Ten Little Celebrations – December 2024

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December has so many big celebrations. My little ones ended up not being as associated as usual with the big ones. Half the celebrations were at Festival of the Cranes…perhaps because my husband and I were so glad to be there again after a long hiatus beginning with the COVID years.

First frost. I celebrated noticing frost crystals on a car next to mine in the parking lot of the clinic where I go for physical therapy….and photographing them!

Warm drinks on cold days. Hot chocolate is my favorite, and I celebrated figuring out that the cocoa will dissolve better in a small amount of hot water before adding the other ingredients. I enjoy a cup every morning. Hot cider is my other hot drink on cold days.

PT exercises for the Road. I anticipated asking my therapist for some exercises I could do during our road trip to New Mexico…and celebrated that they worked!

Easier drive than expected to New Mexico. My husband I celebrated that there was no heavy traffic or construction along our route during the long day of driving from Missouri to New Mexico. It was a great beginning for our Festival of the Cranes experience.

Cranes at Sunset. We celebrated two great sunsets photographing cranes. The first one was my favorite because we thought the clouds were going to block too much of the sun at first…and then a hole appeared at the perfect time.

Bluebirds and green heron. Campuses are quiet places in the early morning…great places to see some birds – at least in the case of New Mexico Tech in Socorro. We also saw a great horned owl!

Harris’s hawk. These are probably my favorite raptors because they hunt in groups…are beautiful birds. I celebrated seeing two of them at close range with their falconer.

Sunrise in Tucumcari. As we headed back toward Missouri in the early morning, the sun was rising as we neared Tucumcari, NM. The clouds were in perfect position to keep the sun from shining directly in our eyes and the color (and reflection of color) spectacular.

Red velvet cake. Celebrating just the cake – no icing!

Joplin Mineral and History Museum. A day trip with my daughter…celebrated the time to talk, the museum (interesting display of minerals along with galena which was mined in Joplin), and the Mexican food for lunch.

Sandhill Cranes at Sunset

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The winter sunrise and sunset with sandhill cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge are always good photography challenges. We had two sunset opportunities during our trip in early December for the Festival of the Cranes. The first day was cloudy but there was a ‘hole’ in the clouds at just the right time to light up a group of cranes. The problem was the cranes were grouped together…and chowing down rather than settling for the night. The birds were in one of the flooded ‘wet soil’ farming units that had plenty of small invertebrates and seeds in the shallow water for them to eat. The cranes were up and own…focused on feeding…and the stubble made for a messy water surface.

I didn’t ever find a solitary crane free of stubble. The image below was a closest as I got…but I still like the silhouette of the bird…balance on one leg…surrounded by the orange glint of sunset on the water.

The next opportunity was on a different pond, and we arrived well before sunset. I got a zoomed shot of a female Northern Shoveler than I liked…and turned around to get a picture of the moon. The idea was to use the color of sunset and then – perhaps – do some photography with the light of the moon.

The sun went down, and I realized that the water was shallow enough that the surface was not going to be a smooth in this location either.

I opted to try to photograph cranes as they flew in to roost…backlit by the waning sunset. I didn’t get good enough at it until the color was mostly gone. The moon was bright behind me.

The cranes were moving about their roost pond but not so intent on feeding as the previous day/location. My favorite picture was one of the last that I took….with two cranes moving through silver water.

Other Birds at Bosque del Apache

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There are birds other than cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge too. They didn’t seem quite as numerous as when we were there pre-Covid…but we didn’t spend as much time looking for them either.

In a trip around the wildlife loop, we saw Northern Pintails, Buffleheads, Northern Shovellers, American Wigeon, White-crowned Sparrows, Sandhill Cranes, Snow Geese, and Ruddy Ducks.

Winter plants/landscapes are also abundant…water, mountains, cottonwoods, cattails….knobby ice on the surface of shallow ponds.

There are two bird feeder areas near the refuge visitor center. Sparrows (white crowned and house), Gambel’s quail, starlings, Red-Winged blackbirds, Curved Bill Thrasher, Spotted Towhee, and White-winged Dove were frequent visitors either on or under the feeders!

My favorite non-crane sighting was the Spotted Towhee.

Previous Festival of the Cranes posts

Gleanings of the Week Ending December 21, 2024

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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.

6 Things You Should Never Wear on a Flight – Most of the suggestions are good for road trips as well.

What Your Last Name Says About Your History – Interesting…a different perspective on names.

