- [Stephfond Brunson] Tonight on WPBS Weekly, Inside the Stories.

Various towns across the north country, celebrate their hometown heroes as Memorial Day approaches.

We'll show you what to look for and ticks in Canada have flourished.

Discover how to stay aware of the tiny arachnid as the season unfolds.

Also tonight, meet an artist specializing in stained glass design and boat restoration.

It's all part of the Dorothea Susan Badenhausen Legacy Fund.

Your stories, your region, coming up right now on WPBS Weekly Inside the Story.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] WPBS weekly inside the stories is brought to you by the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation, The Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, Carthage Savings, CSX, The Oswego County Community Foundation at the Central New York Community Foundation.

The Richard S. Shineman Foundation, and The Badenhausen Legacy Fund at the Northern New York Community Foundation.

- Good Tuesday evening, everyone.

And welcome to this edition of WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories.

I'm Stephfond Brunson.

Memorial day is just around the bend.

And what better way to honor our veterans than to show the community the local people who served our country.

Thanks to an initiative called "Hometown Heroes," several communities throughout the region are celebrating veterans past and present with highly visible banners on light poles throughout their community.

WPBS Weekly producer, Joleene DesRosiers, has the story.

- [Joleene] You may have seen them last spring, banners on light poles, donning the images of military heroes past and present.

This week, communities throughout Jefferson and Oswego Counties are preparing to hang them again.

They'll go up on Memorial Day, spend 18 months greeting the community, and come down Veteran's day of 2023.

Then the process begins all over again.

- It's a great way to show support for the community and to honor their loved ones.

You know, they have a portrait up in the village all summer for their family to see, and for the community to see that, you know, they're not forgotten.

- [Joleene] For Sackets Harbor, the banners are far from new.

While this is the second time they're utilizing the Hometown Heroes program out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the past, the small historic village has shared banners doting veterans from the War of 1812, as well as noted architects of the area.

But this time around, they wanna continue to honor the historic village and the military personnel, past and present, who lived there.

- The community has always had a strong military presence, and this is kind of a way to bring that out of the past and into the present.

- [Joleene] Sackets will be displaying 36 banners.

Meantime in neighboring Oswego County, the Oswego County Federal Credit Union prepares for their lot.

The city is looking to hang 39 on Bridge Street in Oswego.

- It brings a sense of pride in our community because we have so many people that serve and give their lives, right.

They sign on that line and they give of themselves.

They give their time to be able to support the United States of America.

And to be able to do this in our small little town of the Oswego county or Fulton, Oswego, Minetto, which we just started Minetto.

So it's just huge, like how everybody wants to belong and remember, and it's just such a great opportunity to do this.

- I have talked to a lot of these families.

It gets emotional.

Talking about their veteran or hero.

They always like one lady cried on the phone with me, 'cause she was so happy that we were doing this program.

I connect with these people because I feel like I'm helping them.

They wanna recognize their veteran.

They want everybody else to as well.

They can do that through me.

And I mean, it makes me feel good to help them.

- Now Mayor Moore plans on having a map available for residents and visitors alike so that they can find all of the banners that will be up right here in Sackets Harbor.

And that's key to helping folks remember the strong, significant military base and presence right here in Sackets Harbor.

- You know, if we have a map where we can say all right, it's a two and a half mile walk, if you do this walk, you get to see each banner.

We wanna try and attract people to come to the village specifically to go and do that walk and then hopefully stay and, you know, go to one of our restaurants or shops.

- [Joleene] Families and friends interested in having their veteran honored in the next round of Hometown Heroes are encouraged to reach out to the village offices in Sackets Harbor.

In the city of Oswego, the Oswego County Federal Credit Union spearheads the initiative.

For WPBS Weekly, I'm Joleene DesRosiers.

- The Adirondack Park Agency.

This government organization was created just over 50 years ago in an effort to protect the Adirondacks from being overdeveloped.

Sometimes the fight got ugly, but in the end, environmentalists prevailed and continue their mission to preserve the land today.

Just last month, the New York State budget included 29 million for APA to build a new headquarters in the park and continue their mission.

Here's a peak at the powerful documentary film that relives the history of the park and the fight to keep it intact.

- [Narrator] New York's Adirondack Park is bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Great Smokeys National Parks combined.

It is one of the largest unbroken deciduous forests on earth.

It has a thousand miles of wild and scenic rivers and hundreds of breathtaking lakes and peaks.

But here is an even more amazing thing about the Adirondack park.

Most of its land is privately owned.

And 85 million people live within a day's drive.

Yet the Adirondack seem almost completely undeveloped.

How did that happen?

- In the story of land use planning in the United States, the Adirondack Park Agency is truly significant.

- [Narrator] The Adirondack Park Agency was a wild idea when it was created 50 years ago.

