Earlier this year, I browsed two books that were full of images of Abraham Lincoln. Photographic technology had progressed enough to leave us a relatively rich group of pictures; we can see him aging over time. There is some overlap in the two books but also unique images. I was surprised at how many of them seemed familiar; these might be some of the most reused images in the world! Both books are available from Internet Archive. (click on images to see a larger version)
My PC has been Intel-based since the 80s…but I transitioned to an Apple MacBook Air 15” last week (after transitioning from an Android-based phone to an iPhone 15 Pro Max earlier in the month). So – April 2024 has been a big tech transition for me. Now that I am through most of the it– I am thinking about my impressions of how it all went.
It was not as traumatic as I thought it would be although I was anticipating that it was going to be harder than a transition to a new Intel-based laptop and it was. But not as hard as I thought it was going to be. That could have been because:
My most active files were already in the cloud (OneDrive) and the huge bulk of my photographs were on an external drive.
I knew all my passwords. I am sometimes anxious about passwords (remembering them and changing them often enough) but I’ve managed to get better at it over the years.
My browser was the latest version.
The docking station I had used with my laptop worked with the new machine too (so the two external monitors were available immediately).
It only took me a day to begin doing some of my normal things on the Mac: writing and posting a blog, browsing some books, checking my news feeds, copying photos from my camera’s SD card to the Mac and tagging the best ones, sending/receiving text messages. Other than installing Microsoft Office and my favorite browser, I found myself minimizing the other apps I installed; I wanted to thoroughly explore the capabilities of the apps that came on the Mac; of course, Finder was a big focus for me since I was looking for ways to tag and resize pictures almost immediately along with moving around files.
On the subsequent days, I made tweaks – changing some settings to be more familiar to me (scrolling…the CTRL key to mimic the CMD key for cut and paste). I also installed the driver for my scanner, and it worked without any issues at all (the scanner was connected via the docking station, so it had been attached physically from almost the beginning). Tweaking will continue until I am thoroughly comfortable with the way the software is configured. Since I feel comfortable now, I suspect further tweaking will be minimal.
What I haven’t done yet is clean up the dock – taking off apps that I am not using and making sure the ones that I use frequently are always there. I will gradually try all the apps that are on the doc now and make the decision.
My overall impression of the transition at this point is positive. I am doing my normal activities – often in a slightly different way but acceptable (often improved). And I have cleaned up my environment considerably.
And – everything works faster! I’m very happy I made this tech transition!
My parents prompted my goal to go to college; it was still in my future during the 1960s. At first there was only a vague idea of what universities were like. That begin to change when my mother went back to school so she could become a teacher when I was in junior high. I learned about required courses and textbooks and the library. My sisters and I were in the audience when she acted in a play as part of a drama class. I remember paging through a very thick book for a biology/life sciences class – relishing how much more it included beyond the encyclopedias and schoolbooks I had looked at before. When I started an insect collection for special credit before my sophomore year of high school, my mother took me to the campus bookstore and we bought special black straight pins for the project (there must have been a class at the university that required insect collection too). My collection impression my teacher so much that she asked to keep it!
I was also aware of the protests of the Vietnam War at universities in the 1960s via the news and now with protests of the war in Gaza also via the news. I never was on a campus when one of the more significant protests happened at either time of my life.
Now my perception of universities is based more on first-hand experience from the 1970s and early 1980s when my husband got his PhD and I got my masters, vicarious experience (again) from 2007 to 2019 when my daughter was at 3 universities for undergraduate through to PhD and post doc, my daughter being employed as a professor at a university now, and the prospect of a course each semester at the university beginning next fall taking advantage of the free tuition for citizens age 62 or older.
In the 1960s, the prospect of heading off to the university was all about continuation of my education…preparing for a career…getting the required credits toward a degree. Now, I’ll be taking courses because I am interested in the topic and not ‘for credit.’ Courses that offer field experience or labs will be my primary focus…things that I can’t get in an online format or from a book. The first course will likely be a field course identifying woody plants; the second might be geology course which includes field trips and a lab; the next one might be pottery making!
In the 1960s, I was oblivious to the administration of universities. In retrospect, there were a lot less non-faculty staff at universities in the 1960s. And those non-faculty people often get higher salaries than the faculty; they are largely responsible for the cost of university education increasing faster than costs in just about every other sector. And those non-faculty people make decisions about how funding cuts will be made so their ranks will never go down! How does bloat in a university’s administrative staff ever get trimmed?
It seems that universities are changing very slowly compared to the rest of society. There is a paradox of research that is often leading edge coming out of an organization that incorporates processes that are almost like hazing (qualifying exams for graduate students that are traditionally ‘failed’ the first time through…committees of other faculty members that review tenure track packages and provide negative feedback, sometimes not factual and sometimes personal rather than relevant to the position…minorities and women judged harshly).
