Author: David Gorsline

DIY Science

I participated in the inaugural DIY Science day at the Clifton Institute, led by co-Director Eleanor Harris. It’s an adult-tailored version of the Institute’s Young Naturalists program. Not too many rules: explore the field station, formulate a research question, do some science, and present your results. The vibe is a little like the Serendipity Days practice when I was with NPR’s Digital Media.

As I wasn’t sure how the day would play out, I planned a research question ahead of time: roughly, can we measure any differences between two species of oak (White Oak, Quercus alba, and Northern Red Oak, Q. rubra), as sampled as dead leaves from my home and the Institute? The red oaks are well-known for showing more tannins than the white oaks. Is there a way to measure that difference?

So I brought some leaves picked from my backyard, and then at the field station collected some more in the woods. First complication: I was hoping to also analyze another species from the red oaks, Q. falcata, only to find that there are no records of Southern Red Oak at Clifton.

Second complication: methods and materials for measuring tannins were a bit beyond the capabilities of the research station, or so I surmised. However, some follow-up searching suggests some simpler, alternative methods.

specimenAs a result, staffer Bridget Bradshaw suggested some other tests that might yield some interesting results. She also brilliantly suggested a simple way to make equal measured samples from my dead leaves: 10 punches with a paper hole punch from each leaf. No mussing about with weighing something in the sub-gram range. Samples went into small lidded yogurt jars (apparently well-stocked at the research station, and easy handled by the kiddos).

  • Simple chromatography with a bit of acetone and (coffee) filter paper.
  • Measuring acidity of samples steeped in water and set in the sun for 30 minutes.

pH samplesThe chromatography didn’t show any results after the hour or so that we had available. But the pH measurement did return some results, on the face of them counter-intuitive. Here’s our 16 pH specimens, sunning on the Clifton Institute porch.

All the White Oaks sampled, as well at the Red Oaks at Clifton, measured more basic than the control (the plain spring water that was used to steep the samples). A possible explanation: fresh oak leaves will measure on the acid end of the scale, but after some decomposition as dead leaves, the acidic compounds leach away preferentially, leaving more basic dead leaf material.

Third complication: the pH meter that we used took several minutes to produce a reading, and readings shifted about as we took our measurements.

For “final presentation” to the group, I drew a quick, crude graph with a Sharpie. I’d like to polish it a bit for presentation here. Update: After some scuffling with the Google Charts API, I managed to produce the following graphic. (It’s a screenshot, not live; the API and vanilla WordPress don’t play well together.)

More research needed: I’d like to try this experiment on some fresh leaves and with a more reliable pH meter.

By Jimmy Van Heusen: 2

somewhat familiar turfAn easy saunter up the C&O Canal from Carderock with Nature Forward’s Stephanie Mason, Genevieve Wall riding shotgun, and some familiar bird and plant people. We got stuck on “High Hopes,” most of us wrinklies remembering this novelty song from an animation seen on Captain Kangaroo, after watching two ants dragging a dead spider twice their size across the towpath.

Genevieve spotted a Silver-haired Bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) roosting. Stephanie pointed out Smooth Rockcress (Borodinia laevigata (= Boechera laevigata)), a new plant for me. We all heard Louisiana Waterthrush singing very clearly, but nobody got eyes on it. Another critter with high hopes: an American Beaver (Castor canadensis) swimming upstream in an arm of the Potomac.

Genevieve and I collaborated to reconstruct the chorus of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” (not “strange,” as I think I told the group) to serenade a trio of Wood Ducks, two drakes and a hen.

Out of Heber Springs: 2

An update by Arthur Lubow on the complicated artistic legacy of Mike Disfarmer. Ron Slattery is part of the story, which is not too surprising.

[Family member Todd] Minor said that contrary to prevailing belief, Disfarmer had been close to his sisters and nieces until an acrimonious probate dispute led him to change his name. “Our perception of him is a little off from what people think,” he said. “He was eccentric, yes, but not so extreme.”

Previously on AHoaA:

Really Quite a Lot of Mechanisms

Baltimore artists Alex and Olmsted lean into their entertaining penchant for visible contraptions and wordless storytelling in their new piece, aptly named Really Quite a Lot of Mechanisms. Two workers, clad in cowls and greatcoats that would not be out of place in a production of Endgame, scuttle about a workshop, sometimes producing something useful, but often just punching a time clock and spilling a coffee can of screws and assorted hardware. Found in the can is a charming mini puppet on rods, a mere earthworm, but soon it’s put into service turning a crank in the workshop.

