Maryland Water Monitoring Council Conference

The Maryland Water Monitoring Council Conference went virtual this year. It was held on the mornings of December 3rd and 4th rather than all on one day as the in-person event. I appreciated that scheduling since webinars for a whole day can be overwhelmingly intense. And now – they’ve made the presentations and session videos available! I highly recommend the Dr. Rita Colwell plenary session: Oceans, Climate, and Human Health: Lessons from Cholera for COVID-19. The video is in the ‘Morning Plenary Session Day 1’ and the charts (which are visible in the video) are posted at the link for the 9:15 AM slot on day 1.

I bought the Kindle version of Dr. Colwell’s book A Lab of One’s Own: One Woman’s Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science. It’s a thought-provoking book for me as I think of my life and women I’ve known – my mother’s generation, my own, and my daughter’s. There is much in the book that even non-scientist women will recognize in their experiences of work. In my case – I didn’t know any scientists growing up, but I did observe women that ran a mill, was a traveling dietician for small town hospitals, and teaching math/science to high schoolers and at colleges. In my own generation, I had quite a few peers in the computer industry…and noticed the thinning of the ranks as my career moved forward. By the time I retired, there were 2 or 3 female CEOs in the industry…but there was not a robust pipeline of women behind them. In my daughter’s generation, it is still not unusual to find one or no female faculty members in physics departments. Improvements have come…but very slowly…and the pandemic has taken us back decades (in the accessibility of childcare, for example).

The sessions I watched at the conference were Clean Waters, Healthy Humans (VB Room 2) on Day 1 and PFAS: News on an Emerging Contamination (VB Room 3) on Day 2. The talks were very good and I appreciated the virtual format – much more comfortable that crowded rooms where the bottom of the charts were blocked by heads of people….trying to take a few notes (the old fashion way with paper and pen)…overeating with all the goodies provided between sessions. Now that the videos and presentations are out, I’m going back to look at some of the other presentations that I didn’t get to ‘live;’ I am looking forward to that in this lull week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Unique Activities for Yesterday:

Sunrise the day after Christmas. I noticed pink clouds to the west and then went to check the east from an upstairs window. Perfect timing. I took pictures through the window since the temperature outside was in the 20s.

9 Months in COVID-19 Pandemic

The first vaccine for COVID-19 was approved in the US by the FDA on the 9-month anniversary of the WHO declaring the world wide pandemic. The rollout will take months but there is more hope now….if we can just get through the months until enough people get vaccinated to provide herd immunity. The US is not in a good situation right now with hospitals filling up, larger than ever numbers of people testing positive, and deaths per day about the same as 9/11/2001 – the trauma of that death rate repeated again and again instead of one day. Even a month ago, I thought there were more effective treatments that had been developed since last spring, but it now seems that either they don’t exist or they are in such short supply that they don’t make a difference. Even worse – the best treatments only seem to be available to favorites of the President…implying (or confirming) the corruption of at least part of the medical system in the US.

The psyche of everyone in the country is impacted by the pandemic – made worse by the leadership of the country, particularly at the Federal level and trickling down to some states. There is a lack of caring in American society that still surprises me. I limit the time I spend watching/reading news…stay more with stats and public health recommendations to guide the actions I take relative to the pandemic.

• I have elongated my time between trips to the grocery store to every 3 weeks (rather than every 2 weeks like I did over the summer and fall or every week I did pre-pandemic). It takes more planning but is preferrable than going back to grocery delivery. I like to choose my purchases directly!

• My husband and I celebrated Thanksgiving on our own at home and are planning to do the same for all the upcoming holidays. Special foods are still part of the celebration but we cook for 2 (or enjoy a lot of leftovers). I am intentionally trying some new recipes for desserts. We also do telephone calls/Zoom sessions with family on the special days.

• We are getting take out every week or so. We haven’t eaten in a restaurant since back in February. It’s impossible to know how good the air circulation/filtration is in an enclosed area where 6 feet distance may not be adequate….and one cannot wear a mask while eating. Many municipalities/counties in Maryland are going back to take-out only because of the dramatic rise in cases over the past few weeks (although the rise might be more because of behavior around the Thanksgiving holiday than restaurants); whatever the cause - the likelihood of asymptomatic people in our community has increased and there is a need to respond to that to help avoid hospitals overflowing/starting to ration care.

