Crossroads at Big Creek 920.746.5895

Night Sky Viewing offered by the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society

Coggin Heeringa — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:39:47 +0000

On Saturday, May 19 at 8:30, join members of the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society at the Astronomy Campus of Crossroads to view the beautiful night skies. Enjoy the spring constellations.

If overcast, a video presentation will be offered in the Stonecipher Astronomy Center. Free and open to the public. Please use the Utah Street Entrance (at the stop sign of the Utah/Cove Road intersection) to reach the astronomy center.

Documenary: “Blue Gold”

Coggin Heeringa — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:28:51 +0000

The Door County Environmental Council seminar series at Crossroads at Big Creek will begin on Wednesday May 23rd 7:00 P.M. with a powerful documentary titled “BLUE GOLD” World Water Wars Coming.

This is a very graphic video presentation about the worldwide water crisis that is affecting many nations now and will increase drastically as the population rises and global temperature changes modify our world fresh water supply. “Blue Gold” the exciting documentary, explains the long-range plans that oil barons have been developing to control water resources all over the planet as the oil profit diminishes.

Prominent and powerful people in Washington and in other countries have been buying up huge parcels of land bordering fresh water lakes in South America to give them unlimited access to the water rights and ultimate control over access to use the water.This film is a sobering warning for our future generations about the dangers of privatization of essential public resources, and you will witness first-hand the resulting disaster when someone else owns the water you must have to live.

This must-see documentary by Sam Bozzo is sponsored by the Door County Environmental Council . Free and open to the public.

For more information please call Jerry Viste at 920 743 6003

Stanley Greene on the “Radio”

Coggin Heeringa — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:42:15 +0000

For a historical way of looking at history, Sunday , May 20 at 3:00, visitors can do what Door County citizens did some fifty years ago—listen to Mayor Stanley Greene ‘s radio program about the History of Sturgeon Bay.

Thanks to Eddie Allen of WDOR, we have an audio recording of Rick Whitt interviewing Stanley Greene. If the weather is nice, participants will gather on the porch or around the table of the Warren House to sip lemonade and listen to the program. (If it’s chilly, the program will move into the Collins Learning Center and the menu will change to decaf coffee and hot chocolate.)

History Movie: ” The Dawn of the Space Age”

Coggin Heeringa — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 23:22:44 +0000

Saturday, May 5 at 2:00, relive the excitement of the early days of space exploration from the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik to the magnificent lunar landing and privately operated space flights. During this 42 minute presentation, you will be immersed and overwhelmed with this accurate historic reconstruction of humans’ first steps into space.

Free and open to the public. Meet in the lecture hall of the Collins Learning Center.

DPAS :The Upcoming Transit of Venus

Coggin Heeringa — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:53:17 +0000

On May 1 at 7:00, the public in encourage to join the members of the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society for their May general meeting at the Stonecipher Astronomy Center at the Astronomy Campus of Crossroads. Following a very brief meeting, Gary Henkelmann will discuss the Space Mission of the Month and Professor Ray Stonecipher will present the feature lecture “Upcoming Transit of Venus.”

The program is free and refreshments will be served. Please use the Utah Street Entrance to Crossroads (from Highway 42/57) turn east onto Utah Street , travel up the hill and turn left at the first stop sign. (Cove Road Intersection.)

Dr. Death confronts Double Trouble- Flower and Veggie Diseases

Coggin Heeringa — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:46:26 +0000

On Tuesday, May 8, The Door County Master Gardeners are pleased to welcome Dr. Brian Hudelson, director of the UW Plant Disease Diagnostics Clinic to Door County. Dr. Hudelson’s presentation will explore the variety of diseases that local gardeners might face in our vegetable and flower gardens. He plans to include information on the common tomato leaf blights and powdery mildew as well as a host of other diseases, and there will be opportunities to ask questions about common plant diseases you might face in the up-coming growing season. This is not a program to miss.

Brian Hudelson is affectionately known as “Dr. Death” because of his love of plant diseases. Brian received his BS in Botany, Bacteriology and Molecular Biology, MS in Biometry and PhD in Plant Pathology from the UW-Madison, and in 1998, became the director of the Plant Disease Diagnostics Clinic (PDDC). The PDDC, part of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin-Extension, provides expertise in diagnosing plant disease problems, and provides information on diseases and their control to a wide range of clientele throughout the state of Wisconsin. For more information on Brian and the PDDC, check out the PDDC website at http://pddc.wisc.edu.

