Absent Neighbors

Addie Craig

Luke of Maquoketa

(which means “There are bears” even though no one living has ever met one there) loves his lawnmower. I know this because it is Saturday morning in mid-June, and he is mowing his lawn not far from my window, and the mower’s hungry growl wakes me up. It often does.

Luke’s lawn (the best of the neighborhood) is crew-cut uniform. One kind of grass (no weeds) One length (no stragglers) And

One color (several sprinklers) make it look like the fields of green: patchworks of corn and beans draped across the hills like an antique quilt that you may not use because it is for decoration only, not for life.

No wonder we have no bears nor bison, who would make quick work of Luke’s lawn, great molars grinding in slow motion rumbling and deliberate as the drift of tectonic plates. They would make space for the native grasses, creating bare wallows with their hilly shoulders.

Luke is several neighbors in one. His mower replaces the bison, his weekend hunting trips replace the wolves, and his chainsaw’s flashing teeth serve for bull elks’ antlers, branching like ancient oaks humbling the vigorous younger trees while its sustained snarl mocks at the hollow bugling that has not echoed from the bluffs for so long.

The town makes the stars dim, so Luke has installed a yard light whose buzzing competes with the summer’s hatch of cicadas

The fireflies, mirroring their celestial counterparts, are fewer every year. How easy it is with our never-setting lights and our wailing metal and the inescapable whirring of our incessant upkeep to forget how alone we are.

From Daydream to Darryl: How Luther College got its wind turbine Aislinn

Geedey

When Jim Martin-Schramm, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Luther College, went to the 2008 meeting of the American Wind Energy Association to secure a turbine for the college, he wasn’t expecting to bring one home with him that day.

As he walked around the room, he talked with several manufacturers and told them that Luther was interested in purchasing a wind turbine. “The guy said… ‘you know, if you wanna buy 10, maybe I’ll put your name on the list. If you wanna buy a hundred, I’ll put your name at the top of the list. But if you wanna buy one… I can give you this. It’s free.’,” said Martin-Schramm as he showed me his very own wind turbine, albeit a miniature model version.

One of the most prominent features of the Decorah horizon is Luther’s wind turbine, or Darryl, as he is affectionately called by students. While Darryl has been a stand-out member of the community and has become a symbol of sustainability for many on campus, Darryl wasn’t always a familiar sight on the skyline.

Martin-Schramm first started daydreaming about Luther’s very own wind turbine in 2004. That year, Carleton College invited students, faculty, and staff from Luther to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony on their new wind turbine. “We were just really inspired…” he said, “and on the way back we said, ‘Well, gosh, if Carleton can do it, we can do it!’”.

Martin-Schramm is no stranger to sustainability projects. In 1987, around the time he graduated with his master’s from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, the scientific community had reached a strong consensus on global warming. “It became clear to me that global warming… would magnify existing social problems like hunger while also creating new issues like climate injustice,” he said.

His interest in environmental ethics has continued throughout his career, and has most recently been focused on renewable energy efforts such as bringing a wind turbine to Luther. However, bringing a turbine to campus wasn’t a breeze. “The challenge was finding a good location for it and then figuring out how to pay for it,” said Martin-Schramm.

The ideal place for a wind turbine is, obviously, somewhere with a lot of wind. Usually this means placing the turbine as high as possible, but this often means that the blades of the turbine will throw “shadow flicker” onto the surrounding areas during sunrise and sunset. After abandoning two potential sites due to shadow flicker on residential areas and conservation site restrictions, Luther negotiated a land lease agreement with the owner of Darryl’s current location.

With a land permit in hand, Luther was ready to secure a wind turbine. Prior to the 2008 economic recession in the United States, wind farms were being installed frequently, since companies could participate in government funded financial incentives for their investment in wind energy. Manufacturers were not willing to negotiate with buyers that wanted a single turbine. However, during the recession, far fewer companies were investing in wind energy. As he held up his model turbine, Martin-Schramm said, “All of a sudden, it goes from, ‘Here’s your wind turbine, dude.’ to ‘How can I help you?’”.

After securing a turbine, the college needed to find a way to pay for this $3.2 million project. To do this, the college formed Luther College Wind Energy Project, LLC, a for-profit branch of Luther College. This allowed Luther to obtain a cash grant to help offset the cost of the turbine. Combined with the college’s financial reserves, a government payment from putting college-owned land into a permanent conservation easement and several loans, Luther was able to finance the project.

According to Luther’s Center for Sustainable Communities, Luther’s wind turbine was officially commissioned by General Electric on Nov 1, 2011, meaning that Darryl recently celebrated his tenth birthday.

In another 10 years, many of the permits allowing Luther to run the turbine will need to be renewed. The college will need to decide whether to continue investing in the turbine. “But all of that’s down the road. Darryl’s doing just fine, he’s 10 years old. He’s sitting middle age. He’s probably not a candidate for a knee replacement yet, but he’s getting there. And that’s when we’ll have to decide,” said Martin-Schramm.

After recalling the process of getting Darryl, Martin-Schramm smiled and said, “It took seven years to get this project from conception to completion. It took me six years to finish my Ph.D. I’ve worked probably as hard on this as I did on my Ph.D. and I don’t know which I’m more proud of.”

Desert Series

Ava Shively

Outside The Palace Gates

Audrey Fashimpaur

Oslo 2

Adrienne Clefisch

Iris

Anastasia Baldus

You are a cat. belly cat cracking the wood and lighting the dark, dark sky with tiny floating embers, but you, you, are the wood after the fire has gone out; the charcoal holding memories. A loaf of solid black, you sparkle with the stars. decidedly you hold me down with love, purring, very comfy, like nice and warm like a started car in winter in happiness

I am lying, silent, leg over the back of the couch chilling pressure of paws, claws digging, grasping the fabric of my shirt to curl up on my stomach. Warm. purrs, yours, resonate, like a demon from fiction, storming mines whence it guards souls of greed that uprooted it from slumber. A human shape of Fire?

Your engine hums a good tune.

Kairos

Rory Wisgerhof

Kairos

(n.) The perfect, delicate, crucial moment; the fleeting rightness of time and place that creates the opportune atmosphere for action, words, or movement.

Walking barefoot across the grass was a blessing to the greeks. And how could it not be?

When your skin meets the dew, Born of the night air, Shining with the dust of dead constellations, Do you not feel blessed? Do you not feel holy, Bathed in the sunlight of the early morning?

As you walk through the blades, As crabapple blossoms drift upon your brow, As the birds compose melodies in the distance, You note only the warm breeze and the brilliant sky, And you think yourself ordinary. But as you walk back from the mailbox, Letters clutched in hand, The birds sing your resplendence to Apollo, And the snakes in the garden bow to kiss the ground at your feet.