Newsletter title

July 2010

In This Edition

OETA Reports from the Preserve

—Bill Rinehart

Thursday, 24 June 2010, OETA visited the Preserve. OETA’s Angela Rosenkrans is shown interviewing a retired school teacher from Atlanta, GA, who was in the area attending the annual Indian Tribal Dances being held in Pawhuska at the time. Also shown in the picture are the interviewee’s daughter and her mother from Jacksonville, FL, as well as the cameraman, Edwin Wilson, and Preserve Director Bob Hamilton — both mostly hidden behind the camera.

The segment was scheduled to be shown on OETA Channel 11 after 4 July 2010, according to Rosenkrans.

OETA Reports from the Preserve

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

There were 979 people from 39 states (936) and 13 countries (43) who signed in during May. There were 567 from Oklahoma, and the next 3 highest states were Texas (38), Kansas (36) and California (32). There were 43 international visitors from 13 countries with the highest number coming from Germany (11) and Thailand (8). We added 2 new countries in May: Botswana and Libya.

The history of visitor counts for May is shown below:

Keep up the good work getting people to sign the visitor’s registry.

Docent Coverage of Season Days

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

Well done indeed, 100-percent coverage in June! Let’s try to do the same this month by filling the holes in the Docent Schedule. As of July 15th, Saturday the 24th and Friday the 30th are available for willing volunteers.

Docent Coverage of Season Days

 

Voices from the Past

—Iris McPherson

This is the third in our series Voices from the Past. Read Dick Baker’s Prairie News for September as We Start Into the Fall. You need Acrobat Reader or a similar program installed on your computer to read the PDF file.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Visitor’s Center Latitude & Longitude

Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.

Kiosk Maintenance

The manufacturer’s instructions for cleaning the touch-screen 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.

Over time, a matter of several weeks continuous operation, I have noticed that calibration of the touch-screen drifts away from the initial set-point. If you notice that the cursor isn’t under your finger when you touch the screen then restart the kiosk by unplugging it from the wall, waiting a few moments and then re-inserting the power plug. It will restart and recalibrate.

This link points to the complete Kiosk Maintenance Manual.

Back Issues

Some printed 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.

All back issues are available electronically via the links shown below. All newsletters prior to December 2007 are available in Portable Document Format (PDF), which means that you will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read these files. All newsletters from December 2007 onwards are in HTML format that is easily read using your web-browser.

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Newsletter Publication

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.