Gleanings of the Week Ending October 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.

Ancient Roman Mosaic in England Discovered by Amateur Archaeologists – A 4th CE Roman mosaic near the village of Boxford in Berkshire….discovered and then covered up to protect the mosaic until decisions are made about what to do next.

Fall Color In-Depth: Maple Trees Offer New Answers to Diabetes, Alzheimer’s – National Geographic Society  - I like maple syrup and often us it in cooking….it adds more than sweetness and – evidently – is better for you because of those other elements!

Electric Car S-Curve Adoption by Country (Fun Chart!) | CleanTechnica – Norway followed by Iceland and Sweden lead…The US is behind China.

Question: Can People Use Rooftop Solar Power During an Emergency? Answer: It Depends | CleanTechnica – As more battery storage becomes available…the problem of having solar panels but not being able to utilize them if the power grid is down may go away.

Spectacular Shots of Summer Fireworks Festivals in Japan - Hanabi Taikai – Wow! What a huge display.

Infographic: Brain Infection and Alzheimer’s Disease Pathology | The Scientist Magazine® - Evidence of infection (biofilms) in the hippocampus and temporal lobe in brains from people that have died with Alzheimer’s neurodegeneration….several theories about their relationship to Alzheimer’s.

These Breathtaking Natural Wonders No Longer Exist – 18 landscapes that no longer exist…including a beach in Hawaii…some sights in US National Parks.

Free Technology for Teachers: Historical Patterns Animated – A site from the University of Oregon…worth browsing even if you aren’t a teacher.

Interactives from NASA…Exoplanet Exploration – Create your own Earth-like planet….or a hostile world.

LED Lights, All-Electric School Buses, Hydroponic Gardens ... (Cleantech in Action Series) | CleanTechnica – A roundup of cleantech press releases that came out in September.

Five Years Post Career

It’s been a little over five years since my time shifted abruptly from being driven by paid career work to being driven by me alone. As I converted my 5 years of blog postings from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 7, I thought about how things have changed for me over those years.

In the beginning, I felt very much like I did in my early 20s…that there were so many things I wanted to do and I just need to make some choices about what to do first. I was almost giddy with excitement but stressed by the newness of the choices I was making. The rhythm of writing the blog every day helped me overcome some of the discomfort of so many new things happening.

Coursera became available and I busied myself taking online courses. It was indulging the student in me that never grew up!

My husband and I did a little more travelling than before but that did not make as much impact on our lives as the aging of our family (hospitalizations, cross country moves, etc.). I was much more available to help as needed – and often that meant some traveling.

Volunteer work was always something I thought I would do but I did not anticipate 5 years ago that I would return so strongly to the focus of my (long ago) undergraduate degree: biology. Once I started being a volunteer naturalist for elementary school field trips with the Howard County Conservancy the ball just kept including more: Master Naturalist Training, Middle School BioBlitz, High School Stream and School Yard Assessments, pre-school nature programs, nature photography with summer campers and then, just this past summer, Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy flight attendant. So far – once I’ve started doing something, I’ve kept doing it although I am probably close to capacity at this point. If I decide to start a new volunteer endeavor, I might have to stop something else.

I do more ‘art’ type activities that I did before – Zentangle and collecting of botanical/butterfly prints and photography. I still read quite a lot but I enjoy the pictorial books too. I spend more time with visual arts that I did earlier in my life.

Overall – I’ve noticed the change in myself…less feelings of stress…more joy. The pace of life has stabilized to be just right!

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 30, 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 If the Oil Industry Leaves the Gulf Coast? - CityLab – After Hurricane Harvey – there is more recognition of the country’s energy infrastructure.

Clues to Africa’s Mysterious Past Found in Ancient Skeletons - NYTimes.com – 8,100 year old DNA recovered from bones….and other finds that are enlarging our understanding of ancient population movements within Africa via DNA analysis.

Ancient Gem-Studded Teeth Show Skill of Early Dentists – An elaborate example of dental bling from 2,500 years ago from Chiapas, Mexico.

Satellites that Measure Ice Loss to Go Dark - Yale E360 – The two satellites that collect detailed information about earth’s ice sheets will be decommissioned in the next month or so. The replacement satellite is scheduled to be launched in early 2018…but that will still leave a gap in the data.

BBC - Future - The ships that could change the seas forever – Monster ships, remotely piloted, built of futuristic materials and partially powered by renewable energy….so many possibilities.

