Life Magazine in 1941

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1941, I thought about the buildup of war activities in the US and then Pearl Harbor occurring in December. The US did not formally enter the war until December 11th but it is obvious from the pictures Life published that people were very aware of what was happening and the US involvement too. And there were still other aspects of life that continued on – iceboats, Coca-Cola, glass food packaging, the New York skyline. (Click on any of the sample images below to see a larger version and the links to see the whole magazine online.)

 Life Magazine 1941-01-06 – Ernest Hemingway

Life Magazine 1941-01-13 – Hitler with big guns

Life Magazine 1941-01-20 – Florida sand and mud creating Camp Blanding for 70,000 soldiers

Life Magazine 1941-01-27 – London on fire from war

Life Magazine 1941-02-03  - Wright Field wind tunnel

Life Magazine 1941-02-10 – American bombers poised to take off from Newfoundland

Life Magazine 1941-02-17 - Iceboats

Life Magazine 1941-02-24 – Railway gun built by US Industry

Life Magazine 1941-03-03 – Greek Peasant troops into Albania in winter

Life Magazine 1941-03-10 – Mayor LaGuardia explaining the food stamp plan

Life Magazine 1941-03-17 – English children

Life Magazine 1941-03-24 – Tornado shelters

Life Magazine 1941-03-31 – Bombing rehearsal off Diamond Head, Hawaii from aircraft carrier

Life Magazine 1941-04-07 – Coca-Cola six-bottle carton (cardboard and glass)

Life Magazine 1941-04-14 – British war prisoners (sketches from a German prison camp)

Life Magazine 1941-04-21 – Damaged British battleship seeking repairs in New York’s upper bay

Life Magazine 1941-04-28 – Glass for food packaging

Life Magazine 1941-05-05 – Big classes at Harvard

Life Magazine 1941-05-12 – Gandhi is the voice of Hindu masses

Life Magazine 1941-05-19 – Nazi blitzkrieg reaches London’s oldest cardroom

Life Magazine 1941-05-26 – Balkan war

Life Magazine 1941-06-02 – Nazis wreck great monuments of English culture

Life Magazine 1941-06-09 – Crete invasion

Life Magazine 1941-06-16 – Women bringing pans to provide metals of the war

Life Magazine 1941-06-23 – Chinese children (orphans)

Life Magazine 1941-06-30 – Wrecked Axis ships

Life Magazine 1941-07-07 – The arming of America - tanks

Life Magazine 1941-07-14 – Beer and ale

Life Magazine 1941-07-21 – Tin makes Singapore rich

Life Magazine 1941-07-28 – War in Russia

Life Magazine 1941-08-04 – Germans execute Russian sniper caught in wheat field

Life Magazine 1941-08-11 – Life photographer in Moscow a week before Nazi invasion

Life Magazine 1941-08-18 – Line of tanks

Life Magazine 1941-08-25 – Naval gun construction at Bethlehem

Life Magazine 1941-09-01 – Moscow camouflages itself by day and black out by night

Life Magazine 1941-09-08 – Hard times of Alden family

Life Magazine 1941-09-15 – Battleship tests its guns at sea

Life Magazine 1941-09-22 – Roosevelt mourning his mother

Life Magazine 1941-09-29 – Spitsbergen – British blow up coal mines

Life Magazine 1941-10-06 – Rain, mud, dust….the Army goes through

Life Magazine 1941-10-13 – Appalachian trail

Life Magazine 1941-10-20 – Pan American Airways Clipper

Life Magazine 1941-10-27 – Crowd in Moscow park listening to war speakers

Life Magazine 1941-11-03 – Army builds its Iceland base

Life Magazine 1941-11-10 – New York skyline behind New Jersey suburbs

Life Magazine 1941-11-17 – Russian mud and blood stall German army

Life Magazine 1941-11-24 – B-19, world’s largest warplane (at the time)

Life Magazine 1941-12-01 – Balloon houses for defense workers under Virginia trees

Life Magazine 1941-12-08 – American flag goes down in the south Atlantic

Life Magazine 1941-12-15 – Jap bombers aim first blow at Oahu base

Life Magazine 1941-12-22 – US planes fight to command the air

Life Magazine 1941-12-29 – Knox Report – deeds of heroism at Pearl Harbor

Chicago – big city views

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We stayed at The Drake Hotel while we were at the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago. We had a view of a beach and the lake from our window. There was a lot of light on the beach at night – probably confusing to the birds. My husband commented about how much city noise could be heard through the night from our 5th floor room in the historic hotel! Perhaps traffic made a lot less noise when it was built!

Since my husband was driving while we were at the festival, I took pictures as we drove around the city. There are some very tall buildings. Most of the time we were near the lakeshore…so not driving down a ‘canyon’ of tall buildings!

I was impressed that the parts of the city where we were had so little (almost no) trash – very different from other big cities I’ve visited.

Out on Lake Michigan

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We had signed up for birding out on Lake Michigan on the last day of the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago. We had to be at the dock by 5 AM so we were leaving our hotel about 4:30…checking out and loading everything into our car. Both of us were feeling a bit sleep deprived.

Everyone that had signed up for the trip appeared and we were heading out of the harbor by 5:30 AM. The boat was a fishing boat. It wasn’t a windy morning, but I appreciated the extra handholds that the rod holders provided when I tried to move around. I sat most of the time!

Everyone that had signed up for the trip appeared and we were heading out of the harbor by 5:30 AM. The boat was a fishing boat. It wasn’t a windy morning, but I appreciated the extra handholds that the rod holders provided when I tried to move around. I sat most of the time!

We saw the sunrise on the lake. We passed several of the water intakes for the city that are a ways out into the lake and often host colonies of cormorants.

The guides were throwing chum (fish, bread, popcorn) to the birds from the back of the boat. There were more Herring Gulls than Ring-billed Gulls already. We saw a few terns. The hope was for some rarer birds – like a Parasitic Jaeger. That didn’t show up so I focused on observing gulls at various stages of development and how they used their tail feathers to control their flight/landing behind the boat.

The rocking of the boat was calming…at least while I was sitting…not so much when I was moving around.

The skyline of Chicago was always present…although we were at least 15 miles out on the lake. The air around the city was hazy. The air in the city and on the lake was humid and the air quality was yellow (small particulates). It is a big city and there are a lot of cars.

The surprise of the trip was seeing a Monarch butterfly – flying south – when we were between 10 and 15 miles from shore. I had assumed that they took the land route south from Canada…but some of them obviously don’t.

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and Lincoln Park Zoo

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The headquarters and registration for the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago was at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. We were in and out of the building during all three days of the festival. They have a small butterfly house with some exotics…some natives.

I managed to make a short video of a butterfly feeding.

There were lots of activities for young children. It was fun watching them explore. A fiber mural appealed to me too.

We signed up for a walk at Lincoln Park Zoo – birds and botany – skewed toward botany.

The two birds that I photographed were in a wilder area of the zoo…where wild birds sometimes drop in…sometimes decide to stay. The wood duck was relatively close and preening. The green heron was further way and harder to see through the vegetation. On the underside of a bridge were some barn swallow nests; the birds had already left for the season.

There were turtles out and about – including a soft shelled one.

The plantings in the main part of the zoo are a mix of formal landscaping plants (non-natives) with some natives like coneflowers and turtlehead and sunflowers mixed in.

The zoo has a very old elm that is treated to keep it from succumbing to Dutch Elm Disease. They have started planting elms resistant to the disease.

The walk around South Pond is landscaped with all natives….as close as the horticulturalist can to get prairie…with a few woody plants mixed in on the outer edges. I was surprised at how many plants I recognized! There were lots of yellows and seed pods this time of year!

We made the mistake of using Google Maps to show us the shortest route back to our car; it had exits from the zoo that didn’t exist! We circled back to find an exit….had a much longer walk than we would have had without technology!

Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary

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Our first field trip at the Urban Birding Festival in Chicago was at the Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary. We sought out the rest room facilities in the clock tower beforehand. The doorway there was half covered in ivy. There was an unopened protein bar that someone had dropped on the walk nearby…and cicadas and leaves/small branches. Not trash. There were trash/recycle bins…and evidently, they are used. I noticed a young catalpa with seed pods as we walked back toward the sanctuary.

The core of the sanctuary is protected by a fence; visitors have a good view from a platform that is high enough to look over the fence and vegetation….the platform is where our group spent a couple of hours. There was plenty to see!

