Sandhill Cranes Lofte Theatre Bluebird Nursery Arbor Day Founder
ELK HORN
Passport Worthy: Experience Denmark without international travel. Simply drive into Iowa for the chance to visit the only working 60’ authentic Danish Windmill in the U.S., built in 1848. Tour it from top to bottom, experience a Viking smithy’s home and workshop, visit a tiny chapel and be introduced to Danish heritage and traditions like hygge.
CLARINDA
Tunes and Travels: There’s no better end destination than a oneof-a-kind musical experience at the Glenn Miller Birthplace Home & Museum. Dive even more into the culture by checking out the Nodaway Valley Historical Museum and Clarinda Carnegie Art Museum. Or join the locals in attending the Annual Craft Carnival event, Iowa’s largest handmade craft show, in October.
CRESTON
Outdoor Oasis: Hit the road and head to southwest Iowa for an abundance of fun and relaxing outdoor adventures. Take a dip or cast for fish in the Three Mile and Twelve Mile Lakes near Creston and explore the scenery at Green Valley State Park. With beautiful murals and exciting events held throughout the year, you’ll always catch the Southwest at its best.
APPANOOSE COUNTY
Slow Down: With renowned hunting and fishing grounds, miles of trails, eclectic shops and restaurants and award-winning lodging, Appanoose County has it all. Stop and explore the county’s 100+ National Register of Historic Places attractions, enjoy a weekend on the water at Rathbun Lake and rest up at Centerville’s town square jewel, The Continental Hotel
OKOBOJI
Resort Escape: Between the sparkling blue lake, concerts and locally owned lakeside restaurants, it’s no wonder visitors fall in love with the nostalgic feel of Okoboji’s resort community. Make a pit stop for thrills at Arnolds Park Amusement Park, fun in the sun at the chain of lakes and relaxation at the museums, wineries, breweries and gift shops.
MASON CITY & CLEAR LAKE
A Perfect Pair: No other destination blends world-class architecture, small-town charm and endless memories quite like Mason City and Clear Lake. Relax and recharge at one of the top beaches in America, dance the night away at the Surf Ballroom then settle in for the night in one of the luxe rooms at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Historic Park Inn.
This is your adventure. THIS IS IOWA.
CLARINDA
ELK HORN
OKOBOJI
Hey, Nebraska! Pack your bags and buckle up because adventure awaits, and it’s closer than you think. An exhilarating day trip or relaxing weekend getaway is in store in Iowa.
CRESTON
MASON CITY & CLEAR LAKE
APPANOOSE COUNTY
MARCH/APRIL
2022
FEATURES
22 Roy Swoboda
Nature photographer Roy Swoboda shares remarkable Nebraska images from across the state and talks about how he started photography as a kid in Madison County. Now he has a new young apprentice of his own. And they might never come inside again.
Story by Megan Feeney Photographs by Roy Swoboda
32
Bern Miller
Championing gentler horse training in the Panhandle, horseman, artist and teacher Bern Miller is a modernday Renaissance man who’s attracted a loyal following. Giddy-up on a safer ride for horse and handler and learn a little history along the way.
Story and photographs by Joe Arterburn
38 Bluebird Nursery
A family-owned nursery in Clarkson grows wild and beautiful plants and provides job opportunities for people living in this Czech community. Through family tragedy and industry changes, they’ve persevered to produce Nebraska-hardy plants.
Story by Megan Feeney Photographs by Brooke Steffen-Kleinschmit
54 Lofte Theatre
The Born-in-a-Barn Players at this rural Manley destination bring the magic of theater to life and nurture community ties across geographical and generational divides. Featuring comedies, musicals and dramas, a new season starts soon.
Story by Megan Feeney
62
J. Sterling Morton
Arbor Day, a tree-planting holiday, began in Nebraska City in 1872. Today, it’s celebrated worldwide. It started as the vision of one man who sought to transform the mostly treeless prairies and longed for political success beyond reach at a turbulent time in our nation’s history.
Story by James J. Kimble
J. Sterling Morton, pg. 62
Bluebird Nursery, pg. 38
Columbus Psychiatry Clinic provides comprehensive mental health services for Columbus and the surrounding area.
Our top-notch mental health experts care for all ages, including children, adolescents, adults and seniors. They offer medication management, individual therapy and couples and family therapy.
Our team can provide treatment for the following conditions:
Columbus Psychiatry Clinic 4508 38th St., Suite 165 Columbus, NE 68601
Phone: 402-562-4765
Fax: 402-562-4766
Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Accepted payer sources
Our network of preferred providers:
• Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
• Aetna.
• Midlands Choice.
• United Healthcare.
• Medicaid – Healthy Blue, NE Total Care and UHC Community Plan.
• Medicare.
• Medica Prime Solutions.
STORIES IN THIS ISSUE COME FROM:
Harrison pg. 32
Scottsbluff pg. 14
Bayard pg. 32
Gering pg. 86
Bridgeport pg. 32
Verdigre pg. 22
Meadow Grove pg. 22
Battle Creek pg. 22
Ord pg. 14
Wood River pg. 14
Gibbon pg. 84
Heartwell pg. 14
DEPARTMENTS
11 Editor’s Letter
Observations on the ‘Good Life’ by editor Megan Feeney.
12 Mailbox
Letters, emails, posts and notes from our readers.
14 Flat Water News & Trivia
Heartwell artist builds sculptures with Nebraska scrap, Ord author tickles children’s imaginations with a crane’s tale, Buffalo Bill’s unusual mouser was a feathery force, newborn calves trumpet arrival at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium, and Scottsbluff scribe inspires with steampunk. Plus: “Crane” you answer these trivia questions correctly? Answers on page 82.
46 Kitchens
It’s OK to pig out on these delicious recipes from Elk Creek farmer Travis Dunekacke and blogger Danelle McCollum. Get together with family and ham it up.
51 Poetry
Poets spring into action to welcome Nebraska’s season of warmer weather and its new possibilities for growth and beauty.
76 Traveler
Half a million daffodils bloom at Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha, talented Nebraska baseball team starts string of home games, high school jazz groups bedazzle in Norfolk, and quilters from across the Midwest hang their best at Chadron show.
84 Naturally Nebraska
Former Nebraska Life editor Alan J. Bartels encourages everyone to celebrate sandhill cranes.
86 Last Look
For Lindsey Keller, Scotts Bluff National Monument is home and a reminder of those she’s loved.
Norfolk pg. 76
Clarkson pg. 38
Manley pg. 54
Lincoln pg. 76
Omaha pg. 14, 76
Bellevue pg. 62
Nebraska City pg. 62
Elk Creek pg. 46
Olsen,
ON OUR COVER
Migrating sandhill cranes soar over the Platte River as a sure sign of spring in Nebraska.
MARCH/APRIL 2022
Volume 26, Number 2
Publisher & Executive Editor
Chris Amundson
Associate Publisher Angela Amundson
Editor Megan Feeney
Photo Editor Joshua Hardin
Design
Traci Laurie, Valerie Mosley, Open Look Creative Team
c/o Subscriptions Dept. • PO Box 430 Timnath, CO 80547 1-800-777-6159 NebraskaLife.com
SUBSCRIBE
Subscriptions are 1-yr (6 issues) for $25 or 2-yrs (12 issues) for $44. Please call, visit NebraskaLife.com or return a subscription card from this issue. For fundraising and corporate rates, call or email subscriptions@ nebraskalife.com.
ADVERTISE
Advertising deadlines are three months prior to publication dates. For rates and position availability, please call or email advertising@nebraskalife.com.
CONTRIBUTE
Send us your letters, stories, photos and story tips by writing to us, visiting NebraskaLife.com/contribute or emailing editor@nebraskalife.com.
COPYRIGHT
All text, photography and artwork are copyright 2022 by Flagship Publishing Inc. For reprint permission, please call or email publisher@nebraskalife.com.
MEMBER OF
International Regional Magazine Association
Grit and the Greater Good
MY 9-YEAR-OLD SON Neil adores trees. He likes climbing them, studying their fruit, leaves, nuts, pods and seeds, and looking for wildlife or nests in their branches.
Since we moved to our little Cass County acreage, Neil has helped my husband Adam and me plant seedlings through the Nebraska NRD tree program – black chokecherry, eastern white pine, serviceberry and American plum, among others.
Like both my sons, the trees have grown fast, but they demand care and patience. As our Nebraska Life team put together this issue, we encountered many Nebraskans committed to the sometimes-arduous work of growing trees.
It’s the watering, not the planting, that’s the toughest job, Tom Hamernik said. Tom owns Bluebird Nursery in Clarkson and enjoys tree planting as a hobby. He jokes that his family is going to take away his credit card because he buys so many NRD trees for their acreage. They won’t dare follow through. Tom has created such a nice habitat around the acreage’s pond that every year a mama wood duck hatches her babies there.
It makes me restless to get my shovel back in the ground. It also makes me proud of Nebraska City, where Neil goes to school.
As the birthplace of Arbor Day, for more than 150 years people in Nebraska City have planted trees. Wide-crowned bur oaks provide shade, towering pines inspire awe, and showy lilacs fragrance the air. Every year, the town celebrates Arbor Day with a weekend of festivities, including a children’s program that teaches about trees and the founder of Arbor Day, J. Sterling Morton. Kiddos leave with a seedling. The one Neil received his first year now stands 6 feet tall in our front yard.
There are challenges ahead for Nebraska trees – my family’s trees included. The Scotch pines at the southern border of our acreage are dying, a casualty of pine wilt disease that’s sweeping through our state. Likewise, our dozens of green ash trees are healthy now but susceptible to the imminent arrival of emerald ash borer.
Tom at Bluebird Nursery encouraged me to plant more trees immediately and to plant diverse species. A windbreak doesn’t have to be pine, he said. It can be any number of things. His advice is heartening.
We look to history for more encouragement. When residents planted trees for that first Arbor Day in 1872, Nebraska City was a mostly treeless prairie. Disaster often visited in the years that followed. Storms, disease and pests destroyed some of the planters’ efforts. But the people of Nebraska City never quit. They showed up with their shovels, their seedlings and their hope.
These Nebraska lessons of grit and contributing to the greater good are ones I want to instill in my boys. We’ll start again this spring and join countless Nebraskans in their efforts to plant trees. And then we’ll get to the hard work – of watering, fertilizing, mulching and mowing – to see it through.
Megan Feeney Editor editor@nebraskalife.com
MAILBOX
Naturally new column
I enjoyed Alan Bartels’ article “Hanging on for the Hunt,” (Naturally Nebraska, January/February 2022). It reminded me of my son and his best friend in high school in Sumner. That’s all those two ever did for fun was hunt on the back roads. The stories they would tell – good ol‘ fashioned fun.
Before my son was born, Alan was a young lad living across the road from us in Sumner. Thank you, Alan, for the inspiration. I still hunt deer, and it’s about “the hunt, not the kill.”
Emily
Eutsler
Kearney
Welcome, Megan
As usual, I sat down to read my new issue of Nebraska Life, and, as usual, I read it cover-to-cover without stopping. What a wonderful issue it is. I welcome new editor Megan Feeney. It was all excellent work. All my good wishes go out to you in your new job.
February 2022 issue of Nebraska Life are some of your best. Kudos on the variety of interesting topics about places throughout our state and the fresh writing style – and, of course, the great photos. We can’t wait for our next issue to arrive.
decided Hartington is another place I would like to go see after reading the article about Hartington (“Hartington Heartsong,” January/February 2022).
Julia McMillie Missoula, Montana
This issue of Nebraska Life truly lives up to the magazine’s goal of highlighting the variety of life in Nebraska. Kudos to Megan Feeney on her first issue. I think Chris and Angela Amundson have found an editor who can find and tell us about the good life in Nebraska.
Beverly Puhalla Pawnee City
We just got our January/February 2022 copy, and as I read the note from the new editor, I saw that her parents own Paradise in Progress Farm. We are happy customers of the farm, and know Megan’s parents, Ellen and Jim Shank, well. How cool is that? Congratulations to you all and how thrilling it must be to be close together again. We just visited Brooklyn, New York, to welcome our twin grand-babies.
Char and Mike Hon Bellevue
We are long-time subscribers and third-generation Nebraskans. We both agree that the stories in your January/
Doug and Pat Friedli Nebraska City
Publishers’ note: We are thankful the mantle has passed from one passionate and talented editor to another. Thank you for making Megan feel welcome.
Fifth-grade puppy love
I have the privilege of teaching Cosette Wagner who brought in the story, “Having a doggone good time in Nebraska City with agility,” (Flat Water News, January/ February 2022) and shared it with our fifth-grade class here at Hayward Elementary in Nebraska City. What a great article about dog training and about Cosette. She is amazing, and I am so glad that she has this opportunity to shine.
We all also had the chance to learn about training and showing dogs. The article will be going up in our office and by our classroom.
Susan Armstrong Nebraska City
Inspired by Hartington
Since the beginning of the pandemic, my husband and I have been exploring this great and beautiful state of Nebraska. I
Ben and Erin, the veterinarians, and all that they have done to make Hartington a special place to live and visit has been inspirational to me. I have hopes that families like them will encourage our young people to stay and see what they can do to make this state a great place to settle and raise a family.
Suzi Martin Nebraska City
I am so happy that you did an article on Ben and Erin. I’m very proud of them and the things they have done for this town and for Nebraska.
Angie Peitz Hartington
Seward’s last party
The January/February 2022 issue Last Look photo reminded me of a favorite spot where local college students in the 1980s (including me) used to go to park with their honey, have road parties or hike and enjoy expansive views and spectacular wide-skied sunsets.
I remember many fun occasions at a forested place on a hill north of Seward that we referred to as “Columbia-[Street] Right-Left.”
I’ll never forget when the local law thought it would be fun to mess with our party one night and snuck up with lights
off, then gunned his engine over the hill with his lights going full blast. I had no idea how so many in “that” condition, could dart off to the safety of the roadside so adroitly.
All was silent, and as the dust cleared, a voice over the loudspeaker said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Not a good place to party.” Those were the days.
