Gleanings of the Week Ending July 1, 2017

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.

Carbon in Atmosphere is Rising, Even as Emissions Stabilize – Are the carbon sinks less able to function as CO2 levels have risen? Still TBD. There is still a lot to understand about our planet and the impact of higher and higher greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Cats Domesticated Themselves, Ancient DNA Shows – Cat came into settlements on their own…enjoying the bounty of rodents human settlements contained. They didn’t give up their wild natures to the extent that dogs and other domesticated animals did. There is genetic evidence that they’ve remained largely unchanged for 1000s of years.

Not so pearly whites – Evidence of a filled dental cavity in a 13,000 year old hunter-gather tooth!

43 Incredible Photos of US UNESCO Sites: Present and Proposed – I was surprised that I had visited so many of these places (the ones in the continental US).

Plastic Pollutants Pervade Water and Land  and Microplastics sloughed from synthetic fabrics in the washing machine - Plastics are everywhere in our environment and their  negative impact is probably greater than we realize…but it is surprising how much we don’t know.

In the AI Age, being ‘Smart’ Will Mean Something Completely Different – The author proposes that the new definition of ‘smart’ will be about the quality of thinking, listening, relating, collaboration, and learning…not about the quantity of factoids we remember. It won’t be easy to be the new kind of smart and I often wonder if the way we use current technology has moved us in the opposite direction.

American Icon in the Alaskan Horizon – Birds at the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve in Alaska…in snow and ice.

11 Very Different Types of Photography that Each Illuminate Our World – A little eye candy for the week…and a survey of types of photography.

Mars rover Opportunity on walkabout near rim – One of my daughter’s first jobs as an undergraduate student was calibrating images coming from Opportunity…so I always take note when articles come out of it.

Mapping the potential climate effects of climate change – I look at these types of articles and try to understand the assumptions that are being made. It always seems that there are still a lot of unknowns….and it could be different and worse than they projections. Basically north and west seem to fare better than the south where it is already hot and often dry.

Road Trip from Tucson – Part 1

I decided to take pictures at every stop we made along our four-day trek between Tucson, Arizona and Laurel, Maryland. The first one was at the Texas Canyon rest stop – still in Arizona – that we’ve stopped at every time we’ve made the long drive over the past 6 years. It’s the most scenic rest stop of the drive – rocks, blue sky, and

Desert plants.

We didn’t stop at all as we traversed New Mexico – holding out until we reached El Paso, Texas and a Love’s for gas, coffee for my daughter, and a soft drink for me. El Paso has the best highway art (overpasses and abutments) along the drive. The area is very dry – makes Tucson look lush.

The next stop was a rest stop near Van Horn, Texas. It is one of the old style in Texas: not air conditioned or completely enclosed….but beautiful with historical themed mosaics and colorful sandstone walls.

The area is still very dry.

The first day out was a long one so we had another stop at a Love’s in Odessa, Texas

Before heading on to Abilene where we stopped for the night. The sun was going down by the time we picked up our dinner. We parked in the shade and decided that the temperature was dropping enough that we didn’t unload the plants or tarantula that we had in the car.

The increasing amount of available water makes the eastward journey greener and greener. By Abilene there are even some trees!

As we headed out the next morning there were some clouds.

We stopped at a new rest stop. It opened in Spring 2016. It was museum like…air conditioned…no mosaic.

Shortly after the stop, it started sprinkling and then we got waves of heavier rain through Fort Worth. It was misting and then just cloudy for the rest of the day. We arrived in Carrollton…visited with family. I took another picture of the red yucca in bloom…and the sunset. We were glad that the drive between Abilene and Carrollton was a short driving day allowing us to rest up a bit for the next 2 long drive days….which I will post about tomorrow.

Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge - Part 1

Last week, my husband and I attended a day of the Spring Delmarva Birding Weekend; our first destination was the Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge near Smyrna DE. We learned so much from our time with our guide that we’ll plan another trip to the refuge soon so we can take it slow and do even more photography. I have so much to share from the 3 hours we were there this time, that I’ve divided it into 2 blog posts! At the visitor center, there were American Goldfinch enjoying thistle seeds,

Purple martins in and out of the ‘apartments’ and

A white throated sparrow that sat still long enough for me to photography. There were also robins and a brown thrasher which did not!

We did a short hike through some woods and heard/saw a lot of warblers but they move so fast I didn’t get any pictures. Even the cardinal moved to fast for me. We climbed an observation tower and there was an American Avocet visible through the foliage along with smaller birds beyond the distance my camera could capture well. At another location, there were many more Avocets.

There were also Black-Necked Stilt. I’m showing three pictures below of the same scene...zooming in. The black and white birds with the legs are the stilts.

More tomorrow….