Photos of the Week – December 6, 2024 – Winter sunrise/sunset beauty on the prairie.

German Archaeologists Discovered the Iconic Bust of Nefertiti in an Ancient Egyptian Sculptor’s Studio – One of the most famous of ancient Egyptian artifacts…’ownership’ has been questioned from the beginning.

Lifesaver for wild bees: The importance of quarries – Research done in Germany, but Missouri has considerable limestone…perhaps we should be striving to keep quarries open rather than overgrown with woody plants. Many wild bees in Germany and in Missouri nest in the ground and often need open, sunny areas to do so.

Archaeologists discover key tool that helped early Americans survive the ice age - Tiny artifacts unearthed at a Wyoming site where a mammoth was butchered 13,000 years ago are revealing intriguing details about how the earliest Americans survived the last ice age. Archaeologists found 32 needle fragments made from animal bone buried almost 15 feet (nearly 5 meters). Analyzing the bone collagen of the needles revealed they were created from the bones of red foxes, bobcats, mountain lions, lynx, the now-extinct American cheetah, and hares or rabbits!

Here Are 2024’s Best Northern Lights Photographs - From a purple and green sky in Canada's Banff National Park to an unexpected, fiery orange appearance in Namibia, this year's auroras took us by surprise. While called the Northern Lights Photographer of the Year, there are plenty of Southern Lights represented in this year's collection too.

The Arctic Could Have Its First ‘Ice-Free’ Day by as Early as 2027 - The first summer on record in which practically all the sea ice in the Arctic melts could occur much earlier than previously expected. In a new study, scientists warn that the ever-increasing greenhouse emissions may bring us closer to an ice-free Arctic by the end of the decade.

Water Infrastructure, Disasters, Water Scarcity & Security, Potable Water, & Conflict – A post about what happened to Ashville, NC. Water-related disasters currently make up over 90% of all disasters on Earth, with record-breaking floods and droughts making headlines around the world. Over the past ten years, the number of fatalities from these catastrophes has doubled. Climate change, warming surface water temperatures, and more aggressive hurricanes making their way up to some of the planet’s oldest mountains in North Carolina have all contributed to a growing awareness that rising temperatures have disrupted the entire water infrastructure of the Appalachians.

Meet the Mysterious Woman Who Shaped MoMA – A biographical post about Lillie P. Bliss and the creation of the Museum of Modern Art as an exhibition focused on her opens.

Road trip from Missouri to New Mexico

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My husband and I were excited to get to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge last week. This was our third time to attend…the first since the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the first time we drove rather than fly since we had moved to Missouri – a bit closer that where we lived previously (in Maryland). We made the drive over 2 days.

The first day was a 10-hour drive. We left the house at 6 AM and drove in the dark at first…and then it was foggy for most of the route through Oklahoma although I did spot a harrier (hawk) flying near the road in western Oklahoma). I didn’t take any pictures.

By the time we got to the Texas panhandle, the sun was shining. The rest stop building had a berm on two sides and dramatic white walls with a star cut out. It was very windy and cold – we were walking fast to and from the car!  The mosaic in the bathroom was a lot like the scene outside; the old Texas rest stops all had mosaics and I am glad that they have continued the idea in the new ones.

The panhandle of Texas has a lot of wind turbines. They were almost all in motion!

As we crossed into New Mexico, there was a welcome center. I took a picture of the front and back of the sign…but it was still very cold.

We stopped for the night at Santa Rosa NM…about 2.5 hours from our destination.

I observed the changes in vegetation as we drove on toward Albuquerque. The interstate curves around through the mountains just before getting to the city…a very scenic stretch of highway. Since I wasn’t driving, I took some pictures. There is a lot of rock – but vegetation too…and highway art.

We got to Socorro NM, ate lunch, made a reconnoiter drive around the Bosque del Apache wildlife loop, checked into the hotel, and then my husband headed out to a nighttime photoshoot at the Very Large Array; maybe he’ll share his photos with me, and I’ll post the best ones. I appreciated an evening on my own to unpack and get ready for the flurry of Festival of the Cranes events.

2024 in Review – Life Events

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This is the first post reviewing what happened to me in 2024; I’m starting with the big events.

