Last fall, early in the semester, I fell woefully behind with this blog though I did keep up on You Tube and on Facebook with all the events I usually highlight here. I will now begin the process of catching up, so you see a mixture of dates and events for the next few months.
As these photographs indicate, the opening game of the Bobcat Football season attracted a large and loud crowd.
And while Hastings College prevailed in the 26-0 contest, we all enjoyed the chance to watch a game on a beautiful day in the Oak Bowl.
The halftime show featured the presentation of the Bert Swenson Awards given to outstanding athletes at Peru State College. VPASA Todd Drew presented this year's awards to Leisha Tennal and Jesse Haynes pictured on the right with Dr. Todd Drew.
The game also featured the return to Peru State of a good friend of the college and of mine, Kent Propst, who begins a another career at the very school from which he graduated; Kent takes on the responsibilities of heading the Peru Foundation.
During Half Time, I visited with and filmed the Pep Band under the direction of Ken Meints whom we all welcome to the Peru State.
As always, the band did a wonderful job entertaining the large crowd on a beautiful afternoon in the Oak Bowl.
And the Peru State Cheerleaders might have felt a bit wilted in the heat, but they never slowed down and kept the opening-day fans entertained and enthusiastic.
At the conclusion of this posting, you will find a short--around four minutes--video that features the Pep Band and the Cheerleaders. I will try to get a clearer video for viewing.
And, of course, you can enjoy a slide show from today's pictures by clicking here. Feel free, in addition, to download any photographs that appeal to you.
Welcome back everyone to the start of another term.
The week after the Trace Trail Photography Run that follows this posting, Linda, my wife, and I went to Sarasota to visit for a week her mother.
In addition to swimming a couple times at beautiful Siesta Key Beach and visiting my Aunt Bernice (88 years old), we both ate well, sat a lot with books, and I sent my usual batch of around 30 postcards.
On the left is an image of a famous Salvador Dali painting, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening Hope (1940), that appealed to me when we visited in Saint Petersburg the Salvador Museum, a stunner of a place.
I look forward to a return visit, especially as during his stay in the United States (1940-1948) Dali took a liking to baseball, as the image to the right, Untitled (Baseball and Ballerina), suggests.
If you get a chance, pay the museum a visit.
The picture of the Glossy Ibis that tops this blog entry comes from the pond by which my mother-in-law's house sits. I also found an excellent if unusual place to take pictures of other large wading birds, in the trash bin behind a shopping center. As the shot on the left indicates, Wood Storks are not amongst the most attractive birds, especially on the ground; and the immature stork pictured here reinforces the bird's less-than-endearing looks.
But what beautiful creatures in flight.
I posted a few pictures that include the White Ibis that concludes this entry.
On Monday, 7 July, my wife, Linda, and I started for Peru, NE, where I engaged in a couple days of photography along the Trace Trail in Peru, Brownville, and Nebraska City.
We spent the first night in Prairie deChien, WI, where the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers meet; instead of evening drives along the Mississippi, we huddled in our hotel room as waves of impressive thunder storms crashed through the area.
But as the image at the top of the page indicates, we got to see some of the area's beauty on our drive from Marquette, IA, to Dubuque, where we picked up highway 151 down to I 80 and on to Nebraska where we stayed Wednesday and Thursday returning to Ripon, WI, on Friday.
I have posted elsewhere--both here (especially) and at this site--material about the Trace Trail and the Sherman Memorial Area. This site in particular contains links to slide shows and a series of short films devoted to the sculptures, birds, and plants in this special area of Nebraska.
Beebalm
I work now on a video about the Trace Trail, from Nebraska City to Brownville, for the Nebraska Center for Rural Development's web page (I must check about this title.)
At any rate, as I have for the past fifteen years exited Peru in May each year and returned in August, my collection of pictures from the area does not include any May-August photographs of the trail.
But this two-day stay in Peru gave me a chance to hit the trial with my tripods and close-up equipment to experiment further with flowers and, as matters turned out, some insects.
I got pictures from Peru north and south, from Brownville north and from Nebraska City south and will continue the "campaign" in the fall.
When the first draft of the Trace Trail video gets complete, I will post it on You Tube and link it here. And soon, I will update the video on the Trace Trail Trilogy about Flora and some Fauna to include images taken during this most recent stay, including this shot of Wild Garlic.
Wild Garlic
You will find photographs on Flickr by clicking here.
In addition to the hours spent on the Trace Trail, we attended on Thursday night a play at the Brownville Village Theater, where Chet Harper directs the plays; he and the actors celebrate your number 42 for the BVT.
