13th Anniversary of my Blog

This is the 13th anniversary of this blog space. It all started when I made the firm decision to retire and started a daily blog…a few months before my career formally ended. It was a way for me to guarantee a little bit of structure in what loomed as a time of my life without many external requirements on my time.

Work had dominated so much of my time – way more than my college education during the first decade of my career…more than my daughter’s 1st 20 years in decades 1.5-3.5 of my career. My husband has been a constant through it all  - both of us putting considerable time into our careers. Mine ended without a glide path (intentional on my part)….his was a glide that finally ended a few years after my retirement. We both were aware of developing new ways to fill our days with a mix of activities that we chose – sometimes very different from things we did while our careers were active.

Writing a daily blog has had a positive impact on furthering my artistic side…and sometimes spurring me to action.

Previous anniversary posts: 12th anniversary, 11th anniversary, 10th anniversary, 9th anniversary

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 19, 2022

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.

Pinning the Day

Does it matter what day it is? During this time while we are still not leaving home very often – there are fewer things that prompt us to keep track of which day it is. Some are self-imposed:

• We do the laundry on Saturday. It is a habit not a requirement at all.

• I do the grocery shopping on Thursday. Since I retired, that has been the day most of the time. It’s changed slightly now to every other week rather than weekly.

• I call my parents on Tuesdays. My calls used to be ad hoc and sporadic…but I opted to set an item on my calendar to remind me as the pandemic stretched on.

Then there are the calendar items that are externally determined. These are the ones that are so reduced at this time.

• The time slot for our CSA share is Wednesday afternoon…every week until the end of October.

• The two-day Mid-Atlantic Climate Change Education Conference virtual sessions are 2 days later this month.

• The Climate and Sustainability Webinars are every other week through the end of August.

And that is all that is on my calendar! There are the recycle (Wednesday) and trash (Friday) that prompt us to remember the day of the week; they are not on the calendar and, so far, we have remembered them. I guess that is an indicator that we are still syncing with the calendar – pinning the day – even as we have less interactions that demand that we do so.

In general, I think we are more focused on the present…enjoying whatever we are doing now and for the next few hours…savoring our time today rather than thinking about the weeks ahead. There is an appeal I haven’t experienced all that often in my life.

Unique activities for yesterday:

Watched Stonehenge’s Summer Solstice Livestream. English Heritage had a Facebook Live event from Stonehenge. The summer solstice is a big event at the stones each year, but the pandemic has forced its closure…so this was a great opportunity to see the event without traveling! There was thunder and birdsong…and the stones. I clipped a couple of images from the sunset as I watched. Hopefully they’ll make the video available for playback from their Facebook page.

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Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/10/2020 - Gleanings

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Finishing Vermont Life issues. I finally browsed through the last of the Vermont Life issues. The magazine was published from 1946-2018 and most of the issues are available on Internet Archive. I started at the beginning back in July and just finished the last one (from summer 2018) yesterday. Every issue contains great photography…of beautiful places. It’s a great armchair travel to a place…and through time. I had a friend that had family in Vermont when I was growing up in Texas; she visited there almost every summer. I found myself looking at the pictures from the 1960s and realizing that she probably saw some of those places. I remember her talking about picking blueberries.

IDing a plant for my sister. She sent me a picture from her Texas yard. I found a reference from Texas Master Naturalists easily enough – and passed along the id: Southern Dewberry (p. 23 of the reference).

Cleaning the filter on the air purifier. We’ve been running the air purifier more in our bedroom to keep the pollen allergies at bay – at least while we sleep. The red light came on to tell use the filter needed to be cleaned….it was an easy job…but we were without it for a couple of nights while everything dried. My husband and I both noticed the difference when we began running it again yesterday afternoon.

Hearing the wind sweeping through the forest. Yesterday afternoon was very gusty – not stormy…it was a mostly sunny day. The wind came roaring through the forest ripping off small pieces of leaves and bud coverings from the tulip poplars; some of the bits ended up in our gutters.

The red maple is full of seeds – looking golden from afar but reds/greens show when looking closer; the seeds are mostly staying put; they are not ready to helicopter away from the tree.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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 to avoid touching your face so much - BBC Future – Something we are all trying to learn to do along with making masks for whenever we venture away from the house.

A more balanced protein intake can reduce age-related muscle loss -- ScienceDaily – My take away -older people (me included) need to have a high quality protein at lunch…not leave it for the evening meal!

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Bald Eagles and the Unfortunate Power of Forgetting – When I was growing up, bald eagles were rare. They are not now because people took action and stuck with it. Remembering will keep Bald Eagles around and maybe provide a blueprint for the way we all move forward to a healthier Earth.

Scientists find Earth and moon not identical oxygen twins -- ScienceDaily – The finding may challenge the current understanding of the formation of our Moon…..future modeling will need to explore that possibility. Previously models have tried to account for complete oxygen isotope homogenization between the Earth and Moon.

How to escape the tyranny of the clock - BBC Future – Now that I am retired…the tyranny of the clock is not as overwhelming as it was during my career. Right now – there is even less requirement for me to do anything at a particular time….maybe a Zoom meeting or when my shopper is collecting my groceries. Otherwise I set my own time. Text messages or telephone calls or my husband wanting to talk/assistance with a project are interruptions that are easily handled with whatever I am doing. It’s an easy time to enjoy a loosening of the tyranny of the clock.

Top 25 birds of the week: Yellow Feathers - Wild Bird Revolution – Just as I was looking at this group of pictures – an American Goldfinch flew to our feeder! I even got a picture! It has quite got the full summer plumage yet.

See Seven New Dazzling, Dancing Peacock Spiders | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – A 1.5-minute video.

Does Equinox Sunset Highlight Egypt’s Sphinx? - Archaeology Magazine – The sun sets over the right shoulder on the spring and fall equinoxes!

Regular Exercise Helps Patients Combat Cancer | The Scientist Magazine® - It may benefit both mental and physical health. This is an example of exercise helping – even when you are sick and probably don’t feel like doing it.

Watch Seven Medieval Castles’ Digital Reconstruction – A animated way to learn about castles…and some history.

Filling a Day of Social Distance – 4/5/2020 – Our Yard

Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

Here are the unique activities for yesterday:

Wearing Sherman TX earrings. I hadn’t worn them recently. I bought them in a boutique on the square after lunch at Fulbelli’s. Savoring the memory!

Seeing a Carolina Wren with nest material. The bird (probably a male) appeared to be looking around to see if a female was noticing his find. I didn’t see exactly where he went but it was in the general direction of our gas grill. We had a Carolina wren nest built in the grill a few years ago. I hope it isn’t happening again!

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Loosening sense of the day of the week. It’s harder to remember which day of the week it is because the days are so much the same. I try to include some variety every day, but the activities are not pinned to a day of the week (except for laundry which, for some unknown reason, we still do on Saturdays). If the pandemic was not raging, I’d be volunteering 3-5 days a week with Howard County Conservancy’s outdoor field trips for school groups, guiding Robinson Nature Center visitors at the salt water Touch Tank, and (by mid-Month) morning shifts at the Brookside Gardens Wings of Fancy (butterfly) exhibit. None of those organizations are open now. The calendar for April is a big blank.

Mowing the grass…doing some yard work. It’s the first mowing of the year…not really grass, mostly weeds. My husband did the mowing after I picked up twigs and small branches under trees to make the mowing easier. I also started a new compost pile with kitchen scraps and paper shreds.

Photographing the best of our yard. The trees are pretty this time of year. The red maple samaras are ripening. Soon the squirrels and birds will enjoy them, and they’ll helicopter off the tree. From afar the tree looks golden brown…looking more closely the colors are more appealing.

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The tulip poplar is full of new spring-green leaves. Soon the buds will open. Right now, the buds are surrounded by small leaves. The trees themselves are far from the ‘wall of green’ they will become.

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There are a lot of violets blooming in the thin grass under the trees.

The cherry tree is still full of blooms, but the petals are beginning to fly.

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The plum has lost its flower petals, but the rest of the flower is still visible among the new leaves that are a red-purple color.

I heard a cardinal high the oak tree. The buds are larger than they were a week ago…but there are no blooms or leaves yet.

Trimming hair. My hair was short enough going into the ‘stay at home as much as possible’ mode but my husband needed to have the hair on the back of his neck trimmed. Fortunately, we have clippers and it was easy for me to do; it bothers him when he wears a shirt with a collar so wanted it gone. Otherwise, he’s letting his hair grow too.

Looking at the COVID-19 cases per 10K population map from the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago. It goes down to the county level. There is also a social distancing activity map down to county. Interesting….and scary at the same time. I try not to spend too much time looking at them.

Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 26, 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 #101 and #102 – 50 bird pictures this week! My favorite in the first group is the barn owl (and the other owls in this group). My favorite in the second group are the two pictures of spotted owlets! --- I am drawn to owls this week for some reason.

Voyager: Inside the world’s greatest space mission – The two Voyager space craft were launched in 1977…and are both sending back messages to earth.

Trees with ‘crown shyness’ mysteriously avoid touching each other – I haven’t observed this phenomenon in our Maryland forests…but now when I am in a forest, I’ll always look for it!

Time Spent – Who Americans spend their time with (from Richard Watson’s blog). It changes with age. The last chart shows that as we get older we spend more and more time alone.

Air pollutions ranking in 32 cities –  LA ranks 24; Washington DC, San Francisco and New York are 26-28; Boston is 31. Delhi, Beijing, and Cairo are the top three.

Trees and shrubs offer new food crops to diversity the farm – Ongoing research from the University of Illinois trying to mimic the habitat features, carbon storage, and nutrient-holding capacities of a natural system with a farming method that incorporates berry and nut bearing shrubs/trees with alley cropping (hay or row crops)….to be economically and environmentally sound.

AWEA releases map of every wind farm and factory in America – There is a link to the interactive map. The red diamonds are manufactures and the blue dots are the wind farms themselves. It’s easy to see that manufactures happens a lot in areas other than where the wind farms are located….that the center of the country has a lot of installed wind turbines! We saw some of them in Iowa on our way to and from the solar eclipse last Monday.

Diversity Lacking in US Academia: Study – Under-representation of African Americans, Hispanics, and women in STEM faculties at public universities. There is a similar lack of diversity in PhD programs. On a positive note: the assistant professor is more diverse (more Asians, Hispanics and women) that the associate or full professor rank.  Unfortunately, this positive finding is not true for African Americans. Overall – still a challenge….and it impacts the broader labor market as well.

More than 300,000 Atlantic Salmon Spill into Pacific – Oh no! Hopefully this is not catastrophic in the long run. But – Why are they growing Atlantic salmon in pens in Puget Sound anyway?

Thanks to Co-op, Small Iowa Town Goes Big on Solar – Kalona, Iowa – not far from our route to the eclipse! It comes down to local self-reliance and economic development that made sense for this small town. Somehow a pointer to this article (from last February) was in a blog post I looked at when I returned home and I noticed where the town was…small world.