Category — Eco-History Tidbits

A few weeks back I found a large black woolly caterpillar walking along the edge of the sidewalk near my office.

I picked it up and it coiled into a circle and exposed bright red bands that had been hidden between rings of black bristles. Pretty impressive! I showed it to my daughters but none of us knew what it was.

Fresh out of field containers, I scavenged a paper cup with a wad of napkins for a temporary home. It worked long enough to get us home and inside but somewhere between the kitchen and the family room we set the cup down long enough to lose track of this black beauty.  Open screen-less windows make it pretty easy for quasi-pets to escape so, after a cursory search, I presumed she was settling into a cocoon in and amongst the great outdoors.

This morning there was a nasty storm - the kind of wind & rain that makes weathermen break into regular programming to give us the blow by blow. Our regularly sun-filled family room was dim with stormy purple-green light. The kids were camped out in the bathroom with our dog, Buster. He’d taken refuge in the shower, refusing to be coaxed out for even with warm-from-the-oven-sugar-cookies.

Anxious and grabbing up odds and ends on the off chance we decided to head to the spacious safety of our crawl space, I weighed my shoe options. My rubber boots were by the back door in the darkened family room. Something bright caught my eye. Suddenly it registered that there was a large bright white moth on the back of one of my black rubber boots. Storm-be-damned I got a jar, hastily stuffed in some climbing sticks, and gently nudged the impressive moth into the make shift habitat.

It was 3 or 4 inches long with white fuzzy antenna and black circles & shapes on it’s robust iridescent white wings, thorax, & head. There were watery yellow-green droplets on either side of it’s head. None of us had ever seen anything like it. There was nothing like it in our guide to the butterflies & moths of North America. While it rained and hailed, we focused on finding the name of this pretty guest.

I scrolled through several Google screens of white moths with black circles. Some of them were close. Some

of them weren’t even moths. Finally between the field guide and online info, I narrowed it down to a Giant Leopard Moth. The description of their black and red caterpillars brought back a recollection of our long lost black beauty.

Clear sky was on the horizon just as we solved 3 mysteries - what was the caterpillar, where did it go, and

what kind of moth was this. Ready for some puddle jumping, we pulled on our rubber boots and headed out to straighten our wind-blown yard.

Somewhere along the way I’ve managed to get into poison ivy. My arm is slightly swollen with one nasty looking rash painted a flaking chalky pink. Lovely. I also twisted my wrist funny while biking along the river yesterday so I’ve got this nappy wrist wrap on, too.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be filming some of the Wetland Learner activities as well as being photographed myself for a feature in the Lawrence Magazine later this summer. I think I’ll wear long sleeves.

I have to say that the poison ivy at the river seems to be thriving while the tomatoes I cleverly planted before July this year seem to be getting paler by the day. The trials of gardening in Kansas.

In today’s Dragonfly Messenger I reported on the availability of a number of historic publications through KSU’s Research & Extension. I took a lull in the afternoon to flip through Walter Balch’s 1937 bulletin on Home Vegetable Gardens. He included a horse-drawn-cultivator-friendly layout for the average 1/2 acre Kansas home garden, encouraged the autumn application of well rotted manure, and discouraged the use of imported seedlings suggesting it would be better to focus on overall production quality than force early production. My tomatoes are looking even paler now!

Wednesday Twitter-ish

Site visit to Baker Wetland, the rails-to-trails stormwater retention wetland, and Edgewood Park (not a wetland but some darn pretty soil with a stream and a grove of trees). Lots of turtles, frogs, birds, ducks, & every one of them has an attitude right now!

Wetland Wednesdays -Alison Reber

With help from the Roger Hill Volunteer Center and the Youth Volunteer Council, students enrolled in the CJHS EDGE Program have spent the last 2 Wednesdays working on wetland projects.

Last week they helped finish about 125 Wetland Learners booklets. It was slow going but we had a wonderful time visiting about the life of a junior high student. They had a good time relaying the Art for the Sky / Regal fritillary project experience.

Also, my daughter Tabitha came along to get a smidge-a-bit of the Central experience. One of the students, Sam, gave us a grand tour of my old alma mater. I’m not sure if she believed me when I said my sister, my mother and both my grandmothers had also gone to school there. (I’m only a little heart-sick that Tabby’s hell-bent on going to West where her Daddy and Uncle Rich and my father - her grandfather went to school.)

Yesterday we first went to Baker Wetland to walk through the boardwalk so they could get the feel for what the Wetland Learners would do with the booklets. Then, surprise of surprises! We got to where Rex usually does his macroinvertebrate gig and Sam goes: “I came out here with my class last year and there was this guy in the water and we had to get in and find BUGS!” I prompted, “Like what?” and she said “Like frogs and tadpoles, and beetles and stuff…” A little sketchy but we’ll take it - Congratulations - our first documented Wetland Learners play-it-forward peer-to-peer teaching. I so love it when that happens. sigh.

