May 20, 2023

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 20, 2023

May 20, 2023/ Gwen Morrison

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.

These four challenges will shape the next farm bill – and how the US eats – Thought provoking. Will the author’s dream priorities for investment (organic agriculture as a climate solution, infrastructure to support vibrant local and regional markets and shift away from an agricultural economy dependent on exporting low-vale crops; and agricultural science and technology research aimed at reducing labor and chemical inputs and providing new solutions for sustainable livestock production) be funded….or will Congress stay entrenched in continuing agriculture as it is today.

The Energy Revolution in 5 Charts – 1. The energy transition is a technology revolution (it’s not a brown to green caterpillar…it is a caterpillar to a butterfly; we are moving from a commodity (fossil fuel) to technology-based system). 2) The renewable revolution is exponential, not linear (and we are at or past the knee in the curve). 3) The renewable revolution is led by China (with the US and Europe recently enacting policies to compete). 4) This is the decade of change (exciting times for heat pumps, electric vehicles, solar, and wind). 5) By 2030, the debate will be very different with the renewable revolution obvious to all.

National Park waterfalls being honored on US Postage Stamps – Beautiful places. Would like to see (and photograph) more of them!

The Camouflaged Looper: This Inchworm Makes Its Own Flower “Costume” – Another reason to take a closer look at flowers….the small creatures that might we living (and munching) there!

Our tropical fruits are vulnerable to climate change. Can we make them resilient in time? – The work to help our food plants tolerate and thrive with climate change. The post is specific to Australia but has applicability elsewhere. Techniques have already been successfully applied to chickpeas to make them more drought resistant, survive higher temperatures, and produce better yields!

Commercial Rooftop Solar on Warehouses Could Power All of Them – Commercial rooftop solar on America’s warehouses could provide 185 TWh of clean renewable energy every year. Hurray! Power produced near population centers where it is used….and avoiding taking farmland for solar panels (unless the plan is to grow crops under the panels).

Water arsenic including in public water is linked to higher urinary arsenic totals among the U.S. population – Not good…and water pitcher type filters do not remove it…..it takes reverse osmosis, activated alumina, or ion exchange (anion) resins to do that.

Fashion World Remembers Mary Quant, the Miniskirt Pioneer – I was old enough in the ‘60s to remember wearing Mary Quant type dresses!

How do you stay optimistic in spite of it all? 6 hopeful souls share their secrets – Thought provoking…maybe we all need to think about the ways keep ourselves positive….not let the pessimism around us overcome us.

The clean energy milestone the world is set to pass in 2023 - Greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, the largest source of the world's emissions, are expected to fall for the first time!

May 12, 2020

Filling a Day of Social Distancing - 5/11/2020

May 12, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Sending in my absentee ballot for the Maryland primary. The primary was moved to June 2nd and is being done by mail for most voters.

Life Magazine in 1962. My youngest sister was born in 1962. Internet Archive has one issue for that year. It had ads for Carnation Instant Milk, Pepsi, Chef Boy-ar-dee, and Kodak film. There was a story about Paris fashion that was not as interesting as I thought it might be. The article with the most pages and caught my interest was called Sights that Never Lose Their Magic and included pictures of Paris, London, Venice, Hong Kong/Avila, Gizeh, Istanbul, Fuji, Angkor, and Taj Mahal. The last one is probably my favorite – moonlit instead of blazing sun. (click on an image to see a larger version).

**Taking out kitchen scraps to the compost pile**. I’d been collecting the snippets in the kitchen and took it out to the compost pile since the container was full – after adding a spent iris flower this morning. I should take it out more frequently since there was mold growing in the bottom. I took some pictures of tiny flowers growing in our yard and some shade loving plants under our deck on the walk back to the front of the house.

Checking the iris stalks that weathered the 2 nights of cold temperatures. They survived. Their location is somewhat protected, and the buds seem to be maturing normally.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

And now for some goldfinch observations….

2020 05 IMG_9442 (4).jpg — House finches are frequent visitors to our feeder…goldfinches not as often. But they have been showing up a little more frequently and the house finches seem to accept them as non-competitors at the feeder.

The males have their summer plumage at this point, so they are easy to spot.

April 26, 2020

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/25/2020

April 26, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Spotting a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. The bird was a on the gutter of our covered deck initially – then on the feeder. This is a first sighting for this species at our feeder. I managed to tell my husband in time for him to see it too. It was the most exciting event of the morning! The bird flew off to the maple tree then returned several more times during the morning. It was assertive enough to drive away the cowbirds!

Catching up on Charles Cockell’s Life in the Universe Pandemic Series:

Reflecting on my own wardrobe over the decades. After finishing the Fashion as Design Coursera course, I am doing some thinking about my wardrobe history. What was memorable about each decade (after I was old enough for clear memories).

1960s

I started school in 1960 so a lot of my growing up was done during the decade. I can remember learning to iron my clothes early on but being thrilled later with synthetics that did not need to be ironed. Underwear and socks were ordered from Sears as needed, but we shopped in local stores for clothes and shoes. I rarely had more clothes that I needed to last between the weekly laundry days although we did have seasonal clothes that we kept in heavy cardboard barrels during the off season. As I got older, my mother involved us in deciding the clothes we wanted with the budget she allocated for each of us. I learned to sew to stretch the dollars as I got older.

