Natural History of a Place

I went to Belmont Manor and Historic Park in Elkridge, MD frequently enough over the past year to observe it in every season. Last summer a large English Elm on the front lawn of the Manor had to be cut down (Dutch Elm Disease). I took this picture shortly before it was cut down - the picture taken from an angle that the dead part of the tree didn’t show too much. A month later the tree was gone, the stump and exposed roots dug out, and new sod put over the wound. A month later and it was hard to tell where the tree had ever been. The episode stirred some thoughts about the natural history of a place and the significance of our actions on that.

The English Elm was planted – a non-native to North America. Whoever made the decision to plant an English Elm may have been wise in the end because this one lasted longer than most of the American Elms against Dutch Elm Disease.

The pond further down the hill was probably dug in the 1980s. It was probably always a wet area. There was probably a vernal pool there in spring. Lots of wood frogs would have successfully laid their eggs there and new frogs would have emerged. Now the pond has fish – that eat frog eggs.

In the 1900s – the area in front of the house was open. For some of those years it was pasture for horses. The forest would have been different. At the beginning of the century there might have been American Chestnuts in the forest. They would have been noticeable for their size and their nuts would have been gathered every fall – by people and squirrels (and other animals too). There is no tree that has quite filled the niche of the American Chestnut that was wiped out by the mid-1900s by the Chestnut Blight.

Earlier in the 1800s, many of the trees would have been cut for fuel. There were a lot of ironworks. There were massive erosion events when the forests were cut and the Patapsco River – downhill to the north of Belmont – received a lot of sediment changing it from a navigable river to a shallow, easily flooding river by the early part of the 1800s.

Prior to anything being built on the hilltop where the Manor House is today – the area was forested. The chestnuts were the big tree and the Europeans were impressed by the richness of the life in the rivers.

There is so much that we did not preserve…and that we still don’t quite know how to sustain.

3 Free eBooks – February 2016

There are so many excellent resources out there. My biggest sources of eBooks are Internet Archive and Hathi Trust.

One theme for this month was vintage wallpaper. The Internet Archive has a lot of old catalogs. One of my favorites is:

Roche, David. House of Decoration. Halifax, Nova Scotia: David Roche. 192? Available here. I liked the texture (all the better to hide any imperfections in the wall underneath) and the colors of the designs. There were other wallpapers in the same book that looked like crewel embroidery.

Another theme was flowers and birds:

Smith, C. E. and Janet Harvey Kelman. Flowers: Shown to the children. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack. 1910. It is available from Hathi Trust here. I liked the books because of the labeling of the images. This book could still work well since the common names of flowers have stayed consistent while more detailed classifications may have changed over the years.

Another theme was pictures of places – snapshots in time.

D’Auvergne, Edmund Basil. Switzerland in sunshine and snow. London: T.W. Laurie. 1912. It is available from Internet Archive here. I read this book on a particularly cold day this month – that was sunny. It seemed to fit the day so well that I selected it for this post. I am attracted to the drawings and paintings rather than photographs of the period. Sometimes that approach works of art – and they often smooth over imperfections of lighting and landscape that mar photographs of the period.

Gleanings of the Week Ending February 13, 2016

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.

Lava flow crisis averted (for now) – We saw the cooling flow described in this article from Science Daily when we were in Hawaii last December!

We must better communicate the health benefits of nature – Not everyone is outdoors as much as I am --- or has a great view of the outdoors from their office window. I remember an instance when I was outdoors with students on a middle school field trip and realized that many of them thought about the outdoors in terms of streets and parking lots rather than hiking paths, trees, and birds. The hike and what they were seeing was a new experience for them.

Sally Ride reminds us that one thing has not changed for female astronauts – An interview from 1983… the types of questions she got from the press.

Inside the Eye: Nature’s Most Exquisite creation – From National Geographic.

In New Anti-Aging Strategy, Clearing Out Old Cells Increases Life Span of Mice by 25 Percent – A good thing or the modern equivalent of ‘snake oil’? If it does increase life span – how healthy is that extra time?

Sign of early settlement in the Nordic region date back to the cradle of civilization – We think of the transition from nomadic to settlement living happened first in the Middle East but this find in Sweden indicates that it may have happened about the same time in Nordic prehistory.

This uncrushable robot cockroach just wants to rescue you – Building a robot that can compress itself in much the same way a cockroach can…. Another instance of observing nature and implementing the same solution via technology rather than biology.

The Truth about Processed Foods – Every wonder what the difference is between highly, moderate, and minimally processed foods in articles about healthy diet? This article provides some definitions. I changed my food log for a few days to put categorize foods and discovered that most of the foods I consume at home are unprocessed or minimally processed because I make most of what I eat from scratch. There are a few moderately processed foods. The highly processed are things like salad dressing or stir fry sauces; I also drink almond milk which is ‘highly processed.’

Organic Farming could help feed the planet and protect it – A good graphic comparing conventional to organic farming based on some research from Washington State University. One of the authors is quoted as saying: “The challenge facing policymakers is to create an enabling environment for scaling up organic and other innovative farming systems to move towards truly sustainable production systems.” As a consumer – I have already made the decision to buy organic as often as I can.

Learning Log – January 2016

January was a month of varied learning opportunities.

Udemy. I finished one course: Unearthing the Trojan War: The Life of Heinrich Schliemann

And started another (Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography).

