(gentle music) (gentle music) - Thanks for watching another episode of, "My Wisconsin Backyard."

Hi, I'm Traci Neuman.

- And I'm Brian Ewig.

Today we get up close and personal with the Milwaukee police horses.

- [Traci] And we'll take you inside the recently reopened, Yerkes Observatory, and find out what makes the Mississippi River in our state so spectacular.

- Plus we'll spend some time with the Milwaukee Admirals.

All that more today on, "My Wisconsin Backyard."

- Hey Brian, I think the Milwaukee Admirals are practicing.

Should we go check it out?

- Yeah, let's go have some fun.

(upbeat music) - We got a good variation of older guys, young guys.

So, a good mix.

- All right, can you teach us to do a slap shot?

- Yeah.

You just gotta step into it.

You load up.

All your weight's back here.

And then you put all your weight on your front foot.

Zip right through it.

(upbeat music continues) Yep, there you go!

- All right, Spencer, where are you from?

- I'm from Mequon, Wisconsin.

- Greats so you know I'm a huge fan, right?

- Huge fans get jerseys.

There you go.

- Thank you so much.

I will put that on.

- Of course.

- Hey, what about me?

Where's my jersey?

- You can have this one.

- Yeah, I don't know.

Do you guys wash those?

- No.

(upbeat music continues) - All right, I've always wanted to do this.

(dramatic music) (sirens wailing) (upbeat music) - My name is Officer Esteban Arreguin.

This is my horse, Charlie.

He's a 12-year-old percheron cross.

We've worked together now for the past six years.

When I was a kid, I got to work with horses for a couple of years and I really found a passion for horses.

- Stinker.

(Speaker laughing) - [Esteban] We use all percheron or percheron crosses.

They are a draft horse.

They have a very good temperament, willingness and an eagerness to work.

- This is my partner, Jill.

Jill and I have been together for almost six years.

It's nice because with the horses, you really get a bond, the same way that you do with humans.

I know what's gonna bother her.

I know like what she's gonna be willing to do, what's kind of gonna scare her if something would.

And I know that she can keep me safe, and I can keep her safe.

We do a lot of community events so it creates like a nice bridge for people, citizens that maybe wouldn't feel comfortable coming up and talking to an officer.

And it just creates nice relationships, maybe that we wouldn't experience if I was just in the squad car 'cause no one wants to pet my squad car.

(Aja laughing) - [Esteban] We have the ability to go out into communities that might not often get to see a horse.

Whether you like the police or not, you're gonna like my horse.

So it bridges that gap between us and the community.

- One great thing about being on them is that we can see very deep into the crowd.

So if I was just walking on foot, I can only see maybe 10 people deep or something.

When I'm on her, I can see to the far end of the crowd.

I can see if somebody needs help or medical assistance.

And then we can create a nice path through that crowd to get to someone who's injured.

We can get to those spots a little easier than the guys on the ground.

- Sometimes when we're out working a crowd, I feel like he enjoys the intensity of the crowd, and he handles that very well.

There isn't much that startles him or spooks him.

He's very sure-footed.

- So a lot of the training for the new horses is on-the-job training.

And then we also do training in the indoor arena here.

(gentle music) So the foundation is named MPD Mounted Patrol Foundation.

We are here solely to support with the horses.

The foundation was started in 2019 with the mission to be able to help supplement the funds that do come from the budget for the city of Milwaukee.

We help with anything from, even supplying simple things, like treats for the horses to training materials.

So the foundation's goal and mission is to be able to help foster community engagement.

People in urban areas are not used to seeing horses, and if they are, they're used to maybe seeing a pony or something smaller.

And these are really big, wonderful giant draft horses that are fantastic to see in the middle of the inner city, and the urban areas around the city of Milwaukee, and bringing them positive interactions with the police department.

- He likes scratches.

- It takes a team, in one word.

But it takes a lot of energy.

It's a lot more hours and time than I predicted.

So we were able to acquire horses directly from donations, and that's really where we thrive.

But we also wanna ensure that this unit stays in force forever.

There's definitely some restraints with budgets and we're here to supplement that, and help that, and make sure the unit stays, and then also grows as well.

(gentle music continues) - Their true passion is to make life better for the horses and for the officers on the unit.

