Three Japanese Ukiyo-e Artists

The eBook for this week features the art of ukiyo-e artists from the late 1700s through the first half of the 1800s. The artists are Chōbunsai Eishi, Eishōsai Chōki, and Katsushika Hokusai (links are to the Wikipedia entry for each artist). The book is the catalog from an exhibition of their prints in Paris in 1913. I have included 6 sample images from the book…but there are 118 plates in all – so well worth taking a look at the art work in the online books itself.

Yeishi, Choki, Hokusaï : estampes japonaises tirées des collections de MM. Bing, Bouasse-Lebel, Bullier...[et d'autres] et exposées au Musée des arts décoratifs en janvier

Project FeederWatch – January 2025

Our third month of weekly Project FeederWatch counting continued our regulars: white-crowned sparrows, white throated sparrows, house finches, gold finches, and dark eyed juncos. We have started seeing the Northern cardinals more frequently – but never the male and female at the same time. We haven’t seen the red-bellied woodpecker recently but the downy woodpecker (a female) comes frequently (even though sometimes not when we are making the count!). The chickadee, titmouse, and Carolina wren have not come to the feeder when it is very cold and snow is on the ground; I’m hoping they are hunkered down somewhere. We seem to have more starlings around – which is not a positive development. The doves seem to have returned; we are seeing 2-4 consistently; they like the area under the hollies and cedars. The squirrels don’t seem as aggressive toward each other…still come to the feeders and go away mostly frustrated.

Missouri Giant Traveling Map

Doing a program for 7-13 years old students with the 17 feet x 21 feet Missouri Giant Traveling Map at a nearby county library was a learning experience for me as a Master Naturalist (and my partners too). For one session we had 18 students and the other one 4. The groups were enthusiastic to be out and about after a snowstorm had kept them inside for a few days. They enjoyed taking their shoes off and walking around on the map…so much that they sometimes started sliding on the plastic a little too much.

That age group has had some great outdoor experiences in the state – but they don’t necessarily know where they went unless it is associated with a city. Fortunately - one of the fathers took off his shoes and stepped on the map to show his daughter where the river they had floated down was on the map.

The students also were able to look at rivers in Missouri that flow into the Mississippi River directly…ones that flow into the Missouri River and then the Mississippi…and those that flow south into Arkansas and the rivers there before eventually flowing into the Mississippi.

We noted the grayish areas on the map…where the terrain is very hilly…and other areas that were not. I suggested that they look at roadcuts when they are out and about in the state (that it is a safe thing to do since they are not driving!)…and notice that not all of the layers of rock are horizonal…and think about how the layers can become the way they are.

We have 3 more topics we are presenting in upcoming library sessions and we learned: to have a better idea of how many people we expect and be more assertive when some of the students are disruptive. We also realized that it was fortunate that our subsequent sessions are more hands-on active rather than simply walking around and looking. We’ll get better with each one!

2024 in Review: Travel and Classes

2024 was a year we ramped up our travel and educational activities – almost to the pre-COVID levels. Both involve being out and about with groups of people….great opportunities to enjoy the place and engage social skills more frequently. Since we now live in the center of the country rather than the east coast, our travel has been via road trips rather than flying; we are not missing the hassle of airports and rental cars!

The travel included two birding festivals (Whooping Crane Festival and Festival of the Cranes) and a solar eclipse…and frequent trips (at least monthly) to Dallas for family visits.

There are accommodations my husband and I (4 years older than when we travelled pre-COVID) are developing for ourselves to ensure that we feel good when we travel:

  • stretch breaks every hour or so when we are driving

  • exercise regime that works in hotels to minimize aches and pains

  • eating almost the same as we do at home (big meal in the middle of the day, extra veggies for me)

  • keeping our sleep time on central time (if possible)

Both my husband and I have been doing online webinars for a long time. This last fall I re-started in-person classes with the Missouri Master Naturalist Training and a class at Missouri State University (Identifying Woody Plants). The master naturalist training was a path toward creating the level and type of volunteering I had enjoyed in Maryland; it lived up to my expectation of continuing the transition to ‘Missouri as home.’