Dan Oelrich Colorado Springs, Colorado
Hall County otters
I read with great interest the story on the river otter comeback in Nebraska (“Call it a Comeback – River Otters Rebound in Nebraska,” January/February 2022), as I had just experienced my own encounter with a family of three.
I was out on a sunrise photo excursion along the Platte River in Hall County and stopped to walk my dog on a public trail around a small pond adjoining the river, when I noticed three small heads pop up in an opening in the otherwise frozen pond. I thought they were beaver,
But after putting the dog in the van and grabbing my camera, it was apparent to me that these were too small – I assumed they must be muskrats.
I snapped a few shots and headed home. It wasn’t until I reviewed the images later that I realized I had found otters.
I went back morning after morning to continue photographing them. They were extremely curious of me as I carefully kept my distance and photographed from the
opposite side of the pond. The first morning I watched them disappear under the ice on the far side of the pond. They came crashing through a frozen-over opening just a few yards away. The larger male crawled out on the ice and stood on his hind legs for a better look at me.
I had an amazing several mornings with them, watching as they went about their daily routine of eating fish and playing.
Alan Shadduck Hastings
Grandpa’s still got it
Thank you for publishing my poem, “Snow comes to the farm” (January/February 2022). My grandkids think it’s pretty cool that I am still writing at almost 80.
Jerry Gronewold Kearney
Paleontological praise
Thank you for the recent articles on Charles Henry Morrill and some of Nebraska’s more notable fossils (“Natural History Hero,” January/February 2022). Just wanted to add, as a retired paleontologist, that these were finds made in the field of paleontology, which is the study of past life forms (fossils) and not under the study of archaeology, which is the study of past humans and their cultures (artifacts and relics).
My wife and I do enjoy your magazine very much here in Colorado and it comes to us through a gift subscription from good friends in Holt County.
Harley Armstrong Westminster, Colorado
Editor’s note: Thank you for your kind words and your correction. Duly noted. Some days, it feels like our brains are a little fossilized.
SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Please send us your letters and emails by March 15, 2022, for possible publication in the May/June 2022 issue. One lucky winner selected at random will receive a free 1-year subscription renewal. This issue’s winner is Susan Armstrong of Nebraska City. Email editor@nebraskalife.com or write by mail to the address at the front of this magazine. Thanks for reading and subscribing!
your stay in the heart of the Sandhills at our 6-8 person cabins starting at $175/night. Just a short walk from the brewery where you can enjoy an ice-cold select beer, brewed in-house.
Noteworthy news, entertaining nonsense
Super-sized calving at Omaha Zoo
BY MEGAN FEENEY
Two calves nudge their mamas’ teats for a suckle at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium. But unlike other Nebraska calves milling around their mommies this spring, these babies aren’t bovine.
Earlier this year, within a few weeks’ timespan, two African elephant mothers, Kiki and Claire, each delivered a baby elephant. Kiki’s birth of an African elephant calf was the zoo’s first in its 127-year history. The herd stood around the first-time
mom to protect and support her as she labored. Every elephant touched rumpto-shoulder as her baby, later named Eugenia, was born. Claire had baby Sonny later.
It takes an elephant 22 months to gestate a baby, but bringing these newborns into the world has been an effort years in the making.
Becca Wyatt, the lead elephant keeper at the zoo, began preparing the mothers before their calves were born. She trained them to prop up their front foot to give a
calf easier access to a nipple – or for the keepers to milk the cows, if necessary. Zoo staff built ramps of sand and logs for the calves to stand on to get in a better nursing position – sort of like how humans use nursing pillows.
The zoo also constructed a calf training area with a scale that takes weight by the pound since the other elephant scale weighs in increments of 10 pounds. Keepers place a toy in the spot to lure a baby in for a quick weight and future training.
The keepers resemble first-time parents, recording the nursing, sleeping, pooping and peeing. “We all text each other so happy when baby urinates,” Wyatt said.
Credit also goes to the babies’ father, Callee, who was brought in after another male didn’t work out. Callee is a perfect 10 by female elephant standards, a real Don Juan. He shares food, he intertwines trunks, he gets down on his knees to play with smaller females, and he spends the night with the cows. Whenever a female presents her rump to him, he approaches from behind, puts his trunk on the female’s back, and, if she shows willingness, he mounts and breeds her. The females can’t keep their trunks off him.
This is good news for the elephant population. For a long time, the birth versus death trends have been going the wrong way. The zoo’s babies are the only African elephants born in captivity in the U.S. this year. They are critical to creating a sustainable population. Rescued from drought-stricken Swaziland, the herd is not only growing their family – they’re keeping elephants and elephants’ wellbeing on peoples’ minds.
Mother Kiki and matriarch Jayei tend to Eugenia, the first-ever African elephant calf born at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium. Sonny was born to Claire later.
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium
be reached for comment.
Pecking back at the paparazzo
BY ALAN J. BARTELS
Photographers are often heard saying “just one last photo” as they point and shoot and keep clicking away. During a recent photo session in Ord, the subject in the viewfinder made a sharp and direct “point” of its own.
Game cameras give hunters and landowners the ability to document the animals on their property without freezing their toes off during photography safaris in the frigid days of late winter and early spring. Occasionally, one of these motion-sensing devices captures something unexpected from Nebraska’s great outdoors.
Jason Moudry, a 10-year employee of the Lower Loup Natural Resources District, was swapping out game camera memory cards at the agency’s experimental farm near Ord when he noticed something
strange – a hole in one camera’s plastic lens. Even though hunting is not allowed, Moudry thought that a stray BB might have connected with a bullseye shot.
Later that day, while scrolling past images of coyotes, a badger, whitetail and mule deer, turkeys, a pair of bobcats, porcupines and other wild critters, Moudry’s computer mouse scrolled across a shocking image that caused him to laugh out loud.
During his quest to peek into the lives of the farm’s wildlife, Moudry’s camera trap caught a curious avian visitor drawn to the camouflaged device clicking away from the gnarled trunk of an ancient ash tree.
Identified by its red cap and jackhammer of a bill, the camera-busting woodpecker gave itself away with an incriminating selfie of sorts recorded on the unfortunate camera’s very last frame. Mark one point for the woodpecker, zero points for the NRD.
Crane story lifts young nature lovers’ hearts
BY ALAN J. BARTELS
Viewing the antics of sandhill cranes often involves parking along dirt roads at dusk or hunkering down near the frosty Platte River for hours. That can be challenging for children.
Now, young nature lovers can experience the cranes’ spring migration without leaving home. Introducing Sandy Crane, follows Sandy, a sandhill crane, from the time she bursts out of her shell in northern hatching grounds, to her first migration south for winter. After her first winter in warmer environs, she and her family head for Nebraska’s Platte River in the spring.
In Nebraska, Sandy dances in the river and gets her grub on, fattening up for the big journey north and learning the final skills she needs to survive on her own.
Warner’s playful oil painting illustrations bring Sandy, her family and the rest of the natural world to life. Cranes soar in blue skies and dance with delight, lifting every reader’s spirit.
Warner hopes children who hear this story can take away the importance of conservation and know that they can face life’s challenges, like the act of growing up, while still taking time to dance.
Available through paulawarner.com Mascot Books Hardcover, $16
This woodpecker’s self-incriminating selfie shows him ending an NRD game camera with a few decisive bonks of his beak. The woodpecker could not
Lower Loup Natural Resources District
92% of 2020 grads found work or continued their education.
91% of 2020 employed grads are working in Nebraska.
83% of 2020 grads are continuing their education in Nebraska.
Pibel Lake Recreation Area, Wheeler County
Irrigation Well Monitoring
Artist welds metal to her will in Heartwell
BY MEGAN FEENEY
When doctors diagnosed a beloved member of her central Nebraskan community with cancer, artist Sally Jurgensmier opened her Heartwell showroom for the woman to come and look at her metal sculptures. The woman needed a distraction – and maybe some inspiration for her long journey ahead.
Jurgensmier felt helpless in the face of her friend’s pain until she put her talents to work. She created a small metallic sculpture for the woman that symbolized wisdom, strength and faith. It might tarnish or rust or take on different characteristics, Jurgensmier said, but it would take a lot to make that metal go away.
The woman took the sculpture with her to hospitals and treatment facilities, rubbing its contours with her hands and trying to believe life would get better. It did when, later, her doctors declared her cancer free.
Medicine healed the woman, but art provided the hope. It’s art that Jurgensmier has relied on in her own life to get through challenges like family members’
deaths and her divorce. But art is more than just a cathartic release for her – usually it’s a joyful process of welding metal to her will.
Jurgensmier creates large-scale metal sculptures – up to 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide – with pieces of scrap metal salvaged from local farms and machinery shops.
“By the time it gets to me, that scrap from farm equipment has done its job, it’s exhausted. Now it becomes part of something new,” Jurgensmier said.
Her studio and showroom are only steps away from the house where she grew up on her family’s multigenerational farm.
She honors the area’s agricultural influences in her work and often finds inspiration while walking her two dogs around the country or driving gravel roads.
Depending upon which angle you view a piece from, you might see a sunflower or a wagon wheel or a field of wildflowers.
“Even though some of my work takes on an abstract feel or idea, it’s all tied to my Nebraska roots,” Jurgensmier said.
Every May, Jurgensmier hosts a biannual open weekend at her place, called Art on the Farm, to showcase, sell and
discuss her work. She leads people around her studio, crammed with metal that she’s acquired through the years, walks them through her workspace and then exits to head to the showroom, where viewers can admire – and buy – the finished pieces.
During the summer months, Jurgensmier does the rounds at art in the park events in Grand Island, Kearney and Hastings, among others. It’s another opportunity to discuss the ideas that inspire her and to learn what people take from her work.
“In a world that’s getting bigger, I love that people are still interested in what I’m doing. As Nebraskans, we value the origins of things and the stories they tell.”
Jurgensmier’s work is also available for purchase at the Brickwalk Gallery in Kearney and Gallery on Lincoln Avenue in downtown Hastings.
Sally’s Art on the Farm is May 21 and 22. 1388 41 Road, Heartwell (308) 830-0489, sculpturesbysally.com
BJ Huchtemann
Sally Jurgensmier
“Storming is a love letter to my life here,”
Katie Weiland, Nebraska author, said. “It was the single easiest story I’ve ever written, since I was so familiar with the area and its folksy slang.”
Author pens dieselpunk love letter to Scottsbluff
BY MEGAN FEENEY
Katie Weiland grew up riding horses and hiking Scotts Bluff National Monument near her childhood home in Scottsbluff.
“I’ve always felt a deep connection to the land here,” Weiland said. “Even just the flatness of it and the wind in the winter, not to mention the cotton flying from the cottonwoods in spring or that very specific tinny sound the cicadas have in late summer.”
Being a Nebraskan has influenced this award-winning, internationally published author’s work in every way. Written under her pen name, K.M. Weiland, her reverence for home surfaces in her dieselpunk novel Storming about a barnstorming
pilot who discovers sky pirates. Dieselpunk is a fiction genre combining historical and fantastical elements – and, in this case, Scottsbluff scenery.
Weiland has not only written popularly received fiction, she’s also the author of several bestselling writing guides and mentors aspiring authors on her blog and her podcast, which has 1.5 million downloads. National and international media outlets seek out her advice on everything from outlining a novel to how best to kill off a character. (Answer: when it advances the plot or enables the story.)
Weiland’s voice is earnest and encouraging. Her vast knowledge of stories and her incisive analysis energize anyone pursuing the writing life.
Experience the Sandhill Crane migration in the Lake McConaughy, Nebraska area. With 363 species, it’s a year-round birding hotspot. Download the Lake McConaughy App in the App Store or Google Play. 800-658-4390 I-80 Exit 126, OGALLALA, NE Plan your trip at ilovelakemac.com today!
K.M. Weiland
Lame crane rid ranch of rodents in Old West Nebraska
BY TOM HESS
The hunt for “ribeye of the sky,” aka sandhill crane, is legal in seventeen states, but not Nebraska.
As many as one million members of the migratory species roost on the Platte River from February through mid-April. Unmolested by human hunters, the birds feed on corn. Anything else that they can catch also fits the bill, so to speak. Sandhill cranes are opportunists. So are people, like Luther North, a Pawnee scout who decided to put one crane’s hunting instincts to good use in 1877 at his Hooker County cabin.
After North found a crane with a broken wing, he brought it home to the
Be Inspired by Handmade Jewelry
ranch he shared with his brother, Frank, and Buffalo Bill Cody. When the weather turned cold, Luther brought the bird inside. Mice also moved in – a bad decision on their part.
The crane would stand back about a neck length from the mice’s escape route and never missed its mark as the mice scurried to escape. “After a while I got to taking them away from him,” Luther wrote. At first the crane objected, but it eventually resigned itself to its mouser role.
The bird – without a recorded name –was smart and good natured. Only one guest received a black-and-blue rebuke from its sharp beak.
Sandhill cranes often mate for life, but
after Luther let it out the following spring, it never returned. So much for fidelity. Maybe its next partner was less stingy with the mice.
Inlaid White Buffalo Pendant by designer David Rosales
CEDAR CREEK POTTERY
Featuring the work of Ervin Dixon, a country potter who makes and displays salt-glazed stoneware at his refurbished 1895 Lutheran church near Beatriceworth a day’s drive from any direction.
cups • mugs • glasses • plates
baking dishes • vases • pots
402-228-0138
Regular Hours | Mon-Sat, 10 am-5 pm
Beatrice Cedar Creek Pottery
Directions – 7 miles east of Beatrice to 80th Rd, 3/4 mile south
ART EVERYDAY ~ ART EVERYDAY ~ ART EVERYDAY
Explore Lincoln’s Best
Treasure hunt 25,000 sq-ft-plus of antiques and collectibles. You’ll find something for everyone at the Aardvark Antique Mall. Lincoln’s best kept secret!
Located off I-80 and Exit 405 Open daily, 9 am-8 pm
aardvarkantiquemall.com 402-464-5100
5800 Arbor Rd • Lincoln
SANDHILL CRANES
Challenge your brain with our Nebraska quiz. Questions by MEGAN FEENEY
1
The Platte River dating scene is excellent for sandhill cranes who find their mate before heading to summer nesting grounds. Which direction do they fly to get there?
