Author: David Gorsline

Goldfish Thinking

Kathleen Akerley premieres another of her enjoyable head-scratchers. This time it’s a Law & Order procedural hopelessly warped by a shot of Viennese-school psychoanalysis, as well as automatic writing in the form of Mad Libs—all of it marked by Akerley’s signature physicality.

Heather Haney plays a young law student whose dreams (peopled by Caryl Churchillesque shapeshifters like a comic Chairman Mao [Jesse Terrill] with an inscrutable accent) threaten to overtake her waking life. She is prone to what you might call reverse auditory hallucinations, as she will make a cutting remark about someone and not remember having said it a moment later. Compelled to serve as her own Hercule Poirot—did she do something, say something, think something, awake or asleep, that caused a man to die?—she argues with a fellow student (the affable, goofy Michael Glenn) about which of her thoughts she can call her own, and which are archetypal bubblings from the collective unconscious.

Akerley explores the interesting theme of re-presentation through the metaphor of courtroom protocol that requires a defendant to remain silent and to express her thoughts only through her advocate, her mouthpiece, her representative. Abstruse as much of this is, nevertheless Akerley’s writing remains grounded and personal, as when she writes of a traffic altercation that ends uncertainly.

The necessities of the script’s many scene changes, as Haney’s law student slips from dreams to day and back again, at times tax Longacre Lea’s limited technical resources. And the significance of a point of law, the distinction between contractual acceptance (which occurs when given) and rejection (which occurs when received) still has me mystified.

  • Goldfish Thinking, written and directed by Kathleen Akerley, Longacre Lea, Callan Theatre, Washington

    Red roadster

    thinker frontthinker backLeta and I spotted this polyethylene-bodied Th!nk City electric vehicle getting a drink of juice in a local parking garage. The manufacturer has gone bankrupt four times in twenty years, but Electric Mobility Solutions AS has plans to restart production soon. Most of the U.S. production was to the state of Indiana for government fleet use. What’s this one doing in Silver Spring?

    Trust me

    David Firestone challenges Willard Mitt Romney’s “mathematically impossible” tax and spending proposals. There’s no there there:

    … the presumptive Republican nominee claims his far deeper tax cuts would have a price tag of exactly zero dollars. He has no intention of submitting his tax plan to the [Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation] or anywhere else that might conduct a serious analysis, since he seems intent on running a campaign far more opaque than any candidate has in years.

    * * *

    … Mr. Romney has also vowed to repeal any Obama regulation that might burden the economy, without telling us which ones. Could he mean the power-plant rule that keeps mercury out of children’s lungs, perhaps? Or the one requiring better brakes on big trucks? Or the one expanding disability protections to people with AIDS or autism? Don’t expect an answer.

    Howdy, stranger

    Roger Hamilton encounters an species alien to the mid-Atlantic that is numerous but not considered invasive. Indeed, it provides a valuable ecosystem function. It’s the filter-feeding freshwater clam Corbicula fluminea.

    And, as the comment thread notes, this species (like almost any outsider) can indeed be harmful, depending on the habitat. It’s apparently rather a problem in Lake Tahoe, which is perhaps as different from the tidal Potomac as chalk from cheese.

    ᔥ Leta

    Notebook

    Above all, the student should cultivate the scientific attitude of mind, and he should never believe in his infallibility. The beginner’s notebook is all question marks. The student who is beginning to know birds really well often has no question marks. The notebook of the trained ornithologist always has many question marks, until death closes the notebook.

    —Ludlow Griscom, “Problems of Field Identification” (1922)

    If you can’t say something nice…

    One of the connections I did not make in the Wikipedia article for Ludlow Griscom that I am expanding is his dislike of Texas ornithologist H. C. Oberholser. I have transcribed many of Oberholser’s migration cards as part of the Bird Phenology Project. Griscom butted heads with a lot of his colleagues; I don’t think that he and I would have got along. But this zinger, quoted in William E. Davis, Jr, Davis, Dean of the Birdwatchers: A Biography of Ludlow Griscom (1994), is too good to keep to myself. It’s from a letter to Guy Emerson in 1943:

    I happen to have known Oberholser very well indeed over a long period of years. While I have every esteem for him as an ornithologist, as a man and a human being he is a mean spirited hypocrite and, in spite of his scientific distinction, got himself detested by every ornithologist in the United States. For years his colleagues in the National Museum and the Biological Survey looked forward with keen anticipation to the happy day when he would finally reach the retiring age, and all of them would enjoy writing a sonofobituary address. (p. 150)

    Rachel Carson Conservation Park

    For our second field trip to look at invasive non-native plants of the mid-Atlantic, Carole took us to Rachel Carson Conservation Park, a darling gem of 650 acres in northeastern Montgomery County.

    native and plantedMost of what Carole had to show us were success stories about the restoration of this former agricultural land. In the meadow, warm season grasses like Indian Grass (Sorghastrum nutans) have been planted and are thriving. Autumn Olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) is generally under control.

    another comebackpucker upNaturally occurring Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) (ripening fruit at right) is avoided by the deer, for some reason. Goldenrod is also making a comeback.

    Unfortunately, at the forest edges, Polygonum perfoliatum is still running wild, just barely checked by the Japanese Beetles that find it as tasty as home cooking (which it is, for them). Carole is less concerned about the non-native Foxtail Grass (Setaria sp.), whose nodding heads you can see in the background above.

    ridgelineIn the woods, we found two of my favorite plants. Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) was showing some fruit. I like this plant a lot, because it’s fairly easy to spot and identify. At a ridgeline, Chestnut Oaks (Quercua prinus) were in control. I like its chunky bark and its disdain for the good soils of the bottomlands.

    doomedAt the end of the ridge, Carole showed us a mature American Chestnut (Castanea dentata), blighted yet nevertheless putting out flowers and fruit. It is likely to succumb eventually, but it continues to throw out suckerish regrowth.

    more work to doThere are patches in the woods, however, that are still works in progress. This old farmstead was ablaze with Oriental Bittersweet before Carole’s machete-wielding team attacked. Now the battle is against the sprawling Polygonum.

    shingles?gallingHeading down into the stream valley, the trails show evidence of scouring. But in a section that has been reclaimed from the big vines, Carole was able to show us Shingle Oak (Quercus imbricaria) along with its characteristic galls, formed by a cynipid wasp.

    hawling what?The Park’s east-west axis is the Hawlings River, which rises west of the park and flows to the Patuxent. The group spotted several little patches of Cranefly Orchis (Tipularia discolor)—in flower but long before the autumn emergence of its two-toned leaf. We looked at some additional restoration work; Carole likes to use Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) (what a jawbreaker of a name!) because it stabilizes the soil and deer don’t like to eat it. Back in the meadow, we smelled two species of mountain mint (Pycnanthemum spp.) and a Monarda.

    Bird life in the park sounded good: we heard Wood Thrush, Acadian Flycatcher, Common Yellowthroat. Eastern Bluebirds were hanging around, perhaps influenced by the nest boxes that were mounted in the meadow.

    somewhere in MarylandBonus plant for the trip was the tiny Asplenium montanum, a Montgomery County rarity.