2024 included a bigger-than-usual event…perhaps even a pivot point in my life: my mother died. We had shared our lives for over 70 years; no one else can fill the gap completely. The months leading up to her death (hospitalization, moving to assisted living, rallying, COVID-19) and the immediate aftermath (the funeral, selling my parents’ house, finalizing her financial affairs, comforting my father) are still fresh in my memory. I’m not completely sure that the pivot is complete even now. My relationship with my siblings (3 sisters) is still changing.

All the other events of 2024 are not as life changing:

Taking the Identifying Wood Plants class at Missouri State University and the Missouri Master Naturalist training were an important step back to pre-COVID times. Both have prompted an uptick in volunteering and discovering ‘favorite places’ close to home.

Attending a funeral for my cousin. She was more than a decade younger than me, and we had not seen each other frequently in recent years. It happened not that long after my mother’s death and the sadness was quite different…for a life that ended early.

I made many short trips (day trips, one or two nights away from home) with my daughter. Sometimes with my husband along too. There are so many new places to explore when one moves to a new part of the country. We have been here in Missouri for 2.5 years and there still seems a lot to see for the first time within the ‘short trip’ range.

Nevin Otto Winter Travel Books

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This week’s books are 9 well-illustrated travel books by Nevin Otto Winter published between 1910 and 1918. I was most interested in the illustrations – mostly photographs – although the narrative would serve to understand the perspective of an American traveler of that time period encountering foreign customs. I picked two sample images from each book to include with this post but follow the link to Internet Archive to experience the whole book. Enjoy!

 Brazil and her people of to-day

Dallas and Back – October

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I made my monthly trek to Dallas and back late last week. It was a cold morning as I left Missouri…getting away well before 6 and my nav system routing be around a nighttime road closure before I even made it to the highway! It was almost sunrise by the time I made my first rest stop. The color in the sky changed even in the short time I was in the building getting a protein shake for breakfast.

The color was mostly faded when I stopped the second time although it was still within the hour after sunrise.

The drive was uneventful although it seems like there is more active construction on some parts of my route than a month ago. Perhaps they are trying to reach a milestone before winter weather or maybe previous work had been hampered by very high temperatures in southern Oklahoma and Texas.

I visited with my dad and then headed to the hotel to relax…recover from getting up a little earlier than usual and driving for almost 7 hours.

The next morning, I was up and ready for a breakfast at the hotel at 6:30 then arrived to visit my dad shortly after 8 AM. We took a walk around the block. The weather was coolish (he wore a quilted vest over his long-sleeved shirt) and the sun was bright. Some of the houses had fall/Halloween decorations. The bald cypress trees I had noticed last time I walked with him were beginning to lose their needles. They will be ‘bald’ soon!

I was on the road heading home shortly after 10. The drive between the assisted living residence in Dallas and the border between Texas and Oklahoma is the most stressful part of the route – the speed limit is 70 mph for most of the way and people are trying to go that fast and beyond even when the traffic is too heavy to allow that safely.

I got home by about 5:30 and my husband informed me that we might be about to see the aurora after it got dark. We went out about 8…and there it was…faint but definitely some color in the Missouri sky!

Buckyball and Compton Gardens

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We visited the Buckyball at The Momentary on our only evening in Bentonville. There were not many people around; we enjoyed reclining on the wooden seats and taking pictures/videos….until we realized how many mosquitoes there were!

It was a Sunday evening, so the eating places were closed…we walked around the nearby garden area. The lights were still on the sculptures. If I return the area, I’ll plan to be there on an evening when businesses are open!

The next morning we walked in Compton Gardens. A few weeks previously when my daughter was there, she had seen lots of butterflies and goldfinches. We didn’t see any goldfinches but there were a few skippers (one was a tawny edged skipper) and a great spangled fritillary butterfly around.

The gardens had been damaged by a tornado recently and some trails were still closed. Some critical cleanups had been done. I took a picture of a recently cut stump and counted the rings in the image. The tree was more than 70 years old!

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (2)

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There is also a lot to see in the outdoor area of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.  There were some parts that were closed because of recent storm damage (downed trees…at least one piece of art: R. Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome).

The first sculpture we saw was near the entrance – a silver tree.

Some areas are relatively wild: horse nettles, thistles, shelf-fungus, mallows and grasses.

I was thrilled to photograph a butterfly since I’ve seen so few larger ones this year.

The design on the upper level of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bachman-Wilson House was attractive. We got tickets (free) when we first got to the museum, and entered the house less than 2 hours after our arrival (enough time to do a broad look at the art on display inside the museum). Pictures are not allowed on the inside of the house. I liked the main living room but felt the rest of the house was claustrophobic (low ceilings and narrow hallways).

There were two installations of Chihuly glass.

There was a giant spider sculpture. It was a good place to take a little rest.

There were several animal sculptures along the trails. I photographed a bear with a fish, a smiling pig, and arabbit with an itching ear.

Water features are near most of the trails. I appreciated the structures in one of the streams to ‘slow the flow.’

There was a turn out from one trail to view quartz crystals in boulders that often contain imprints organisms from long ago in parts that are not crystals.

We probably spent at least as much time outdoors at Crystal Bridges as we did inside! It would be interesting to go again in a different season…maybe next spring.

Lake Springfield – August 2024

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We set out to the Clay Henshaw Memorial Access on Lake Springfield since we had not viewed the lake from that perspective before. It was a little too late in the morning for birding, but I took a few pictures of flowers growing in the area.

There was a large (lotus?) leaf on the water surface that had interesting patterns of green in the deteriorating leaf that curled upward at the edges.

The sun was very bright, and we could feel the temperature rising.

We headed over to the boathouse…. which is our favorite place on the lake. The area around the building is full of native plants created by the area Master Naturalists…some with seed pods already.

As we started toward the meadow, I noticed that that the purple martins have already left. There were a few birds near the feeders…and the moon was visible in the nearly clear sky.

I took pictures of dragonflies that landed on the paved path or in the grass long enough for me to photograph. Most of them didn’t…they were on the prowl for breakfast.

The thistles were attracting skippers, but I didn’t see larger butterflies feeding in the meadow.

The sunny meadow had a lot of tall vegetation…not as colorful as earlier in the season. Many of the meadow plants are producing seed now. The goldenrod has not started blooming yet.

As we got to the far side of the meadow, a bird flew into a tree. I got several reasonably good pictures: a Great Crested Flycatcher!

There are two trenches made by storm runoff in that area…and both are dry right now. It’s been a dry August here.

We turned around and made our way back to the car…pleased with our morning activity before the heat of the day became overwhelming.

Road Trip to Texas – August 2024 (1)

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I am anticipating taking more than one trip to Dallas to see my dad in August since two of my three sisters are traveling during the month; it’s more challenging for one of us to see him every day when there are less people in the rotation! This road trip was easier that my recent ones – not as many delays from construction or accidents. However….there were still moments of drama….

As I headed out of my neighborhood, I noticed a skunk amble from my neighbor’s corner flowerbed and move off down a side street where there are houses on both sides. It’s probably very familiar with the area but I had not seen it before.

About 45 minutes into the trip, there was on overturned truck on the opposite side of the interstate with trailer partially on the median…partial blocking the inner lane. There were a lot of cars waiting to get by on that side. There didn’t seem to be any obvious cause of the accident other than the sun being in everyone’s eyes driving in that direction.

As soon as I got to Oklahoma, the wind picked up and there were bands of low dark clouds. I kept a careful watch for funnel shapes since they looked so strange and the trees along the interstate where clearly being buffeted by the wind. Not a good time to be beside a truck either. Fortunately, the wind calmed down within an hour and I only got a short sprinkle rather than heavy rain.

After those first couple of hours, the rest of the drive was uneventful by comparison. I stopped at the Texas Welcome Center on US75 for a snack lunch and took pictures of some of their plantings. The beautyberry seeds are beginning to ripen.

I found a feather on the sidewalk…wondered what kind of bird had left it behind.

The street parking at my dad’s assisted living home was shady…but the temperature still felt very hot. When I came out after visiting with him for a few hours, my car said it was 108 outside as I drove to my hotel.

The hotel turns their air conditioning down to the 60s and it felt way too cold. I set the thermostat in my room to 75 and was more comfortable.

The next morning, I headed over to see my dad again and got there as he was finishing his breakfast. It was cool enough for a walk and we worked on a puzzle. I was on my way home by 11. I had planned to stop at the Oklahoma Welcome Center on US75 on the way home but needed to buy gas instead.

The only picture I took on the way home was a grasshopper that was sitting on the sidewalk outside one of my stops along the way.

And so…another road trip to Texas is history.

Celestron Origin (1)

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My husband has been taking one image per clear evening in our back yard with his new Celestron Origin Intelligent Home Observatory.

