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Rev. LeHavre Buck has been pastor of a Milwaukee inner city church for decades. He had a day job with the YWCA, advising participants in W-2, Wisconsin’s welfare reform program, and now works full-time doing marriage promotion work with the Milwaukee-based Center for Self Sufficiency. Reporter Art Hackett profiles Rev. Buck and explains what motivates his life inside and outside his church.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Article on Rev. Buck
Effort aims to unite blacks, marriage
Churches in Milwaukee
Click Here to Watch Saving Souls - 9:36 (real media)
Click Here to Watch Saving Souls - 9:38 (windows media)
Why has the World Wildlife Fund allowed the use of their Panda Bear icon on bags of Wisconsin potatoes? Why has the Defenders of Wildlife allowed the use of their logo? And the International Crane Foundation? To answer that question, reporter Jo Garrett traveled to Central Wisconsin, the heart of Wisconsin’s potato industry and the home of a new way of farming called, “Healthy Grown.” The “Healthy Grown” model offers farmers a way to lessen their use of pesticides and could provide a world-wide model for more sustainable farming. Find out why supporters of pandas, cranes and other wildlife have chosen to cheer on a particular kind of Wisconsin potato.
Wisconsin Healthy Grown Potatoes
World Wildlife Fund
Find out about a funding program for Maremmas
Click Here to Watch Potato Farmer - Real Player 8:23
Click Here to Watch Potato Farmer - Windows Media 8:23
“It’s deadly and it’s beautiful at the same time,” says Amy Waddell of one the replica medieval swords her company makes. New Glarus-based Albion Swords sells historically accurate swords made to the exacting standards of medieval warriors. While the swords are more often used for decorating than for battle, customers are drawn in by the authenticity of Albion’s products.
Albion Swords
New Glarus Homepage
Albion Sword Collector’s Guild
Click Here to Watch Swords - 4:21 (real media)
Click Here to Watch Swords - 4:23 (windows media)
Glimpse a rare avian event… Canadian Great Grey Owls, roosting briefly in Northern Wisconsin.
Great Grey Owl Invasion Begins
The Great Grey Ghost of the North
Birder Blog
Click Here to Watch Great Grey Owl - :46 (real media)
Click Here to Watch Great Grey Owl - :52 (windows media)
Loew:
Most weeks we tell you about how legislators or other elected officials are affecting your life, but chances are the vast majority of people who are quietly trying to make a difference are people you've never even heard of. Our first report this week by Art Hackett features one of your fellow citizens who's trying to make life better for some of the most at-risk people in Milwaukee.
Art Hackett:
Reverend Le Havre Buck leads a small church with a big name. Triumph, the Church and Kingdom of God in Christ.
Le Havre Buck:
This is my neighborhood. I grew up in this neighborhood.
Hackett:
The congregation has been holding services on North Sixth street in Milwaukee for nearly 50 years.
Buck:
We built this church about 20 years, 25, 26 years ago.
Hackett:
Sunday mornings reverend buck is a man of God who sings like the Godfather of soul.
Buck:
What I wanted to do with my life was to be a psychologist. Why I wanted to be a psychologist I have no idea.
Hackett:
Reverend Buck has held many jobs. At various times, he's run a gas station on Milwaukee's north side, a trucking company, and a mortgage brokerage, all this following a tour of duty in Vietnam with the Marine Corps.
Buck:
I did four years in the Marine Corps. I left my father's house because I got tired of him telling me what to do. And I went to the Marine Corps where somebody was what? Telling me what to do. Ain't that stupid?
Hackett:
Reverend Buck is in the business of helping others make decisions.
Buck:
The way you make choices, who you make choices with, what goes on in your life has to do with how you feel about yourself.
Hackett:
Until recently, he worked for the YWCA leading the self-esteem classes required for Milwaukee clients entering W-2, Wisconsin's replacement for welfare.
Buck:
One of the reasons that we did this was that we were going to visualize.
