Open Rivers

Food systems planner Lynn Peemoeller walks us through the cultural, botanical, and culinary history of pokew**d, a resilient native plant with a distinctive ability to thrive in disturbed and polluted areas. Peemoeller calls for us to be in kinship with, not in opposition to, w**ds like poke – to see them, in all their complexity, as "partners in place." **d

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Pokelore: How a Common W**d Leads Us to Kinship with Our Mid-River Landscape By Lynn Peemoeller “A w**d is a plant growing in a place where we don’t want it, and I have seldom seen a poke plant that I wanted removed.” Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus[1] It’s certa…

Looking for some reading that will give you hope, joy, and connection to people and place? Download your copy of Open Rivers Issue 28 | Mississippi River Open School now! This collection of articles draws together practices and strategies for social connection, action, and restoration that reinvigorate social and ecological communities along the entire Mississippi River. PDFs of each article and the issue as a whole are available now at openrivers.lib.umn.edu/.

As we approach the publication of Issue 28, let's look back through the wide-ranging, thoughtful work from last fall in Issue 27 | Prospect. As editor writes in her introduction, the articles offer us "the prospect of seeing the conditions of our environment a little differently, widening our scope, and animating potentials for the future." Read more at: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/introduction-to-issue-27-prospect/

To commemorate International Women's Day, we invite you to explore these articles from Issues 21 and 22, our Women and Water series. Through scholarly inquiry and personal testimony, across geographies and disciplines, these authors challenge and deepen our understanding of women's relationship with waterways.

"Storying the Floods: Experiments in Feminist Flood Futures," by Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Margot Higgins, Tamara Dean, Eric G. Booth, and Rebecca Lave, from Issue 22: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/storying-the-floods/

"Formless Like Water: Defensoras and the Work of Water Protection," by Natalia Guzmán Solano, from Issue 22: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/formless-like-water/

"Washed Up," by Shannon LeBlanc, from Issue 22: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/washed-up/

"Open Water," by Aizita Magaña, from Issue 22: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/open-water/

"Floodplains and Hurricanes: Mapping Natural Disasters to Uncover Vulnerable Communities," by Kristin Osiecki, from Issue 21: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/floodplains-and-hurricanes/

"Water as Weapon: Gender and WASH," by Becky L. Jacobs, from Issue 21: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/water-as-weapon-gender-and-wash-2/

"Women Landowners and the Language of Partnership Needed for Water Quality Change," by Linda Shenk, Jean Eells, and Wren Almitra, from Issue 21: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/women-landowners/

"How the River Moves Us: Women Speak Their Story," by Victoria Bradford Styrbicki, from Issue 21: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/how-the-river-moves-us-women-speak-their-story-2/

"Collaboration for a Common Goal," by Mollie Aronowitz, Jennifer Terry, Ruth McCabe, and Mary Beth Stevenson, from Issue 21: https://openrivers.lib.umn.edu/article/collaborationforacommongoal/