Pelicans and famous children

Couldn't miss PelicanFest today.

Down at Coralville lake, a number of bird and wildlife organizations put together a little festival to celebrate the migration of white pelicans through Iowa on their way to the gulf coast where they hang out in winter.

As soon as I heard about this, I knew I wanted to go. I love seeing pelicans fly overhead--and they do here, twice a year, going up or down the Mississippi flyway on their way to summer or winter residences. They fly in big Vs like geese, but they flap their wings less, and they're white with black wingtips. An awesome sight.

Often, I've seen them on our lake here in town, Cedar Lake. If they're there, I can even get a glimpse of them from my office!

I was glad we have Cedar Lake here because the pelican sightings were not great at the festival! The pelicans were on Coralville lake . . . but on the other shore from us, about a mile away! There were scopes set up so we could see them, but it was less satisfying than seeing them close up here.

Still, it was great being there, with other people who think pelicans are worth a festival! We saw some people from the local raptor center. They had wings from raptors that had died--beautiful, and a great way to see the feathers and shapes up close.

There was a big huggable pelican.

And a woman with some snakes from a nature center--wish I'd gotten a photo of the beautiful fox snake she had.

Lots of birding groups were there--Audubon groups and other ornithology groups--and I got lots of web addresses so I can see what they're up to. I'm especially excited about a listserv that lets people know what's been sighted where.

One of my favorite displays, though, was by the Prairie States mushroom group. I recognized them because we met a few of the mushroomers once a long time ago on a hike. I told the person who was there, and I told him I'd written a column about it for the local paper. The mushroom group (I think it was that guy!) had asked for permission to print it in their newsletter :-)

"Oh yes! I remember meeting you. I was at the Woodpecker Trail on my knees looking at a mushroom, and a little boy about 5 years old came up to me and said 'what are you doing?' I said 'I'm looking at this mushroom.' And he said 'That's a polypore!'"

That little boy was either Robbie or Eli!

As we drove home, I hoped that my boys will remember those early experiences in Nature and make the natural world a part of their lives. There are so many other options now--fancy phones, computers, the internet . . . will they stay in touch with nature?

And about an hour after I got back, Eli called here on his cell phone. He and Chris had "rescued" a baby rabbit that had gotten scared by a cat and run into the street. It couldn't get back up the curb and was panicking, so the boys scooped it up. It was tiny; it fit into Eli's hand.

They brought it home, and we placed it under a bush in our yard. We figured it was in shock from seeing the cat and from having trouble with the curb. The boys went back inside to get a piece of fleece to cover it, and by the time they got back, it was gone.

Magic and running

School has started, and the boys are getting settled in their routines. They're both at the high school this year.

They're getting into after school routines, too. Robbie had his trumpet lesson yesterday, and Eli had a piano and tympani lesson today (his piano teacher also teaches percussion!).

And for fun? Well, it's been Magic: the Gathering for Robbie.

It's a card game. What I figure is that it's like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, but for older kids. "It's been around LONGER than Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh," points out Robbie. It makes no sense to me.

In the summer, Robbie and his buddies would swim at the Bever Park Pool, then play Magic at our house. Now that school has started, they don't have much time. But they were here today (Friday) after school!
You can tell when they're at our house.
Eli is not interested in Magic: The Gathering. He and his buddy Chris have taken up running. I'm glad--Eli has always been a gifted runner. In elementary school, he was the fastest runner in his class. This despite the fact that he was also one of the smaller kids.

Eli and Chris have been running to Tomahawk park and back every evening. It's about 2 miles, roundtrip.


View Directions to Tomahawk Park, Cedar Rapids, IA in a larger map

I've asked Eli if he would like to run on the cross-country team and he is NOT interested. He's not a joiner! But as long and he and Chris are enjoying it together, that's fine.

Wisconsin, Take 2

It's Band Camp week for the boys this week. This means they're at a sleep-away camp M-Th to learn their marching band routine for the fall.

This year, since BOTH boys were gone, Bruce and I decided to take advantage of the empty nest and go on a trip together!