Next we went over to the stormwater retention area south of Douglas County Works east of Haskell University, adjacent to the Rails to Trails trail. We trekked down to the wetland area and up the berm so we could look down and across the basin (sometimes 2-dimensional words are too pale for this 3-dimensional world). The kids were surprised because it’s not like anybody guess there’s a squiggly channel of water on the other side of what appears to be a mound of mud with some tree seedlings here and there. However, it wasn’t the frogs, or the turtles, ducks, mud, etc… that really grabbed their attention. It was the cows. Just beyond the retention area, there was a pasture with a handful of cows grubbing down on what looked like absolutely divine grass. The stormy sky was undercut by late afternoon sunlight; the grass looked like cake icing green.

We walked a bit farther down the trail so I could show them the backside of a new building/walled parking area - something… The important thing was to show them the water leaving the wetland area becomes a stream but then dwindles back to a wetland and then merges with another drainage ditch to be a stream again, etc… Wetlands and streams aren’t mutally exclusive. The other big thing was to point out the soil where the construction took place. Its a nasty yellow brown. Trash in streams is visually disturbing but the sediment in the stream is smothering. My mini-monologue was disrupted by a chorus frog jumping from said sediment filled puddle to another puddle. The possum footprint didn’t help my case either. I think they more or less got the dirt on dirt - it’s all dirt, baby! Soils age and change. That’s important because when we’re talking about wetland restoration and wetland construction the soils dictate everything.

The kids took some pictures - check them out over at flickr but be patient - I haven’t cleaned them up at all yet. Enjoy….

From Johnson County, Kansas Homepage January 2008
Funding for construction of a Riverfront Park overlooking the Kansas River in De Soto was approved Thursday, January 24, by the Johnson County Board of Commissioners.

The Board authorized $56,685 from the county’s Stream Maintenance Fund for public improvements in connection with the new park. Vote to approve the funding request was unanimous by the Board.

The Stream Maintenance Fund receives royalty payments from sand removed from the Kansas River as it flows through Johnson County. The funds can be used for the cleaning and maintenance of the river upon approval of the Kansas Division of Water Resources and for development of public park lands along tributaries of and along the Kansas River.

The fund was last used in 1996 and 1997 by the Johnson County Park and Recreation District to construct a boat ramp near Cedar Creek.

Thursday’s funding authorization by the Board will be used by the city of De Soto to help finance phase one of its 50-acre Riverfront Park located along the banks of the river with a connection at Ottawa Street. The site of the park is on property of the former commercial sand dredging business operated by the Kaw Sand Company in the 1990s.

De Soto’s concept plan of the park includes a stage for festivals, concerts, and other attractions; hiking and biking trails; an informational kiosk or monument with De Soto history; picnic shelters; playground equipment, including a disc-golf course and sand volleyball area; parking areas, including a site for recreational vehicles; public bathrooms; and shower facilities for campers and RV users.

The first phase of the project now is under way, including site clearing and rough grading for the regional festival and concert viewing area to accommodate up to 2,500 visitors. That work is expected to be completed by mid-February.

Construction of a performing stage overlooking the Kansas River, grass seeding, and final grading work will start in March with completion by early summer. The first concert in the new Riverfront Park is scheduled October 11, featuring a Blues and Barbecue Festival.

Other work in the first phase, with an estimated cost of $700,000, will involve construction of the loop drive snaking through the park, public parking areas, a storm water system, and potable water system along with installation of electrical service and an irrigation pump to provide water from the river to irrigate grass, trees, and plantings at the park.

The project, which is the first Johnson County park along the banks of the Kansas River, is being developed in five phases by the city over five years with a final estimated cost of $3.5 million.

Funds for new Riverfront Park in De Soto authorized

By remembering the past we can envision our future.

Our understanding of common experiences is anchored in history and culture. When we creatively interact with the environment, we’re also building a sense for how the world should be. If people are able to find common ground, a shared vision for the future becomes within the realm of possible.

Over the years KVHA has interwoven humanities-based principles with our grant-based programs.

We need help gathering the resources to make these things happen.

What you can do:

1 - Help us find compatible partner projects or potential collaborators.

2 - Share your talents and/or volunteer your abilities.

3 - Make a financial contribution.

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs004/1101274774513/archive/1101954710829.html

Bob Burkhart, Stephanie Barrows, and I have been collaborating on a project designed to spark ideas and conversation about personal relationships within the natural world and how they carry forth into the future.

Many of you know that this topic is especially fascinating for me.