Hackett:
We first met Reverend Buck when he was doing the same job in 1997. That was two years after Governor Tommy Thompson unveiled the W-2 program.
Governor Thompson, 1995:
We are going to end welfare in Wisconsin.
Hackett:
Reverend Buck was not one of W-2's early fans.
Buck:
The whole system stinks. It's too quick. It's too fast. It's too harsh. Now it's here. Let's deal with it. Only because you do it, it don't make you like it.
When I made that statement we had people on AFDC for a number of years, and that had been a certain way for a number of years, so there was a culture there. So when you try to break a culture, immediately you have a lot of stress, a lot of strive.
Hackett:
Reverend Buck said officials in the Thompson administration said to have a talk with the reverend, and ask him if he doesn't like the program, why does he work in it?
Buck:
It's because the people in my community need that assistance. And since it's here, you work with it. So when you talk about setting goals and objectives, we're talking about setting goals and objectives of where we are to where we want to be.
Hackett:
When the W-2 program was launched 10 years ago the then Governor Tommy Thompson set lofty goals for his alternative to welfare.
Governor Thompson, 1995:
There will be no more welfare offices. There will be no more welfare checks. There will be no more welfare families. There will be, instead, job centers like today, paychecks.
Hackett:
Ten years later, studies have shown the program has put people to work, but often at poverty level wages.
Buck:
This is no place anybody wants to be, but most people are attempting not to be on W-2. They want to work. They're looking for work.
Hackett:
And W-2 was supposed to be more than a program to make people work. It was supposed to change the way people behaved.
Governor Thompson, 1995:
It is time to break the cycle of teenage pregnancy that has put so many women and children on the welfare roles.
Buck:
Right now 70% of all children born in African American community are born to unwed mothers. No. It's less. It's going down, but there's still that element of people, young people who are still having children out of wedlock.
Hackett:
The 70% figure is actually low. Reports from the Wisconsin Division of Public Health show that during the period W-2 took effect, the percentage of unwed births to African-American mothers in Wisconsin remained unchanged at 82%. Among whites, it increased from 20% to 24%. Overall, it jumped from 27% to 32%.
Buck:
We have an epidemic of people having children out of wedlock.
Hackett:
Reverend Buck is part of an interfaith movement to promote marriage in the black community.
Buck:
So we've got to be understanding that God meant for man to be married. God meant that. That ain't your choice. God meant it.
Hackett:
He preaches abstinence outside of marriage from the pulpit. But he admits it will take more than a call for Christian morality to reduce the number of unwed births.
Buck:
And I think you have to teach a person about their self-worth, their goals and objectives, where they want to be at a certain time in their lives. And then abstinence is to be abstinence for anything that will endanger them from reaching their goals and objectives. And I think if you instill that in a child, the child will register in their mind that certain things in their mind that they've got to stay away from if they want to make these goals in their lives. And I think that curtails pregnancies and out of wedlock births, more so than God does not want you to sin, because actually as you can see that is not working.
Hackett:
Reverend Buck believes in the power of making the right choice.
Buck:
And if you don't feel good about yourself, then a lot of things, you're going to make choices that are not good for you. You can be whatever you put your mind to. It may be hard and difficult, but you've just got to work to it.
Hackett:
But he knows that power has limits.
Buck:
Sometimes you can reach everybody else's child and it seems like you just can't seem to grasp yours.
Hackett:
June 2001, Reverend Buck's 24-year-old son, Le Havre buck Jr., had just been shot to death along with another man on Milwaukee's north side.
Buck:
Here you are with a person who doesn't mind dying with a person who wants to live.
Hackett:
Your son wanted to live.
Buck:
Right. And so he's sitting on the corner with a guy who did some crazy stuff.
Hackett:
Reverend Buck was already aware of the inner city violence that caused his son's life.