There were plenty of birds – including flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, Copper’s hawks (which scattered all the other birds when they were about), downy woodpecker, hummingbirds, and goldfinches.

There were monarch butterflies feeding and resting…before they continued their migration south.

A racoon made an appearance…climbing a tree then coming back down and disappearing into what must have been a hole on the other side of the trunk!

Of course, there was a lot of vegetation to look at when the birds were not active enough. The humidity was high so there was moisture on a lot of the leaves. The usual fall color was there – golden rod and pokeweed included!

To and From Chicago

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My husband and I signed up for an Urban Birding Festival in Chicago earlier this month. I’ll be doing a series of posts about it over the next week. This post is about our drive to and from the city; as usual my husband did all the driving.

We made frequent rest stops along the way. At our first one I realized that the route from Springfield MO to Chicago via Route 66 was depicted on floor! The Interstate route of today is likely a bit straighter that the old route…and the speed we traveled was probably higher too.

I took pictures as we drove – road cuts in Missouri, the arch in St. Louis just before we crossed the Mississippi River, and sunflowers in Illinois.

At the end of our trip, I took a few pictures as we left the city…and of sunflowers along the roadside. I like that Illinois encourages sunflowers in the medians by only mowing the edges (and not mowing too frequently even at the edge). The farmland appeared to be mostly planted in soybeans and corn.

At the last rest stop in Illinois, I recognized a hackberry – it was full of galls produced by insects as most hackberries are.

And then I photographed the arch and bridges as we crossed the Mississippi River into St. Louis.

There was a little fall color in the forests west of St. Louis…and the bluffs always make for added interest.

We got home easily; our three cats were a great welcoming committee.

Our Missouri Yard – September 2025

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There are parts of my yard that I am enjoying even with the prospect of the big landscaping change that is coming (which hopefully will not impact any of the plants in this post):

The Missouri Evening Primrose is thriving by my mailbox (there is a tiny remnant of a prickly pear cactus underneath it that I discovered when I cleaned out the weeds earlier this summer…its growing too!) and a crape myrtle that seems healthier than in previous years.

The Virginia Creeper is crowing on the front steps and onto the bricks. I’ll enjoy it a bit longer than pull it down – relegate it to the horizontal surface of the front flower bed.

The chives are thriving in several places in the back yard. They were started from seeds harvested from my mother’s garden. They don’t seem to care if they are in the sun or shade!

The American spikenard – one of my first native plant purchases – is larger each year. There are violets under it (and a small pokeweed in the foreground). The fruit is beginning to turn purple. I’ll harvest some and try to sprout them indoors to plant outdoors next year.

There are a variety of things in the garden where a pine tree once grew. The iris leaves look a little burnt on the ends, but the pokeweed is full of berries that the birds will eat as they ripen. I am still watching developments…not sure of everything there although I like the surprises discovering the naked lady lilies blooming in August and the beautyberry that I planted…glad that has survived.

The area under the short leaf pine is full of pokeweed – mostly. As the season changes, I will enjoy its red foliage…then cut it down and clear out anything else growing under the tree….except the redbud (perhaps).

Josey Ranch – August 2025

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While I was in Dallas in August, I made an early trip to the pocket prairie and lake at Josey Ranch in Carrollton – a place I visited frequently before we moved my parents to assisted living in January 2024.

There didn’t seem to be very many birds around, so I started my visit at the pocket prairie. The trash cans looked freshly painted, and the gardens looked like they had been recently weeded (piles of vegetation waiting to be picked up). Some of the flowers had gone to seed but that is normal for August. There were marshmallows that were surviving in the rain garden area. The sunflowers dominate but I was glad to see Texas rock rose among the plantings.

I went back to look at the lake and realized that there were not many grackles (I heard several…only saw one)…pigeons were about as numerous as always…only two ducks and one was a white domestic duck. The only birds I saw in the pond were one great egret and one snowy egret. The two swans were still there. Evidently there were a lot of geese there recently judging from the goose poop on the sidewalks. It was depressing that there weren’t more birds around and I wondered what happened.

I noticed more trash in the water – a foam cup, plastic bags, and sheen on the water near the shore. Is there more pollution in the pond now? I saw one turtle snout from a distance. Overall, the pond does not look as healthy as it was a few years ago. I took a few pictures of feathers in the grass.

