Month: July 2025

Wakefield Park grasses and things

the easementAnother hot, muggy morning, another walk in the power line easement of Wakefield Park. I’ve explored this stretch several times, this time again with the Grass Bunch.

The only new species that I recorded an observation for is Delicate Cycnia Moth (Cycnia tenera), A/K/A Dogbane Tiger Moth, conveniently posed on a bit of dogbane. Aw, snap! I saw this species at a bioblitz two summers ago. But! Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) is a new species for my observations.

helloHello Kitty observations don’t count in iNaturalist.

Clifton Institute NABA Butterfly Count 2025

I returned for the second year to the Wildcat Mountain property as co-sector leader. (Hmm, I see that I didn’t post any trip report for the 2024 count.) We all survived the heat and humidity: MK and Lili had the smart idea to stage a vehicle at the bottom of the hill so that we didn’t have to trudge back up the slope.

Nothing too exciting. Scads of Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus); I got a look at but no photo of Red-banded Hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops); I got identifiable photos of Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor).

Contemporary American Theater Festival 2025: 3

Two monologists to round out the festival.

Kevin Kling, storyteller from Minnesota, brings a bundle of endearing material to the Marinoff stage. His stories, sometimes equally harrowing and goofy (being struck by lightning, riding shotgun in a small plane with his father flying into a fog bank), are supported by multi-instrumentalist Robertson Witmer. The set by David M. Barber puts Kling in a Joseph Cornell box, deep cosmic blue, angel’s wings, painted portraits.

Kling has an extensive back catalog on NPR, from back in the days when we could spare six or seven minutes for a unique voice.

Cody Leroy Wilson, Asian American son of a Vietnamese mother and a West Virginia farmer, gives a voice and a face to the Vietnamese family that he can never know. His mother, adopted from an orphanage during the Vietnam War (some of us do remember the horror, whether at home or deployed), has no memory of her parents, that is, Wilson’s grandparents. What might have happened? Well, the title of the piece gives it all away.

  • Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
  • Kevin Kling: Unraveled, by Kevin Kling, with music by Robertson Witmer, directed by Steven Dietz
  • Did My Grandfather Kill My Grandfather?, by Cody Leroy Wilson, directed by Victor Malana Maog

Contemporary American Theater Festival 2025: 2

In Magdalene, Mark St. Germain, continuing to mine the vein of real-life people who have become clouded in mythology, gives us an imagined meeting between Simon Peter, soon to become first in the line of Catholic popes, and the titular Mary, soon to be sidelined as an important figure in the Christian faith. The work probes the uncomfortable inconsistencies across the various accounts in the century following Jesus’s death;1 asks why there are no women priests in Catholicism; and challenges the notion that a physical church is necessary for practice of the Christ’s worship.2 As St. Germain notes in his playwright interview, “it’s not something that could play in the Kennedy Center right now.” What does a parable mean? Wherein lies a miracle? These are the play’s questions.

Something I can’t unhear: the idea that when speaking of Peter, never the sharpest tool in the shed, Jesus meant Matthew 16:18 as a joke.

The festival has backed up the production with a sturdy dramaturgical note and many links for additional reading.

1How much would you trust a strictly oral account, handed down by his advisers and their successors, of what Warren Harding did and said?

2St. Germain’s Mary reminds Peter that Jesus did not say, “Blessed are the landlords.”

  • Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
  • Magdalene, by Mark St. Germain, directed by Elena Araoz

Contemporary American Theater Festival 2025: 1

Side Effects May Include… is not a play so much as it is a dramatized version of a previously published memoir of Loomer’s struggles with her son’s akathisia, a debilitating, somewhat mysterious movement disorder linked to both genetics and medication. This is not to take away from solid ensemble work by Sophie Zmorrod, Susan Lynskey, and Jimmy Kieffer.

Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular is, in a sense, a nostalgic return to 1980, when it wasn’t safe to be out, and before AIDS replaced one scourge for another—before CGI, green screens, and all that jazz. It’s a love story between two stuntmen, an aging Tom Cruise type and a young upstart with some serious Eve Harrington vibes. We do see some fancy fights (my teachers call fight choreography “ballet with dangerous props”) and wire work, and a practice dummy takes some of the lines, but we don’t really learn that much about stunt work.

Do the multiple framing devices get in the way? I’m not sure. The trope of the 8-week movie shoot that runs over to 9 months, however, is a little forced.

Credit is due to Stefania Bulbarella’s projection design; Se Hyun Oh’s set is packed with scrims and TV monitors.

  • Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
  • Side Effects May Include…, by Lisa Loomer, directed by Meredith McDonough
  • Happy Fall: A Queer Stunt Spectacular, by Lisa Sanaye Dring, with Rogue Artists Ensemble, directed by Ralph B. Peña

Clifton Institute bioblitz July 2025

On a punishingly hot and muggy July day, we returned to a property that we had biolblitzed last summer. I was able to last about 90 minutes out in the gardens and meadow, and about an hour down where the Rush River joins the Thornton, but then I had to crash on our hosts’ porch. I was sucking wind just climbing a small rise.

In the garden, I documented my first Snowberry Clearwing (Hemaris diffinis). I tried to expand my horizons by looking for leaf miners.

At the rivers, iNaturalist honcho Carrie Seltzer and I found several species of myxomycetes, including the critter that acts like a puffball mushroom, Wolf’s Milk (Lycogala epidendrum). I got a look at a Rappahannock Darter (Etheostoma vexillare) (a Rapp endemic of cool, clean waters) before the rest of the team charged upstream—I just don’t have the footing to follow.

After dinner, activity at the lighted sheets was great. Our big charismatic beetle, Broad-necked Root Borer (Prionus laticollis), settled in at Jeff and Izabella’s setup and stayed all evening. The Scarlet-winged Lichen Moth (Hypoprepia miniata) was shockingly beautiful.

This is National Moth Week. I’m cogitating on getting my own setup for my cubby-hole of a back yard.

TickTalk

Amplifying signal from Maryland Native Plant Society:

With summer officially here, outside activities are on the rise and so too are encounters with ticks. Those who find ticks on themselves or pets are encouraged to donate them to the tick research project run by Dr. Rebekah Taylor at Frostburg State University. This research provides a better understanding about various ticks found in the region and what pathogens they carry, such as the bacteria responsible for Lyme disease. Every donated tick is identified, mapped, and tested. All of the data is uploaded to an open-access website hosted by FieldScope.

Donated ticks should be from the following counties (or areas very close to these counties):

  • Maryland
    • Washington
    • Allegany
    • Garrett
  • Pennsylvania
    • Somerset
    • Bedford
    • Fulton
  • West Virginia
    • Mineral
    • Hampshire
    • Grant
    • Preston

To donate ticks:

  1. Tape the ticks to an index or post card, and note the date and the approximate geographic location where the ticks were encountered.
  2. Place them in a freezer for at least one day to ensure that they are dead before being mailed.
  3. Mail the card to: Dr. Rebekah Taylor, Frostburg State University, 101 Braddock Road, Frostburg MD 21532.