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Free, Educational Event Offers Glimpse of Bald Eagles in Their Natural Habitat

LECLAIRE, Iowa, Jan. 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The City of LeClaire, Iowa, is thrilled to announce its inaugural Eagle Festival sponsored by the Riverboat Twilight on Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 21-22, 2023. This free, educational event invites guests to witness majestic bald eagles in their natural habitat as they soar high above the Mississippi River.

“The LeClaire Eagle Festival is a celebration of the incredible, natural beauty of our river town as well as the opportunity to learn about these amazing birds,” said LeClaire Tourism Manager Cindy Bruhn. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for both nature enthusiasts and those who have never seen these incredible animals in the wild, as well as the scenic vistas they call home.”

Bald eagles are typically found in LeClaire from December to March. The Eagle Festival will provide visitors with an unparalleled glimpse of how these birds of prey live in the wild while providing an up-close view of the mighty Mississippi River. The two-day eagle extravaganza begins Saturday, Jan. 21, as Historic Cody Road hosts ice sculptor Rob Storm, who will create breathtaking works of art from 1-4 p.m. for display at local businesses. On Sunday, Jan. 22, the Celebration Center located at 229 N. Cody Road in LeClaire will host multiple eagle presentations from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m along with a hot cocoa bar sponsored by Blackhawk Bank & Trust, and there will be more ice sculpting from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Other events on Sunday include:

• 11 a.m. — Internationally acclaimed author and storyteller Brian “Fox” Ellis will present a story about bald eagles, bringing along a spotting scope and books for sale.
• Noon and 2 p.m. — St. Louis-based World Bird Sanctuary will host two presentations with live eagles. The World Bird Sanctuary has treated more than 21,000 injured birds and has helped organize conservation efforts on four continents.
• 1 p.m. — Photographer Ty Smedes will give a lecture that offers an often-unseen look at the lives of Iowa’s bald eagle population, from fishing to building nests and much more. Find out how researchers track eagles’ movements and where the eagles come from. Second editions of Smedes’ book, “The Return of Iowa’s Bald Eagles,” will be available for sale and can be signed by the author.
• 3 p.m. — Representatives from Living Lands & Waters will talk about the importance of the protection and preservation of the environment along the Mississippi River and how humans can help create a more hospitable habitat for bald eagles and other migratory birds.
• The LeClaire Community Library and LeClaire Parks & Recreation also will be on hand with organized activities for children.

Finally, a spotting scope will be available at the Celebration Center rooftop patio, allowing an up-close look at soaring eagles without disturbing them. Local businesses along Historic Cody Road will also host related events, activities, and displays.

“The thriving bald eagle population in LeClaire is a miracle considering these animals were once on the brink of extinction. To see the number of eagles in the lower 48 explode over the last couple of decades speaks volumes to the hard work and dedication of conservation groups across the nation,” Ty Smedes explained. “I’m honored to be involved in this program and further educate the public about bald eagles, how we can take care of their habitat, and how conservation impacts the natural world.”

The Eagle Festival is supported by a grant from Travel Iowa and the Iowa Economic Development Authority. The city is also collaborating with groups and topical experts such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Chad Pregracke of Living Lands and Waters, and Celebration Center owners Ryan and Garrett Burchett. The Eagle Festival is sponsored by the Riverboat Twilight along with the Holiday Inn Express, Bobby Ray Bunch – Ruhl & Ruhl, Mississippi River Distilling Co. Celebration Center, Ty Smedes Nature Photography, Fox Tales International, Bela, Happy Joe’s Pizza & Ice Cream, the LeClaire Chamber of Commerce, First Central State Bank, Antique Archaeology, Living Lands & Waters, Wide River Winery, and Blackhawk Bank & Trust.

For more information, go to www.visitleclaire.com/events/leclaire-eagle-festival/ or contact:

CINDY BRUHN LeClaire Tourism Manager [email protected] or call 563-650-7963

BRIDGET NORMANMedia & Public Relations Director — McDaniels Marketing 11 Olt Ave., Pekin, IL 61554 309-346-4230 • mcdanielsmarketing.com[email protected]

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SOURCE Visit LeClaire, Iowa

Liam Neeson and his late wife Natasha Richardson have been seen together in a bittersweet throwback photo shared by her sister Joely Richardson.

Natasha was married to Liam for 15 years before she died in 2009 from an epidural hematoma (brain bleed) following a skiing accident in Quebec, Canada.

Joely said the black-and-white photo had flashed up on her phone as she fondly remembered her sibling, who was just 45 when she died.

Alongside the photo, posted in the run-up to Christmas, actor Joely wrote on Instagram: ‘A few years ago I was in a hotel in Dublin and really missing my sister Natasha.