Buck:
I had planned a peace rally for that Saturday. I had worked with some guys at the Martin Luther King center, a minister there, we had planned to have a peace rally that Saturday, and my son was murdered that Wednesday, but we still had a peace rally that Saturday.
Buck, 2001:
Whatever I can do for you I'll do it. If you need education, you need your G.E.D., you need job training, whatever it is that you need, you call me. I'll see if you can hook you up with something that will help you get off the street.
Hackett:
You were doing what you're doing before then and you're still doing it.
Buck:
Still doing it now. How was your week? How are you doing?
Hackett:
What qualifies you to do what you're doing? I mean, you mentioned you wanted to be a psychologist. Well, now you're sort of one, but -- -
Buck:
What qualifies me to do what I'm doing?
Hackett:
There was a long pause before Reverend Buck answered that question. His answer in a roundabout manner was that he could see people in a place better than where they are.
Buck:
Well, I love the people. I have a spirit that connects with the people. Don't you never let nobody tell you that you'll never be anything, and your children won't, because you're the model for your children. What your children see you doing, they believe that's right because you're their God..
Loew:
Since that report was produced, Reverend Buck has moved on to yet another job. He tells us that since last October, he's been working as a trainer and educator for the Milwaukee-based Center for Self-Sufficiency promoting the value of marriage here in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Loew:
We head now from the city to the countryside where there's a bit of a mystery. Why has the World Wildlife Fund, that international organization known for saving pandas in China, taken an interest in a group of central Wisconsin potato growers? This same group of farmers is also attracting attention from the National Wildlife Federation and the International Crane Foundation. We sent producer JoAnne Garrett to find out what's happening down on the farm.
Nick Somers:
This is where I grew up. It was built in 1909. The whole family lived here. Eight children grew up in this house. This is a russet variety. It's called gold rush.
JoAnne Garrett:
Since he was nine years old, Nick Somers of Plover has always been raising potatoes.
Somers:
35, 40 years. I don't know. I don't want to count, because then I'll know how old I am.
Garrett:
Somers' place, Plover River Farms, has been in operation for decades.
Somers:
We farm around 3,200 acres, owned and rented.
Garrett:
But there are changes afoot here.
Sandy Somers:
Oh, my gosh. It's gorgeous.
Somers:
It smells wonderful, doesn't it?
Garrett:
Changes that nick and his wife Sandy have made in the way their place is farmed, changes so trail blazing that you can now find this guy on bags of Wisconsin potatoes. That's right. The World Wildlife Fund, one of the world's largest conservation organizations with over five million members has given its stamp of approval to these Wisconsin spuds. They're panda approved. How did this happen? Well, there was something in the water.
Somers:
It pretty much started in the 1980's when we found a chemical in our water. Aldicarb was detected in central Wisconsin in the underground water.
Garrett:
Yeah, this powerful pesticide called Aldicarb started it all. It was the pesticide of choice for potato growers in the 1980's. And when it turned up in well water it was a controversy. There were lawsuits, tests, hearings.
Somers:
There was a big debate and a lot of people have said we've got to fight for this. Other states will be using it and we're going to be at a disadvantage.
Garrett:
Ultimately the pesticide was restricted in Wisconsin. The growers felt they had lost an important tool.
Somers:
How are we going to survive was my feeling? Can we survive it? How are we going to survive? It was pretty scary.
Garrett:
So the growers did something new. They reached out to researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Somers:
So this must be the planting line right here.
Garrett:
To learn how to raise potatoes without Aldicarb, with fewer pesticides.
Deana Knutson:
Really what we're looking at is how this affects potatoes and what it does for yield and quality.
Garrett:
Growers called upon people like Deana Knutson, a grower with the university.
Knutson:
They reached out to the university and said we need to grow in a better way.
Garrett:
The partnership flourished. The potato growers have survived and thrived. So much so that in year 2000, some of the growers, with the help of the university, launched the Ecopotato project. They launched an Ecolabel, Healthy Grown.
