March 20, 2014 Vernal Equinox

From the studios of Radio Station WBEZ, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL

Jeanne Nolan is here today to be interviewed on the Morning Shift with Tony Sarabia, in honor of the first day of Spring. Jeanne is chatting about growing vegetables with the host and taking a variety of calls from the listening public. A food grower for decades and the founder of The Organic Gardener, she can advise at length on the roots and shoots that make up a garden patch. But some of the callers have some oddball questions. "My rose bush looks like something out of a science fiction movie," declares a woman from Elmwood Park. "What can I do?"

My view of the studio is from the foyer where studio guests can lounge before going on air. I am here as Jeanne's driver. She is a busy woman, the entrepreneurial driving force behind our company, and as such can benefit from extra work time while cruising the roads and expressways of Chicagoland. That's why I, a landscape construction laborer, have been drafted into the role of chauffeur. I am sporting my navy wool blazer and my Donegal flatcap, doing my best to look like Tom Branson, the earnest motorcoachman who won the heart of the master's daughter on Downton Abbey.

I'm looking at Jeanne and Tony through soundproof glass and their voices reach me via the airwaves through a little speakerbox on the foyer coffee table. Jeanne is friendly, upbeat and confidently shares knowledge about soil and sunlight gained from her seasons of experience. There is real information here. I write myself the following email:

well aerated nutrient dense soil is the foundation. outdoor composting systems go fairly dormant in the deep of winter. pumpkins need full sun, which is 8 plus hours per day. How many hours for garlic? jonathan messinger asks how to acidify his soil for growing blueberries. hot pepper or garlic spray to deter squirrels

A homeowner in Lake Forest calls about tent caterpillars attacking his tree limbs. "We usually take a manual approach to insects," Jeanne says. "If they're not doing to much damage you can just pull them off. There is something available, a little heavier duty, Bacillus thuringiensis. BT. It's a certified organic pesticide. So you can try that."

WBEZ staff pass through the corridor as the spot moves along. I am not a true NPR junkie but I listen enough to be curious and a bit starstruck by the people that work in this office. A young woman in a beige skirt and matching sweater vest walks through the door with some acquaintances. Her voluminous blond hair is striking, hanging in waves past her shoulders. She says something to her friend. I know the voice from informative features on local politicos, delivered with the perfect dash of skeptical irony. It's Lauren Chooljian. I always pictured her with dark hair.

Jeanne's spot wraps and shortly she emerges from the studio. As we prepare to leave Monica Eng appears. Monica is a dedicated food writer and advocate, and I am pleased to be introduced. She and Jeanne express mutual admiration and chat about gardening. Somehow the conversation turns to Bacillus thuriniensis, BT. Monica asks what pests were bad enough to pull out the big guns for last year and Jeanne replies that it was the cabbage worms. "I know!," says Monica. "I looked up one day and those cabbage loopers had destroyed my kale!"

We return our badges at reception and make our way to the parking lot. We step out of the lampglow of the local media. Today is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, but on the way here there was a shortlived snowfall. Now the air is getting definitely pleasant. We head north on the expressway and return to our ordinary work.

Prairie Reading List

February 22, 2014 

           Working on the Landmark wildlife crew, our days are rigorous. Documenting the animals of the Great Plains is not for the faint of heart. Hikes of up to 14 miles per day over the plains and then down and up flood-cut troughs are de rigeur. As conscientious scientists, we don't fail to record glimpses of fleeing animals, even when they come at the end of a long and trying transect. On the other hand, we always look forward to some cozy down time at the Lazy J Lodge after the workday is done. Relaxing in the glow of the heatstove, a variety of leisure pursuits pass the time. Crochet, jigsaw puzzles, and guitar strumming are among the ways we pass the time. The other day the local ranchers even gave three of us a calf-roping lesson. But the most frequent option for our down time is reading. Send a bunch of well educated millennials (and a few token misfits from generation Y) into a media starved cellular deadzone, and noses tend to get buried in books.

            I have read three very inspiring books since I have been here; namely, Buffalo for the Broken Heart by Dan O'Brien, American Bison by Dale F. Lott, and Built for Speed, on the subject of pronghorn antelope, by Dave Byers. Together these three form an edifying triplet for learning about conservation and wildlife on the Great Plains. I recommend all three to someone planning to visit the American prairie, and to those with a general interest in the native animals of our country.

            Each of these writers is either a biologist with a literary tendency or an English major that leans toward zoology. Lott writes imaginatively about the mass dying of the North American megafauna, saying that bison and grey wolves "walked together through a cloud of extinction," and emerged, respectively the smallest of the Great Plains herbivores and carnivores, the only survivors. Pronghorn were also there with them. Byers, a pronghorn specialist, shares the grind of collecting wildlife data year in and year out, and the satisfaction of riddling about the evolutionary strategies of grazing ungulates. And he shares a hilarious account of apartment hunting as a young researcher, with a sense of irony worthy of  David Sedaris. O'Brien is a novelist and professor of English whose love of the Great Plains landscape flourished immediately as he travelled through South Dakota in the backseat of a station wagon as an adolescent on vacation with his family. Since then his passion for land stewardship and conservation biology have led him to ranch for cattle, and then for bison once he realized that native North American grazers were the more ecologically harmonious livestock choice.

            All three of these books were published between 1999 and 2003, the dawn of the new millennium. Perhaps because of the time of writing and the thematic links among them, each author concludes in the same way: with a plea for the creation of a large Great Plains reserve to accommodate bison, pronghorn, and the many species that thrived on the American Serengeti. Ideologically all three are indebted to Frank and Deborah Popper of Rutgers University who suggested that much of the Great Plains be ceded back to native fauna. Some of the events of the intervening years might not satisfy the authors. For example, bison prices in Montana have crashed, and rancher O'Brien may well have fallen back on his literary trade to pay the mortgage on his spread. But one development in recent years would satisfy all three. The creation of a grasslands park on the Northern Plains is under way. The American Prairie Reserve is working to collect 3.5 million contiguous acres in Montana where the grazers and the carnivores can thrive. A creative merging of private capital, conservation science, and public policy, the project has the potential to fulfill the aspirations of these three insightful writers and many others who have dreamed of a revitalized buffalo commons.

prairie blog

check out this project I'm working on in Eastern Montana:

http://www.adventureandscience.org/2/post/2014/02/landmark-journal-tomas-ward.html

Public Transit Prophet

I'm a agent of the CIA 28 year

When I was younger I was a bad blackstone ranger

You see that guy walk up to me?

He see me a broke down homeless man

He don't know who I really am

I'm from Haiti. Where they make the dead bodies walk

You gone three days just and i wake you back up

Less than ten hours you will have to recover

Something is wrong in your mind mental stutter

But after a while you'll come back all the way

Dead less than 3 hours and you be the same person

You hear him cursin?

With the cross around his neck and the quran in the pocket of his coat

He messed up he got problems no joke

Its not a joke to say it takes 3 to make one

Holy trinity has 3 the father ghost and sun

I bang the drum for the holy ones