The role of universities is not as clear now as it seemed to me in the 1960s. I’m not sure if that is true because I know more about them now or if they have not changed in the intervening years in ways that they should have.
Previous Then and Now posts
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.
Tax Burden by State – A comparison done by WalletHub that compared the 50 states on 3 types of taxes - property taxes, individual income taxes, and sales and excise taxes - as a share of total personal income in the state.
See a Restored Ancient Roman Helmet—and Two Shiny New Replicas – 2,000-year-old helmet made of silver-gilded iron.
Solar Savings in the US – Looking at the numbers….
Feral Hogs to Be Removed from Congaree National Park – My husband and I visited Congaree in 2008 and I vividly remember the feral hogs. Evidently action is being taken to remove them. They have become a pervasive problem to both the park and surrounding landowners, routinely causing widespread damage to land and water resources both within and outside of the park. Recent observations have shown that they have begun to cause more extensive damage to areas near the Harry Hampton Visitor Center, including areas where synchronous fireflies are active and where restoration of longleaf pine is ongoing.
What four decades of canned salmon reveal about marine food webs - The cans contained fillets from four salmon species, all caught over a 42-year period in the Gulf of Alaska and Bristol Bay. Researchers dissected the preserved fillets from 178 cans and counted the number of anisakid roundworms -- a common, tiny marine parasite -- within the flesh. The parasites were killed by the canning process but still visible… counting them is one way to gauge how well a marine ecosystem is doing.
Texas Solar Power Growth Changing the Shape of Daily Electricity Supply in ERCOT – Looking at the changes between 2022 and 2023…easy to see graphically.
Functional capacity in old age is like an ecosystem that may collapse when disrupted - In old age, a tighter interlinkage between different domains of functional capacity may indicate a loss of system resilience. When functional capacity domains are tightly interconnected, a disruption in one domain can affect others and lead to a collapse in functioning.
Ming Dynasty Tomb Found in China's Xinfu District – Part of excavations before nearby highway construction begins.
I spy with my speedy eye: Scientists discover speed of visual perception ranges widely in humans - The rate with which we perceive the world is known as our "temporal resolution." Though our visual temporal resolution is quite stable from day to day in general, a post-hoc analysis did suggest that there may be slightly more variation over time within females than within males.
Study Reveals Vast Networks of ‘Ghost Roads’ in Asian Rainforests - An extensive analysis of satellite imagery has uncovered thousands of miles of unmapped roads slicing through Asia’s tropical rainforests - “ghost roads” may be laid down by miners, loggers, poachers, drug traffickers, and land grabbers, often illegally.
L’art Vietnamien was written by Louis Bezacier, a French archaeologist and art historian. It was published in 1955.
As I browsed the book, I found myself wanting more illustrations; the ones that were there acted to stimulate my interest but not satisfy it. I also wondered how much of Vietnam’s art history was damaged or destroyed in the battles that followed. The author first began his work in Vietnam in 1935 and published for at least 20 years after that…but this book is the only one that is currently on Internet Archive.
In the 1960s, my mother did the grocery shopping for the family – usually going once a week. I went with her occasionally but not often. She usually shopped while my sisters and I were in school. Her favorite grocery store was Safeway. I am now shopping at Walmart most of the time since it is the closest grocery store to me and once a week is still my goal. The hours my The Walmart is open from 6AM-11PM, 7 days a week; the hours grocery stores were open in the 1960s was a lot less than that and there were items they couldn’t sell on Sundays if they were open then (‘blue laws’ in Texas).
The carts were similar in design to the larger ones in most stores now although they were all metal (no plastic) and did not have seatbelts for young children. Most grocery stores now have a few smaller carts along with the larger ones but I usually am buying enough that I get a large cart.
My mother always had a list that accumulated over the week; most of the time she made the additions to the list but as my sisters and I got old enough, we sometimes wrote in items. Now I use the OurGroceries app so that my husband and I can add items to the list from any of our devices and I use my phone when I am in the store rather than a piece of paper.
My mother only bought food at the grocery store…not toiletries or over-the-counter medications; those were purchased at a drug store which also included a pharmacy. I buy many non-groceries during my weekly shopping now; toiletries are frequently on the list, but I sometimes buy clothes or office supplies as well. It’s an advantage of shopping at Walmart rather than a grocery store. We still pick up our prescriptions at a CVS; the pharmacy at Walmart is not open at the time I usually shop (between 7 and 8:30 AM on Friday mornings).
At checkout, a cashier had to enter the price of each item on the register and the strip of paper that my mother was handed at the end only included the prices and the total. She paid with cash or wrote a check. Now I scan my purchases myself, use a credit card to pay for them, and get an itemized list that includes an abbreviated description of each item along with the total.