How a Satellite Just Used Earth Like a Slingshot | Smart News | Smithsonian – OSIRIS-REx in the news. We were in Florida a year ago to see it launched!

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #106 – National Geographic Society -  There is a picture of a Peregrine Falcon at the very end of this set…one bird that has managed to take advantage of urbanized environments.

5 Things We Learned from The Newly Updated “Heat Maps” Developed By Sustainable Energy For All | CleanTechnica – Follow the ‘heat maps’ link to look at them directly or think about the 5 facts highlighted in the article about clean cooking, electrification, rural/urban divide, enabling policies and energy efficiency.

Five Fascinating Facts About the Amazing Cassowary | Smart News | Smithsonian – Big birds…that are fascinating but not very friendly.

This Tiny Country Feeds the World – Food production in The Netherlands. Is this the future of food production to feed the world’s increasing population?

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 23, 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.

Celebrate Cassini’s Historic Voyage in Eight Incredible Images | Smart News | Smithsonian – Cassini has crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere (intentionally) and there have been quite a few retrospective articles about its long mission. I liked this one…so am including in the gleanings for this week.

Eighteenth century nautical charts reveal coral loss -- ScienceDaily – The study compared the coral documented in the Florida Keys in nautical charts from the 1770s to satellite data. More than half the coral reef has disappeared completely. Nearer to land, the loss is closer to 90%.

What We Still Don’t Know about the Health Benefits of Nature – THE DIRT – I noticed this article first because the picture under the heading is of Klyde Warren Park in Dallas (I visited there several years ago and enjoyed it) but thin the article was worth looking at too. It defines some priorities for research to understand the health benefits of nature better although most people already agree that is it beneficial…but how exactly does it happen. Some doctors are already prescribing time in the park!

North American Ash on Brink of Extinction | The Scientist Magazine® - In Maryland many of the Ash Trees are already dead or dying. Very sad.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #105 – National Geographic Society – There’s an Eastern Bluebird toward the middle of this collection….perched a little differently than I usually see them.

A Monumental Road Trip in Northern Arizona - National Parks Traveler – I’ve been to most of these places…..and enjoyed them all.

BBC - Future - How we’re creating ‘super plants’ to help humanity – The article highlights 4 ideas: cross-breeding super plants, using plants as medicine, bananas on steroids, and fire-fighting plants.

Learn How to Create Zentangle Art, a Meditative Form of Drawing – This article is about doing Zentangles (drawing patterns) rather than buying an adult coloring book. I started doing doodles and graduated to Zentangles and never was tempted by the ‘coloring book’ craze.

Ruins of a Roman City Found Off the Coast of Tunisia | Smart News | Smithsonian – The area of ancient Neapolis is off the coast of Tunisia. It was destroyed by a tsunami in 365 AD.

Why are fossilized hairs so rare? -- ScienceDaily – Evidently, fossilized hair is 5 times rarer than feathers.  Chemistry? Environmental conditions? The research includes statistical analysis of where hair and feathers have been found in the fossil record and make some predictions about where and how to look for them going forward.

3 Free eBooks – September 2017

I picked three series this month – one magazine and two multi-volume books.

The Graphic Arts (The monthly magazine of the craftsmanship of advertising). Boston: The Graphic Arts Co. 1911-1915. Eight volumes are available from Hathi Trust here. A lot of technical advances were being made during this time to meet the demand for increasingly colorful print advertising. The clip I’ve picked was annotated “An achievement in two-color plate making.”

Duncan, James and Dunbar, William. Introduction to entomology. Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars. 1843. Seven volumes available from Internet Archive: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Some of the butterflies looked very familiar (like ones in Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy exhibit). I wondered how many of the insects seen in 1843 are now extinct.

Harris, William T, Edward Everett Hale, Nelson A. Miles, O. P. Austin, George Cary Eggleston (editorial staff). The United States of America: A pictorial history of the American nation from the earliest discoveries and settlements to the present time. New York: Imperial Publishing Company. 1909. Five volumes available from Hathi Trust here. There are more drawings than color illustrations…and the telling is somewhat dated. History is subtly re-interpreted. This was the way history was presented prior to World War I…before we became a ‘superpower.’

Hiking to the Patapsco

Last Saturday, I led a group from Belmont Manor and Historic Park to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. It was a beautiful day for a hike – sunny and not too hot. I didn’t take any pictures going downhill since I needed to be in the front. I did stop to check some spicebush (understory trees) for caterpillars since I am more aware of spicebush swallowtail caterpillar behavior from the Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy caterpillar house (see my post about them here) while we made a short stop to allow the group to come together.