They’re watched over by a huge orbicular eye, also a puppet. Does the Eye suggest the Artist’s nagging self-editing and need to produce creative work? Perhaps, but later in the piece it shows its malevolent side, a HAL 9000 that can only be thwarted by a strategically placed parasol.

And there’s never enough time to eat lunch.

    Really Quite a Lot of Mechanisms, devised by Alex and Olmsted, Baltimore Theatre Project, Baltimore

Between Riverside and Crazy

1st Stage brings life into this play that is less impressive on the page, with a generally balanced ensemble of actors. Chief among them is Dylan Arredondo in the supporting role of Oswaldo, a mountainous, felonious man-child. Tony Cisek’s set design realizes a rent-controlled apartment that has accumulated decades of stuff; at certain points actors are climbing over stacked-up furniture: a novel way to accomplish multiple paying levels. Alas, “Pops” Washington’s second act redemption feels unearned, a little more deus ex machina than dominus vobiscum.

  • Between Riverside and Crazy, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by José Carrasquillo, 1st Stage, Tysons, Va.

At the park: 156

First report of the season for our nestboxes for Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser:

As I (successfully, for once) predicted, our birds have not begun laying in our 16 boxes, due to the snow and cold in February. We added fresh chips to all and trimmed back vegetation around some of the boxes along Barnyard Run.

We have plenty of plastic bags in the shed for carrying chips; we have almost used up our supply of chips. I’ll make a note for next winter to request more chips.

I will bring supplies to touch up the numbers on a couple of the boxes.

L. spotted a handsome Dark Fishing Spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus) in the shed.

See you next Sunday, same time and place. Remember that we switch over to Daylight Saving Time at 2 AM that morning….

Thank you!

The World to Come

There’s a song from 1980 by The Police, “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around.” It would make an interesting underscoring for Ali Viterbi’s excellent apocalyptic The World to Come, starring Woolly long-timers Brigid Cleary, Michael Russotto, and Naomi Jacobson.

Set in what we once called an “old folk’s home” that suggests both an assisted living facility (an “I could retire here” set (at least in the opening moments) by Misha Kachman) and later a concentration camp, the residents piece together news of the world outside that is literally crumbling away. They are aided, then thwarted, by a succession of nurses played by Ro Boddie, who sports a progressively alarming array of PPE.

These self-described alter kockers challenge each other with the question, “What could/would/should you have done to deal with the crumbling?”, be it climate change, tyranny, plague, or nuclear war. Rather than hear answer in words, we see them carry out acts of compassion one-on-one: bring medicine, make love, fight, tell a funny story, say Kaddish,1 join in the other’s hallucination. Most movingly, to close Act 1, Fanny (Jacobson) sings to Barbara (Cleary), as Barbara slides into the undiscovered country; Barbara’s dementia has been punctuated by prophetic visions and moments of her career as physicist.2

Technical praise: Sarah O’Halloran’s sound design, realizing earthquake rumbles without Sensurround, and Ksenya Litvak’s terrifying raven puppets.

  • The World to Come, by Ali Viterbi, directed by Howard Shalwitz, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

1Alas, there are too few characters to make a minyan.

2I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Peter and the Starcatcher: an update: 4

I was reviewing my script and I realized how much importance is placed on characters’ names. Boy, of course, acquires two names in the course of his adventure, escaping the traps of being “No Name” and “Mule,” only after Black Stache asks him, “Appellation, please.” And Stache (who will soon lose that name) hears his own name shouted multiple times, at least once at his own prompting.

Lord Aster bears a rather transparent tag name (“star” in Latin). Sánchez can never get Stache to call him by his name. Prentiss uses an unflattering nickname for Ted. Much fun is made of the meaning of Molly’s name in whatever language is native to the polyglot Mollusks. For some odd reason, Stache calls Alf “Alfred.”

And so it is that I realized that, of the limited text that Captain Scott has, twice he tells us his full three-barreled name, just so we won’t forget who is doomed to an Antarctic grave. And thus I made the choice to make those self-namings really big, declaiming each piece to the three sections of the house, with a slight increase in pitch and dynamics: “Robert Falcon SCOTT.”