Excerpt from Esther's Town

Fishermen caught pike, pickerel, bass, perch, and catfish in huge numbers, particularly in the Okoboji lakes and in Spirit Lake. In 1868 the Vindicator said that "one man with an ordinary pitchfork can secure a wagon-load of fish within a few hours." In 1870 Peter Larson caught a wagonful of fish at Okoboji. In addition to Okoboji, Spirit, and High Lakes, fish were caught plentifully in the west branch of the Des Moines River running through Estherville, the east fork of the Des Moines through Armstrong, and in some of the creeks.

But by the time father and I - during my teen years - were dipping our lines in the Des Moines River in search of walleyed pike and blue-channel catfish and rowing out hands sore probing the rushes and rock piles of Angler's Bay at Spirit Lake, we were grateful for modest catches. We had to employ more subtle lure than a pitchfork. Despite our fancy tackle and carefully selected bait, we were often "skunked," as my maternal grandfather described failure. Mother had to find substitute protein for the fish we planned to catch and she planned to fry.


Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Excerpt from Esther's Town

Often it was the lot of the boys in a family to herd cattle over largely unfenced prairie lands rich in native grasses, succulent and nutritious. The boys took their cattle our to graze in the morning and returned only at dusk. Sometimes boys would merge their herds and then separate the cattle as they returned to their own yards. When he reminisced many years later, father would still mourn the "hundreds" of jackknives he said he lost while herding cattle on low grasslands across the river from the Lee homestead. But more than the exaggerated number of knives he claimed to have misplaced while whittling sticks as his family's cattle grazed, father lamented new-century devastation to the prairie he has tromped. Diesel shovels and bulldozers made huge, ugly spoilbanks of riverside pastures as they quarried rich glacial gravel deposits for use in surfacing roads and manufacturing concrete. The pits not only yielded salable sand and rock but must have provided a rich harvest of father's jackknives as well.


Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Excerpt from Esther's Town

Scandinavian immigrants found Emmet winters more severe, the snow deeper, the wind more violent, the thunder and lightning more terrifying, the dew wetter, and the countryside more desolate than their native lands. They thought their old-world clothing of wool much warmer than American-made garments, largely of cotton. Moreover, they choked easily on a strange language. The name of the Des Moines River, close to their homes, was often pronounced by the newcomers from Scandinavia as "DisMines" River. Such words as "slough," "Sioux," and "Dubuque" were also twisters. My father often amused me when I was a boy by telling of the Norwegian who reported that on a trip across the state his wagon "got stuck in the slutch, halfway between SI-ox City and DUB-kwee."

Deemer Lee, Esther's Town.

Excerpt from Esther's Town

A fireplace provided the heat and was the stove to bake bread and prepare the meals. No family intentionally allowed the fire to go out, even in the heat of summer, when a bed of coals was kept outdoors for use when needed for cooking. There were no matches. A trestle-like table and a cupboard supported on one wall were provinces of the housewife. On another wall a rifle, bullet pouch, and a powder horn hung from pegs. The luxury of kerosene lamps was to come later and electric light much later yet. A shallow dish of lard or other grease with a loosely twisted cotton rag in it for a wick provided illumination of a sort. More sophisticated and somewhat scarce were candles fashioned from a mold that was shared by the settlement--an improvement upon dishes of grease. But often an open fireplace provided the family's only lighting on winter evenings.


Deemer Lee, Esther's Town.

Book News: Esther's Town now available!

Esther's Town could be "Any Town, U.S.A.," for the equals of its cast of characters can be found in any small town. And here, as usual, was the town newspaper editor, the observing eye of all the foibles and peccadilloes that form any town's history. Remembering all the years with love and humor, editor Deemer Lee chronicled for the forty-four years he gathered and wrote news--forty-one of them as editor and publisher of his town's newspaper.

The excitement and fun begin with bootleggers, Chautauqua meetings, and an accomplished arsonist--who achieves in less than two months the impressive score of burning seven barns and one feed store, with an unsuccessful attempt on the Methodist church. Scandinavians move in, build crude shelters for the first winter, and add their special characteristics to the town. The Irish arrive and stamp their mark on the whole territory. The circus comes to town and entrances everyone with its ancient pageantry. The railroads come through and add a rowdy element to the population. The Depression begins and farms see 11-cent corn, 108-degree heat, and a twister. All these events, plus adventures with a massive meteorite and haunting river tragedies, create the drama and flow of small-town life, story by story, in a fascinating revelation of Americana.