From one side of the state to the other, 10 year olds to 90 year olds, I’ve guided group discussions about where people live and what they hope is different in the future. Generally speaking, people like where they live and they hope that in the future others will valued it more than they do now.

With Mudscapes thousands of young people have worked together as neighbors to plan out their ideal watershed. Not unsurprisingly they create something that mirrors what they see in the world around them. Urban, rural, good, bad, ugly…and equally fascinating.

Several years ago Bob and I began having indepth conversations about teaching approaches that spark collaborative learning. For me when that happens it’s like a moment in time freezes and I try to become invisible before the “students” suddenly realize they’re learning from each other without “teacher-directed curriculum bumpers”. Bob and I have been refining guided storytelling techniques that build shared visions of the future.
We met Stephanie through the Wetland Learners Project. She has a talent for tenacity, a passion for poetry, and a calm capacity to channel creative chaos. She also taught me a cool word — diachronical, which means changes that happen over time. Stephanie’s been wearing the letters off her keyboard trying to work out the details for this and several other poetry endeavors.

In mid-December we hosted a poetry reading at KVHA’s office. From there we decided to launch a spring series - recording the events with the hope of connecting the poetry with several of KVHA’s other projects.

Details about the events in this series are shown above. If all goes well, we plan to hold a special event in June to share and celebrate these new endeavors. -ALR

Note: In 2008, KVHA’s WRAPS group approved $40,000 in funding to KDWP for the completion of the Elk Creek Wetland area. See Elk Creek Page

[Read more →]

Note: “Noodling” was historically a common practice in the Kansas River. There a many tall tales and stories of unfortunate outcomes of this approach to catching prized cats. The Natural History Museum at KU has a wonderful exhibit about fishing on the Kaw. According to local Lawrence lore, Jake… was dragged to his death by a “grand-daddy” cat in 18xx. Jake and his fishing partner, Abe, have been cast in bronze in sculpture at river front restaurant (what else… but) Abe & Jakes, in downtown Lawrence. Abe & Jake’s overlooks “Rock Island”, the setting for KVHA’s River Roots book Catfish Cookies. -ALR

From The Topeka Capitol Journal July 8, 2007

>>Imagine wading through waist or even chest-deep water, feeling with your feet and hands as you go. You encounter a hole and your heart rate quickens. You take a deep breath and submerge to the entrance of the hole, sticking your hand slowly inside. All of a sudden and without warning, a huge catfish chomps on your hand and the battle is on. Sound like fun? Depending on your perspective it could be, but most people have another word for it.”Different areas of the country call it different things,” said Fostana Jenkins of the typical terminology of fishing with your hands. “Some call it noodling, tickling, hogging, grabbling, but the number one thing is probably CRAZY!”

To read this article, please visit:
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/070807/out_183059434.shtml

 The first-ever handfishing season in Kansas opened June 15 and will run through the end of August. Two locations are open to handfishing:

1) the Arkansas River from the John Mack Bridge on Broadway Street in Wichita downstream to the Kansas-Oklahoma border and,

2) the Kansas River from its origin downstream to its confluence with the Missouri River.

Flathead catfish are the only species legal to take and a special permit is required ($27.15), in addition to a regular fishing license. For more information, see www.kdwp.state.ks.us.

Marc Murrell

The latest newsletter is now digitally available in all it’s 12 page glory.

Many moons ago writing for a fall 2006 newsletter began. Somewhere along the way we decided that one big newsletter might be a manageable way to demonstrate the breadth of the organization. It took a while but we finally got the whole thing written, formatted, printed, folded, and addressed. Ideally we would have been able to send out many more copies but limited funds have meant limiting many things. Don’t let the January 2007 print date deter you from enjoying the contents of this impressive publication. It’s a keeper.

PS We could definitely use a hand getting the future newsletters produced. Contributions of elbow grease or dollars would be fantastic.

The City of Lawrence sponsors WaterWise kits for area fourth graders who have completed a series of water conservation explorations. Teachers are provided with a curriculum set that leads students through an evaluation of their own water conservation practices. At the end of the project each student gets a WaterWise kit containing 10 resources for them to share with their families. Among the items are a high efficiency showerhead, a kitchen aerator, a bathroom aerator, a flow rate test bage, and an Adventures in Green Valley CD-Rom.

Alison Reber, KVHA Executive Director, visited with 60 some fourth graders at Hillcrest Elementary about Kansas’ WRAPS Program and source water protection. Students were especially interested in how the Kansas River and Clinton Lake are used for water supply. Last fall they completed a social studies unit on Kansas’ river systems and a science unit on the properties of water. A large foam-cored satellite map of the Wakarusa watershed remained at the school on loan for several weeks in order to provide teachers and students a chance to study it at length.

WRAPS groups may want to consider how classroom maps can augment their existing outreach strategies.