This is the first time we've done this since the boys were born. That sounds pathetic, but we don't have relatives close by to take both of them overnight, and sleepovers never seemed to occur on the same weekend for both guys. Besides, we like to travel with them . . . most of the time.

Still, a trip without the boys meant a nice B&B instead of a hotel-with-a-pool. And it meant slow food and tours with tour guides!

We set off for Madison, WI after putting the boys on the bus Monday. The weather was perfect! After a picnic lunch in Belmont, IA, we drove to Spring Green to have a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin. We've been near there so many times on trips to see the APT, but have never done a tour.

Tours were definitely pricey, but great. There were fewer than a dozen in our group, and we had a 2 hour tour of the house and grounds.

We got greeted by Sherpa, official Taliesin cat . . .

I love the way Wright "framed" views of the landscape--and used Asian art. Above all, I loved his optimism--that there could be a new and exciting way to view nature and make things.

Next, we drove on to Madison, where we had a B&B booked--a room at the Arbor House, an "environmental inn" in a historic building. We loved the location of the B&B, in Madison's "near west side." As we walked to a restaurant for dinner, we saw some cool things, like this little free library
.

flags for pedestrians to carry so they wouldn't be hit by cars when they used a crosswalk (!),
etc.

The Belgian bistro we walked to for supper had great food. Though we did decide against the moules frites, the grass-fed burger (Bruce) and chicken-tarragon salad were great.

Just across the street from the restaurant was MadCat, a local boutique for cats!

I'd hoped to find one (it's a chain of 3 in Madison) because a former student worked there--and it looked fun. It turned out to be where Meagan worked, but she wasn't working that evening.

The next day, after mushroom/asparagus eggs, pear smoothies, and tea, we ventured downtown. We started at the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW campus--it had a really nice collection--and was free. There was a great exhibit on printmaking as rhetoric (how appropriate!) and some awesome ancient Greek vases (I'm reading a biography of Socrates now, so that was timely).

I also like looking at modern/contemporary art, and they had a whole floor of that. This one made me laugh--it's called Congress of Fools!

They look pretty foolish.

From there, we wandered up to one of Madison's lakes, Lake Mendota--the student union looks over it, and there were pleasant tables under the shade.

Oops, I must have been crooked when taking that photo!

I wanted to see the capital where all those people were protesting Governor Scott Walker. Inside, some people were gathering to sing protest songs under this beautiful dome.

There were still remnants of protest about.

We had lunch at an adorable Italian place, Porto Bella , which had a charming courtyard for dining.

After lunch, we headed to the Olbricht Botanical Garden, on Lake Monona. It's famous for having a Thai Pavilion, which we visited--very beautiful!

The plantings were really nice--and this garden was free to visitors!

We were pretty tired after that, so headed home--less than 3 hours away. For a 36-hour vacation just for us, Madison was just right.

August already!

Today was Eli's last day at Pioneer. No more shoot bags and tassle bags for him! He thinks he made over $700. Pretty impressive. And I'm especially impressed that he worked so hard for so long in such awful (hot!) conditions.

Here he is with his buddies Chris and Finn at Pioneer.

He's now talking about working Pioneer again next year, maybe even being a corn measurer, who carries a heavy metal pole around to measure the shoots and the height of the corn. He may not have enough seniority to do that--may be more shoot bags and tassle bags.

Meanwhile, he is really looking forward to going back to our volunteering at the Humane Society. He misses the kitties, and I'm sure they miss him.

Robbie has also been busy working--in lawn care with his business, BAGELS. He hasn't been mowing much, but has done a lot of weeding and some mulch-shifting. It seems to be fairly steady work; every time we go to church, he gets another job from our friends there :-)

Driving to the jobs gives him some good driving practice. He's getting quite good at it.

On the days he hasn't worked, he's done some engineering--he built this binary counter out of LEGOS.

What's a binary counter? Well, ask Robbie. This device counts marbles that go down a shoot. But it counts them in binary--on or off. The marbles cause switches to go in an on or off position . . . I told him to make a movie of it and put it on YouTube . . .

