Cooking Up a Fun Summer

By: Airicca

Hello fellow CPBS lovers! I wanted to step out of the kitchen for a moment and brag on my staff just a little.

Over the past couple of years, we tried to partner with our Hospitality, Restaurant, and Tourism Management Department with small (but awesome) success. The HRTM program is fairly new to the UNL system leaving the pool of candidates petite in number but growing rapidly. We decided that we would try again this year, since we had let it rest for a year.

Our partnership with our HRTM program did not disappoint! I had an amazing staff consisting of three HRTM students, one friend of a student, an HRTM grad from a different university, and a dietetics major from yet another university. Everyone of them was unique in education, tastes, and styles creating a kitchen that was never dull. One found a love of garlic (hehe). One decided that they didn't want to go back to their old job because it would be too boring (because everyday here is very different... kinda like a grab bag). One made authentic Italian food that was to die for. One learned a ton of kitchen skills totally applicable to cooking at home.

All of them, however, gained a lot of confidence and rightfully so. There is a very steep learning curve in a kitchen that is only open for 3-4 months out of the year, and I expected a lot out of them. They flew over that curve with no trouble and were amazing people on top of that. I'm excited and worried about next year... They've set the bar pretty darn high.

Excerpt from RISE OF THE WOBANZI (A novel inspired by CPBS)

Excerpt Submitted By: J. J. Morrow

A few people have been asking me about my zombie novel lately, so I thought I might share some of it with my fellow Cedar Pointians. I wrote the novel as part of National Novel Writer's Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2012 and just recently felt it was ready for e-publication. The story has multiple settings, but the last half of the book centers around a field station inspired by Cedar Point.  The following excerpt comes from chapter seventeen, which is titled "Disrupting Homeostasis".  I chose this particular excerpt because the last few weeks have seen lots of parasite research, so it seemed appropriate. At this point in the story, the characters have made the field station their new home and have begun research to try to figure out what causes people to turn into zombie-like creatures known as "wobanzis". The book is titled Rise of the Wobanzi and has been published as an e-book, which can be purchased from the following website: 

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/426123 

The Excerpt:

Connie poked her head into the lab to see Zoey staring into her microscope.  Slides were scattered all over the table around her and she had skipped the last two meals with the group in order to keep working. 

Connie walked over to her, “Z? I brought you a burger…Cayson said this is how you like them, with pickles and ketchup!”  She paused for a moment trying to gauge the reaction…or more precisely the lack thereof…from the dedicated biologist. “You really should eat something.  The mind can’t work if the belly is empty.”

Zoey pulled her tired eyes back from the eyepieces of her compound microscope and rubbed her aching head.  She didn't realize how long she had been staring at the tiny red blood cells of seemingly healthy wobanzis.  “Thanks Connie, I shouldn't eat it in here though, let’s step outside into the hall.”

Connie smiled, “I made you coffee too, it’s on the table out there.”  Zoey grinned at the thoughtful librarian.  She couldn't help thinking about how much help Connie had been to everyone.  She carried her weight with chores (especially the gardening), she had practically memorized that book on edible fungi (which had been very helpful in supplementing their food supply), and she always seemed to intuitively know when someone needed a little cheering up.  Zoey was thankful to have such a wonderful friend who had survived all of the insanity that this new world had to offer.  She stepped out into the hall and began to eat the lukewarm burger. 

“Can I go look at your slide?” Connie asked with wide, curious eyes. 

“Sure thing,” Zoey replied, “Just don’t move anything, I need to know where I was when I stopped scanning.” An excited Connie ambled back into the lab as Zoey sipped her coffee and finished off her dinner. 

Connie came back out into the hallway a few minutes later.  “Cool stuff.  What are you looking at?”

“Blood.”  Zoey answered.

Connie nodded her head excitedly, “So what are all of those round thingies?”

Zoey gave a short laugh, “Which ones?  There are lots of red blood cells, which are the small, red, disc-shaped ones.  Then there are a number of different kinds of white blood cells, like basophils, neutrophils, eosinophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, and macrophages.”