The university class was the first time I had taken a university class since the 1980s and was something to savor because of that and the topic/professor/other students; I found that taking a university class without the pressure of needing a grade or hurrying off to my job was pleasantly different from any of my prior experience.

2024 was a year that saw us settled in our new home in Missouri and increasing both our travel and in-person classes activity. The travel will be sustained (or increased slightly in 2025). The in-person classes might be reduced since there is nothing equivalent to another master naturalist core training, but my volunteering in 2025 is likely to be significantly more than it was in 2024.

Making Hot Chocolate

It’s a cold morning as I write this, and I have just made myself a cup of hot chocolate…a great way to start the day.

I start out with water (about 25% of my cup)…microwave it for 30 seconds…then add a rounded teaspoon of cocoa powder. I enjoy watching the powder melt! The clumps are like little melting icebergs that eventually disappear under the surface.

Then I add milk (about 50% of my cup) and then more water (another 25% of my cup). Most of the time I also add a very light sprinkle of cayenne pepper too – a nod to the way Aztecs made their chocolate drink although they didn’t use milk, and they made their drink at room temperature.

The cup goes back in the microwave for 2.5 minutes.

I’ve gotten used to not adding any sugar at all! I like the flavor with just the milk and cocoa and cayenne. On cold mornings, it is the first calories of the day…but not as many as the traditional hot chocolate or hot chocolate mix packets.

White Oak Seedling

I planted a white oak acorn last fall and posted about it sprouting last November.  The seedling is doing well on the windowsill of my office – and still had its 4 green leaves. I’ve put some snowmen decorations on each side of it.  The seedling leans a bit toward the light, so I turn it occasionally…and keep it damp. I’m wondering if the leaves will turn and fall at some point. I can’t tell that they’ve grown very much recently; perhaps the roots are more active but it’s difficult to see with the soil.

In February, I have an outreach event about trees and the seedling will be a good prop!

And then in the late spring – when I’m confident there will not be another frost – it will get planted outside somewhere. It will grow up to be a very large tree so I am not sure I should plant it in my yard.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 11, 2025

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.

Dogs trained to sniff out spotted lanternflies could help reduce spread – Dogs sniff out egg masses that overwinter in vineyards and forests. This is some good news in the fight against this invasive insect.

Farmers are abandoning their land. Is that good for nature? - Small-scale farmers with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water "give up because they cannot compete." By one estimate, the area of farm land that's been abandoned around the world since 1950 could be as much as half of Australia. Without people, cattle or sheep around, meadows filled with wildflowers and butterflies give way to shrubs and trees, which ecologists say are often less biologically diverse. There is an effort in some regions where humans are moving out to help wildlife move in (i.e. rewilding).

Seven proven ways to help the planet in 2025 – Some of the ways are easier than others. I have done 3 of the 7 for at least the last 5 years…and maybe now I should think about what more I want to do. The beginning of the year is always a good time to take stock on things like this.

This Mysterious Pyramid Dominated a Prehistoric Mexican City—and Still Guards Its Secrets – The Pyramid of the Niches in El Tajin….built by indigenous groups that predate the Aztec and Toltec. The Wikipedia article about site says it became a World Heritage site in 1992.

Aerial Photos Highlight Surreal Beauty of Kazakhstan’s Mangystau Plateau - Colorful canyons and mountains, dramatic salt flats, and surreal rocky outcrops…photographed by Daniel Kordan.

The Year in Energy in Four Charts - Solar is driving the shift to renewable power, and it continues to outpace the projections of both analysts and industry experts owing largely to China. Global EV sales reached a new high. In China, the sticker price for EVs is now generally lower than for conventional cars. Along with EVs, the growth of electric heating and cooling and the proliferation of energy-hungry data centers globally are driving up demand for power. Wealthy nations have all but stopped building new coal plants, and coal burning is expected to continue its decline in the developed world as countries move to wind and solar. We’re now moving at speed into the Age of Electricity, which will define the global energy system going forward and increasingly be based on clean sources of electricity.

Photos of the Year – December 30, 2024 – From The Prairie Ecologist

A Year of Climate Extremes, In Photos - 2024 … the hottest year ever, with warming reaching new extremes worldwide. These photos from Greenpeace show the profound impact of severe weather, which scientists are increasingly connecting to climate change.

