM s with newsletters and a toll free information hotline. Part of the continuing process of getting the information out someone is listening. Sometimes it's what you tell them specifically to do or hopefully help them do. But the reward comes back when they will tell you that. I've got more information from you in the last half an hour than I've gotten in all the years I've been going to X Y or Z to try to learn more about what's going on what's going on with treatment today is it turn away from pills supplements of the hormone progesterone were once thought to be a possible

cure for PM as she used the first dose and I went out and mowed the lawn and came back and you could tell the difference. No I've got no panacea but you could tell there was a light back. Progesterone remains in use for severe PMS but has fallen out of favor because evidence shows prolonged use requires higher and higher dosages. One clue that has shown to be effective is good general health adding vitamins and getting rid of the bad stuff. Well don't take good care of ourselves. Our eating is terrible. And we aren't exercising. We I'm taking quiet contemplate of time. And so some of the self-help things that we tell women that you must exercise that you must delete alcohol caffeine sugar on your diet.

Remember. When I gave up all red meat. So I was only eating fish and chicken. I had given up all salt out of my diets. I tried decaffeinated myself at that point and I think I lasted for two months. Kieran Clarke has gone from two weeks to two days of symptoms and a much healthier life. I don't know if I would have gotten myself on as stringent of a of an exercise schedule as I am now. You don't have to be dominated to three weeks out of your mouth by something that that there's help for you. I think it's great that that it's changed from 10 years ago to now 10 years from being controlled by PMS to cartoons. But the jokes and the buttons are another kind of medicine really laughing away what ones didn't even have a name in another 10 years our experts say we might not be talking about PNAS much at all that women will control and

accommodate their symptoms as a matter of normal routine. What we may be talking about however is some other moral research that is now getting underway into men's cycles trying to find out why guys get cranky and depressed for no apparent reason. And after all those years of all those PNAS jokes what they find out about men might provide the best laugh of all the. Men. Still to come on the magazine The detectives are a look at the world of fine art and how the experts find fakes and forgeries. Still to come on the magazine. Periodic lay on this program we journey back to a particular moment in Wisconsin history and

give it another look. This evening's edition is about an event that took place 14 years ago in northern Wisconsin and made national headlines. It was the takeover of the Gresham Abbey by a group called the Menominee warrior society. Well the takeover made for dramatic television. The dispute had a less visible dimension which we explore now in this report Gresham revisited produced by Jerilyn Goodman. The Alexian Brothers Abbey in Gresham. Originally a private mansion it was built in 1940 by a wealthy Easterner. Ten years later the property was given to the Alexian Brothers a Roman Catholic order of monks which used it first as a retreat. Then as an officiant but dwindling membership forced it to close. And by the 1970s the stately grounds were uninhabited except for a single caretaker.

The. Abbey Serenity was shattered on New Year's Day 1975 when a group calling itself the Menominee warrior society sees the empty building and demanded that it be used as a hospital for the tribe. During the takeover tensions ran high and the National Guard was called out to maintain order. After 34 days of intense negotiation the Indians left the Abbey when the Alexian Brothers agreed to sell it to them for one dollar down and the promise that they would pay the full value of the estate estimated to be $750000. But he Chevaux a leader of the takeover spoke about the action in this 1975 documentary. We took it over so that we could we could have first of all there are many reasons why. But as far as I am concerned and I only speak for myself on this that we would have national attention focused here so that we could relate to the restoration the Restoration Act Chevaux and his fellow warriors were upset about the

terms of an act of Congress that restored tribal status and land to the Menominee Chevrolet and other warriors thought that tribal leaders had abused their power and neglected the true needs of the people. One of those leaders was a dear who defended her motives and the reasons for tribal restoration at the time. It's a strange change in our legal status as well as. Mental. Attitudinal change. But in terms of the. Serious community problems health education welfare employment it takes time to solve all of these. And in one short year one cannot begin to overcome. 20 years. Backlog of incompetence deprivation and neglect. We now have. The. Legal. Political framework from which to receive and working out these critical problems. During the takeover. The media focused on the imagery of Indians versus white men. But the real struggle was a fight for leadership within the tribe over issues like tribal

restoration that struggle at times took on sexist overtones as members of the opposition singled out to dinner and other female tribal leaders for attack. And so far as the petition is concerned are asking for removal of the big three. It's quite apparent to me that the people of this community feel strongly that these ladies are not doing the job in the concern areas. I am speaking of both today a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Dear response to those attacks. Let me say that we were elected by all the people which includes the men of the tribe. And. I feel that. Many losers in elections. Do have. Negative attitudes toward the people who are successful. This is true and only in Indian community but in the dominant society to shovel a vocal opponent of deer.