He has been changing the exposures every night from 20 minutes to over 90 minutes…taking pictures of galaxies and nebulae: Whirlpool Galaxy, Bode’s Nebula, Fireworks Galaxy, and Bubble Nebulae. The images below are created without post processing outside the telescope!  

The skies at our house are not particularly dark; there is one streetlight that is particularly problematic…and a neighbor’s house with twinkle lights around their deck. Our house blocks the streetlight in front of our house – which is good. Still – the initial days with the new telescope have been positive ones. There is a huge advantage to doing things in the back yard in a couple of hours each night rather than driving someplace, staying up all night (dosing in the tent during longer exposures) making the most of the night, and then either sleeping in a tent in the early morning hours or driving home.

He is planning to go to the Okie-Tex Star Party at the end of September. Then he’ll go into the mode of staying up all night…getting the most out of the dark skies for photography and interacting with other amateur astronomers. I’ll stay home to care for our 3 cats.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 10, 2024

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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.

Versailles’s Hidden Scientific Legacy to Surface in a Major U.K. Exhibition - The five-mile-squared grounds were mapped out by geometricians and astronomers; keeping the 14,000 fountains bubbling further required developing an unprecedented hydraulic engineering system. AND… Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who headed the Paris Observatory, turned skyward, mapping the moon with a precision that wouldn’t be matched until the late 19th century. AND… Hundreds gathered in the courtyard of Versailles to watch the flight of a hot-air balloon, agronomists developed a hardier potato capable of feeding the masses, and an inoculation against smallpox was discovered.

Air conditioning causes around 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. How will this change in the future? – The article concludes: “Rather than lamenting air conditioning's impact on energy use, we need to accept that demand for cooling will increase, work on making it affordable for those who need it most, and build efficient solutions that ensure electricity grids worldwide can cope.”

Ancient Rome’s Appian Way Is Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site - Rome’s Appian Way, an ancient highway dating to the fourth century B.C.E., has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Could the shingles vaccine lower your risk of dementia? - The idea that vaccination against viral infection can lower the risk of dementia has been around for more than two decades. Associations have been observed between vaccines, such as those for diphtheria, tetanus, polio and influenza, and subsequent dementia risk. It may be the resulting lack of viral infection creating this effect. We need more research exploring in greater detail how infections are linked with dementia. This will help us understand the root causes of dementia and design potential therapies.

Chickasaw National Recreation Area's Monkey Tree Needs Some TLC - An Osage orange tree estimated to be about 130 years old with three thick spreading trunks that generations of children have played on.

Divers Discover Mesmerizing Roman Mosaic Beneath the Sea – Near Naples…a villa in a city known as the Las Vegas of the Roman Empire…now under water.

Healthy diet with less sugar is linked to younger biological age – The correlations between a diet that is rich in vitamins and minerals, especially one without much added sugar, and having a younger biological age at the cellular level.

Agriculture: Less productive yet more stable pastures - Grassland optimized for high yield responds much more sensitively to periods of drought than less intensively used meadows and pastures.

Anne Boleyn’s Childhood Home Is Restored to Its Tudor Glory – The interiors of rooms restored to the style they had during Anne Boleyn’s time.

Forest carbon storage has declined across much of the Western U.S., likely due to drought and fire – Forests in some parts of the world, like the American West, probably do not have the potential to help curb climate change.

Zooming – July 2024

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As I reviewed my group of zoomed images from July, the favorite subjects of the month emerged: hot air balloons, animals (birds, butterflies, a squirrel), museum and monuments, and (of course) plants dominated by flowers. The places included areas close to home, Springfield Botanical Garden, Oklahoma City (First American’s Museum and Oklahoma City National Memorial), Tulsa (Philbook Museum), and Joplin (Wildcat Glades)

The hot air balloons are from a Balloon Glow event. They didn’t leave the ground!

I enjoyed the pottery room and garden structures at the Philbrook, the light of late afternoon as I walked around the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and the wall art in the First Americans Museum).

Animals included a robin, a green heron, a skipper, a swallowtail (not sure what kind), a fox squirrel, and a juvenile male mallard.

And then there were plants. Most were flowers but there were seeds (dandelion puff), a pine cone, and olorful new redbud leaves.

It was a good month for photography and being outdoors. Only the pot and the wall art are indoor images.

