Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 8

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Week 7 of Missouri Master Naturalist consisted of two sessions: a lecture on Fungi that was part of the monthly chapter meeting and two lectures in our regular class: Snakes of Missouri and Endangered Species and Conservation. I took notes during all three! I particularly enjoyed the photographs in the fungi lecture, the snake experiences from a place we had visited for a field trip, and the example used for talking about endangered species (freshwater mussels). I still have a lot of materials from the Missouri Department of Conservation that were on the handout table to browse through from the regular class: salamanders, snakes, mushrooms, lizards, crayfish, toads and frogs, caves and karst, Missouri fishes.

During week 8, I also took action to learn more about Missouri geology on my own since it is not a topic that was covered in the training….starting with two books: Roadside Geology of Missouri by Charles G. Spencer and Geology of Missouri State Parks by Max W. Reams and Carol A. Reams. The second book is the most current – copyrighted in 2022; about 25% of the books is an overview of Missouri geology and then there are sections for state parks by physiographic region. I’ll start with the state parks since it seems safer than stopping at road cuts…although I might keep the Roadside Geology in the car for when my husband is driving, and I can observe as we are on the road.

Next week is graduation week! The time has flown by. I have an evaluation form that I am completing this weekend.

Missouri Master Naturalist Training – Week 1

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The training to become a Missouri Master Naturalist (MMN) started last week. Some weeks there is only one session…sometimes there are more sessions or field trips or chapter meetings. September and October are going to be busy months this year! The first class was at the Springfield-Greene County Botanical Center starting at 6 PM. I went a little early do some late afternoon photography in the garden areas near the building. I always enjoy the rain garden area with the duck sculpture almost covered with vegetation this time of year. There were goldenrod soldier beetles on the asters and golden rods….skippers on the asters. A mallow was beginning to fade nearby.

On my way from the rain garden to the build I noted what looked like a large basket beside the sidewalk; I didn’t try to open it.

In the raised bed near the door there were several interesting plants…including some chard and an oak leaf hydrangea in bloom.

Inside I met the rest of the people that will be in the class with me. There were handouts that included a Missouri Master Naturalist tote bag. Since we all got one, I am thinking about making some Zentangle patterns on the back so that I can easily identify my bag!

The lecture topics were History of Conservation and Insects. I appreciated that we had a break to walk around between lectures since my back starts hurting if I sit for longer than an hour!

I am using a blank book my daughter picked up at a recent conference for note taking since the activity is part of my learning strategy (forces me to pay closer attention). The charts are evidently not going to be posted or sent to us so my notes will be what I will have from the class.

I find myself comparing this class with the one for Maryland Master Naturalist 9 years ago; but realizing that whatever they do here in Missouri for training is geared for the type of volunteer opportunities available here….and the volunteer work is why I am in the training!

A College Class…after 40 Years

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Going to a college campus for a class was almost a ‘new’ experience since I hadn’t done it for over 40 years.

The campus was newer and bigger than the university I attended in the 1970s. There was more construction and different types of parking that I’d experienced before. I set my nav system for a parking lot close to the building where my class was located; it took me to the parking lot but not on the side that had an entrance! I used the nav system to help me find the building to…and still walked past it because I wasn’t looking for the name of the building in the right place. As I walked in the building, the doors leading to the first floor were taped saying there was construction on that floor…realizing that my class was supposed to be on the third floor; I took the door to the stairs that were off the lobby between the outside doors and the doors to first floor. I stopped at a lady’s room then found the classroom…both similar to 40 years ago.

The class I am taking is a field class about woody plants so there is a short lecture segment at the beginning and then the rest of the session is outside either around the campus or on field trips at various locations around Springfield MO. The professor had posted the charts for the first class and the syllabus for the course on Brightspace earlier in the week; I had looked at the charts and printed the schedule page of the syllabus…brought a notebook for recording notes in the field.

It turned out that the professor had printed copies of the syllabus and worksheets for when we were out in the field (around campus). The amount of paper was reminiscent of my long-ago college days. My earlier idea of using my phone to take pictures and notes in the field was not looking as realistic.

I did try to take some pictures of the woody plants that were part of the first class but the only ‘good enough’ picture were from black gum (Nyssa sylvatica) (1 picture) and buckeye (Aesculus) (2 pictures).

Juggling the cell phone on a lanyard and taking physical notes is cumbersome. I’m going to try a slightly different approach for the next class which will be a field trip to Springfield Botanical Gardens….maybe taking my bridge camera (better optics so I don’t need to get as close to what I am photographing) and wearing my photovest (with lots of pockets in the front) so the notebook can be taken in and out more easily.