Mother’s purchases were put in brown paper bags by the cashier. Now the store provides single-use plastic bags; I’ve used my own bags for more than a decade (they are stronger, and I don’t have to take precautions to contain the single-use bags from littering and polluting the environment). I put my items into my bags after I scan them. All the refrigerator items go into an insulated bag and the remaining items are grouped into bags to make unloading easier once I get home (and to make sure bread, chips, and eggs are not damaged in transit).
There was a lot less plastic. Milk came only in cartons (waxed…not plastic coated) and juices and soft drinks came in glass. Canned foods were purchased frequently, and the cans were not lined with plastic. The produce section included mainly seasonal foods along with ones that could be easily stored/transported (like bananas). Broccoli was something we had periodically as a frozen vegetable, and it was packaged in a box rather than a plastic bag. We enjoyed strawberries seasonally or frozen (in a box); now my husband likes the frozen ones (in a plastic bag) more than he likes fresh ones! Plastic is the dominate packaging now: jugs of milk, bottles of water/soft drinks/juice, bags of frozen veggies and fruit, robustly sealed meats, bags of snacks and fresh vegetables/fruits, jars of peanut butter. Sometimes there is an option to buy in class jars but most of the time there is no choice; the packaging is plastic.
The most common type of bread was white; my mother wanted ‘whole wheat’ and bought Roman Meal when she could find it. I buy Dave’s Sprouted organic bread….avoiding a lot of added chemicals that have been introduced over the years to keep bread from molding or otherwise ‘improving’ it in some way (‘improving’ is in quotes because many breads cross over into the ultra-processed realm with the additions that are quite common today).
Some of the brands are still around: Cambell’s, Nabisco, Kelloggs, Green Giant. I don’t buy them as often as my mother did…only Cambell’s Tomato Soup and Green Giant Niblets Corn for my husband.
There are a lot of products in the grocery store that were not available in the 1960s…most of them ultra-processed and they fill up whole aisles of the grocery store. It requires some willpower to steer clear of those (although it gets easier over time). On the healthier side, it is now easier to find international foods (salsas and tortillas, etc.) and things like boneless chicken breasts…a lot more options when it comes to pasta, sauces in glass jars, greens (kale and arugula were not in grocery stores in the 1960s), grains/seed (quinoa and chia are new…’chia pets’ were not introduced until the later 1970s), and no salt seasonings. There are now targeted foods for special diets; for example, milk that includes Lactaid for those that are lactose intolerant and protein shakes for diabetics or those dieting and concerned about getting adequate protein.
My mother was very conscious of nutritional guidelines; she had taken home economics courses in college. We had some form of protein at every meal along with fruits and vegetables and grains. Sugary items were only for special occasions. There were seasonal fresh foods, but she relied on canned goods more than we do now, particularly during the winter. Both sets of grandparents had big gardens and we enjoyed their bounty whenever we could – supplementing what was purchased at the grocery store; we knew how food was grown and a little of how it was preserved (canned) for later. Now we buy more fresh or frozen fruits and veggies rather than canned because they are readily available during the whole year. I also buy organic as much as I can….something that didn’t exist in the 1960s.
Groceries have changed significantly since the 1960s. Availability of healthy foods is probably better now – although it takes more attention/knowledge to avoid the ultra-processed foods that are often intermingled with the healthy food.
Previous Then and Now posts
Last week I posted about my pre-eclipse experience. Today’s post has photos of the eclipse itself. I used my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HX) on a tripod with a solar filter for most of them. Both my skill and camera improved since the 2017 eclipse when I was using a Canon Powershot SX730 HS with the same filter. I compose my shots such that the camera stays in P (program) mode and autofocuses. The only setting change made was the +/- exposure compensation during totality. My ‘best shots’ for the 2024 eclipse included:
Two areas of sunspots (pre-eclipse)
First contact
Further along
Only one sunspot still visible
Frown in the sky
Diamond ring (no filter)
Baily’s beads and solar flares/prominences (no filter)
More solar flares/prominences (no filter)
Corona (no filter)
Nearing the end of totality (no filter)
Diamond ring (no filter)
Smile in the sky
I took one picture with my phone holding my solar glasses over the lens after totality. I was klutzy to hold…but worthwhile to try.
My husband had an app running that was providing prompts leading up to totality…when to remove filters…the mid-point of totality…filters back on. It was good to have the audio rather than having to check the time some other way. He had a more complex set up with several higher end cameras – one of which had automated tracking (which didn’t work quite the way he expected). These were his three favorite totality shots.
The road trip home was prolonged with heavy traffic. A lot of people traveled to see the eclipse, and all were heading home afterward at about the same time. We stopped for dinner along the way and the traffic cleared a little. It was a long day for us: leaving home at 5:30 AM and returning at 9:30 PM. It was worth it!
