Inside the March/April 2005 Issue
Here's what's inside the January/February issue of Nebraska Life! (An excerpt of “Knight Flight” and selected photos are available online.)
A Fascination with Cranes
When counting participants in the annual migration of sandhill cranes to central Nebraska, numbers are necessarily a bit fuzzy. From late February to early April, something like 50,000 human visitors come to the Platte River to see 350,000 to 500,000 sandhill cranes, plus a handful of endangered whooping cranes and about 10 million (give or take a few) migrating ducks and geese. What is it about cranes that so intrigues us year after year?
Story by David Bristow; Photography by Georg Joutras
Knight Flight
They had no radios, no lights and no brakes. Their runways were dirt, their landing fields hay meadows pocked with buffalo wallows. Their expected flying life was about 800 hours, or, as one historian put it, “less than a light bulb.” And on a dark night in North Platte, one of these daring young airmail pilots made history.
By Linda Read Deeds
Grand Island
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New faces, fast horses and thousands of sandhill cranes — life in central Nebraska's largest city. Story by David Bristow; Photography by George Burba |
Elgin's Plantation House
After turns as a pig sty, gambling hall, and nursing home, an old mansion returns to glory.
By Curt Arens
When the Prairie Booms
Voyeurs on the prairie chickens' mating grounds.
By Jerry Wilson
The Devil's Rope
The beauty and lore of barbed wire.
Story and photography by Peter G. Beeson
In Praise of Ranch Life
A look into the lives of two families on a Sandhills ranch. Story by Sheryl Schmeckpeper; Photography by Bob Thompson |
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Lewis and Clark's Boundless Nebraska Prairie
Nebraska City visitor center celebrates the expedition's flora and fauna.
By Steve and Bobbi Olson
Nebraska's New Homesteaders
Crowded by urban sprawl, Amish families seek new homes in Nebraska.
By Curt Arens
Oh, Mary Ann
A Nebraska woman remembers the farm of her childhood and the cow whose black eyes “surely had devils inside.”
By Marilyn Dorf
Plus
Flat Water News (trading post at Robidoux Pass; Kenesaw land
giveaway; Nebraska reads Willa Cather's My Antonia; duck pin bowling in Potter);
Traveler (High Plains Homestead; Omaha's Irish Music; event
listings); Travel Tips by Mary Ethel Emanuel (Mari Sandoz'
Western Nebraska); poetry by Ginny Odenbach, Frederick Zydek
and Marilyn Dorf; and the latest Nebraska books in Bookshelf.
(Photo at left: the Dubliner Pub, Omaha)