We enjoyed Kiss or Make Up, one of the five plays presented this season--you will find a schedule at the preceding link.
The Sculpture that Began the Latest Series of Sculptures
This Sunday, May 25, the Lincoln Journal Star ran this much-appreciated article by Kendra Waltke on Roland Sherman and his sculptures the Sherman Memorial Area feature along the Trace Trail. I talked over the telephone with Kendra for quite some time about the sculptures and hope that her article will increase interest in the Memorial Area and the Trace Trail. The preceding sculpture of a woman's name, Sara, and not the sculpture of a woman, according to Sherman family members, inspired Roland Sherman to create the series of sculptures Kendra's article addresses. For more information and links about the Trace Trail, just click here.
On Saturday, May 24, my wife and I drove to Mt. Vernon, IA, to pick up books and other "furnishings" from my daughter's dormitory room at Cornell College; classes there end on Wednesday, May 28. Anyway, on the way back, we visited the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, which features, among other things, the William Black, a river dredger captured in the following picture.
The William Black
For years on my drives through Dubuque on my way to and from Peru, I have given thought to swinging by the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in the Port of Dubuque by the river-- and surrounded by gambling establishments, just like, I suppose, in the "old days." The William Black in particular impressed me--I postedmore images of the ship and a couple from inside the museum. The aquariums hold some impressively large Gar and Catfish.
On Saturday, May 17, I traveled to Lodi, WI, to visit a marsh there with my Botanist friend Beth Middleton. Beth works for the USGS at its National Wetlands Research Center in the heart of Cajun country, Lafayette, Louisiana.
Owing to a very late spring, the Marsh Marigolds pictured to the left--one of the many wetlands plants the marsh features--remained in beautiful bloom.
Lodi Marsh is owned by the DNR and became in 2002 a State Natural Area. In addition to the Skunk Cabbage--pictured on the right--that informs the area, the marsh also supports a number of threatened prairie moths I hope to get pictures of early in August.
Beth works to get this site included on the Ramsar List, marking the area as a wetland of international significance. You can at this site read a bit about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran.
I posted photograhs from this area of prairie (Burr Oak) and wetland (Marsh Cat Tails) through which flows Spring Creek, whose cool, spring-fed waters support native Brown Trout.
I will return over the summer to this area and plan to add more photographs to the slide show and to land a trout or two.
My Botany friend Beth asked me to add the following photograph of the plentiful granite rocks scattered throughout the marsh area. She wrote me that "these are small glacial rocks in the stream created by the springs, which form the heart of the hydrology of these calcareous fens. Because this area was at the very edge of the glacier, and at the edge of the Driftless Area, the limestone bedrock is intact and visible on the bluffs. The small rounded granite rocks were deposited by a thin layer of glaciar covering the limestone bedrock."
Small Granite Rocks at Lodi Marsh
The rather unique geology of the area also affects in special ways the flora and the fauna. As Beth points out, " The Lodi Marsh State Natural Area (SNA) in Dane County, Wisconsin (USA) is reported to have a large number of unusual prairie moth species, which depend on the fen/dry prairie gradient. Unusual pollinators are found in these high quality habitats including the Silphium borer moth (Papaipema silphii; federally endangered species); Papaipema nelita; Papaipema rutila (Mayapple Borer Moth); Papaipema beeriana (Blazing Star Borer); Otto Skipper (Hesperia ottoe); Euxoa spp.; Richia grotei; and Newman’s brocade (Meropleon ambifuscum), following collections in the past years."
The previous Wisconsin DNR link adds further information in this regard. Lodi Marsh supports an extraordinary high moth diversity because, as Beth's preceding graphic undercores, of area's rare wet-fen-dry-prairie transition, the intact Oak Savanna (Burr Oak abound), and the fact that the moths use this entire gradient. And I hope later in the summer to get lucky and include some pictures of the moths, beginning in August. Click on the links for further information and some photographs of the species in question.
On May 27, I made a quick trip to Lodi Marsh and took more photographs, mostly of the flowers, for I experiment with a new macro camera lens. You can view these new shots on the link to the photography slide show.
I had planned some fishing, but Linda, my wife, and I took long walk instead on the trail and then slipped down to the marsh--tall grass and some tricky footing shorted the trip. We will wear boots next time.
I will return in a month.
The following flower appealed in particular to me.
On May 1, Bill Snyder, Bill Newman, Paul Hinrichs and I enjoyed a glass of wine at Whiskey Run in Brownville--and on a very pleasant evening.