2
Nebraska beef farmers know the power of corn in increasing weight. What percentage increase in body weight do sandhill cranes gain during their stop in the state?
3
Sandhill cranes appreciate corn leftover in fields, but how do the birds help Nebraska farmers?
4
For what reasons do sandhill cranes take off for brief flights in surrounding skies during their stay in the Cornhusker State?
No peeking, answers on page 82.
5
The Platte River is home to the largest crane roost in the world. How many cranes should Nebraska expect to visit this spring?
Jorn Olsen
Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston
6
The Crane Trust and Visitor Center in Wood River encourages guests on group tours to shout, “Kaa-rrrr-ooo” and flap their arms to attract the birds.
7 Sandhill cranes are one of the most ancient bird species in the world. The oldest undisputed fossil record is 2.5 million years old.
8 The entire global sandhill crane population passes through Central Nebraska in the spring.
9
Sandhill cranes have grayish feathers, but some appear rustcolored because they preen with mud.
10 Seeing the cranes requires booking a guided private tour two years in advance.
MULTIPLE CHOICE
11
Sandhill cranes can fly 15 to 50 miles per hour and ride thermals for hours without flapping their wings, traveling up how many miles a day?
a. 50
b. 150
c. 500
12
Sandhill cranes are monogamous, and pairings last a lifetime. Cranes dance for their mates. Which is not one of their moves?
a. Vertical leap and horizontal head pump
b. B ow and vertical toss
c. Do-si-do
13 Sandhill cranes face predators like coyotes and eagles. How do they respond?
a. Trying to kick the predator
b. Hissing and stabbing with their bills
c. All of the above
14
Sandhill cranes also face habitat loss. Still, after it was banded, one wild crane was seen after:
a. 25 years
b. 15 years
c. 35 years
15 Sandhill cranes lay 1-2 eggs per year. How long does it take a hatchling to become independent?
a. Three months
b. 10 months
c. A s soon as its parents can kick it out of the basement
MagicalWild Nebraska
Meadow Grove photographer captures images at home and throughout the state.
story by MEGAN FEENEY | photographs by ROY SWOBODA
On the opening pages, Roy Swoboda shoots the Elkhorn River near Neligh from a friend’s plane. Above, a whitetail doe steps from the cover of trees in Meadow Grove in Madison County. A long-billed dowitcher hunts in a flooded field in Pierce County. Right, prairie flowers and clover grow close to home.
ROY SWOBODA shivered beneath a sleeping bag in his blind on a 10-degree day. Although the photographer was only steps from the door to his acreage home, the woods surrounding him suggested he’d entered a wild, sylvan world. It was the result of years of effort. Swoboda forested his 35 acres close to the Elkhorn River in Madison County’s Meadow Grove by planting upwards of 8,000 trees and shrubs – caragana and white honeysuckle and linden and cedar and pine. Apple trees and hawthorn.
Swoboda has spent years capturing outdoors images for Nebraska Life readers. His pictures illustrate the beautiful abundance discoverable in every part of the state. He’s especially touched when people who can’t travel Nebraska thank him for
bringing Nebraska’s wild beauty to them. Swoboda has given back to the land he calls his own and mentored young people to embrace the outdoors.
At one point during the early days of Swoboda’s tree planting, a farmer neighbor came by. He squinted at Swoboda sweating as he hauled water and shoveled mulch.
“You must really like trees,” the farmer said.
“You must really like corn,” Swoboda laughed.
Through the years, the deer ate a lot of Swoboda’s plantings, but many resprouted. Much of the new growth didn’t have a central leader and grew up to resemble bushes more than trees. He didn’t mind.
“I wasn’t trying to make a city park. I was trying to build habitat,” Swoboda said.
That winter day in the blind with Swoboda, his 6-year-old grandson Caleb cuddled with him under the sleeping bag. In a lot of ways, Caleb was a typical 6-year-old – silly and squirmy. But, like his grandfather, as he sat in the blind and watched wildlife, he transformed into a stiller, more focused version of himself. Swoboda had given the boy a bird book, and Caleb memorized it. Even the little brown birds, so easily lumped together, had names and characteristics singular to their species.
At one point, Caleb told his grandpa he needed to go to the bathroom. Well, let’s just go in, Swoboda returned. It was pretty dang cold anyway. No, the young boy replied. Never mind. I can hold it. They sat there for another hour, watching the birds. Swoboda took photos.
SWOBODA STARTED TAKING wildlife pictures at a young age. When he was 11 years old, his father had an attorney friend who was an avid photographer. The attorney’s work had even been featured in National Geographic. Swoboda’s dad and the attorney arranged for young Swoboda to accompany the attorney on a wildlife shoot. It was a special opportunity for Swoboda.
He was one of 13 children – the second youngest – in a family that lived frugally first in Verdigre in Knox County and later in Battle Creek in Madison County. Swoboda’s dad had also insisted on planting trees and made his kids lug the buckets to water them. The family grew vegetables, canned and preserved food and raised hogs. There wasn’t a lot of money for luxuries like a camera – in the late 1970s a good film camera was still quite expensive – but a chance opportunity arose after a police cruiser flooded in Lincoln.
Swoboda’s big brother was a mechanic for the police department. After a storm soaked the backseat of a cruiser and a Nikon Nikkormat EL camera left there, the police chief instructed Swoboda’s big brother to throw it out. Instead, his brother got permission to keep it and passed it on to his dad, who sent it to Nikon for repairs. Fixed, it was given to Roy. That began Swoboda’s entry into photography. Whenever he wasn’t in school or helping with chores, Swoboda was shooting pictures. To make the money to buy or develop film, he did whatever extra farm work someone would pay him to do. He found himself especially drawn to shooting pictures of wildlife. He switched to digital soon after it was available.
Rich shades of brown in textures soft, spongy and sandy demonstrate life’s diversity. In Knox County, a coyote creeps through a field with all its senses trained. Morel mushrooms are a treasure for gourmands and for this photographer’s visual interest in Madison County. Fresh muskrat tracks along the Elkhorn River evidence a journey taken not long before.
Knox County rewarded Swoboda with shots of this fierce eagle and gentle fawn. The kestrel surveyed the landscape in Sioux County.
Swoboda hadn’t known his grandma before she passed, but he’d heard the tales of how she could mimic the call of any songbird. As a kid, learning about Nebraska birds brought him closer to her in a way. Growing up, his family would put a box on their window air conditioner in the winter months and spread birdseed across it. Swoboda stood on tiptoes to watch through the windows. Later he shot pictures. Today, at his place in Meadow Grove, he refills the feeders with three gallons of seed a day. For him, the beauty of photography is that it can capture a moment in time that will never happen the same way again.
There was the morning a bobcat padded across the field. Roy barely got a shot off before it disappeared. On another morning, lightning and thunder woke him. The light outside the window called to him. His thoughts flashed to a nearby field of yucca in full bloom. He grabbed his lab mix Sophie – who, until she died
last summer, was his loyal photography assistant – and flew down the road in his truck.
“Just as I crested the hill, the sun came fully exposed. There were all these dark clouds overhead, and I composed several shots, and the clouds went over, and it was all gone,” Swoboda said. “I thought, no one is going to believe this. It was a magical time and magical light like I’d never seen before in my life.”
He feels lucky to share some of these incredible moments with Caleb, who is now 8. Last spring, they visited the Crane Trust in Hall County and went out into a blind. Caleb, Swoboda and Swoboda’s wife, Sherri, witnessed otters playing, geese soaring by and cranes dancing. They hope to return this year.
After all, Caleb has a point-and-shoot camera that grandpa gave him. And there’s so much Nebraska to see.
Swoboda’s got friends in high places above Antelope County. Back home, a yellow warbler and a green lacewing pose for the camera.
A Gentler
GIDDY UP
BERN MILLER PROMOTES NATURAL HORSEMANSHIP IN BRIDGEPORT
BERN MILLER, LEAN as a weathered fence post in his Wrangler jeans and tall black boots, leads a brown-spotted Appaloosa by a halter rope in a slow circle in his arena near Bridgeport. He speaks to the horse, Lakota, in soft, encouraging tones and points to the well-trampled ground. Lakota stops and bends one front leg. Bern makes an approving clicking sound with his mouth. Lakota kneels and settles to the ground. Bern gives her a treat. Using clicker training, 78-year-old Bern can teach any horse to lie down within a month. It’s one of many techniques Bern has drawn on to encourage and teach natural horsemanship, a gentler and safer form of training for horse and rider, in Nebraska’s Panhandle.
In Bern’s barnyard, colorful peafowl roam the yard, occasionally breaking the rural silence with piercing cries. The peacocks trail their metallic blue and green tail feathers in an extravagant train twice their body length, now and then going into full feathered display. The afternoon sun highlights the vibrant colors and eyeshaped spots.
Bern lives in a house set among corrals and shaded by a grove of towering cottonwoods with his wife Kay. His original paintings decorate the walls of the cozy home. Bern was an art and history teacher. His artwork depicts horses, horsemanship and the American West. Some pieces are abstract. As a teacher, Bern encouraged his students to explore different styles and techniques. Bern applies this same
out-of-the-box thinking to every aspect of his life.
Bern and Kay raised three boys; all have grown up and become artists. Today, he runs natural horsemanship clinics with Kay and a like-minded trainer named Andrea “Annie” Rosentrater Mills, who has stables and an indoor arena north of Bayard.
To understand natural horsemanship techniques and develop clinics, Bern dug into the past. He looked back centuries, as far back as 360 BC to a text by Greek cavalry officer Xenophon, who detailed training war horses with emphasis on praise rather than punishment. Bern learned from Assyrian, Mongol and Muslim warriors, European knights, Spanish vaqueros from the time of Hernan Cortes
story and photography by JOE ARTERBURN
and World War II horse soldiers.
He also learned much from Native American horsemanship. Lakota Sioux and Comanche trained horses to lie down so that if a rider was injured in battle or accident and unable to stand, the rider could remount. Plains tribes also mastered bridleless and jaw rope methods.
Bern incorporates all of these lessons in his clinics. He trains horses to respond to body language, such as leg pressure, weight shifting and toe pointing. Working with horses, he uses the same philosophy he once used with kids. It’s the teacher’s responsibility to make it positive and productive – not punishing. That means swapping out some of the traditional horse-riding tools, like the whip, for a horseman’s stick.
Natural horsemanship training is a methodical process requiring patience and simple gear. One of the main tools is a horseman’s stick, a 3- to 4-foot foot fiberglass rod with a length of rope on the end. It is not a striking instrument.
The stick is an extension of a human arm. It provides more reach and emphasis to a rider’s movements. With his stick, Bern can command his horse’s direction and speed simply by how he holds it. He’ll start with the stick tip on the ground. If the horse doesn’t respond to hand commands, he’ll raise it 6 inches off the ground for emphasis; raising it incrementally only if necessary.
The idea, he said, is to train the horse to respond to the lightest command. “Natural horsemanship is about being easier on the horse and easier on the rider,” he said. Not everything Miller has tried has been a success. Mounted archery didn’t go over well. Neither did garrocha, an equestrian art form that involves a 12- to 14-foot pole or lance, originally used by Spanish vaqueros to steer and control cattle.
Those trainings were never the priori-
Bern rides in a friend’s craggy pasture north of Bridgeport. Using natural horesmanship techniques, he trains in his three-sided enclosed arena at his country home, where he lives with wife Kay.
Miller and his wife became experts in natural horsemanship, a gentler form of training, in response to a tragic death in their community. “None of us thought we were the right person for the job,” Miller said. “But somebody had to do something.”
ty anyway. Bern and Kay learned about natural horsemanship as a response to addressing a tragedy in their community.
THE TELEPHONE RANG in the kitchen. When Bern answered, he knew something was wrong. His wife spoke to him in a tremulous, breaking voice. It was the only time in her decades-long emergency-room career that Kay, trained and experienced at remaining cool and unemotional in the face of trauma, called home in tears.
A 13-year-old girl had died from injuries suffered in a horse-related accident.
The girl’s family, which previously owned a gentle aged horse, had purchased a young quarter horse. The seller assured the family it had received training. The
girl mounted the haltered horse bareback. The horse broke into a run across a highway, where the girl fell, striking her head on the pavement.
There were other accidents, too, but this one pushed the Millers into the educational arena. “That’s when we decided something had to be done,” Bern said.
The girl’s death compelled the Millers to research safer, easier ways to start horses.
Around 2003, Bern and Kay started attending natural horsemanship clinics in Fort Collins and along the Front Range. Then they started putting on clinics themselves.
“None of us thought we were the right person for the job, but somebody had to do something,” Bern said.
Annie Mills drapes her body over a
horse in her arena near Bayard. Bern and a group of others watch as Mills demonstrates the Jeffery Method, a century-old step-by-step horse training that uses behavioral principles and positive reinforcement.
The diminutive Mills leads her horse to a two-step stool, places her hands on his back and lifts herself so her midsection is over the horse’s withers. She hangs briefly then lowers herself. The braid down her back bounces. This is a progression of putting more and more of herself on the horse. It’s a progression of trust.
Mills grew up riding on a farm near Elsie and has been training horses since she was a teenager. Now in her 30s, Mills has done equine-assisted therapy in a prison and was a farrier. She moved to
To understand natural horsemanship techniques and develop clinics, Bern looked to history for lessons.
Bayard and joined Bern and Kay in putting on clinics in 2006.
She describes Bern as a Renaissance man, “but I’d also say he’s a pioneer.” Bern was instrumental in establishing the first natural horsemanship club in the Panhandle, and he helped her start the first club for positive-reinforcement training. The two often put their heads together to work out horse-related problems.
“If I’m struggling teaching, he’ll give me ideas,” she said. “Or I’ll get excited about something in horsemanship, and I’ll share it. We bounce ideas back and forth.”