Here is a mosaic of my pictures featured above plus others. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version.
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.
Touching Image of Intergenerational Love Wins Black and White Minimalist Photography Prize – Minimalist…but powerful.
How an English castle became a stork magnet – 30 White Storks from a rescue project in Poland introduced in the rewilded habitat at Knepp Castle in southern England in 2016. At one point, storks even built nests on Knepp Castle itself although they usually build their nests in the crown of huge oak trees. The young storks started migrating in 2019. The colony has grown to about 80 storks…and is the first breeding colony in Britain in 600 years.
Evidence for Domesticated Chickens Dated to 400 B.C. - A study of eggshell fragments unearthed at 12 archaeological sites located along the Silk Road corridor in Central Asia.
Noisy Summer Ahead for U.S. as Dueling Broods of Cicadas Emerge - It is the first time these two broods are going to be emerging in the same year since Thomas Jefferson was in the White House. Mating season will last until July.
California’s Live Oaks in Focus - Some centuries old, the oaks are magnificent giants that can grow up to 100 feet tall and are what remains of a forest that once blanketed the region.
New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects - Analyzing the diversity of organic compounds dissolved in freshwater provides a reliable measure of ecosystem health. Microparticles from car tires, pesticides from farmers' fields, and toxins from harmful algal blooms are just some of the organic chemicals that can be detected using the new approach.
Cars & Road Trips Made a Huge Difference in Women’s History – One of the first cars ever built got taken by a woman, without permission, on the world’s first road trip! Bertha Benz wanted her husband’s invention to be seen out in the country so people would buy it, but her husband Karl Benz was being timid about it. So, she took the car out on a road trip with her kids.
Common household chemicals pose new threat to brain health - The new study discovered that some common home chemicals specifically affect the brain's oligodendrocytes, a specialized cell type that generates the protective insulation around nerve cells. Loss of oligodendrocytes underlies multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases. They identified chemicals that selectively damaged oligodendrocytes belong to two classes: organophosphate flame retardants and quaternary ammonium compounds.
The Soundtrack of Spring on the Platte River – Sandhill cranes staging last month along the Central Platte River in Nebraska. So many birds….lots of sound.
These Are the Most Polluted National Parks – Many national parks are suffering from air pollution and facing threats stemming from human-caused climate change. 98 percent of parks suffer from visible haze pollution, while 96 percent are grappling with ozone pollution that could be harmful to human health. Four of the nation’s parks with the unhealthiest air are in California: Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve and Yosemite National Park. Another California site, Death Valley National Park, also made the top ten list. 57 percent of national parks are facing at least one threat stemming from climate change that could permanently alter its ecosystems, with many parks grappling with multiple issues at the same time. Invasive species were the most prevalent issue.
W. Stevenson Smith’s The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt was published in 1958 and is available on Internet Archive. It has 192 black and white plates which are well worth browsing. There are familiar images of Egyptian artifacts/ruins, but the ones I enjoyed the most were either new-to-me or a different view of something familiar.
For example, the different perspective of the Ramses II statue and Tutankhamon’s chair and chariot drew my attention (click on the sample images to see a larger version).
Many statues and smaller items like axe heads were shown large enough to make out details. It is also evident that the author included images of artifacts from many museums.
The architecture of ancient Egyptian sites is shown at locations and via reconstructed versions (models and drawings).
Enjoying browsing the images that are grouped after the text of the book! Research and excavation continue in Egypt so keep in mind the vintage of this book.
For the first time in my life, there have been two family funerals in close succession: my mom and, more recently, a cousin. The cousin was 9 years younger than me...succumbed to cancer rather than old age. I’ve discovered that my thoughts spiral in a different direction to the death of someone younger than myself; I suspect they are more intense because I knew her as a child.
I was old enough when she was born to remember her young childhood. We interacted when our visits to our shared grandparents coincided. By the time she was entering her teens, I was married and working full time while going to college part time. Then our grandparents died and I moved to the east coast. In all, there were 50 years when we didn’t see each other at all --- just heard about each other from family members. And then there was a memorable lunch at my uncle’s house during the last overnight travel my parents enjoyed – traveling through Oklahoma to have Thanksgiving at my daughter’s house in Springfield MO in 2019.
After my mother’s death, my dominant thought trended toward being grateful that she’d lived as long as she had….that she was enjoying her life up to the very end. For my cousin, I cycle through feeling like her life ended too soon, regretting not knowing her better over the years, and grateful to learn at her funeral how keen her zest for life had endured.