I am not taking the class for credit, but I am still trying to learn the common and scientific names for the woody plants viewed in the course. It might take some study techniques I’ve not used for a very long time. I want to find techniques that do not involve making paper flashcards!

A Photography Course

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My husband purchased Matt Kloskowski’s Inside the Composition course and we are working our way through the 21 modules.

I’ve done 6 modules so far. Each of them had a short lecture then an assignment…encouraging students to apply the concepts in their own landscape photography. Review and critique of my own photos has been enlightening.

The course has already helped me recognize some shortcomings in my photography –

I tend to like my macro compositions more than landscapes and one of the reasons is that I almost always have too much sky in my landscapes. Sometimes cropping can improve it…although I will try to do better when I am in the field from now on. A good example is this sunset I took back in December…the colors were outstanding…but there is way too much sky. I cropped part of the sky but maybe I should have cut some of the dark foreground too. The result is an odd shaped image but the composition is improved.

Some of my photography is almost like note taking…documentation rather than art: taking a picture to later use for identification of a bird or insect…or taking pictures of signage to read later (or act as a caption to other photos. But the rest of my pictures should be more than documentation. I need to improve my composition on those pictures even if I think about then as documentation of the place. My macro pictures generally composed better than my landscapes!

I tend to like birds moving left to right through my image – even though this breaks the ‘right third’ rule. I always make the assumption and a bird will be moving; we read left to right and our eyes tend to be trained for that direction. Inanimate objects tend to be better place on the right third but software easily flips the image if I forget (see sun yard ornament below).

I should learn to consistently turn my phone when I am taking landscapes. The sunrise picture with half the image a dark band is a good example. Again – cropping can help but it would be better if I’d learn get the composition right when I take the picture!

One of the only landscape pictures I’ve taken recently that I like, turns out to demonstrate some composition concepts. It’s a sunrise pictures but the large diagonals of the silhouetted tree branches in the foreground lead the eye into the colorful sky rather than just having large expanse of colored sky. The second layer of tree silhouettes adds more complexity and the recognition that it is a winter sunrise.

I’m looking forward to the modules still to come….

Coursera Again – Neuroanatomy

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The beginning of Coursera coincided with the beginning of the post-career portion of my life a decade ago. It burst on the scene offering auditing of online courses for free (a small fee was charged for the testing and projects for credit). I was like a “kid in a candy store”…so many topics of interest that I never had time for during my undergraduate/graduate years….and some topics that didn’t exist until more recently! I audited a flurry of courses in the first few years then settled into an occasional course – usually in the wintertime when I spend more time indoors; there was an uptick during the COVID-19 pandemic but not to the levels of the first few years.  

I recently looked at my records and discovered I have audited 74 courses! The topics are varied: art, anatomy, nutrition, history, meditation, education, entomology, exoplanets, poetry, psychology, design, and architecture! The nutrition course was one of the early ones…and is where I learned about the Cronometer site that I am still using to track what I eat so that can take off a few pounds.

This month I completed a Neuroanatomy course from the University of Michigan. It is a 7-week course; I completed 3 weeks before I went to Carrollton TX in late January and completed the other 4 after I got back. I did my usual notetaking as I made my way through the material – trying to learn the vocabulary and the anatomical structures. Now I find I want to learn more about neurobiology!

This course pointed me to a new-to-me source of reference books: PDF Drive. Just look at the list of books available for Neuroanatomy! There are lots of other topics as well. I am getting the “kid in a candy store” feeling all over again!

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 19, 2022

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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.

Energy crisis: How living in a cold home affects your health – The coming winter is going to be very difficult for many – particularly in Europe.

Parks of the 21st century: new ways to reinvent abandoned land – Parks always are signs of hope…the greening of places that might have been eyesores in the past. I wondered how much toxic remediation had to occur for some of the sites they described; its encouraging that we can clean up the messes we’ve made in the past!

Alcohol caused one in eight deaths of working-age US adults – The data used from the analysis was pre-COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, the CDC has released data for 2019 and 2020 and it shows a larger-than-normal 26% spike in the alcohol-induced deathrate. In 2020, alcoholic liver disease and mental/behavioral disorders were the leading underlying causes of alcohol-induced deaths. Sad numbers….lots of people and their families impacted.

A field guide to the unusual raptors of the Southern US – I was pleased to see the snail kite in this article – a bird I saw on a birding trip to Florida in 2019.