Once we got down near the river, a volunteer ranger met us to provide some park history. One stop was concrete Avalon Dam and I took a picture of it through the tangle of vegetation trees. The river bypasses the dam now! Looking down I noticed some self-fungus and very green moss among the accumulating leaves.

We stopped at the sign about Elkridge Landing. There is some controversy about exactly where the Landing was but it probably was not exactly where the sign I located. Another bit of history: the sign was made as an Eagle Scout project; it was very nice at the beginning - but has not weathered well. Maintenance in the park is always a challenge.

This is a wall that remains near what was the mill race in colonial times for the Avalon Nail and Iron Works – mended many times. It could be used for a geology talk as easily as for history.

While we were in the park we saw an ambulance come by with flashing lights and then leave again – lights still flashing. We heard that a hiker had gotten bitten by something. Later we learned the bit was from a copperhead and was on the ankle. It was a warm enough day that many people were in hiking sandals and shorts….scary that there was at least one snake not that far from where were hiking.

We started our hike back up the trail and noted the shelter along the trail that we hadn’t noticed on the way down because we stayed on the fire road rather than taking the trail.

The trail through the forest was up hill but shady and scenic.

I stopped to enjoy the stand of bigleaf magnolia. I didn’t hike to see them in the spring this year…maybe something to plan to do in 2018. That’s when they would be blooming.

The path is at the edge of the meadow for some distance and took pictures of a spider and meadow plants going to seed.

The hike was over 4 miles --- a good prelude-to-fall hike.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 16, 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.

Two places to look at bird images: Stunning Winners of the 2017 Bird Photographer of the Year Contest and Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #104 – I can’t resist. Birds are such interesting subjects for photography….and challenging enough to engage photographers the world over.

This is how Pittsburgh is taking climate action – Now that my son-in-law is in Pittsburgh for his post doc, I am learning more about the city. It’s moving way beyond its heavy industry history. The Phipps Conservatory was one of the places mentioned in the article as a place that generates all its own energy and treats/reuses all water captured on site! We visited the place last March (see blog post here).

‘Rubber material’ discovered that could lead to scratch-proof paint for car – Wonderful if it can be made available at reasonable cost.

Silicon Valley Courts Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues – School needs to prepare students with skills they will need as they get older….so it can’t stay be anchored in the past. The challenge is to not set a new high-tech anchor that is expensive and potentially a dead end or not very effective. The pace of change that adults and children have in their lives is ramped up; perhaps a life skill we all need it how to cope with that pace of change without being overwhelmed.

How self-driving cars will change the American road trip – I’ve been thinking about this recently and was disappointed in this article in that it hypothesized the cars stopping every 180-200 miles. If I was on a road trip and only stopped every 3 hours or so….I’d be very stiff by the end of the day. Does the author think that the interior of self-driving cars will be different enough that people can somehow move around a bit more rather than just sitting relatively still? What about children and older people that can’t ‘hold it’ for 3 hours? If the cars or autonomous enough – will we be more likely to be traveling through the night and the car just stopping when it needs to for charging with us sleeping through everything?

Exploring Europeana in Czech, Irish, Slovak and Slovenian – One part of my family is Czech so this post caught my attention. I don’t speak the language but I’m interested in the art my ancestors might have seen before they left in the late 1800s.

West Coast Monarch Butterflies Flutter Toward Extinction – The numbers of west coast monarchs have declined by 97% since 1981. Very sad. Monarchs are declining all over the US not just the east coast ones that migrate to Mexico.

We could lessen the toll of hurricanes – but we don’t – A timely article after Harvey and Irma – so much destruction…of places and people’s lives.

New Guide: Energy Efficiency at Home - ASLA has created a new guide to increasing energy efficiency through sustainable residential landscape architecture, which contains research, projects, and resources.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 9, 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.

Reimaging Neuroscience’s Finest Works of Art – Recreating the work of Santiago Ramon y Cajal’s century old drawings of the nervous system

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #103 –  There is wood duck image near the end of this group….I have never managed a view from the front. This one has the reflection too.

Utilities Grapple with Rooftop Solar and the New Energy Landscape – I’m glad some utilities are adapting in a positive way to renewable energy. If they don’t – I think more people will be motivated to add battery capacity as the technology becomes available and be ‘off grid.’

New Guide: Smart, Sustainable Materials at Home – This is some I’ll take a look at more thoroughly if I am doing any renovations to an outdoor area.