As I walked to the plantings between the library and senior center, I noticed a tree that was planted in memory of someone. It was about 6 feet from the sidewalk….a Bur Oak! I was surprised that it was planted so close to the sidewalk…maybe the climate in Texas will cause it to not get as big as Bur Oaks usually grow.

I looked for the beautyberry that seemed to thrive previously in that area, but they were gone. One of the new plants was a rock rose. The morning was warming up but I didn’t see many insects.

It was a little depressing that the wildlife that used to be around the area seems to be reduced. Maybe I was there at an odd time….I’ll try to look again later this year when the birds that typically winter in Texas might be around.

Life Magazine in 1940

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1940, I thought about my parents in elementary school then and becoming more aware of the war as they got older. Their families were probably listening to the radio but many of the reports must have seemed very far away, and it is unlikely that saw the pictures in Life Magazine. (Click on any of the sample images below to see a larger version.)

 Life Magazine 1940-01-01 – War’s impact on the London Zoo

Life Magazine 1940-01-08 – Trucks from the US going to France for troops

Life Magazine 1940-01-15 – Torpedoed British freighter goes down in the Atlantic

Life Magazine 1940-01-22 – Finnish people fleeing the war

Life Magazine 1940-01-29 – War in Turkey

Life Magazine 1940-02-05 – Swedish aviators

Life Magazine 1940-02-12 – Hardship in Spain

Life Magazine 1940-02-19 – In Russia

Life Magazine 1940-02-26 – Germans in Poland

 

Life Magazine 1940-03-04 – Life in Miami

Life Magazine 1940-03-11 – Maginot Line

Life Magazine 1940-03-18 – Coco Cola ad

Life Magazine 1940-03-35 - Plastics

Life Magazine 1940-04-01 – Niblets corn ad

Life Magazine 1940-04-08 – Stratoliner plane

Life Magazine 1940-04-15 - Fashion

Life Magazine 1940-04-15 – A German-transport armada crosses to Norway

Life Magazine 1940-04-29 – Europe’s sea power

 

Life Magazine 1940-05-06 – Shirley Temple

Life Magazine 1940-05-13  - British destroyer crew rides waves of North Sea after Germans sink ship

Life Magazine 1940-05-20 – German Blitzkrieg

Life Magazine 1940-05-27 – British in Belgium

Life Magazine 1940-06-03 – Germany’s fighting forces

Life Magazine 1940-06-10 – German private with a French flag captured in battle

Life Magazine 1940-06-17 – British wounded

Life Magazine 1940-06-24 – Mussolini struts his stuff as prelude to war

 

Life Magazine 1940-07-01 – Britons aim at the sky, send children to the US

Life Magazine 1940-07-08 – Admiral Byrd’s expedition to the Arctic

Life Magazine 1940-07-15 – Imaginary invasion of Britain

Life Magazine 1940-07-22 – British children housed in an American Castle by the Sea

Life Magazine 1940-07-29 – Easter in Paris

Life Magazine 1940-08-05 – Vacation at the Grand Canyon

Life Magazine 1940-08-12 – Japanese bomb Chungking

Life Magazine 1940-08-19 – Parachute practice

Life Magazine 1940-08-26 – War in English Channel and over London

 

Life Magazine 1940-09-02 – The Oval Office

Life Magazine 1940-09-09 – German bombers try to break civilian morale

Life Magazine 1940-09-16 – Heart diseases a major factor in US death rate

Life Magazine 1940-09-23 – Hitler tries to destroy London

Life Magazine 1940-09-30 – The bombing of London

Life Magazine 1940-10-07 – Bombing of London (damage)

Life Magazine 1940-10-14 – Praying for Great Britain in Washington’s National Cathedral

Life Magazine 1940-10-21 – US Industry

Life Magazine 1940-10-28 – The US Navy

 

Life Magazine 1940-11-04 – International Trucks

Life Magazine 1940-11-11 – Hitler’s Reich Chancellery

Life Magazine 1940-11-18 – Times Square on Election Night

Life Magazine 1940-11-25 – The world’s biggest ship leaves New York to join the war at sea

Life Magazine 1940-12-02 – Mussolini tries to break Greece

Life Magazine 1940-12-09 - Gibraltar

Life Magazine 1940-12-16 – German plane crash

Life Magazine 1940-12-23 – Ruins of Coventry

Life Magazine 1940-12-30 – Germans in Paris

What is eating the pokeweed?