Farmers in China, Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice – Very positive results. Hopefully we will eventually have perennial forms of other grains (wheat in particular).

The weirdest places you can find wild turkeys – Wild turkeys have made a comeback since the early 1900s…a restoration success story. Part of the Thanksgiving vibe this week!

Breast cancer survivorship doubles – An analysis of Canadian data from the 2007-2001. The study also highlighted the long-term side effects in these survivors…the need for new therapies to improve the health of women after surviving breast cancer.

Permanent Standard Time Could Save Lives, Explained by A Sleep Expert – I don’t like changing to/from daylight savings time; before reading this article, I didn’t care which one we chose to make permanent. Now I am convinced that we should stick with standard time! There are too many negative health impacts to staying on daylight savings.

How to avoid bad choices – The article is about the research on how to teach children ‘decision-making competence’ – not just a measure of raw brainpower but how well someone is able to appraise situations. There are many approaches but the goal is to get children and adolescents to start thinking about risk and danger in a more analytical way….on the way to adulthood.

Blind spots in the monitoring of plastic waste – The amount of plastic waste in rivers could be up to 90% higher that previously assumed. The current measurements are mainly based on surface observations…but plastic can be suspended or sink! This study tracked 3,000 particles from 30mm to larger objects like plastic cup. Knowing where the plastic is helps guide where clean up would be the most effective.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 29, 2022

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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 an asteroid impact would transform the food we eat – Thought provoking…and scary. Right now, I am beginning to wonder how the level of drought in the US is going to change the food we eat…or will we eat the same way but pay much higher prices.

A Field Guide to Unexpected, Out-of-Place Wildlife – Why wildlife shows up in the ‘wrong’ place… I had read about the shifting range of armadillos last spring (was reminded of it by the reference to the Virginia opossum in this post).

State Of the Birds Report: More Than Half of U.S. Bird Species Are Declining – Sad….another indicator that the Earth is changing.

Economic losses from hurricanes become too big to be offset by the US if warming continues – I’ve been wondering about this since Hurricane Harvey and finally there is some analysis of the data…but, so far, it does not seem to be changing the way we deal with the aftermath of these catastrophic storms. The dominate idea still seems to be ‘rebuild.’

Life expectancy improves in some countries after big drops in 2020 – but US and others see further falls  - The life expectancy at birth in the US was 79.8 in 2019 and was down to 77.4 in 2021. It might take a few years until the impact of COVID-19 on life expectancy is fully understood. It seems to me that there are other cultural changes that happened concurrent with the COVID-19 pandemic that could impact life expectancy in the US into the future: reduced vaccination rates, reduced trust in medical professionals, increased belief in whatever is said on social media and conspiracy theories, increased stress/mental health challenges, etc.

The Clean Water Act at 50: Big Successes, More to Be Done – The Act was passed the year I graduated from high school. I had done a project about algae as pollution indicator in the streams around Dallas, Texas in the fall before so I was aware of water pollution issues of the time. It is frustrating that there is still so much to be done….

New model of Alzheimer’s as an autoimmune disease – A new perspective….maybe leading to new therapies in the future.

Ancient Maya Cities Were Polluted with High Levels of Mercury – The Maya coated surfaces (walls and floors and bodies) with cinnabar…and the mercury from that leached into the water supply and soils. Chronic mercury poisoning causes tremors, weakened vision and hearing, and paralysis! The contamination at some sites is high enough that archaeologists need to use mitigation techniques and protective gear.

Young kids avoid one learning trap that often snares adults – Young kids are not as good at focused attention as adults which means they notice new things happening away from a ‘focus area’ more quickly…..but focused attention can also mean learned inattention in adults which might not be the best strategy in all situations.

After Three Summers, Man Finally Gets Photos of Hummingbird with Rainbow Wings – Beautiful pictures. They prompted me to look up why hummingbird feathers can show the colors of the rainbow. I found a Science Daily post from back in 2020 that offers an explanation.

Ten Little Celebrations – December 2021

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It’s a season full of celebrations. In my family we have celebrations associated with a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas…and then ones associated with the beginning of winter. Here’s my top 10 for the month:

A winter day at home. Being at home enjoying the forest through the window….still one of my favorite places to be…even in winter. I like I particularly in the morning when the sun first hits the treetops with golden light.

Flannel sheets. The week we change from percale to flannel sheets has a lot in common with decorating for the holidays….it is a celebration of the season…full of warmth and snuggles. It’s such a treat to get into a bed made with flannel sheets prewarmed by a heated mattress pad!