Newman and I drove to Rock Port in Missouri to check out the wind farm there. As this link indicates, Rock Port, Missouri, plans to become the first completely wind-powered town in the country.
Impressive to see and to hear the thirty or so towers with the rotating blades, especially after watching for over a year the towers loaded on trucks and wondering where they all ended up.
After a union meeting in Lincoln (State College Education Association) the following day, 2 May, I rushed back to Peru to gather notes and thoughts.
The union business certainly set the stage for the evening, for I traveled south to Falls City, to the beautiful library there to talk about John Ford, John Steinbeck, and The Grapes of Wrath.
Around fifty folks--I forgot to take a picture of the people who came for the discussion and the film--attended the event; I controlled myself and stopped The Grapes of Wrath only a few times to share information and an interesting anecdote now and again
I stand here with Merle Stalder, who graciously donated the Thomas Hart Benton lithographs that Twentieth-Century Fox commissioned for the film.
If you get a chance stop by the Falls City Library and Arts Center and view the lithographs and other featured items in the Stadler Gallery.
My presentation was part of the Kansas-Nebraska Chautauqua program: Bright Dreams, Hard Times: America in the Thirties.
Commencement went very well the next day. And after turning in grades and taking care of some end-of-the-term matters, I joined my colleague Dan Holtz and headed to a pond at which we like to fish.
Although the water remains cool and the fish sluggish, we managed to pull in a few Large-mouthed Bass and a couple Bluegill, an enjoyable way to conclude a very busy term.
And for the past week in particular, I have taken quite a few pictures of the birds in my back yard.; this past week, many Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Indigo Bunting, and Baltimore Orioles visited my feeders.
I take off in the morning, Wednesday, for Ripon, Wisconsin, my home away from Peru--hard to believe that I have made this commute for fifteen years. I look forward to adding some material and to continuing the blog next fall.
On Saturday and Sunday, April 26 and 27, Peru hosted the inauguralGreat Nebraska Mushroom Festival (The preceding link includes a schedule of events) centered at the Steamboat Trace Trail Head.
The event was dedicated to the memory of Charlie Hahn, MushroomistExtrodinaire.
I did not get to see much of the action on Saturday, as I spent a good part of the day in Lincoln a the NSEA Delegate Assembly (just scroll down); however, I visited the Trail Head late Saturday afternoon to catch some of the entertainment provided by the Bunky Christensen Band; many folks continued then the search for the Morel Mushrooms pictured on the right.
Linda Tynon, pictured on the far left, organized the event with help from Beth of Canfield's Sporting Goods in Omaha, the store that sponsored the event and supplied the $100.00 first prize awarded on Sunday.
And Mark Davis, Omaha World Herald Outdoor Photographer, took part in the event on Sunday and served as a judge for the many awards:
Largest mushroom by weight Largest mushroom by size/biggest Smallest mushroom Best Mushroom Jig (hope you can dance) Best Tall Tale (accuracy counts) Youngest hunter Oldest hunter Sportsmanship – Grand Prize $100
As you can see from the left to the right, the Youngest Hunter enjoyed his prize as did the winners of the Sportsmanship Grand Prize provided by Canfields.
Check out the slide show of the event and a post-awards-ceremony walk along the Trace Trail and into the woods. You should have no problems downloading photographs that appeal to you.
Linda Tynon invited me to take part in the festival, and I was glad to help out on Sunday afternoon from 1:00-2:00. I brought along photographs of common birds and showed a film about the Trace Trail. And I talked with many people about birds and other things the Trace Trail features, including the Roland Sherman Memorial Area.
Eight of my bird photographs were awarded as prizes, and I joined the group after the awards ceremony for a walk on the trail and a search for mushrooms.
And while we did not discover any Morel Mushrooms, I enjoyed the walk and did manage to take a photograph of a Rufus-sided Towhee that flitted amidst the branches of a bush along the Trace Trail; these birds possess wonderful red eyes.
As these photographs indicate, the opening game of the Bobcat Football season attracted a large and loud crowd.
given to outstanding athletes at Peru State College. VPASA Todd Drew presented this year's awards to Leisha Tennal and Jesse Haynes pictured on the right with Dr. Todd Drew.
The game also featured the return to Peru State of a good friend of the college and of mine, Kent Propst, who begins a another career at the very school from which he graduated; Kent takes on the responsibilities of heading the Peru Foundation.
direction of Ken Meints whom we all welcome to the Peru State.
opening-day fans entertained and enthusiastic.
photographs that appeal to you.