And so without them, I don't think we would be able to operate the way we do.

- Whoa.

(gentle music) - A crosswalk mural or a slip lane mural is really meant to slow down traffic.

This is one of the areas that's really highly trafficked in the south side of Milwaukee, and there's a lot of accidents here all the time.

We hear from neighbors and residents all alike.

So today we are installing a slip lane mural as part of a street safety initiative.

The city actually came out with an application for this kind of project, it's called Paint the Pavement.

And it makes it really easy for anyone to do a project like this.

It could be an individual artist, it could be an organization, it could be a committee, or a neighborhood group, a group of friends.

But essentially they have their own restrictions too on what we can and can't paint, just so that it doesn't distract the cars, specifically with like really, really bright colors that would look similar to traffic markings, or any words or symbols, and other stuff like that.

But this design was really meant as like a homage to people and individuals who have passed away from reckless driving accidents.

So we have a character who represents just kind of the strength and like empowering sentiments that we wanna create in these spaces.

And then we have a hummingbird on the other side that also is kind of like a skeleton.

So that's, the hummingbird in Mexican culture is representative of a fallen warrior, specifically in Azteca culture.

So I kind of wanted to pay homage to the cultures that are here, that we can find around the neighborhood and acknowledging that too.

But still make it more as a celebration as a way that we can change our own behaviors and come together to address this issue.

Paint the Pavement has certain just kind of like guidelines that can help the group create something like this.

So we have to use like exterior porch or floor paint.

We have to add some sort of skid additive that will help with the traction for like bikes and cars.

It also has to be primed.

We primed it double this time so that it lasts a little bit longer, or at least we hope so.

And then it has to be sealed too.

I think pavement art is just a way that we can bring arts and bring like beautification projects to our neighborhoods.

It's just kind of like taking advantages of the things that we have and the assets that we do have.

And just going about creatively, I think you know, like writing a message on there in a form of a design or a symbol can be really meaningful to a lot of places.

And if we can bring beautification efforts to areas that are likely not to have it or not have it be funded as a priority, then that's very important.

I put it out on social media if anybody wanted to come and help me, and this is literally just my immediate group of friends.

They all said, "Yes."

It honestly makes me feel so happy.

I love being able to share like my own thoughts and my own just style to anybody that I can, especially if it's gonna spark some sort of conversation or reflection.

I think that's the most important part for me.

I also love being able to share my culture and just kind of my roots where I came from in the design itself.

It's acknowledging that, but also where I am implementing it is reflecting that too.

So I grew up in the area, so it makes me feel very, very happy that I'm able to do this as a project of my own in a place that I call home.

It's really, really meaningful.

(gentle music) (guitar music) - Wisconsin is rich with water resources.

We have over 15,000 inland lakes, plentiful groundwater aquifers, and hundreds of miles of Great Lake shoreline.

We even have over 13,000 miles of rivers and streams.

And of all of those, the Mississippi is one that stands alone and really commands a lot of respect.

Old Man River is truly the elder of our Wisconsin streams.

And geologic dating indicates that the river has drained the region for at least 70 million years, and has only been following the channel as we see it today since the last glacial retreat, much more recently.

The Mississippi Basin is the largest in North America, spanning over 1 million square miles.

It drains water from 31 different states.

The gathering flow from major tributaries like the Ohio, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Red Rivers.

The river's headwaters are in north central Minnesota where it's only a knee-deep stream, gaining depths as deep as 200 feet near its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico.

So the Mississippi is draining a huge chunk of North America.

And we should picture it like a funnel resting on its side between the continental divides, you know, between the Rockies and Appalachia with the funnel at the bottom, down near the Gulf of Mexico.

And it creates a 2,300 mile system that carries an incredible amount of water.

It's the eighth largest river discharge in the world carrying up to 600,000 cubic feet of water per second, which relates to like four and a half million gallons of water per second.

The flow velocities vary depending on the current conditions.

But a drop of water takes like three months to travel its entire corridor from the headwaters to the mouth, to the Gulf of Mexico.

Wisconsin is part of the upper Mississippi River basin, and the river's entrenched in our culture, and we've relied on it for centuries.

Native Americans and the earliest European settlers certainly used the river as a travel corridor, and for commerce when trading.

And that commercial value remains today as annual commerce supports 500,000 jobs to many people who call Wisconsin home.