Brookside Gardens lights. Our walk around the lights at Brookside Gardens was even more celebratory this year since we didn’t do our traditional visit to the garden lights in 2020!

Pumpkin roll. Our grocery bakery has this treat seasonally. My daughter is the one that introduced me to them several years ago so the celebration is a special food of the season that prompts me to savor the positive impact she has always had on my life.

My birthday…my parents’ wedding anniversary. Celebration abounds in December for my family…every year.

Coursera course – Anatomy of the upper and lower extremities. What a great way to fill up the lulls this month. It’s challenging enough to require my full attention! Celebrating the course…grateful to the Yale faculty for producing it…Coursera for hosting it.

Druid Hill Park for birding. Celebrating the walk around the park as we did it…and in hindsight that it was before the Omicron variant was spiking in our area.  

My mother’s experience coming home from the hospital. I am celebrating that she is getting focused therapy that is showing positive results….more than any previous hospitalizations.

Telephone conversations. Celebrating all the alternative communications we have…since I didn’t travel in December. Even though we do texts and emails and zoom…somehow the telephone seems to be the one where the deeper communication is occurring (maybe because it is synchronous, one on one and not as ‘quick’).

Quiche. When I make quiche…I simple use what I have on hand – so I am celebrating that one I made recently turned out great!

30 years ago – February 1991

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I couldn’t find any pictures we took in February 1991. As I looked back through my notes, I found references to us have bad colds/flu – daughter first (with an ear infection) and then me…my husband last. I was busy at work trying to write a proposal while I was sick. I was worried about my parents having trouble buying the house they wanted because of an easement issue, one of my sisters needing surgery, and the sister-in-law that I had never met/that my husband hadn’t seen in almost 20 years communicating sporadically while she was getting rounds of cancer treatment; it was all happening very far away from Maryland but the worries were always there while I did everything else.

On a happier note – we discovered that our 17-month-old daughter had picked up some counting skills (maybe Sesame Street or at day care). Her dad was playing with her one evening dropping disks into a can with a slot…he picked up several and counted…one, two, three, four…as he dropped disks into the slot. She picked up one and dropped it into the slot and said ‘five’…and another and said ‘six.’ We were both so surprised that there was a little pause before we celebrated her accomplishment!

It seems that I always find some nuggets when I look back at notes and pictures from 30 years ago There are events – like the counting skills surprise – that my notes indicate I thought would be something we would always remember…but I didn’t. I’m so glad I have the notes and can savor the surprise again!

Flying Wild

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Last Friday – I was in Annapolis for a Flying Wild class offered by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. It was a day to learn some activities that celebrate birds designed for age groups I normally encounter as a volunteer and Maryland Master Naturalist. The forecast for the morning drive was a little threatening (freezing rain) but it didn’t materialize. It was my first time at the Tawes State Office Building where the class was held do I took a few minutes for pictures of lobby area of the building (it was rainy and cold so no outdoor pictures): Maryland symbols, a frayed Baltimore Checkerspot (which is very rare these days), a garden drawing on one of the windows looking out onto a real courtyard garden and a sculpture of a tree planting.

We did a sampling of the activities available from Flying Wild. One of my favorites was nest building. In teams of 3, we used wire to make a frame for a nest and then used materials that we had scored for strength, flexibility, and space filler. We could use as much material as we wanted except for clay; we were only allowed a golf ball amount of that. After we constructed our nest, there were tests: 3 marbles were used as ‘eggs’ (did they fit in the nest and not roll out when the nest was shaken); then some weights were put into the nest to simulate the growing chicks. It was a lot of fun and our nest ‘passed.’ We all gained a healthy respect for birds building nests with just their beaks and feet!

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Of course, I come home with lots of stuff – handouts and the book…a poster and a ‘prize’ for being on the winning team for the nestling feeding relay. There were Black Eye Susan Seeds to plant next spring too!

I’m already thinking about doing some of the Fly Wild activities with summer campers!

Bugs 101

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I took a lot of Coursera courses between 2015 and 2017….then I got so busy with other things that I didn’t do any in 2018. Now I am back to an occasional course when I have a lull in other activities.

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The most recent course was in August – Bug 101: Insect-Human Interactions from University of Alberta.

I enjoyed the course beyond the content too. It was more thought provoking that I thought it would be.

  • It was very evident how much has been learned since my biology undergraduate courses in the 1970s and I found myself thinking more about taking some biology courses again – challenging myself to identify all the deltas between the first time I took them and now.

  • The world has changed too…much caused by what we have done (or were doing prior to 1970 but didn’t quite realize the impact of our actions at the time). We were just beginning to fully understand the impact of DDT on the environment when I was in school.