Wind power costs could drop 50%. Solar PV could provide up to 50% of global power – Are solar and wind energy underestimated? They may be getting cheaper and scaling up faster than the most optimistic forecasts of a few years ago. Hurray!

The Smartphone’s Future: It’s All About the Camera – Some tech…just over the horizon but plausible based on what is available already.

Opinion: The Flood Reduction Benefits of Wetlands – There are lots of studies that will come out of the hurricanes that are impacting the US. This one was based on Hurricane Sandy and came out on August 31. It reported that insurance industry models show that during Hurricane Sandy, marshes prevented $625 million in direct flood damage in 12 states….a reduction in property damage by as much as 30% in some states.

Artificial warming trial reveals striking sea-floor changes – When researchers heated up a slice of Antarctic sea bed by 1 degree (Centigrade), changes were visually discernable: some species grew twice as fast in the heated conditions, different animal communities developed…one bryozoan became so dominate on the warmer sea floor that the diversity of species went down. The researchers already have more experiments planned.

Podcast Series Delves into History, Cultures of Mesa Verde – There are three episodes so far (available here) with a plan for additional ones in 2018.

Our Hurricane Risk Models are Dangerously Out of Date – More than half the area flooded by Harvey was ‘outside of any mapped flood zone’! It seems like insurance companies and property owners need a better understanding of risks…and the old models are no longer adequate.

How my blog has changed since November 2011

I’ve been savoring some of my oldest posts and thinking about what has changed – and what has not changed - about my blog over the almost 5 years.  I’ve enjoyed the trip into my past. If you want to look at the old posts, select ‘2011’ from the pull down under ‘blog archive.’

The very first blog was a recipe for Pumpkin Gingerbread Muffins…and it still is something that I would bake although I am not eating as much bread of any kind these days and not posting very often about recipes. Still – in mid-November 2017 – I probably will be in the mood to cook with those spices and with pumpkin!

I was already doing 'gleanings of the week'. There were more posts that were just text since I was just beginning to develop an expertise in photography. My first gallery resulted from a trip to Longwood Gardens; it was still warm enough for the water lilies to be looking good. I still take similar photographs but have a better camera (40x optical zoom rather than 10x) and I watch the lighting and composition more now. Still – that original gallery is not bad.

I still post about new technology. In November 2011, it was a Kindle Fire. More recently it has been my Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid).

Travel is still a frequent topic in my blog just as it was in November and December 2011. I made a road trip from Maryland to Arizona where my daughter and her husband were in grad school --- doing a blog post for each state I crossed. If I used that same rationale for a road trip now it would be to Pennsylvania (where they are doing post docs).

The trend has been to include a lot more photographs and other images (Zentangles, clipped images from ebooks I am recommending). When I started the blog, I was in the middle of transitioning for full time career to post-career. I was thrilled to have so many appealing choices. Now, I’ve made some choices and am savoring ‘now’ – enjoying the variety of activities day to day…season to season…and further out. There are still so many opportunities to pursue and freedom to choose…or not. I’ve become more a matriarch than I was in 2011!

Transitioning from Squarespace 5 to 7

Over the three-day weekend, I upgraded my Squarespace 5 website to Squarespace 7. If you are seeing this post you are seeing my new site!

A screen snap of the last post done on Squarespace 5

Squarespace provides a 12-step process for doing the transition. The first 2 are in the ‘getting ready’ category and then comes the import (step 3). It was significant in my case since I had been blogging daily to my Squarespace 5 site for 5 years. I started the import from Squarespace 5 to Squarespace 7 on Friday and was concerned that the import interrupted before finishing when I stopped for the night…then pleasantly surprised Saturday morning that it had restarted and finished overnight. 3 steps down and 9 more to go!

Enabling content (step 4) was very easy for the blog posts…it was all done with one ‘enable’ and then moving the page from ‘not linked’ to the ‘main navigation’ area within the new site. The galleries were another story. Each of the galleries (sets of pictures), were imported as a separate page so they had to be enabled and moved one at a time. They now are in the galleries archive segment of the site. The other single pages were easy to enable too. Fortunately, I did not have anything I needed to manually move so Step 5 did not require any action. Step 6-9 were all about getting the site looking like I wanted and learning how to use the Squarespace 7 interface to add new content. I experimented with several of the templates before settling on Five and then worked to tailor it the way I wanted. The first days of using a new interface are always a little frustrating and this was no exception. I’m still not sure I understand how do everything but I’m confident enough that I can figure it out that I consider myself transitioned to Squarespace 7 at this point.