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I have learned to tolerate pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) in many places in my Missouri yard…where it provides lush greenery…eye-catching magenta stems…flowers for small pollinators…food for birds.

This is the first year I have noticed that something is eating the leaves.

I thought perhaps it could be Giant Leopard Moth (Hypercompe Scribonia) caterpillars that are reported to eat the plant….but I have never seen them on the plants.

I did see some frass one morning (the fly is for size comparison) but the caterpillars are apparently stealthy.  The mystery is not a bad thing necessarily; it motivates me to check the plants more frequently…and I’m pleased that the pokeweed leaves are food for something rather than remaining pristine!

Butterfly House – August 2025

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So many things to see in the Botanical Garden and the Roston Native Butterfly House this month. There are plenty of native plants in bloom in the rain garden on the walk between the Botanical Center and the house….but I just take a quick look since I want a few minutes to get things cleaned up before turning the sign to ‘open.’

Sometimes we find butterflies that have died overnight. I took a picture of one before we put it in the small bin we keep for butterflies that have succumbed. Another morning I found the 4 parts of a cecropia moth’s wings scattered on the floor; maybe a mouse ate the body during the night?

I like to see butterflies getting nectar from flowers…but sometimes it is enough to see them ‘resting.’ There are often fresh zinnias for the butterflies – freshly cut from the Master Gardener area of the Botanical Gardens. And there is always something blooming in the house itself. I like the Zen of the place when there aren’t many people but there is always the magic of a child’s wonder seeing a butterfly in a way they haven’t before.

The caterpillar that was ‘new to me’ this month was a Zebra Swallowtail…large enough to make its chrysalis – picked up off the floor when it was trying to leave the plant!

The moths are easily photographed because they are not very active during the day. The Luna moth is my favorite….but the Polyphemus is beautiful too. They, along with the Cecropia, have large caterpillars that are always interesting to visitors.

Our Missouri Yard in August 2025

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July was very dry here, but our sprinkler system has kept up. Our shade garden looks lush with violets and a few hostas and lambs ear going to seed. The dried remains of alliums and some grass seed heads offer some highlights in the sea of violets.

The American Spikenard is blooming with violets under it a little further up the hill – and where I can see it from my office window.

Even further up the hill with violets around it, is the spicebush I planted last fall. I have been checking it for eggs or caterpillars --- and it finally has caterpillars. I counted 4 – all Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars. I am leaving them alone right now but will go out and check on them. They are easy to spot even when they are small because they pull the leaf around themselves (like a leaf taco) when they resting.

One morning last week when I was out weed eating, I noticed that one of my mother’s naked lady lily bulbs that I planted in my yard in January 2023 has survived! The pokeweed shades it from the heat. There was a second plant that was mostly still buds. I was happy to see it --- glad it was there to spark memories of Mom. I took some macro images of the flowers. They start out a darker pink then fade as they mature.

The pokeweed seems to have more evidence that insects are eating its foliage…but has plenty of energy to make seeds. None of reached maturity yet (i.e. no purple fruits). I am going to let the ones in the bed with the lilies make seeds and hope the birds will enjoy the this fall/winter.

There are birds around: a female hummingbird that comes to my feeder frequently and sometimes flies to the nearby pine or visits the plants in the shade garden, a family of finches,

A young wren,

And a juvenile robin in the pine tree (the third brood for the summer). I am glad that the shade garden seems to be attractive to so many birds.

In the front yard, the crape myrtles are doing better than I expected. They tend to die back in winter but this year they seem to be more robust.

The Virginia creeper is a thick ground cover in the front bed around two of the crape myrtles. I periodically pull it off the bricks although the way it adheres is not damaging like English Ivy can be.

Our yard is looking good in August…and I am looking forward to the work to do the landscaping this fall in the front of the house.

Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge

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The next morning was bright and sunny. I appreciated the golf course scenes from the front of our hotel room. The sidewalk was wide enough to accommodate tables and chairs; quite a few people were outdoors enjoying the morning sunshine. The bird houses seemed to be populated with sparrows.