Now goes by his Indian name a sign of what it is today. Tribal Chairman of the Menominee. You have to remember that even I voted for them because I thought that restoration meant we were going back to what we were and it wasn't until we got into the process that we would learn that there in fact sold us out on a lot of the issues to be in Washington and the tradeoff of getting the bill through. For their part in the takeover of the Abbey three of the warrior leaders went on to prison others like a sonic wot went on to assume leadership roles in the tribe. Many of them have now become entrenched in the political system that they at that point repudiated they are working in positions of responsibility on our reservation positions in the tribal leadership. And let me say I think they have grown up certainly we've grown up you can repudiate something. Bad. And because it's the only medium or vehicle to achieve or to attain or forum I suppose something you still have to utilize. That system has gotten

no better. The fact that we're operating in we're dealing with a government within this framework is no indication that we bought into it are we are as it were so close I would consider just awful the takeover was a major media event. It's a real significance is debatable to date a dear it was an unfortunate internal squabble that garnered far too much media attention violence. Confrontation. Bede's said. There is these all go into the cowboy and Indian mentality that. Many media people have. Unfortunately. This particular incident. Occurred. Shortly after restoration and it obliterated all the goodwill. And the positive images that we had worked for five years to create at the state level and at the national level.

Hypersonic quadruplex the takeover had positive results. I think certainly there's been a renewed awareness of who we are. And that's gone beyond our generation. To the generations that are coming. And I think to that degree the bar that. People are no longer. Being. Conscious or not. That in itself is a significant enough for them. And whatever happened to just what I would do was again given the circumstances. Unlike the principal characters in this drama Gresham Abbey itself has not flourished although the Alexian Brothers had agreed to the sale. The elected Menominee leadership refused to take possession of the Abbey saying it was taken unlawfully and the costs and upkeep would be too great.

So for 15 years it has lain unwanted and unused for a time. There were plans to build a summer camp and family retreat and an executive conference centre. None of these plans materialized. The once sacred grounds are now a playground for vandals. In September 1988 the property went on the auction block again and it was sold for one hundred seventy five thousand dollars. Its future remains in doubt. For now it is a. A stark reminder of an incident whose historical significance to Wisconsin and to the Menominee is also in doubt. Still to come on the magazine tour the state capitals assembly chambers is restored to its original glory. Later on the magazine. Our next story is about an unusual exhibit for those who like art. Those who like mysteries

and those who would like to buy artworks and have the mystery taken out of it. The exhibit is called the detectives and it has something to offer for those who like Rembrandt as well as those who like Sam Spade the detectives as investigated by Joanne Garrett in March of 1987. The Van Gogh paintings sunflowers were sold at auction for thirty nine point nine million dollars. Eight months later the van gogh painting Iris's was sold at auction for fifty three million dollars. Art it seems has become very big business. All kinds of art. Art. New Art. Art that was previously never thought of as art. But how to know what an artwork may be worth. How does one recognize quality when it's yours. I brought an artwork. What are they looking for. What did they see that makes them say that a particular work is valuable.

In the last 20 to 30 years investors said Nuvo just covered that could go up in value and. Open so much hullabaloo with Dr Alfred bater. Someone who has witnessed this hullabaloo. He is a chemist by trade and art collector and kind of sheer passion. A man who bought his first painting at the age of 10. And has not stopped since. You get specialized in the 17th century Dutch Peters the old masters and they make up the subject material of an exhibit that Baker and his wife Isabel have assembled as guest curators for the Milwaukee Art Museum. It's called the detectives are investigating the old masters. The exhibit is really less about old masters than it is about correcting. A kind of course on connoisseurship that could be applied to any kind of art. How to Look what to look for. Isabel bater.