• My husband is still planning to do some amateur astronomy sessions with the local club…outdoors and masked and telescopes set up at least 6 feet apart….if the weather cooperates. He did some solar astronomy on his own from our driveway and backyard in November. The club meetings have been via zoom for months.

Over the past month, we enjoyed

• The virtual Crane Fiesta (from Bosque del Apache)

• The virtual Maryland Water Monitoring Council Conference (me)

• The virtual AGU fall meeting (my husband)

I am looking forward to cooking holiday desserts, watching a virtual Holiday House Tour being produced by my county and a session on Wild Birds in Winter from our state Department of Natural Resources, and filling up the porch with items for a charity to pick up…and continuing day to day activities that give me joy like Zentangle tile creation, photographing birds and wildlife from my office window, finding good books to browse, and writing a blog post….taking a walk in the neighborhood or watching the trees gently moving in the winter wind from my office window.

I am looking forward to cooking holiday desserts, watching a virtual Holiday House Tour being produced by my county and a session on Wild Birds in Winter from our state Department of Natural Resources, and filling up the porch with items for a charity to pick up…and continuing day to day activities that give me joy like Zentangle tile creation, photographing birds and wildlife from my office window, finding good books to browse, and writing a blog post….taking a walk in the neighborhood or watching the trees gently moving in the winter wind from my office window.

Over the next month, we might get a better sense of when we will be able to get the vaccine. My plan is to get it as soon as I am eligible. Once I’m protected by it and my parents are in the same state…a road trip to Texas will be my first post-pandemic travel.

At the 9 month mark – I am more hopeful for 2021….but very focused on staying hyper vigilant – doing everything we know to do to avoid getting COVID-19 until we are protected by the vaccine.

Zooming – December 2019

December was not a big month for photography. I did enjoy birds and wildlife…the decorations too…but I found myself in observational mode rather than trying to take photographs. I did quite a lot of volunteer work early in the month, and there never is time for very much time for photography when I’m paying rapt attention to people during a volunteer gig.

Enjoy the slide show for December 2019!

Happy New Year 2020!

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2019

Happy Holidays!

My December had a lot of little celebrations already. I picked my top 10.

Coming home – I traveled over Thanksgiving and didn’t get home until the first of December. As usual after being away, I celebrated being home again.

Weather Conference for 6th graders – The weather was great…the students were focused…the speakers geared for the audience. It’s another annual volunteer gig that is now part of my celebration of December.

Maryland Water Monitoring Conference – This was my third year to go to the MWMC and I learn something new every time. It’s a pretty intense day of learning.

Howard County Conservancy Natural Holiday Sale – I love stocking the cookie table and keeping the urn full of Russian Tea. The event is always a celebration of the season.

Touch tank at Robinson Nature Center – I have a new volunteer gig! I chose something different than my other volunteering and easy to do during the winter since it is indoors. I really like the sea stars…watching the children observe the ‘feet’ through the glass and what happens when I ‘tickle’ to help the sea star let go so I can pick it up.

Flying Wild and building a nest – I took a train-the-trainer type class for activities intended for grades 3-8…and one of hands on activities was building a nest. I celebrated that the one my team made managed to meet all the criteria: holding ‘marble’ eggs even when the nest moved and holding (weights) of fledglings!

Fog in the forest, birds at the feeder – It was a beautiful time looking out from the window of my office…the quiet of the forest holding the fog in the soft morning light, the birds coming to the feeder for breakfast. A moment to celebrate.

Maryland State House Christmas Trees – I enjoyed seeing all the creativity of the garden clubs…getting idea for upcoming years (maybe). It was just one of the things that put me more in the mood for all the other celebrations of the month.

The Rise of Skywalker – It was a good ‘book end’ with the other end being the original Star Wars movie back 1977. I liked that so many story lines were resolved. Now I’m ready for a marathon watching of the other movies!

Bird feeder camera – We’re still perfecting how to mount the camera to optimize the view or our bird feeder. I’m celebrating getting the squirrel climbing the ladder as one of our early successes.