  • Scanning ScienceDaily in my news feed helps keep me updated at a ‘headline’ level but having a course integrate the topic is something I should pursue for areas I am really interested in.

  • It’s good to know that Integrated Pest Management is pushing toward more sustainable agribusiness.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 3, 2019

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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.

Dive beneath the pyramids of Egypt’s black pharaohs – The challenge of excavating a 2,300-year-old tomb that is submerged in rising groundwater.

Another Fire in Greenland – There have been more reports of fires in the far north this year. Evidently warm dry air causes Arctic circle landscapes (that are not ice and snow) to be very flammable…fires start and burn quite easily.

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week: Pigeons and Doves – National Geographic – I was surprised at the diversity of these birds.

Call for green burial corridors alongside roads, railways and country footpaths -- ScienceDaily – I wonder how many other countries have a similar problem. Space for burials is probably already a challenge for almost all large cities.

How the sound in your office effects your mood – Aural architecture….how we listen to buildings, the sound within buildings, and how we react. It isn’t considered very often in the current built environment except for things like concert halls and sound proofing. Maybe in the future it will be. One segment of the article talked about the need for quite and nature sounds in city soundscapes…much better than sirens and traffic noise.

Air pollution speeds up aging of the lungs and increases chronic lung disease risk -- ScienceDaily – A large study…another reason to do everything we can to improve air quality.

Banding Hummingbirds – Banding larger birds has it’s challenges but a hummingbird….I’d never heard someone describe it. Kudos for the people that have the touch to do it well.

Engineers develop chip that converts wasted heat to usable energy -- ScienceDaily – Interesting idea…I wonder how long it will take to get this type of technology into laptops and solar panels?

How a Pokémon-like Card Game Is Changing the Way People Learn About the Environment – What a good idea. I hope more teachers start introducing their students to the Phylo game!

Solar panels cast shade on agriculture in a good way – Research from the University of Arizona…how solar panels could shade plants to help them survive in a hotter environment…and the plants help cool the air under the solar panels as they produce electricity! The plants that might do best are the leafy greens that tend to wilt in the mid-day heat. The leaves grow bigger in the shade too! Production of nutritious food and renewable energy in the same system.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 26, 2019

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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.

Learning Rule: Quantity, then Quality | Scott H Young – Quantity as an initial strategy is probably what I do most of the time….but I throw in a healthy dash of variety of mediums as I go after quantity. And I push myself to actively apply while I am learning all along the way.

Serious loneliness spans the adult lifespan but there is a silver lining: Feeling alone linked to psychological and physical ills, but wisdom may be a protective factor -- ScienceDaily – Most of the time we hear only about the negative impacts of loneliness (the emotion….not necessarily the physical situation). But there are many people physically alone but who don’t feel lonely. This study had a broad age rage of participants and looked at loneliness from multiple perspectives.

Aerial photos of U.S. national parks from space – National treasures…hope that the damage during the government shutdown is not widespread. Joshua Tree has been in the news….very sad.

Nutrients in blood linked to better brain connectivity, cognition in older adults -- ScienceDaily – Reinforcement that we need to eat foods with omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, carotenoids, lycopene, riboflavin, folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin D. The fatty acids and carotenoids are particularly linked to better functional brain network efficiency.

The Biggest Science News of 2018 | The Scientist Magazine®  - Just catching up on some end-of-2018 interesting posts. I had heard about some of these during the year – but missed some too.

The immune system's fountain of youth: Helping the immune system clear away old cells in aging mice helped restore youthful characteristics -- ScienceDaily -Early days…a lot more research needed. But an interesting idea…helping the body clear out old cells.

There’s a huge and hidden migration in North America — of dragonflies - The Washington Post – It appears that dragonflies migrate. The Monarch is the ‘poster insect’ for migration but it seems like there are more and more articles coming out about other insects that migrate too.

Meeting the Challenge of Feeding 10 Billion People Sustainably in 2050 - News | Planetizen – Land and water to grow food for an expanding population. It’s going to be challenging.

I Dug a Green Grave and Learned the Truth About the Dirty Death Industry – There is a Green Death Movement…and an example is in the Adirondacks called Spirit Sanctuary. In this case the goal is to return bodies to the Earth and preserve a landscape. Interesting…and far more sustainable that the more common burial practices (that include preservatives and waterproof vaults, sealed caskets) and cremation.

The Surprising Evolution of 'The Great Wave of Kanagawa' by Hokusai – A little art history.