Step 10 was to upgrade from a 14-day-trail site. That happened on Sunday afternoon and I moved the domain to point to it (Step 11). I was surprised and pleased at how fast the change propagated. I’m waiting to cancel my Squarespace 5 site (which I can look at using the internal Squarespace address) until I am sure everything imported correctly. There are still a few issues related to galleries that I am working.

I’ve been thinking about what has happened to me over the past 5 years as I’ve looked at the content of my blog and the galleries. It been quite a journey! There are probably some blog posts about the trends I’ve noticed that I’ll post about in the next few weeks.

Use the ‘Contact’ button to let me know anything you notice that I need to fix.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 26, 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.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #101 and #102 – 50 bird pictures this week! My favorite in the first group is the barn owl (and the other owls in this group). My favorite in the second group are the two pictures of spotted owlets! --- I am drawn to owls this week for some reason.

Voyager: Inside the world’s greatest space mission – The two Voyager space craft were launched in 1977…and are both sending back messages to earth.

Trees with ‘crown shyness’ mysteriously avoid touching each other – I haven’t observed this phenomenon in our Maryland forests…but now when I am in a forest, I’ll always look for it!

Time Spent – Who Americans spend their time with (from Richard Watson’s blog). It changes with age. The last chart shows that as we get older we spend more and more time alone.

Air pollutions ranking in 32 cities –  LA ranks 24; Washington DC, San Francisco and New York are 26-28; Boston is 31. Delhi, Beijing, and Cairo are the top three.

Trees and shrubs offer new food crops to diversity the farm – Ongoing research from the University of Illinois trying to mimic the habitat features, carbon storage, and nutrient-holding capacities of a natural system with a farming method that incorporates berry and nut bearing shrubs/trees with alley cropping (hay or row crops)….to be economically and environmentally sound.

AWEA releases map of every wind farm and factory in America – There is a link to the interactive map. The red diamonds are manufactures and the blue dots are the wind farms themselves. It’s easy to see that manufactures happens a lot in areas other than where the wind farms are located….that the center of the country has a lot of installed wind turbines! We saw some of them in Iowa on our way to and from the solar eclipse last Monday.

Diversity Lacking in US Academia: Study – Under-representation of African Americans, Hispanics, and women in STEM faculties at public universities. There is a similar lack of diversity in PhD programs. On a positive note: the assistant professor is more diverse (more Asians, Hispanics and women) that the associate or full professor rank.  Unfortunately, this positive finding is not true for African Americans. Overall – still a challenge….and it impacts the broader labor market as well.

More than 300,000 Atlantic Salmon Spill into Pacific – Oh no! Hopefully this is not catastrophic in the long run. But – Why are they growing Atlantic salmon in pens in Puget Sound anyway?

Thanks to Co-op, Small Iowa Town Goes Big on Solar – Kalona, Iowa – not far from our route to the eclipse! It comes down to local self-reliance and economic development that made sense for this small town. Somehow a pointer to this article (from last February) was in a blog post I looked at when I returned home and I noticed where the town was…small world.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 19, 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.

Three things to know about the Louvre’s history – A fort…royal residence…and then a museum!

Americans are using less electricity today than a decade ago – Annual residential electricity sales have declined by 3% and residential electricity sales per capita is down by 7% since 2010. Advances in efficiency and shifts to smaller devices are making a difference. Some argue that electric cars will cause an increase in demand for electricity….but the same people that drive electric cars are likely to have solar panels!

Aspirin’s Four-Thousand-Year History – Willow bark was used for 1000s of years for ‘curing’ fevers. In 1897, Felix Hoffman at Bayer created chemically pure salicylic acid and then created acetylsalicylic acid which did not irritate digestion the way salicylic acid does….and Aspirin came to the marketplace.

The Quest to Restore American Elms: Nearing the Finish Line – My grandparents had elm trees around their house in Oklahoma when I was growing up in the ‘60s. My grandfather built a picnic table around one of them and we had our evening meals there during our summer visits. In my late teens, the tree began to die and eventually had to be cut down. The place lost a key element when that happened. I’m sure that was true around many homes. I hope the elms can be restored….and maybe the chestnuts too.

Climate change is disrupting the birds and the bees and Europe to experience vast and rapid ‘invasion’ by infectious diseases as climate warming continues – The effects of climate change are not just rising temperatures or changing weather patterns. Everything on earth is interrelated. Sometimes that building in resiliency to change and sometimes it enables small changes to have a domino effect that is catastrophic.

