Gleanings of the Week Ending March 13, 2021

Spring is starting here in Maryland…we have a clump of crocus up and blooming in our front flower bed!

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 birds of the week: March 2021 – Starting off the gleanings for this with bird photographs. I found myself looking at eye color as I enjoyed this group of 25.

Satellite imagery shows northern California kelp forests have collapsed – I had read a story about this previously….but this article include visuals: satellite image and underwater images of what it look like before…and the urchin barrens that are there today.

Kauri trees mark magnetic flip 42,000 years ago | Science – Analysis of a tree preserved in a bog. It lived during the Laschamp Excursion (the last time the poles flipped) The climate instability lasted about 500 years.

Giving Wildlife Room to Roam in the Face of Climate Change – The importance on microhabitats in wildlife conservation particularly as climate changes.

Small Particulates From Burning Fossil Fuels Kills 8.7 Million People Each Year – And this is a form of pollution no one escapes….unless you choose to live in an enclosed and continuously filtered environment (like on an planet that does not support life as we know it). Right now, there are areas outside cities that have lower levels of the small particles in their air but eventually the continued increase in particles and circulation within the atmosphere will spread the ever increasing particles over the entire planet.

Even for Solitary Squirrels, It’s Better to Know the Neighbors – Red squirrels that have the same neighbors year after year…live longer! The study was done in a remote area of Canada over 22 years.

Thanks to Etsy, You Can Now Purchase a Gee's Bend Quilt Online for the First Time | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Folk art…museums…and a modern outlet to improve the artists’ ability to sell their work.

There’s a Koala in the Backyard – A description of what it’s like to have a koala in a tree near homes – serenading.

Geologists Share Their Concerns With Drilling For Oil In Big Cypress – Hopefully the project will not move forward….a national preserve should prioritize the natural environment, not the degradation or destruction of it.  

Eight ways chemical pollutant harm the body – From Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health: oxidative stress and inflammation, genomic alterations and mutations, epigenetic alterations, mitochondrial dysfunction, endocrine disruption, altered intercellular communication, altered microbiome communities, and impaired nervous system function.

Newport Teahouse and Green Animals

The issues of House & Garden from the second half of 1983 (available on Internet Archive) include pictures from two Newport RI places that I visited back in 2014…and I always like to find places I’ve visited in magazine pages:

Green Animals Topiary Garden (my blog post from October 2014 and the official site). It was one of my favorite places because it was outdoors…and so different from the ostentatious houses.

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Chinese Teahouse at Marble House

(the official site and my blog post with depictions of the Tea House published in the 1916 Architectural Record that includes some of my photos from 2014). I only saw the outside in 2014 so it was interesting to see the picture of inside from 1983 and the ‘Votes for Women’ cup from its association with the suffrage movement.

Another significance for these issues – my husband and I had just made our big move from Texas to the east coast (Virginia) in 1983. We had moved into our house at the end of June and within a couple of weeks, the air conditioner compressor stopped working! As I browsed through the 1214 pages of this volume, I remembered that I would have been way too busy to have noticed them at all in 1983 (unless they happened to be available to thumb through while I was waiting for an appointment). Here are some other images from the volume that I am enjoying so many years later!

A Year in COVID-19 Pandemic

It’s been a year since the WHO declared the COVID-19 Pandemic. This time last year was chaotic with shortages in grocery stores and trying to figure out how to reduce our risk of getting the virus; in March 2020 even the medical professionals didn’t always have the equipment they needed to protect themselves and the public was not yet being encouraged/mandated to wear masks. Shutdowns were just starting.

A lot has happened since then. For some, the impacts of the pandemic year will continue for a long time. For me – I am more aware than ever of how fortunate my family has been to stay well and to now be getting vaccinated. My parents and nieces were the first to get vaccinated; my parents because they were over 75 and my nieces because they are medical professionals. Then my sisters and me.  My husband and I managed to make an appointment to get vaccinated the first time our county health department notified us that appointments were available to us (notified on a Sunday and appointments were available on Friday…we took the first available). We got the first shot of the Moderna vaccine last Friday and already have our appointments for the 2nd dose; we’ve been recording our side effects (minor) using the vsafe.cdc.gov tool. My daughter and son-in-law got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine last Saturday. They experienced a few more side effects – were glad they had the Sunday to rest – but were able to teach their classes at the university on Monday.

In our state (Maryland), the rollout of the vaccine seems a little chaotic, but it appears that a lot of people are anxious to be vaccinated and the supply is slowly increasing. The state has scaled up the capacity for getting shots in arms by increasing the number of sites providing vaccines. I was in the throes of trying to figure out when pharmacies got supplies of vaccine so I could make an appointment when we got the notice from our country health department. The site my husband and I went to was well organized and kept people moving through with plenty of distancing. We filled out a survey and made our second appointment via our phones while we were waiting the 15 minutes after the shot.

