Behind the Scenes
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A marvelous morning of migratory bird banding
CHAMPAIGN COUNTY, Ill. – My alarm is going off as I quietly, yet eagerly, get out of bed at the dark and early time of 4 a.m. Today, I get to do something that I love and that also benefits bird conservation. I arrive just before dawn at the U. of I.’s Phillips Tract, a […]
Vivifying ikebana: Japanese flower arranging
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Sitting at the long covered tables in the heart of Japan House, I close my eyes. All 18 of us do. We are students in the Japan House class Ikebana: The Art of Japanese Flower Arrangement. Professor Kimiko Gunji is introducing our sixth ikebana arrangement, and this is our first step. My […]
Learning from chickens
About 1,200 chickens, including white leghorns, pure Columbians and brown egg-layers known as Hy-Lines, inhabit a facility designed to hold roughly 2,500 chickens. Photo by Michelle Hassel Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed. align image leftalign image centeralign image right CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The first thing I notice when […]
Bringing an enslaved potter’s story to the Met
NEW YORK CITY – As we climb the mountain of stairs that leads to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and step inside, I’m struck by the scale and grandeur of what lies before me and the complexity, beauty and discourse it offers. My family and I are entering one of the pinnacles of American artistic […]
Exploring an ancestral Maya neighborhood
Incised ceramic sherds excavated from an ancestral Maya building. Photo copyright ©2022 VOPA and Belize Institute of Archaeology, NICH. Delete Edit embedded media in the Files Tab and re-insert as needed. align image leftalign image centeralign image right CENTRAL BELIZE – We stand in the open fields of Spanish Lookout, a modernized Mennonite farming community […]
Searching the Texas brushland for a rare, temperamental plant
ZAPATA COUNTY, Texas – Our truck rumbles down a dirt road, kicking stones and swirling clouds of dust in our wake. Illinois Natural History Survey senior plant ecologist Brenda Molano-Flores, INHS researcher Janice Coons and I drive at a snail’s pace to avoid deep gullies created by flash flooding, a defining feature of this region’s […]
Waiting for the sun to set to find a rare bird
MASON COUNTY, Ill. – When most people are just getting home from their workdays, I’m about to start mine. I am a researcher studying the breeding behavior of the Eastern whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus), a cryptic bird that is primarily active after sunset as it forages on the wing for moths. So – for the summer, […]
Rescuing ancient Maya history from the plow
CENTRAL BELIZE – Things have changed since I was last in Belize in 2018, when I excavated the ancestral Maya pilgrimage site Cara Blanca. Thousands of acres of jungle are gone, replaced by fields of corn and sugarcane. Hundreds of ancestral Maya mounds are now exposed in the treeless landscape, covered by soil that is […]
Making meat much more than a meal
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The grills are already fired up as I approach the Meat Science Laboratory on the U. of I. campus. It’s midmorning on a spring day that’s chillier than it should be. Well-worn charcoal and gas grills are stationed in a wide arc on a lawn flecked with violets. In front of each […]
Building a traditional Japanese boat
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Eighteen students in bright blue happi coats gather around a 21-foot traditional Japanese riverboat sitting on the bank of the pond at Japan House at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The narrow, light-colored boat is a simple structure made of thick pine planks. Used primarily for fishing, its low sides curve gracefully […]
Creating an escape room experience
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The instructors and students are gathered around a computer screen behind two temporary rooms constructed just off the lobby of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. I watch with them as they track via webcam the progress of the players in an escape room they have created. The students playing the […]
Building back a tiny piece of prairie
OUTSIDE URBANA, Ill. – Early November may not be an optimal time to visit a tallgrass prairie in central Illinois. But if you know what to look for, as my two guides do, it’s as good a time as any. Despite recent heavy rains, the prairie looks as dry as a skull. Grass and flower […]