Earth Week Observed with Solar Collector

Coggin Heeringa — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:15:21 +0000

At Crossroads at Big Creek, Earth Day Celebrations for area schools will occur in April and May and June this year, but we will observe the official Earth Week with the installation of a 21 foot solar collector at our Astronomy Campus. Appropriate to the setting, this energy-producing installation designed by John Hippensteel, was inspired by the Pinwheel Galaxy, which is known to astronomers as M101.

The common name Pinwheel Galaxy is obvious. It indeed does resemble a toy pinwheel, but what do the M and the numbers mean?Well, the M is short for Messier Object, named for an astronomer who lived in the 1700s. Fascinated by astronomy as a youth when he saw a comet with six tails (really?) Messier was dedicated to discovering comets. He dreamed of being the first to discover the predicted return of Haley’s comet, but someone beat him to it. Frustrating.

But it was just as frustrating to discover a fuzzy object through his telescope—and in the mid 1700s most celestial objects were just fuzzy smudges in a telescope—and then to realize that the smudge was not moving as a comet would, but instead, appeared to be stationary. What a waste of time to focus on a stationary object when one was trying to be the first to discover a new comet. So Messier developed a system to catalog and number the objects that were not comets. It would save everybody a great deal of time to know the locations of the objects that were not worth studying.

Over the years, as optics improved, astronomers have come to realize that Messier objects should not be ignored or passed over, unless you are hunting for comets. M objects are amazing–they can be nebulae or star clusters or galaxies… far, far away.

The Pinwheel Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, the essentially the same shape we believe our own Milky Way Galaxy to be. It has a huge central mass of stars, with the remaining stars in curving “arms” extending outward in a spiral arrangement. The difference is that M 101 is enormous, possibly twice the size of the Milky Way.

Last September, the Pinwheel Galaxy was in the news when one of its stars went supernova. Actually, this star self-destructed some 21 million years ago, but it took all of that time for its bright light to reach our Earth. In contrast, it will take 8 minutes and 20 seconds for photons of light to travel from the Sun to the solar panels we are putting up Crossroads. Specifically, the good folks from Lake Michigan Wind and Sun LTD with assistance from students from the NWTC Solar Energy Technology Program and Sturgeon Bay Utilities will be installing this newest model of the Solar Flair TM colector.

On Saturday Night, beginning around 8:15, the Astronomy Center will be open for night sky viewing if the skies are clear. No doubt, the planets of our own solar system in our own Milky Way galaxy will highlight the evening, but members of the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society will be on hand to show you how to locate a few of the Meisser objects. Sky viewing is free and open to the public. Please use the Utah Street Entrance to reach the Astronomy Campus.

At 1:00 on Sunday, April 22, join the naturalist for an Earth Day Hike along the Planet Walk to the Astronomy Campus to see the progress on this exciting project and then a ramble through the preserve. And know, that in the years to come, daytime use of the Leif Everson Observatory and Ray and Ruthie Stonecipher Astronomy Center will be powered without pollution or the use of fossil fuels. Happy Earth Day.

NIght Sky Viewing at Astronomy Campus

Coggin Heeringa — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 20:06:30 +0000

For those who want to experience star or planet-gazing, the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society is offering a Viewing Night on Saturday, April 21 at the Astronomy Campus at Crossroads. Beginning at 8:15 PM, members of DPAS will be in the StarGarden with telescopes and astronomical binoculars available for visitors. This will be a clear-sky only event. To reach the Astronomy Campus, turn east on Utah Street and travel up the hill. At the stopsign, turn left into the Crossroads preserve. Night vision-friendly red lights will show you where to go.

Wild Rice Lecture Rescheduled

Coggin Heeringa — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:48:08 +0000

On Tuesday evening, April 23, at 7:00 the Door County Master Gardener Lecture will be “Wild Rice, Our Native Treasure.” Guest speaker Juniper Sundance will discuss of the world of wild rice, one of northern Wisconsin’s native treasures. The Ojibwa and Menominee have traditionally enjoyed wild rice as a staple of their diets, and its harvesting today is carefully regulated. Ripening in late summer, wild rice joined corn, beans and squash as a primary dish.

Not a true rice, wild rice grows in Wisconsin’s shallow lakes and streams and is actually a cereal grass. Juniper will describe places where real wild rice still grows, its importance to wildlife, how to care for it and what is involved in harvesting it. She is a relatively recent convert to ricing, and avidly recommends the practice.