And so from that regard, we should consider it one of our hardest working river systems in the country.

And it's directly tied to our economic and environmental health.

For many though its greatest attribute is in the intangible resource that the River Valley offers in terms of a recreation hub.

Recreational trips to the upper Mississippi River Valley actually outnumber some of our most popular national parks.

And related tourism provides a welcome boost to local economies.

And for example, it's scenic beauty is unmatched when climbing Grandad Bluff overlooking the city of La Crosse, or even just on a Sunday drive along Highway 35 towards the village of Trempealeau.

But its value isn't only to humans and for our interests alone.

The Mississippi's upper basin is a showcase for biodiversity and it provides for hundreds of other species inhabiting its watershed.

Its channel and the adjacent prairies are a critical habitat for federally protected species like the relic paddlefish, Blanding's turtles, peregrine falcons, massasauga rattlesnakes, and many other threatened and endangered species.

(guitar music continues) So the Mississippi reigns as king of Wisconsin's streams.

It outlasted the asteroid impact that led to the dinosaurs' demise.

It was rerouted by mile-thick ice sheets of the Wisconsin Glaciation.

Species and generations come and go, but the river still remains.

(upbeat music) - To see more of our short stories- - Check us out on Facebook and Instagram, or on Milwaukee PBS.

- It's mine.

- Traci's gonna be mad.

(ethereal music) - You're in Yerkes Observatory.

This is considered the birthplace of modern astrophysics.

It was really the first thorough astrophysics school in America.

It opened its doors October 21st, 1897, and it began to combine astronomy and physics to study the disposition of space, the personality of space.

Not just discovering a moon of Jupiter but telling you how fast that moon was moving, how that moon was imploding.

Was that moon young or old?

So we really set the astrophysics world on its ear because no one had done this kind of stuff before.

And this is a full school.

It was a 50-acre campus where the students lived in the attic and the professors lived in the houses dotted around the woods that were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and his son John Charles Olmsted.

Certainly the preeminent landscape designers in American history who had designed the U.S. Capitol grounds, Central Park in New York City, and many things in Wisconsin and Chicago as well.

(ethereal music continues) Most observatories are a dome and a telescope.

Yerkes Observatory is a full school with the most famous refracting telescope in the history of the world.

And it's an architectural masterpiece.

(door opens and creaks) Welcome aboard the ship.

And this entire floor goes 23 feet up to the balcony.

The floor weighs 74,000 pounds and that's how you get up to the eye piece.

This was built in 1896 and 1897.

It still works remarkably well to this day.

Away we go.

And here we are.

Now refractor telescope uses lenses.

All modern telescopes use mirrors to gather light.

But before mirrors got really great technologically speaking, speaking lenses were the norm.

And this has two 40-inch diameter lenses that were made in Paris in the 1880s.

The tube and the base weigh 160,000 pounds.

The tube rotates 360 degrees and goes up and down.

So this is how you move the telescope up and down.

It is this giant and it just moves by hand.

And so you can move it sideways, you can move it up and down.

Over the past month, I've looked at the Andromeda Galaxy, and Jupiter, and the moon, and plenty of Messier objects.

And it's like taking a road trip in space.

Although this style of astronomy observation is outdated, because telescopes are in the sky now, and they're on mountaintops in South America.

This is a really visceral human experience.

And to look at Neptune through this eye piece is very rewarding.

Your eyeball is looking at the cosmos as opposed to looking at something on a laptop or a cell phone.

And the reason why this telescope became so significant, and Yerkes Observatory's great refractor had a camera.

And so Williams Bay, Wisconsin took the first pictures of space beyond the moon that the world ever saw.

So you take them on glass plates, and the glass plates could then be photocopied essentially, and put in newspapers and magazines.

(ethereal music) I mean, you're talking about Yerkes Observatory that had Edwin Hubble as one of its students and staff.

Edwin Hubble figured out that there was more than one galaxy.

Mary Calvert was here for many decades, one of the first people to map the stars.

Nancy Grace Roman was here for eight years.

She was NASA's very first Chief of Astronomy.

She's the central force behind the Hubble telescope.

William Morgan in 1951 in this building discovered the shape of our galaxy.

William Morgan figured out that our spiral arm structure was what we were.

