theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
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 art of practicing. You were not practicing “phrasing”; you were drawing like Michaelangelo, or seducing like Don Juan. [György] Sebők said many times that you don’t teach piano playing at lessons; you teach how to practice—the daily rite of discovery that is how learning really happens.
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, but we found lots of other things to look at.
Our first stop was at Calvert Cliffs State Park. The playground near the parking lot is guarded by a fierce dragon made of recycled tires.
We found a spread-wing skipper, most likely Juvenal’s Duskywing (Erynnis juvenalis), according to Dick, given the time of the year; a hairstreak, a battered Henry’s Elfin (Callophrys henrici); and an azure (Celastrina sp.).
The oaks in this sandy, acid-soil habitat are tricky to ID this time of year. Working from bark, leaves, and acorn cups, we found evidence of Chestnut Oak (Quercus prinus) as well as Swamp Chestnut Oak (Q. michauxii). The understory is well-populated with American Holly (Ilex opaca) and Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia).
We watched three 4-inch-long, yellow-brown elvers (Anguilla sp.) wriggling in the current of a small, shallow brook.
There is a spring hunting season for Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) in parts of the park (which might explain why we didn’t see any). Back at the parking lot for lunch, a good half dozen of us spent 10 minutes looking for a steadily-singing Pine Warbler (Dendroica pinus) that would not budge from its concealment near the top of a pine. This has not been the first time I’ve chased a bird like this: I’m inclined to consider lack of visibility a field mark for Pine Warbler.
We moved on to the Glendening Nature Reserve of Jug Bay Wetland Sanctuary, and the butterfly action picked up a bit. Several Eastern Tailed-Blues (Everes comyntas) and American Coppers (Lycaena phlaeas) were found. And flitting about its host Juniperus virginiana, Juniper Hairstreaks (Callophrys gryneus). Whereas the elfin basks with its wings held perpendicular to the ground and the duskywings spread their wings parallel, the Juniper basks in a tree “rolled over” with both wings folded together, nearly parallel to the ground and angled to face the sun.
It’s only the new growth of a Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana), but it’s the only close-focus image that I succeeded at for the trip.
This little patch of prickly pear (Opuntia sp.) was a bit of a surprise.
The big mystery for this stop was a series of burrows, ranging from 1 to 2 cm in diameter, some of them ringed with a little wall of twigs and beech scales. Ben measured one of the burrows to be 10 inches deep. The consensus is that the perfectly round holes were made by one or more species of solitary bee or wasp, but we couldn’t get more specific than that.
Update: Stephanie has suggested one of the scrub burrowing wolf spiders (Geolycosa sp.) as the maker of the holes.
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, Pollack, Johns, de Kooning) and contemporary artists are part of the collection of Mitchell and Emily Rales. Carol Vogel has the full story.
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, we’re not as optimistic about #13, as the 8 eggs there are not yet being incubated. We expect to report lots of hatching activity from our May trip, which we have scheduled for the first Sunday, 5 May.
All three of our common swallow species have arrived. Some Blue-winged Teal are lingering.
Water gauge: 0.42
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 entertained nor educated by these studies, nor any good done by them for society. And at the outset, O Collegians, I put it to you (if I can guess your feelings by my own), and I ask what possible pleasure can lurk in these gamesome quarrels of gloomy oldsters. If they were not born in the cave of Trophonius, their stench betrays their birth in the caves of the monks, they reek with the grim harshness of their authors and are as wrinkled as their fathers. Their style is terse but in spite of it they are so prolix that they bore us and nauseate us. When they are read at any length, they generate an almost instinctive aversion and an even stronger natural hatred in their readers. Too often, my hearers, when it has been my bad luck to be saddled with assignments of research in their contemptible sophistries, when both my eyes and my mind were dull with long reading—too often, I say, I have stopped for breath, and sought some miserable relief in measuring the task before me. But when—as always—I found more ahead of me than I had yet got through, how often have I wished that I had been set to shovel out the Augean ox-stalls rather than struggle with such absurd assignments. And I have called Hercules happy because Juno was so easy-going as never to give him a job like mine to struggle through.
—Prolusion III, “Against Scholastic Philosophy”
This translation from the Latin of one of Milton’s exercises from his time at Christ’s College, Cambridge is taken from Merritt Y. Hughes’s 1957 collection of the complete poems and major prose.
Bill Cain’s brazenly autobiographical play takes a wry but clear-eyed view of what the modern clergy can and cannot accomplish. Cain says, through his protagonist also named Bill (the genial, bemused Ray Ficca), that a holy person proceeds mainly by calling attention to details. In this way, by being an indicator (as many depictions of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, show her), he resembles the modern playwright (and Cain is both playwright and Jesuit priest).
The details to which Cain points are simple but strong: the decline and death of his own mother Mary (the flexible Marybeth Wise), the life in flashbacks of his late father Pete (Mitchell Hébert, always a pleasure to watch), and the life journey of his brother Paul (Danny Gavigan). With many short scenes (some no more than a line or two long) and much direct address to the audience, the play clicks along. Hébert and Gavigan fill in minor characters of friends, neighbors, and health care professionals, and Gavigan is at his most watchable as a comically callow physician.
Nevertheless, the side trip to explore Paul’s military career in Vietnam, cut short by a crisis of faith in the rightness of our conduct there, serves to diffuse the focus of the play. Cain deals more effectively with the U.S.’s misadventures in Southeast Asia in his 9 Circles, recently produced by a Round House partner theater.
This is the first Round House show directed by new Producing Artistic Director Ryan Rilette, who brings new life to the company’s repertory after its ill-advised overemphasis on dramatized novels. Next year’s season includes works by Martin McDonagh, August Wilson, and area premieres of plays by Theresa Rebeck, Melissa James Gibson, and Nicky Silver.