Zentangle® – March 2017

I thought February was a big Zentangle month (with 90 tiles)…but I stopped counting before the end of the month in March at 121 tiles! Yes – there are 3 more days in March than there are in February but the increased production was more because I needed the extra Zen during March to savor the length of time I’ve had with elderly family members rather than going into a grief cycle.

I am still enjoying the Ultra Fine Point Sharpie pens I got last month…and making tiles from Seltzer water boxes and using the backs of old business cards. I picked 31 of the 120+ tiles to feature in this post.

There are three sizes of tiles from March just as there were in February. My favorite of the 3.5 x 3.5 inch squares looks somewhat botanical. The color of the tile and the melon ink….and the startling black of the collection of black circles …appeals to be every time I look at the tile.

And then there are 18 more of that size tile.

My favorite of the reused business cards is quite different but still will black highlights and then color around the black. The purple looks almost chalky.

And there are 7 more of the business card tiles.

The last group are 4 x 3 inch card stock tiles. My favorite of this group…and the month…is below. It reminds me of a transit map or a petroglyph (a dancing figure with a giant headdress.

And there are 3 more of that size tile.

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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.

On the Road in Pittsburgh

We visited my daughter and son-in-law in the Squirrel Hill area of Pittsburgh and the pizza place where we ate dinner has a painting of itself as part of its decorations! We sat by a window…but not the one that was by the fire hydrant.

I took some pictures of the city as well as we were driving (my husband at the wheel…so I was not being a hazard on the road): University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning (I have heard that they decorate for the rooms for Christmas….something to see next December),

Bridges (the challenge of having so many rivers through the city), and

Cliff faces with development just above the river and then on the cliff top…with incline (rail…funicular) transport between the two.

I already have some sightseeing objectives for out next trip to the city! My husband and I will be visiting the city several more times while my son-in-law continues his postdoc at the University of Pittsburgh…plenty of time to explore the city.

Phipps Conservatory Chihuly Glass – Pittsburgh

The times I had been to Pittsburgh in the past offered no time for touring so I looked at places that could be enjoyed on the cold days we were in the city. On our first day in the city, my husband and I walked around the inside of the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens (i.e. the Conservatory). We easily found parking in the Conservatory parking and I discovered it was difficult to get the whole conservatory in one image!

There was a lot to see inside too….so much that I am dividing it into 2 posts (today and tomorrow). The focus today is on the Dale Chihuly glass sculpture that is nestled in the plantings. The glass often has plant-like forms…but draws the eye with brilliant color.

The large ruffled edge bowls look like flowers.

At other times, the glass blends in with its surrounds. Is it glass or a very unusual plant?

Then there are the chandelier pieces that are suspended over the plants like an alternative sun.

Some are so complex that I find myself enjoying them for a second or third look via my camera zoom.

Tomorrow I’ll focus on the plants in the Phipps Conservatory.

Road Trip to Pittsburgh

Our Maryland neighborhood was snowy when we started out after the morning traffic. The roads were clear and my husband savored the adaptive cruise control in his new car once we got on the highway.

We’re becoming more familiar with the South Mountain rest stop in Interstate 70 these days. The walks and roadways were clear but there were piles of snow everywhere else. It was cold and breezy at the place….this picture makes it look a lot warmer than it was.

I liked the side at Pennsylvania Welcome Center further on. By this time in our drive, the clouds had come in. The closer we got to Pittsburgh the colder it seemed to get and at one point it started to snow sideways (because of the stiff breeze).

I attempted to get pictures of ice flows that were on many of the roadcuts through the Allegheny Mountains. My favorite is the one with the truck since it demonstrates how big some of the icicles were.

More posts from our time in Pittsburgh over the next few days….

Prius Prime and Samsung Galaxy S7

I thought for sure I’d made a road trip sometime during my second month owning the Prius Prime but we took the new Honda CR-V for the road trip to Pittsburgh (more on that in the posts over the next few days). I’ve included a picture of the car with a backdrop of snow piles at the South Mountain rest top on Interstate 70.

We did tease out about how much the electricity cost to charge the Prius Prime for my “around town” driving: the car got about 300 miles on about $5 of electricity!

I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy S7 for about a month….have most of the apps I’ll use frequently loaded. I leave it on my desk when I am at the computer – plugged in so when I leave it is always fully charged.

I added the app for my grocery store (Wegmans) so I can see the coupons I clipped electronically, experimented a little with the iNaturalist app for BioBlitz and used several apps while I was traveling recently: FlightView (to get the current info for my air travel), the Accuweather forecast for where I am and where I am going, and texts to people I need to connect arrival and meetings. I also have started using the phone for (Kindle book) reading on the plane.  I bought a lanyard phone holder so the phone is attached to me (without me dedicating a hand to it) in the grocery store and on the plane. I’m still experimenting with the length of the lanyard but the holder part works very well and will attach to just about any lanyard.