I don’t dwell on my own mortality very often, but I found myself doing so at my cousin’s funeral. Healthy lifestyle can help us sustain our ability to continue to enjoy our life…but there are a lot of things that happen (accidents, natural disasters, genetics, cancer, etc.) that can evade the benefit healthy lifestyle provides. All my grandparents lived past the life expectancy age, and one lived into her late 90s. Both parents lived into their 90s. So – genetics is probably a positive for me…but there are unpredictable life shortening things that can happen to anyone. The best we can do, is to live every day in the best way that we can.
The is the first post in my Then and Now series that will include my reflections on my ‘growing up decade’ (the 1960s) and now. A lot has changed over those 60 years, and I’ve found myself thinking more about it recently – maybe prompted by my mother’s death or me being 70 years old. Choosing these decades leaves out my career almost entirely – only the perspectives of preparation for it in the 1960s and reaping the benefits from it now in my post-career years.
I was 6 to 16 years old in the 1960s …remembering vivid snippets primarily about friends, family, and school…and a few events in the news (the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and a tornado that I saw through my school window before the sirens went off on April 3, 1964). In the 1960s I assumed I had a long life ahead of me; now I assume that it will take more and more focused effort on my part to remain healthy and enjoy the years left in my life. The way I live now definitely has roots that began developing in the 1960s!
The posts will focus on a particular aspect that has changed and will come out weekly on Monday mornings. Stay tuned….
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 do terracotta warriors tell us about life in ancient China? – Discovered 50 years ago…they are a snapshot of the soldiers of Qin – the feudal state that unified China, for the first time in 221BC under the country's first emperor Qin Shi Huang – from the soles of their shoes to their candy-colored clothes to the bronze weapons buried with them to their distinct facial features. 2,000 terracotta warriors have been excavated but more are uncovered every year.
This Map Shows Where Planting Trees Would Make Climate Change Worse - Trees draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, helping to keep warming in check. But their dark, green leaves also absorb heat from sunlight. Snow and sand, by virtue of their light color, reflect more sunlight back into space. As such, trees planted in snowy areas or in the desert will absorb more sunlight than their surroundings, which may negate the climate benefits of soaking up carbon dioxide.
These 3,000-Year-Old Treasures Were Forged from Meteoritic Iron - In the 1960s, researchers discovered a trove of Bronze Age treasure in Villena, Spain. New research has revealed that some of them made between 1400 and 1200 B.C.E. were forged from iron from a meteor that struck Earth a million years ago. Who manufactured them and where this material was obtained are still questions that remain to be answered.
Vernal Pools Make Your Garden Sing - It’s not just frogs that are making homes in these little pools of water. Less vocal species like salamanders, dragonflies, fairy shrimp, and even dozens of native plants are there too. Even more species than that can be found simply visiting the pool for a drink or snack, including great blue herons, wood ducks, and box turtles.
Return of Trees to Eastern U.S. Kept Region Cool as Planet Warmed - Over the 20th century, the U.S. warmed by 1.2 degrees F (0.7 degrees C), but across much the East, temperatures dropped by 0.5 degrees F (0.3 degrees C). A new study posits that the restoration of lost forest countered warming, keeping the region cool. Still, the return of trees can only partially account for the drop in temperature. Other possible explanations include the growth of irrigation, a source of water vapor, and the uptick in particulate pollution, which reflects sunlight, thereby cooling the air.
Sweetened drinks linked to atrial fibrillation risk - 20% higher risk of irregular heart rhythm, known as atrial fibrillation, among people who said they drank two liters or more per week (about 67 ounces) of artificially sweetened drinks. The risk was 10% higher among people who said they drank similar amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages.
Measles outbreaks and what parents need to know - Measles can lead to complications such as ear infections, diarrhea, pneumonia, and encephalitis (brain swelling). One to three of every 1,000 children infected with measles dies. More than 97 percent of the people who have had their two shots of the vaccine never get measles.
A new world of 2D material is opening up - 2D materials have shown great potential for an enormous number of applications. You can imagine capturing carbon dioxide or purifying water, for example. Now it's about scaling up the synthesis and doing it in a sustainable way.
In Cleveland, mushrooms digest entire houses: How fungi can be used to clean up pollution - Fungi can eat the noxious waste from abandoned homes. Heavy metals and other toxins are extracted and captured in the mushrooms that grow, while the substrate leftovers, including the mycelium, are compacted and heated to create clean bricks for new construction. The resulting "mycoblocks" have a consistency akin to hardwood and, depending on the specifics of the manufacturing process, have been shown to be significantly stronger than concrete.
Arctic nightlife: Seabird colony bursts with sound at night - Acoustic recordings of a colony of little auks reveal their nocturnal activities and offer valuable monitoring means for avian biology in the Arctic.
Twenty more books were added to the botanical print collection in March – available for browsing on Internet Archive. The publication date range for this group is over 400 years: 1569 to 1993 with 4 volumes in the 1500s, 4 volumes in the 1600s, 4 in the 1700s, 1 in the 1800s, and 7 in the 1900s.
