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A pond filled with plant overgrowth surrounded by trees Water is essential to all forms of life, and maintaining its quality is crucial for health, ecological balance, agriculture productivity, recreational use, industrial processes, and environmental sustainability. However, if you have been hiking or biking around Dubuque recently, you probably have noticed that much of our water has been overtaken by algae blooms, plant overgrowth, and other pollutants. Dubuque is not alone. Water quality is an issue throughout Iowa, the rest of the country, and the world.

One of the primary goals of National Water Quality Month, observed every August, is to raise awareness about the sources and impacts of water pollution. Water pollution has two categories, point-source and nonpoint-source pollution. Point-source pollution originates from a single, direct source, such as a factory or wastewater treatment plant. Nonpoint-source pollution occurs when precipitation or irrigation water runs over land and picks up pollutants, depositing them into streams, lakes, or groundwater. This latter type, especially runoff of soil, fertilizer, and manure from agricultural land, is the most common in Iowa and is largely unregulated. This pollution reduces water clarity, fills lakes, and carries nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, causing harmful algae blooms that threaten drinking water, wildlife habitats, and outdoor recreation. It also includes chemicals or nitrates that leach into waterways and groundwater.

Bee Branch Creek covered in plant overgrowth and trash There are no quick fixes to this widespread issue. Prevention is key, focusing on keeping excess sediment, nutrients, bacteria, and other pollutants out of water. In agricultural areas, conservation practices like wetlands, ponds, terraces, and buffers are essential to reduce pollutants. Urban areas can contribute by managing lawn fertilizers, preventing pollutants from entering storm drains, and controlling soil runoff from construction sites. These efforts require not just changes in individual practices but a collective effort that addresses issues of regulation, policy, and funding.

National Water Quality Month is an ideal time to advocate for these solutions, raise awareness about the importance of water quality, and encourage practices that protect our water resources. To learn more about water quality, please visit our book display on the main floor of the Library.

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International Volunteer Day 2024

International Volunteer Day, December 5, was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1985. This day honors the spirit of volunteerism and its crucial role in addressing the world’s challenges. For 2024, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program focuses on the vital role of volunteers in fostering sustainable development, highlighting community-driven solutions to global issues like climate change, inequality, and conflict.Volunteerism is a powerful tool for transforming societies. Each month, 862.4 million working-age (age 15 and over) volunteers dedicate their time and skills globally. About 6.5% of volunteers do so formally through organizations, while 14.3% do so informally, often initiated between individuals. Formal volunteers are more often men, whereas informal volunteers are more likely to be women. A significant number of people are involved in multiple types of volunteer work.Volunteerism fosters attitudes and behaviors that drive social, environmental, and economic change. It empowers individuals to become actors in local, national, and international development. By embodying values such as equity, compassion, solidarity, and respect, volunteers create meaningful impacts. Their contributions advance the Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring inclusive growth and peace. The UNV program amplifies these efforts by collaborating with volunteers worldwide, emphasizing that lasting transformation begins with people-led initiatives.Celebrate International Volunteer Day by recognizing the commitment of volunteers everywhere. You can share volunteer stories on social media using #IVD2024. If you would like to find volunteer opportunities, you can contact Spiritual Life or Volunteer Dubuque. To learn more about volunteerism, check out the book display on the third floor. ...

