Month: February 2016

Going

Meanwhile, on 15 March, Metro will start removing revenue-service 1000-series cars from the line and shipping them off for scrap.

“It’s certainly the end of an era, no question,” [spokesman Dan] Stessel said. “They have a distinctive character to them that is unique to Metro. Even that high-pitched squeal they make when they’re braking — that’s unique to the 1Ks.” (Here, Stessel emitted a high-pitched squeal, then chuckled.) “That sound you hear as the train pulls into the station and is slowing down, that squeak: No other cars make that sound.”

ᔥ Greater Greater Washington

Guards at the Taj

Rajiv Joseph fancies two guards assigned duty at the soon-to-be-unveiled Taj Mahal in 1648: the dour, straight arrow Humayun (Ethan Hova) and the free-spirited, bumbling, imaginative Babur (the fearless Kenneth De Abrew). They’re called upon to execute a quite bloody task, and their temporary paralysis in reaction to this horror turns out to be quite funny: complementary disabilities that suggest Beckett’s similarly doomed Hamm and Clov. Sound designer Palmer Hefferan conjures an ominous sonic landscape in the pre-dawn hours while the two clowns await their fate.

  • Gaurds at the Taj, by Rajiv Joseph, directed by John Vreeke, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Mosses in Fred Crabtree Park

crossingGaylan Meyer led a two-hour workshop in introductory identification of mosses in Fred Crabtree Park, just south of Reston on Fox Mill Road. Fred Crabtree Park (renamed from Fox Mill Park since the last time I visited) is a pleasant patch, protecting part of the Little Difficult Run watershed. Gaylan has identified at least ten, maybe 12 moss species in the park.


yellow yarnWe keyed out one species, using the recent McKnight et al., Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians (2013). The first swell surprise about moss ID is that there’s not a lot you can do in the field with mosses. You can classify plants into growth form, acrocarp or pleurocarp, and if you’ve got tweezers and a hand lens you might be able to look at leaf shape and the presence of a midrib. Gaylan identifies this as Yellow Yarn Moss (Anomodon rostratus). For the remaining mosses we looked at on the trip, we relied on Gaylan’s scouting of this location and his patient work at home with his microscope.

oil spillfeather combOil Spill Moss (Platygyrium repens), at left, and Feather Comb Moss (Ctenidium molluscum), at right, are pleurocarps, frequently branching and usually trailing along the substrate.


starburstpincushionThe more conspicuous mosses are acrocarps, with upright stems packed together like tufts of carpet. At left is Wavy Starburst Moss (Atrichum altecristatum) and at right is Pincushion Moss (Leucobryum glaucum). For the starbust moss, the sporangia, ending in the brown tubular capsules (empty, with lid off), are fairly well imaged.


haircapGaylan’s call on this plant is Polytrichum commune, but after checking the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora, I think that Juniper Haircap Moss (P. juniperium) is much more likely. By the way, the otherwise invaluable USDA PLANTS database is pretty hopeless for range maps for mid-Atlantic bryophytes.

shiningWe also looked at a few plants that are not mosses. Here’s a lovely patch of Shining Clubmoss (Huperzia lucidula), a/k/a Shining Firmoss. The clubmosses, firmosses, running cedars, and such are in a bit of a classification jumble. But they are nevertheless vascular plants that only happen to resemble true mosses.


woodfern 2woodfern 1And a fern-savvy member of the group ID’d this as Spinulose Woodfern (Dryopteris carthusiana). I didn’t get an image of the entire frond, but at least this time I remembered to look at the sori.

Great Backyard Bird Count 2016

Clear, but just as darn cold as last year (15°). A nice 20-species total for my patch along the Glade stream valley. Conspicuous by its absence was White-breasted Nuthatch. Got a quick look and listen for the reliable Red-shouldered Hawk. Surprise species for the trip was a trio of female Red-winged Blackbirds.

The Critic and The Real Inspector Hound

Early Stoppard and rebooted Sheridan, in an adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher, both of them quite fun. One might think that there is nothing funny left to be found in a play-within-a-play that experiences a disastrous run-through, but errant 18th century stage machinery and wobbly wigs are up to the task. And how much more interesting, how reflexive, that the Guffman for whom the play is being presented is “Sheridan” himself. Robert Dorfman is very fine as Mr. Sneer, egging on the hapless Sir Fretful Plagiary (John Catron), giving him ridiculous notes that move his historical play of the Spanish Armada onto a plane not visited by reality.

In the second half”s Stoppard, the opening monologue by theater critic Moon—a celebration of second-stringers and deputies—was all the more piquant on the night we heard it, as understudy Brit Herring was standing in as Moon. Naomi Jacobson is perfect as Mrs. Drudge, the dogsbody of Muldoon Manor who answers the telephone with the scene-setting stage directions. Dorfman is quite deranged as Inspector Hound, as if Agatha Christie’s Sgt. Trotter were played by a braying Harpo Marx. And hats off to the props and effects departments, who provide an offstage crashbox that actually sounds funny, as well as the excruciatingly noisy chocolates wrapper with which Birdboot opens the proceedings.

Who is the mysterious intruder? Tom Stoppard offered this answer in a 1999 speech reprinted as a program note: “…a play which depends on keeping its secrets isn’t worth seeing twice… When it comes to mystery stories I am in agreement with Edmund Wilson… whodunits would be more interesting if Playbill named the murderer.”

  • The Critic, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
  • The Real Inspector Hound, by Tom Stoppard, both directed by Michael Kahn, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington