cockroaches in the pentagon / estimated number

Source

LEWIS H. LAPHAM, et al., The Harper’s Index Book (New York : Henry Holt, 1986)—

Percentage of Americans who never read books: 45. Estimated number of cockroaches in the Pentagon : 2,000,000. Percentage of Americans who say they don’t know how they could get along without Scotch tape: 46. Number of plastic pink flamingos sold in the US in 1985: 450,000.

Memoir | Learning from Iowa poet James Hearst

I still clearly remember the day I met Iowa poet James Hearst and his wife Meryl Hearst for the first time. I remember it in part because I have a photograph of it. It took place during my freshman year at the University of Northern Iowa (known as the State College of Iowa in those days). I was an art student, and I had just returned to Iowa from a summer in California, where I had the fortune to study pottery with a person who had been among the first women students at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany. The UNI Department of Art hosted an on-campus event in which non-art members of the faculty were invited to a gathering at the ceramics studio quonset hut, where they painted their designs on greenware pots that had been wheel-thrown by the students. In that surviving photo, I am quietly standing beside music professor Don Wendt and Meryl Hearst. James Hearst is not in the photo, but he was nearby in his wheelchair. …more>>>

Bird Posters at Hartman Reserve Nature Center

A new exhibition of twenty-five posters pertaining to birds was installed on July 1 at the Interpretive Center at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. The posters will remain on view throughout July and August 2019. All the posters can also now be viewed online.

The posters are promotions for a series of informative talks, one per month, always on the second Sunday. This is second in a series of four poster exhibitions that promote presentations on nature-related topics. The upcoming presentation include a program on nature and poetry by storyteller, poet and teacher Laura Sohl-Cryer (Sunday, July 14, at 2:00 pm), and a talk about area birds by members of the Prairie Rapids Audubon Society (PRAS) (Sunday, August 11, at 2:00 pm). All presentations are free and open to the public.

Bird poster exhibition at Hartman Reserve Nature Center

Future presentations will take place in September-October, and November-December. Each time, a new series of posters will be designed and exhibited in connection with each pair of talks. Created by Iowa-based author and designer Roy R. Behrens, these posters are digital montages, made by combining components from public domain photographs and other graphic elements.

Hartman bird poster exhibition

Hummingbird in Cat's Mouth

Hummingbird surveillance drone

Above Hummingbird-based aerial surveillance drone. Public domain.

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Dorothy Van Doren, The Professor and I. New York: Appleton , 1959, p. 128 [spouse of Mark Van Doren, mother of Charles Van Doren; her brother-in-law was Carl Van Doren]—

When Blackie [the family cat] was a half-grown kitten, I found him with something in his mouth—something that didn't look like a mouse. He is very good about giving up his prey if I insist and this time I insisted; I pried his jaws apart, there was a rush, and a hummingbird flew off at breakneck speed. How Blackie ever caught a hummingbird, I don't know; how he could hold the delicate body in his jaws without hurting it, I don't know either. But it happened; there was no mistaking the tiny size, the pointed bill, the emerald flash; and there was no doubt that it was unhurt.