Esther's Town, by Deemer Lee

Engineers for a Sustainable World: Interview with Jeremy Bril, Part 2

You organized Iowa City’s first prescription drug drop-off in 2009. Tell us about this.

The prescription drug drop-off was a great project and I was fortunate to work with Christina Balmer (a student in the UI College of Pharmacy), Jennifer Jordan (of the Iowa City Landfill and Recycling Center), and Maeve Clark (of the Iowa City Public Library) to make it happen. The goal of the project was to collect expired or unused prescription and over-the-counter medications for safe disposal away from landfills and domestic sewers to better prevent contamination of natural waters. An additional goal was to reduce the occurrences of prescription drug abuse and accidental ingestions many times associated with insecure in-home storage of prescription medications. Due to the success of the project in 2009, Iowa City now holds two prescription drug drop-offs every year (April and September) in coordination with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s National Take-Back Initiative. 

The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering awarded you a Ph.D. Dissertation Year Fellowship. You’re assessing the effects of freshwater mussels on lakes, streams, and rivers. In light of Hurricane Sandy, this is an especially timely subject. Tell us more about your research.

My research is investigating how native freshwater mussels influence the nitrogen cycle in the Iowa River. Management of the nitrogen cycle is an especially important issue for agricultural watersheds of the Upper Midwest. The goal of my research is to help inform strategies for nitrogen management by examining the interactions between biological organisms (mussels) and the hydrology and chemistry of large rivers. We hope that understanding these natural interactions will allow us to better predict how changes in environmental conditions (e.g., climate change) will influence valuable ecosystems such as the Iowa River and Mississippi River.

You’re incredibly busy—that’s an understatement—but when you do find time to relax, what natural areas do you visit in Iowa? Besides mussels, what kinds of plants and animals are you interested in?

My favorite place to go is back home to Decorah, Iowa. I especially enjoy camping and kayaking on the Upper Iowa River. My wife and I also enjoy taking our son to F. W. Kent Park—we think it is one of the hidden gems here in Johnson County. I would have to say my favorite animals are my two dogs, Joey and Cora. They always keep life interesting. My favorite plants are native prairie plants/grasses due to their resiliency, diversity, and numerous benefits for the environment.

You’re finishing up your dissertation—congratulations! What’s next?

Thank you! After graduation, I will be working as a postdoctoral research scholar here at Iowa and then I hope to find a job with an engineering company working in the field of water resources management.

Jeremy Bril, University of Iowa Environmental Engineering Graduate Student

Engineers for a Sustainable World: Interview with Jeremy Bril, Part 1

You and fellow students from Jerry Schnoor's Sustainable Systems course built the UI Press rain garden, the first rain garden on campus. And you also built a berm that has kept water out of our basement. Tell us how you did this.

As part of the UI Press rain garden design, we had to remove some existing soil to make sure the rain garden was able to correctly collect and infiltrate water. We thought it would be a good idea to try to use the excess soil to prevent water from entering the basement. Amy Bouska, an urban conservationist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, recommended that we construct a berm that would divert rainwater runoff into the grass instead of letting it run along the side of the building where it eventually found its way into the basement. This turned out to be a simple and efficient solution that allowed us to use our existing resources to solve a water management issue.

You’re studying environmental engineering and science. The old-fashioned image of engineers—men in hard-hats standing around large construction sites with clipboards in hand, imposing order upon the natural world—seems to have vanished. How are today’s engineers integrating the natural and the built environments?

The field of engineering has certainly evolved over the years. As an environmental engineer, my job is to utilize science and engineering principles to develop solutions to environmental problems. A great example of integrating the natural and built environments is low impact development or LID. The purpose of LID is to work with nature to manage stormwater runoff by employing techniques such as preserving and recreating natural landscape features and decreasing impervious areas to create appealing and functional site drainage that treats stormwater as a resource rather than a waste product. Rain gardens, bioretention facilities, green roofs, rain barrels, and permeable pavements all help reduce the impact of built areas and promote the natural movement of water within an ecosystem.

You’ve been involved with Engineers for a Sustainable World. Tell us about this organization’s projects.

The University of Iowa chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World is a student group that focuses on using technical projects, education, and collaborative action to affect local sustainability challenges. The projects we work on reflect the interests and passions brought forth by the students. Some of our recent projects include Campus and Community Rain Gardens, a Habitat for Humanity Net-Zero Energy Home, a Solar-Powered Funnel Cake/Smoothie Cart, the Quaker Oats Wind Energy Assessment, and Sustainability Road Show Demonstrations.