“Whoa…that’s a lot of different kinds of white blood cells.” Connie said in a stunned tone.

“Yeah, they are pretty important.  They all have different jobs, but basically they fight infection.  We've seen a lot of white blood cells in the samples, which makes sense because these came from people who are infected, but we can’t seem to find what’s causing them to become infected.  We don’t know what these cells were fighting off.” Zoey replied.

“So what is the one with the little squiggly things coming off of it?” Connie asked.

“What do you mean?” Zoey responded with a confused look on her face.

“You know, the squiggly things that were coming off of that thing that wasn't one of the red blood cells.” Connie said matter-of-factly.  She motioned Zoey back into the lab and pointed at the microscope.  Zoey sat down and looked at into the microscope. 

“Well, there are the red blood cells and that macrophage off to the right” Zoey said as she examined the field of view. 

“Yeah!” Connie exclaimed, “that thing off to the right, what are the little squiggly things coming out of it?”

Zoey stared at Connie for a moment as if she was crazy, and then returned to gazing into the eyepieces.  She stared at the macrophage and noticed a tiny flicker. “What the…” Zoey blurted out as she centered the field of view around the macrophage and went up to a higher objective lens.  Zoey adjusted her lighting and carefully brought the macrophage specimen into focus.  There, right under her nose, literally, she saw something she had not noticed in scanning the dozens of slides she had examined over the past few weeks.  The macrophage had tiny whip-like structures extending from its sides.  They were so faint that she had never noticed them before when scanning at a lower power. 

“Oh my God!  These are flagella!!!” Zoey shouted in excitement.  She jumped out of her chair and hugged Connie who was taken completely by surprise.  She started laughing and jumping up and down saying, “We found it!  We found it!  We found it!  Ha!  And it IS a parasite!!!”

Connie stood stunned wishing she knew what had just happened.  “What’s a flagella?”

Zoey’s teaching assistant instincts kicked in as she corrected Connie, “A flagellum, many flagella.”
Connie stared at her with a look of utter disorientation.  “Sorry,” Zoey replied, “I’ve been teaching biology for way too long.  That squiggly thing you saw,” Connie nodded her head as Zoey continued, “it’s not supposed to be there on a macrophage.  It is there because this thing isn’t a macrophage at all! This must be some new parasite! This could be what turns people into wobanzis!!!”

Connie’s eyes lit up as her jaw dropped, “You mean, I just did science?!” Zoey grabbed the beaming librarian for another big hug. 

“Yes!  Connie, yes!  You did wonderful science!  We have to go get the others.  I’ll grab Violet, and you go get Adelaide!”  Connie nodded enthusiastically and the two took off to find the others.

After a few minutes, it seemed like everyone had heard the news and made their way towards the laboratory.  The three biologists took turns gazing into the microscope and nodding at one another.  They spent the next few hours going through other blood samples and finding more and more of the macrophage-mimicking parasites.

The next few days were filled with a renewed sense of purpose for almost everyone.  The seedlings were growing fast and working in the garden became a new favorite pastime of most people in the group.  The raids were turning up lots of useful items that were not only good for survival, but also made living at the station more comfortable and exciting.  They were playing scavenged board games and card games that they kept in a bookshelf nestled in the back of the dining hall near the fireplace.  They were using thick, warm towels after showers.  They had even found a dehydrator and were making their own deer and turkey jerky as well as drying out some of the wild fruits that they were beginning to harvest. 

All the while, their researchers were starting to figure out how the parasite life cycle worked.  From samples, and from decapitating a few wobanzis, they had worked out more and more about the pathology of the parasites.  It seemed that the parasite mimicked macrophages in the blood to avoid being detected by the host’s immune system.  They moved and acted just like macrophages, and probably had similar receptors.  Some of the parasites would move to the salivary glands and come out in the saliva when an infected person bit someone.  This was how the parasites were transferred.  The parasites were ubiquitous in most of the blood samples they had examined.