In the past month – I have started mini road trips to get used to driving again. It’s a great time of year to begin to get out and about more…choosing outdoor activities and locations where there are not many people around. Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant and Brookside Gardens have been my favorite destinations so far.

I have started wearing KF94 masks that fit me better than any of the cloth ones I have.

As soon as I am fully protected by the vaccine (in mid-April), I will be taking a road trip to Dallas to see my parents. The CDC’s recent guidance has helped me begin planning the trip. I will be wearing my KF94 mask during times I might encounter other people on the road trip down – to protect others…and to reduce the risk to myself from any variants that the vaccine might not handle effectively. I’ll get takeout or drive through food rather than going into a restaurant. And then I’ll stay in Texas for several weeks for a good visit and maybe get some projects done for my parents while I am there. My Dad will be reaching the 90 year milestone this month.

I enjoyed 3 birding festivals in one weekend during the past month: Laredo, Niagara, and Bosque del Apache. It was a very cold weekend…the webinars a welcome distraction. I am continuing some webinars but skewing toward more outdoor time in the coming weeks.

I am also preparing to resume my volunteer activities. The organizations have changed and are offering training for the programs they are doing now and anticipating the ramp up as more and more people are vaccinated and the infections continue to drop in our area.

The % positive from testing in Maryland is the one I am using to decide if I will resume going into the grocery store rather than doing curbside pickup. Right now, it is looking good so I might do my own shopping next week! I enjoy picking out my own items…automatically picking substitutes on the fly rather than interacting via texts with a shopper. And I like using my own reusable bags; we’ve been accumulating a lot of paper bags recently!

In the next week or so, the US will pass the 100M vaccines administered milestone (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations ) and the trends of infections/deaths are declining. Good news…and there is a lot of work being done to help it continue.

Mini Road Trip: Brookside Gardens – Part 1

The mini road trip to Brookside Gardens last week was my first time back to the gardens in over a year. It was in the low 50s, sunny and breezy – I typical early March day for our area of Maryland. The outing started out with a group of five robins looking for worms in our front yard as I drove away for the house – a great indicator of early spring. There were not as many people at Brookside as there had been at Centennial Park and almost everyone was masked and maintaining distance; it was a more comfortable situation…and I took so many pictures that there will be a second post about the mini road trip tomorrow.

On the walk from the parking lot toward the visitor’s center, there was a bird’s nest from last season in one of the young trees. I’ll see the spring action at Brookside this year that I completely missed in 2020!

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It’s still early in the season – but there are some flowers to photograph in the gardens already.

There are plants that stay green through the winter too. I always enjoy the profuse stand of horsetails planted in one of the beds at the visitor center.

The tall sycamore uphill from the conservatory has been cut to a tall stump. It had struggled in recent years with some the higher branches being leafless/dead. The stump has been fitted with a mask and googly eyes!

There was another tree I noticed had been cut down too! I’m glad they left the roots and short stump…wonder what will come up around it in the bed.

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The hydrangea flowers from last season were prevalent….and seem to always draw my attention;  their flowers are so large and they last, in dried form, through the winter. Maybe I’ll plant some native hydrangeas at my house…although the deer that come through our yard would gobble them up if they were not protected with fencing.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the witch hazels blooming at Brookside!

Gleanings of the Week Ending March 6, 2021

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.

America’s First National Wildlife Refuge – Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge….I’m including it in our plans for the next time we go to Florida; it’s about 1.5 hours to the south of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge which is always one of the places we visit in Florida.

Highly functional membrane developed for producing freshwater from seawater: A desalination membrane laminated with nanosheets featuring 2D nanochannels -- ScienceDaily – Still in the research stage. Maybe this is one of the technologies that will enable low-energy desalination - something we will need to avoid water shortages in many areas of the world.

A mild way to upcycle plastics used in bottles into fuel and other high-value products -- ScienceDaily and How Paving with Plastic Could Make a Dent in the Global Waste Problem - Yale E360 – Two articles about uses for the plastic waste that is overwhelming the planet right now. There still needs to be significant testing on plastic for paving: will it withstanding heavy traffic…will it shed microplastic particles, etc.

Pompeii's Museum Reopens With Dazzling Display of Archaeological Treasures | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – I enjoyed the article…and the website for the new museum.

A large number of gray whales are starving and dying in the eastern North Pacific -- ScienceDaily – Ongoing research but one explanation being explored in a decline in prey (i.e. amphipods) availability in their Arctic feeding grounds – maybe caused by warming there due to climate change.