Wildcat Glades

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My husband and I visited Wildcat Glades one morning last week. He did not feel up to hiking, so we did some photography near the Nature Group buildings. There were several varieties of sunflowers. I did some macro photography with my phone (iPhone 14 Pro max); my favorites are the landscape oriented one and the flower with a petal across its center…a shy sunflower.

I also took some others with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HS) since I couldn’t get close enough to them with the phone

The Queen Ann’s Lace was in a grassy area…so the bridge camera’s zoom was used for those one too.

There was a small water feature that was almost surrounded by taller vegetation.

There were several birds (Eastern bluebird, House Finches, Eastern Phoebe) that I photographed although the cloudy day was not great for bird photography. We’ll have to visit on a sunny day next time.

One insect was still for long enough for me to go into macro mode again!

Bed bug?

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During the last year of my career (more than 10 years ago), one of my colleagues missed some meetings and I found out from him later about his trauma with bed bugs. Based on the timing of his symptoms developing, he’d picked them up in a hotel near Dulles Airport on one of his frequent business trips to the area…not realized that he had them until his home was contaminated too and he had terrible bed bug bites particularly on his face. He was overwhelmed by what happened; it had a significant impact on his life for about 6 months.

Even so, I didn’t change anything about the way I traveled. Something happened on my last trip to Dallas that is changing my strategy.

I was sitting on the small hotel-room couch in the evening and noticed a small bug crawling across my t-shirt. I crushed it and wiped it onto a paper towel; it left a bloody streak. My first assumption was flea or tick. Then I thought it might be an adult bed bug although at the time I thought it was too big to be a bed bug. I still went to check the seams of the mattress…and discovered that there was a mattress cover than looked very tightly woven. The bedding was the usual white and I didn’t see anything on the bed that looked suspicious. I looked at the crushed bug, but it was too mutilated for identification.

On the way home, I began to realize that I had to assume that it could have been an adult bedbug (and where there are adults…there are likely eggs and nymphs); my husband did some research while I drove home. When I got home:

  • Almost everything stayed in the car.

  • I took a shower/shampoo immediately and the clothes I took off were put into a plastic bag and put back in my car.

  • I stayed mostly in the downstairs apartment area for 2 days/nights (laundering linens in hot water and dryer after the 1st night).

  • After the 1st night, I put the pillows I’d used into my car and parked it in the driveway; the day was hot and sunny. The thermometer in the car indicated that the interior was above 130 degrees for 6 hours.

I still don’t know if I was exposed to bedbugs or not. I haven’t developed any symptoms of bites and it’s been 8 days. Sometimes it takes time for the symptoms to appear.

The experience has me making some changes to how I travel:

  • Pack a small collection vial. If I see a small bug – I will put it in the vial rather than crushing it so I can ID it.

  • Carry my luggage into the hotel rather than rolling it. Put it on a hard surface rather than carpeted for the duration.

  • Put dirty clothes in a sealed plastic bag.

  • Shower thoroughly when I first get home and put dirty clothes in a sealed plastic bag

  • In the summer – leave fabric items (sealed plastic bags, hats, purse, shoes, etc.) in the car and park it outside after the trip; make sure the temperature is above 120 degrees for several hours.

  • In the winter – put fabric items in the freezer (downstairs apartment) for several days

  • Buy and install mattress covers that prevent bed bugs from accessing the mattress.

Some websites I found helpful:

https://www.thespruce.com/handle-bed-bug-infestation-laundry-2146304

https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/bedbugs-infestation

Johan Nieuhof’s drawings of Brazil, China, and India in the mid 1600s

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Johannes Nieuhof  travelled for the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East Company…and documented his travels with drawings and annotations. According to the Wikipedia entry, he traveled from 1640 (when he was 22) to his death in 1672 (went missing in Madagascar) only returning home for short visits in 1658 and 1671. He entrusted his notes and papers to his brother Hendrik who produced the books attributed to Johannes. These ‘books of the week’ by Nieuhof are two available from Internet Archive.

Voyages and travels into Brazil and the East-Indies, 1640-1649

At the time these books were published, Nieuhof’s drawings of China were the first to show the country true to nature. He drew realistic images of structures, people, and plants/animals he saw as he travelled.  

Then and Now – Cars and Driving

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The first car I remember well was in the 1960s – a small red Ford my father bought for my mother. It did not have air conditioning…or seat belts (it was before they became standard equipment in the later 1960s). The windows were opened/closed manually with a handle. There were no car seats for children either although my mother generally put my sisters and I in the back seat. I was the oldest so sometimes road in the front seat. It did have power steering and brakes…probably because my mother was not very good driving with a manual transmission. The car was the second for our household and was parked at the curb since my father’s car was parked in the one-car garage.