Red Planet Day 2024

Red Planet Day, November 28, commemorates the anniversary of the launch of NASA's Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1964. This mission achieved a successful flyby of Mars, giving humanity its first close-up images of another planet. But long before this, Mars has held a fascination for humanity. As the closest planet to Earth, it can be viewed with the naked eye, appearing distinctly reddish in color due to the iron oxide dust covering its surface. Early records of Mars date back thousands of years to ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Babylonian astronomers, who documented its motions and developed methods to predict its position. All this was based on observations with the unaided eye. However in 1610, Galileo Galilei made the first telescopic observation of Mars, marking a significant advancement in its study.Improved telescopes in the 19th century enabled mapping of Mars, with the first map published in 1840 and more refined ones following in 1877. The idea of life on Mars became widely popular in the late 19th century, primarily due to the work of astronomer Percival Lowell who observed linear features that he speculated were a network of canals built by intelligent life. These turned out to be optical illusions, but the search for signs of life has remained. Since the 1960s, robotic spacecraft have explored Mars from orbit and its surface, while instruments across the electromagnetic spectrum continue to observe it. Martian meteorites found on Earth provide valuable insights into the planet's chemical conditions through laboratory analysis.Mars is a world of extremes. Its surface consists of vast deserts, massive volcanoes like Olympus Mons (the tallest in the solar system), and an enormous canyon system, Valles Marineris, roughly 10 times longer, 20 times wider, and 5 times deeper, than the Earth’s Grand Canyon. Its surface temperature is incredibly cold, with average temperatures of -80 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet's atmosphere is very thin, containing more than 95% carbon dioxide and much less than 1% oxygen. It experiences wind and dust storms, ranging from small tornado-like storms to massive planet-wide events visible from Earth. Mars has significantly less mass than Earth, and so about one-third the gravity. A person who weighs 100 pounds on Earth would only weigh about 38 pounds on Mars. Despite these harsh conditions, evidence of ancient riverbeds, lake systems, and polar ice caps suggests that billions of years ago, the planet had conditions favorable for life.NASA is currently exploring Mars with three orbiters studying the planet’s climate, surface features, radiation, and minerals. On the surface, the Curiosity rover, active since 2012, investigates the terrain. In 2021, the Perseverance rover arrived with advanced tools, including a system to produce oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide and a helicopter named Ingenuity to test powered flight. The ultimate goal is to send humans to explore Mars. The robotic missions serve to prepare for this, researching habitats, food production, and the effects of space living. To learn more about Mars check out these books and the display on the third floor. ...

National Aviation Month 2024

National Aviation Month is a time to celebrate pioneers who helped shape this field. Among these is Amelia Earhart, a trailblazing pilot, whose adventurous spirit and numerous achievements continue to inspire people around the world. Earhart not only set numerous flying records but also paved the way for women in a male-dominated field. Her legacy remains one of courage, determination, and advocacy for equality.Earhart’s interest in flying began in 1920, at the age of 23, when she had her first airplane ride while living in California. This inspired her to take flying lessons and within two years she had her pilot’s license and owned her own small plane. She then moved to Massachusetts where she worked as a social worker with immigrants in Boston while continuing to pursue her flying career. Earhart gained notoriety in when she was chosen to be a passenger on a transatlantic flight piloted by Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, making her the first woman to cross the Atlantic in a plane. This was just the beginning of her aviation achievements. In 1931 she flew to the record-setting altitude of 18,415 feet. In 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. For this feat she was awarded, among other honors, the Army Air Corps Distinguished Flying Cross and an Honorary Membership in the British Guild of Air Pilots and Navigators. Later in 1932, she became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the United States. In 1935 she became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific and thus also the first person to fly over both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Earhart spoke extensively about her flying adventures and also wrote several books. Beyond her flying achievements, Earhart was an advocate for women’s equality. Recognizing the lack of support and resources for women pilots, she co-founded the Ninety-Nines, an organization dedicated to promoting women in aviation; she served as its first president. Additionally, as a visiting professor at Purdue University, she encouraged women to pursue careers in engineering and science, empowering them to envision new opportunities in traditionally male-dominated fields. By 1936, the one aviation achievement she had not yet achieved was flying around the world, so she began to make plans to do so. She stated, “I have a feeling that there is just about one more good flight left in my system, and I hope this trip is it. Anyway, when I have finished this job, I mean to give up long-distance ‘stunt’ flying.” Earhart began the 29,000-mile journey in 1937 with her navigator, Fred Noonan. They had covered nearly 22,000 miles when they reached New Guinea. Their next stop was Howland Island, but on the way she and Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. The Itasca, a US Coast Guard cutter near Howland Island, received a radio transmission on July 2, “KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you... gas is running low...” The Itasca eventually lost contact and began search operations. Despite an extensive search, the plane was never found. It is generally presumed they ran out of fuel, crashed into the ocean, and died near Howland Island. The mystery of Earhart’s disappearance continues to capture the imagination of explorers. In January, Deep Sea Vision, a South Carolina-based team, said it had captured a sonar image in the Pacific Ocean that “appears to be Earhart’s Lockheed 10-E Electra” aircraft. However, earlier this month the team was able to do more extensive scans and discovered what they found was a rock formation. So while the mystery of her death remains, the more important story is not how she died, but how she lived.To learn more about Amelia Earhart and aviation history, please check out these books and visit the books display on the fourth floor. ...

