Gleanings of the Week Ending June 1, 2024

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.

How Storm King Art Center Became One of World’s Top Sculpture Parks – Adding to my list to consider seeing if I travel to New York (state).

Dirt Cheap Batteries Enable Megawatt-Scale Charging Without Big Grid Upgrades Right Away – Hope the technology trend continues…that this idea helps us transition to more electric trucks and other vehicles.

Extreme Birding: Shorebirds at the Sewage Lagoon – Maybe a great place for birding….if you can stand the smell. The same thing happens at landfills.

The human brain has been shrinking – and no-one quite knows why - The brains of modern humans are around 13% smaller than those of Homo sapiens who lived 100,000 years ago. Exactly why is still puzzling researchers. I was a little surprised that the authors did NOT consider the challenge of birthing babies with larger heads (i.e. until C-sections allowed mother and baby to survive if the baby’s head was too large, both mother and baby died) which would result in natural selection of genes for smaller heads.

Climate change is most prominent threat to pollinators - Pollinator populations are declining worldwide and 85% of flowering plant species and 87 of the leading global crops rely on pollinators for seed production. The decline of pollinators seriously impacts biodiversity conservation, reduces crop yield, and threatens food security. Changes in water and temperature associated with climate change can lower the quantity and quality of resources available to pollinators, decrease the survival of larvae or adults, and modify suitable habitats.

The deep ocean photographer that captured a 'living fossil' – In 2010, Laurent Ballesta was the first diver to photograph a living coelacanth. In 2013, Ballesta and his team returned and encountered multiple coelacanths, spending up to half an hour in their presence. Thanks to Ballesta's work, we now know the coelacanth is among the longest-living fish species, with a lifespan of around 100 years, and has one of the slowest life histories of all marine fish – so, like deep-sea sharks with a reduced metabolism, the coelacanth grows slowly, taking as long as 69 years to reach sexual maturity, and with a gestation period of around five years.

Under stress, an observer is more likely to help the victim than to punish the perpetrator - It takes more cognitive effort to punish others than it does to help them. Studies show that when witnessing an act of injustice while stressed, people tend to behave selflessly, preferring to help the victim than to punish the offender.

Stunning Aerial Photos Capture the Abstract Beauty of Iceland’s Glacier Rivers – Iceland….blue.

These tricks make wind farms more bird-friendly – Migratory birds can crash into wind turbines…but there are ways to reduce the carnage: adding high visibility reflectors and spirals to cables, not building wind farms in flight paths, painting one blade on each turbine black (or stripes of black on each blade), and sound.

Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously – Interesting idea. While the bots were decontaminated and reused…they were not as effective…so more work is needed.

eBotanical Prints – September 2023

Twenty-two more books were added to the botanical print collection this month – available for browsing on Internet Archive. More than half of the books are Harvard’s Botanical Museum Leaflets from 1932 to 1954…roughly the years between my parents’ births to my own. The publication was dominated by orchids!

The last two books were added well after I had finished the first 20; I opted to include the botanical books from the Natural History of New York series published in the 1800s. The last picture in the mosaic below is of the American Chestnut; I wondered how many other plants documented as being in New York are missing today, like that tree.

The whole list of 2,717 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the September 2023 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

Click on any sample images in the mosaic below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the September 2023 eBotanical Prints!

Orchid culture in Ceylon and the East  * Price, F. A. E. * sample image * 1918

Cactaceae of the Boundary * Engelmann, George * sample image * 1858

Botanic contributions relating to the flora of western North America * Engelmann, George; Gray, Asa; Fremont, John Charles0; Torrey, John * sample image * 1853

Report on the botany of the expedition * Torrey, John; Bigelow, John Milton; Engelmann, George * sample image * 1857