For the Birds: Why Designing for Birds is Good for Everyone - News | Planetizen – Fast Company interviewed Tim Beatley about his book; he was one of the speakers at the Birds on the Niagara conference.

Wombats Poop Cubes, and Scientists Finally Got to the Bottom of It | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Over 40,000 contractions as the feces moves down the intestine to shape a very dry cube. Evidently the cube shape is an indicator of wombat health!

Water Warning: The Looming Threat of the World’s Aging Dams - Yale E360 – Lots of people live downstream from big dams. Yikes! Decommission of dams is not easy…arguably it could be harder than the building of the dam originally.

Thousands of Wild Bee Species Haven't Been Seen Since 1990 | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Most of the data came from Europe and North America….with some from the rest of the world. All of it sums up to a grim picture when it comes to bees.

Yellowstone's Hotspot Has Been Simmering For About 17 Million Years – An example of how continued data collection and study…can shift our understanding of geologic history even in areas like Yellowstone that have been studied for a long time.

eBotanical Prints – February 2021

20 new books for the botanical prints list in January – all from Internet Archive. I started through the magazines of the Arnold Arboretum (Arnoldia) toward the end of January and all 20 of the ‘books’ for February are that magazine…and the browsing continues in March.

These volumes are from the past few decades rather than the past few centuries which is often the case with the eBotanical prints monthly posts. There is one image for each of the 20 new books; click an any sample images below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the February eBotanical Prints! The whole list of 2,084 eBooks can be accessed here.

Arnoldia -  v.74:no.3 (2017) * Arnoldia -  v.74:no.3 (2017) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2017

Arnoldia -  v.74:no.4 (2017) * Arnoldia -  v.74:no.4 (2017) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2017

Arnoldia -  v.73:no.4 (2016) * Arnoldia -  v.73:no.4 (2016) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Arnoldia -  v.73:no.3 (2016) * Arnoldia -  v.73:no.3 (2016) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Arnoldia -  v.71:no.1 (2013) * Arnoldia -  v.71:no.1 (2013) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2013

Arnoldia -  v.71:no.2 (2013) * Arnoldia -  v.71:no.2 (2013) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2013

Arnoldia -  v.71:no.3 (2014) * Arnoldia -  v.71:no.3 (2014) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Arnoldia -  v.73:no.1 (2015) * Arnoldia -  v.73:no.1 (2015) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2015

Arnoldia -  v.73:no.2 (2015) * Arnoldia -  v.73:no.2 (2015) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2015

Arnoldia -  v.74:no.1 (2016) * Arnoldia -  v.74:no.1 (2016) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Arnoldia -  v.74:no.2 (2016) * Arnoldia -  v.74:no.2 (2016) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2016

Arnoldia -  v.71:no.4 (2014) * Arnoldia -  v.71:no.4 (2014) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2014

Arnoldia -  v.32 (1972) * Arnoldia -  v.32 (1972) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 1972

Arnoldia -  v.34 (1974) * Arnoldia -  v.34 (1974) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 1974

Arnoldia -  v.62:no.1 (2002) * Arnoldia -  v.62:no.1 (2002) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2002

Arnoldia -  v.62:no.2 (2003) * Arnoldia -  v.62:no.2 (2003) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2003

Arnoldia -  v.62:no.3 (2003) * Arnoldia -  v.62:no.3 (2003) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2003

Arnoldia -  v.63:no.1 (2004) * Arnoldia -  v.63:no.1 (2004) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2004

Arnoldia -  v.63:no.2 (2004) * Arnoldia -  v.63:no.2 (2004) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2004

Arnoldia -  v.63:no.3 (2005) * Arnoldia -  v.63:no.3 (2005) * Arnold Arboretum * sample image * 2005

Mini Road Trips: Mt Pleasant – February 2021

I visited Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant twice in February. The first attempt was a beautiful day – one of the warmest in February. It was a little traumatic because when I attempted to leave my house, my car’s battery was low; I decided not to hike – just make the round-trip drive to let the battery changed again.

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I took a picture of the river birch in the rain garden near the parking lot through the windshield.

The next day was colder but I was intent on hiking…seeing the skunk cabbage again about a month from when I’d hiked to see it back in January. The paths were often muddy and sometimes snow covered. I was glad my hiking boots were waterproof!

The approaches to the bridge over the stream near Hodge Podge Lodge were very muddy but I managed to step on and off onto vegetation. There seemed to be more sand than decaying leaves in the stream bed below the gentle ripples.

The area where the skunk cabbage grows is a low spot where a seep creates a muddy spot then forms the beginning of a stream that feeds into the Davis Branch. There are skunk cabbage plants in the muddy part and then along the tiny trickling stream. It takes a little hunting…watching your step to avoid stepping on plants emerging through last summer’s vegetation.