The whole list of 2,842 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The volumes are shown by centuries this month…making it a bit easier to compare the state of the art in botanical print making. Click on any sample images to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink to view the entire volume on Internet Archive. Enjoy the March 2024 eBotanical Prints!
The 1500s:
Florum, et coronarianum odoratarumque nonnullarum herbarum historia * Borcht, Petrus van de,; Dodoens, Rembert; Plantin, Christophe * sample image * 1569
Purgantium aliarumque eo facientium, tum et radicum, conuoluulorum ac deleteriarum herbarum historiae * Dodoens, Rembert; Plantin, Christophe * sample image * 1574
Caroli Clusii Atrebat Rariorum alioquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia * Christophorus Plantinus; Clusius, Carolus * sample image * 1576
Caroli Clusii Atrebatis Rariorum aliquot stirpium * Bejthe, Stephan.; Christophori Plantini.; Clusius, Carolus, * sample image * 1583
The 1600s:
Histoire des simples medicamens apportes de l'Amerique, desquels on se sert en la medecine * Colin, Anthoine; Pillehott, Iean; Monardes, Nicolas; Orta, Garcia de * sample image * 1619
Hortus Eystettensis * Besler, Basilius * sample image * 1640
Horti medici amstelodamensis rariorum tam Orientalis quam Occidentalis India * Commelin, Johannes; Blaeu, P. & J;Commelin, Caspar; Kiggelaer, Franz; Moninckx, Johan; Moninckx, Maria; Ruysch, Frederik,1638-1731; Someren, Abraham * sample image * 1697
Hortus Indicus Malabaricus V1 * Reede tot Drakestein, Hendrik van * sample image * 1678
More of this series in April. There are 12 volumes in all. The Wikipedia entry for Hortus Malabaricus says that “it is believed to be one of the earliest printed works on the flora of Asia and the tropics” and is a “cultural storehouse of the incidental sociological situation and social affinities carried by the flora of those times.”
The 1700s:
Hesperidum Norimbergensium, sive, De malorum citreorum, limonum, aurantiorumque * Volkamer, Johann Christoph; Brückmann, Franz Ernst et al * sample image * 1713
Praeludia botanica ad publicas plantarum exoticarum demonstrationes, dicta in horto medico * Commelin, Caspar * sample image * 1715
Herbarium amboinense V5 * Rumpf, Georg Eberhard; Fransicum Changuion * sample image * 1747
Herbarium amboinense V6 * Rumpf, Georg Eberhard; Fransicum Changuion * sample image * 1750
The 1800s:
Histoire particuliere des plantes Orchidees recueillies sur les trois iles australes d'Afrique * Du Petit-Thouars, Aubert Aubert * sample image * 1822
The 1900s:
Etudes et commentaires sur le code de L'Escluse * Clusius, Carolus; Istvanffy, Gyula * sample image * 1900
Studies in American plants, III * Gibson, Dorothy N. * sample image * 1972
Pteridophyta of Peru - Part I * Tryon, Rolla M.; Stozle, Robert G. * sample image * 1989
Pteridophyta of Peru - Part II * Tryon, Rolla M.; Stozle, Robert G. * sample image * 1989
Pteridophyta of Peru - Part IV * Tryon, Rolla M.; Stozle, Robert G. * sample image * 1991
Pteridophyta of Peru - Part III * Tryon, Rolla M.; Stozle, Robert G. * sample image * 1992
Pteridophyta of Peru - Part V * Tryon, Rolla M.; Stozle, Robert G. * sample image * 1993
This ‘book of the week’ post introduces a collection found on Internet Archive that features slideshow collections of art works from artists from around the world and different time periods. There is a lot to browse in this collection and I will probably feature it again from time to time since I enjoy the images and learning about the artists. I have chosen 5 for this first post…hopefully the sample images will provide enough of an incentive to take a look at these artists and the rest of the collection.
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.
6 chemical stories of colors through time – A little history of these colors….some very toxic!
Possible Neolithic Body Piercings Unearthed in Anatolia – Over 11,000 years old…found near ears and chins of human remains.
Under Threat in Their Native California, Giant Sequoias Are Thriving in Britain - First introduced to country estates in the 19th century, half a million sequoias now grow in Britain, compared to just 80,000 along the western flank of the Sierra Nevada in California, where they are increasingly imperiled by warming. Up to a fifth of all large giant sequoias in California died in wildfires in 2020 and 2021. The trees in Britain are still relatively young — sequoias can live for more than 3,000 years — and squat. In Britain’s cool, mild climate, sequoias are growing nearly as fast as in California.
Whales That Go Through Menopause Live Longer and May Help Care for Grandchildren - Female tooth whales that go through menopause (narwhals, killer whales, false killer whales, short-finned pilot whales and beluga whales) have longer lifespans than those that don’t, surviving decades past their reproductive prime!