An intriguing piece from a few weeks back by Nicole LaPorte on Kenneth Lander’s THRIVE Farmers Coffee. THRIVE seeks to move beyond the fair trade co-op model, to capture more of the value added by the coffee supply chain (roasters, distributors) for the farmer who got the beans out of the ground in the first place. THRIVE farmers follow organic methods, although not all go through the process of USDA certification.
It’s a small operation now; it will be interesting to see whether it can scale up from its current annual volume, somewhat more than 300,000 pounds of coffee.
Five words from Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie that I had to look up and probably have unlearned since high school:
- en revanche
- on the other hand
- demeurer
- to remain
- quelconque
- any, with connotations of ordinary, banality; n’importe lequel
- écarter
- to spread open
- la paroi
- interior partition, wall
Our friend Lizzi writes:
So I will start by confessing that this IS a mass email asking you to support a good cause, but please read because all I am really asking you to do is sign up to see a movie, and who doesn’t love movies? My roommate and I have undertaken to bring a beautiful new film, Girl Rising, to the Majestic Stadium movie theater in Silver Spring on Thursday April 25th at 7:30 pm, but we need your help.
The film was created by 10×10, a global campaign to educate and empower girls. Girl Rising tells the stories of 9 girls from around the world who face and overcome – unbelievable obstacles on the path toward getting an education. Each girl’s story is narrated by a cast of great actresses, including Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington, Anne Hathaway, Salma Hayek, and Alicia Keyes (among others)– and the cinematography is stunning. I am truly excited to be part of helping to get this film screened (an effort that is happening across the country) and to be involved in a global effort for girls’ education.
You can watch the trailer here (it’s worth it, I promise!)
The film will only be screened at the Majestic if at least 100 people sign up to see it. You can sign up to buy a ticket for the movie here (not to worry, you will only be charged for your ticket if we succeed in booking the screening). We need 100 people by April 11th in order for them to screen the film, so please don’t wait to sign up!
A portion of Girl Rising ticket sales will help fund programs for girls’ education around the world, so seeing the film literally makes an impact on girls’ lives. For a mere $10 you get a night out at the movies and the the lovely warm feeling of knowing you’re contributing to positive change in the world. (A steal, I’m sure we can all agree). So get a group together (a BIG group), tell ALL your friends (please!) and come see a beautiful movie and be part of something special.
I’m back with NPR for a short gig, working on- and off-site. As Scott Simon reported this morning, NPR is relocating from its Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. building (really two buildings stitched together: on the 5th floor, there’s a two-stair difference between the blunt end of the building and the Tiny Desk Concerts venue at the “skinny end” where Bob Boilen sits) to new digs on North Capitol Street.
The move is happening in phases; this posting in the elevator keeps everyone informed of the GO dates.
A… demande ce qu’il y a de nouveau, aujourd’hui, sur la plantation. Il n’y a rien de nouveau. Il n’y a toujours que les menus incidents de culture qui se reproduisent périodiquement, dans l’une ou l’autre pièce, selon le cycle des opérations. Comme les parcelles sont nombreuses et que l’ensemble est conduit de manière à échelonner la récolte sur les douze mois le l’année, tous les éléments du cycle ont lieu en même temps chaque jour, et les menus incidents périodiques se répètent aussi tous à la fois, ici ou là, quotidiennement.
—Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie (1957)
I was driving back from my dentist’s office and I found one of the old wayfinding signs directing drivers to what it now called Washington Dulles International Airport. I don’t know how old these signs are—perhaps they are of the same vintage as the original access road that was built to the airport, but probably not. I remember seeing one or two to the west of the airport, out U.S. Route 50, but I think that they are gone now. This one, on a relatively sleepy stretch of Little River Turnpike, perhaps has survived because it’s been a while since the road required widening.
So it took me two tries to get a serviceable image of the sign. And on my way home, I continued farther west, not following my usual path, and I found another one! Less sun-faded, but a little more scuffed up.
Carole Bergmann led a walk across Hoyles Mill Conservation Park, home to one of the largest tracts of contiguous forest in Montgomery County. The park’s selling point is its geology, an underlying sill of diabase bedrock that isn’t that far below the surface, as the image on the right demonstrates.
Diabase is prized as a construction material. Its mafic chemistry and the thin soils translate into a forest community of mixed oaks with a fair amount of Virginia Pine and Eastern Red-cedar, but not much in the way of our usual hickories, maples, and Tuliptree. Uncommon oaks to be found here include Shingle Oak, Swamp White Oak, and Post Oak.
We found American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) in bloom on the far side of Little Seneca Creek, and the state rare Pricklyash (Zanthoxylum americanum) right at the entrance gate.
The special bird sighting for the day was a Downy Woodpecker working the upper branches of a Virginia Pine, hanging upside down. This is not the first time that I’ve seen a Downy acting like a songbird. Maybe I should start calling them Downy Chickadees.
FELIX. …I’ll find something, because I’ll tell you, Steven, I’ve got a little news flash for you: the world is not waiting for a play! Okay? The world is waiting to see who’s gonna go broke or blow what up next, and how many people are gonna get killed or go hungry, and in between people getting killed and people going broke, they just want somewhere cool to sit in the dark and be happy, you know, it could be Mistakes Were Made, it could be Mamma Mia, it could be fuckin’ Muppets, they don’t care!
—Craig Wright, Mistakes Were Made
Wednesday’s poem at Poetry Daily is a killer, “Things That Have Changed Since You Died:”, by Laura Kasischke.
…We
send each other mail without stamps.
