Come join the activities at the 20th Anniversary Open House at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Saturday, September 26. On that day Preserve Founders, Trustees, Donors, Barnard Family members, and the general public will gather for an afternoon of informative conservation programs.
There are two ways Docents can be a part of this milestone recognition:
Greeter at the Gateof the parking lot distributing event programs and providing directions, or serve a shift in the Visitor’s Center to handle the heavy visitor traffic there. We need about a dozen extra Docents for these important functions.
Docents who wish to offer their services should contact Kay Krebbs at the Preserve: kkrebbs@tnc.org. Please meet on the Bunkhouse porch at 11:30 a.m. for a bring-your-own lunch meeting to receive assignments and instructions. Thanks a bunch, and let’s have a great day!
No reservations are needed to join the Bison Corral Painting Party next Saturday, September 19. Docents and other friends of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve will meet at the Visitor’s Center at 10:00 a.m., then proceed to the corrals. If you are running late, drive straight to the corrals, about a mile north of Preserve Headquarters.
Joe Bob Briggs of the Preserve staff will provide equipment, paint, and instructions. Bring a lunch for the noon lunch break, and plan to be finished by 3:30 p.m. The benefits in rust prevention and appearance will make it all worthwhile.
All Tallgrass Docents are cordially invited to the annual Docent Recognition
Luncheon at the Ecological Research Station at the Tallgrass Prairie
Preserve on Saturday, November 21, at 12:15 p.m. This informal catered
luncheon is our opportunity to honor the young
Docents who have served
their first four shifts at the Visitor’s Center by presentation of service
pins. Those passing other shift milestones will be recognized as well. For
all of us, it is a great chance to catch up with fellow volunteers and
meet others.
Immediately following the Luncheon, at about 1:30 p.m., Preserve Director Bob Hamilton will lead our Fall Field Day. This will be a non-strenuous walk onto the prairie to observe native flora and fauna at this wonderful time of year. The tall grasses will be at their peak height after a delightfully rainy summer. And anyone under the impression that no wildflowers bloom in November is in for a pleasant surprise.
Docents are welcome to bring a guest to the Luncheon and Fall Field Day. It is a fine means of introducing someone to the Preserve.
See the October issue of the Docent News for more Docent Recognition Luncheon details.
The new touchscreen-enhanced kiosk began operating on August 18th, the result of efforts by a diverse team of people during course of the last three years. Additional information will be added as it is prepared in the correct format.
An anonymous donor provided the funds to complete the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Interactive Information Kiosk project. The kiosk grew out of the conceptual ideas proposed by docents David and Betty Turner, so David supervised acquisition of the touchscreen monitor and installation of the pedestal assembly since he and Betty had developed a mental picture of the end product.
David surveyed the marketplace and selected the touchscreen monitor. He then investigated pedestals, finally deciding to have one constructed by local cabinetmaker Lloyd Smith. David and Lloyd worked together to produce a very attractive combination, as you can see in the photographs below. A long-time carpenter and educator from Pawhuska, among other things on the Preserve, Lloyd also constructed the stone monument at the south entrance and the large wooden yard sign near the headquarters building.
Lloyd’s craftsmanship is excellent from the selection of oak wood, finish and fittings, to the nice touch of the oak leaf copied from one of the docent badges.
Andrew Donovan-Shead integrated the kiosk computer with the display. Knowing technology, he was surprised that it worked at the first attempt; it is all in the preparation. Andrew brought a second computer to the Visitor’s Center that he had prepared at home. Once connected, all that he needed to do was to run the calibration utility to map the active area of the screen.
In the photographs below, Lloyd is pictured on the left with Andrew on the right.
David arrived just as Andrew succeeded in getting the kiosk to work.
David launched the kiosk with some inaugural touches
regally applied. Two visitors from Michigan, exploring the shop, were pressed into
service to test the kiosk; they pronounced it good
.
