Thomas Dean & Steve Semken "Nature Writing & Publishing"

When the Leopold Heritage Group invited Thomas Dean of Iowa City to discuss the book "Grace of Grass & Water" on May 4, it was with the idea of introducing another Midwest nature writer, Paul Gruchow. Although I knew that Tom had one of the essays in the book, which contains tributes by several well-known authors to Gruchow, their colleague, I didn't realize that he had been a very valued and personal friend. The essays in "Grace..." are moving and thoughtful reflections on the varied encounters and relationships the writers had with Gruchow, whose death by suicide was tragically anticipated. He was an eloquent writer with a sense of the importance of community and an affinity for the boundary waters of Canada/Minnesota, the prairies of Dakotas and Montana, as expressed in several books including" "Grass Roots: The Universe of Home", "Journal of a Prairie Year", and The Necessity of Empty Spaces". (NOTE: The Burlington Public Library now has a copy of "Grace of Grass & Water"). After Thomas Dean shared his comments, Steve Semken publisher of Ice Cube Press, North Liberty, Ia, addressed the audience at the Arts For Living Center, Burlington. Steve first developed a newsletter entitled "Sycamore Roots" which he shared with such noted writers as Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Barry Lopez and when they responded favorably he was encouraged to continue in the publishing venue. He is particularly interested in "place-based" writings and his list of successful books continues to grow.

Although this was the last program formally scheduled by the Leopold Heritage Group for 2008, members will continue to support community efforts to raise awareness of Aldo Leopold and his writings. The ecological balance which he investigated and spoke about, is still relevant today.

We are grateful to HUMANITIES IOWA, THE RAND LECTURE TRUST, BURLINGTON FINE ARTS LEAGUE for funding support for speakers and the "Wild Words & Art" contest awards.
Thanks very much to the Burlington Hawk Eye for promotion of the series of programs, the informative articles, the contest, for the "blog"and, also, to other area media. Thanks to Des Moines Co. Conservation Foundation for acting as fiscal agent. The film series at the Burlington Public Library and accessible meeting rooms there were real assets to our programs. Special thanks to all the committee members: Jerry & Lois Rigdon, Randy Miller, Kim Perlstein, Dave Riley, Judy Johnson, Rhonda Frevert, Steve Brower, LaVon Worley, Dan Ring, Ed Whitmore, Elaine Baxter, Robert Sayre.

Excerpts from May & June Essays by Aldo Leopold

Here are parts of two more of Aldo Leopold's essays from "A Sand County Almanac", taken from the Illustrated Edition produced by Michael & Denise Sewell and Kenneth Brower, 2001, in conjunction with the Oxford University Press 1949 edition.

MAY - "Back from the Argentine"
When dandelions have set the mark of May on Wisconsin pastures, it is time to listen for the final proof of spring. Sit down on a tussock, cock your ears at the sky, dial out the bedlam of meadowlarks and redwings and soon you may hear it: the flight-song of the upland plover, just now back from the Argentine.
If your eyes are strong, you may search the sky and see him, wings aquiver, circling among the woolly clouds. If your eyes are weak, don't try it: just watch the fence posts. Soon a flash of silver will tell you on which post the plover has alighted and folded his long wings. Whoever invented the word "grace" must have seen the wing-folding of the plover...

Leopold reveals his love of fishing by sharing a trick of dangling his fly from the branch of an alder & allowing the breeze to drop it onto the pool of water above his quarry. A bit of philosophizing comes with the meditations on trout fishing.

JUNE "The Alder Fork --A Fishing Idyl"
...I sit in happy meditation on my rock, pondering, while my line dries again, upon the ways of trout and men. How like fish we are: ready, nay eager, to seize upon whatever new thing some wind of circumstance shakes down upon the river of time! And how we rue our haste, finding the gilded morsel to contain a hook. Even so, I think there is some virtue in eagerness, whether its object prove true or false. How utterly dull would be a wholly prudent man, or trout, or world! Did I say a while ago that I waited "for prudence' sake"? That was not so. The only prudence in fishermen is that designed to set the stage for taking yet another, and perhaps a longer, chance"...

Aldo Leopold Middle School

The Burlington School Board on Monday voted 4-3 to name a new west side middle school for native son Aldo Leopold, taking a mulligan on the earlier decision to name the school Hawkeye Creek, a once pleasant but later fetid stream that flowed through the area where the school is being built and for which the city's Hawkeye Sewer is named today.

The 17-acre construction site includes land that had been timber, a tree-lined-but-rundown mobile home park and a couple of houses. One of the houses and two garages were sold and relocated, the trailers moved or scrapped, and trees cleared to make way for the school. The site is within the city and abuts a residential area on the east, railroad tracks on the south, church property on the west and Sunnyside Avenue on the north.

While the decision makes this school the first building or street in Leopold's hometown named for him, viewed through the lens of Leopold's writings, is the naming appropriate?