In the Earth’s hottest place, life has been found in pure acid – Microbes that survive in extreme acid, hot temperatures, and high salinity. The pH in one pool was 0…and life was found there.

Here’s a crazy idea: let’s agree on the facts – Finding common ground through data? That is what Steve Ballmer is working on. The USAFacts site is the result and it is very easy to spend time looking at the summary reports….and the linkage to raw data sources.

It’s not your imagination. Summers are getting hotter. – A graphic of the changing bell curve of the temperatures with the base period being 1950-1980…crawling toward the hot and hotter direction for the time periods since them.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #100 – There is an indigo bunting in this set. I always celebrate when I see one in the field!

The greatest threats to humanity as we know it – Infographic from BBC Future.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 12, 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.

Map of Play – A non-profit that not only builds playgrounds all over the US but also maps the ones they build and others (here). What a great way for families with children to explore the parks where they live….and when they travel!

Could a Bus with Sleep Pods Replace Airplanes? – Right now it only operates between LA and San Francisco…but it has the potential to be a less stressful way to travel than through an airport. What would it be like to take buses overnight and touring cities during the day…gradually moving cross country?

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #99 – Two pictures of peafowl! A male sitting with the tail feathers bunched behind and the head of a peahen!

The Chemistry of Giant Hogweed and how it causes skin burns – Awful plant! We were warned about this plant in Master Naturalist training since there have been some found in Maryland.

5 health benefits of beets – I’ve been enjoying beets from the CSA this year. Instead of always making fruit beety with them, I’ve be using them one at a time: raw in salads, in soups with potatoes (adds color!), and slivered for stir frying with other veggies. I like them well enough, I’ll buy them at the grocery store after the season for them via the CSA is over!

Illustrated timeline presents women’s fashion every year from 1784-1970 – A little history. I remember from the late 50s onwards and was making many of my own clothes from the mid-60s…so the styles for those years look familiar. I made a dress for myself that looked very similar to the 1966 dress about 1967!

The animals thriving in the Anthropocene – A study done by a team based near where I live in Maryland! Mosquitos, cockroaches, rats, deer, house sparrows…a few of the organisms are thriving while others are declining…or even becoming extinct.

Medieval Manuscripts are a DNA Smorgasbord – Much can be learned from the debris scraped away during cleaning of old manuscripts: DNA from bookworms and humans plus the animals that became parchment. So – we learn history from the physical aspects of manuscripts as much as well as from the words on the pages!

Magnificent Photos of Canyons Carved over Millions of Years –  Antelope Canyon and Canyon X…in Arizona. My husband already wants to plan a vacation to the place.

Ancient DNA used to track Mesa Verde exodus in 13^th century – Another item in the gleanings for this week about a place near Antelope Canyon…Mesa Verde. When I visited years ago, the mystery of where the people went was unresolved although many assumed they came part of the Pueblo peoples in New Mexico. This study used DNA of turkeys! Evidently the Mesa Verde people raised turkeys for feathers and food…and they took the turkeys with them when they migrated to the Northern Rio Grande area north of Santa Fe, NM.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 5, 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.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #98 – This set includes a kestrel!

View and Print in 3D more than 200 Objects from the British Museum – If you can’t go to the museum itself, these 3D renderings are the next best thing. And you can look at them whenever you want!

Here are UNESCO’s Newest World Heritage Sites – There are so many unique places to explore.

How a guy from a Montana trailer park overturned 150 years of biology – The researcher that overcame challenges of early life….and figured out that lichen was made of more than a fungus and an alga.

The dizzy history of carousels begins with knights – A little history. I was surprised that it starts with a training game for Arabian and Turkish warriors in the 12 century!

16 best train trips in the world – I’ve never taken an extended train trip…only short ones for fall foliage in Maryland and Pennsylvania – or scenic areas in Arizona. Maybe a train trips will be my substitute for long road trips.

Paul Hawken on One Hundred Solutions to the Climate Crises – Focusing on solutions rather than the problem…of course.

Look Ma, No Break! You’ll Drive Electric Cars with One Pedal – My Prius Prime still has 2 pedals but long term EVs will be changing to 1 pedal to maximize regen breaking…barely using brake pads

These nature photos inspire serious wanderlust – From National Geographic.

Archaeologists discover a ‘Little Pompeii’ in Eastern France -  From the 1^st Century AD…abandoned after catastrophic fires….but the excavation will only last until the end of the year before the construction of a housing complex begins.