This particular exhibit is an attempt to encourage people to read who don't know a great deal about it to realize that there is much more to be seen in a painting than just what you would see at first glance. It is an unusual exhibit. The kind that dares to hang a painting upside down to make a point. The point in this case is to reveal a set of eyes evidence and one painting underneath another. This is the kind of information that could lead to an assessment of a painting's value. These are the kind of clues and mysteries that make up this exhibit. James Mandie is the chief curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum. The idea of this exhibition uncovering certain hidden clues or looking for those clues and then making sense of them is what we're after. You will learn about originals and copies you will learn about signature and fake signature signature.

You will learn about condition. You will learn about these wonderful polvo. These wonderful puzzles. Suppose you've got a seascape like this one ships in the Amsterdam Harbor. The first step in assessing value is to find a signature. The new variational snobs and they want to label. This painting used to have a signature in the lower right hand corner. It read Willaim Vandervelde. The name of one of Holland's most famous painters. You'll notice it's not there now. The signature slid off when the painting was cleaned. A signature shouldn't do that. It's a clear sign that someone tried to pull a fast one to increase the paintings value. They should have run it up the flagpole first. If they had. They would have found another signature. Zeeman Dutch for seemin and the nickname of Reiner nums a Dutch painter who specialized in seascapes and the actual artist of this painting. A very good artist but

not as great as Vandervelde. Hence the switch. Several centuries later I switch thwarted by cleaning solvents. You learn over a period of time what to look for. Suppose you find a signature is the mystery soft. This painting is called Rembrandt's mother and indeed in the upper right hand corner is the monogram r h l for Rembrandt Harmatz of Lyddon. The manner in which Rembrandt's signs his early paintings for a long time. This painting was believed to be a Rembrandt. But in the end scholars have decided that the painting is betrayed by another kind of signature. The painting style the wonderful style in which the color and transparency of the kerchief have been rendered. Rembrandt never painted anything quite like this. And scholars now attribute the work to Jan lovers a good friend of Rembrandt's a great painter but one who is not a

saleable as his old friend. Is one thing in particular that you think people going to do in order to become good art detectives and all they have to look at paintings. You have to look and look and look. I think part of what we talk about here is the recognition of style and that is the same set of talents that all of us apply or try to recognize our friends. Fifty yards down the street we know who they are simply by some some quality about them where there is where they all go grass or or their gestures there are recognizable aspects of their personality. We can pick up on the same thing applies to old Master paintings modern paintings prints and drawings sculpture. It all depends on recognition. And it's essentially the same sort of recognition we have and we use every day of our lives. To recognize style to recognize quality. Sometimes in order to

avoid getting taken to the cleaners a collector needs simply to go to the cleaners. The art cleaners the small square shows that this painting is much more beautiful than a first glance might reveal. But a cleaning can also uncover a story a mystery buried beneath the first layer of pigment. This is one half of a painting that the bought before cleaning. This is the other half after cleaning hidden under the grimy sky was an angel. But why would someone cover up over something so beautiful in that particular case. It is a fragment. It was a large painting and the head was cut out and who wants a corner. A painting with a corner of an angel. So the thing is to try to make it look as if everything is rotten painting you. You cover over the Angel thing it 50 years ago. The paintings were very difficult to sell. People didn't have enough wall space and gamers could buy these enormous paintings in a to very cheap money

and they'd cut them out they make five or six paintings out of one and they simply over paint the background and then they'd have six heads of people. Paintings are overpainted for all sorts of reasons. This is a pre-screening photo of a 16:16 painting a self-portrait by Michael Swartz is the artist pointing off into space. No cleaning reveals he is pointing into the nasal cavity of a skull. Apparently someone thought this subject matter not to sailable. Or perhaps an owner thought it not too palatable and it was painted over. The faders were tipped off by what wasn't there. Did you expect that there is going to be something to be seen. For instance with the Michaels ferret's the fact that they in the painting is pointing to a kind of nothingness and the paint there looks new and so Alfred began claiming in that area. Well why did he begin cleaning in the area where the scar was because he expected there was going to be something there to be seen. You have to look. And

