We're gonna milk this for all it's worth.
It's Dairyland Diaries.
And look at local stories around Wisconsin.
I love this segment, mostly because of just this open.
It makes me happy.
I
love the open.
It always, it also means that it's Friday and we're about eight minutes away from knocking
off for the weekend.
But most importantly, it is good uplifting stories from around Wisconsin.
The T word is not mentioned anywhere in this segment.
So let's get started because we have some great stories today, especially the story of how Christopher Lyerman became the voice of Bayport sports.
It started 12 years ago.
He and his wife had been hired.
His wife had been hired as agriculture teacher at the school in Bayport.
So he had never heard of Bayport, even though he was from Manitowoc.
He went in and met with the principal.
and the athletic director and he said hey you know we should uh we should really start broadcasting
pirate sports.
This would be fun, wouldn't it?
He started only with football and let's see how it goes.
So he had experience in business, in the broadcasting business at a young age.
He served as sports director at WRFW at the University of Wisconsin River Falls before he graduated.
So he, the principal said, yeah, this is something we could do.
So what we'll do is we'll get you somebody else.
but nobody else wanted to do it so he decides he'll do it fine i'll do it by myself i don't think he said it in that tone maybe he did so he became the john madden of bayport football i love this he has stuck around as the color man in the booth even after he retired last summer his screams during big moments can't really be heard from miles away even though it does sound like it
Football broadcasts at the school soon turned into basketball and hockey broadcasts, then baseball and softball in the spring.
Almost every sport in between this guy has been broadcasting.
He
celebrated his 1000th career game at Bayport over the winter.
He has broadcast every sport but tennis.
It presents a logistics issue on several fronts, but the plan is to do it for the first time
this
fall.
He's gonna do some tennis.
He's not doing it for the revenue.
He generates from sponsorships, although those have grown from a handful to a dozen.
He puts in a lot of hours, thousands of miles on his automobile, and he has allowed students with an interest in journalism the opportunity to practice their play-by-play work on the production.
Many of those have gone on to actually work in the business.
This guy!
has taken over.
I love that he's
the John Madden of Bayport
football.
I love this story.
I think it's fantastic.
Kudos to him.
And you know what?
I'm going to say a sports broadcasting, it is a lost art.
It's getting harder and harder to find people who are good at it and to do it.
So somebody with a passion is that that's awesome.
We've got so much more though.
And I'm excited about this one because it turns out that why we were all entrenched in Artemis 2 and watching what was happening.
there were two Wisconsinite, two Wisconsin women, in fact, who happened to be a part of that team.
The program of Artemis has been years in the making, and NASA has been gearing up for the Artemis III, even before Artemis II launched.
Learned that, by the way, at Kennedy Space Center.
Got to go through all of the fine art of Artemis, and it is really exciting.
It turns out that life on the moon is going to be a thing if they have their way.
Two Wisconsin natives, though, Susan Lederer and Kara Polkamp, played significant roles
in NASA to bring Artemis II to launch, and they're already working on programs to prepare future astronauts for a lunar landing.
Now, Lederer and Polkamp both discovered their passion for science and space exploration while they were growing up in northwestern Wisconsin.
Sue grew up in, grew up in Shawno, about 9,200 people, and the small town had one of the most remarkable night skies that Lederer had ever seen.
Her grandpa loved constellations, so they would spend a lot of time at night
just staying up looking at the stars.
And she actually remembers seeing the Milky Way stretching across the sky.
when she was working at a camp in the summer.
A view that's not as visible from where she lives in Houston now, as you can probably imagine.
Well, she is now at NASA as a planetary and space scientist and has an impactful voice on our understanding of the moon.
She's the lead project scientist in NASA's commercial lunar payload services.
NASA works with commercial companies to deliver technologies and science instruments to the moon.
Kara, who's 43, remembers what the Orion spacecraft looked like
and it was just a design on a PowerPoint slide.
She is an Appleton North High School graduate.
She is the deputy chief of NASA's extra vehicular activity, robotics and crew operations at the Johnson Space Center.
That involves supporting Artemis II crew's habitability, recovery, stowage, and maintenance efforts inside the spacecraft.
Her team works on making the spacecraft habitable in where they sleep, how they eat, how they take care of personal.
hygiene, and even the onboard toilet system, which we know Artemis too had a little issue with.
But at any rate, she also hopes to operate a robotic arm on the International Space Station.
She developed spacesuits and other elements for astronaut spacewalks.
She's also involved in the Neutral Boyancy Lab, which is the large training pool at the Johnson Space Center.
Go, ladies!
That is awesome.
That's incredible.
Check out
the big brains on these women.
Love it.
That
is spectacular.
I love it.
So you know somebody who went to high school with them was like, they didn't seem that smart back then.
Their science teachers and their math teachers are probably like, who asked me if you're going to use math later in life?
Anybody?
Anybody?
Yes.
That would be the easy thing.
Why do I need to learn this?
I don't know, maybe because someday you want to learn about the moon
and
operate a robotic arm in space.
Perhaps
that.
Develop a space suit, who knows?
Wow.
That's cool.
That is
crazy.
That is cool.
And
just real quick, how do we not highlight the bubble lady of Wisconsin?
It was
love at first bubble for Madison area performance artist, Michelle Hackett.
She first became acquainted with interactive bubble shows nearly a decade ago.
I don't even know how that happens.
She's billed as Marvelous Michelle.
She tagged along with artist friends and then she started doing bubbles.
She crisscrosses the state giving bubble performances at fairs, festivals and libraries.
She is presenting at the fifth annual Dane Arts Business of Art Conference about how she's carved out a creative niche as a bubble performer.
So
good for her.
That's Dairyland Diaries.
Hopefully you leave the show with a smile.