The people that came through this building like Otto Struve, Gerard Kuiper, who pioneered the research that figured out everything on the other side of Neptune.

Carl Sagan, the most famous astronomer of the second half of the century, they all lived and worked in little ol' Williams Bay, Wisconsin.

(relaxing music) - Well the name of the company is Hybycozo, and they focus on geometric sculptures.

We have all sorts of icosahedron, and rhombi, and polyhedrons.

And it's a combination of math and art.

I think the kids really love the sculptural art.

They love, you know, people can get up to it, they can touch it and things like that.

Sometimes when you have a painting and whatnot it's a little bit more interpretation.

A little bit more interactive, I think, than maybe some of the museum type art pieces that people don't always have access to in their public space.

(relaxing music continues) So their focus is really to kind of bring kids and inspire adults as well, and kind of from their everyday lives, and for creativity.

You know, that's what art is generally for, is to inspire.

You'll see all those geometric patterns like play onto the ground.

And honestly, I think that's what the kids enjoy most is seeing all that light and shadow, and you know, the contrast between the two, which is important in art.

When the kids get up to it and they can see this from afar, they want to know what it is.

I mean, they don't know the names of them, right?

So they may go home and ask their parents, look it up online, and suddenly they're engaged.

I think that the more we have hands-on experiences, and the more we understand geometry, the more the world can expand their knowledge base.

I mean that's just the basis for all education.

- [Guide] You're putting your helmet on.

- Okay, helmet.

When I was much younger, I started losing my vision.

I have retinitis pigmentosa and I went to a program to help me adapt to being blind.

And they mentioned the BOLD program, Blind Outdoor Leisure Development.

And I thought, "Wow, if these people are willing to teach a guy-" - You ready?

- Yep, I am.

"who's blind how to ski, I'm up for it."

So I tried it, and I have loved it, and enjoyed it for about 35 years now.

- [Guide] And turn.

- I've been downhill skiing since I was five-years-old with BOLD.

And my mom got me into it.

And I don't plan on stopping any time soon.

- [Dan] Skiing without sight is a matter of focusing on the snow, my skis on the snow, and the sound of the voice from my guide.

- [Guide] Right and turn.

- To be a guide, you obviously have to have some skiing ability or experience, but you don't have to be an expert skier.

So we have, you know, people that are far from expert skiers.

We do most of our skiing here on Southeastern Wisconsin on beginning and intermediate hills.

- [Dan] The guides are everything because I ski with the guide, and the guide and I are a pair.

I rely on them entirely for my safety and for fun.

But the fact of the matter is, what we try and do, and what I especially try and do, is we get a rhythm in our calls of direction, set up, execute.

So the guide calls left and turn, right and turn.

And what I try and do is, I want to turn right when they tell me turn.

That way they know I'm doing what they're asking me to do.

And I know they're keeping me safe.

I trust them with my life.

- Yeah, you gotta trust them to get you down the hill.

I mean, I can see somewhat.

But, yeah, not enough to do that on my own.

(upbeat music) - I ski probably six to eight times a year, but I stay in physical condition all year long based on the fact that I wanna be able to ski, and be prepared to ski as long as I possibly can.

It gives me a sense of excitement.

I love the thrill of going down the hill.

I love the thrill of the acceleration and the speed.

Skiing downhill, sliding across the snow is just a wonderfully graceful experience in contrast to the slush, and the ice, and the slippery stuff of winter.

(upbeat music continues) - It's something to enjoy in winter.

And I love, I mean, I always loved this season.

And I know everybody, a lot of people hate it.

But I love skiing, and I'm not, you know, I'm not letting my disability stop me from doing what I love to do.

I would just say, you know, don't let any challenges stop you from doing what you're doing.

If you have a goal, if you have a dream, don't stop yourself from getting there.

Because the only thing in the way is yourself.

- Well, thanks for watching another episode of, "My Wisconsin Backyard."

I want to thank Milwaukee Admirals for having us out today.

- Yeah, and if you wanna see more of our short stories, you can check us out on Facebook and Instagram or milwaukeepbs.org.

- Is that everything?

- Yeah, we're done.

- I'm gonna need my jersey.

- I have to give it back?

I thought I could keep it.

- No, I'm gonna need it for the game.

(gentle music)