Also assembled the day Mills demon-
strates are Kay, once as much a rider as Bern but now grounded by arthritis; Aly Dusatko of Alliance, who clicker trains her former racehorse, Cursor, an 8-year-old thoroughbred; Megan Reimann, a rancher and trick trainer from Hay Springs; Rebecca Kolle of Antioch, an English riding coach; Jenna Croswell, an English riding student from Alliance, who owns a 3-year-old barrel-racing palomino; and Mill’s 11-year-old son, Kyler, who assists his mom by pitching hay to the horses and helping with chores.
The gathering reflects the value both Bern and Mills bring to such an event.
Bern has experience; Mills draw younger people. They’ve both studied and thought deeply about horses and training techniques. Mills is in tune with new sources of knowledge to inform her approach.
“They’re the new school,” Bern said. “I look at it like I’m a founding father of all this and she’s more aware of the new things. She starts talking about some of the horse psychology and I can’t keep up with her.”
Even though natural horsemanship is safer, it isn’t risk-free. Even Bern has suffered some bumps and bruises, not to mention a little bit of wounded pride.
Presenting his first seminar on natural horsemanship in 2005 in Harrison, Bern was bucked off in front of a large group gathered to see him demonstrate horse-handling methods.
“He cut loose to bucking and just drilled me right into the dirt. It was the hardestbuck-off I ever had, and it was right in front of all these people,” Bern said.
The crowd of cowboys, cowgirls and ranchers was stunned. “It got real quiet,” Bern said. “I knew what they were thinking.” Embarrassed, he dusted himself off and did “a bit of groundwork,” calming the horse and leading it in circles, before hoisting himself back in the saddle and continuing with the seminar.
The horse was “green,” a term used for untrained or partially trained horses. “He had a history of bucking, and I was trying to show techniques I’d been using to get him to calm down,” Bern said.
What he hadn’t taken into consideration was that the horse had never been spurred before. Bern’s touch had been light, but it had been enough to rattle the horse and set him off.
Back in the saddle, Bern questioned whether or not he should be teaching other people horsemanship if he couldn’t even stay on his mount. Then, addressing the crowd, he laughed and said he was ashamed and embarrassed.
The people assembled wouldn’t hear it. It had been an excellent demonstration, they said. Bern had shown everyone what to do if a horse bucked you off.
He didn’t lose his temper. He didn’t punish the animal. Bern kept cool, worked with the horse and got right back on.
“Center Of It All” on scenic Highway 2, along the Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway.
This is a place where tradition has nothing to do with being resistant to change.
There’s a kind of identity that’s inherent in the agricultural tradition. The straight plowed rows would still be familiar to the long-ago settlers who found their way to this place. It’s a way of life with its roots planted deep in the earth, not by chance, but by the dedicated work of many hands. And it’s a way of life that endures in Broken Bow and Custer County.
The roots are deep. The roots are strong. But they don’t keep us earthbound. They keep us growing.
Broken Bow has something for everyone. • 126 total acres of parks • New Aquatic Center • Fishing pond • Picnic and camping facilities
• Numerous playgrounds
• Bike paths and walking trails
• Visit our downtown merchants
• Restaurants and breweries
• Art galleries and museums
• Custer County Historical Society
• Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway Visitors Center
Brothers Tom , Chuck and Mike (not pictured) Hamernik took over the nursery in 2007. They have adapted to industry changes.
Bluebird nursery carries on family’s tradition of service and beauty
AS HARLAN HAMERNIK grew the Liatris wildflower seed at Bluebird Nursery in Clarkson, a farmer plowed the prairie where the original plants had grown. A customer had dropped the perennial seed off with Harlan after collecting it from the tall spikes with poofy purple blooms. Unlike other Liatris, this variety didn’t fall over. It exists today only because of the nursery.
story by MEGAN FEENEY
photographs by BROOKE STEFFEN-KLEINSCHMIT
Harlan and his wife, Shirley Hamernik, started Bluebird Nursery in 1958. Still family-owned today, it has provided major employment in the small town of Clarkson, grown and shipped tens of millions of plants throughout the United States and survived change and challenges.
Harlan and Shirley were born in Clarkson in the 1930s and grew up in the Czech immigrant community. Clarkson’s population has remained steady at around 600 people for decades. It’s the kind of place where neighborhood kids run in packs and feel welcome playing on anyone’s porch. Located three miles west of the NE-91 and NE-15 junction in Colfax County, Clarkson draws tourists every year during its annual Czech Days, a celebration with music, street dances, Czech food and a beer garden.
Harlan and Shirley graduated high school at 16 and 17, attended more school and married at 20. They hoped to buy the Clarkson newspaper and moved to Iowa so Harlan could study Linotype, a typesetting system. To support themselves,
Shirley worked as a med tech and Harlan worked in a nursery. Someone bought the paper before the could return to Clarkson, but working in the nursery had ignited another idea in Harlan for a hometown startup. He found the greenhouse building he needed for his venture in Lincoln, but first he needed funds to buy it.
“I’M VERY SORRY, young man,” the Clarkson banker said to 20-year-old Harlan. The bank couldn’t lend Harlan $500 for a greenhouse. What could he possibly do with such a thing in smalltown Nebraska? Now, if Harlan wanted a couple cows, the banker said, that was a different story.
Harlan’s dream to grow containerized vegetables, flowers, trees and shrubs wasn’t just far out for a Nebraska lending institution in the late 1950s, it was a new idea everywhere. Back then, greenhouses were mostly the domain of florists who wanted to grow cut flowers. Customers seeking plants bought them by the dozen wrapped in newspaper at the grocers.
Fortunately, nothing incentivized Harlan more than proving someone who said he couldn’t do something wrong. For the nearly 50 years that Harlan ran Bluebird, he obsessively hunted fields and forests for new seed, hired a biologist to help clone and propagate unique species, expanded his greenhouses and its offerings and traveled the world to learn as much as he could about plants.
Rod Ackerman came on board as Harlan’s science guy more than 30 years ago. He also served as Harlan’s chauffeur on domestic plant-hunting adventures. Years ago, on a trip with some other plantsmen searching for unusual plants in the Sandhills, they walked into a cafe that “hadn’t seen a stranger in years,” Ackerman said. As soon as the men walked in, “all those old ranchers stopped talking and stared.” All the outsiders except Harlan sat down, trying to be inconspicuous and just enjoy a bite. Harlan worked the room. The next thing Ackerman knew, “we had a handdrawn map of places to visit.”
“No” wasn’t in Harlan’s vocabulary. After the bank refused him, family helped buy the greenhouse, dismantle it in Lincoln and reconstruct it in Clarkson. From the start, family support and loyal employees were integral to the business’s success.
Harlan And Shirley’s three sons helped at the nursery from a young age. They plunged their shovels into the still-cool spring earth and dumped the fragrant loam into wheelbarrows. It was getting close to bedtime, but Dad told them they needed to finish one more batch. Using an electric sterilizer, they heated the soil to 170 degrees to kill weed seeds and disease organisms.
When the boys weren’t in school, they spent their time shoveling dirt, planting seeds and stapling together wooden con-
Harlan developed the Dazzler Candy Lily. This popular dwarf strain showcases radiant colors and dense blooms.
Bluebird Nursery
tainers for the nursery. Plastic pots weren’t available.
Today, the Hamernik brothers, Tom, Chuck and Mike, run Bluebird. Tom manages operations and staff. He knows his plants, but he lights up when he speaks about the trees he planted in the town park with a Nebraska Statewide Arboretum grant or the saplings he nurtures around a family-owned pond. Chuck is the numbers guy and a guitarist who plays in two bands and has spearheaded efforts to preserve the Clarkson Opera House. Like his father before him, he served as the town mayor. The youngest Hamernik brother, Mike, remains a Bluebird owner and helps with shipping. He also works as a pilot and flight instructor.
THE BROTHERS DO things a little differently than their dad did. The times have demanded it. Back when Harlan started Bluebird, it was a new business model. Other startup nurseries and plantsmen willingly shared new discoveries. The retail side of the business still thrived, and big box stores hadn’t swallowed up most of the mom and pop garden centers.
One morning in January, Tom packs plants in a cardboard box illustrated with the company logo – a bluebird with a red-blossomed flower in its beak. He stacks the finished box onto a dolly. A worker will wheel it onto a waiting truck to load.
Bluebird sells more than 1.1 million perennials, herbs, succulents, grasses and wildflowers to garden centers, landscapers, mail order firms, botanic gardens, parks and zoos each year. That day’s shipments are heading to Arkansas, Ohio and Illinois.
Workers buzz around, some bobbing their heads to pop music piped through speakers. It’s chilly in the warehouse – and in many parts of the eight acres of Bluebird’s greenhouses growing 1,450 varieties of plants. Part of growing plants hardy enough for the Midwest is to start them off cold.
On a tour, Tom points out one of Bluebird’s most beloved plants. Years ago, his dad discovered a Heuchera variation in a seedling plant and propagated it. Heuchera sanguinea, or “Snow Angel” was
Plant trends come and go. The pandemic years of home-based living has spurred succulent and cactus sales for Clarkson’s Bluebird Nursery. Success in the nursery business has required flexibility and tenacity.
the result – a plant with creamy white and green leaves and cherry pink flowers. Currently dormant, its leaves blush a subtle pink. Only a single stem on one plant heralds the coming arrival of spring. A flushed filament, so thin and new a camera lens can’t even focus on it, rises from its body’s slumber to greet a new season.
THE HEADY FLORAL
scent of lavender mixes with the sharp woody fragrance of rosemary in one of the warm greenhouses. There, Bluebird Nursery employee Sherilynn Hawkins is sowing seeds in plastic trays. She uses a device created by Harlan – a hair clipper outfitted with a spade. As the clipper vibrates, the seeds fall evenly into the rows. Then she sprinkles the entire tray with vermiculite.
Harlan used to give plants away for people to try, Hawkins said. One time a group of women from Omaha rolled up in a limousine to see the nursery. Deeply pleased, Harlan packed their vehicle so full it seemed the leaves waved goodbye from the windows.
Bluebird Nursery’s slogan is “If they’ll grow in Nebraska, they’ll grow anywhere.” It’s a promise they’ve kept with the help of employees, like Hawkins.
For “40-something” years, Hawkins has trialed the nursery’s new perennial offerings at her place, she said. She plants them on a windy hill at her acreage, where every winter temperatures regularly drop below zero. If they make it through, it builds confidence that the nursery’s customers will be satisfied too. But some of Bluebird’s offerings were never intended to live in Nebraska’s winter climate.
One frigid night in January, a critical piece of equipment failed in the succulent greenhouse. Staff rushed to salvage what they could. They stacked piles of green gummy waste on one side of the greenhouse and set up a triage station to save damaged but still-living specimens. They could potentially grow new plants from these extremities, but it would take time before the plants became sellable. Meanwhile, they had to tell customers their orders were delayed – or worse.
Longtime Bluebird employees Cathy Schroeder and Pam Hamernik – who is Chuck’s wife – are working on cuttings
When Shirley Hamernik, 85, tried to quit gardening a few years ago, her grandkids wouldn’t let her. She is glad they encouraged her to continue. As one of the cofounders of the nursery, she was the backbone of the business for many years and still often drops by to visit.
one morning a week after the event. Poking shallow holes in soil on trays, they “strike” the plant – horticulture-speak for placing a piece of a plant in a medium to grow a new plant. They have a lot of orders to fill.
“We were joking that it’s like the Biblical story of the loaves and fish and all the people to feed,” Schroeder said. “We have a lot of people to feed right now.”
“Too bad we can’t also turn some water into wine,” Pam said, raising her eyebrows and smirking at Schroeder.
They burst out laughing. Nearby, Shirley Hamernik, the 85-year-old family matriarch, who’s stopped by for a visit, leans into Pam with a wry smile and gives her a hug.
Shirley was the backbone of the business for many years. When Harlan was dreaming and scheming, she was getting payroll done and designing, writing and laying out the sales catalogs. Sometimes she filled the role of short order cook, too.
Throughout the years, various foreign groups visited the nursery to learn about its perennial growing operation as one of many stops in the U.S. One evening, a Tibetan group and their University of Nebraska-Lincoln hosts were forced to cut short a trip to Western Nebraska, because of an impending snowstorm.
Shirley had to throw together a last-minute dinner for a dozen and prepare beds in the nursery’s adjoining
The Hamernik family prides itself on being of service. They grow Nebraska hardy perennials to beautify the environment, and they have a history of service as volunteer firefighters in Clarkson and other communities. Tom and Chuck have planted trees in local parks. Chuck volunteers his time for the Clarkson Opera House and served as Clarkson’s mayor for 22 years.
“Dad was the ideas guy,” Tom said. “But the
of Bluebird. They were the ones charged with making all the big ideas a reality.” The mostly female staff said working for Bluebird helped them put food on the table while offering
bunkhouse for the Tibetan visitors. She whipped up a spaghetti dinner with pie and ice cream for dessert.
Shirley drafted a UNL professor to set the table since she was still busy cooking. The group lingered happily over dinner. Later, the Tibetan guests shoveled the sidewalks and had a snowball fight.
The next day, a university host admitted to Shirley that he’d initially been skeptical about the stop in the little Nebraska town, but seeing Bluebird and meeting the Hamerniks had been a highlight of the group’s trip.
Shirley is happy to recall the memories – even after her husband’s untimely death.
The shockwaves from a home explosion that took Harlan’s life in 2012 reverberated throughout town and around the world. A life flight helicopter rushed him to a Lincoln hospital, where he died from burn wounds. He was 76 years old.
It was a tragic irony. Harlan was one of the first people in rural Nebraska to get his EMT certification and work as a volunteer firefighter in his community. It became a family vocation. Tom, Chuck and Mike continue to serve as community firefighters in Clarkson. Mike’s son, Corbin, is an Omaha firefighter.
Harlan had retired from Bluebird five years prior to his death, but he was still pursuing his love of horticulture with a new company. H.H. Wild Plums focused on hardy trees and shrubs, like persimmon, chokecherry and wild berries.
If a plant could describe Harlan’s life, maybe it is the red-stemmed Missouri evening primrose he discovered in a Western Oklahoma wellfield and brought back to Nebraska to cultivate.