Our destination for the morning was Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge. It was our second visit (our first was in June of 2024) to see the big cats (and a few bears) that had been rescued from around the country and then provided for in this sprawling facility near Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Many of the cats have health challenges either from prior abuse and/or genetic disorders caused by inbreeding. We arrived just in time for the first tram tour at 9 AM. One high point of the tour for me was a juvenile racoon that was perched on the top of one of the enclosures. Hopefully it got itself back to the forest rather than wiggling through to where it would be no match for the big cat.

The other high point was sound. Two lions were communicating! We couldn’t see either one, but it was interesting to hear their back and forth conversation across the facility.

After the tram, we walked through the area closer to the entrance. I remembered some of the cats from our last visit – a serval found by a farmer in Missouri and brought to the refuge…some bobcats found as cubs. There are also some habitats for large cats. I remembered the black leopard; she was in the same place I saw her on my previous visit; She either is turned away from people or follows them as the move about on the other side of the double fence.

One tiger was new to her area and not settled in yet. She was near the back of the enclosure and trying to ignore people and the cats in the enclosure next door. A staff member was encouraging people to be quieter near her enclosure.

There were butterflies active on a patch of zinnias: several Spicebush Swallowtails, a dark morph of the Tiger Swallowtail (I am assuming….there was one that was a lot larger than the Spicebush Swallowtails), and a Common Buckeye butterfly.   

We headed toward home, stopping at a restaurant that floated on Table Rock Lake. I took a picture of the view from our table…the bluff across a narrow arm of the lake.

On the way back to the car – turtles were visible in the water along the pontoon walkway! The red-eared slider’s markings make identification easy.

We stopped at our house on the way to my daughters…and were greeted at the door by our 3 housecats…wanting cuddles and more food!

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 9, 2025

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Scientists unveil bioplastic that degrades at room temperature, and outperforms petroplastics – Sounds great…but will the existing plastic (made from petroleum) industry let this innovation move forward?

The world is getting hotter – this is what it is doing to our brains - As heatwaves become more intense with climate change, scientists are racing to understand how extreme heat changes the way our brains work. A range of neurological conditions are made worse by rising heat and humidity, including epilepsy, stroke, encephalitis, multiple sclerosis, migraine, along with several others. Heat can also alter other ways our brain functions – making us more violent, grumpy and depressed. Hospital admissions and mortality rates among people with dementia also increase during heatwaves. Rising temperatures have also been linked to an increase in stroke incidents and mortality. And there is a lot we do not know.

Bizarre New Creatures Discovered 30,000 Feet Under the Sea - Entire communities of animals, rooted in organisms that can derive energy not from sunlight but from chemical reactions. Through a process called chemosynthesis, deep-sea microbes can turn compounds like methane and hydrogen sulfide into organic compounds, including sugars, forming the base of the food chain.

Hawaiian Petroglyphs Reemerge for the First Time in Years - The full panel of petroglyphs has been exposed again after seasonal ocean swells swept away covering sand. In all, the petroglyphs are spread across 115 feet of beach and consist of 26 figures and abstract shapes that archaeologists believe were created 500 or more years ago.

The US Commercial Rooftop Solar Market Is About to Explode, Federal Tax Credits or Not - If all goes according to plan, all 500+ projects will be completed during this year into 2026, proving yet again that solar is the fastest way to add more capacity to the nation’s grid. Generating electricity on commercial rooftops and distributing it into the grid is America’s most shovel-ready energy option.

The Power of the Emerald Edge - Whether a tropical forest or coastal temperate rainforest, all forests must contend with a unique set of stressors including changes in land use, invasive insects and disease, and extreme weather events. Rapid changes in climate compound these stressors. How do we prepare our forests for the future? Preserving old-growth forests is one of the most powerful steps we can take.

Elusive and Majestic Red-Crowned Cranes in Hokkaido – Beautiful photographs…of beautiful birds.

Germany’s Stunning Fairytale Castles Added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List - The royal castles of Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, Schachen and Herrenchiemsee have been added to the prestigious list, which includes more than 1,200 sites. Neuschwanstein Castle, located near the village of Schwangau in Bavaria, is one of Germany’s most popular tourist sites. Every year, roughly 1.4 million travelers visit the site.

Learning how to live with shrubbier grasslands (part 1 and part 2) - Our grasslands are getting “shrubbier” and it’s increasingly difficult to prevent that. Because the drivers for that change are mostly beyond our control, it seems obvious that we need to start thinking differently about grassland management.