A healthier diet is linked with a slower pace of aging, reduced dementia risk - We have some strong evidence that a healthy diet can protect against dementia…but the mechanism of this protection is not well understood. This study suggests that slower pace of aging mediates part of the relationship of healthy diet with reduced dementia risk, and therefore, monitoring pace of aging may inform dementia prevention. Additional observational studies need to be conducted to investigate direct associations of nutrients with brain aging.
The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife – The pathogenic strain of avian influenza has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals. Between January 1, 2003 and December 21, 2023, 882 cases of human infection were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal. To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.
Ultra-fast fashion is a disturbing trend undermining efforts to make the whole industry more sustainable - Ultra-fast fashion is marked by even faster production cycles, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it trends, and poor labor practices. Without change, the industry will account for 26% of the world’s carbon budget for limiting global warming to 2°C by 2050. Established brands such as Gap introduce 12,000 new items a year and H&M 25,000. But Shein leaves them in the dust, listing 1.3 million items in the same amount of time.
Seven ways to improve your sleep according to science – Science and historical perspective.
Warming Waters Bringing More Sharks to the Alabama Coast - Globally, warming waters are driving sharks to new areas where they were previously scarce. Great white sharks, tiger sharks, and bull sharks have all edged northward. From 2003 to 2020, the number of juvenile bull sharks swimming through Mobile Bay rose fivefold.
Incredible Winners of the 2024 British Wildlife Photography Awards – So many great images!
The 4 eBooks for this ‘books of the week’ post are from Canadian Arctic Producers Co-operative published in 1980 and include sculpture from Inuit artists in 1979-1980…grouped by village. I enjoyed the figures of the Arctic as a place and culture.
I found these 4 eBooks by accident but recently did a comprehensive search for the publisher and found a lot more books so there are more to browse – which I will do over the coming months! These books are a great way to become more familiar with modern Inuit art. There is a Wikipedia entry for the Co-op too.
My daughter enjoyed a boat tour of Sequiota Cave (in Springfield, Missouri’s Sequiota Park) last spring and encouraged us to sign up when they were offered this year. They only do the guided tour a couple of weekends in the spring and fall – leaving the cave to the roosting bats for the rest of the year. The instructions were to ‘bring your own headlamps’ so we grabbed our headlamps that we have for astronomy nights/emergencies.
It was my first visit to the park, and I was a little disappointed that Galloway Creek was dry. It has been channelized in the area near the cave entrance with abutments and concrete additions. There was a bumpy area of concrete that might work to slow the water a bit.
The buds on some of the young trees near the sign-in pavilion were colorful close up.
We picked out hardhats (which seemed to be fall squash colors!) and flotation vests and gloves for our visit to the cave. The boats were loaded at the mouth of the cave; they held 4 people (including the guide). Our guide worked for a non-profit associated with water quality and was volunteering for this event. I appreciated his comments about the cave and its water quality (and the water quality of the region).
As we entered the cave, my husband took a picture of the mouth of the cave with the truck/trailer that brought in the boats.
The cave is not pristine in the sense that it was used as a fish hatchery in the 1920s and the mounds that were once mushroom beds are still visible. The water course has been cleared (probaby would not have been navigable by boats originally). Nubs of metal from old infrastructure are still visible. But the cave features are in great shape – still actively growing…unbroken…no algae growth. There are not any blind cave creatures; if there ever were any, they didn’t survive the fish hatchery days.
But there are bats. The ones in residence during our tour were tri-colored bats – roosting alone. They are very small….but stand out because they are often darker than the cave walls (the bat is to the right of center in the picture below). There is a colony of endangered gray bats that roost during their migration that number in the 1000s. We’ll go in September to see their nightly exodus from the cave!
This might be my favorite cave tour! I liked it because it was not as commercial. The only light was from headlamps. The tours happen infrequently enough that there isn’t algae or moss growing on the cave features (although there was fuzzy white mold growing on poop from racoons that wonder quite a way into the cave). Spotting tri-colored bats was a great challenge during the tour. The water flowing through the cave made for lots of drips….but also added to the ambience of being in a cave now being left alone most of the time.
My March visit to Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge was on my way home the day after my mother’s funeral in Dallas. I needed the healing of being out in a natural place like Hagerman. There were the usual male red-wing blackbirds proclaiming spring and their territory. Several times I could see males spaced out over the landscape…a visible cue for the size of their territories.
There were American wigeon, gadwalls, northern pintails, and American coots on the water in small numbers. A neotropic cormorant was enjoying the warming sun on its wings. Some birds had probably already headed north.
There was a group of 2 great blue herons and a great egret in sentry mode. They must have already had their breakfast because they didn’t move while I was watching.