look. And look. Look at the Ivy in the lower left hand corner of this painting anti-dote two girls in an opera. Is it fair to add symmetry. Or is it a kind of red herring. Meant to distract her from noticing that this painting has been cut down. This is what it looked like before. It had no life. The crack in this case the cracks one usually expects to find in the surface of an oil painting you can see a fine web visible face of one of the girls. But look at the leaves again. No cracks. That shouldn't be. They were painted at the same time. The invaders have filled these walls with dozens of similar mysteries. Mysteries and beautiful paintings as seen through the detective's eye. Doctor take good friend joins us now as we turn to this week's health topic which is aging.

Well you know you and I have discussed many diseases on this program. And I want to discuss something today from a different point of view. Aging and aging is not a disease it's a normal process as we see some examples in this short report. Growing. Let's hope we all live long enough to experience it. Most of us don't fully understand what aging means and have misconceptions about what it's like. Too often we think in terms of a frail old person in a nursing home unable to fend for himself or herself. But disability is not an inevitable part of aging. Actually most people remain bright and vigorous and enjoy their older years. Aging itself is not a disease. It's a normal biological process that brings gradual physical changes. For those of us who reach our 50s and 60s some of the changes are easily recognizable.

The hair begins to turn gray may even turn white. The skin becomes thinner and wrinkles appear. Hearing loss occurs that begins with the high tone's muscle mass decreases and our eyes are no longer able to focus at close range. All of these changes are normal. Not a sickness but a stage of life. We've come to call only. Two. There are lots of sayings about the inevitability of age. What about each of those symptoms are each of those things inevitable. Well let me give you an example. Among the signs of aging. You need to hold things out far from your body to be able to see them well. And this is the gadget that the ophthalmologist uses and he says Now tell me how close you can get that before it gets blurry. And I say oh well about there. Then he takes it and he writes down something and I always thought he was writing down an unusual number like centimeters or diopters or things that I don't understand.

And I looked at this gadget and written on the side of the gadget is age approximate age in years. In other words the the ability to read close up clearly diminishes in a predictable fashion with age. But I would think that some things are not so predictable in other words. Gray hair is something that happens at some times with people at one point in their lives. Other times like Ronald Reagan not at all. It's not all that predictable always is it that's true. The fact that it occurs is fairly predictable but the rate at which it occurs is not in most people aged. Aging occurs at the rates we accustomed to beginning about in the 50s or 60s. But there's a rare mutation in children called progeria in which aging takes place extremely rapidly. The picture that's now on the screen is of a 10 year old girl who looks looks 19 because she has aged

extraordinarily rapidly. And the significance of that for physicians and scientists who are studying the aging phenomenon is what. Well with because it's a mutation and because it rapidly accelerates aging it's possible now to study something like that with genetic engineering type biological techniques. And in fact the interest in the biology of aging not the pathology not the disease but the biology is escalating but we still don't know a ton. Do we really. I mean it's not like anyone is very close to coming up with that magic pill that's going to turn a 70 year old into a 40 year old. We don't we don't really know or don't know how to stop at least the aging process to. That's right. Over all the years at which diseases have been conquered the final lifespan the total possible lifespan of the average human remains 90 to 100 people just aren't living any longer than that. Even if they don't have disease. So whereas medical science has made great progress in overcoming obstacles that used to kill people off sooner.

We're still. Once we overcome those obstacles living about the same amount of time about the same length of time. What does that mean then for doctors. I mean the point in your short report is rather is clear I think that this is a normal process not a disease. Does that mean then the doctors aren't much help when it comes to aging. Well doctors weren't much help to me when my parents began to age. I was astounded that I have access to a lot of medical help and I tried to invoke it on behalf of my parents and I found that doctors weren't the doctors that I called weren't really prepared to help me with the normal changes of aging doctors or disease or and that the medical model is what they live with aging is normal. A lot of these changes are not diseases and the doctors that I called were not much help. Now there is a new specialty called geriatrics and those people are really becoming more expert at normal aging. But the first thing really to understand about aging is that it's normal not a disease and that we must take what I guess time brings us.

