This Week in Iowa Nature

Sphinx moths, hovering over flowers at dusk, are sometimes mistaken for hummingbirds.

Jean C. Prior and James Sandrock, The Iowa Nature Calendar

July Rain Garden Update

What can we say about June except rain, rain, and more rain? We can only imagine what our office’s basement would have looked like if it were not for the rain garden and the berm that help siphon water away from our building. The rain garden proved its ability to handle large amounts of precipitation without sending it flooding into the street in one big gulp. We are now looking at aerating the soil in back of our building in another effort to enrich and manage our small habitat. Newly blooming in the rain garden—and also in our prairie garden—are gorgeous red beebalm, brown-eyed Susan, purple coneflowers, and cup plant. We also transplanted little bluestem and prairie dropseed from our home gardens.

Ragbrai Week

John Karras


     No question, it changed my life, and all for the better.
     Because of it, I stopped smoking, kept biking, discovered the beauties of the state of Iowa, met thousands of friendly, decent and upstanding people and a few scoundrels, and formed dozens of friendships that have lasted years and years...What I have enjoyed most on RAGBRAI, however, and especially in the earlier years, is seeing middle-aged women find independence.
     Modern feminism was in its adolescence when RAGBRAI began in 1973, and a lot of women in their 30s, 40s and 50s were still laboring under the illusion that they couldn't do much of anything or go much of anywhere without a man at their side. RAGBRAI helped demonstrate to at least one and perhaps two generations of women that they could pretty much go any damn where they pleased without a guy hanging around. The demonstration dismayed as many traditional men as it pleased traditional women. I was more than pleased to have been a part of its happening.


John Karras and Ann Karras, RAGBRAI: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

Ragbrai Week

RAGBRAI -- XXV, 1997

     Another year, another birthday, this time the twenty-fifth.
     And the weather on this one was as bad as the weather was good the year before. In fact, I have no doubt that the weather on RAGBRAI XXV was the worst, the most difficult the ride has ever experienced. The humidity was in the 90s the entire week. And it was hot, hotter, hottest. Overcast skies through the middle of the week, and a drizzle at least one morning helped, but then the sun came out with ferocity Thursday afternoon and stayed out all day Friday and Saturday.
     There were places on the road at the bottom of hills and in sheltered areas untouched by breezes where the temperature had to be well over 100 degrees.
     The route was no help. The first day, Missouri Valley to Red Oak, was 82 miles of unrelenting hills. The rest of the route went mainly through southern Iowa, overnighting after Red Oak in Creston, Des Moines, Chariton, Bloomfield and Fairfield and ending in Fort Madison.
     I knew it was a difficult route from the start, writing in the February announcement story, "This year's route could be characterized as the answer to a masochist's dream -- it is guaranteed to make strong men weep, strong women stronger and young children old." And that was before anyone knew anything about the weather.


John Karras and Ann Karras, Ragbrai: Everyone Pronounces It Wrong

Scarth Exhibit Premiere

If you're in the Iowa City area, come over to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics to see art by Robert and Linda Scarth, photographers of Deep Nature: Photographs from Iowa! Their photos are in the PVAC Gallery 1 wall on the 8th floor of the Colloton Pavillion in the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics starting today!