3 Ways Ancient Egypt Left Its Mark on Modern Art – Empire furniture, art deco, and artists like Bridget Riley.

Life Magazine in 1939

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Internet Archive has digitized versions of many Life Magazines. I have been browsing through them – slowly since there was an issue for each week. As I looked at the issues from 1939, I thought about my parents in elementary school then. War was becoming more serious over the course of the year but Pearl Harbor was not until December 1941; the US was providing supplies but was not actually engaged in the war effort.

Life Magazine 1939-01-02 – Japanese Navy holds the Yangtze

Life Magazine 1939-01-09 – Very cold in Europe

Life Magazine 1939-01-16 – US Capitol building

Life Magazine 1939-01-23 – Scenes from Mexico

Life Magazine 1939-01-30 – Tourist trailers in Tampa municipal park

Life Magazine 1939-02-06 – American plane breaks speed records

Life Magazine 1939-02-13 – Fort Wayne house goes up in 1 hour 4 minutes

Life Magazine 1939-02-20 – Birthplaces of presidents

Life Magazine 1939-02-27 – This is the way the fleet goes to battle

Life Magazine 1939-03-06 – German battleship launched

Life Magazine 1939-03-13 – World’s Fair

Life Magazine 1939-03-20 - Goebbels

Life Magazine 1939-03-27 – Construction of “America” at Newport News shipyard

Life Magazine 1939-04-03 - Coelacanth

Life Magazine 1939-04-10 – Madrid falls and General Franco’s Spain joins the European dictatorships

Life Magazine 1939-04-17 – Britain’s defense against planes from continent

Life Magazine 1939-04-24 – Marian Anderson

Life Magazine 1939-05-01 – Louis Raemaekers drawings from WWI

Life Magazine 1939-05-08 – Burning ship in Le Havre

Life Magazine 1939-05-15 – British royal women

Life Magazine 1939-05-22 – Chicago fire affects the price of wheat

Life Magazine 1939-05-29 – Hyde Park and the Roosevelts

Life Magazine 1939-06-05 – Grand Coulee Dam

Life Magazine 1939-06-12 – Albert Switzer

Life Magazine 1939-06-19 – British royalty in Washington

Life Magazine 1939-06-26 – WWI trenches

Life Magazine 1939-07-03 - Antarctica

Life Magazine 1939-07-10 – Emperor Hirohito

Life Magazine 1939-07-17 – Mount Rushmore and fireworks

Life Magazine 1939-07-24 – Coca-Cola ad

Life Magazine 1939-07-31 – Texaco Dealers (rest rooms registered)

Life Magazine 1939-08-07 – Japanese showing captured Russian tank and plane wreckage

Life Magazine 1939-08-14 – Bloody climax of U.A.W. Strike

Life Magazine 1939-08-21 – Concentration camps

Life Magazine 1939-08-28 – Wizard of Oz (technicolor)

Life Magazine 1939-09-04 – Madeline (children’s book)

Life Magazine 1939-09-11 – Salvaging the relics of WWI I France

Life Magazine 1939-09-18 – Liner “Athenia” is sunk

Life Magazine 1939-09-25 – German leaves its mark

Life Magazine 1939-10-02 – The English take the war in their stride

Life Magazine 1939-10-09 – Queen Elizabeth looks over London’s air-raid precautions

Life Magazine 1939-10-16 – Hitler reviews German Army from plane

Life Magazine 1939-10-23 – Hitler and von Ribbentrop walking

Life Magazine 1939-10-30 – German submarines in the North Sea

Life Magazine 1939-11-06 – 3 Ocean liners in New York

Life Magazine 1939-11-13 – Helen Hayes and family

Life Magazine 1939-11-20 – Nazi Bombers reach Scottish coast

Life Magazine 1939-11-27 - Lockheed

Life Magazine 1939-12-04 – 6  of 140 Allied and neutral ships sunk in the war

Life Magazine 1939-12-11 – French guard on German border

Life Magazine 1939-12-18 – Military inspired toys for Christmas

Life Magazine 1939-12-25 - High spots of “Gone with the Wind”

Adventures in Caterpillar Care (4)

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July 2 – July 9 with a lot of bigger and bigger luna moth caterpillars and a few cecropia moth caterpillars… an ongoing adventure.