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There seemed to be about the same number of plants as in January. Some appeared to be damaged at the top by the recent very cold days. The plants create some heat chemical and pull themselves deeper in the muck to survive cold days…but the top part of the spathe would probably always be above the muck.

I did manage to zoom in on one plant that had a visible bloom! They look like a golf ball inside the spathe!

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I’ll make at least one more hike to see the skunk cabbage….try to photograph some of the first leaves unfurling.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 27, 2021

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 birds of the week: Bird Interactions! - Wild Bird Revolution and Top 25 birds of the week: Raptors!  and Top 25 birds of the week: Feathers!  – A treat this week – 75 bird photographs – enjoy!

The unseen 'slow violence' that affects millions - BBC Future – The harms that happen so slowly that we don’t notice in the moment. It happens over months and years and decades (maybe even centuries). We notice as we use our ‘big data’ to see hot spots of ill-health, where the environmental degradation is at it’s worst, and populations that can’t seem to escape their dire situation. And the issue very quickly becomes – how does our culture respond to the awareness of that ‘slow violence.’

Carbon: Getting to net zero -- and even net negative -- is surprisingly feasible, and affordable -- ScienceDaily – A detailed model of the entire US energy and industrial system….showing how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050…with particular emphasis on what needs to happen in the next 10 years.

The country rejecting throwaway culture - BBC Future – France has introduced an index of ‘repairability’ rating for appliances…hoping to increase the electronics repair rate to 60% within 5 years. I’m glad I opted to repair my clothes drier rather than replace it….although the repair (replacing of the failed heating element) produced some trash it was a lot less than the whole appliance! Things like phones and laptops and monitors are harder.

Carolina Wrens Will Nest in Just About Anything and Why Carolina Wrens Have Moved into Your Neighborhood – We had a Carolina Wren make a nest in a gas grill we hadn’t used in along time. It surprised me when I opened the lid and the bird – startled and then panicked – flew out onto the deck railing. There is usually a pair nesting somewhere around our yard; we see them when they come to the feeder and hear them even more frequently. The forest behind our house and the brush pile at the edge of the forest are good places for them.

Federal Funding Obtained to Replace Zion National Park's Shuttle Fleet – And they’ll be electric! What a great way to keep the air smelling like nature rather than combustion fumes!

Rare Yellow Penguin Photographed for the First Time | Smart News Science | Smithsonian Magazine – What an unusual looking bird! It’s a king penguin on South Georgia Island with leucism, a condition where melanin is only partially lost and some parts of the body retain color. In this case…the ability to produce the usual black pigment is missing.

New River Gorge is America's Newest National Park - News | Planetizen – This park is within ‘road trip’ distance from where we live….maybe a destination post-pandemic.

How we turned a golf course into a haven for rare newts, frogs and toads – Hopefully US golf courses are doing things like this too. I usually think of them as using a lot of chemicals and would not want to live near a golf course….but if they consciously made places for amphibians….it would mean that other creatures could survive in the space too. There is an Audubon International Certification program for golf courses but they don’t publish a list of course that are certified.

The Arctic Ocean might have been filled with freshwater during ice ages – Based on a geochemical study of sediments.

Japan in old Books

The ‘subject’ metadata in Internet Archive can be used to find clusters of books on the same topic. Earlier this year I used a simple search to look at books about Japan using the subject “Japan – Description and Travel” and then sorting by the date published since I was mostly interested in books old enough for the copyright to be expired. I browsed the search results for books that included illustrations and am featuring my favorite ‘finds’ from this search in this weeks’ book post.

Every-day Japan by Arthur Lloyd (1909)

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Since my success with books about Japan – I’ve used the same type search for China, Algeria, Peru, Sweden, and Ireland….and am now browsing books from the Greece version of the search! I enjoy exploring books in the Internet Archive using the digital equivalent of walking through the stacks of a library…selecting a book and leafing through its pages (using thumbnail views)…pausing when something looks interesting. The big difference is the huge number of books available via Internet Archive and that I can do it anywhere/anytime there is a good internet connection! What a boon it is….particularly during this pandemic year.

Ice Shelf

The skylight in the roof of our cover deck slopes enough that the snow and ice it accumulates acts like a mini-glacier as it melts. Over the past few days, our part of Maryland stayed cold with melting occurring with the sunshine even as the temperature stayed below freezing. And then everything re-froze overnight. The snow was icy and dense rather than fluffy because the majority fell as sleet….and as it began to slide down the slippery slope of the skylight, an ice sheet formed.

Did the icicles that formed at its edge provide any support?

