Author Archives: David Gorsline

Puff is moving to Twitter

Not content with last year’s mastery of the television airwaves, Leta has moved on to conquer radio.

Posted in Local News and Views
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At the park: 59

I took a walk through the park “on my own,” as it were, unencumbered by monitoring duties but looking to make some field notes as homework for my current class. I was halfway there before I missed my point-and-shoot, so … Continue reading

Posted in In the Field
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Yes, A-M is on the list

Cleaning out the e-mail folders and bookmarks: here’s a list of notable graduates and attendees of Northwestern University. That’s all.

Posted in History
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At the park: 58

Excerpts from my report for 5 May, last Sunday: We have hatching activity to report in 9 of the boxes, plus (unfortunately) one nest that completely failed. We have produced 82 ducklings so far, even though box #2 only hatched … Continue reading

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Enroute: 4

On my way to visit one of my clients last week, I stopped to snap a pic of the entrance plaza for their new building on North Capitol Street. Spiffy!

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Other Desert Cities

Seeking drama and humor in the living rooms of the privileged class, Jon Robin Baitz introduces us to Lyman and Polly Wyeth, retirees from 1960s-era Hollywood and old guard conservatives. Unfortunately, the drama (a tell-all memoir by their daughter Brooke) … Continue reading

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DC-7: The Roberto Clemente Story

This biography of Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder Roberto Clemente (the mimetic Modesto Lacén) comes alive in the songs and the dancing. The book scenes convey the story of Clemente’s childhood in Puerto Rico, his 3,000-hit baseball career, and its tragic, … Continue reading

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Scrub burrowing wolf spider

Stephanie Mason did some digging, as it were, and turned up this identification for the mystery animal that made the burrows armored with pine needles and beech scales: one of the wolf spiders. Participant Sheryl has posted an image of … Continue reading

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Robbe-Grillet decoded

Five words and phrases from Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie that I know I never learned in high school: le margouillat any of various species of lizard; on the narrator’s banana plantation, probably the gecko Hemidactylus frenatus l’igname (f.) yam, of genus … Continue reading

Posted in Fives, Personal Development, Prose Fiction
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Fraser Preserve

I broke from my usual Saturday gig to take a walk through the Fraser Preserve in the northern tip of the county, bordering on the river. Fraser is jointly managed by the Nature Conservancy and Calvary Baptist Church; one of … Continue reading

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Making permanent

The nut of Jeremy Denk’s “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” a recollection of his training and teachers, in the 8 April 2013 issue of The New Yorker: The aim of that first lesson, I later realized, was to ennoble the … Continue reading

Posted in Music, Quotable
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Spring butterflies of southern Maryland

Unseasonably cool, breezy weather greeted us on Sunday for a foray to southern Maryland looking for spring butterflies. Stephanie Mason and Dick Smith took us to two sites on the Coastal Plain. The weather checked the activity of the butterflies, … Continue reading

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Upcoming: 33

Glenstone, a private art museum in Potomac, Md., looks forward to a $125 million expansion. Come 2016, a new series of exhibition spaces will be open five days a week, albeit by reservation only. Important works by mid-century moderns (Serra, … Continue reading

Posted in Art and Architecture
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At the park: 57

Now is the time when my trip reports begin to lag behind the actual field work. My report from 7 April: A quick look into a half dozen boxes. Whereas #62, which started inauspiciously, now has an incubating Wood Duck, … Continue reading

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The hidden virtues of stones and herbs

Dedicated to everyone who has ever had to swim the sea of script submissions to a theater festival, taken from the hypereducated Puritan snarkmeister John Milton: …I shall briefly prove in my little half hour that the mind is neither … Continue reading

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