Knutson:
Healthy grown is really a whole farm process of growing your crop. It's not organic, it's not conventional, it's a third way. It's not as costly as organic. It's kind of in the middle. Right now, it’s about the same as conventional. But the idea is if there's a premium, buyers can help these growers by paying a little bit more and supporting this kind of agriculture.
Garrett:
This kind of agriculture looks at more than just potatoes and pesticides. It may add a little bit more to the bottom line, but it considers the farmer's whole farm.
Somers:
It's not just the potato crop. It's the whole farm. We're looking at the environment, nature, wildlife.
Ted Anchor:
There's a bunch of rows over there.
Garrett:
Ted Anchor is an ecologist with the University of Wisconsin in Madison who helps with the healthy grown program helping growers manage their farmland for wildlife, for water, for soil quality.
Anchor:
What's great about these systems is that there's always something blooming.
Garrett:
Anchor has, for example, helped the Somers restore this prairie on their property. All the benefits the prairie brings to the landscape are part of the healthy grown label.
Anchor:
You're getting soil quality, you're getting water quality, you're getting natural lands management, you're getting esthetics, you're getting the preservation of these natural landscapes.
Garrett:
With two-thirds of the land in the world privately owned, the actions of farmers like Somers can have a big effect on wildlife. People are not just buying potatoes. They're buying a way of farming.
Anchor:
They're buying a potato that's grown in the best scientific method possible, but they're also getting all this natural area that's being managed at the same time. They're buying biodiversity essentially.
Garrett:
Which is why the panda and his pals have come on board with the potato growers.
Anchor:
The World Wildlife Fund has been a supporter since the inception of the project. The International Crane Foundation has been a supporter since the start as well. In 2004, Defenders of Wildlife came on board.
Garrett:
But what exactly makes this produce healthy grown? Well, here's one example.
Somers:
This is a Colorado beetle. They can devastate the whole field. If you didn't do anything with it, in two weeks, they would be all just stems. All the leaves would be chewed off. Just amazing.
Garrett:
Previously, the growers might have nuked the field with Aldicarb killing everything. Now they go for a nuanced approach. The guy with the net is Randy Charney, an agronomist, a farm employee. And he's scouting, assessing the area for insects. He scouts once a week so they can attack an insect problem at exactly the right time.
Randy Charney:
This one on my finger is the adult, and this is the second larval stage we call it, and this one is in the third larval stage.
Garrett:
And these potato beetles are most susceptible to pesticides at their early larval stages, so catch them young, kill them easier, less pesticide on these fields. And a more select use of pesticides means that growers can count on an insect's natural predators, what they call the beneficials.
Somers:
When we use our chemicals, we treat just specifically for that insect. So we can keep the beneficials, like the ladybugs. They're a help. They're our friends. Many times we go in the field and say, well, there are a lot of egg masses, and all of a sudden they're gone, and the beneficials have come in and eaten them.
Garrett:
Healthy Grown involves hundreds of changes and choices like these, tracked through detailed record keeping and independently certified. It all adds up to a greener way of growing, and one the potato farmers hope to sell to the consumer through their Healthy Grown label.
Anchor:
I think that there's a general consensus that something has to change in agriculture.
Garrett:
And a segment of Wisconsin's potato growers has seemingly led the charge.
Anchor:
They seem to be a little bit ahead of the curve as far as a business model. They see the conditions changing for the market. They see foreign countries going to more ecologically grown potatoes. They're first adopters and they're out there pushing the step along every step of the way.
Loew:
There are 11 state potato growers enrolled in the Healthy Grown program. This represents about 10% of Wisconsin's fresh market for potatoes. And it seems that Wisconsin's efforts are creating waves. There's a group of wine growers in California that also recently adopted the Healthy Grown motto.
Loew:
Although some days at the office may make us feel as though we've slain a few dragons, most of us don't have a suit of shining armor hanging in our closet. However, one Wisconsin company banks on the fact that many of us do have an ongoing fascination with all things medieval. Reporter Andy Soth found that from swords to scabbards, this company makes a business out of re-creating a craft from yesteryear.
