Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

Champions of grass-roots biodiversity must face the realization that in much of the United States, local plants and animals do not stir deep emotions; paddlefish, while having a certain appeal all their own, are not pandas. Nevertheless, I suggest that if you can care about pandas, you can care about paddlefish or amphibians or dragonflies or even clams.

Michael J. Lannoo, Okoboji Wetlands: A Lesson in Natural History

Biographical Dictionary of Iowa: Charles Reuben Keyes

Charles Reuben Keyes
(May 5, 1871-July 23, 1951)
--educator, archaeologist, ornithologist, professor of German language and literature at Cornell College (1903-1941), and director of the Iowa Archaeological Survey (1922-1951)--has been called the founding father of Iowa archaeology. His personal surveys and work for the State Historical Society of Iowa resulted in the accumulation of more than 108,000 artifacts and a correspondingly large set of notes, photographs, maps, correspondence, manuscripts, and memorabilia now known as the Keyes Archaeological Collection. Shortly after Keyes's death, Smithsonian Institution archaeologist Waldo R. Wedel described the Keyes Collection as "the largest and most comprehensive extant assemblage of Iowa archaeological materials." Former State Archaeologist Marshall McKusick observed that the collection "contains numerous outstanding specimens of aesthetic and interpretive importance."


The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, edited by David Hudson, Marvin Bergman, and Loren Horton

Check out this review of THE RAPTORS OF IOWA

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/blogs/218518401.html

Raptor of the Week: Burrowing Owl

Burrowing Owl

Athene cunicularia

The burrowing owl is a Great Plains species that rarely nests in Iowa, and these nests, as expected, are mostly in the western half of the state. It is our only owl that nests underground. In its principal range, it uses prairie dog burrows for its nest; in Iowa, it probably uses badger dens.

The Raptors of Iowa, paintings by James F. Landenberger

Moonshine Takes Over TV, Liquor Stores, and the UI Press

According to the Associated Press, the new reality TV show, Moonshine, has inspired distillers around the country to brew their own brands to be sold at liquor stores. For more information, check out the article here.

At the Press, moonshine's comeback is getting us excited for different reasons. Next month, we'll be releasing Others Had It Worse: Sour Dock, Moonshine, and Hard Times in Davis County, Iowa. In 1977, Chris D. Baker asked his grandmother, Vetra Covert, to write a notebook of her childhood memories. Grandma Covert wrote about her younger life in rural Iowa between 1920 and 1929. In Others Had It Worse, Chris Baker has compiled her stories and transcribed her words into nine chapters that illuminate home, family, neighbors, school, and social life. He has composed a collection of candid, whimsical, sometimes ornery stories that will resonate with anyone who has ever tried to decipher the lives found in old letters and photos.

Keep coming back to read an interview with Chris Baker and make sure to check out Others Had It Worse when it releases in September!

Others Had It Worse: Sour Dock, Moonshine, and Hard Times in Davis County, Iowa, by Vetra Melrose Padget Covert and Chris D. Baker

Midwest Nature Quote of the Week

As we swing around the bend, the water suddenly swarms with a shoal of redhorse suckers that arch and dive in a shadowy tumble. Suddenly, though, the fish are gone and the canoe crunches to a stop against a sheet of ice. Jabbing hard, I do nothing except chip a large notch out of my wooden paddle. The ice remains uncracked, stretching out before us for hundreds of feet. This, then, is the end of our trip: trapped by the current against an immobile sheet of ice too thick for us to break but too thin to support our walking weight. What made us think we could canoe a partially frozen river?

David S. Faldet, Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People

Excerpt 6 from STATE FAIR by Phil Stong

Abel Frake smiled. By deliberately snapping off his sense of direction he could almost imagine that he was driving, as he had been driving seven days before, to the carnival--to the Fair. There was Blue Boy murmuring objections at every pit in the road; there was the sleeping family; there was the yellow roadway with its fringe of varying shadow; there was the crackling mist of light which was the universe, spread out over Abel Frake at regular intervals, and over Blue Boy, the finest Hampshire stud boar in the world.

That, of course, ended the illusion and with surprise Abel Frake realized that he was glad that he was not going to the Fair--that he was going home. He was gorged with the excitement and the triumphs of that strange place; reality, as he had made it for himself, pleased and satisfied him. The Frakes had stepped for a moment into a fantasy; now, unchanged, they were returning to that five hundred acres where only birth and death--not even marriage--had been the only changes for four generations.


State Fair, by Phil Stong