Maryland Water Monitoring Council Annual Conference

The 25th MWMC Annual Conference was held last week. It was my third time to attend and it was, once again, a great opportunity to catch up on water-related research and Maryland specific plans, activities, and accomplishments. The two themes in the sessions I chose to attend were watershed health and remote sensing. I am hoping the agenda with links for the presentation material will come out soon since my note taking is not all that legible.

I also enjoyed the vendor tables. One of the companies that did the stream restoration at Howard Country Conservancy’s Davis Branch had a table – and a post card picturing the project (before last summer’s drought)!

One vendor had a great ‘Got Bugs? Banner and another had macroinvertebrate stickers.

There were other giveaways too – lip balm, pens, a frog shopping bag, and a folding card Field Guide to Aquatic Macroinvertebrates.

The conference was the largest every – with over 600 attendees.

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2018

It was easy to find 10 little celebrations in December before today. I divided the month into three segments: before I went to Texas, in Texas and then after I got back from Texas.

Before I went to Texas there was the Howard County Conservancy’s Natural Holiday Sale (ate lots of cookies and bought suet garlands from the garden club),

A glorious hike along the Trolley Trail between Banneker Historic Park and Ellicott City,

The Maryland Water Monitoring Conference and managing to find a replacement travel mug in a store (since I didn’t have time to wait for an online order before I left for my travel to Texas.

While I was in Texas, I enjoyed the birds at Josey Ranch Lake,

Two sunrises (the first and last mornings in Texas!),

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Listening to vintage to modern Christmas music…getting in the mood for Christmas and making progress on a Christmas themed jigsaw puzzle that took us almost the whole week to finish.

Afterwards, I celebrated being home again – the usual for me after being away for a week – and staying indoors on some cold, wet days.

Hope everyone is enjoying today’s holiday – Merry Christmas! It’s always of time of year to savor.

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2017

Merry Christmas!

It’s be a month full of little celebrations too! I’ve picked 10 to highlight.

There has been luscious food all through the month. I managed to spread it out and enjoy it more:

My birthday slice of carrot cake has so much icing that I saved half of it to spread on toast for two days following my birthday!

There were a large variety of homemade cookies to enjoy at the annual Howard Count Conservancy (HCC) Natural Holiday sale. It’s wonderful to enjoy just one of my favorite kinds rather than having to bake a whole batch myself.

A few days afterward there was a surprise event for HCC volunteers…as celebration of our 2017 activities.

I did make oatmeal cranberry bars and enjoyed the cookie dough first…and then the bars (another multiple day celebration).

I celebrated a hike in the woods…seeing a lot of different kinds of shelf fungus…

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And a conference about water monitoring….well worth the registration fee and time.

We had our first snow – it was easy to celebrate because it didn’t snarl traffic but stuck enough to make a surface for animal tracks.

There is something to celebrate in almost every shift I do with the Brookside model trains because there are always young children there enjoying the trains – a vicarious celebration.

I also celebrated a special engine during one of the shifts: it has smoke swirling out of its smokestack!

Finally – we’ve had such dry weather recently, I found myself celebrating a rainy day – realizing that even in winter, plants need moisture. I also celebrated that it was a day I was spending at home.

Maryland Water Monitoring Council 23rd Annual Conference

Last Friday, I attended Maryland Water Monitoring Council conference. The theme was “Managing Water Quality in a Changing World.” This was the 23rd conference held by the council…but the first one for me. I’d signed up as soon as I found out about it – months ago – and looked at the agenda ahead of time. The agenda was packed with interesting topics from 8:30 -4:30. Except for the two keynote talks there were 7 concurrent talks for the rest of the day plus poster presentations and vendor booths. Based on my experience with the symposium I went to back in October about the War of 1812, I hoped that I would make it through the whole day.

It turned out to be an invigorating day all the way through to the last talk! It helped that the food was fabulous and easily available, the chairs were comfortable, and the venue was large enough to provide easy transitions between sessions for the 600 attendees. Those things provided the infrastructure for the high-quality talks.

I’d printed off the agenda before the conference and highlighted the ones I thought I would be most interested in attending. Of the 12 talks I’d selected, only 1 did not live up to my expectations. At the end of the day I was very glad that I’d attended and plan to go again next year.