It owes its existence to several big trends that combined to create an irresistible force.

A small group of activists spent decades building the case that the Adirondacks needed stronger protection.

By 1968, they had overwhelming public support that got the attention of New York governor, Nelson Rockefeller, who eagerly supported the activist cause.

- You know, he believed in big things.

He was not a small man in any sense of the word.

It wouldn't have happened without him.

There's no question about it.

- [Narrator] Rockefeller strong armed state lawmakers into passing the bill that created the Adirondack Park Agency.

He ordered the agency to write two master plans for a territory the size of the state of Vermont, and to deliver them in less than two years.

Nothing like that had ever been done before.

The APAs young staff was brilliant, passionate about protecting the park, and extremely hardworking.

The plans they produced were revolutionary and 50 years later, their work is still praised and studied.

Today, the urgent need to control climate change depends on preserving and restoring large forests.

New York did that in a big way 50 years ago.

- It's the most unusual case of land protection in the country because it's also an attempt at community protection.

The Adirondacks is trying something very hard.

We're trying to have wild nature and human beings make their living in more or less the same place.

The wilderness and the hamlets are intertwined in a way that you see in almost no other landscape on the planet.

And that's what makes it exciting.

And it's also what makes it difficult.

- [Narrator] The wide open spaces of the Adirondacks are now recognized as one of Earth's treasures, but a lot of people still disagree.

They say that the agency and its restrictions on private land development are un-American.

They believe that private property is private and that the Adirondacks don't need more wilderness as much as it needs better jobs.

- 60% of that land is privately owned.

No privately owned land is part of a state park.

In other words, they have taken the theory that Hitler practiced.

If you tell a lie often enough, it will soon become believed.

And it will be a fact.

- [Narrator] It's an endless debate that boils down to a basic question.

What is wild land worth?

(people arguing) (uplifting music) - Go back to wherever you come from but get outta here!

- Because the next time they're gonna see 'em with deer rifles, then they better have another thought about this.

We are deadly serious about defending our rights up here.

- Tick season is nearing and the tiny parasites are thriving in Southern Ontario.

They're appearing earlier than normal and sticking around longer.

Now is the time to start protecting yourself as their bites can cause some serious health problems.

Here's a story of awareness from one woman whose tick bite led to years of health setbacks.

- It was extraordinarily long time to not have a diagnosis and to just be progressively getting worse and worse.

- [Niki Anastasakis] For 52 year old glass artist, Jennifer Kelly, experimenting with glass artwork and creating designs using a combination of textures ignites her soul.

Unfortunately, her passion was put on pause in March of 2019 after returning from a teaching trip to Bristol England.

- I went from March, 2019, to January, 2021 with symptoms that just kept flaring up and it was debilitating.

I wasn't able to work.

Tons and tons of pain in my arms and legs and my hands.

I got super loud tinnitus in my right ear.

- [Niki Anastasakis] The Ottawa resident was prescribed some antibiotics, but doctors didn't have an answer as to what was wrong.

Out of desperation, Kelly did every test imaginable, including testing for Lyme disease, a disease that is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks or deer ticks, which are most active from March to mid-May and from mid-August to November.

- So I discovered that even people who are bitten in Canada often send their blood to a lab called Armin Labs in Germany.

I sent it off and sure enough, it came back positive.

- [Niki Anastasakis] Unfortunately, her positive test only caused more frustration since so much time had passed and the disease had begun to affect her central nervous system and was now considered to be neurological Lyme disease, which can cause numbness, pain, weakness throughout the body.

Kelly's story mirrors the thousands of Canadians who report Lyme disease infection each year with government data pointing to between 1,500 and 2,100 new cases annually over the past decade.

So Jennifer, what does your road to recovery look like?

Do you still have Lyme disease?

- I don't.

I was able to receive IV antibiotics.

It got me 85% better, but unfortunately my central nervous system has been so damaged.

- [Niki Anastasakis] Kelly says she's speaking up in hopes of helping others prevent the disease from going undiagnosed for so long.

Especially now as the snow melts and tick season gets underway across Ontario and other parts of the country.

- It's obviously important for you to share your story and bring awareness to the subject.

Why are you so passionate in telling your story?

- Because although I appreciate that everyone has to advocate for themselves when it comes to their personal health.

There's still so much misinformation in the community about Lyme disease.

And there were so many opportunities for me to get a treatment, even to the point of finding out what it was.

And then the doctor saying that they couldn't prescribe what I needed.

- [Niki Anastasakis] Kelly is amongst many Canadians who feel they have been let down by the medical system after contracting Lyme disease, even though the disease has been identified and researched since at least the 1980s.

Though experts suggest that's not a long time in terms of developing effective testing and medical therapies.

- What are some of the controversies around Lyme disease and tick bites right now?

- There's a couple of issues.

