Newsletter title

October 2010

In This Edition

Editorial

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

Beginning this month, we introduce video content to the newsletter. Obviously, if you are reading a paper copy then this avant-garde moving-picture technology will be unavailable. Tallgrass Docents now have a basic account with Vimeo, the video sharing service. For this to work, your computer must be capable of displaying Adobe Flash video and have Javascript enabled. If you can view YouTube videos then your computer is set correctly. For those of you who have neither Flash nor Javascript, you can click on the alternative links and download the videos to save or for display by your multimedia application. Don’t follow the links if you are using a slow dial-up connection to the Internet because it will take a very long time to retrieve these large files.

I have tested these videos with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6, FireFox, Opera, and Epiphany. All of them work except Microsoft IE6, which doesn’t justify the view-port properly — you may have better results with later versions. Apple Mac users should have no trouble at all, since Mac computers just work, which is the way computing should be.

If you have interesting video clips that you would like to share with us all, you can send them to me on disk for inclusion in the newsletter.

Docent Recognition Luncheon

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

We had absolutely delightful weather for the thirty-eight docents who attended the Recognition Luncheon, Saturday, 2 October. Lunch was excellent, the best ever. Joe-Bob Briggs smoked some beef that was delicately done, tender, and quite delicious. Tawnda, Anne, Carmon, and Anita produced hashed potatoes in cheese sauce, green beans, baked beans, and a salad, followed by a variety of pies. There was coffee and iced tea to drink. A note for next year: Joe-Bob said that he could handle a bison if he were given one to smoke.

After lunch, Dennis recognized those who had passed shift milestones. Van Vives remains way ahead of everyone else with more than two hundred shifts to his credit.

Dennis announced that he is resigning as Program Coordinator, a job that he has done well since 2003; he will be replaced by Anita Springer. Harvey Payne presented Dennis with a framed photograph of the first bison released on the Preserve.

Afterwards I went for a walk along the trails with George Pierson. The tallgrass was over our heads, as you can see in the video inset to the right, waving in the wind, giving the impression of an ocean swell, lending verisimilitude to the metaphor used by William Winchester in his book A Very Small Farm when he described the prairie grass as a wine-dark sea. Indeed, up close, the Big Bluestem shows shades of tan, brown, purple and gold.

Left-click on this link to open the source video directly or right-click and Save Link As... to download it to your computer: Whispering Grass. Don’t follow the link if you are using a slow dial-up connection to the Internet because it will take a very long time to download this large file.

New Leadership

—Dennis Bires

Those who were able to attend the Docent Recognition Luncheon early this month are aware that at year-end I will be handing off the Program Coordinator position to Anita Springer. Anita is one of the most committed and hard-working Docents our program has ever had, and I am delighted she will be taking the reins. I told Anita that if she is willing, I will continue in my capacity as Work Day Coordinator, and she kindly approved.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time as Program Coordinator, made so much easier by the talented and efficient efforts of all the other Docent Coordinators, and by the consistent and dependable efforts of the entire Docent membership. This is a remarkable group of volunteers, with whom Marian and I hope to remain active for many years. I am convinced that a change in leadership will be an occasion for the introduction of new ideas and energy, and I look forward to being an active supporter as we move forward.

Thanks to everyone in the program for making my tenure so enjoyable and productive. We’ll see you all at the Preserve.

Fall Road Cleanup Set For October 16

—Dennis Bires

There are few better ways to enjoy crisp autumn weather than by roaming the county roads on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve for a road cleanup work day. On Saturday, October 16, everyone is invited to meet at Preserve Headquarters at 10:00 a.m. to receive an assignment to clear a stretch of prairie roadway. The best approach for our fall cleanup is to drive slowly and stop only when litter appears.

A good time is guaranteed for all. Pack some food for the convivial Bunkhouse porch lunch break. We will finish by 3:00 p.m. Thanks!

Docent Day At Roundup

—Anita Springer

The annual bison roundup has begun at the preserve and November 6th has been designated as docent day. For those who wish to see this ballet up close and personal, please meet at the visitor’s center at 1:00 p.m. for a briefing. Ann will then escort us up to the pens and you are welcome to stay as long as you wish. Please feel free to invite a guest (maybe a potential docent). I suggest that you dress in warm clothes and bring a jacket. It can get chilly out there where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. See ya’ there!

A Little Swiss Prairie

—Van Vives

Achilles Schnetzer & Reto Lininger

Some of the long-standing docents may remember me talking about a unique experience that I encountered in 2006. The newer docents have not. In March of 2006 I received an email from Achilles Schnetzer, a young philosophy doctorate candidate from Switzerland telling me that he and a friend would like to visit the Tallgrass Prairie after he presents a paper at a Tucson, Arizona conference. I think a quote from that email tells a lot about him and is astounding for reasons I will tell in a moment.

For some reason, I have always been magically attracted by the wide open space of the prairie. It is very hard to explain, but I just feel this strong love for the prairie as a habitat for wildlife, for the stories it has to tell us about the past when it was frontier land and before when it was the land of the bison and the Indians. Being a philosopher, maybe my love comes from the sheer vastness of the prairie which truly allows one’s thoughts and perceptions to roam freely and endlessly….