Squirrels Are Displaying ‘Widespread Carnivorous Behavior’ for the First Time in a California Park – In California’s Briones Regional Park (not far from Oakland and Berkeley), California ground squirrels there are now known to hunt, kill, decapitate and consume voles. Squirrels of all ages and sexes took part in the vole hunt, an indication that this dietary flexibility is widespread across the species and may serve as a crucial survival mechanism in response to fluctuating environmental conditions

Vampire hedgehogs, pirate spiders and fishy fungi - the strangest new species of 2024 – New species are discovered every year….so much we don’t know about our world!

La vie et les paysages en Egypte

My choice for ‘book of the week’ is La vie et les paysages en Egypte – a group of 60 heliotype prints of Egypt published in the 1870s by Photoglob Co. in Zurich. The prints are from The New York Public Library Digital Collections and can be browsed in a thumbnail view or book view.  I picked 4 images of structures from Ancient Egypt to share in the post – but recommend browsing the whole collection.  

Photography was relatively new and labor intensive when these images were created…and yet we already see elements of excellent composition. They show what Egypt was like at the time in a way that drawings and paintings could not

2024 in Review - Photography

Picking two pictures per month of 2024 was challenging….but a joy. The activity reminded me of times in Texas and at home…the solar eclipse…short trips to Arkansas and longer ones to the Texas gulf coast and New Mexico. They are all taken outdoors. I am celebrating 2024 through these images!

Physical Therapy

I’ve had 8 physical therapy sessions – motivated by lower back pain. At first, I thought it was a long shot that they would help very much but now it looks like they might be as successful as the session I had more than 15 years ago for shoulder pain (which totally fixed that problem).

This time around, I know there are some age-related issues but strengthening muscles is already helping! The exercises I started with were very simple and have built up over the past few weeks. There was a breakthrough around the end of 2024 when I discovered a maneuver that resolved backpain almost immediately just as I did years ago with the shoulder pain. To keep the pain from happening during all activities, the muscles must be stronger…but I feel good when I exercise now rather than afraid that I am going to hurt myself. When I take my road trips, I know exercises I can do that make the prolonged sitting not a prelude to back pain! An open car door (the lower ledge of the opening is a good height to put my foot for the exercises) is all I need to do them.

Now that I have achieved more pain-free time, I am probably going to make more rapid progress building up muscles that had weakened as I had curtailed some types of activity due to pain in 2024.

I am also forming the habit of doing focused exercises twice a day…and that is probably important to achieving and then maintaining the muscle strength required to keep the lower back pain from taking over again.

I am a fan of physical therapy….awed at the skills of the therapists to select the ramp up of exercise to help.

Top of the Rock’s Nature at Night

My husband, daughter, and I took the seasonal Top of the Rock’s Nature at Night tour last week. It’s a 2.5-mile trail via plastic enclosed golf cart through light displays, waterfalls, bridge crossings, a cave, and classic holiday scenes.

On the drive south from our home in Nixa MO, the sun was going down. I tried a few sunset pictures. There were enough clouds to provide some added structure.

The first lights we saw were before the gate to the property…2 bison. The car was moving as I took the picture, which made their hides look furrier!

The first lights we saw were before the gate to the property…2 bison. The car was moving as I took the picture, which made their hides look furrier!

We had bought our tickets ahead of time, so I took a few minutes to take pictures of the lights below, the sunset, and the lake before we got in the line for the golf carts.

The temperature was in the low 40s, but we were bundled up and the plastic cover helped too. My daughter did the driving. There were some sharp turns, inclines, and shallow water in some areas along the route. We stayed in the cart the whole time as instructed so all the pictures I took were through the plastic cover.

My favorite display included a waterfall with a giant wolf and orb in lights.  I took the scene from several angles and magnifications.

The activity was the grand finale of our ‘holiday’ season!

Road Trip to Dallas in Late December

My monthly trek to Dallas and back is never boring! This time I left at 6 AM (normal for me) expecting darkness but dry weather. It turned out to be foggy. The density of the fog seemed to increase as I headed west from my home near Springfield MO toward Oklahoma on I-44. It was reassuring to see taillights ahead or other lights along the road…and I appreciated my navigation system since the usual landmarks were not visible. The traffic was light enough that I was surrounded my darkness and fog for short periods --- but then some lights would appear out of the gloom, and I realized the fog had not thickened to the point of blocking out all light!