Sundance received her BS in Biology from the UW-Green Bay, where she worked on a project to map the historic distribution of wild rice in Wisconsin. Currently she is involved in a long term forest survey project in the Nicolet National Forest led by UWGB professors, and volunteers with the Northeastern WI Audubon Society, with creating a vegetable garden at the NEW View Sheltered Workshop in Gillett, and in the UWGB Herbarium.

This program, originally scheduled for February was rescheduled due to weather.

Eggs, Seeds and Master Gardener Lecture

Coggin Heeringa — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:27:11 +0000

This time of year, eggs and seeds become the focus at Crossroads at Big Creek. The Boy Scouts from Troop 1021 have put out their Bluebird Trail in hopes that soon, they will be keeping records of the eggs. The suckers have been running in Big Creek, (two months earlier than last year) so millions of fish eggs cover rocks, and as is our tradition, frogs fill the evenings with songs and the ponds with eggs, and we will celebrate “EGGStravaganza” on Saturday, April 7. EGGciting, but just as many folks are getting excited about seeds. Seeds are sprouting in the Collins Learning Center Greenhouse and next month, a Garden Workshop for Families will get underway. Packages of seeds are just waiting to be planted by learners of all ages.

Ah, seeds. They come in various colors and many are covered with intricate designs. Besides having a superficial resemblance to Easter eggs, seeds are similar to eggs in function.

The seed coat is analogous to the egg shell. Both “life packages” contain an embryo which will develop apart from the parent. Just as an egg contains a food supply (the yolk), a seed contains a package (or two packages) of food.

In answer to the old riddle, the egg really does come first–before the chicken. By the time we see the hatched chick, the yolk has been absorbed by the developing bird.

Not so with seeds. In the plants classified as monocotyledons [grass and corn are familiar examples] the food is stored in tissue called the endosperm. This (and the rest of the seed) stays underground as the blade-like sprout emerges from the soil.

Other plants are called dicotyledons, so named because the seed contains two food storage packages called cotyledons. These sometimes are called “seed leaves.” When this kind of seed sprouts, the embryonic stem pulls the cotyledons…the seed leaves… right out of the ground.

The stem and leaves of the plant embryo are neatly tucked between the two cotyledons. When the plant emerges from the soil, the cotyledons open and the true leaves unfold and begin to grow. By the time the true leaves are able to make their own food through photosynthesis, the nutrients in the cotyledons have been pretty well used up. They shrivel up and drop off.

In many religious traditions, eggs and seeds have been used as symbols for new life. New life is EGGzactly what we are celebrating Crossroads.

If you and your family are longing to get soil under your fingernails and plant some seeds, and you want to do it correctly, you are invited to take part in a Garden Workshop for Families at Crossroads. Co-sponsored by Crossroads, Master Gardeners, and The Community’s Garden, this four session gardening class for families begins on April 17. Instructors Patsy Stierna and Pat Thorp will explain how to make good garden soil, how to keep weeds under control, and how to plant plants that you then can take home to your own garden. Finally, participants will learn to prepare vegetables. A $15/family fee covers the costs of plants and planting supplies but these will result in enough plants to fill a home garden. Children are welcome to come along, and we will keep them busy with nature-related activities during class sessions. They will, of course, be involved in the planting. Pre-registration required and space is limited. Applications are available at Crossroads and the UW-Extension Office or call Jenny Spude at 920-746-2260 for more information.

Another way to learn about gardening is to attend the Master Gardener lecture: “Chemicals in Your Garden” on 7:00 on Tuesday, April 10. There are differences of opinions about the use of chemicals in flower and vegetable gardens, areas adjacent to gardens like paths, driveways and lawns, possibly fruit trees and bushes, or to get rid of poison ivy, etc. Hear the pros and cons of herbicide and insecticide use in controlling weeds and harmful insects. Learn what works best in Door County, when and how to use these various chemicals, where to buy them, and how and when to apply them. In particular, safety issues such personal protection, proper use of chemicals, what to look for in pesticide labels, maintenance of spraying and other equipment, disposal, weather and environmental considerations. Dick Weidman, the recently retired Superintendent of the Peninsular Agricultural Research Station, will present the program. Dick has abundance of knowledge and experience in the use of chemicals in and around your gardens. Please join us for this program and be smarter and safer in the use of these chemicals.

Finally, as is the case each Easter Weekend, the Family Program will be the Annual EGGStravagaza. From dissecting chicken eggs to the ever popular egg drop, families will crack up over this interactive program offered Saturday, April 7 at 1:00.