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It lasted for more than 24 hours with the re-freezing overnight although there was a noticeable erosion of the ice closest to the skylight housing during the first exposure to sunshine.

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I watched it all morning the second day as the sun came up and the skylight began to get full sun as the morning progressed. About noon – the shelf cracked (I heard it rather than saw it)…slid down the rest of the roof and gutter and crashed to the deck below….shattering on impact.

It was awesome to watch this small model of glacier and ice shelf behavior --- think about how the process would translate to a larger scale and longer duration in the Antarctic.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 20, 2021

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 10 things we learned about climate change in 2020 – I’m thinking about this more this week with the extreme cold in Texas…and lack of preparedness of utility companies and state governments. It drives home the overarching message now: doing nothing will cost more than doing something.

Top 25 birds of the week: Seabids! – Birds and water…from around the world.

Size, Shape, and diversity in phytoplankton – The tiny organisms that could be changing in warming, more acidic oceans….do we have enough of a baseline to know if these communities are changing in ways that will impact the food networks of our oceans?

Fairy Shrimp – A video from a vernal pool in Pony Pasture Rapids Park in Richmond, Virginia.

Wintering bird communities track climate change faster than breeding communities in Europe and North America – Weather impacts birds in the short term (my family has commented that they have seen flocks of robins in their neighborhood recently….having not seen them in the past 30 years they’ve lived in the area) but the longer term impacts of climate changes are only observable with large data bases built since the 1980s. This study looked at over 1,200 species of birds!

How to see the red fox in winter – We occasional see red fox in our neighborhood but I haven’t seen any (so far) this winter. Maybe after the snow/sleet is over I’ll take a walk and look for tracks.

Age provides a buffer to pandemic's mental health impact, researchers say -- ScienceDaily – It may not be ‘age’ as much as older people being more able to stay at home and avoid other people (stress reduction through conscientious steps to avoid COVID-19 exposure)….whereas young people are more likely to have to get out and about for work or other obligations. It could be difficult for older people living along…but maybe we have quite a few older people that are not alone in their ‘bubble.’

Sunset Crater's Explosive Past – The youngest of the volcanoes in the 1,800 square mile San Francisco Volcanic Field near Flagstaff, AZ. It’s a place I visited (and posted about) back in February 2015.

Immune driver of brain aging identified -- ScienceDaily – It seems to be a change in how myeloid cells handle glucose….tending to hoard it rather than using it for energy. I wondered if that is why people with diabetes are at increased risk for cognitive decline.

Magnetic fields detected in Venus Flytraps – A small magnetic field is produced when the trap closes!

Stephen Lucius Gwynn Books about Ireland

I’ve enjoyed 5 books with pictures of Ireland published in the same decade as World War I. The author – Stephen Lucius Gwynn – was an Irish MP and writer with close links to the Iris literary revival; he had a long and varied career (I always browse the Wikipedia entry for the authors/illustrators of books I enjoy).  These books were illustrated by Irish illustrators of the time; many are in color; I selected one or two for each book. I find the illustrations of this period – just before color photography took over for books like this – very appealing. They capture the places as they were…also representing the history of book illustration.  

The Famous Cities of Ireland (1915) with illustrations by Hugh Thomson

Leinster (1911) with illustrations by Alexander Williams

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The Fair Hills of Ireland (1914) with illustrations by Hugh Thomson

Munster (1912) with illustrations by Alexander Williams

Ulster (1911) with illustrations by Alexander Williams

It is interesting to think about the time it took to produce these illustrations compared to photography. Do as many people make their living as artists today?

Technology has changed our work and the way we live in so many ways. I’ve changed almost entirely from physical to digital books over the past decade! I don’t need to go anywhere to obtain my books these days and there is always a huge number of books readily available to me. I find myself savoring the illustrations – painting and photographs - in books/website more than ever. What a boon during this pandemic year!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 13, 2021

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.

Self-controlled children tend to be healthier middle-aged adults -- ScienceDaily – Benefits include younger brains and bodies, better outlook in the years ahead. This finding is from a study done in New Zealand with 1,000 people tracked from age 3 to 45 (i.e. they were born in 1972 and 1973). Hopefully they will continue to be tracked as they get older….to determine if they remain healthier as they age. The finding makes sense to me based on my observations of my own life and people I have known over many years.

An Invasive Wild Edible Winter Rose – Natural History Society of Maryland – Multiflora rose…it’s a plant that takes over – climbing over everything around it…and it is prickly. One redeeming quality might be the RoseHips that can be used to make tea. Birds eat them too and that propagates the plant – so maybe more harvesting by humans would reduce this invasive!