There was no color at sunrise. The fog and clouds blocked the light although it was obvious that it was lighter. Driving became a little more fraught because some vehicles did not have their lights on (and they really should have). I almost passed the QT in Muskogee where I had planned to stop because they did not have any external lighting on either. The fog finally dissipated by the time I got to McAllester OK – which is about 2/3 of the way to Dallas!

I stopped at the Texas Welcome Center on US-75 – finally all the way through Oklahoma. I took a few pictures of the plantings. It appeared that the leaves had just fallen from the oak trees.

When I got to the assisted living home, my dad had just finished lunch and was ready to go for a walk. It was about 68 degrees and sunny…very pleasant for a late December day. He wore a light jacket. We made our way slowly around the block seeing other neighborhood residents enjoying the warmer day. He is the only resident of the assisted living home that is still taking walks into neighborhood; he is using a walker with 4 wheels which is easier to maneuver on the rough pavement than his 2 wheeled version. We avoided puddles with rafts of wet leaves (mostly oak).

When we returned, we finished a puzzle that he had started with other visitors. I took a picture just after we finished it ….with his 93-year-old hands.

I visited again the next morning – making the frame of the next puzzle and talking to him while he ate breakfast.

The drive home was easier – sunshine…no fog. I saw an osprey, 2 bald eagles (not at the same place), soaring hawks…and a red-tailed hawk that was gliding down to the side of the road with its tail spread. I was tired when I got home but realized that my PT is paying off: my back was not hurting!

Different in 2025

What am I anticipating being different in 2025?

It is a better thought process for me than making a list of resolutions…even though to make some of the ‘anticipations’ become reality it will take some intentional action on my part which might be very much like the focus a resolution can have. But I am noticing that what I have on my list this year are things that have been available in some form to me before; I am simply making the decision to follow through…and enjoy the ride.

Last year I enjoyed the Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) training and in 2025 I am going to explore the opportunities associated with being an MMN. I’ll be organizing the monthly programs for the chapter and ramping up my volunteering. At the end of 2024 it appeared that 20 hours of volunteering per month would be feasible…and I might discover that I can do more during some months of the year.

My husband has pointed out that the local Audubon Society chapter has great field trips and we are already planning to go to 2 in early 2025….and more of those will probably become our norm.

I initiated some Missouri geology themed day trips in December (1st one was to the Joplin History and Mineral Museum and Grand Falls) and want to do more in 2025. We’re planning to go to Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in February for birding….but there will be geology there too (it in the part of the state that was glaciated)! Maybe I will make a day trip to the Ed Clark Museum of Missouri Geology in Rolla in January. I’ve always wanted to take a basic geology class but never could fit it into my schedule back when I was in college…so I am registering for one during the 2025 spring semester at Missouri State University; maybe they will have a field trip or two.

I hope I can finally renew my friendship with a childhood friend (we’ve been exchanging Christmas cards for years but haven’t seen each other since we were in our teens). We have been communicating via text over the past year but then events in our families made it challenging to reconnect in person. Maybe it will happen in 2025.

The physical therapy I am getting now is beginning to yield positive results and I am anticipating that a lot of the activities I want to do are going to be easier for me physically…so I am very motivated to do what they tell me and continue a routine of exercises that will sustain the improvement.

I am looking forward to the differences from 2024 that I am anticipating!

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 4, 2025

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.

Uplift Underway in Finland’s Kvarken Archipelago - Some 20,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Maximum, the Baltic Sea sat under a sheet of ice as thick as 10,000 feet. Since the glaciers receded and the weight was lifted, the land has been bouncing back. The rates of uplift, known as glacial isostatic adjustment or isostatic rebound, in this region are among the highest on Earth. By one estimate, land about twice the size of Central Park in New York City rises from the sea each year along the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, the Baltic Sea’s northern arm.

Silent Threat: America’s Abandoned Oil Wells and the Danger Beneath - Abandoned oil and gas wells across the U.S. pose significant environmental, health, and safety risks, with many leaking hazardous gases and chemicals, highlighting regulatory failures and the immense financial burden of remediation.