‘Passing through the lobby on a screen this picture came up as “previous guests” – I smiled broadly. My phone just sent it to me as a memory. Tash in all her glory.’ 

Many of her famous friends were quick to share kind messages, with Zoe Ball, Richard E Grant and Julianne Moore all leaving heart emoji beneath the snap.

Others commented on the poignant nature of the picture, with one Instagrammer noting: ‘That was her letting you know she is with you’ and another adding: ‘It was her little “hello”.’

On the 10th anniversary of her sister’s death, Joely spoke to MailOnline about dealing with grief and finding perspective after such a devastating loss.

She shared: ‘In terms of that horrific pain and inability to see that life will ever be the same again – yes, that does end. Do you get over grief? Absolutely you do – with love. Is there joy? Absolutely.

‘But in those early days I never thought grief would end. In my case, it took quite a period of time. Those first five years… grief is just very shocking. I still miss her every single day.’

The screen star went on: ‘I feel funny talking about it because I’m aware just how many people in the world have lost loved ones, lost family.

‘Everyone goes through it, just at different times of our lives. And it even seems strange calling this “my loss” because it was my whole family’s loss – my sister’s boys’ loss… it was like a big explosion.’

Joely was of course referring to the two sons Natasha shared with Liam – actor Micheál, 27, and fashion designer Daniel, 26.

Although the Taken actor mostly dealt with the loss of his wife privately, he did open up about Natasha’s death in 2014 when speaking to Anderson Cooper for a CBS special.

‘She was on life support… I went in to her and I told her I loved her. I said, “Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this, you’ve banged your head”,’ shared Liam.

‘She and I had made a pact, if any of us got into a vegetative state that we’d pull the plug. That was my immediate thought, “Okay, these tubes have to go. She’s gone”.’

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Sometime in the past decade or so, the coining of new terms to help us understand what work is and how workers should relate to it reached unprecedented velocity. We were introduced to co-working and hybrid working, encouraged to lean in then out, to boss up and to werk. The utility of these neologisms in the longer term is doubtful. Not so for the work in this photography package, which grapples with the big question of the meaning of work at the same time as it documents the increasingly fragile security of many workers around the world.

MAKING

Ilyes Griyeb
Morocco, 2014-19

We are all descendants of farmers. If we go back through past generations, we all share the same fundamental history. I do not have to look too far back. The images in my series “Morocco” (2014-19) are of workers on my father’s land in the Meknes region in the north of the country. They all come from the countryside where my parents grew up, and most of them are kind of family or very close neighbours.

I believe agriculture is our past but mostly our future. If we still want to have an Earth to live on in this century, we will have to come back to a more human scale and a more respectful connection with our planet and each other. —IG

“Morocco” was published as a photobook in November 2020; ilyesgriyeb.ma/product/morocco/

Wang Bing
15 Hours, 2017

The town of Zhili accounts for 80 per cent of China’s output of children’s clothes. Part of the city of Huzhou in the province of Zhejiang, it is home to around 18,000 small factories for children’s clothing, staffed throughout the year by more than 200,000 migrant workers. In the 1980s, Zhejiang saw the emergence of a private capital-based garment industry open to any and all operators prepared to invest in flexible business models based on mutual credit or leasing. The film, 15 Hours, was shot in August 2016 and documents one day in the lives of the workers of 68 Xisheng Road in Zhili.

Maurice Broomfield
Industrial Sublime

Maurice Broomfield (1916-2010) made some of the most spectacular photographs of industry in the 20th century. His work spans the rise of postwar industrial Britain in the 1950s to its slow decline into the 1980s. From shipyards to paper mills, textile production to car manufacturing, he emphasised the dramatic, sublime and sometimes surreal qualities of factory work. Broomfield was born to a working-class family living in a small village near Derby, in the East Midlands. His parents and grandparents were from a farming background, but his father worked in a nearby munitions factory during the first world war, and later as a lace designer, producing detailed pen and ink drawings. As Broomfield wrote: “The impressions of my father making intricate and variegated conventionalised patterns in his peaceful studio, later to be fed into noisy, clattering machines to produce lace, had a considerable influence in my photography.”

“Industrial Sublime” is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London until February 5

Carmen Winant
Pictures of Women Working, 2016

“Pictures of Women Working” (2016) was assembled over several years under a straightforward rubric: pictures of women working. This simple prompt unfolded in myriad directions: women in care work, women in sex work, women exercising, studying, beautifying, performing and so on. I wanted to think as expansively as possible, and not differentiate. The collected images are adhered to newspaper broadsheets that, though partially covered, also hold stories about the nature of gendered labour. Together they are meant to create a non-linear, semi-explosive constellation. One that demonstrates just how many kinds of work women are called to do, often at once. —CW

CARING

Lewis Khan
Theatre, 2015-19

Lewis Khan took these photographs as the culmination of an artist residency at two NHS hospitals, capturing the intimate realities of daily life there. With prolonged and unprecedented access, his series “Theatre” documents everything from high-level clinical procedures and the people who perform them to the hospitals’ cleaners and porters, staff rooms and bed bays. Seen through his eyes, it is often the small details that tell the story.