I’m very pleased with my 2017 tech purchases and am still learning how to best apply them --- using the technology effectively for the way I want to live.

Previous Posts about the Prius Prime: My New Car – a Prius Prime, Prius Prime – Week 1, Prius Prime – Month 1

Previous Posts about the Samsung Galaxy S7: A New Phone

Art Seen on the Move

I made a quick trip from Maryland to Texas then Oklahoma…back to Texas and then home to Maryland….and used my new cellphone to take pictures of the ‘art’ along the way.

At BWI airport early in the morning, I noticed the Maryland scenes depicted in mosaics on the floor and on tables that are probably very busy later in the day.

Driving from the Dallas area toward Tulsa on I75, we stopped in Durant for lunch. Salitas (Tex-Mex food) is not far off the highway and has desert murals painted on the side.

After visiting family near Tulsa, we headed to Stillwater, OK for a visit with friends and then headed for home along I35. The rest stop had Teepee shaped structures over the picnic tables! Note that I didn’t take any ‘on the road’ pictures this trip; that is because I was the driver for the entire part of the trek made via automobile.

As I arrived at Love Field for my flight home, I paused a few extra seconds while I retrieved by boarding pass and driver’s license from my bag to take a picture of the colorful mosaic beside the security checkpoint. It’s size and position make it difficult to capture…but I always notice it and celebrate because I am heading home.

Prius Prime – Month 1

My Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid) ownership is one month and counting. I am still on the first tank of gas (still registering as ‘full’) with about 300 miles on the car. I’ve discovered that unless I take a road trip, it will take months to use a take of gas!

I have learned more about the car since my last post about it:

• Now that I have a smart phone – I’m getting used to the wireless charging surface in the car.
• The charging happens between 11 PM and 7 AM when the electricity costs from my utility are the lowest (the car has a feature that allows setting of charging times so I set it to start at 11:10 PM and it finishes well before 7).
• The audio system can play music from a USB drive – so I have one that I plan to just load up with music and leave in the car. Later, I may use music from phone but the USB option is working so well that I am not motivated to change right now.
• There is a handy slot for sunglasses in the ceiling and I’ve started using it.

The permanent license plates came during the month --- so everything is complete. I really do want to take it on a short road trip!

Previous Posts: My New Car – a Prius Prime, Prius Prime – Week 1

3 Free eBooks – February 2017

Peter Rabbit --- Big Cats --- National Botanic Garden: quite diverse eBook picks for this month.

Potter, Beatrix. Peter Rabbit. Frederick Warne & Co. 1902. Available from Internet Archive here (click on the author link to get all the other Beatrix Potter books available from the Internet Archive). I am reading and enjoying the illustrations of all Potter’s books that have been digitized this month. Peter Rabbit is probably the most memorable story from my childhood. I can remember giggling at one phrase in particular: “…and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it.”

Fallen, Anne-Catherine; Shimizu, Holly H.; Solit, Karen; Allen, William C. A Botanic Garden for the Nation: The United States Botanic Garden. Washington, DC: US Botanic Garden. 2007. Available from Hathi Trust here. I was please to find this book online (published only 10 year ago) about one of my favorite places in Washington DC. I’ve posted about it many times (here). We didn’t make the trek in December this year…but maybe we should in the next few weeks. The conservatories are a warm place to tour in the winter!

Turner, Alan; Anton, Mauricio (illustrator). The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives. New York: Columbia University Press. 1997. Available from Internet Archive here. Another more recent book – published only 20 years ago. There are more different kinds of cats with long canines in Earth’s past than I realized.

Zooming – January 2017

I use the zoom on my camera in so many situations – to look at the details of a façade in McKinney, Texas,

A swan and coot at Josey Ranch.

And then there is the combined strategy of photographing through a window and zooming: crepe myrtle seed pods through the window of the hotel in Grapevine, TX (when it was very cold outside),

Kitt Peak (probably) taken through the window of the plane taking off from Tucson headed to Los Angles, and

A tangle of plum tree branches covered in water droplets in the morning sunshine.

Sometimes the zoom is so great that it makes the picture look more like a painting. I thought this shelf fungus looked like a stylized bird!

Highway through El Paso, TX

The best highway art on our drive between Abilene, Texas and Tucson, Arizona on Interstate 10 was through El Paso. My daughter was driving so I could indulge in photographing some of it. I had remembered some of the structures from previous road trips when I was driving and thus unable to do any photography. There is quite a variety: decorative supports, stripes and medallions on the sides of the decking, elaborate railings, metal sculpture, towers on abutments, and colorful retaining walls. The colors send to be muted…very much like the colors of the surrounding mountains and desert.