My father’s car did have air conditioning and was larger. He started buying new cars (Oldsmobile or Buick were his preferred make) almost every year in by 1963; my mother got to drive his older car and they traded in her car. Those cars had windows that opened and closed with a button. I remember the first car my father owned that had seatbelts because he had a serious accident in it; a truck sideswiped the car on the driver’s side and he always claimed that he would not have survived if he’d been wearing a seatbelt since he was pushed to the passenger side during the accident. It took several years before he started wearing seat belts consistently and even more years before he took his keys/locked his car when he parked it. I also remember my father’s first car that has radial tires in the late 1960s; the road noise was noticeably different.

Most of our road trips were to visit family members. My mother drove my sisters and I to visit her parents (aunt, uncles, cousins) at least once every summer. The trek was between Wichita Falls TX and Beggs OK and was a lot of 2 lane roads…often very curvy. We took food and drink with us…stopped at gasoline stations for the bathrooms (which were usually in bad shape). My mother was not a great driver…but she knew her limitations and never had an accident. She shared that when she first learned to drive, she tended to look at the front of the car when she was driving; my dad noticed shortly after they married and coached her to look further out – to become a more defensive driver.

I learned to drive in the two cars my parents were driving at the time (a large Oldsmobile and Buick) later in the 1960s. My driver’s ed class emphasized wearing seat belts and I convinced my whole family we needed to ‘buckle up’ consistently.  Both of my parents encouraged me to drive whenever I was in the car with them as soon as I got my learner’s permit; I got my driver’s license on my 16th birthday and became the designated driver for my younger sisters and my parents when I was available. I didn’t have my own car until after the 1960s.

Now – the car I drive is smaller – a plug-in hybrid (2017 Prius Prime). The air conditioning and heating has a thermostat rather than the 1960s switch controls. Perhaps the equivalent of the big Buicks and Oldsmobiles of the 1960s are the SUVs that are very popular now. The cruise control is adaptive. Many of the controls are digital rather than switches. The navigation system is a big improvement over a collection of paper maps or a road atlas kept in the car at all times. There are handy places to put drinks that were absent in the 1960s cars. My car has a hatch opening in the back rather than the enclosed trunk of the big 1960s cars; SUVs also have an opening in the back that connects to the interior of the car. The seatbelts (one unit lap and cross body) are more comfortable than the clunky lap belts and then clucky two-piece lap/shoulder belts of the 1960s. The bucket seats in front have more adjustments than the bench seats of the 1960s and the material covers are more durable. Cars frequently last for 100,000 miles or more now; that was very unusual in the 1960s.

Cars have improved a lot since the 1960s – in both function and durability - and driving is easier because of those improvements and the highway system that has matured (although it often needs maintenance). My frequent road trips would certainly be more challenging/less enjoyable in a 1960s car and on 1960s style roads!

Previous Then and Now posts

Philbrook Museum of Art

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On our way home from Oklahoma City we stopped in Tulsa to see the Philbrook Museum of Art. We started in the gardens before the day got too hot to enjoy them. There were plenty of plants and water features…sculptures and activity areas (like creating poems with word stones).

The garden on one end of the house was probably my favorite because there were swings in the metal arches. My daughter and I sat in one and coordinated our pushing off (no brakes)! There was a zinnia that had been broken and dumped nearby (picture taken when we stopped the swing…just before leaving it).

Inside I enjoyed the Native American themed rooms – particularly the mosaics and pottery. The pottery was a mix of historical and modern pots. I have been sensitized by my visit to the First Americans Museum to think more critically about how some of the historical collections were created.

There were views of the gardens from the museum…a different perspective than walking through the gardens.

I thought about the building as a residence and decided it was too big to be comfortable as a home! The house was built in the 1920s for Waite Phillips and his wife; it was donated to the city of Tulsa in1938 and opened as the museum in 1939. I noted the fireplaces and some of the columns/ceilings that were obviously original to the house. They work well as a museum.

One of my favorite items was titled ‘Texas Seed Pod’ made of porcelain by Janet A. Frankovic in 1990.

We learned that the museum/gardens are decorated for Christmas…and my daughter and I already making tentative plans to visit again in December!