They also found that the parasites were present in the amygdala of the brain.  This, Zoey hypothesized, was how people’s behaviors were changed.  The parasite probably changed hormone levels in the body by changing neurotransmitter levels in the brain, similar to the way that Toxoplasma gondii changes the behavior of rats. They also found that some people had the parasites in their retinas.  Violet knew that this probably caused the inflammation of the choroid in the eyes, which gave them that milky appearance in wobanzis that couldn’t see well.

It was all starting to make sense and they were learning more and more every day as the frenzied research continued.  They had taken their first steps to understanding the wobanzi disease and they now understood just why it was spread through bites.  Like all good research, the answers they discovered birthed an array of new questions.  The biggest question that was on everyone’s mind was now that the cause was known; could there be a way to prevent it?  Or better yet, could it actually be cured?

Check out other J.J. Morrow book here!

CPBS Wraps Up Final Summer Session

By: Johnica Morrow

The final week of fourth session came to a close here at CPBS as students finished their final projects and turned in the last of their papers. With the conclusion of Field Parasitology and Ecology and Evolution, the station begins preparations to shut down for the summer. This season has seen lots of changes, which have been met with the extremes of both open excitement and resentful resistance. The summer has seen many ups and downs with students' misbehavior as well as students' amazing achievements. In this respect, the summer has been no different than any other summer here at CPBS. However, along with change often comes growth. The station has seen both literal and metaphorical growth throughout the summer.

CPBS has witnessed the growth of a garden near a kitchen where students grew their knowledge and skills as part of our partnership with UNL's Hospitality, Restaurant, and Tourism Management program. Thanks to all of our hard-working interns for rocking the kitchen this summer despite the whining of students and visiting researchers who wanted nothing but boring burgers every day! Our students picked up a wide range of culinary skills...from pastry making, to dough baking, to fish flaking, and temperature taking. They also learned all about meal planning, ordering, inventory tracking, scheduling, and other aspects of kitchen management. We've had amazing food representing countries from all over the world. We've had entrees that were both nutritious and delicious as well as desserts that were mostly just the later. We've been fortunate to have a wonderful group of hard-working individuals to represent our first successful summer with student interns all but running the CPBS kitchen. We hope that the future will bring new interns who will have very big shoes to fill after the group that graced Goodall this summer. 

CPBS has also witnessed the growth of students, two-three weeks at a time. Students arrived with enthusiastic ignorance and left with minds full of new knowledge about biological systems. It has been amazing to watch the transformation as students' faces light up while explaining a concept that they picked up during a session here at CPBS. The courses have been similar to those of the past, but something was different this year with class dynamics. Some sessions brought students with levels of discipline all too often not seen in college classes today, while others brought the opposite side of the student spectrum. With an increase in student enrollment this summer, there were many new faces in addition to familiar ones in our courses.

Today will be a flurry of cleaning, taking inventory, and putting away for the staff as the last of the students head back to Lincoln. We will have to fight the urge to sleep in this dreary weather while we prepare the station for her next big event, the Rocky Mountain Conference of Parasitologists, which will be held from September 4th-6th. This regional conference will bring in many prominent parasitologists as well as many students with promise to become such in the future. The kitchen staff is already busy planning out a menu for the conference and RMCP t-shirts have already been ordered. An experimental deal trading a waiver of room and board fees during the conference for 5 hours of volunteer help in the kitchen worked out well last year, so this year, the deal has been made more formal. A student volunteer application has been sent out to the RMCP members in hopes of getting help from some of the students who would like to offset their conference costs. This rare opportunity is mutually beneficial for CPBS and for RMCP student members who are tight on cash. If you'd like more information, you can contact Jon Garbisch or Airicca Roddy. (See CPBS website for contact information.)

Experimental Garden Dubbed a Success at CPBS

By: Johnica Morrow

The idea of a CPBS herb garden came to life as an experiment for this summer. Conceived by the Associate Director, Jon Garbisch, the Head Cook, Airicca Roddy, and myself, the garden was planted with the hopes of producing fresh herbs and possibly peppers and tomatoes that could be used to help offset the costs of these foods used by the kitchen. (Not to mention being more sustainable, better for you nutritionally, and light years more delicious.) Due to complications with both weather and bureaucracy, the experimental garden got a bit of a late start. Despite the late blooming (pun intended), the bed has blossomed into a beautiful garden with lots of yummy goodies sprouting forth.