Well I think that puts it in a sort of a negative sense. Somerset Maugham said that the pleasures of old age although different from those of youth are just as intense. Ted good friend thanks. If you would like to comment on this week's broadcast right. The Wisconsin magazine. Beat 21 University Avenue Madison Wisconsin 5 3 7 0 6. From aging to an age old source of power. Many people of independent means collect art. Others might collect cars vacation homes or jewelry. But entrepreneur Peter burrow collects hydroelectric dams and investment with a different kind of payoff. But burnout doesn't keep his collection to himself. He shares the proceeds. The damn man produced by Linda friend. Well. I've always been in. Favor of hydro power.

For a number of reasons. It's a very environmentally benign source of energy. It doesn't put any pollution into the air. It doesn't use any fuel it's totally renewable and from a standpoint of economics it keeps the finances local. Welcome to step in to build. That big stone in southeastern Wisconsin. And meet. Peter Bruno. Stevensville is only resident. Bruno is also his town's only power engineer running turn of the century water turbines to draw power from Stebbings villes little Diom along the meandering Johar river. Generating system. Maybe the story in any city now provides electrical power to over 500 surrounding homes the homes of his grown children grandchildren and friends. Bernard Lewis had a prestigious career as an engineer and energy consultant.

He wanted a retirement project bought the shut down old dam from the state in 1967 for $1. The lights are flashing. No. Need to raise the speed a little bit. He spent the last twenty years getting the dam back on line as a heritage of power for his ears. Were locked on the line. Going to start to pick up some willow. This little plant out here. Eliminates the burning. Of. Posthole half a million pounds of coal. Well. A half a million pounds of coal sounds like an awful lot of coal but when you look at a big generating station that may burn 680 carloads of coal in 24 hours. A half a million pounds is a drop in the bucket.

But Bruno's drop in the electrical bucket comes from the energy of water turning blades that power electrical generators. Bruno says this ancient method of harnessing the power of falling water went out of favor when coal oil and nuclear plants replaced the country's smaller dams. These plants then were. Retired because one big nuclear plant. Would more than take care of all the hydro plants in the state of Wisconsin. Well that big nuclear plant never materialized. There are some things that an individual can do and there are some things he can do. I couldn't change the nuclear energy picture. But I could restore a couple of these small hydro plants and put them back into service. And this seems like an ideal way for a power engineer to live out the balance of his life. That's what I've done. Burna also bought the shut down dam a little farther upstream in St.. And also for $1. He says he then spent about

$650000 of the last 20 years getting the two dams back on line though you'll never recoup his investment. Vernon says his small hydro dams harness enough energy to be worth restoring and I have never felt that any society could afford to waste and especially in a state like Wisconsin that's as energy poor as Wisconsin is. The river flowing without being used is just a waste of energy which is something that neither the state nor its citizens can tolerate. This is something that's within my capability to handle burnoose says the turn of the century generating systems were built in 1890. The old fashioned way to be slow and durable enough to last a century. And during is time consuming restoration process. Aesthetics were considered and this was a paint job that. Followed a design that my grandfather developed. In the late

1880s for the steam pumping engines for the water department of the city of Chicago. He was there designing engineer for many years. He was also a power engineer. So I come by that naturally. I've. Built this whole utility out of my own hip pocket. And I've never had any government or state funding of any kind. I've just done it myself as I was able to do it. I rather liked that way of doing things. Gives you a very personal feeling toward the equipment and toward what its capabilities are. Berto says his generators should last well into the next century without major repair. But in case an antique park shouldn't need replacement he's collected antique machines he can use to make new parts. We're running at about 20 550 volts. The kilowatts and right now we're putting out just about 80 kilowatts from this unit.