I graduated to two large bins for the 40 or so luna moth caterpillars on 7/2 because the caterpillars seemed too crowded in one.

I moved the cecropia moth caterpillars to are larger bin too. They were still small but were beginning to look colorful…growing well on the sweet gum leaves.

I appreciated my neighbor with the sweet gum tree even more as the caterpillars got bigger. I made almost daily trips to get a bag of leaves! Pretty soon I graduated from my long-handled pruners to a pole saw because all the leaves were higher in the tree. The cecropias were eating well (I could find them more easily once they were in their own bin) and were still small enough to keep up with their food requirements.

One morning I thought I heard noises coming from one of the big luna bins. I made a movie to capture the sound of caterpillars eating (not loud….but I was pleased to capture the sound of caterpillars munching)!

The same day that I heard munching, I started to see some cocoons and noticing how big many of luna moth caterpillars had become.

The next morning I saw one that had changed color…as they sometimes do before building their cocoon.

I thought I left plenty of leaves in the bins for overnight….but when I came downstairs the next morning there was not a leaf left in either bin. It was a caterpillar emergency. I texted my neighbor and cleaned out the bins (put cocoons in a separate bin) and then went to get leaves. Fortunately, most caterpillars survived.

As I was cleaning out the bins, I found another caterpillar that had changed colors and put it in a small bin with violet leaves, and it immediately made a cocoon!

After the caterpillar emergency was dealt with, I had a shift in the Butterfly House. I took two larger caterpillars for the caterpillar display table and 4 cocoons for the display case. The cocoons contrasted nicely with the older cocoons already in the case because the leaf part was still green!

I got a collapsible case to put my other cocoons in so I can watch them emerge….and hopefully share the experience with the family that provided the leaves for the caterpillars.

The cecropia caterpillars will probably go to the Butterfly House at some point and maybe some of the luna moths when they emerge.

It’s been an exciting week…probably the peak sweet gum consumption of this adventure.

Previous Adventures in Caterpillar Care posts

Remains of a Bird

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I found the remains of a bird on our patio. It must have been there for a while – through several recent rains. It has been picked clean except for the more substantial wing feathers. It is about the size of a barn swallow; they nested under our deck again this year. The cause of death is not obvious, and I was relieved that it was unlikely caused by the bird flying into the glass of a window since there is not one nearby.

 My first thought was about how fossils of archeopteryx look because of how flattened it is except for the skull. I didn’t try to move it because it is out of the way and appeared to be glued to the pavement. The most nutritious part of the bird is already gone and I will let nature complete the process.

The Green Island

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The book-of-the-week is a children’s book about the Botanical Garden in the middle of Moscow published in 1983. The story is about a visit to the garden by a six year old boy and his father. It is illustrated with colorful art and photographs. I’ve picked 4 sample images but there are many others to browse via Internet Archive. The author (and photographer) is Victor Datskevich and translated from Russian by Jan Butler.

The Green Island

This is one of the many books published in the waning days of the Soviet Union and part of the MIR-titles collection in Internet Archive.

Clover Cushions

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One of the experiments in my backyard is not mowing areas that seem to have more clover growing in them. They look like ‘cushions’ in the otherwise mowed yard….an artsy look that doesn’t challenge the neighborhood yard police (as long as it is in the backyard…I’m not trying it in the front).

The idea is to let the plants grow, bloom, and produce seed…only mowing them infrequently…or maybe not at all.

Clover is a nitrogen fixing plant and its roots are generally deeper than grasses in the lawn – both positives from my perspective. It is a good way to improve the soil and stabilize the slope. Maybe eventually the whole west side of the backyard will be clover with some prairie plants mixed in.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – June 2025

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I walked around our neighborhood in early June and noticed juvenile robins and territorial male red-winged blackbirds. The grackles were making the most noise; there seem to be more of them around this year.

The moss on the side of the channel down to our storm water ponds is thicker than I remembered; May was much wetter than average this year and the moss is probably responding to that increase in moisture.

The turtles were sunning on the edge of the pond. I photographed them from across the water. By the time I was on the same side, there was only one left on the shore. They are very quick to slip into the water at the slightest disturbance.

I didn’t see any ducks or geese or herons. There were quite a few people out already, so perhaps they had left for more remote ponds if they had been around earlier.