Some of the seeds used for the garden were free seed packets that I happened to have left over from the School of Natural Resource's Naturepolooza event held last year. This is why we had a few little corn plants and some of the herbs that you see in the pictures below. We never really intended to serve corn from the garden, but what's a Nebraska garden without an attempt to grow corn? :)

Some of the plants, including various heirloom tomatoes and some of the peppers, came from a local farmer's market. CPBS was happy for a chance to buy fresh, local products that were useful for the station. Though these plants didn't have enough time to create lots of produce, they did help to confirm the hypothesis that these plants could, and would, thrive in the small plot outside of the kitchen. They produced a several harvests of tomatoes in the time that they had.

A few plants were purchased by an anonymous donor from a farmer's market in Lincoln and brought in for the garden. This included a couple of cherry tomato plants and a peppermint swiss chard plant. The plants were not planted in the garden for several weeks owing to the factors mentioned previously, so some of us were skeptical that they would grow to produce things by the end of the summer. Luckily, the skeptics were wrong. We have had several harvests from the cherry tomato plant, and the products were sweet with just a hint of tartness to yield an wonderful flavor. The chard plant, which looked like it wouldn't last long, has grown into a massive plant with emerald leaves and hot pink stems. It is a magnificent specimen that one can't help but admire.

The herbs are surviving just as well as the other plants. CPBS can boast of long, succulent chives, fluffy patches of cilantro, happy basil, velvety sage, springy parsley, and feathery dill. Had these been planted sooner, there's no telling how full our bed would be by now!

All in all, this experimental plot can be called a tremendous success. In future summers, we plan to replant those that won't survive the winter and revive those that do. Summer 2015 is sure to see more fresh herbs, tomatoes, and peppers, and maybe even some more swiss chard! Cheers to the kitchen and misc. other staff members who have taken the time to weed, water, and harvest this wonderful little garden!

CPBS Campus Postcard Flashback

By: Johnica Morrow

As you may or may not already know, the CPBS campus was once a girl scout camp. The construction of the cabins and the lodge, in addition to the property itself, was funded by the Goodall family and by the Gainsforth family. The dining hall, which is one of the original buildings, is therefore named the "Goodall Lodge". (Additionally, a building erected much later was named the "Gainsforth Resource Center".) 

The Goodall Lodge is an iconic piece of architecture for the campus. As one of the original buildings, it is an amazing reminder of the station's history as it has stood through hoards of girl scouts, college students, and professionals attending meetings. Recently, our associate director, Jon Garbisch, was able to find a postcard featuring this building. The postcard has no official date, but was probably printed sometime between the late 1950s and early 1970s. It certainly pre-dates the building's use as a mess hall for dirty, sweaty, enthusiastic biologists!

Finding pictures from the earliest days of CPBS is difficult. Finding pictures from the campus' days as a girl scout camp is near impossible. This postcard was quite a treasure and it seems that only a few other photos of this area exist at all. The station has need many changes since the photo for the postcard was taken all those years ago. We have new facilities; we have many more red cedar trees; and we see a much more diverse group of faces during our summers here. It's pretty amazing to think what all the walls of Goodall have experienced during the decades. Below is the front and back of the postcard.

As you can see from the photo, the GRC has yet to even be conceived of at the time that the photo was taken. The girl scout camp also boasted of a dock/swimming area and a flag pole. It is also noteworthy to point out the minimal red cedar growth visible in the picture. What a wonderful step back into history!

Janovy Delivers ASP Presidential Address to CPBS Students

By: Johnica Morrow

     Last night, Cedar Point was lucky enough to have Dr. John Janovy give this week's seminar. Dr. Janovy was the president of the American Society of Parasitology (ASP) this past year. He delivered his presidential address to the society in New Orleans at ASP's annual meeting a few weeks ago. Because he and his wonderful wife, Karen, were here at CPBS for a visit, he agreed to speak for our seminar series. 