BERNHOLZ little power company which he calls the Wisconsin Edison Electric company sells its electrical load to the utility company in Stoughton. There are no figures as energy accounts for about 6 percent of the Stoughton area's energy supply. We can handle about 200 homes. It's not big in proportion to what the utility industry is doing today. But for a small plant using non-polluting benign energy source. It. Is very important especially if you live in one of those two hundred homes. Vernon says though his total energy output may be small. His contribution to the area's power supply and lower electrical rates is great. I'm selling the cheapest electricity sold in the state of Wisconsin. Even the electricity from nuclear plants is more expensive than what I sold in the city of Stoughton. It gives them a little bit of an edge on surrounding

power prices while it's a small percentage and dramatically reduce anybody's light bill. It probably staves off the next Rayder increase or two. And Stoughton has has benefited by that and they've told me so. Berto has bought 14 more dams in Wisconsin Vermont and Idaho during the last 20 years and he's slowly getting them or stored and back on line. But Brunos hydroelectric power has natural limitations that keep it from becoming America's big energy answer. You can only operate with what nature has given you. The amount of water coming down the river is a function of the rainfall and that's probably a function of God. And the. Height up or down is a function of the DNR. So with those two things you have a limitation. But Burnell is glad he's getting some of the country's smaller dams running again because he

believes every kill a lot of power they generate improves America's energy independence. And I'm very self-sufficient. It's a business that is not a get rich quick thing. But it's depression proof and inflation proof. And. Provides a. Comfortable living. A good deal of security. For as long as the water shall fall. Earlier tonight we reported on our collecting on how our restoration sometimes reveals more than one might expect. So was last summer at the state capitol when workers undertook artistic restoration on a massive scale all through the long hot summer of 88. Craftsman stripped sanded and scraped away. The idea was to make the assembly look like what its builders originally had in mind. Original intent is our story produced by Carol Larsen.

There were seven months between table saws. And shmoozing. A lot of work between the carpet lifts. And the camera shots. A project both huge and minute. The restoration of a public monument and a Wisconsin symbol. It's a great day in the state assembly. We sit in an assembly chamber today that has been brought back to its original magnificence. And I want you to give a round of applause to all those who worked in this chamber many of them are here today to see the fruits of their labor. An appropriate tip of the hat and a repeat of the salute given in 1989 when the assembly was first opened for business. It was reported that the beautiful new assembly chamber was appropriately decorated in the national colors and the work was well done.

The work was and is lavish almost religious in its reflection of Wisconsin government designed to reflect the Wisconsin idea of achievement. Intellectual pursuit and public service. To the best of my ability. So help me God. Go. Back to a place. Today. The foundations are still firm but time has taken its toll. Some would say on the decorum as well as the decor. Over 70 years the national colors had faded and the patriotic symbols had frayed around the edges. Time in does Ted DLB lady Wisconsin's light. And a crack caused by shifting walls split her portrait. The words of Abraham Lincoln were obscured by grime. Even the marble pillars were stained the crowns chipped and the gilded Sheen worn away.

Everything from the electrics to political icons needed to be fixed or fixed up. But it's a lengthy process as complex says the law making the symbols represent. After almost 10 years of debate. The decision was made to put faith in history not to redecorate or recreate but to restore. Only then did work begin. On the day the 1988 assembly was to adjourn. The workers took over. Yanking out the surface layer of active politics leaving the room looking rather forlorn. While. This.

Was. True to occasional form however the assembly had not finished its work and members were exiled to a less opulent setting in a fourth floor room near the attic. Back in the chambers years of redecoration were scraped from the walls part of an historical excavation of the room. It had been altered so many times by well-intentioned but really misguided renovations that no one knew. After sixty years what the room even looked like originally. Tony Rodger is a world renowned conservator who happens to be from Cheboygan. Basically in this box I have a whole history of all the painted surfaces in the assembly. Roger is a restoration expert an archaeologist of sorts searching the layers of time for the designers original color. But when you look at other parts of the building you realize that the institutional green of the 50s and the 60s could not have been the architects of and

the original intent was recorded in old documents and in photographs but you can't replicate history's color scheme from a black and white photo. Isn't there some value when. Out when the tourists come you know as they come to this building every single day and you can point to the room and say this is very close to what it was like. When the men and women. The legislators that were elected in 1910 first entered this magnificent ruin. That magnificence would be temporarily lost while work preceded the room being reduced to barely recognizable pieces. What's nice is when it's when. You claim it gives you an idea of what