Jeremy Bril, University of Iowa Environmental Engineering Graduate Student

Strickschule and Other Wintertime Pursuits

When cutting ice or accomplishing some other outdoor task, colony fathers were happy to have the woolen mittens and socks knitted by their children. Young boys and girls were taught to knit in Strickschule classes led by one or two of the older women of the village. Strickschule followed the regular school time and must have been a trial to youngsters who had spent all day indoors and were ready to get out and play. Their parents, however, forbade skipping Strickschule and cheerfully wore the results, appreciating just how much diligence was required of an earnest six-year-old to produce a pair of nubby mittens.

Following knitting class and chores, youngsters rode sleds, played in the woodshed, or skated on nearby ponds. The Mill Race was a dangerous but popular place to skate, and more than one colony youth was drowned, or very nearly drowned, while attempting to cross too-thin ice on the canal. Susanna Hahn said that as a teenager she once skated nearly three miles from Middle Amana to West Amana in order to buy a crochet hook at the West Amana Store and that Middle Amana youngsters often skated to Amana to visit friends. South Amana and West Amana youths held evening skating parties on a slough located in the forest between the villages; there they skated by lantern light, skimming on luminous pools from a dozen kerosene lanterns, casting shadows into the forest, where hoarfrost hung shimmering on the tree branches.


Seasons of Plenty, by Emilie Hoppe

Bald Eagles

Over wintering bald eagles can be seen across the country in large and small groups or as single birds.  Groups usually include a number of mature adults and a collection of juveniles up to four years in age.  Immature or juvenile bald eagles are mottled brown and often mistaken for golden eagles.  Although golden eagles range across the entire country during the winter months, they are found in very small numbers.  Data collected on mature birds indicates that bald eagles are slightly larger than golden eagles, and one needs to remember that in all birds of prey female birds are larger than males.     
  

The World Beneath your Feet: Iowa's Prairie Legacy

Above: Plowing virgin prairie with oxen. Archive photo.

When early settlers ran the first plow through virgin tallgrass prairie, they soon discovered how deep and dense the prairie root system was. New Jersey tea was known as the pest of the plowman or rupture root because its huge taproot would damage plows. Leadplant was called prairie shoestring due to the sharp, snapping sounds made when a plow point tore through its rootlets. A regular plow and a mule could not cut the tough sod, it took a breaking plow and a team of oxen. But break it they did. A good team and a long day of backbreaking labor could plow up one or two acres. Within one generation, early farmers—without modern equipment—plowed 99% of the Iowa prairie into cropland and stopped the cycles of the tallgrass ecosystem. Over thousands of years the prairie had built soil so rich and deep that it has been productive cropland for decades. Iowa owes its productive agricultural economy to prairie soils.

From Mark Muller's "The World Beneath Your Feet: A Closer Look at Soil and Roots," Funded by the Iowa Living Roadway Trust Fund

November Gardening

Mowers and other large power garden tools should be taken in to be serviced. Have the mower blade sharpened to prevent browning of the grass tips next spring. Check out the snowblower, too, to make sure it's in shape for the first snow.


Excerpt from Gardening in Iowa and Surrounding Areas by author Veronica Lorson Fowler

Michael Lannoo Interview Part 3

Your new book has convinced me that conservation biologists trained at Lakeside Lab—and biological research stations like it—might just be able to solve today’s huge array of environmental problems. Tell us more before we forget about this summer’s extreme heat and drought.

Our current societal emphasis on the spending habits of 15-year-old girls at shopping malls means that we are culturally ill equipped to understand the things that are really important to us. Further, we retain little memory of critical events such as environmental disasters, especially when we were not directly affected or inconvenienced. At some point in the future, for civilization to continue, we will have to place our emphases on things necessary to propagate civilization. And both our resources and our models for operation will come from ecosystems. Right now, nobody understands ecosystems better than people working at field stations. These rubber-boot biologists collectively know everything that we now know about ecosystem functions and services. Lose these guys (of both sexes) and you’re left with folks trying to understand life by sitting in front of a computer screen. And life is still too complicated, and probably always will be, for us to adequately model it in any sort of reasonably predictable way. Concerning this past summer’s weather, people sitting in front of their computers and looking at their models say, “Wow, we never thought this would happen!” while field biologists are out in it looking. Getting sunburned, sweating their rear-ends off, measuring everything they can, observing effects firsthand. In science, these facts should always take precedence, and by and large it’s folks at field stations who are collecting them.

