River Days of Action - the Report from Muscatine!

by Nancy Porter, LWV UMRR Co-Vice Chair and representative to the Mississippi River Network

 Friday, June 5, 2026,  
From a sustainable building to lunch with LWVJC author whose great grandfather captained a wooden boat on the River, to lock and dam 16, Mississippi River Day of Action was full and busy!

LWVUMRR ILO took a group for the Mississippi River Day of celebration to Muscatine to visit the Stanley Peace and Security Sustainable Building. If you ever can visit, do...all sustainable, including growing food for salads for the employees!  Then with lunch we had a speaker. LWV MEMBER, Linda Meloy, whose great grandfather built a wooden 'tug boat'. He carried his 2 children and wife, to do the cooking and be the food gatherer, with him.  Then we visited lock and dam 16.  Great day!!

This is my 7th year of planning and execution...even got a proclamation to our City Council,  that will have to be repeated annually.  Read more about the proclamation in this blog post!  

The one and only pearl factory is in Muscatine, Iowa, also. (Of course, none of the pearl mussels currently exist, because all were harvested.  Our lunch waitress had shared some of those special buttons with a NY clothing company and made a nice profit).  It's a great Mississippi River town to visit, see the past and the present and appreciate the River. The Native American  Mesquakes found it first, of course.  

The following gallery has a dozen pictures from the event.  

Mary Ellen Miller, UMRR President, drove from her home in south central Iowa, to attend the event. Vicki Aden, Catherine Franczyk, Marsha Smith, Barb Helmick, Bill Crews, Polly Horton, Dave Ulrick, Steve Paulsrud, Nancy Porter at Lock 16.

Linda Meloy, author and LWV Johnson County member, presents her book about her great grandfather during lunch.

BIG THANKS TO Steve Paulsrud for acquiring a guide in the June closed building and arranging a lunch space and finalising lock and dam 16. (Pictured here with UMRR treasurer Catherine Franczyk who came from Naperville, IL.)

A ‘paint by number’ art work to support community participation on the back wall of the Stanley Bldg which is connected to the food pantry by Solar panels, helps both buildings. For sustainable national recognition of the Stanley Building, actions with the Food Pantry has to be met. It’s Community spread of a great thing. This is a requirement of reaching a national goal to be on a national registry.

Vicki Aden, LWVJC President really wanted to pick some lettuce.

Our Stanley guide stands in front of tress where each leaf was taken from a book housed on the building when it was the library.

There are four Fika trees (only non local greenery.) Local trees wouldn’t exist there through the winter.