The schools I went to were not air conditioned until I was in high school so the beginning and ending of the school year (in Texas) was extremely hot. Maybe it was a positive thing that girls were expected to wear dresses to school!

I remember dresses getting shorter and shorter as the decade progressed. In 6th grade I had a drop waist dress that I liked a lot. High school colors were important.

The worst fashion of the decade from my perspective was corrective oxfords. I had flat feet. The oxfords were white leather with metal arch supports to hold the foot as it grew. They didn’t help at all since my foot already was the size it is now by the time I started wearing them. They were heavy and awkward; I seemed to always be catching the low, clunky heal on my ankle (frequently enough that scars formed).

1970s

My dresses and skirts reached their maximum shortness in the early 1970s. It seems that I transitioned to wearing slacks and jeans more during the decade.

I was making all my clothes except underwear and jeans…even making some dress and flannel shirts for my husband. I made my own wedding dress out of white brocade upholstery fabric (for a January wedding).

My clothes had to go from office to school because after I graduated from high school, I was working full then going to college classes in the evenings. I still didn’t have many clothes; they were all general purpose. There is a picture of me in a vest, puffed sleeve blouse, pants rolled up over my socks – carrying a camera bag on a geology field trip – not the most practical outfit (or shoes) for hiking!

Later in the decade I started dressing up a little more for work because I was moving up in the organization. I remember liking dirndl skirts and squarish jackets – scarves/jewel necklines or blouses with wide ties at the neck. I’d learned to tie square knots and good bows in the early years of the decade.

I did buy my first pair of hiking boot – heavy, leather that was so stiff that the tops made blisters on my ankles when I wore them to hike down to the plateau level of the Grand Canyon.

1980s

I started out the decade sewing everything then sewing blouses (I even made one with a several with crocheted sections around the neck). I took some classes to refine my tailoring skills. But by mid-decade, I was ordering by suits from Spiegel. By the end of the decade I stopped sewing completely; it wasn’t as economical as it had been previously and – with motherhood and working full time – there was no time.

I wore 2- or 3-piece suits to work from about 1984 to the later part of the 1990s. I was moving up in my career and the suits were part of the corporate culture for men and women. I liked skirts that had an actual pleat in the back rather than a slit and a small inner pocket in the jacket (I never used any external pockets). I wore blouses with lace or crochet or a bow at the neck….or a scarf. The suits were all solid colors – black, navy, gray, red jacket/dark skirt. One of my favorites was tan silk; I always got compliments on it. I wore it with a black blouse or with a scarf that was maroon and the exact tan of the suit.

My work shoes were generally black or navy pumps (often a sling strap because my heel was so narrow that the others didn’t fit well) with a 2-inch heel.

1990s

My husband, daughter and I wore look alike t-shirts/sweatshirts from places we visited on vacations for casual wear with jeans, shorts, or sweatpants.

2000s

Several tapestry jackets were also added to my wardrobe. I remembered having some bell bottom tapestry pants in the 1970s that I enjoyed until they wore out. I donated a couple of the jackets when I retired from my career but have kept one that I wear occasionally.

Some of my clothes came from thrift stores – particularly some of the black slacks and colorful blouses to pair with otherwise dark jackets. It was thrilling to find things appropriate for ‘business casual’ for so little.

One of my favorite jackets was a gift from my Mother….I usually wear it buttoned….over one of my many pairs of black slacks

2010s

By the 2010s, almost all my work shoes were clog type heels. The only pair I have left had soft leather uppers and are slightly lower heels that the ones from early in the decade. I liked square toes. Eventually my knees started hurting if I walked a lot in the shoes and I was glad to go to much flatter shoes by the time I retired.

For the last years of my career I wore a wig to work; it was my way to have ‘great hair’ every day that earlier generations of professional women – like my mother – got by having a weekly appointment with a hairdresser. The wig was less time consuming.

I also built up more casual clothes for outdoors. My daughter enjoyed being outdoors and most of the family vacation were to National Parks (or similar places). And then my volunteer gigs needed those same type of clothes.

Longer skirts are my favorite warm weather clothes. Most of them I find at thrift store and some of them are probably decades old!

Now

These days I like leggings (jean or cotton knit) with tunics. The tunics need to have something unique: asymmetric hem, embroidery, or color.

Overall - there are a lot of synthetic fabrics in my closet that will last a long time. I’ve gotten rid of the things I don’t wear via donation…and plan to keep what I have for the foreseeable future!

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts here.

March 23, 2020

Jigsaw Puzzle of the Moon

March 23, 2020/ Gwen Morrison

Cleaning out a large box that had been in our basement since we moved to our house 25 years ago, I discovered framed pictures and other wall hangings. Several pieces were from the 1980s – a macramé piece made by sister on a large hoop and a collage of astrophotographs my husband made in the late 70s and early 80s. Other things were much older: a picture my husband remembers being in the houses he grew up in from the very beginning of his memories and a jigsaw puzzle of the moon that I remember helping to assemble in the 1960s. The puzzle was very difficult – made possible only because of the labeling of the features; my family was so pleased when we finished it that we glued it to a board. Someone carefully cut the circle and painted the raw edge black. I not sure when I ended up with it because of my husband’s interest in astronomy.

The 1960s were full of optimism about space exploration. It fueled an uptick in science and engineering interest overall. I’m glad to have this memento of the time. But where does this jigsaw puzzle go next?