The clear, bright yellow flower thrives in tough environments and blooms through a frost – it doesn’t take a no. Harlan selected the plant from the most colorful specimens he collected and named it Comanche Campfire, for the land of its origin.
As for the nursery and its people, the Dazzler candy lilies best reflect their characteristics. Developed at Bluebird, Dazzlers come in brilliant shades of pink, yellow and orange. Each flower is beautiful on its own, but a field of them together creates an unforgettable tableau.
In late summer, every year, a native wildflower, called penstemon, blooms alongside Interstate 80 outside of War Axe State Recreation Area, east of Kearney.
For years, Harlan and Tom collected seed from the unique offering of pale
pink and purple flowers with a tube-like cup. Later, after Harlan’s death, Tom went alone.
As his dad had done, Tom warred with the roads department to delay mowing until he could collect seeds to cultivate the plant at the nursery. It was an unbelievable plant. They couldn’t get enough of it. They just needed a little more time.
Today the nursery doesn’t chase down wild plants or try to create new varieties – that was more Harlan’s hobby. Tom and Chuck devote their efforts to providing customers proven perennials and serving as a generous small-town employer. In doing so, they honor their parents’ original goals.
The nursery industry has undergone big changes since Bluebird’s beginning –more specialization, changes in popular taste, loss of family-owned garden centers and the rise of big box stores. In the past year, supply source challenges have also posed difficulties.
Bluebird is trying to find its way forward amid much uncertainty, Tom said, but one thing about the nursery’s future is beyond doubt – it will always be a proud Clarkson business that grows Nebraska hardy plants.
employees are the heart and soul
flexible scheduling for family.
Megan Feeney
Dining wine
THE EASTER TABLE spotlights ham, often cooked simply to beef up – er, pork up – its natural flavor. Other home chefs prefer to dress their hams with fruits and glazes. But there’s another, less traditional way to dine on swine this holiday. Ham-based fried rice and porky meatballs offer fresh approaches in this season of new beginnings. Or forgo the ham entirely and throw a pork shoulder in the oven or slow cooker to create crowd-pleasing sandwiches or tacos. Guests will go hog wild.
Shredded Savory Pork
With its high fat content, pork shoulder is perfect for cooking low and slow to achieve moist, tender mouthfuls. For his recipe, farmer Travis Dunekacke of TD Niche Pork in Elk Creek recommends rubbing it with garlic and spices before cooking to infuse the meat with a subtle uplifting bouquet that balances its richness.
Mix garlic and all spices together in bowl. Rub evenly across entire shoulder. Place in a roasting pan with cover. Pour beef broth on roast. Cover and cook at 250° for 4 hours 15 minutes or cook in slow cooker on low heat 8-10 hours or high 4-5 hours. Turn off heat and let sit in oven at least one hour to finish cooking and cool for handling.
Trim excess fat, pull out the bones and trim away gristle. Shred pork by hand or with forks. Mix with liquid.
Stack in a bun, throw in a tortilla or serve on its own with or without sauce of your choosing.
4 lb shoulder roast
8 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp dried & crushed oregano
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground white pepper
1/2 tsp ground red pepper
1 14.5-oz can beef broth
Ser ves 8-10
Ham Fried Rice
Our friend, food blogger Danelle McCollum at LetsDishRecipes.com, makes this dish to use up leftover ham – or any pork, chicken or beef. Stick to your ribs comfort, it’s a fun way to pack in veggies while eating a dish that feels decadent.
Heat small non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. In small bowl, whisk eggs. Add eggs to skillet and cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes. Remove scrambled eggs from skillet; chop and set aside.
Heat vegetable and sesame oil in a skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Add chili flakes and garlic and sauté for 2 minutes. Add ham. Stir-fry 1-2 minutes or until golden.
Add bell pepper and onion; stir-fry another 5 minutes. Stir in peas, rice and soy sauce.
Cook additional 3-4 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Stir in reserved egg. Sprinkle with green onions.
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp sesame oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp red chili flakes
2 large eggs
1 cup diced cooked ham
1/2 large red or green bell pepper, diced
1/2 onion, diced
1 cup frozen peas
4 cups cooked rice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 bunch green onions, sliced
Ser ves 6-8
What’s in Your Recipe Box?
Send your family recipes, and the family stories behind them, for possible publication in Nebraska Life. Submit by emailing kitchens@nebraskalife.com or by mail to the address at the front of this magazine.
Danelle McCollum
Morrill Village has everything a family vacation needs. Just 20 minutes from the bustle of Scottsbluff, you can hit the range at the public 9-hole golf course, go for a dip at the community swimming pool, stroll through the city park or pick-up a tennis match at the courts. And don’t forget to pack your tackle box and poles for some fishing at the sand pit ponds!
www.
GOOD LIFE Poetry
RICH SOIL SPEAKS to the grower in all of us. The spring awakens the need to start again and create anew. Days grow longer. Tender buds emerge on trees. Crocuses push through. Newborn calves and lambs frolic in greening grass. Our poets, near and far, celebrate the season’s return.
McCool Junction Memories
Cliff Schneider, Glendale, Arizona
Clouds of dust, plowed furrows a agriculture serenade of farm equipment humming.
Spring planting so infectious a pandemic of sorts in rural Nebraska.
Dust settles life is renewed. The last seed is laid to rest.
From Seed Again
Burns Pierce, Omaha
I plunge my hands into still-cool soil
The rich smell of loam tickles my nose Around me, robins bob and fight A red-breasted victor soars into the blue
I take off my gloves to feel the dirt
Loose and black and lovely
As it travels through my sun-starved fingers
All winter long, I’ve waited
For this moment of reconnecting With the good Nebraska earth
Dreaming of my garden –
The vegetables and the flowers
Oh, the flowers!
Such blooms we’ll have this year We’ll start from seed, again
April Poem
Denis Kaeding, Tekamah
Sun warming the fallow ground, Fruit trees budding all around, Pastures full of calves, newly born, Farmers hurrying, planting corn, Gutters full of run-off rain, Last year’s leaves plug the drain. The scent of lilacs in the air, The warmth of sunshine beyond compare, April, a key in nature’s scheme Opens the door for spring, it seems. And the door opened with her charms; Joyous summer follows to welcome arms.
Robyn Koelling
Of This, I Dream
Mellie Bronson, Caloundra, Australia
Casting wildflower seeds on last snow
Sowing “amber waves” for the dough, Corralling the geese after they mow, Heading for a hearth in evening glow. A Nebraska garden, I want to hoe.
Watching hatchlings while they learn, Building a windmill till it turns, Chasing fireflies while they burn, Gazing at storm clouds while they churn. For this, I yearn.
Leading a mule, or maybe a team, Growing everything from beets to beans, Finding a fossil or two in a seam, Planting asparagus by the stream. Of this, I dream.
Climbing cottonwoods near and far, A thriving acre under the stars, Enough space for even Ma and Pa, Cowboy kissing upon a carpet of prairie sheen. Of this, I dream.
Springtime in Nebraska
Myron Hitz, Plainview
Planting season is arriving soon.
No time now for dreaming about a harvest moon! Seeds must be planted in rested fields in April and May. When the sun is shining, it’s time to make hay. Long days at work are what farmers and ranchers do best. They help feed the world before they can rest.
What Should He Plant This Year?
Joycee
Weeks, Waverly
He looks sat the tilled garden in late April
Trying to decide what to plant
Shaking his head with indecision again Wanting to plant more but knowing he can’t.
Potatoes, tomatoes, onions and what else
He looks at his seeds once again
Oh yes, okra and maybe some melons Visualizing his late summer harvest with a grin.
He digs a row with an old handy spade And drops the seeds in steadily Then he covers them with dirt and maybe some straw Hoping a rain is in the forecast to be.
Fast forward a month and in the hot sun
This gardener waters some more
And his garden is coming alive with green leaves that abound With beginnings of a large garden in store.
After a while the vegetables will ripen And harvesting will soon begin
And the older but wiser gardener reaps what he sowed Thanking God for it all, with a grin.
NEBRASKA LIFE IS seeking poems about the freedom of summer. The Fourth of July, going barefoot, letting kids stay up late, playing outside. Feel free to send along photos, too! Poems set in specific Nebraska places are preferred. Send to poetry@nebraskalife.com or by mail to the address at the front of this magazine.
AJ Dahm
Lofte Love Lofte Love
Rural southeastern theater fosters community ties
by MEGAN FEENEY
WHEN GPS DIRECTIONS
instruct first-time visitors to the Lofte Community Theatre in the southeastern Village of Manley to take a white rock country road, it’s understandable some might hesitate. The path that winds through corn and soy fields looks like the place GPS goes to die.
But after following the road around a curve and over railroad tracks, the sight of the theater and its glowing windows shining high atop a hill reassures visitors that they’ve navigated correctly. The deep red post-and-beam performing arts center, built in 2006, pays homage to the theater’s roots.
Unlike the Lofte’s first location in a renovated hog barn, the current facility offers the comfort of climate control and plush seating. The sound of laughter and chatter leaks from the lobby’s twin double doors until ushers advise audience members to
take their seats.
The Lofte draws cast and audience members from rural and urban Nebraska, puts on six shows, special events and a weeklong children’s theater workshop each year, and serves as a second home for its Born-in-a-Barn Players. It is a place of creation, belonging and connection.
Jean Colbert is 89 years old but moves with an easy grace. Her voice possesses the quiet command of a practiced stage mom. She’s been with the Lofte since its inaugural performance of Godspell in 1977. Her son Kevin starred as Jesus. Today he is the theater’s director. One afternoon last fall, at a free performance of patriotic songs, Jean, a Weeping Water native, welcomed the audience and introduced herself this way:
“Hello. My name is Jean. I’m a member of the board, and I clean the bathrooms.” Laughter rolled through the theater.
No one can deny that Jean, a retired teacher and dairy farmer’s wife, has good comic timing. She’s also good with figures. She manages the box office, in addition to her janitorial duties. She has never starred in a production, but she’s always played a central role for the theater, beginning with making handmade tickets from construction paper during those early years. She’s also crafted volumes of scrapbooks memorializing 45 years of performances. Flipping through them on a recent evening in the lobby, Jean reminisces about Lofte friendships made across generational and geographical divides, couples who have fallen in love while performing together and people who have used the power of art to work through personal difficulties.
When Jean gets to the very first scrapbook she made, she smooths her hands across the cover and beams. The smile
Lofte Theatre
lines alongside her eyes deepen. Inside, the book, she pasted sepia-toned photos and local newspaper writeups that applauded the efforts of a young drama teacher in Weeping Water named Diane Bjornborg (now Reece) who became convinced that her community had the talent to start a local theater. The teacher found the perfect place in a farmer’s barn, just outside of town on Nebraska Highway 1.
FARMER HOWARD RATHE
scraped and power washed decades of poop and dirt out of his weathered hog barn to provide that first space for a theater. Initially reluctant to lend his building to the project because he didn’t want to move all his machinery out just to move it right back in, his wife and daughter convinced him that it was worth trying. Along with his son Les, he poured a concrete floor and installed electricity.
The community pitched in, too, washing windows and erecting a stage. A local funeral home lent folding chairs. High school kids made lights from coffee cans.
“I saw people pounding nails that didn’t even know what a hammer was before that,” Jean said. “It really brought the community together.”
The newly formed theater company expected 350 people to attend three performances of Godspell. The first show was standing-room-only – 850 people came. The barn served the Lofte’s needs for the first 29 years. Howard Rathe never did put his machinery back in it.
The Lofte’s Born-in-a-Barn Players span generations and come from rural and urban communities surrounding Manley. They unite in their love of fun and storytelling. Everyone pitches in to build sets, help with costuming and makeup, sell concessions or even clean the bathrooms.
Megan Feeney
Megan Feeney
Not even spring irises can upstage the handsome Lofte Theatre. The new barn was built in 2006 after director Kevin Colbert secured family land to use. Above, a musical audition raises the roof. The theater also showcases comedies, dramas and special events, like a childrens’ workshop.
Choosing Godspell as the theater’s first performance was risky, because although it tells a traditional story – the life of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew – it does so in a flashy bohemian way that calls for Jesus to dance around in a pair of yellow underwear.
That bit got axed. Instead, Kevin had his mom dye him a pair of yellow underwear to wear under his costume. The show was a success – even years later when the cast performed it on road. That is, until one evening performance, when Kevin didn’t wear the yellow underwear. “All the microphones cut out, and the bread we were supposed to eat was moldy,” Kevin said.
It set him up for a lifelong superstition of wearing yellow underwear for every show.
Even with its rudimentary amenities, the old theater held many wonderful memories for its players. During the earliest days, there was no men’s restroom, so the men relieved themselves in the surrounding cornfields. One evening, during intermission of a performance of Damn Yankees, the actors re-emerged from the corn still wearing their 1910 baseball uniforms. They took audience members in the parking lot by surprise – it was straight out of the film Field of Dreams
In the summer, because the building
Lofte Theatre
Megan Feeney
didn’t have air conditioning, they had to keep the side doors open. Sometimes a barn cat wandered on stage. Other times, the crickets wouldn’t quit chirping.
By 2001, the board knew they were outgrowing their old space. So they did what they’d done before – they reached out to their community for help. Lofte players sat in patrons’ living rooms and appealed for funds to erect a new building. A class of Weeping Water fourth graders rallied for the cause and emptied piggy banks. Neighbors chipped in what they could –$5 here or $10 there. They found corporate donors, too.
The board raised more than half a million dollars this way. They were set to build at the Cass County Fairgrounds, right across the road from the old theater, but the deal fell through. They were back to square one. Zoning laws made finding a rural spot a challenge.
Kevin decided to ask his grandma if they could buy 10 acres of her land in Manley. He also had to get the OK from his brother, who farmed it. Both family members supported the sale.
In the time that had passed between losing the original location and finding the new one, building costs and materials had gone up – way up. Board members gathered and redrew the blueprint. They took their plan to the United States Department of Agriculture. Because it was a barn serving a rural community, the USDA agreed to carry the loan. The agency gave the theater a 40-year fixed rate and construction began. Despite adversity, the Lofte remained faithful to its rural roots. It has also remained true to its mission to provide an artistic outlet for youth in rural Nebraska, like Lucas Hrabik of Louisville.