Lymphoedema: The 'hidden' cancer side-effect no one talks about - Lymphoedema is a chronic, incurable condition that causes excessive swelling due to a damaged lymphatic system, a network in the body responsible for maintaining fluid balance in tissues. It occurs when lymph fluid is unable to properly drain from the body, due to a dysfunction or injury to the lymphatic system. The condition is a common consequence of certain cancers and the treatments for them. It can also be a genetic condition, which people are born with, or it can be the result of injury, obesity, or infection. There are some clinicians who regard lymphoedema as an overlooked pandemic due to the significant chronic public health problem it poses globally.

Hazelnut DNA Study Challenges Misconceptions About Indigenous Land Use in British Columbia - Starting some 7,000 years ago, Indigenous people actively cultivated hazelnuts across the continent, disproving the settler-colonial notion that Indigenous peoples were simply hunter-gatherers. People were actively transplanting and cultivating hazelnuts hundreds of kilometers from their place of origin. People were moving hazelnut around and selectively managing it to the point that it increased genetic diversity.

Extreme Heat May Cause People to Age Faster - Researchers looked at such aging markers in 3,800 Americans over the age of 55, comparing the data with local weather records. They found that people living in places with more hot days tended to have more genetic markers of age.

An inexpensive fix for California's struggling wildflowers - California's native wildflowers are being smothered by layers of dead, invasive grasses. Simply raking these layers can boost biodiversity and reduce fire danger.

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2024 – From Smithsonian Magazine.

Fluorinated “forever chemicals” and where to find them – Infographic and text. Studies have linked PFOA to some health conditions including cancers and hormone disruption. There’s also still plenty we don’t know about their potential effects. PFOAs are human-made compounds which do not occur naturally, so we’re only seeing the effects of their accumulation in the past decades.

Brighten Your Day with These 15 Photos of Beautiful Balloons from Around the World – Mexico, India, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Turkey, Spain, and the US (Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Wyoming).

How an Extreme Combination of Fog and Air Pollution Brought London to a Standstill and Resulted in Thousands of Fatalities - On December 5, 1952 (a little more than a year before I was born) as cold weather in London prompted residents to burn more cheap coal, a high-pressure wind system known as an anticyclone settled over the city, trapping cold air beneath warm air. Pollution from coal fires, diesel buses and factories could not travel up in the atmosphere, instead hovering in a deadly, stagnant smog. When the Great Smog of 1952 finally lifted on December 9, 4,000 people were dead from the effects of the extreme pollution. Retrospective assessments estimate that the number of fatalities could be almost triple that. While the government’s response was sluggish at first, the Clean Air Act of 1956, passed in response to the Great Smog, heavily regulated the burning of coal and established smoke-free urban areas throughout England. In the years that followed, a host of other industrial nations were inspired to follow suit.

eBotanical Prints – December 2025

Twenty more books were added to my botanical print eBook collection in December - available for browsing on Internet Archive. They cover a range of botanical topics: medicinal plants (9 volumes), ferns (2 volumes), plants of China (2 volumes), and fungi of Scotland (7 volumes).  Overall - the 20 books were published over less than 100 years (1760-1852).

My list of eBotanical Prints books now totals 3,023 eBooks I’ve browsed over the years. The whole list can be accessed here. Click on any sample image below to get an enlarged version…and the title hyperlink in the list below the image mosaic to view the entire volume where there are a lot more botanical illustrations to browse.

Enjoy the December 2024 eBotanical Prints!