Glenn Witteman and Jim Blake said that kids are attracted to the kiosk and
know intuitively how to make it work. Andrew said that his Little Brother
knew what to do without being told when he first saw it.
Andrew reconfigured the kiosk computer to login automatically. Now it self-starts without need for external intervention. Also, he disabled the screensaver so that the display remains active at all times; this shouldn’t be a problem as LCD panels don’t suffer from burn-in like CRT displays.
Interior of the kiosk pedestal is shown in the picture to the right. On the top shelf you can see the Fit-PC on the left-hand side. In the center you can see the USB hub; this expands to Fit-PC USB ports to allow connection of more than two devices beyond the keyboard and touchscreen, such as a mouse and USB memory sticks. The keyboard is stored as shown. On the bottom shelf there is space for storage, the power supplies, and the surge suppressor that you can see in the right- hand corner. The upper shelf is adjustable in height. A door lock is provided and the key is located in the drawer below the sound system behind the counter.
The kiosk can be left running at all times. Although the touchscreen instructions said that cleaning of the display requires application of a clean, dry, soft cloth only, this proved unable to remove some smeared finger-prints. I used a slightly damp, soft-paper kitchen towel with a small drop of liquid hand-soap to wipe away the smears, followed by application of a dry piece of kitchen towel.
Last week while driving on a county road about five miles east of Bartlesville I saw a cougar crossing the road about 1/10th of a mile in front of me. Although I had my camera with me, it was too fast for me to get a picture. The sighting was actually only about 30 yards from Highway 60 (Nowata Road). Two days later I was driving on a county road just east of Bison road in Bartlesville. This time it crossed the road only about 30 yards in front of me and disappeared into the brush. There is a house just about 100 yards from the sighting. The distance between the sightings is about 5 miles. I don’t know if I saw two cougars or the same one twice. In either case I felt privileged and excited to have seen it.
Now that the kiosk is deployed in its final form, it is time to look at extending its functionality. As a result of some investigation, I have discovered that enabling multi-media support is relatively straightforward. I have two examples to share with you.
First, it seemed to me that we could provide slides of the birds common to the tallgrass prairie accompanied by their characteristic songs and some words describing the habits of each species. You can see a proof of concept by following this link to see and hear the Indigo Bunting.
Second, these days video is everything and everywhere and now we can bring it to the kiosk. You can see a proof of concept by following this link, which you will remember from the 2007 Docent Reorientation if you were present then: Tombstone. This video clip is about 6 Mbytes in size, so you might not want to do this if you are connected to the Internet via dial-up.
If you look around you can see that the prairie is in the Sunflower and Aster phase. The fall season can’t be far away. Members of the Asteraceae family are composite flowers, meaning that they are not simple, but complex flowers. Most flowers have parts in a simple order: a ring of sepals, then a ring of petals, a ring of stamens, and the pistil(s) in the middle. Composite flowers, such as asters, are different. The sepals are really bracts (modified leaves) and may be in multiple layers. The petals make it look like one big flower, but look through a magnifying glass and you will find a head with many very small flowers, perhaps hundreds of them. Each seed of a sunflower is produced by one tiny flower and each flower has even smaller sepals and petals.
Sunflower Tribe: All parts of the Sunflower are resinous and aromatic. The resin is especially useful as an expectorant to clear mucous. Arrowleaf Balsamroot is said to be good in a salad. The seeds are also edible and the resinous bark can be used to make a tea that coats the throat with the sticky resins, soothing a sore throat. A tea made from Goldenweed is used for skin fungus. Sunflower seeds are rich in phosphorus, calcium, iron, fluorine, iodine, potassium, magnesium, sodium, vitamin B, niacin, vitamin D, and protein. The Jerusalem Artichoke roots are high in inulin polysaccharide, which are good for diabetics.