it's going to look like when it's finished you start feeling. It won't look too much different than that it's been. By mid-July what needed washing is washed and what needed stripping is stripped. Including 20 pounds of chewing gum from the bottom of the members desks evidence of a bipartisan bad. Habit. Up on a full second floor created to reach the skylight light bulbs the first bits of rewiring are done. But with one significant and unplanned problem for everyone involved. Remember last summer. It was hot. We. Decided very early on when it was under 20 degrees at any rate it didn't have a sense of humor on the job. Greg Erickson supervised many of the nearly 60 crafts people working on the project. Up above the skyline we hit on our 20 to honor 30 degrees and we can learn more. Than. That was putting on a long string of power

lines. Despite the heat and other surprises the crew kept to schedule. What was the worst idea we had to move a marble column. You had. To move. Home. How do you move a marble column slowly. By late August the chambers looked less like a house of state and more like a vandalized coal mine. This state of purposeful destruction revealed another view of the Capitol from behind the walls and another layer of history. For instance the workmen's pipe which is a German clay pipe with fall below the floor on a balcony when we are installing. Electrical conduit for the new. Boards. Charlie quali on-I is one of the state architects working on the restoration concentrating not only on the building but on the builders and what they

left behind. Pite whiskey bottles. We found several of these when we did the revolving doors and we found two of them we are doing this and they were in an area where we believe they were from the original work. The original workmen left a legacy in the walls evidence of certain interests tucked between the floorboards from I believe it was August 23rd 1928 and it's kind of the headlines on the sports page there Copley's regulars. Detroit slugger is steadily drawing away from batters in the American League and it talks about his batting average of age 57 for 100 games. There are some interests. Time has not changed. By September. The activity upstairs combined romance as gold dust floated through the air with eyes squinting drudgery as paintings were swabbed clean inch by single inch.

Once cleaned the paintings would be cleaned again and again. In fact for another two months 18000 hand-rolled Q-tips were used to clean the main 80 foot mural. I've been doing a lot of touch up on the on the cracks you know because we're just two major cracks and they are slowly disappearing they won't disappear completely that only you know God or a magician could do. We are still getting more grime off of it. The effort paid off. The paintings shined as bright as the new gold leaf. The assembly began to look like the assembly again or rather the original assembly. Two months to go.

And. Take. At. Time. A deadline hovered over these last months. The pressure to put a surface back on the chambers. That's it. One week left. The work was down to door jambs and brass fittings. The many details that make the building distinctive. It's unique among capitals for sure. And that it has much more artwork. Than most capitals. It's a much more consistent design than most capitals and I think it reflects on the people who built it and there are lots of progressive. Attitudes. Then-Gov. fighting Bob La Follette maybe smiling somewhere. As would the original workers. In fact on the Cornus in the lowest area we found the signatures of lot of the original artists and I'm sure that some of artists left their signatures also. Did you say. Yes you can tell us man be it's somewhere

up in the upper areas. I hate to leave at. Usually what we do is we turn a string of pearls. When you're pulling the lights off and firmly sings it's very nice to find. A room that sings savored for a moment before it becomes a room that schmoozes. With members of. The assembly. Please take your seats. The Grand Reopening the first session of the 1989 legislature. A day to meet new members take lots of pictures and maybe notice what's different about the old day. First thing that I noticed. Was the voting machines. In the machine. Store. I think it was the. Lack of the institutional freedom that was. The feeling. Around the. Gallery. I certainly hope that it brings a little different

tone to the legislative proceedings a little more dignity and historical perspective to the proceedings here. Because Lord knows we need it. Maybe. Perhaps this session gets underway. The room will have an effect. Someone may look up and notice something new. Something to instill a restored sense of their own purpose. From the original intent of the building. And that's our report for this week. I'm Dave Iverson. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again a week from tonight. Next time on the Wisconsin magazine. In light of the pending U.S. Supreme Court decision

on abortion an entire hour will be devoted to this volatile issue. Special guests from the studio audience will discuss major questions dominating the abortion debate. What is Roe versus Wade. What Missouri law caused this decision to be challenged. We'll hear both sides of the issue next time on the Wisconsin magazine