Plantes de chine * Buc'hoz, Pierre Joseph * sample image * 1760

Herbier ou collection des plantes médicinales de la Chine d'après un manuscrit peint et unique qui se trouve dans la Bibliothèque de l'Empereur de la Chine * Buc'hoz, Pierre Joseph * sample image * 1760

Icones filicum ad eas potissimum species illustrandas destinata V1 * Hooker, William Jackson; Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1831

Icones filicum ad eas potissimum species illustrandas destinata V2 * Hooker, William Jackson; Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1831

Flora Edinensis, or, A description of plants growing near Edinburgh * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1824

Scottish cryptogamic flora, or Coloured figures and descriptions of cryptogamic plants, belonging chiefly to the order Fungi V1 * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1823

Scottish cryptogamic flora, or Coloured figures and descriptions of cryptogamic plants, belonging chiefly to the order Fungi V2 * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1824

Scottish cryptogamic flora, or Coloured figures and descriptions of cryptogamic plants, belonging chiefly to the order Fungi V3 * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1825

Scottish cryptogamic flora, or Coloured figures and descriptions of cryptogamic plants, belonging chiefly to the order Fungi V4 * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1826

Scottish cryptogamic flora, or Coloured figures and descriptions of cryptogamic plants, belonging chiefly to the order Fungi V5 * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1826

Scottish cryptogamic flora, or Coloured figures and descriptions of cryptogamic plants, belonging chiefly to the order Fungi V6 * Greville, Robert Kaye * sample image * 1828

Icones plantarum medico-oeconomico-technologicarum cum earum fructus ususque descriptione V1 * Vietz, Ferdinand Bernhard; Alberti, Ignaz * sample image * 1800

Icones plantarum medico-oeconomico-technologicarum cum earum fructus ususque descriptione V2 * Vietz, Ferdinand Bernhard; Alberti, Ignaz * sample image * 1804

Icones plantarum medico-oeconomico-technologicarum cum earum fructus ususque descriptione V3 * Vietz, Ferdinand Bernhard; Alberti, Ignaz * sample image * 1806

Flora medico-farmaceutica V1 * Cassone, Felice * sample image * 1847

Flora medico-farmaceutica V2 * Cassone, Felice * sample image * 1847

Flora medico-farmaceutica V3 * Cassone, Felice * sample image * 1848

Flora medico-farmaceutica V4 * Cassone, Felice * sample image * 1850

Flora medico-farmaceutica V5 * Cassone, Felice * sample image * 1850

Flora medico-farmaceutica V6 * Cassone, Felice * sample image * 1852

2024 Festival of the Cranes Last Hurrah

This is the last post about our road trip to the2024 Festival of the Cranes in New Mexico in December! It is mainly about our trip home. My husband was driving again so I could take pictures!

We left after the morning with the falconer (peregrines and Harris’s Hawks) so the sun was almost overhead when we passed through Albuquerque NM. I hadn’t noticed the big pots between the two directions of the interstate when we can through in the other direction. I did remember the big aloe/yucca sculpture perched on a ledge above the highway – and was pleased that I managed to photograph it.

Santa Rosa NM was our stop again for the night and we left early the next morning for the long drive back to Missouri. We were near Tucumcari for the sunrise. The clouds and the vegetation along the highway made for a great photographic opportunity.

We were lucky that the clouds were thick when the sun popped above the horizon – no painfully bright sunshine in our eyes!

We saw the wind turbines in the panhandle of Texas again and a Route 66 mosaic in the rest stop bathroom.

Later in the day, there was Tulsa highway art.

We were glad to be home again but are still savoring our December time in New Mexico.

Previous Festival of the Cranes posts

Zentangle® – December 2024

31 tiles for the 31 days of December.

They are all presented as square tiles this month. I segregated the ones I made in New Mexico for this first group of 12.

The rest were made mostly at home. I am using a lot of different colors of card stock…mostly black or white pens although there is a smattering of other colors.

Making Zentangle tiles almost every day is rewarding…and a way to create islands of calm in otherwise hectic days.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Joplin History and Mineral Museum

My daughter and I picked a sunny day before Christmas for a ‘field trip’ to the Joplin History and Mineral Museum. It was the first of my planned geology field trips in the coming months; as soon as I realized that the Missouri Master Naturalist training did not include a geology segment, I started thinking about how I could educate myself and field trips are probably my favorite options.

Joplin has a lead-mining history so many of the minerals on display include galena (black cubes usually). There were big chunks of rock and crystals. The smaller items were in glass enclosed cases around the edge of the room…large pieces on stands in the center. The labeling was well-done with numbers by the specimen and then signage nearby with the information about the specimen.

On the landing of the stairs was a case of Missouri fossils and ancient Native American artifacts. I liked the poster of different types of arrowheads.