When Khan began the residency, he saw his work in part as standing “against the privatisation of the NHS”. As time went on, however, he began to view the series of photographs as a “much more universal study of human strength and fragility”.

“Theatre” was published as a limited edition photobook by The Lost Light Recordings in May 2020

Joy Gregory
Alongside Matron Bell, 2020

In 2008, I was commissioned by Lewisham Hospital in south London to make a work celebrating 60 years of the NHS. After almost a year of intensive research, I chose to focus on Marjorie Bell MBE, who was appointed in 1948 as the first matron at the hospital under the NHS.

In 2020, I went back into the archives to make the project “Alongside Matron Bell”. I wanted to highlight the many nurses and healthcare workers at the hospital who, as the NHS was being established, were recruited from across the Commonwealth to build a dream for the “mother” country, as part of the Windrush Generation. In the hospital’s archives there are many photographs of these workers but their names are not recorded. —JG

Cole Barash
Smokejumpers, 2017

These photographs document the work of US Forest Service firefighters, who in some circumstances use parachutes to reach wildfires in remote areas of the country. Smokejumpers, as they’re known, must complete intense physical and mental training. They often stay in situ for 48 hours, miles away from help and without receiving extra supplies. For his Smokejumpers book, Cole Barash was commissioned by the US Forest Service to make a series of photographs of the firefighters’ work, including “controlled burning”, a technique used in forest management that can burn up to 1,000 acres at a time.

SERVING

Richard Renaldi
Billions Served, 2019

Richard Renaldi has been photographing workers at fast-food restaurants in the US, including Taco Bell, Chick-fil-A, Dairy Queen and Wendy’s, since 2019. The result is a series of portraits titled “Billions Served”. Apart from the workers’ first names and locations, he does not give any information about them or their motivations. He says he would rather let their postures, expressions, surroundings and dress communicate the emotional and physical experience of working in these environments.

Alejandro Cartagena
Carpoolers, 2011-12

I made “Carpoolers” over the course of a year, standing on overpasses on Monterrey’s Highway 85 and capturing workers travelling south to one of the richest cities in Latin America, San Pedro Garza García. In Mexico, for more than a decade, the government has tried to tackle the housing crisis by subsidising the building of suburbs far from urban centres, causing long commutes and increased fuel consumption. I first noticed the carpoolers on an earlier project photographing urban landscapes. Public transport is lacking, so people cobble together sometimes dangerous solutions to reach work. But I found their determination uplifting. Mexico can be a hard place to live; these guys are staying honest and legit, which is something to admire. And even though they’re probably not conscious of the ecological impact of travelling this way, they are silently contributing to the preservation of our city and planet. —AC

Hajar Benjida
Atlanta Made Us Famous, 2018-ongoing

To the casual passer-by, the Magic City strip club in Atlanta, Georgia appears distinctly ordinary. The small grey building is perched on the side of a busy road, a glowing neon over the doorway. But to those in the know, it’s a place where hip-hop history was made. It was once visited by 2Pac and Biggie, and has since hosted performances by Young Thug and 2 Chainz. On her first visit to the club in 2018, the photographer Hajar Benjida found herself drawn not to the music industry names who frequent it, but to the dancers who entertain them. Her project “Atlanta Made Us Famous” captures brief moments in the lives of these women — dancers, mothers, wives, breadwinners — each posing as a famous musician might, offering a mix of fierce confidence and palpable vulnerability. Distinct from the club’s prevailing male gaze, Benjida presents an insight into the dancers’ respective worlds. “I hope to show that their images hold power and importance beyond hip-hop and its surrounding culture,” she says. “From my perspective, it’s the dancers that shine as the stars of the city.”

“Atlanta Made Us Famous” is at TJ Boulting until January 28; tjboulting.com

Sabelo Mlangeni
Invisible Women, 2006

In 2006, Sabelo Mlangeni spent eight months accompanying municipal workers as they cleaned the streets of Johannesburg at night. “Invisible Women” is the result. Mlangeni grew up in Driefontein, a village some 300km east of Johannesburg, and was fascinated by the city’s demands and rhythms. As he later told the journalist Sipho Mdand, the women did not initially trust him and were worried that his attention on their jobs could backfire. But over time he built a rapport with them, hearing their stories and helping with their work. They did not want to sweep the streets in darkness while their families slept at home but needed the money to feed their children. It often created problems at home as household chores piled up and schedules clashed, with mothers leaving for work in the evening just as their children were returning from school.