Peacock Feathers

I’ve tried to photography peacock feathers by getting close to them…but decided to use the zoom on the camera instead yesterday. I put the feathers in front of a window to use natural lighting. It was more satisfied with the result than my previous attempts although it is hard to capture the iridescent quality of the color.

These feathers are over 30 years old. My grandmother picked up feathers that her peacocks shed one year in the early 1980s and then gave them to her granddaughters at Christmas time. I am so glad I still have them!

Looking closely at the images – it is possible to see the dust that the feathers have accumulated. They are getting fragile and I try to not touch them these days…let along try to dust them.

3 free eBooks – January 2017

Furnishings – butterflies – tiles….3 interesting topics that seem to be my themes for eBooks this month.

Tracy, Berry B. (curator). 19^th Century America Furniture and Other Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1970. Available from Internet Archive here. The objects were included in an exhibit in 1970 – with this book recording it all. I found the ‘other decorative arts’ even better than the furniture.

Weed, Clarence Moores. Butterflies. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company for Nelson Doubleday, Inc. 1927. Available from Hathi Trust here. I liked the vivid colors of the illustrations. Butterflies are generally colorful but the backgrounds were just a vivid in this book. Do you recognize the Tiger Swallowtail?

Campbell Brick and Tile Co. Designs for encaustic and geometrical tile pavements, also of encaustic, glazed, majolic̀a, and other tiles for hearths, fireplaces. Leicester: J. Fleming & Co. 1877. Available from Hathi Trust here. I like decorative tile…great ideas of Zentangles and (maybe) a renovation project for my house!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 21, 2017

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

What’s Your Sleep Animal? Find out with this quiz. – A little self analysis…about how you sleep. I’m a lion!

What teeth reveal about the lives of modern humans – It turns out our teeth are not adapted very well for modern diets. And it not just cavities and plaque buildup. It also has to do with jaw growth.  Did you know that wisdom teeth (third molar) impaction became 10 times more common after the Industrial Revolution?

The Chemistry of Bodily Fluid Colors – An infographic summarizes how blood, bile, urine, and feces get their color.

Appendix may have important function – I thought the diagram of the appendix shapes of different animals was as interesting as the idea that the appendix may serve as a reservoir for beneficial gut bacteria.

It’s Time to Give Nature the Credit It Deserves – Nature as water infrastructure! Hopefully more areas of the US will include these strategies in their long-term water planning. Good for people, the economy, and the planet!

20 of the Most Stunning Photos Captured by Drones in 2016 – Eye candy that I couldn’t resist sharing.

The Most Precious of Gifts – About gold, frankincense, and myrrh…from the Manchester Museum

The Chemistry of Fireworks Pollution – Wow….there are a lot of bad things that are exploded into the air by fireworks. I’m glad there are efforts to make ‘greener’ fireworks. No one ones a celebration to lead to respiratory problems and exposure to toxic metals.

Designation of Bear Ears National Monument in San Juan County, UT – Some great pictures of one of our newest National Monuments.

Meet Your Newest Organ: The Mesentery – I’m taking a Coursera course on the anatomy of the abdomen and pelvis…and the mesentery is part of the discussion. I just finished a module about how it develops with the gut from an embryological perspective. It’s quite a complex membrane – and now maybe it will be researched as an organ.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 14, 2017

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Why some companies are trying to hire more people on the Autism Spectrum – The pilot programs in companies like SAP and Microsoft are net positive – for the companies and the high functioning autistic people they employ.

Ancient Chaco Canyon population likely relied on imported food – There is physical evidence that timbers, pottery and chert in Chaco came from the Chuska Mountains which are some 50 miles west of Chaco Canyon; corn probably did too. The soils in the canyon and the its tributaries are too salty to grow enough to feed any sizable population.

Researchers record trillions of migrating insects swarming through the skies – A study monitored insects flying over southern England above 500 feet. There were a lot more than expected – insects that move north in the spring and south in the fall. 70% of the migration takes place in daylight hours. A similar study of insect migration has been started in Texas…and had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of invertebrate they are finding!

The Next Big Thing: Healthy Homes – Important to think about for long term health….and maybe not as expensive as it once was.

What have the world’s oldest mummies kept under wraps? – Digital reconstructions of 7,000 year old bodies from South America is in its initial stages. The mummies are deteriorating because of microbes that are more active as the climate of the Atacama becomes more humid.

2016: Compound Interest’s Year in Review –  I like this site…and have included some of these postings when they originally came out…but there were more that were interesting.

United Stated of Cookies – A cookie for each state….and the recipe for it. Maryland is the Berger Cookie.

Scientists can now make lithium-ion batteries last a lifetime – Sometimes small changes make a big difference!