College campuses are COVID-19 superspreaders, new study suggests -- ScienceDaily – My daughter and son-in-law are very aware that this could happen at the university where they teach and have research teams. They are offering blended classes so that students can be in person or virtual…and providing higher quality masks for their themselves and their research teams.

The 'megascale' structures that humans could one day build - BBC Future – Some history and observations…the realization that there are existing ‘megascale’ structures: terracing of parts of Southeast Asia, land reclamation from the sea by the Netherlands, the internet, the US Interstate Highway system.

SolarEV City concept: Building the next urban power and mobility systems: Unlocking the potentials of EV batteries with roof-top PVs for urban decarbonization -- ScienceDaily – Calculations done for 9 Japanese urban areas…CO2 emissions in these urban areas could be reduced by 53-95%!

The state of the climate in 2021 - BBC Future – Looking at CO2, record heat, Arctic ice, permafrost, and forests. We need to make progress toward drawdown rather than continuing actions that cause the upward ramp of planetary warming.

Are monarchs in trouble? | Science – In my area of Maryland…the decline has been dramatic.

A Tweak to Immune Cells Reverses Aging in Mice | The Scientist Magazine® - Interesting but so far has not be translated into humans. Evidently a drug to specifically block the EP2 receptor is not easily developed.

Tiny hard drives that are alive — and multiplying : Research Highlights – Experiments with data encoding in the E. coli genome. Evidently the data is protected from degradation in the presence of dirt and other contaminants…but what about changes that would occur over many replications?

Top 25 birds of the week: February 2021 – A grand finale to the gleanings….bird photographs!

American Museum of Natural History in 1953

The 1953 volume of the Magazine of the American Museum of Natural History is available from Internet Archive (here is the link for whole collection list). I am featuring the volume of magazines published the year I was born this week. There were two items that resonated…that reminded me of other years in my life.

The first was an article about Bandelier National Monument.

I’ve been to the place at least 4 times: Spring 1971, August 1980, September 1981, and March 2005. The first time was for a picnic during a high school trip. In 1980 and 1981 my husband and I camped there. We hiked to the lower falls in 1981….and took our best pictures of the place.

The sideshow below is a mix of pictures from the 1980 and 1981 trips. Based on the pictures, we took longer hikes in 1981. My husband did all the photography. I scanned the slides years later.

In 2005, it was a wet day. It was a bit larger group with my parents, husband and daughter. We only walked around near the visitor center. It is a place to visualize how people lived long ago….and the juxtaposition of more modern history of the world in nearby Los Alamos, the lab at the forefront of creating the first atomic bombs.

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The second item was a picture of horsetails.

I remember reading about the plant in a textbook when I was in college in the mid70s…and then being thrilled to see and recognize a stand growing in Platt National Park when we visited a few months later. I had probably seen them before but overlooked them…didn’t realize that these are remnants of primitive plants that used to be the understory of the giant forests that eventually formed coal deposits. The genus (Equisetaceae) was eaten by dinosaurs!

I like finding publications from meaningful times in my life ….it’s a tangible connection to history. It’s also fun to see places I have seen more recently and to think about how they’ve changed … how they’ve remained the same.

11 months in COVID-19 pandemic

It’s been 11 months since the WHO declared the COVID-19 pandemic. The US appears to be through the peak of cases and deaths that resulted from the late 2020 holiday celebrations but there is a lot of concern about more contagious variants of the virus that have been detected in the country. We could be nearing a low and then see another peak before enough people are vaccinated to bring it down again (assuming the vaccine still is effective with the variant). Vaccinations offer tremendous hope, but they are still in relatively short supply with only around 10% of people vaccinated. The administration of vaccines is still confusing – with a maze of sign-up processes and locations to navigate. There are times I think that the vaccine is going to people that are gaming the system rather than the intended groups.

The news stories about the COVID-19 variants have prompted several actions in our household:

  • Curbside grocery pickup. I decided to switch from early morning grocery shopping in the store to curbside pickup. We’ve done it twice now and I like it better than delivery to the house. There do not appear to be shortages like there were last spring and I include a bouquet of cut flowers on my list. I submit the order so that it is one of the first orders of the day for the shopper and have gotten an experienced shopper both times (judging from how fast they pull the order together). They also package the order in paper bags which I like much better than the plastic.

  • New masks. I ordered some new masks that had wires to help them fit better over the nose…thinking I would double mask from now on. Then we decided that we needed some better masks for the inner layer and my husband ordered some KN95 and the KF94. The KF94s are what my daughter and son-in-law are wearing when they teach…the university is still trying to continue in-person classes. The key is to have a mask that fits snuggly but does not muffle speech. My daughter said that the KF94s fit her the best – and her glasses did not fog at all!