I prefer the Coursera type courses over Udemy. The Udemy courses have less depth and the range of materials is limited to videos (often voice over charts)…without a robust list to references outside the course.

Lecture. I went to a one-hour lecture about Black Bears in Maryland and enjoyed it thoroughly. The presenter had a trunk of materials to pass around. One was a pelt of a largish black bear (obtained from a road kill); it took two people to hold and examine. I realized that I fall back into my long standing habits as a student in the classroom very easily: taking notes to pay attention – it works for me and always has. Now I’m prepared to trivia questions about black bears. Did you know that in the fall bears need to eat at least 20,000 calories per day to prepare for hibernations?

Coursera. I’ve finished 2 weeks of the Soul Beliefs course. This is the first in a series of courses which I will make my way through over the next few months. This is a good time of year to take courses since the weather encourages indoors activities.

Raptor Free Flight. My favorite experiential learning in January was the Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. We saw Harris’s Hawks, a Barn Owl, Chihuahuan Ravens, a Great Horned Owl, and a Prairie Falcon. The Harris’s Hawks live and hunt in small groups; their coordinated efforts while hunting are quite different than the solitary owls and falcon.

A Sad Journey

Traveling for a funeral is difficult. There is a preoccupation with what has happened – sometimes denial, sometimes anger, eventually acceptance. For me the stages of grief sometimes jumble all together. I can be savoring memories of the person and in the next second noticing something that I want to share with them….jerking myself back to the reality that they are not going to be there.

My journey a little over a week ago started at the airport on a very foggy and wet morning. I appreciated the busy-ness of the airport and the bustling of the many other passengers. Everything went smoothly and I realized that handling a lost bag or a flight delay would have been difficult. I was already very close to being overwhelmed.

The next day was sunny and that helped my mood too. Bits of greenery in the garden around collections of stones

And birdhouses and toy construction equipment helped too.

The next morning we were up early for a 4 hour drive to the funeral. When we started out before sunrise the clouds looked thick – almost ominous – in the direction we were going. By sunrise they were clearing although I was still as blurry as the picture and was glad someone else was driving on the first leg.

I felt better after the sun was up…stressed then calm during the funeral itself…the remembered another funeral in the same cemetery at the graveside. My grandmother was buried there almost 30 years ago. On that day is sleeting and the ground was icy. For this funeral, it was sunny, cold and the ground was muddy. The shoes I worn for this funeral were flats – much better than the heels I’d worn at that funeral long ago. I noticed that there was lichen growing on the top of my grandmother’s headstone….another indicator that time has passed.

Afterwards – the family ate a meal together. We all felt better for the sharing of stories. Some of us that live further away don’t see each other as often as we did in our growing up years.

And then is as another 4 hour drive and a flight back home. The flight home provided some quiet contemplation time (being alone in a crown of people) from the Texas landscape in the security line to the waiting area at Love Field ... and then a wonderful conversation with a woman sitting next to me on the plane. It was just what I needed emotionally – even though I didn’t realize it before it happened.

In the end – it was a sad journey…but the lowest points were brief with memories of so many happy times to savor and help me move on.

3 Free eBooks – January 2016

So many books to choose from...so little time....

Denon, Vivant. Egypte : documents d'art Egyptien d'aprés la Description de l'Armée Francaise sous Napoléon Ier, L'Expédition d'Egypte, dessins du Baron Denon, et le Musée Egyptine. Paris: A. Guerinet. 1900. Available from the Internet Archive here. Vivant Denon produced a lot of sketches during Napoleon’s time in Egypt and this book is a collection of them. They include a lot of detail.

Walcott, Mary Vaux. North American Wild Flowers. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. 1925. Five volumes available on the Internet Archive: one, two, three, four, five. I am always thrilled to find books with botanical prints…flowers particularly.

Young, Bonnie and Malcolm Varon. A Walk through the Cloisters. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1979. Available on the Internet Archive here. The art and architecture of Medieval Europe as displayed the Cloisters Museum and Gardens. The gardens – bounded by arches and columns – are always appealing. This book may be a little dated but the photography of the place as it was in the late 1970s is quite good.

Enjoy some good online books!

Learning Log – January 2016

December was full of learning opportunities - surprising with no Coursera classes!

Udemy. I discovered a new-to-me source of free or inexpensive short courses. The first one was referenced in the Ancient Egypt course I’d completed via Coursera in November. The courses I finished in December were:

Blue: a symposium exploring aspects of life in Ancient Egypt

Napoleon in Egypt

I have already started two more in January:

Unearthing the Trojan War: The Life of Heinrich Schliemann

Photography Masterclass: Your complete Guide to Photography (I got it when it was on sale for $10)

The Udemy courses tend to be chart sets with a lecturer…not as many references or extended reading that usually accompanies the Coursera course. Still – I enjoyed the topics and will explore more of the courses they offer.

Travel to Hawaii. The biggest source of learning experience in December was traveling to Hawaii. I had never been to anyplace like it and the length/complexity of the travel was more too. There were all kinds of tangential topics too – like learning about Dengue Fever (they were having an outbreak while we were there).

Looking forward into January – I am set for more courses because there is not so much going on otherwise. Along with the two Udemy couses, I’m starting one from Coursera as well: Soul Beliefs: Causes and Consequences – Historical Foundations.