Dear Reader,
This week, in preparation for Give to the Max Day on Thursday, we’re celebrating some of our favorite moments this past year. This message that Mike Osterholm shared with a room full of children and adults is one of mine.
Mike was at Red Balloon to celebrate the launch of Creekfinding, a true story chronicling his restoration of a creek that hadn’t run in more than half a century. Decades ago, the creek was filled and buried to create a farm, a common practice in the region during the time but one that displaced the species of plants and animals that relied on this ecosystem. With beautiful illustrations by Claudia McGehee, author Jacqueline Briggs Martin tells young readers about the seven years Mike spent uncovering and repairing the creek bed, planting grasses, and reintroducing fish species, including the brook trout, Iowa’s only native strain of trout. The trout in Brook Creek—the apt name for the restored waterway—are now reproducing on their own.
“Long after I am gone these trout will be there,” Mike said in an article in the Des Moines Register. “When you think of one’s contribution in a lifetime – what we give to our kids and community – this will live in perpetuity.”
“The book will be around for a long time, too,” the article notes.
Books are a legacy all on their own, but this particular book doesn’t just contribute to Mike’s legacy, or even Jacqueline’s or Claudia’s. Its very existence is tied up in the legacy of a philanthropist who wanted to bring books about natural history, environmental science, and conservation topics into fruition. Her name was Margaret W. Harmon, and her gift to the University of Minnesota Press has made possible more than a dozen books for children and adults, including 2008’s The Great Minnesota Fish Book and the forthcoming Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers, a guidebook for the whole family that teaches us how to find and identify our state’s beautiful expanse of native flowers.
I think Margaret would be especially proud to have a hand in making Creekfinding a reality because of the myriad of lessons it teaches us. Without this book, Mike and his inspiring message of environmental stewardship and hopeful promise that damage can be reversed would reach fewer eyes and ears.
Beyond the direct message of the narrative, the beauty of this book is in the way it illuminates the roles we each play in sharing stories like this one. Mike does something worth sharing with the world. Jacqueline and Claudia use imaginative descriptions and illustrations to create Mike’s story. We publish it. Audiences read it. And donors like Margaret Harmon, and donors like you, make that a reality.
This Give to the Max Day, consider where you fit in to this constellation—it may be in more place than one. And if you want to make sure stories like Creekfinding will always be told, give a gift today.
Thank you,
Molly Fuller, Outreach and Development Manager
fulle154@umn.edu