The road was in good repair and not too busy on the Sunday (a week ago) that we drove through. The city crowds to the sides of the highway…and the University of El Paso campus is within site of the highway. It is easy to image the interstate as the backbone of the city.

Grapevine, TX Sunrise

I traveled with my daughter to the AAS Conference in Grapevine, TX last week. We didn’t stay in the conference hotel (the Gaylord Texan) – opting for a less expensive hotel near the Grapevine Mall. The plan was that I would drop her off at the conference, visit with family in the area during the day, and pick her up when her sessions/dinner were done for the day. We planned to go down to hotel’s breakfast as soon as it opened each morning. The very first morning we came back to the room after breakfast to a spectacular sunrise as soon as we opened the drapes! These were taken from our hotel window.

The next day – we were a little later getting back to the room…and the sun was already up – muted by clouds. It was a lot more orange...still a nice sunrise.

A good breakfast and a beautiful sunrise. I like to start my day that way.

McKinney, Texas

My sisters and daughter took a walk around the old down town of McKinney, Texas – a place none of us had ever been. It’s a small town that has been around for a long time but is not feeling the encroachment of Dallas. The down town has become a place of repurposed buildings. It has a lot of boutique type shops and eateries. We did our walking around before lunch.

There is a courthouse at the center of it all that has been repurposed to be a performing arts center. Most of it was not open on January 2^nd but we appreciated the outside part of the building. Most of the visible façade was built in the 1920s.

There are also two ‘bank’ facades. When they were built, the thought must have been that they would always be banks!

There are bits of whimsy along the sidewalks too. I’m not sure how many painted frogs there were. I managed to photography two of them.

One store had a metal giraffe with a scarf outside the doorway.

There was a cotton boll wreath in one of the store windows. At one time, the town economy was based on cotton and it was prosperous enough to enable to remodeling of the courthouse to its present form.

The store fronts themselves are interesting and the businesses appear to being doing well enough to maintain them. Unlike a lot of small towns that are overcome by a nearby big city, McKinney seems to be thriving as itself. There were people enjoying a sunny (and warm) winter day all around the square while we were there and the Irish Pub where we had lunch filled up while we were eating our lunch.

If you are in the area – it’s worth spending a few hours browsing the shops and having a meal.

Rhythm of my Seasons

The Rhythm of my Days and Weeks were posted a few days ago. This post is about seasonal rhythms.

Clothes. I still move things from closet to storage and back twice a year (usually spring and fall…whenever the temperature changes enough). I don’t wear corduroy pants and sweaters when the weather is warm just as I don’t wear shorts, skirts and capri pants when it is very cold. Some things stay in my closet all the time – and they wear out the fastest.

Volunteering. Spring and Fall are when I spend the most time volunteering. Those are the seasons that the schools have most of their field trips and stream assessments.

Travel. My husband likes to do traveling in the spring and fall – and that is probably the time for most our travel…but it happens in the other fall and summer too so there might not be a season for travel.

Classes. There is more time for classes in the winter and summer. I’m always a little surprised that I enjoy them more in winter although I am not sure why.

Outdoor work around the house. There are chores that dominate in every season. Cleaning out and planting in spring. Watering and mowing in summer. Raking leaves in the fall. Shoveling snow in the winter.

Food. Pomegranates in December. Orange squashes and apples and pears and cranberries in the fall. Tomatoes and melons at the height of summer. Garlic scapes and strawberries in late spring/early summer. Yum (even though sometimes I buy them out of season because, these days, many are in season someplace in the world).

I still have not come up with any of my rhythmic habits that I want to change in 2017….but writing these posts has heightened my awareness of the rhythms…and confirming to myself that they are what I want them to be.

2017 Begins

I always like to get up early to see the sunrise on the first day of the year. This year will be no exception but I will see it somewhere along the road between Dickson, Tennessee and Dallas, Texas. I’m writing this post a few days ahead of time and scheduling it to come out on the 1^st - including a sunrise from a few days ago. Being on the road at the first of the year is as different as our trip to Conowingo was on Christmas morning.

When my daughter was young, we had a tradition of going down to the Smithsonian on the 1^st of the year. All the museums along the Mall in Washington DC were open. It wasn’t very crowded. I remember when my daughter was only 4 months old and I tried to get her to notice the elephant in the rotunda of the Natural History Museum! She doesn’t have a conscious memory of the experience, of course…but I’ve always wondered if she has a subconscious impression. When she was in elementary school, she spent a long time in the section of the Natural History Museum that displayed skeletons. She liked the Air and Space Museum but spent more time in the Natural History Museum.

So – something beautiful to start this New Year.