I was immediately curious about this young man and went to Google to see if he was listed. He was and it listed some of the papers he wrote or collaborated with. The titles were Reddish Green — A Challenge for Modal Claims About Phenomenal Structure, Unique Hues, Binary and Phenomenal Composition, The Greenness of Green: Bretano on the Status of Phenomenal Green, and others relating to colors.

Photography by Achilles Schnetzer & Associates

A date and time was set for their visit. I met them at the Visitor’s Center as two young men got out of the car. To my surprise one of them was using a white cane with a red tip. This was Achilles and I realized that he was blind. He had sight until he was 13 years old. His friend, Reto Lininger, helped guide him. These two Swiss lads were dressed for the occasion, with cowboy boots and western hats.

I was set aback a little, wondering what I was to do. Achilles wanted me to lead them on a hike on the prairie. I wondered what a blind man would experience on such a walk. I soon found out that he probably got more out of it than I. He smelled the prairie, felt the wind, and touched the wild flowers, while his friend described the colors. There was no doubt that this visit to the prairie was a mystical encounter with nature.

He was thrilled with the bison that he could not see. This attraction to them has remained with him in an almost supernatural way. I sent him a small amount of bison fur and he was delighted.

The sad part comes next. After returning to Switzerland and the University of Fribourg he became very ill and is still struggling with a tenacious disease. His nemesis is ME/CFS, myalgic encephalomyelitis, a debilitating disease which sucks all energy from the body. He is bedridden at times and has suffered for four years.

Photography by Achilles Schnetzer & Associates

Despite the effects of the disease he remains with an almost spiritual attachment to the prairie. He has used the bison fur as an aid to his healing. His amazing positive spirit uplifts everyone he contacts.

I found out that ever since his youth he has been interested in conservation. He said, There was a lot of talk about pollution and the dying of forests. I took this very seriously and went out and marked all the trees that I thought were suffering and probably dying from pollution. I also went around in the neighborhood to get people signing a petition against pollution and the destruction of nature. Since at that time, my Dad was the mayor of the town, I had quite many people signing my little petition. To me, the ecological problems in Switzerland became especially apparent when I shifted my focus to ornithology.

He wrote two articles for our Newsletter a while ago. They were Protecting Locally, Destroying Globally, [November 2006], and On Nature Conservation—Quarrels With Morals, [December 2006].

And now for the real reason for me writing this is that he has established a small prairie in his back yard. Recently he sent me pictures of it and I was amazed. He bought seeds and I sent him some at his request. I never thought that the grasses and wild flowers would survive the mountain climate. His big blue stem is 7 feet tall! He has rattlesnake master five feet tall and budded. His Indian grass is flourishing. Like our prairie the flowers in bloom are mostly yellow, except his blue sage and gay feather. I was amused with the old Texas car tag in front of his prairie.

He also sent a short movie with his narration. He speaks English with almost no accent. It showed a tour of his prairie as he crawled around feeling the plants and identifying each.

During his illness he was able, with difficulty, to write a book, which was published. The title is Die Verse des erschopften Achilles [The verses of the exhausted Achilles, Ed.], at Amazon. It is all in German. He said the title is a play on words. I have to take his word for it.

I have kept communication with this amazing young man ever since his visit to the Tallgrass Prairie.

[Left-click on this link to open the source video directly or right-click and Save Link As... to download it to your computer: A Little Swiss Prairie. Don’t follow the link if you are using a slow dial-up connection to the Internet because it will take a very long time to download this large file. Editor.]

Josie Of The Prairie

—Dennis Bires

Josie Briggs had a photograph featured in the 2010 Annual Readers’ Photography Showcase, in the July/August 2010 issue of Outdoor Oklahoma, the magazine of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. The photo was titled Tallgrass King, and included two whitetail deer on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

Photography by Josie Briggs

Carmon Briggs, Josie’s mom, said: This buck is one we have watched grow over the last couple of years. When he came in last year for the first time, he had a black eye from being in a fight with another buck. He had a scar over his left eye after that. We named him Cicatriz after the John Wayne movie The Searchers.

Essential Wolves

—Chip Ward

At long last, good news. Fifteen years have passed since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and the results are in. The controversial experiment has been a stellar success. The Big Bad Wolf is back and in this modern version of the old story, all that huffing and puffing has been good for the land and the creatures that live on it. Biggie, it turns out, got a bum rap…

Follow this link and scroll down to read the full article: The Big Bad Wolf Makes Good.

Haiku On The Prairie

—Achilles Schnetzer

Blades of grass touch my feet.
Wings of birds touch the sky.
Everywhere everything touches to connect.

[Got touched by a Haiku on the Prairie? Share it with us by sending it to: tgp.haiku@gmail.com.]

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

There were 538 people from 30 states (516) and 6 countries (22) who signed in during August. There were 338 from Oklahoma, and the next 4 highest states were Texas (20), Florida (17), California and Illinois (tied at 15).

The history of visitor counts for August is shown below:

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

Docent Coverage Of Season Days

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

We slipped a bit in September.

Docent Coverage of Season Days

 

Voices From The Past

—Iris McPherson

This is the sixth in our series Voices from the Past. Read Mary McIntyre’s Docent News. 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.

2010—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2010
2009—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2009
2008—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2008
2007—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2007
2006—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2006
2005—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2005
2004—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2004
2003—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—2003
1995—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December—1995

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.