Past performances include the musical comedy, Spamalot, the play The Miracle Worker and the screwball comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner. Director Kevin Colbert casts new and seasoned actors in shows, ever expanding the Lofte circle to keep it dynamic and imaginative.
Photos by Patricia Heather
THE MUSIC PLAYED, but 12-yearold Hrabik froze during dance rehearsal. The choreographer peered at him expectantly. The boy tried to form words, but they got lost in the sludge of blood surging to his cheeks. The lights were too bright, too hot. Time felt like it had slowed to a stop. His feet were cement blocks.
Even though it had been his idea to sign up for his first Lofte audition in 2018 and he got a part, after his first two rehearsals, Hrabik rode home in the car crying. He told his mom he couldn’t do it anymore. It was too hard. He didn’t know what he was doing. He wanted to quit.
Fine, his mom told him. You can quit, but if you do, you have to tell Kevin to his face that you’re done. In this family, we finish what we start, she said.
Hrabik elected to stick it out. He learned he could do things he never imagined – singing on stage, dancing in front of strangers and working toward a common goal with a group of adults. Plus, it’s an escape for him from the chaos of life in a family with six rowdy boys. He likes how people at the Lofte all work together, “because, you know, sometimes with
brothers, not so much,” Hrabik said.
Four years after his first performance, now 16-year-old Hrabik speaks with the poise and self-assurance of someone much older and even laughs about how painfully shy he was when he began. A high school junior, he won’t make plans to attend a college that takes him farther than an hour’s drive from the theater. He’s committed to being a “Lofte lifer,” he said.
He’s one of many. Seventy-year-old Reece, the drama teacher who started it all, still regularly attends performances.
Not only does the theater appeal across generations, it also draws people from different parts of Nebraska together. A scan of the parking lot at any given performance reveals license plates from nearly a dozen different Nebraska counties.
The Lofte provides a unique opportunity for actors from different parts of the state to meet and become friends, too. Last fall, audience members watching the comedy The Savannah Sipping Society felt like they were spending an incredible long weekend with four gal pals, in part because the four actresses formed incredible bonds in real life.
The humanity on display at the Lofte isn’t limited to its staged dramas, musicals and comedies. Melinda Mead of Plattsmouth had a role in Jake’s Women when her sister suddenly died. Mead was there to hold her sister’s hand as she passed. Then she went to a rehearsal.
It might be difficult for non-theater people to understand why Mead carried on, but she needed to be with her Lofte family. To be able to walk on stage and occupy a different life and create art was an escape from her all-consuming sadness. Her love for the stage and the support of her Lofte family carried her through that difficult time.
“That’s who I want to be for the next new person who walks in the door,” Mead said.
The theater company also celebrates life’s happiest occasions together. Kevin and his wife Betty, the retired music director for the theater, met acting in the original Lofte theater’s production of The Music Man. They later married on stage. Their daughter Sam grew up in that theater and she acted on stage at the new one. At the beginning of 2020, Kevin walked
Friendships acted out on the stage endure after the final curtain. Players support one another through happy and difficult times.
Patricia Heather
Sam down the aisle to take on a new role as wife to Amaury Colvarro.
At the end of Sam and Amaury’s ceremony, a friend dressed as Doc Emmett Brown from Back to the Future sprinted down the aisle and proclaimed with gusto, “Sam, Amaury, your future is starting but you have to come now!” The bride and groom looked at each other in mock surprise and fled the stage.
More comedy is in store at the Lofte this year. The theater’s 2022 season begins in April with the play Harvey, which follows a man who insists on taking his invisible 6-foot-3 rabbit friend with him wherever he goes. The classic play explores the power of the human imagination.
That power thrives in the handsome theater down a white rock road in Manley. This year, the Born-in-a-Barn Players will also perform dramas and a musical. They invite audiences to come as they are, to laugh loudly, to cry and to reconnect.
Comstock Premier Lodge
•
•
In each issue you will find breathtaking outdoor adventure, mouth-watering recipes, stunning photography, captivating stories and humor from every corner of Nebraska. Whether you’re a longtime resident, newcomer or distant admirer – if you love Nebraska, then this magazine is meant for you.
The Irascible Arborist
Thwarted in politics, J. Sterling Morton turned to trees
by JAMES J. KIMBLE
Each generation takes the earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed.
– J. Sterling Morton
EVERY YEAR ON the last Friday of April, schoolchildren gather at Arbor Lodge State Historical Park in Nebraska City to celebrate Arbor Day. In the beautiful park, they learn the importance of trees and the history of Arbor Day, which began in 1872.
Julius Sterling Morton gained approval from the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture to realize his vision of creating a holiday promoting tree planting. More than 150 years of efforts have transformed Nebraska from a mostly treeless prairie to a landscape rich with trees. Morton fell short of his political ambitions, and even in his day he was a controversial, irascible figure, but his tree-planting advocacy inspired a still-thriving movement.
AN AMBITIOUS YOUNG man gazed at the view from the ferry on the Missouri River. Just beyond the rugged river shoreline stretched rolling hills, which faded into the great treeless plains of Nebraska Territory. It was Nov. 10, 1854. The rush was on. Earlier that year, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had opened the new territory to settlement claims. Nearby Omaha City was only four months old. Bellevue, an older but still rough-hewn settlement with dreams of becoming the territorial capital, was directly ahead.
Twenty-two-year-old J. Sterling Morton had grown up in Michigan hearing tales of westward American expansion and frontier
leaders. Alongside Morton was his newlywed wife, Caroline Joy Morton, one year his junior. The two had met as young teenagers at a Michigan boarding school. After more schooling in separate locales and a seven-year engagement, they married in Detroit. They left for the Nebraska Territory that same day. They gave up the comforts of well-appointed family homes, city culture and pleasures for the unknown adventure ahead.
Morton was determined to make his mark. In Bellevue, he immediately entered the political fray. He passionately advocated for the settlement to become the territory’s first capital. Omaha won it, and Morton lost a race for a seat in the Territorial Legislature. These were the first of Morton’s many political defeats. He decided to move to a place that would use his talents. He and Caroline relocated to Nebraska City, where Morton became the editor of The Nebraska City News
Passion for publishing ran in the Morton family. Morton’s grandfather, Abner Morton, founded the Detroit Free Press. His father, Julius, and uncle, Edward, published smaller papers. Morton contributed to the family papers and founded the first student newspaper at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Peninsular Quarterly featured articles, fiction, poetry and columns covering everything from foreign policy to musings on the state of higher education. “The great restless spirit of the times,” Morton wrote, “demands a literature responsive to it.”
J. Sterling Morton prided himself on being well-dressed and fluent in colorful country language while he served in Washington, D.C. Back home in Nebraska City, he wrote passionately about conservation and prompted Nebraskans to plant trees, as he had done at Arbor Lodge.
It wasn’t just the times that had a restless spirit. As a teenager at preparatory school, Morton’s teachers described him as “an eager, intelligent, mischievous, light-hearted boy,” but Morton had a starker recollection. In his words, he “achieved the enviable reputation of being so full of the Devil that the very pores of my skin were said to exude the essence of diabolism.” This orneriness emerged later at university in Ann Arbor, where he was the ringleader of the so-called Committee on Acoustics, a group of students whose primary mission was to silence the gigantic school bell that regulated their busy schedule. In his senior year, a public act of defiance led to his expulsion from school before he could graduate.
AFTER THE MORTONS left Bellevue for Nebraska City in the spring of 1855, they built their new home on a quarter-section west of town, a high point with a distant view of the river and its steamboats. In true pioneer style, it was a log cabin. Still, it was distinctive. They had furniture shipped in from St. Louis and Detroit. It was the first house from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains to sport a shingled roof. From their first days, the Mortons began planting trees around the site. In a feat of imagination, they called their home Arbor Lodge. It was the first of four houses that they’d build there, each larger and more ornate than its predecessor. Years later, Morton would joke that he should have called the houses “seed, bud, blossom, and fruit.”
The couple’s first son, Joy Sterling Morton, was born that fall in Detroit. His first name, Joy, honored Caroline’s roots. Born to Caroline Hayden Joy and Hiram Joy, young Caroline Joy had gone to live with David French and Cynthia Eldred French after her mother died. She became Caroline Joy French, until she married Morton.
Because of his fervent opposition to territorial proposals to authorize wildcat banking and fiat currency, he lost his seat. In the face of popular support for such speculative projects, he insisted that “if there are fortunes to be made in Nebraska, they are to be acquired by frugality and persevering exertion alone.”
The state’s politics weren’t falling in line with Morton’s vision, but his home was thriving. The Mortons welcomed their second son, Paul, in 1857. The year following was even busier. The family planted their orchards in earnest. That summer, President Buchanan appointed Morton as Secretary of the Territory of Nebraska – a role Morton served for three years. In the fall, the University of Michigan reversed its expulsion and granted Morton a diploma, and the Mortons’ third son, Mark, was born. In December, Morton became acting Governor of the Nebraska Territory until May 1859. He felt primed for greater political aspirations. Morton seemed to have won a seat in Congress in 1860 by 14 votes. Then Governor Samuel W. Black, also a Democrat, certified the election results on Nov. 2, 1860. A few days later, in a race among four candidates, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the 16th president. President James Buchanan’s administration had by then lost any sense of control. Southern states openly agitated for secession. Northerners were furious. Nebraska City was a microcosm of these fractures. Situated across the river from anti-slavery Iowa and just upriver from Missouri and its slaveholders, the growing settlement was constantly exposed to elements of slavery, including the occasional slave auction, slave hunters, the Underground Railroad network, and even several visits by abolitionist John Brown.
Even as he turned Arbor Lodge into a working farm and churned out copy for the News, Morton was involving himself in territorial politics. Republican-leaning pioneers were swiftly building a majority in Nebraska’s settlements, which meant that Morton’s strongly conservative Democratic positions from the start belonged to a minority view. He once remarked: “It is oftentimes said [by Republicans] that here in Nebraska we can elect a yellow dog against the best man you have got in the Democratic party. I admit it; it is so, and the many yellow dogs who are in the places of trust . . . testify to the truth of the assertion.”
Morton won election to the Territorial Legislature after less than a year in Nebraska City, but it was a short-term lived victory.
With the nation veering closer to civil war that fall, Democratic candidates like Morton were increasingly seen in Northern states as pro-slavery traitors out to divide the union. Indeed, Morton was supportive of slavery if its continued existence could keep the nation together.
Governor Black resigned in February 1861, a month before Lincoln took office. Morton again served as acting governor from February until March. On April 12, the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, beginning the American Civil War. Less than two weeks later, Black undertook his final political act for Nebraska before returning home to Pennsylvania to fight for the Union. Under oath, Black testified that the votes securing Morton the victory were fraudulent. He revoked
Hist
The Mortons set off for the Nebraska Territory on the day of their wedding in October 1854. After settling in Nebraska City in 1855, they built and rebuilt their home. Later, their son Joy renovated it to the mansion we know today.
Morton’s congressional win and certified Morton’s opponent, Republican Samuel G. Daily, who claimed the seat.
MORTON RETREATED TO Arbor Lodge. He was opposed to secession, but burned with contempt for the Republican party, Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, which declared all enslaved people were free. During the war, Morton served as an officer in the Nebraska City Cavalry, which was organized to help protect settlers during the war, and turned his efforts to his land. The Mortons’ youngest son, Carl, was born in February 1865. By the war’s end that spring, between 620,000 and 750,000 soldiers had died.
Morton had just turned 33, and he was going back into the news business. He remade the paper into a voice of the Nebraska Democrats. He frequently editorialized against voting rights and economic assistance for formerly enslaved people. When Morton
Morton told his father he wanted to “be somebody.” He built a grand house, grew orchards, ran for political office and advocated for tree planting.
History Nebraska
Nebraskans must “prepare for the great battle against the timberless prairies,” Morton proclaimed. “So that emerald banners shall wave in triumph upon every farm in the state.”
had first traveled to the newly formed Nebraska Territory in 1854, its creation was based upon the principle of popular sovereignty – letting states decide whether to allow slavery or not. The new question was whether Nebraska should adopt equal suffrage in its application for statehood. (Morton was an adamant no.) The original 1866 Nebraska constitution submitted to Congress limited voting rights to white males. Congress said Nebraska couldn’t be admitted as state unless Black men were also allowed to vote. Nebraska conceded and became a state in March 1867. Its new motto? “Equality Before the Law.”
Morton’s views on race and states’ rights hadn’t prevailed. But his views on conservation and tree planting would soon start a nationwide movement.
Newspaper readers who picked up the March 31, 1870, edition of the newspaper, discovered a Morton editorial using puritanical tones: “if the Bible had been written since 1840, the 10 Commandments would have contained the injunction: ‘Let all the
U.S. National Archives
History Nebraska
History Nebraska
Morton advocated for a tree-planting holiday. On its inaugural occasion in 1872, Nebraskans planted more than a million trees. “An invention of mine,” Morton wrote in his journal on April 8, 1874, “now becomes a public holiday, destined to become a blessing.” At left, tree planting on the U.S. Capitol lawn to honor Arbor Day on what would have been then-deceased Morton’s 100th birthday in 1932. Above, Joy Morton donated Arbor Lodge to the state of Nebraska in 1923. Tours display authentic furniture.
dwellers upon the treeless plains, plant trees!’ ” Characteristic to Morton’s writing style that mixed the pious with the vulgar, a few lines later the editorial read: “whosoever lives upon a prairie farm in Nebraska and fails to put out groves of timber is a jackass.”
Trees protected the soil, created shade, served as a windbreak and beautified the plains, Morton argued. Nebraska was no great American desert, as it had been considered. His own property’s orchards and shade trees offered tangible evidence that trees could thrive in Nebraska. Now Morton just needed to convince everyone else.
In 1872, Morton presented a proposal to the State Horticultural Society that the government should declare a holiday dedicated to the planting of trees. Nebraskans must “prepare for the great battle against the timberless prairies,” he proclaimed, so that “emerald banners shall wave in triumph upon every farm in the state.” The Board of Agriculture was enthusiastic about the idea, and even added prize money for encouragement.