One is that Lyme disease is a relatively new disease in Canada.

And so a lot of healthcare practitioners weren't trained to identify Lyme disease.

- [Niki Anastasakis] Ticks are small arachnids that live by feeding on the blood of animals and humans.

They can cause allergic reactions, pass on disease, and in some extreme cases can even be deadly.

Warmer winters have allowed ticks and the pathogens they often carry to flourish in ways they never did before.

According to Robert Colautti who works as an associate professor in the biology department at Queens University.

Therefore, if you are planning a family hike in a wooded grassy area, a beach, or along a coastal area, anytime between now and November it's a good idea to take extra precautions.

- I have two young kids and we like to go for hikes.

And some of the precautions we take is we always stay on the path.

We try not to let the kids run off into the leaf litter, which is where a lot of the ticks like to hang out.

If we do have to go into that kind of environment, for example, if you're into hunting or you just like to go off the path, then you should do things like tuck your pants into your socks and spray your clothes down with a strong arachnicide, something like DEET.

- [Niki Anastasakis] According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, 1,615 human cases of Lyme disease have been reported for 2020 and 2,851 cases have been reported for 2021 with the Southern areas of British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec as the primary locations were infected ticks are most commonly found in the country.

If you fall victim to a tick bite, be sure to extract it using tweezers and save it to get tested.

- Especially if you see any kind of a rash around the bite, that's a pretty good indication that you received an infection that should be treated right away.

- [Niki Anastasakis] Part of the problem, Colautti says, is symptoms of Lyme disease can vary from mild to moderate, to severe and include everything from headaches, fibromyalgia, and aches and pains.

Colautti is part of a team of researchers at Queens University who are currently examining the link between tick bites and long term disease to help eliminate misdiagnose.

They're inviting people with Lyme disease to share their stories at mylyme.ca.

- They fill out a survey and then they can opt into an ongoing survey, which includes providing information on their symptoms over time.

But then also receiving feedback on that information that might help them make sense of the symptoms that they're experiencing.

- As for Kelly, she's moving upwards and onwards, but now with a lot more caution.

Are you, I guess like overly cautious now, every time you leave your house and get out in nature?

- Short answer.

Yes.

Yes I am.

I now have spray and impregnated clothing that's tick repellent.

So that's really helpful.

And of course our dog has been vaccinated against Lyme disease.

- [Niki Anastasakis] For Inside the Story, I'm Niki Anastasakis.

- Our next segment highlights an incredible artist.

Nestled in a studio along the St. Lawrence river in Hammond.

He is Scott Ouderkirk and his stain glass creations and boat restorations are undeniably unique.

Special thanks to the Dorothea Susan Badenhausen Legacy Fund for making this story possible.

- My name is Scott Ouderkirk and I live in Hammond, New York, right by the St. Lawrence River.

And I'm an artist I got started as an artist, right from the beginning I was drawing from when I was very young.

I remember in third or fourth grade, I got in trouble 'cause my whole desk was just literally pushing up from being full of drawings.

What interested me in art?

I like the creativity.

I just did a podcast interview recently and we were talking about creativity and I was saying that the medium doesn't matter to me anymore.

If I'm working on boats or if I'm doing glass or if I'm drawing whatever I'm doing, or working at my house even, it's all about the creativity for me.

- [Narrator] After teaching art for 13 years, Scott went back for his master's degree in illustration at Syracuse University.

A challenge while in school was the creation of a wild west project while in New York city.

- So we hired models and they were a fake cowboy and a fake cowgirl and a fake horse.

And we all got the same reference shots.

So I did a drawing of this thing.

It was supposed to be a Western romance novel cover.

I went back to my friend who is a glass blower.

And I said, "This is what I have to do."

And he said, "Why don't you do it outta glass?"

And I said, "Well, because I don't know how to do glass."

And he said, "Well, I'll show you."

And that's a piece right there.

That's the first one I ever did.

And that was, I took that, a picture of that.

And then that was supposed to be the illustration.

And then the people were like, you should do it illustration out of stained glass, which I never really wanted to be in that business, the illustration business, I just wanted, I ended up just doing glass.

Within a couple years I didn't oil paint anymore.

Stained glass is a weird thing because a lot of this isn't stained.

It's this color when you buy it.

Okay?

So you're buying blue glass and you're leading it together or you're foiling it together.

There's two different ways.

There's two different processes.

I mostly use leading.

I do a lot of painting and firing.

So if you look at the faces and the hands, there's something there that wasn't on the glass originally and that's the paint that's been fired on.

And you can see that there's real wood in the gun and some copper and some copper pipe that's been leaded over.

So it's kind of strange 'cause it works well in here 'cause you've got this light as well, but sometimes it's too opaque.

It sort of disappears, but it's a really neat medium.

And it allowed me to use my drawing.