A vocal cardinal perched in a tree near the road.
I had two favorite birds of the morning: a killdeer that was posturing in a field just as started down the wildlife loop road (it looked like it was signaling something…but I don’t know what) and
A female common goldeneye…the first I had seen at Hagerman. This bird would certainly be moving north soon since most of their breeding area is in Canada and Alaska!
I continued home…glad that I had made the effort to photograph birds at Hagerman.
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.
Heat Pumps Are Still a Good Investment Even If Your Grid Is Powered By Coal - If every American home with gas, oil, or inefficient electric resistance heating swap those things out for heat pumps, the emissions of the entire U.S. economy would shrink by 5% to 9%. That’s how powerful a decarbonizing tool heat pumps are.
Asian Elephants Bury Their Dead - In India, five dead elephant calves were found buried on their backs in irrigation ditches, with evidence that multiple herd members had participated in the burials. Are there more examples? It doesn’t seem likely that elephants would be able to move an adult elephant like they did the calves. Do they do something else with the carcass rather than burial?
COVID-19 virus can stay in the body more than a year after infection – So – if it persists in blood, should these people not be donating blood? Does this mean that people could get COVID from a blood transfusion?
Archeoastronomy uses the rare times and places of previous total solar eclipses to help us measure history – What we learn from historical eclipses….a timely history lesson with the 4/8 total eclipse that will be visible from much of the US coming soon.
An Eruption for Galápagos Iguanas – The La Cumbre volcano is erupting in the Galapagos. Some satellite views from NASA including a description of the instrumentation available to monitor this eruption.
An obsessed insect hunter: The creepy-crawly origins of daylight savings – We did it again last weekend…changed to daylight savings time. I wish we could stop (don’t care whether we stay permanently on standard or daylight savings…just that we don’t change) but we don’t seem to be able to stop. This post is about George Hudson…and his desire for more daylight after work to study insects! I’ll browse some of his books on Internet Archive.
Solar Accounted for More Than Half of New Power Installed in U.S. Last Year - Solar accounted for most of the capacity the nation added to its electric grids last year. That feat marks the first time since World War II, when hydropower was booming, that a renewable power source has comprised more than half of the nation’s energy additions. Texas and California led a solar surge driven mostly by utility-scale installations, which jumped 77 percent year-over-year to 22.5 gigawatts. The residential and commercial sectors also reached new milestones. The biggest open question is how quickly projects can connect to the grid.
An inside look at Beech tree disease – A fast spreading disease….killing another tree species. It hasn’t been that long ago that Emerald Ash Borer wiped out the ash trees. We were just noticing sickly beeches in Maryland before we moved…realizing that the forests would be profoundly changed without beech trees.
Professional Photographer Shares How to Photograph the Great North American Solar Eclipse Safely – Time to start preparing for 4/8/2024!
America’s Sinking East Coast – There are multiple reasons that areas are sinking faster than melting ice and thermal expansion from climate change would cause.
Alexander Francis Lydon provided the illustrations for Francis Orpen Morris’ 6 volumes that document the great houses of Great Britain and Ireland as they were in 1880. Some of the houses were already old and the families were scrambling to maintain them. Others were benefiting from new wealth from industry or colonies either through marriage or new owners. These are easy books to browse!
A series of picturesque views of seats of the noblemen and gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland. V1, V2, V3, V4, V5, V6
The books are interesting from several historical perspectives. Here are some thoughts these books prompted for me:
They show the publishing technology of the time to produce color illustrations. It was new and expensive…and the publisher folded not long after these books were published.
The weapons of war that would destroy buildings from the air in World War I and World War II had not been invented in 1880. The books include houses that had survived for years because the weapons of war were not sufficient to destroy them in an instant.
Transportation was improving (trains and canals) but travel was still relatively slow, so the wealthy required large county houses for guests that stayed awhile.
The industrial revolution was in full swing, but many wealthy families were still clinging to agricultural streams of income from their lands. Country houses were not just a place to live; they were also the center of the family enterprise.
Lyndon (the illustrator) was not credited on the cover page. Why? He had worked with Morris on several projects before so their collaboration must have been a profitable one for him. He was evidently a successful artist, illustrator and engraver that supported a family with his work.
The author of the text (Morris) was an Anglo-Irish clergyman that had broad interests. He published books about birds and insects and heritage buildings! He was active in the movement to protect birds from the plume trade. His occupation as a vicar must have allowed sufficient free time for him to indulge his wide-ranging interests….and enjoy his family (9 children). He lived a relatively long time (82 years old when he died) and must have enjoyed what he did.
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
Celebrating the whole of life....
Thanks for visiting my blog! Enjoy the photo picks from 2023:
Copyright © 2024, Gwen Morrison. All rights reserved.
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