Native American Heritage Month 2024

November is National Native American Heritage Month. For this week’s blog we welcome guest writer, Dr. Susan Stone, Professor of English. Indigenous people have lived in what we now call North America for over 20,000 years. Currently, there are 574 federally recognized tribes, each with their own unique language and customs, and Native Americans made up 3% of the US population in the 2022 census. Although this number is significant, it could have been much larger if Europeans hadn’t arrived in the 15th century. It is estimated that almost 95% of the millions of Indigenous people living in North America perished from diseases like smallpox and the measles as well as forced displacement and warfare, within the first few decades of contact. Despite the immense challenges they faced, Indigenous people preserved their histories and cultures through storytelling, passing down their heritage for generations. This was complicated, however, by the lack of written indigenous languages, which made recording history and sharing stories among tribes and with colonists difficult. Still in 1809, a Cherokee man named Sequoyah (George Guess) became the first Native American to begin working on a writing system for his nation’s language. He called this project the “Talking Leaves.” A monumental undertaking, especially considering that he couldn’t read or write, it took Sequoyah and his daughter Ayoka over a decade to complete the Cherokee Syllabary, an innovative syllable-based writing system still used today. Today, Cherokee and Navajo, which was used by the Code Talkers in WWII to help win the war, are the two most popular spoken and written native languages. With written languages, the legacy of indigenous storytelling has taken on new dimensions.Over the last two centuries, hundreds of Native American authors have shared stories orally and written prolifically and provocatively in English and in multiple classical genres—poetry, short fiction, novels, drama, etc. In the last 50 years or so as part of the Native American Renaissance first and second waves, they have woven decidedly Indigenous and tribal topics, themes, and forms into their story telling, creating hybrid works like Cherokee/Kiowa Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday’s multi-voiced (tribal, academic, personal, and mythical) and hand-illustrated The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969) and Chippewa writer Louise Erdrich’s critically acclaimed, multigenerational Love Medicine (1984), a text that can be read either as a whole novel or a collection of, stand-alone short stories. Ceremony (1977), by Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo), places the oral traditions and ceremonial practices of the Navajo and Pueblo people at the center of her story, and Tommy Orange’s Pulitzer-nominated debut novel There There (2018) is a polyphonic, puzzle-like text that focuses on the lives of a dozen people—some Indigenous, some not—who are brought together at an urban pow-wow in Oakland, California. In this extremely popular work, Orange blends elements of his Cheyenne and Arapaho heritage with social, historical, and cultural issues that confront both urban Natives and those living on reservations. In addition to the above texts, there is a wonderful emergence of creative Native American authored and illustrated texts for children and young adults. Since 2006 the biennial American Indian Youth Literature Award celebrates the best in children's and young adult literature by and about Native Americans, showcasing authentic and engaging stories that reflect Indigenous experiences. Many of these award winners and honors can currently be found as part of the book display on the first floor of the Library including: Berry Song, written and Illustrated by Michaela Goade (Tlingit Nation); We Are Still Here! Native American Truths Everyone Should Know by Traci Sorell (Cherokee); Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians); and Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee). Native American Heritage Month was created not only to commemorate a rich, multitribal ancestry and heritage but also to recognize the current achievements and goals of modern tribes and their diverse stories, traditions, identities, governments, and lives on and off reservations. Native Americans are a present tense, forward-looking people. Native American Heritage Month reminds us to honor the resilience, creativity, and ongoing contributions of Indigenous communities, whose voices continue to enrich and deepen our collective understanding. This November, let us celebrate by engaging with these stories that bridge past, present, and future....

National Water Quality Month 2024

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