Before the beginning of the talk, Dr. Janovy presented Dr. Scott Gardner, who is here at CPBS teaching the Field Parasitology course this session, with a gift. The gift was a flask from the ASP annual meeting that had a drawing of tapeworms wearing traditional Mardi Gras masks to commemorate the 2014 meeting in New Orleans. 

His speech was delivered as two parts formal and one part laid back, discussion style informal as he spoke about the importance of parasitology. Sporting his Nebraska Parasitology t-shirt, he talked with students about the significance of the discipline of parasitology and about the people who are a part of it. His seminar included stories about integral parasitologists and their contributions to the growth of the field. He also talked about the importance of parasitological studies as an integrative part of other disciplines within the broad scope of biological research. 

Dr. Janovy's talk went a little over time, but all of the students were happy to stay and listen. Many of them were captivated by the stories about Minnie Elizabeth Watson, a prominent gregarine researcher whose photo is apparently impossible to find despite the vast collection of information that is the internet, and J. Teague Self, Janovy's major advisor who worked on avian malaria. Despite being kept out later than expected, students still had many good questions for Dr. Janovy following his presentation, which was titled, "Why American Higher Education Needs Parasitologists". Thanks for participating, Dr. Janovy!

Camp Explore

By Johnica Morrow

Last week the station experienced a flurry of young faces from nearby communities. Middle school-aged children were running around learning about soils, water, and all the things that live in them. This was for a week-long camp called "Camp Explore", which is a part of both Project Wet and Project Wild through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Environmental Studies program. The camp was led by environmental studies majors working under the direction of Sara Cooper. Sara is an academic adviser and instructor for the School of Natural Resources.

The campers came to CPBS during the day for activities rather than staying here on campus. Our awesome kitchen staff provided campers with yummy snacks like homemade granola bars, clementines, and Lucky Charms treats. The week of learning and fun concluded with a field trip. Below are some photos of campers enjoying their interactions with the environment.

Photography 161 Wraps Up First Art at CPBS Course

By Johnica Morrow

CPBS's First Photography Class

Last Friday concluded the first of what will hopefully be many art courses offered here at Cedar Point. This was a photography class open to majors and non-majors alike. The class was taught by Allen Morris and was two weeks long during our second session. Students learned all about technical aspects of photography, but were also challenged to explore their creative side with assignments to create images with deeper meaning and messages through their captured shots.

The class was well-received by students and gave them a chance to see CPBS through different lenses, both literally and figuratively. A simple drain or faucet became a statement into water issues in Nebraska. A long dirt road became a metaphor for life through the use of differential focus and a self-timer. Everyday objects became powerful symbols with insights into the human soul.

It was common place during those two weeks to see students throwing playing cards around a lab hoping for the right shutter speed to capture the shot, or to see people with cameras walking along the shoreline of Lake Ogalalla looking for inspiration. Each day brought new challenges in the use of lighting, shadows, and lines, but these challenges quickly transformed into adventures for our amateur photographers as they honed their skills behind their cameras.

In the final week, students took a trip to the Petrified Wood Gallery in Ogalalla and met some of the brothers that own the gallery. Students were able to see the breathtaking works of art created both by humans and by mother nature alike. The class was even able to score themselves some wall space in the gallery for displaying some of their work! This was a great opportunity for the students and was a wonderful way for CPBS to connect with the local community!

Students talk with one of the gallery's owners.

The library was abuzz with excitement on Friday morning as students made last minute preparations for their final projects. Beginning around 9:30am, students presented a photo series intended to convey a particular message to their audience. The projects were varied and excellent, especially for people who had only just begun to learn the intricacies of this art form. Some of the projects made us smile, some made us cry, some sent us into deep thought, and some pulled us into a world of dreams and fantasy even though the subjects were real. I was amazed at the abilities of these young photographers and at the depth of the imagery before me. It was wonderful to be able to sit in on these presentations and to contribute to the critiques! We anxiously wait to see what sort of art class(es?) will be offered here next summer!