  • My sisters and I have started a sisters zoom session every other week. I’m not sure why we didn’t do it before. I guess we thought the sisters text messages were enough. The zoom meeting is a positive addition to our routine.

My plan was to restart some mini-road trips, but I only managed one to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant to photograph skunk cabbage. It worked out well since there were few enough people around that it was a solitary hike. I wore 2 masks….appreciating their warmth! It’s good to drive my car again and I’ll plan so more as the weather improves – either purely a driving activity or to a place I expect there to be very few other people.

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There were lots of webinars over the month. The birding festivals are a lot of webinars over a short time…the others an hour or less at a time. I like the variety of topics and places. They are my best substitute for travel right now.

  • Finishing up the Virtual Celebration of Cranes from Tennessee

  • Natural History Society of Maryland hosted a Snow Crystal Photomicrography session which reminded me to keep my gear ready for every snowfall…with limited success so far. We have some colder temperatures this week that might make for excellent snowflake photography.

  • Capital Nature hosted The Secret Life and Folklore of Winter Trees

  • Missouri State University Foundation hosted 2 sessions about the Jordan Valley Innovation Center

  • Brookside Gardens is hosting Friday lunch and learns. The first one was a video tour of the conservatories that are closed because of COVID-19. It was good to see the staff faces again. I miss seeing them and the ramp up for the butterfly exhibit that usually starts in April.

My big purchase of the month was a new Swopper chair. My previous one was 10+ years old and when it broke, it was an internal part….couldn’t get to it positioned again to reattach it to the base to it is currently acting as a stool rather than a bouncy chairs. The new one is at my desk…by back feels great again! I am so glad we can get items like this delivered to our front porch.

Of course – I still spend considerable time on various photography and Zentangle projects…browsing books…enjoying meal prep as much as eating.

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My husband has started a project to photograph birds every day using his camera on a tripod on our deck and his phone to control the shutter from inside where it is warm!

There is quite a lot that could happen over the next month:

  • I am full of anticipation about getting a vaccination, but our county hasn’t started my group yet (maybe in a few weeks).

  • There is a glut of birding festival webinars on the Valentine’s weekend from 3 places: Niagara Falls (New York and Ontario), Laredo (Texas), and Bosque del Apache (New Mexico). The forecast is for very cold weather here in Maryland so we’re planning a fire in the fireplace and hot foods (except for snow ice cream if the snow is deep enough and the right consistency).

We are staying at home except for curbside pickups at this point….but continuing to add projects to our routine. It’s not a boring time at all. Our outlook is more positive than it has been since last year this time….because of the vaccine and the transition of power away from a stress inducing national leader. I’m hoping to be able to see my family in Texas sometime in 2021!

30 years ago – February 1991

I couldn’t find any pictures we took in February 1991. As I looked back through my notes, I found references to us have bad colds/flu – daughter first (with an ear infection) and then me…my husband last. I was busy at work trying to write a proposal while I was sick. I was worried about my parents having trouble buying the house they wanted because of an easement issue, one of my sisters needing surgery, and the sister-in-law that I had never met/that my husband hadn’t seen in almost 20 years communicating sporadically while she was getting rounds of cancer treatment; it was all happening very far away from Maryland but the worries were always there while I did everything else.

On a happier note – we discovered that our 17-month-old daughter had picked up some counting skills (maybe Sesame Street or at day care). Her dad was playing with her one evening dropping disks into a can with a slot…he picked up several and counted…one, two, three, four…as he dropped disks into the slot. She picked up one and dropped it into the slot and said ‘five’…and another and said ‘six.’ We were both so surprised that there was a little pause before we celebrated her accomplishment!

It seems that I always find some nuggets when I look back at notes and pictures from 30 years ago There are events – like the counting skills surprise – that my notes indicate I thought would be something we would always remember…but I didn’t. I’m so glad I have the notes and can savor the surprise again!

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 6, 2021

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.

Human egg cells are imperfect surprisingly often -- ScienceDaily – More than 7% of human oocytes contain at least one exchangeless chromosome pair…and the frequency is not affected by maternal age. Our species is hardwired to have significant numbers of miscarriages and babies with extra or missing chromosomes. The finding is interesting, but I immediately thought of some questions…has this changed over the past 100 years (i.e. have we changed our environment enough that we are impacting our reproductive success) and how does this frequency compare to other mammals?

Why our pursuit of happiness may be flawed - BBC Future – A thought provoking piece about how seeking ‘happiness’ often sets the stage for disappointment…rather than contentment.

Pollution from cooking remains in atmosphere for longer -- ScienceDaily – Eating deep-fat fried foods is not just unhealthy…the cooking of foods that way contributes to air pollution. In London, 10% of the PM2.5 particles are from deep fat frying….in Hong Kong 39%!