Botanical Museum leaflets V1 * Harvard University * sample image * 1932

Botanical Museum leaflets V2 * Harvard University * sample image * 1934

Botanical Museum leaflets V3 * Harvard University * sample image * 1935

Botanical Museum leaflets V4 * Harvard University * sample image * 1937

Botanical Museum leaflets V5 * Harvard University * sample image * 1938

Botanical Museum leaflets V6 * Harvard University * sample image * 1938

Botanical Museum leaflets V7 * Harvard University * sample image * 1939

Botanical Museum leaflets V8 * Harvard University * sample image * 1940

Botanical Museum leaflets V9 * Harvard University * sample image * 1941

Botanical Museum leaflets V10 * Harvard University * sample image * 1942

Botanical Museum leaflets V11 * Harvard University * sample image * 1945

Botanical Museum leaflets V12 * Harvard University * sample image * 1947

Botanical Museum leaflets V13 * Harvard University * sample image * 1949

Botanical Museum leaflets V14 * Harvard University * sample image * 1951

Botanical Museum leaflets V15 * Harvard University * sample image * 1952

Botanical Museum leaflets V16 * Harvard University * sample image * 1954

Natural History of New York Div 2 Part 1 * Kay, James, e. De * sample image * 1843

Natural History of New York Div 2 Part 2 * Kay, James, e. De * sample image * 1843

Hildegarde Hawthorne on Internet Archive

Hildegarde Hawthorne was the granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne and a writer as well. I found 6 of her books on Internet Archive from the early 1900s – easy to browse. She lived until 1952 and continued writing so there are probably others that will become available as their copyright expires. The last one is probably my favorite.

Girls in Bookland

Old Seaport Towns of New England with illustrations by John Albert Seaford

Rambles in old college towns with illustrations by John Albert Seaford. The second picture below is the library tower at Cornell; it’s surrounded by more buildings now…I remember it from my daughter’s undergraduate days.

New York with illustrations by Lewis Martin

3 Free eBooks – June 2018

I picked 4 books instead of 3 in June because of the first two were about the same place – New York – and I thought they were interesting history.

Wittemann, Adolph. Select New York. New York: A. Wittemann. 1889. Available from Internet Archive here. This book includes photographs of New York and almost all of them include a tangle of electrical wires…at the beginning of the electrification of the city when there was a lot of chaos and little standardization.

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Wittmann, Adolph. New York: An Album of Photographs. Brooklyn: Wittemann. 1900. Available from Internet Archive here. The photographs have been tinted and there are no wires at all. Were the electrical conduits underground by 1900 or did the publisher manage to take them out of the photographs?

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Lear, Edward. Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots: the greater part of them species hitherto unfigured, containing forty-two lithographic plates, drawn from life, and on stone. London, England: E. Lear. 1832. Available from the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture here. I was surprised to find this book of parrot illustrations…but the same man that wrote the poem ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ I remember from my childhood!

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Wantanabe, Seitei. Seitei kachō gafu v. 2. Okura Mogabe, Toyko, Meije 23. 1890. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I enjoyed the Japanese artwork…like the type of nature photography I like to do. I wanted to be in the place seeing a bird walking in a wetland – perhaps it was early morning.

3 Free eBooks – March 2018

So many books…so little time. I’m still working my way through the Japanese Illustrated Books from the Edo and Meiji Period. My favorite this month was a series with three volumes:

Kacho shasin zui. Published by Nishimura Soshichi, 1805. Available from Smithsonian Libraries here. I like the images of the birds and flowers as art and snapshots of nature through the lens of Japanese culture of the time. The scans appear a little smudged but that adds to their charm – there were books that were enjoyed again and again!

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The other books I’m highlighting this month were both written about the same time – the 1920s – and about scenic highways along rivers. The first one is from the west coast…the second is from the east coast. Both highways still exist…although is renovated/modified form. These books were probably produced as souvenirs with annotated pictures.

Oregon’s famous Columbia River Highway. Published by Lipschuetz and Katz, Portland Oregon. 1920. Available from Internet Archive here. Scenic routes have been popular since the beginning of the age of automobiles! Even with the lower speeds of those early cars, there were still turnouts – places to stop to see the river or walk a little way to see waterfalls.

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Storm King Highway and the Historic Hudson River. Published by J. Ruben, Newburgh, New York. Available from Internet Archive here. A lot has happened along the Hudson River in the last century and not all for the better. I found the highway on Google Maps and the first ‘street view’ was one with graffiti (not the artistic kind) all over the rock wall and rocks beyond. I didn’t look further. It’s depressing to see something that was once scenic turned into a prime example of ‘tragedy of the commons.’

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