So the process that I mostly use is called kiln fired glass painting.

And on this piece here, the faces and the hands, like I said, have been painted and then worked before they were fired.

And then once they're fired, it's permanent.

You could put that outside, that piece of glass outside for a hundred years and the paint wouldn't come off of it.

It's part of the glass now.

But I found ways to use it in a lot of different things.

And we're gonna see that the glassware that I sell has a variation of that on it.

But it allows me to use my drawing, which is my strength, with the glass.

So this piece came about because I bought, I believe this is a transom.

It went up above a doorway in an old house.

I found this at an antique shop.

It had a piece of beveled glass in it.

So I bought it.

Couldn't pass it up, came home.

I drew this.

This is what we call a cartoon.

So I drew it really small first, but then I drew this full size.

I made two of these.

We have to cut each section out so we can make the pattern for the glass.

So this becomes this.

- [Narrator] In addition to stained glass, Scott also sells etched glassware.

And while he doesn't make the glass, the designs on them are his own.

- So this here is an example of the glassware that we sell and these are some of my bee drawings.

And this is one of our logo's, Glass Goat.

So these are fired on in a kiln and they're a permanent part of the glass now.

- [Narrator] In his spare time, if there is any, Scott enjoys restoring wooden boats.

- I've always wanted a wooden boat, but I never got my hands on one.

And then a few years ago, a friend of mine was getting rid of one.

He wanted to get a new one.

It needed a lot of work.

And I had done wooden boats before, like this boat, that's behind me, the transom and this swim platform.

This is a boat that I used to own on the river, but at the time I didn't have the skills needed to save that one.

I saved it originally, but seven years down the road, I couldn't save it.

The reason I don't look for work a lot of times anymore is because I'm also a boat captain and I restore wooden boats and I have a YouTube channel.

I make money in a lot of different ways and I like my year to be split up into different things.

So I'm just getting done with summer.

So I'm not gonna be doing as much of boating anymore.

And now I'm moving into where the YouTube channel will get going again.

And I've gotten on the commissions again.

So I like that little bits of things.

I have an Etsy store, there's lots of little ways that I make money.

And it all works really well.

- [Narrator] Scott's videos posted on his Glass Goat and wooden boat experience YouTube channel often receive in excess of 100,000 views.

- It's a pretty long story, my online presence, but it all boils down to me educating people, whether it's glass or about wooden boats, there's all sorts of ways through YouTube or through other people that are doing webinars that host me on there.

I'm teaching people how to do different things and it gets my name out there.

My career, you're asking me, but I don't even know if I have a career.

So a career might be a strange way of putting it, but the diversity of my career is more to keep me happy than to keep people happy.

My whole life revolves around shrinking my footprint and shrinking my need for money.

I went from a big house and a car payment to no mortgage and driving an old truck.

But every morning I get up and I like what I do.

I never get up and go, "Oh, I gotta go to work today."

'cause I walk 30 feet out to the studio in the winter.

I walk a hundred feet to my boat shed or I might walk down to drive a boat in Chippewa Bay.

But every time I want to do it.

- That does it for us this Tuesday evening.

Join us next week for a fresh look Inside the Stories.

Ontario's Kingston Coal Dock is ready for the 2022 Great Lakes Cruise season with safe waterfront approaches and new dockside tourism activities.

And meet the four founding members of the North Country Quilting Guild.

Their passion for the craft just might ignite your own.

Also take in the cultural lyrics and spiritual voice of Akwesasne bass vocalist, Bear Fox.

Meantime, if you have a story idea, you'd like to see us explore or you're a poet or a musician and would like to be featured, email us at wpbsweekly@wpbstv.org.

Until then, good night my friends.

- [Announcer] WPBS Weekly Inside the Stories is brought to you by The Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation, dedicated to improving the wellbeing of communities by helping disadvantaged children and families.

Online at dmjf.org.

The Watertown Oswego Small Business Development Center, a free resource offering confidential business advice for those interested in starting or expanding their small business.

Serving Jefferson, Lewis, and Oswego counties since 1986.

Online at watertown.nysbdc.org.

Carthage Savings has been here for generations, donating time and resources to this community.

They're proud to support WPBSTV.

Online at carthagesavings.com Carthage Savings, mortgage solutions since 1888.

Additional funding provided by CSX.

The Oswego County Community Foundation at the Central New York Community Foundation.

The Richard S. Shineman Foundation.

And The Badenhausen Legacy Fund at the Northern New York Community Foundation.

- What interested me in art?

I like the creativity.

I just did a podcast interview recently and we were talking about creativity and I was saying that the medium doesn't matter to me anymore.

Whether if I'm working on boats or if I'm doing glass or if I'm drawing, whatever I'm doing, or working on my house even, it's all about the creativity for me.

(gentle music)