The history side of the museum included a cookie cutter museum. I was intrigued by a circular one from Mexico with multiple shapes inside….very little dough to roll out again. They used a set of state shaped cookie cutters as part of the transition to the Route 66 part of the museum.

There was a room with models of circuses and a Victorian doll house. The doll house has plastic over the open side…but it looked like the model dog had run around and knocked over things (the Christmas tree on its side…a book and lamp pushed off a table); I told the person at the desk and we both chuckled. The doll house has had the plastic barrier on it for a long time, but the house has been moved recently and the jostling might have been enough to knock over the items.

There was also a display of the very destructive 2011 tornado in Joplin which tried to show how destructive tornados can be. The twisted muffin tin was the first item that caught and held my attention. Not far away there was a tree that had been splintered. I read more about the event when I got home and discovered that the tornado’s upheaval of the soils along its route caused re-contamination from lead mining remnants in southern Joplin…so the natural disaster recovery had a linkage to the city’s lead mining history too.

Outside there was a bench painted with wildflowers and towers of Missouri rocks. There was a metal sculpture that was interesting too.

My daughter and I had a pleasant lunch at Los Primos Mexican Grill in Joplin….sharing guacamole at the beginning and flan at the end of the meal.

Our next stop was Grand Falls – not far off I-44 west of Joplin. The lower falls is Grand Falls Chert, at 20 to 30 foot think bed of pure chert in an area otherwise dominated by limestone. The chert is extremely resistant to erosion because it is made of silica. The falls is the state’s broadest continuous flowing waterfall.

On the way home toward Springfield, my daughter looked closely at the road cut at mile marker 27.0 as I drove by and saw that the Chesapeake Fault Zone displaces the beds by a few feet toward the western end of road cut on the north side of I-44.

Both the Grand Falls and Chesapeake Fault Zone geology minutes were prompted by a few paragraphs from Roadside Geology of Missouri by Charles G. Spencer.

Overall – a good first ‘geology’ field trip.

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2024

December has so many big celebrations. My little ones ended up not being as associated as usual with the big ones. Half the celebrations were at Festival of the Cranes…perhaps because my husband and I were so glad to be there again after a long hiatus beginning with the COVID years.

First frost. I celebrated noticing frost crystals on a car next to mine in the parking lot of the clinic where I go for physical therapy….and photographing them!

Warm drinks on cold days. Hot chocolate is my favorite, and I celebrated figuring out that the cocoa will dissolve better in a small amount of hot water before adding the other ingredients. I enjoy a cup every morning. Hot cider is my other hot drink on cold days.

PT exercises for the Road. I anticipated asking my therapist for some exercises I could do during our road trip to New Mexico…and celebrated that they worked!

Easier drive than expected to New Mexico. My husband I celebrated that there was no heavy traffic or construction along our route during the long day of driving from Missouri to New Mexico. It was a great beginning for our Festival of the Cranes experience.

Cranes at Sunset. We celebrated two great sunsets photographing cranes. The first one was my favorite because we thought the clouds were going to block too much of the sun at first…and then a hole appeared at the perfect time.

Bluebirds and green heron. Campuses are quiet places in the early morning…great places to see some birds – at least in the case of New Mexico Tech in Socorro. We also saw a great horned owl!

Harris’s hawk. These are probably my favorite raptors because they hunt in groups…are beautiful birds. I celebrated seeing two of them at close range with their falconer.

Sunrise in Tucumcari. As we headed back toward Missouri in the early morning, the sun was rising as we neared Tucumcari, NM. The clouds were in perfect position to keep the sun from shining directly in our eyes and the color (and reflection of color) spectacular.

Red velvet cake. Celebrating just the cake – no icing!

Joplin Mineral and History Museum. A day trip with my daughter…celebrated the time to talk, the museum (interesting display of minerals along with galena which was mined in Joplin), and the Mexican food for lunch.

Zooming – December 2024

20 images – using the camera’s zoom to fill the frame. The moon in a dark sky, sandhill cranes at sunset, a Japanese lantern with yellow ginkgo leaves around its base. There are lots of favorites in this set for me.

Themes for the zoomed images of December: fall/winter and birds.

Locations: Springfield, Missouri and Socorro, New Mexico.