On April 10, 1872, his vision of mass tree planting became an impressive reality. Although Morton’s shipment of 800 trees did not arrive in time for the festivities, the family of farmer J.D. Smith to the west of Lincoln planted over 35,000 trees that day, while Elder Taggart of Palmyra planted 20,000. They joined thousands of Nebraskans in gently placing over a million seedlings into the prairie sod on that first Arbor Day. Many sang patriotic songs or religious hymns as they worked. It was no political legacy, but for an older, wiser Morton, it was no less important.
ARBOR DAY SOON captured the notice of other areas of the country. By 1884, 10 additional states had made it a holiday, and within 20 years every state but Delaware celebrated the occasion. Not surprisingly, Morton’s fame grew accordingly.
But tragedy interrupted the happiness of this conservation success. By Caroline’s 40s, she suffered from acute rheumatism and endured chronic pain. She had made a
Derrald Farnsworth-Livingston
One Stop Shop FOR ANY OCCASION
O ering an array of exquisite quality a ordable products for personal, professional and corporate gift giving. These specialty gifts are sure to make a lasting impression!
Fresh, plants, silks, garden decorations, balloons, mugs, ornaments, and so much more.
(402) 873-5000
1120 Central Ave • Nebraska City firstclassflowersgifts.com
good life with her garden, her beloved music and her loving children, but she was often left alone as Morton traveled in pursuit of his ambitions. In July of 1880, she suffered a fall, which began a downward spiral. By Christmas that year, she could barely walk. In March, she was bedridden.
Morton did everything he could, bringing doctors from as far away as Chicago. Nothing helped. She passed away with her husband and two of her sons by her side. She was 47 years old.
On her grave, Morton had inscribed, “Caroline French, wife of J. Sterling Morton and mother of Joy, Paul, Mark and Carl Morton.” Asked by a friend why he’d included the boys’ names, Morton said it was because he’d told his boys that if any one of them did something to dishonor her, he would chisel the son’s name from her tombstone.
THE STATE DEMOCRATIC party convinced Morton to return to politics by running for governor in 1882. His nomination received widespread praise. As one newspaper put it: “There are no men who have risen, with all their opportunities, to eclipse the magic of his name or the brilliancy, power, or influence of his genius as a statesman.” “Even the Republicans,” added the Johnson County Journal, “acknowledge him to be the
Caroline Morton was a passionate and skilled gardener and homemaker. Flowers and trees surround her statue at Arbor Lodge. A log-themed border encloses the Morton burial plot in Wyuka Cemetery in Nebraska City. The monument for Caroline and J. Sterling is a tree elaborately carved from stone.
Nancy Feeney
ablest man in either party in the State.”
But Morton’s renewed political ambitions continued to falter.
Nebraska was growing quickly, particularly with an influx of immigrants and Civil War veterans. Even so, what came to be known as the Gilded Age nationally often was marred on the Great Plains by regular droughts and economic panics. Republicans continued to dominate the state even as a political newcomer, William Jennings Bryan, was on the rise and by 1890 had begun to seize control of the state’s Democratic party.
Against this backdrop, Morton failed to win the governorship three times, and, in a fourth election, he failed to win a Senate seat.
Seeing an opportunity to snag a veteran Democrat, in 1893 President Grover Cleveland summoned Morton to Washington to serve as Secretary of Agriculture. Morton served with distinction in that role for four years, promoting agricultural reforms and tightening the department’s finances.
What capital gossips most cherished, however, was Morton’s willingness to create a spectacle. Expecting a hayseed from the uneducated hinterlands, Washingtonians were surprised to find that Morton was immediately the bestdressed cabinet member, even as he continually invoked colorful country language to disarm listeners. Referring to an upcoming cabinet meeting, he once wrote to the president’s private secretary that he intended “to yoke up the steers so as to arrive there in time, if I finish husking the corn, feeding the pigs, and milking the cows.”
He also made it known that as the Secretary of Agriculture, the horses drawing his carriage through the capital streets had a responsibility to be the most impressive in the city. His grandson, Sterling Morton III, recalled in 1937 that “if any other Cabinet member, if the President himself, turned out with sleeker horses, glossier harness, or shinier carriages, gloom settled over the stables of Agriculture.”
Morton returned home to his beloved Arbor Lodge in 1897. There, amid political commentary and invective, he spent his twilight years continuing to tout the importance of tree planting in a new publication, The Conservative. He never remarried after Caroline’s death.
After his youngest son, Carl, died from double pneumonia in January 1901, Morton traveled to escape the grief. That December, he gave a speech in Chicago, despite having what he described as a severe cold. The strain of the trip worsened it. He went to Mexico with his son Paul in February 1902, and he got even worse. By April, his family transported him to Lake Forest, Illinois, to his son Mark’s house, where he was seen by specialists. He fell unconscious and died on Sunday, April 27, a few days after his 70th birthday. His three surviving sons were with him.
A train draped with black crepe ran on the Chicago & Burlington tracks. Members of his family and close friends were aboard. It was met at the Nebraska City station by a military detachment, which accompanied the coffin to the city library. There he lay in state the rest of the morning.
Teachers brought their schoolchildren to say farewell. The detachment took him to Arbor Lodge for the service, and local businesses closed. In Lincoln, the Nebraska State Capitol was closed and the state flag lowered.
BY THE TIME his life’s journey came to an end, his legacy was assured. Arbor Day was by then not only observed across the country but had also become an international event, celebrated on various calendar dates across the globe.
The holiday is a lasting tribute to the life of J. Sterling Morton. There can be no doubt that he was controversial in his day. More recently, his outspoken views on slavery and Black voting rights have come under scrutiny. But above and beyond the controversies, Morton clearly had an impact on his adopted state and on the world beyond. The great treeless plains he first encountered coming to the area in 1854 have changed dramatically since that first Arbor Day in April 1872.
Traci Rylands
Perhaps it is fitting, then, that in commemorating his legacy we take to heart the closing that he offered in an 1884 Arbor Day address: “So every man, woman and child shall be able to say, on coming as I have come, towards the evening of life, in all sincerity and truth, ‘If you seek my monument, look around you!’ ”
NEBRASKA MUSEUMS
ASHLAND
Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, p 75
BAYARD
History Nebraska – Chimney Rock Museum, p 75
BROKEN BOW
Custer County Museum, p 73
FREMONT
Louis E. May Museum, p 73
GRAND ISLAND
Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer, p 73
KEARNEY
Museum of Nebraska Art, p 72
The Archway, p 74
LAVISTA
Czech and Slovak Educational Center and Cultural Museum, p 72
NEBRASKA CITY
Arbor Day Farm Lied Lodge, p 71
Kregel Windmill Factory Museum, p 70
Missouri River Lewis and Clark Interpretive Trail and Visitor Center, p 68
Wildwood Historic Home, p 71
NELIGH
Pierson Wildlife Museum, p 72
OMAHA
Joslyn Castle, p 74
Omaha Children’s Museum, p 75
The Durham Museum, p 73
SEWARD
Nebraska National Guard Museum, p 74
YORK
Clayton Museum of Ancient History, p 74
Explore our exhibits featuring the Immigration Room, Music Room, Sokol Room and Josef Lada calendars from the 1940s. Our gift store offers many beautiful Bohemian items from the Czech land.
SEWARD COUNTY
Explore ancient Rome, the Near East and much more. Special Bible exhibit shares the story of scripture from scroll to modern translations. Children’s interactive Little Kingdom now opened!
View rare artifacts from the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Roman Empire! Young and old can experience the museum’s Little Kingdom interactive area. Uncover objects in an archaeological dig, “live” in an ancient house and “shop” a Roman market. Admission is FREE with donations always accepted.
ADMISSION IS FREE
Open Tues-Fri, 1 - 5 p.m. Call for group tours.
Open Tues-Fri, 10 am-5 pm • Sat 1-4 pm
claytonmuseumofancienthistory.org 402-363-5748 1125 E 8th St • York, NE o
claytonmuseumofancienthistory.org
On the road for food, fun and festivities Nebraska Traveler
by MEGAN FEENEY
OUTDOORS
LAURITZEN GARDENS
MARCH-MID-APRIL • OMAHA
As Nebraska’s days grow longer and warmer, the cheerful sight and heady scent of daffodils – that special mixed fragrance of green and musk and vanilla – enrapture visitors to Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha, where nearly half a million yellow heads stretch toward the strengthening early spring sun.
Lauritzen Gardens began its daffodil expansion a few years back in hopes of ultimately showcasing one million blooms. Three years of community donations have led to the planting of an additional 150,000 bulbs in the spot between the rose garden and the Founders’ Garden, making for a total that’s halfway to their goal. The garden’s horticulture team works with
volunteers to plant the bulbs, which are purchased with donations.
In the fall, volunteers and staff members knelt in the season’s cool dirt. At a time when so many garden beds were starting to go dormant with the season, this daffodil-planting team was already looking toward the spring. They dug holes for bulbs. Positioning the bulbs tip up, they dropped them into the ground and replaced the soil. All they had to do next was wait for spring, when the green shoots would emerge from the still-chill ground. Making the field of flowers even more joyous to witness is the fact that this is the result of people working together to make a beautiful garden for everyone.
Half a million daffodils enchant garden-goers with their sunny countenance in Omaha
WHERE TO EAT ARCHETYPE COFFEE
Freshly roasted coffees and pastries made on the premises in Little Bohemia. Drinks made with milk from Hartington’s Burbach Dairy. 1419 S. 13th St. drinkarchetype.com
WHERE TO STAY EVEN HOTEL OMAHA DOWNTOWN
Close to Old Market attractions, the hotel offers guests aromatherapy amenities to help wind down. 2220 Farnam St. (402) 345-3836
WHERE TO GO BEMIS CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS
Work of artists from around the world, educational programming, live performances and films. Art lovers enjoy all of this and free admission. 724 S. 12th St. (402) 341-7130
Chris Machian/Lauritzen Gardens
CRAFTS
CHADRON QUILTING FESTIVAL
APRIL 1-3 • CHADRON
In 2019, when organizers of the Chadron Quilt Festival announced their quilting challenge for 2020, they had no idea how darkly life might mirror art.
The challenge? Using quilting, create the vision of what you’d like to see through your attic window in 2020. The 2020 show didn’t happen. Neither did 2021.
This year, it’s on. Organizers, the Pine Ridge Quilt Guild, are recycling the challenge. People have had plenty of time to look out their attic windows for the past two years.
Quilting can be therapy. So can going to a quilt show, said Patty Calhoun, guild member.
People come from across Nebraska and from South Dakota and Wyoming to the festival, which has been running for 26 years. Two visitors in particular stand out in Calhoun’s memory.
In 2019, the year eastern Nebraska was devastated by floods, a husband and wife came to the Chadron Festival of Quilts, wanting to escape the tragedy. Their family had suffered property damage, and the wife, an avid quilter, wanted a weekend of
normalcy. Calhoun and others from the guild were grateful to provide her that small bit of relief and happiness with their show.
The weekend of events will feature vendors and demos, a featured quilter and trunk shows. Non-quilters can view and vote for favorites and participate in an eyespy challenge, looking for items in the quilts.
It’s a much better view than through any window. Attendees pay $5 for the weekend. Register quilts on March 31 between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the Assumption Arena.
Chadron Quilt Festival is April 1-3, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday; 12-4 p.m. on Sunday. Assumption Arena is at 3rd and Spruce streets. chadronfestivalofquilts.com
WHERE TO EAT BEAN BROKER
COFFEEHOUSE & PUB
Rich coffee and cool cocktails, scratch-made sandwiches, and desserts at this historic downtown building. 202 W 2nd St. (308) 432-4500
Other events you may enjoy
MARCH
Omaha Film Festival
March 1-6 • Omaha
Calling all movie buffs! Celebrating independent cinema, the Omaha Film Festival launches a week of screenings, filmmaking workshops and discussions. The festival showcases works by international and local filmmakers that tell daring or heartrending stories, present new storytelling techniques and take risks. omahafilmfestival.org
The
Color Purple
Beginning March 4 • Omaha
This coming-of-age story follows Celie as she overcomes hardship through the power of love, forgiveness and family. Filled with powerful vocal performances, this musical version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel inspires and uplifts audiences at the Omaha Community Playhouse. ticketomaha.com
Prairie Chicken Dance Tours
March 8-April 16 • McCook
Prairie chickens strut their stuff in a show for the hens in March, April and early May. Puffing their beautiful feathers and hooting, they hope to attract a mate. Bring your own mate to a quiet blind to watch this seasonal spectacle and try not to hoot along, as exciting as it may be. (308) 345-1200.
Sandhill
Cranes Bus Tour
Beginning March 15 • North Platte
Enjoy sandhill cranes from the shelter of a bus traveling the Platte River Valley between North Platte and Hershey. Guides share information about cranes and other wildlife, as well as speaking about local farming and ranching practices and Bailey Yard, the world’s largest railroad reclassification yard. (308) 530-0048.
Chadron Festival of Quilts
Student groups give toe -tapping audiences the old razzle dazzle.
MUSIC
NORTHEAST ANNUAL JAZZ FESTIVAL
MARCH 28-29 • NORFOLK
Hepcat high schoolers from across Nebraska – and surrounding states – claw their way to the top of a jazz competition each spring in Norfolk.
At Northeast Community College’s Cox Activity Center in Norfolk, sparkles flash, trombones buzz, jazz hands shake, saxophones croon, and singers wail. In the hallways, kids rush around lugging instrument cases or makeup bags in preparation for their performance. The strains of vocal or instrument warmups leak from practice rooms. It’s jazz and big band music –old tunes from a different era being kept alive by teenagers.
The Northeast Annual Jazz Festival provides junior and senior high school jazz
bands and show choirs a stage to compete and observe other performances. The two-day event, held this year March 2829, draws as many as 90 student groups. It is free to the public and is a fun event for the whole family.