How the world’s biggest cities are fighting smog – There are techniques to take smog out of city air…technologies to apply in parallel with reducing pollution at its source. In many cities – both strategies are urgently needed.

Twelve new tombs discovered in Gebel el Silsila, Egypt – Even with so much focus on archeology in Egypt…there are still new finds.

McKinney, Texas

My sisters and daughter took a walk around the old down town of McKinney, Texas – a place none of us had ever been. It’s a small town that has been around for a long time but is not feeling the encroachment of Dallas. The down town has become a place of repurposed buildings. It has a lot of boutique type shops and eateries. We did our walking around before lunch.

There is a courthouse at the center of it all that has been repurposed to be a performing arts center. Most of it was not open on January 2^nd but we appreciated the outside part of the building. Most of the visible façade was built in the 1920s.

There are also two ‘bank’ facades. When they were built, the thought must have been that they would always be banks!

There are bits of whimsy along the sidewalks too. I’m not sure how many painted frogs there were. I managed to photography two of them.

One store had a metal giraffe with a scarf outside the doorway.

There was a cotton boll wreath in one of the store windows. At one time, the town economy was based on cotton and it was prosperous enough to enable to remodeling of the courthouse to its present form.

The store fronts themselves are interesting and the businesses appear to being doing well enough to maintain them. Unlike a lot of small towns that are overcome by a nearby big city, McKinney seems to be thriving as itself. There were people enjoying a sunny (and warm) winter day all around the square while we were there and the Irish Pub where we had lunch filled up while we were eating our lunch.

If you are in the area – it’s worth spending a few hours browsing the shops and having a meal.

Road Trip to Texas

I started 2017 on a road trip to Texas. We (my daughter and I) left while it was still dark the morning of the 31^st from Maryland and arrived at our destination near Dallas on the 1^st. It was cloudy – misty – rainy both days. Fortunately, the temperature stayed well above freezing. We did see a dusting of snow on the hills as we drove the ups, downs, and curves of the Interstate in southwestern Virginia…the Appalachians.

The route was through the backbone of Tennessee on the Blue Star Highway: Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis. The rest stops in Tennessee are probably the best along the route.

My daughter drove as we crossed the Mississippi River at Memphis into Arkansas. It’s difficult to get a good view of the river with the high railings of the bridge….safety first rather than view.

We made good time both days. Most of the route was good highway and the construction areas were not active on the holiday weekend. Traffic was light to medium. We encountered one accident along the way that was on the other side of the highway. The flyovers on some the newer interstate connections approaching Dallas were almost too high for comfort; I focused on the road rather than the scenery!

And we arrived about when the nav system predicted.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 7, 2017

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Shortest-possible tour of 49,603 sites from the National Register of Historic Places – Who knew there were that many? There is a 38 second movie to show the route for the whole US and then individual state maps. Take a look at your state!

The Scientist’s Year in Review – Links to the cover story and one news highlight for each of the 12 issues.

The Robotic Grocery Store of the Future is Here – Oh no! I enjoy grocery shopping….not sure I want this future. I particularly like picking my own fresh fruit and veggies from the bin.

2016 Year in Science – From Visionlearning. There could be others added…but here are 6 with a succinct description of each.

Vibrant Paintings of Colorful Fish Merged with Their Coral Environments – Eye candy!

Mining 24 hours a Day with Robots – Another example of automation that reduces the need for manpower. The mine where these huge self-driving trucks are used is in Australia….but it could soon be anywhere in the world.

The Best of Cool Green Science 2016: Birds and Birding Edition  and The Best of Cool Green Science 2016: From the Field Edition and The Best of Cool Green Science 2016: Celebrating Nature Near You – Three year end posts from The Nature Conservancy….with great pictures!

3-D Models Capture Endangered Species Before They Go Extinct – A few years ago I too an archaeology course (via Coursera) and they talked about capturing objects with 3-D techniques (notably merging multiple pictures of an object into a rotatable image). This project is doing it with living animals….with a “Beastcam.” There is a link to the slide show about 1/3 of the way through the article.

My First (and still primary) Cookbook

I still have my first cookbook. My grandmother bought it for me when I was in later elementary school. It has a copyright of 1963

And was ‘The New’ at the time.

It’s never been something I referenced daily but the cumulative use over 50 years has made a mark. The corn breads page is particularly crumpled from splashes over the years.

Some of the recipes are annotated. Sometime along the line I marked off nutmeg and lemon rind from the Apple Brown Betty!

Other pages that are marked with paperclips and spills are popovers and gingerbread. One of the first times I made the gingerbread was the day I had my wisdom teeth extracted; that was in 1973! This cookbook is a part of my life history because I carried it along everywhere I moved from the time I got it until now; it isn’t ‘stuff’ to go into a giveaway pile.