You're most likely to find NPR's Don Gonyea on the road, in some battleground state looking for voters to sit with him at the local lunch spot, the VFW or union hall, at a campaign rally, or at their kitchen tables to tell him what's on their minds. Through countless such conversations over the course of the year, he gets a ground-level view of American elections. Gonyea is NPR's National Political Correspondent, a position he has held since 2010. His reports can be heard on all NPR News programs and at NPR.org. To hear his sound-rich stories is akin to riding in the passenger seat of his rental car, traveling through Iowa or South Carolina or Michigan or wherever, right along with him.
The Queensland Umbrella Tree is named for the state of Queensland in Australia, where it is native, but it has been spread to warmer areas around the world through the horticulture trade for the beauty of its evergreen foliage and unique umbels of flowers and fruit. Unfortunately it is also an invasive exotic that has spread out of control wherever it has been introduced. Even its home country – Australia – considers the Queensland Umbrella Tree an invasive exotic. Queensland Umbrella Tree fruit is abundant and easily available to the diversity of birds and other animals that feed on it. In Florida Northern Mockingbirds often defend the fruit supply, but other birds manage to partake of it. Eastern Bluebirds, Red-bellied and Pileated woodpeckers, and many other species take advantage of it. After feasting, the seeds pass through a bird’s digestive tract and are deposited with a bit of fertilizer – facilitating growth of new trees elsewhere.
Duke is the top overall seed in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament, with Arizona, Michigan, and Florida also landing on the No. 1 line. Miami (Ohio), which opened the season 31-0 before a loss early its conference tournament, got in as an 11 seed despite a weak schedule. They play a First Four game on Wednesday against SMU. The tournament begins Tuesday with other play-in games, including Texas versus North Carolina State.