Aster Tribe: Some Asters are mild enough for salads. The Fleabane Daisy can be used as a diuretic. A tea of Gumweed is used for lung ailments such as asthma, bronchitis and such. A poultice of the plant is used as a stimulant to bring healing to rheumatism, sores, and rashes. Goldenrod seeds are edible as a mush or as a stew thickener. The dried, powdered plant was once used to stop bleeding on the battlefield.
[Source: Botany in a Day by Thomas J. Elpel]
Do you ever get the impression that civilisation has degenerated into an unedifying free-for-all? Like pigs gobbling at their troughs, we all seem to be out to get as much as possible of whatever is on offer. Everyone is at it, from loggers felling the Amazonian rainforest and fishers fighting over the last few cod to SUV drivers running the oil wells dry and politicians on their gravy trains. Science even has a name for the phenomenon — one that seems eerily prescient following the recent revelation about MPs’ expense claims in the UK. It is called the Tragedy of the Commons.
Four decades ago, ecologist Garrett Hardin published a ground-breaking paper on this phenomenon, arguing that when personal and communal interests are at odds, overexploitation of resources is inevitable. His tragedy of the commons referred to the destruction of communal pasture when individual herders act rationally in their own best interests, each putting as many cows as possible onto the land. The same fate, he noted, is likely to befall any shared limited resource, from the atmosphere and oceans to national parks and rivers. Over the years, and with the rise of environmentalism, Hardin’s ideas have become hugely influential.
Does this mean we are doomed to plunder the world’s resources and trash our planet? Even Hardin wasn’t entirely pessimistic.…
Find out why by following this link to read the full article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327225.700-triumph-of-the-commons-helping-the-world-to-share.html?full=true&print=true.
What can we do to help visitors to better express their engagement with the Tallgrass Prairie? Perhaps we can lead the way with Haiku on the Prairie by tapping the emotional viscera of the person experiencing the prairie in all its glory.
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting in seventeen syllables divided into three metrical phrases of five, seven, and five syllables. Traditionally, in Japanese, these three phrases are printed in a single vertical line; in English, haiku usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku.
Here’s an example: In July 2008, I was leaving money and taking honey at Southwind Farm near Collinsville; there was a moment there at the side of the road when I felt touched by the Muse.
Summer noonday heat:
Still air; quiet insect song;
Distant rooster crowed.
I don’t claim to be a poet, but this seemed to fit the occasion, a moment when I felt fully present and emotionally connected with the environment. If I am having this kind of experience on a country lane while running an errand then I am sure that you are touched in similar ways, especially when out on the Preserve.
Relax into this and send me your Tallgrass Prairie inspired haikus via email to: tgp.haiku@gmail.com. I will publish them in the newsletter under your byline. If we have good response, we will vote on the ones that best express the mystique of the prairie and post them by the visitor log. If we collect enough, we can publish a booklet. Perhaps we can encourage visitors to express their emotional response to the prairie in haiku form and, as a consequence, be more interesting; we can do that by printing a leaflet with instructions, a couple of examples, and the TGP Haiku email address for take-away.
The total number of visitors signing in during July was 790. There were 32 states (749) represented with the highest counts after Oklahoma (471) being Texas (41), California (39) and Florida and Kansas (21). There were 11 foreign countries with a total of 41 people. Germany had the most visitors with 10. Just a little history concerning number of visitors in July, we had 709 in 2006, 756 in 2007, 629 in 2008, and now 790 in 2009! We still haven’t had visitors from Wyoming, North Dakota and the District of Columbia.
Please remind the visitors to sign the guest register.
I went through the docent schedule for the years 2008 and 2009 and compared the season days open against the season days closed due to lack of anyone to open the Visitor’s Center. I have reproduced the results in the figure below.
As you can see, we are doing much better this year than last.
Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.
The manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning recommend use of a soft dry cloth only. This proved inadequate for smeared fingerprints. Soft-paper kitchen towels work well, slightly damp with a small drop of soft handsoap. Application of a dry kichen towel removes any residual moisture.
This link points to the complete Kiosk Maintenance Manual.
Back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to February 2009, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.
Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.