“Every year, when I sneak up to the judge’s booth to watch, it’s always a burst of colorful surprise,” said Margaret Schultz, festival manager. “The energy and enthusiasm it takes to produce these shows – I’m awestruck every time.”
The hallways crackle with nervous energy as students line up to perform in the auditorium or the band performance room. To help wrangle the young competitors, Northeast’s music students pitch in.
It provides the college students experience working a big musical event, which will likely inform their future careers and help them put on events of their own someday.
The performances culminate in an awards ceremony, where contestants dance around in anticipation of winning. Big schools or little, all have an equal chance of taking home the prize based on merit. No matter what the results, happy memories are made for all.
Long after the students pack their trumpets and bow ties, their dresses and hair spray, their trophies and judges’ notes, evidence of them lingers in the memories and the songs … and the sequins.
“They’re embedded into the tiles of the women’s bathroom,” Schultz said.
2022 Northeast Annual Jazz Festival is March 28-29. The Cox Activity Center is at 801 E. Benjamin Ave. in Norfolk. (402) 844-7765. northeast.edu/events/ jazz-festival
WHERE TO EAT
THE 411
Gastropub serves creative burgers, fresh fish and chips and tantalizing salads with house-made dressing, along with craft cocktails, beer and wine.
411 W. Norfolk Ave. (402) 851-3034
WHERE TO STAY NORFOLK LODGE & SUITES
Cozy lodge-style accommodations close to many area attractions. Visit Norfolk’s first microbrewery in the connected SandBar and Grill.
4200 W. Norfolk Ave. (402) 379-3833
WHERE TO GO MAGNOLIAS
This locally owned home decor and design store offers silk flowers, jewelry, pillows and more for a take-home momento of a jazzy weekend. 432 W. Norfolk Ave. (402) 379-2300
Boho Bash
March 19 • Schuyler
Ice-cold beer? Czech! A hot meal with kolaches for dessert? Czech! A live polka band. Czech! Schuyler provides a lively night of family fun at its second annual Boho Bash from 7 to 11 p.m. The night gets wilder when the band covers rock tunes. $10 cover charge. (402) 352-5472.
APRIL
Hidden Monuments
April 9 • La Vista
Out there, in Nebraska’s fields and forests, are monuments that mark exactly where historical events occurred. Historian Jeff Barnes speaks about these hidden monuments at the La Vista Public Library. 10 a.m., (402) 537-3900.
Spring Craft & Trade Show
April 9 • Kearney
Vendors gather at the Buffalo County Fairgrounds to sell handmade goods including baked treats, candles and art. A nonperishable food or healthcare product to the foodbank is encouraged. Proceeds support the work of Community Action Partnership of Mid Nebraska. (308) 440-0153.
AKC Dog Show
April 16-17 • Grand Island
Check out the breeds at the 2022 AKC All Breed Dog Show. The public can watch exciting obedience and rally trials, where a dog must mind its handler, despite the excitement. Can you say your kids will do the same? (308) 385-4949.
Easter Brunch at Timbers
April 17 • Nebraska City
Enjoy a delicious brunch overlooking a hazelnut grove at Timbers Dining Room at Lied Lodge. Take a relaxing walk on the nearby paths afterward. $51 per person. (402) 873-8740.
ATHLETICS
HUSKER BASEBALL AT HAYMARKET PARK
MARCH 11 • LINCOLN
Beginning in March, a roar will echo from Haymarket Park in Lincoln as red-bedecked fans cheer on their Huskers. America’s favorite pastime is once again underway – a sure sign that spring is here.
Inside the stadium, a bat cracks as it meets the pitch. The ball sails through big Nebraska skies. The offense runs the bases and the fielders hustle to throw it home. After the runner slides into homebase with a dusty whoosh, the umpire declares, “safe.” The crowd jumps to its feet, wild with applause.
There are no fans like Nebraska fans –and that’s not just true of football enthusiasts. Last year, attendance at Husker Baseball games was number one in the Big Ten and number six in the nation. Drizzly skies and 30 degrees? No problem. Go Big Red! 100 degrees and sunny? No problem. Go Big Red!
Head coach Will Bolt felt the fan love when he was a player recruited from Tex-
as to play for the Huskers from 1999 to 2002. Today those fans help him interest new Husker prospects.
“It’s a big draw to play in front of a fan base that is so supportive, rain or shine, cold or hot,” Bolt said.
These fans cheered their Cornhuskers on to handily win the Big Ten last year. The team also went toe-to-toe with the nation’s No. 1 team, Arkansas, in a regional final. The first home game on March 11 will mark the start of 12 straight home games at Haymarket Park throughout the month.
Bolt brings the philosophy he internalized as a player to his team, “I wasn’t a guy who could go through the motions. I wasn’t talented enough for that. I had to give my best every day, and that’s what I ask.”
With baseball, there’s so much failure involved, Bolt said. You hit the ball 7 out of 10 times, you’re doing well. If you
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Athletics
consistently show up and try to be even keeled, you’ll create opportunities. Stack up enough days like that up, you’ll win.
To drill home this message, after last year’s fall season ended, Bolt held a series of 6 a.m. team defense practices. It was early. The next game was a long way off. Bolt was looking for his players to rally around the fact that they got to be together and to dig deep and find their best.
“Every day isn’t going to be a feel-good day,” Bolt said. “If you can be successful in that moment, you can be successful in any moment.”
This year, the Huskers have a deep bench and some exciting new prospects. Fans won’t worry the skies for the weather, but they might scan the heavens for a pop fly and hope it lands in their outstretched hands.
Haymarket Park is at 403 Line Drive Circle in Lincoln. Baseball schedule available at huskers.com/sports/baseball/schedule
WHERE TO EAT STUR 22 LOUNGE
Juicy wings, stewed meats, rice dishes, curries, pastas and pineapple mango coleslaw wake up the taste buds at this Caribbean and African food spot. 1320 O. St. (402) 937-7126
WHERE TO STAY GRADUATE LINCOLN
Funky throwback decor inspired by the University of Nebraska campus. Onsite Topgolf Swing Suite offers more sporty fun after the Husker Baseball win. 141 N 9th St. (402) 475-4011
WHERE TO GO NEBRASKA HIGH SCHOOL
SPORTS HALL OF FAME
Nebraska high schools’ greatest athletes. 500 Charleston St. (402) 476-4767
Mid-Plains Fabric Fair
April 23-24 • York
Don’t be baa-shful. Snuggly natural fabrics are on sale. Vendors showcase products including hand-dyed yarns, angora and rabbit fiber. Classes in spinning, felting and basket-weaving offered. Come away from the weekend with a good yarn. (402) 405-1971.
Come from Away
From April 27 • Lincoln
An amazing true story of 7,000 stranded passengers and the small town in Newfoundland that welcomed them. Set in the weeks following the Sept. 11 attacks, planes were forced to land. Uplifting musical theater at Lied Center for Performing Arts. (402) 472-7726
your bags for
York.Watch the llama and alpaca show, see demonstrations and visit with vendors. Join weaving, dyeing and spinning classes (all skill levels). Class fees and needed materials are listed at
York County Fairgrounds, 2400 N Nebraska Ave. York, NE 68467
Wild Colonial Bhoys
Kelihans
Spring Affair
April 29-30 • Lincoln
Bloom where you’re planted at the Nebraska Statewide Arboretum’s annual plant sale. Annuals, perennials and garden talks prepare green thumbs for another fabulous growing season. Check out native plantings and trees for maximum impact on your Nebraska ecosystem. plantnebraska.org
Junkstock
April 29-May 1 • Waterloo
Treasure hunters comb vendor booths for antiques and vintage pieces. Foodies nosh on bites crafted by artisanal vendors. Audiophiles dig live music. Well behaved leashed pets welcome. Kids 12 and under are admitted free. Additional weekend in May. junkstock.com
TRIVIA ANSWERS
Questions on pp 20-21
1 North
2 15-20 percent
3 Eat pests, waste grain; fertilize
4 Keep fit, test thermals, feed
5 600,000-1 million
6 False. Be quiet on guided tours.
7 True.
8 False, 80 percent. Some don’t migrate. Other flyways, too
9 True.
10 False. Also rural roads; roadside viewing platforms at Gibbon, Grand Island; bridge at Fort Kearny
11 c. 500
12 c. Do-si-do
13 c. All of the above
14 c. 35 years
15 a. Three months
Trivia Photographs
Page 18 Sandhill cranes dance for a mate along the Platte River in spring.
Page 18 Feathers can appear rust-colored because cranes preen with mud.
Page 19 Sandhill cranes gain up to 20 percent of their weight.
BIRDING CHALLENGE 2022
January 1 – December 31
Go to VisitMcCook.com for application, details and birding locations.
UNWIND
Travel with you in mind
Get refreshed and refueled in Sidney/Cheyenne County, Nebraska. We offer every comfort a road-tripper needs right off Interstate 80, including restaurants, hotels, gas stations, convenience stores and more. Escape the long stretch of road with us.
Open to all ages and all countries! At least one of your birding locations must be at the Red Willow State Recreation Area.
All challenge finishers will earn a 2022 commemorative patch!
Photo: Arturo Banderas
LAST LOOK EDITORS’ CHOICE
photograph by
LINDSEY KELLER
NOTHING COMFORTS LINDSEY
Keller as much as the view of the Scotts Bluff National Monument. The Lincoln public school kindergarten teacher grew up in Gering and as a kid often played with her cousins at its base. They sifted the fine sand in their tiny hands and watched for rattlesnakes.
Today, whenever Keller heads home, her heart lifts at the sight of the monument and of Chimney Rock. She was visiting her father when she captured this picture. A spring storm gathered and cast an eerie glow on the prairie.
Keller cherishes the photo because it reminds her of her loving companion who used to accompany her. Keller got her start in photography taking cellphone shots of her two dogs, Boston terriers Shelby and Asher, in scenic places. Her family bought her a camera, and the hobby stuck. When her dog Shelby recently passed, it broke Keller’s heart.
But when she looks at this picture, she sees home and Shelby beside her.
IN EACH ISSUE, Last Look features a reader’s photograph of Nebraska – landscapes, architecture, attractions, events, people or wildlife.
Submit your best photographs for the chance to be published in Nebraska Life. Send digital images with detailed photo descriptions and your contact information to photos@nebraskalife.com or visit nebraskalife.com/contribute.
This photo was taken with a Sony Alpha a58 camera equipped with a Sony 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5mm lens at 12mm, exposed at ISO 100, f/7.1 for 1/50 of a second.
ATURALLY EBRASKA
For the Love of Cranes
Platte River guide shares stories
by ALAN J. BARTELS
IN THE DARK, I led a group of visitors into a viewing blind. The faint murmur of sandhill cranes grew louder. The cranes’ spring gathering on the Platte River in Nebraska is the largest congregation of any of the world’s 15 crane species. For many, witnessing it is a spiritual event. But not everybody loves cranes. At least, not at first.
In the first light of the morning, thousands of sandhill cranes towered over a dense roost of snow geese stretching to the horizon. The serenity of the moment soon turned to pandemonium. I don’t know if it was an eagle, bobcat or the sound of my jaw hitting the floor at the sight of so many birds, but something spooked the roosting flock. A spiral of snow geese erupted skyward, forming a twisting avian vortex that I dubbed a “snownado.” The cacophony of beating wings and cackling birds reverberated in my chest. A woman next to me said something that I could not hear, but the tears rolling down her cheeks spoke volumes.
People from around the world were part of my group on another evening tour, but it’s a farmer from Gibbon I remember most. He made it known that he grew up seeing these “big gray birds” and was only there because his wife made him. He pouted in a corner of the blind like a child being punished for not cleaning his room.
Cranes soon sprinkled onto sandbars. Two and three at first, then hundreds as Mother Nature painted the sky with strokes of amber, gold and pink as the sun descended. The visitors wedged
their faces in the viewing blind windows – even the farmer. The world’s greatest migration played until the dark curtain of night and then some, as it has for millennia.
When it was dark enough to leave without disturbing the cranes, I led the group back to their vehicles. Only a few remained when my flashlight revealed the farmer’s stocky silhouette approaching. Uh-oh.
In one swift movement he…embraced me in a bear hug. With profuse sincerity he confessed that more than 50 years of seeing cranes from roads and his fields did not compare to seeing them in their river roost.
As an avid outdoorsman and conservationist, I appreciate every aspect of Nature. I capitalize it in this instance because the natural world really is that important. I’ve always appreciated Nebraska being home to the crane migration, but it took visitor from outside the Cornhusker State to teach me that this natural wonder is important far beyond Nebraska.
splashing them with seawater – sounded to me like the ultimate wildlife adventure.
He put the importance of our crane migration in perspective for me when, in his thick Bronx accent, the man told me how the evening’s crane tour was equally impressive.
Since this happens nowhere else, we do get celebrities, too. But one night’s VIP was a woman suffering from a terminal illness. She wanted to see sandhill cranes one more time. Unable to walk under her own power, I gave the woman and her elderly sister a golf cart ride to the blind. For two hours the sick woman didn’t move as cranes filled the sky. She occasionally uttered faint moans that I think were an expression of pain, and, at other times, utter delight.
In addition to the beautiful sky and uncountable cranes, a beaver swam below the woman’s window, and a trio of white-tailed deer waded the river, parting the flock briefly like Moses’ Red Sea. When it was time to leave, I offered to physically help the sick woman but was refused. Fortunately, I was close enough that I caught her when she fell. Five minutes later I helped her into her car.
The evening tour had just wrapped up when a man from New York introduced me to his 81-year-old mother. They were headed home from an Alaska vacation. Their account of being on a small boat as feeding whales breached the surface –
Three days later I received a call that the sick woman had died.
There is something indescribable in the pleading calls, elegant dances and piercing eyes of sandhill cranes that people love. Humans have their hands in the inner workings of most ecosystems, and the blunt truth is –we’ve messed some things up.
When I watch as long skeins of cranes spill into Nebraska’s Platte Valley, I remember the people who love cranes like I do, and believe – at least until the sun sinks below the horizon – that all is good with the natural world.
Alan J. Bartels is the former editor of Nebraska Life who now contributes a column about the state’s great outdoors.