Circling back to the younger Michael Lannoo who discovered his future at Lakeside in 1977, what advice would you give to a similar nineteen-year-old taking a course there for the first time?

Become a sponge; look, listen, and absorb. Know that the world doesn’t revolve around you. Also know that the first rule of life is living. Have a good time—but not so good that your fun gets in the way of learning—and know that human memory functions best when experiences are tied to deep emotions. Lakeside has always been a place where you can discover who you are and what you’re about, if you’re open to it. Right now our society sets us up to be clueless, and to be absolutely serious about our cluelessness. So much better to know yourself, and with this knowledge learn not to take yourself so seriously. During that first summer at Lakeside you’ll become knowledgeable, you’ll become competent, and if you want, you’ll begin to understand who and what you are.

Michael Lannoo, author of The Iowa Lakeside Laboratory: A Century of Discovering the Nature of Nature

Michael Lannoo Interview Part 2

It’s ironic that Lakeside, with its diverse plant and animal communities, is surrounded by what may be the most intensely cultivated landscape on earth. How does this affect your teaching and fieldwork there?

Iowa is iconically the Midwest: an agricultural desert. Its beauty is acquired, subtle, and because its agriculture is so large-scale, its native ecosystems are necessarily small. Iowa’s natural history tends to be squirreled away in this nook or that cranny, a bend in the road, a ravine, a railroad track right-of-way, a field too rocky to plow, a seep that cannot be drained, a grove that meant something to a family and therefore was never logged. In 1977, Okoboji was a lot like that. Sure there were more state parks and natural areas than in most other parts of the state, but classes found areas to explore and plants and animals to study based on experienced faculty knowing where to look. There was a cumulative institutional knowledge about where things were, and new discoveries were shared immediately: an orchid in that woods, a new fish species in that stretch of river. Classes were visiting small remnant habitats that almost everyone else overlooked. Many of these sites were on private property. Beginning around 1988, that all changed. The state and federal governments working with NGOs such as Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited began purchasing property from farmers who approached them. Gradually, vast grasslands were established around restored wetlands—basins that hadn’t held water for 70 years. Today, Okoboji supports over 24,000 acres of “natural” areas that weren’t present 30 years ago. The difference has been remarkable and has fundamentally changed how we teach. Thirty years ago we’d spend afternoons sampling specks on the landscape; today there are areas where we spend days and do not see everything.

A quick story. There is a little wetland on private property along a road about two miles south of Lakeside where, if you sampled early enough in the year, you would find these beautiful, transparent fairy shrimp—the only place in all of Okoboji that supported them. It was a Lakeside secret; not because we wanted it to be, it’s just that nobody else cared. Twenty years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came in and bought land from a farmer named White in the section east and south of this little wetland. A few years ago they bought much of the remaining section, including land immediately adjacent to the wetland. Last year I noticed that the wetland, too, had been purchased. When I saw the Iowa DNR biologists responsible, I mentioned how happy I was that Fairy Shrimp Pond was now protected. They had no idea what I was talking about, and when I explained we all laughed at the serendipity. The current program of land acquisition and restoration had enveloped one of the Lakeside faculty’s favorite little sampling hotspots.

You are a professor of anatomy and cell biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, yet you also teach field biology during the summertime at Lakeside Lab. Tell us how you balance these very different kinds of teaching.

You have to live in the moment. In Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean notes that some people have to do more than one thing to be complete, and that certainly holds for me. Here at IU, I argue that there’s a huge component of human health that’s tied to environmental health, and that it is important to understand environmental health; thus, both the human neuroscience and conservation biology foci. But deeper than that, the two major opposing (they don’t have to be) forces on earth today are 1) the way the human brain puts humans first versus 2) the resulting loss in biodiversity and ecosystem function. I figure if I understand both of these issues deeply enough to teach them, I may be able to help us find a way out.

Interestingly, my IU med students tend toward an extremely conservative political outlook, while my UI Lakeside students tend toward an extremely liberal outlook. Instead of trying to exert any political leanings on either group of students, I tend to listen without comment; I will however moderate extreme views on either side.

As an aside, after writing the previous paragraph I now have a marker for retirement. If I find that I cannot keep UI and IU straight, it’ll be time to hang it up.

Michael Lannoo, author of The Iowa Lakeside Laboratory: A Century of Discovering the Nature of Nature