Andy Soth:
New Glarus, America’s Little Switzerland, has long kept European traditions alive. It's a good place then for these medieval enthusiasts to practice an ancient craft.
Eric McHugh:
We're not just making any swords, but we're making medieval swords in a modern context.
Soth:
The modern context is provided by Albion Armorers, specialists in the manufacture and sale of historic replica swords.
Amy Waddell:
Who buys swords? They're one of the most unnecessary things to purchase.
Soth:
Albion's C.E.O., Amy Waddell, admits that people have an unusual reaction to her business.
Waddell:
Then they see them and hold them and they buy them, because they really are just fantastic pieces of history.
Soth:
The pieces come together in a former meat processing plant. It starts with a blank, the basic shape of a sword cut from a steel plate by a computerized milling machine.
McHugh:
We do have the benefit of modern equipment. They wouldn't have used that back then, but if they could have they would have.
Soth:
The heat treated blank is sharpened to make a blade. The challenge is to make a weapon that is sharp, but strong. The test for this blade puts the old Ginsu knife to shame. This steel drum is the same gauge as a suit of armor.
McHugh:
If this was used against an armored opponent, you could just take a hone and remove that damage and put it back into service back in the time of medieval times.
Soth:
This test demonstrates the blade's flexibility.
McHugh:
So that you get a really strong edge that has the ability to stay sharp, but a blade that will be able to be flexed and take the shock of battle. There it goes, finally. So we would call this a very successful blade.
Soth:
The sharpened blade gets a cross guard and a pommel that counters the weight of the blade in the user's hand.
Carl Croushore:
Both the guards and the pommels were design elements in the medieval, the renaissance, the Dark Ages. They were a way for the swordsmith or the cutler to express themselves in the sword-making process.
Waddell:
You just look at it. It's just such a remarkable piece of engineering, and it's frightening. It's deadly and it's beautiful at the same time, and that's a rare occurrence.
Soth:
It would be a rare occurrence for anyone to actually need a sword made to such exacting standards given that today people are rarely called upon to slay dragons or join the crusades. Why put so much effort into making what for all practical purposes may only be an oversized letter opener?
McHugh:
We want to do the best possible job that we can do to get the best possible performance out of the sword, even though 99% of the people who purchase our swords just buy them and look at them and then put them on display on their wall.
Soth:
That authenticity is essential, because the customer is not just buying a sword, they're buying a tool to help them travel back in time.
Waddell:
In today's extremely stressful times, people need an escape, and fantasy and history are an escape. And they want to feel chivalrous. They want to feel knightly. They want to experience what a knight would have experienced.
Soth:
That experience can be as powerful as one of these weapons.
Waddell:
We've actually had customers write to us and say that when they opened up the box and saw their sword they were brought to tears. They name them. They sleep with them. They hang them on their walls. It’s fascinating. It’s very inspiring to all of us.
Loew:
Okay, speaking of medieval times, we'd like to present you with a challenge. Since "In Wisconsin" first debuted back in 2003, we've traveled to 71 of our state's 72 counties. Now we're on a quest to find the best story out of that final county, Pepin county. And we'd like your help. Contact us with a story idea, or even a concept for the type of report you'd like us to produce and we'll send one of our reporters, Frederica Freyberg, Art Hackett, JoAnne Garrett, Andy Soth, or Liz Koerner to Pepin county. You can contact us by email at inWisconsin@wpt.org. Or give us a call at 1-800-253-1158. When you dial that toll free number, listen to the option to leave a message for "In Wisconsin." We'll let you know in a few weeks which idea is chosen.
Until then, we leave you with a rare glimpse of a bird some call the great gray ghost, the Canadian Great Gray Owl. Our videographer Frank Boll captured these images a few years ago when the owls migrated to Douglas County. For "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew. See you next week.
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