I've been busy getting the guys here and there . . . haven't had much sustained time to do Coe stuff, but have been doing some freelancing. And crocheting! Here's a tiny mushroom I made.

And an armadillo!

He goes inside his shell, too.

Bruce has been going to see presidential candidates . . . of course, it's only Republicans who are campaigning, and a lot of nutty ones. He's seen Bachman, Santorum, and, today, Ron Paul. Ugh. All in the name of (political) science!

Two Vacations

First Vacation: Devil's Lake State Park, Wisconsin

Drove along the Trollway in Mt. Horeb on the way there.

We had rain the first evening . . .

But good weather the rest of the trip! We love the mountain-lake feel of Devil's Lake, and the great hiking up the bluffs.

(No family pics from Devil's Lake--they were on Robbie's Archos, which isn't working)

Second Vacation: Chicago

Went here the hottest week of the summer :-(

The view from the Hancock Tower at night was great.

Friday was a Cubs game for Eli and Bruce. Robbie and I went to the Art Institute. Robbie took some pictures of things that amused us.

Me by the spider silk blanket.

Oscar Wilde teapot.

The Dalai Lama's words in lights, going up the stairs.

Giant Shiny Bean, a.k.a. Cloudgate.

We had lunch with Mike and Susan on Saturday before heading home. Nice to have two vacations--one wilderness, one urban!

Big Corn

Eli is the first of our two boys to get an Actual Job, with a Boss, Tax forms, and a Pay Check.

What's he doing? Working for Big Corn.

He got a job cross-pollinating with Pioneer, a company that produces seed corn. The work is similar to detassling (for those of you who have done that): walking the rows of corn and enabling corn sex. It's a classic Iowa summer job . . .

I told him that he was going to be working for The Man. For those of you who don't think Big Corn is The Man, please read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

He dislikes the work very much. It's out in the hot sun, long hours (he starts work at 7:30 a.m. and they work EVERY DAY for 3 weeks, including Sundays), and unpleasant physical labor. But so far he hasn't quit. "I made $45 today," he said yesterday. He's motivated by the big bucks.

I'm slightly impressed that Big Corn provides 50 spf sunscreen (and makes the kids apply every 2 hours) and protective eyewear. I'm also glad Eli is cross-pollinating rather than detassling because he just goes to the Pioneer farm about 25 minutes north of here to work each day, rather than getting on a bus every morning at 5:30 and being bussed around the state to detassle at megafarms.

Since Pioneer raises corn seed, the seed needs to be pure. So cross pollinators make sure the correct pollen gets on the corn silks by covering the shoots (where corn cobs grow) and the tassles with bags. "Shoot-bagging" isn't too hard, according to Eli.

Tassle-bagging is a challenge as the tassles are at the top of the plants--some of which are 6-7 feet tall by now. You have to bend the corn down carefully so it doesn't break. And watch out for the wasps, spiders, Japanese beetles and flies. And corn rash (from the sharp leaves cutting one's arms . . .)

"I hate corn," said Eli yesterday.

Paint happens

Robbie didn't get a conventional job this summer, but he has been doing some work for me. He scraped and painted one side of the garage, then I had him do the fence.

He's done a good job--he needs very little supervision except for consultation about what to do first, etc. This morning, he painted without break from 8:30-11:15 (when he was STARVING and needed to stop for a sandwich.

He's always loved chores, since he was little. When I vacuumed, he'd come running and play with the attachments, pretending they were vacuums. Bruce bought him a toy vacuum, which got a lot of use.

Besides painting, he's been doing some lawn mowing. Usually the way he (and Eli) get lawn mowing jobs is that colleagues call us, and then we split the work between the two boys. Robbie was tired of sharing the work, so I told him he needed to get the work himself, rather than waiting for people to call.

So he started his own company called BAGELS: Bobbert's Awesome Green Excellent Lawn Service. He made some cards that he handed out to Coe colleagues at a summer lunch. Hope someone will call!