Author: David Gorsline

Srsly?

If I spent all my digital ink on linking to stories debunking ridiculous, egregious, preposterous1 claims by officials representing 47, my electron deficit would be yuge. But this one really got up my nose: Dr. Oz is wrong: Medicaid does not automatically register people to vote.

1From Latin praeposterus (“with the hinder part before, reversed, inverted, perverted”), from prae (“before”) + posterus (“coming after”).

My year in hikes and field trips, 2025

Most of my outings are walks rather than hikes these days.

Yet another middling successful season of monitoring nest boxes at Huntley Meadows Park, Fairfax County, Va. I performed invasive surveys and management in several locations in Northern Virginia, including the Nature Conservancy’s Fraser Preserve.

Peter and the Starcatcher: an update: 2

Rehearsals are chugging along, with just a bit of incidental song and choreography yet to be built. Tonight is our design run, an opportunity for a reality check-in with the various designers. Are there problematic quick costume changes? Will this bit of the set cause sight line issues? Oh, I see you need a prop here.

Rehearsals are taking place in the Arlington County Cultural Affairs facility, an interesting edifice stitched together from at least two predecessor buildings. The building hosts a black box theater, Theatre on the Run; craft studios; conference rooms; and several quite comfortable rehearsal studios, some with barres and mirrors. At the moment, we’re working next door to rehearsals for Dominion Stage’s Xanadu and Synetic Theater’s Antony and Cleopatra. And let’s be honest, sound does travel from studio to studio: sometimes we have to sing ff to be heard over Synetic’s booming score.

What is not so comfortable is the tiny parking lot behind the building.

The neighborhood is typical of where rehearsal studios find themselves: a low-rent mix of auto body shops, home design showrooms, ball fields, kennels, commuter cycle tracks, walking trails, dog park, and food pantry—all running along the channelized Four Mile Run. It’s where Signature Theatre played for several years until moving into posh digs across the creek as part of the Shirlington redevelopment.

Towards the middle of this strip, South Walter Reed Drive drops precipitously down into the valley. Not a street that you want to be on when frozen precip is in the air.

My year in books, 2025

Not so much commuting on the subway, fewer books finished—but some fat ones.

A favorite from the year: Command Performance, by Jean Echenoz, translated by Mark Polizzotti, in particular for the bravura passage in which a character is dispatched.

My year in cities, 2025

More sweet, sweet travel.

Overnight stays in 2025:

Plus four nights in transit by train.

The year in review, 2025

Quality, not quantity, eh?

The first sentence (more or less) of the first post for the last twelve months:

  • 7 January: In the winter holiday break, I Amtraked up to Philadelphia to take in the Barnes Foundation (underwhelming: the pictures can’t breathe) and reacquaint myself with the Duchamp room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  • 4 February: So we’re halfway thru the run.
  • 3 March: From this week’s nest box report: “Ice on the ponds, so we made like the icebreaker ships.”
  • 8 April: At least 47 hasn’t promoted Incitatus to consul. Yet.
  • 2 May: My report for April to the team: “Whew! I am caught up with my paperwork for the moment.”
  • 3 June: Sited art and found art in NYC.
  • 8 July: Amplifying signal from Maryland Native Plant Society: With summer officially here, outside activities are on the rise and so too are encounters with ticks.
  • 9 August: A word that pops up in Elmer Rice’s Street Scene, both the stage play (1929) and the screenplay (1931):
  • 4 September: A quick report from the meadow unit of Elklick Woodlands Natural Area Preserve, accompanied by Darko Veljkovic and other Fairfax County Park Authority Staff.
  • 4 October: Another view through a Tony Smith work, this time Smug (1973/2005), snapped during my first visit to Glenstone…
  • 7 November: A quick stroll in woods and meadows of a section of Leopold’s Preserve that I hadn’t seen before, led by Marion Lobstein and Claudia Thompson-Deahl.
  • 3 December: More fun with punctuation marks: I recently learned that the humble colon (:) is used in Swedish names…

The year in review:

Christmas Bird Count 2025: Central Loudoun

Cold front blowing through at mid-day: a sprinkle of rain, then 20+ mph winds. The trees around the Ashburn Library pond were birdier than usual (I spotted a Ruby-crowned Kinglet), as if to compensate for the lack of interesting birds on the pond. The ponds at Graves Lane/Corder Place now have swan decoys posted, perhaps to discourage the Canada Geese, at which task they were moderately successful; unfortunately, they may have discouraged the interesting ducks, too.

We found a few Eastern Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) against the gray skies.

Urban railfanning in PA-NJ

Inspired in part by posts by Classy Whale and Trains Are Awesome, I drove up to the Philadelphia metro to ride some transit services that were new to me.

diesel light railquick shotOn Friday, starting from Trenton, I rode the River Line light rail to Camden to connect to PATCO for a short hop to Philadelphia. Hmm, the heat in my River Line car didn’t seem to be working. While there are plans to renovate/redevelop it, the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden is, right now, nothing short of a dump.

one of the seasonsI closed the loop with a SEPTA train back to Trenton. The tile mosaic in Jefferson Station is stunning.

thanks for ridingwaiting and fullSaturday was a bit more enjoyable. Starting from Trenton again, I rode New Jersey Transit’s (NJT) Trenton line to Newark Penn Station, switched to a PATH train and rode it as far as Exchange Place.

view thru light snowlight snowA quick snap of the New York Financial District in some light snow that followed the overnight wintry mix, and then I was off to the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station.

you are hereyour are here (closer detail)During my 10-minute wait in the chilly weather, I glanced at the rather fine historical map built into the Exchange Place station platform. (I’m still looking for some information about this map.)

not so poshlast one for the tripThe HBLR took me to Hoboken Terminal, where I boarded an NJT train that ran all of two stops to Newark Broad Street. From there, the third of NJT’s light rail systems, the Newark Light Rail, took me back to Newark Penn Station. Completing my round trip on the Trenton line, I was back to Dr. Hardtacks and headed for home.

Hoboken Terminal is a place of drafty, broken grandeur. Flooding from Superstorm Sandy didn’t help the situation. Some stained glass remains, and the vintage benches are still serviceable, but a renovation (also planned) cries out to become reality.

Something the video bloggers don’t talk about much is how much time you spend waiting. Since I was traveling on Saturday, I had a bad connection at Hoboken Terminal and laid over for almost two hours. Fortunately there are two coffee and donut shops still operating there.

In Newark, my first return train was cancelled. There were lots of delays on Amtrak and elsewhere posted on the departure boards, no doubt due in part to the winter storm.