Gleanings of the Week Ending August 12, 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.

Map of Play – A non-profit that not only builds playgrounds all over the US but also maps the ones they build and others (here). What a great way for families with children to explore the parks where they live….and when they travel!

Could a Bus with Sleep Pods Replace Airplanes? – Right now it only operates between LA and San Francisco…but it has the potential to be a less stressful way to travel than through an airport. What would it be like to take buses overnight and touring cities during the day…gradually moving cross country?

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #99 – Two pictures of peafowl! A male sitting with the tail feathers bunched behind and the head of a peahen!

The Chemistry of Giant Hogweed and how it causes skin burns – Awful plant! We were warned about this plant in Master Naturalist training since there have been some found in Maryland.

5 health benefits of beets – I’ve been enjoying beets from the CSA this year. Instead of always making fruit beety with them, I’ve be using them one at a time: raw in salads, in soups with potatoes (adds color!), and slivered for stir frying with other veggies. I like them well enough, I’ll buy them at the grocery store after the season for them via the CSA is over!

Illustrated timeline presents women’s fashion every year from 1784-1970 – A little history. I remember from the late 50s onwards and was making many of my own clothes from the mid-60s…so the styles for those years look familiar. I made a dress for myself that looked very similar to the 1966 dress about 1967!

The animals thriving in the Anthropocene – A study done by a team based near where I live in Maryland! Mosquitos, cockroaches, rats, deer, house sparrows…a few of the organisms are thriving while others are declining…or even becoming extinct.

Medieval Manuscripts are a DNA Smorgasbord – Much can be learned from the debris scraped away during cleaning of old manuscripts: DNA from bookworms and humans plus the animals that became parchment. So – we learn history from the physical aspects of manuscripts as much as well as from the words on the pages!

Magnificent Photos of Canyons Carved over Millions of Years –  Antelope Canyon and Canyon X…in Arizona. My husband already wants to plan a vacation to the place.

Ancient DNA used to track Mesa Verde exodus in 13^th century – Another item in the gleanings for this week about a place near Antelope Canyon…Mesa Verde. When I visited years ago, the mystery of where the people went was unresolved although many assumed they came part of the Pueblo peoples in New Mexico. This study used DNA of turkeys! Evidently the Mesa Verde people raised turkeys for feathers and food…and they took the turkeys with them when they migrated to the Northern Rio Grande area north of Santa Fe, NM.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 5, 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.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #98 – This set includes a kestrel!

View and Print in 3D more than 200 Objects from the British Museum – If you can’t go to the museum itself, these 3D renderings are the next best thing. And you can look at them whenever you want!

Here are UNESCO’s Newest World Heritage Sites – There are so many unique places to explore.

How a guy from a Montana trailer park overturned 150 years of biology – The researcher that overcame challenges of early life….and figured out that lichen was made of more than a fungus and an alga.

The dizzy history of carousels begins with knights – A little history. I was surprised that it starts with a training game for Arabian and Turkish warriors in the 12 century!

16 best train trips in the world – I’ve never taken an extended train trip…only short ones for fall foliage in Maryland and Pennsylvania – or scenic areas in Arizona. Maybe a train trips will be my substitute for long road trips.

Paul Hawken on One Hundred Solutions to the Climate Crises – Focusing on solutions rather than the problem…of course.

Look Ma, No Break! You’ll Drive Electric Cars with One Pedal – My Prius Prime still has 2 pedals but long term EVs will be changing to 1 pedal to maximize regen breaking…barely using brake pads

These nature photos inspire serious wanderlust – From National Geographic.

Archaeologists discover a ‘Little Pompeii’ in Eastern France -  From the 1^st Century AD…abandoned after catastrophic fires….but the excavation will only last until the end of the year before the construction of a housing complex begins.

Our Neighborhood Streets

The first indication that something was going to happen to our neighborhood streets, were he signs that appeared in late June…and then the big equipment at the front of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is about 25 years old; the streets did not seem that problematic but I was glad the work was being done proactively….and interested in how it would proceeed.

Markings were made on the street around the utility covers and the connections of cul-de-sacs to the primary street into the neighborhood. They started at the front of the neighborhood and scraped off the top few inches of asphalt from a few cul-de-sacs.

The increased heavy equipment traffic caused some break up of asphalt – a sign that it was old enough to be easily damaged.

The big equipment finally removed the asphalt from in front of our house in mid-July. A dump truck moved slowly in front of the big machine to collect the asphalt that was scrapped up. Smaller equipment (Bobcat size) came along and removed chunks of asphalt that the bigger equipment didn’t. And then there were street sweepers. Every night when the work was done for the day, the neighborhood was left tidy.

Ten days later, the asphalting was done in front of our house. The dump truck carrying the surfacing material links with the equipment and then the two pieces move forward and the layer is put on top of the road bed. Big rollers come along behind and compress the material. By the time all that happens – the new layer is flush with the concrete curb.

Our neighborhood looks spruced up with the new street - and the earlier work to replace buckling segments of sidewalk and clear out the clogged water retention pond. 2017 has been a busy year for infrastructure maintenance in our neighborhood!