2nd Annual Threatened And Endangered Parks: Natural Darkness And Sounds – My husband and I are looking forward to more dark sky opportunities in national parks. So far – the ‘star parties’ we’ve been to have been at state parks and hosted by amateur astronomy clubs in the area. The dark sky venue requires a bit of infrastructure to support a field full of camping amateur astronomers with their telescopes (electricity for telescopes/computers and bath rooms with red tented windows).

Top 25 birds of the week: Colouration! - Wild Bird Revolution – Lots of color in this post to break up mostly brown and white winter color outside my window! 

U.S. Breaks Record for Billion-Dollar Climate Disasters in 2020 | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – Not a good record to be breaking…and they happened during a pandemic year too. There were 22 disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damages across America in 2020.

Q&A: Global Insect Declines Due to "Death by a Thousand Cuts" | The Scientist Magazine® - In every case researched….it’s not just one thing that caused the decline…it a cluster of primary factors (6 or more) and then other factors that are difficult to quantify.

Texas Wind Power Dominates Coal In Crossover Year – Hurray! Hopefully, the coal plants will begin to phase out in Texas and across the country as they become less and less competitive with renewable sources of power.

On the road to invisible solar panels: How tomorrow's windows will generate electricity -- ScienceDaily – I am always reluctant to consider replacement windows….but if they were cost effective solar panels…that would tip the decision toward ‘buy’!

Caligula's Gardens, Long Hidden Beneath Italian Apartment Building, to Go on View | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – A subterranean museum beneath the streets of Rome to open this spring.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 30, 2021

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.

I am featuring videos this week….including the newest baby panda in the US and historic houses. I discovered that a lot of house-type museums have increased their virtual content during the pandemic. The historic houses I picked for this post are ones I have visited in the past. Some I have visited more than once (Mount Vernon and Monticello, for example). It’s fun to savor them virtually!

Panda Cub’s virtual debut – From the National Zoo…video is just over 2 minutes

Virtual visits to the Newport Mansions -  3D tours From the Preservation Society of Newport County. Includes The Elms, Marble House, Hunter House, Isaac Bell House, Chateau-ser-Mer, Chepstow, and Kingscote.

The Mark Twain House in Hartford, CT – 3D tour

Mount Vernon – George Washington’s house. 3D of the gardens and mansion

Lyndhurst – Several 3D views….including at Christmas and Halloween

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens – Florida. 3D with links to historic photos of the same area

Monticello – Thomas Jefferson’s house. 3D tour. There is also a Google Arts and Culture tour with video/photos.

Olana’s Historic Landscape Video Tour – Frederic  and Isabel Church home.

Val-Kill tour – Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site from Google Arts and Culture

Wilderstein – Online exhibit, aerial tour, and landscape tour. The house was the Suckley residence for 3 generations from 1852 to 1991.

The Royal Natural History from the late 1800s

The Royal Natural History series was published in the mid-1890s by Frederick Warne & Co. – the publisher of Beatrix Potter’s books a few years later in the early 1900s.

These natural history books were edited by Richard Lydekker with a long list of illustrators. I enjoyed browsing through 5 of the volumes back in November: one, two, four, five and six. Two sample images from each volume are below.

As I was looking at these volumes again for this post, I discovered that there were a lot more books to look at. They were published as 6 volumes, 12 sections….many of the ‘volumes’ are multiple books! So – I’ve bookmarked the Internet Archive list again…planning to go back to look at the books I missed on the first pass!

Bluebirds Visit

On the 26th – we had bluebirds at our birdfeeder! I heard a lot of chatter coming from the birdfeeder so got up to look. There was quite a crowd around the feeder with birds jostling for a perch. It was a cold icy day too. I took a few pictures from my office window then went downstairs where I took pictures through the panes of the French door in the breakfast area. The birds were moving so quickly I didn’t get a good count…but there were probably 6-8 birds…maybe only one male (he is the one that has the brighter blue feathers).

The birds that were not on the feeder were often directly below looking up!

I was using my new camera and took advantage of the zoom and vantage point of our first floor to capture some bluebird portraits…all females (not sure where the male went….the birds were very active).

I looked at the All About Birds entry for Eastern Bluebird – and found that the birds usually don’t come to feeders because they eat primarily insects and fruits. These birds must have been hungry! One of the foods they like is raisins so I’ve put some on my list for the next grocery pick-up!

Back in January 2016, I posted about bluebirds coming to our birdbath. It was a similar kind of day from a weather perspective. There were about the same number of birds in that group. There are many nesting boxes in our area which helps support the birds’ nesting. But we probably need to have more native bushes that have berries for our birds in winter; something to consider for an upcoming landscaping project.