Author: David Gorsline

Great Backyard Bird Count 2012

rip and rapRepair work has begun on reach 6 of the Glade, to fix 2010’s restoration work that was undone by the flood of September 2011. There’s some heavy gear scattered about. Nevertheless, 17 species of our mid-Atlantic winter suburbans were represented on my mid-day count. Mostly cloudy, but with the sun overhead, viewing conditions seemed to be both too dark and too glaring. No real surprises on the bird list, though the briefly heard starling was a little unusual for this patch.

cruel to be kindI was taken aback by the stumps of half a dozen large trees that were sacrificed, but perhaps the undercut stream bank that you can see here is the explanation. Stream restoration is a little like sausage-making.

looking for some friends to make a thickethanging outA little farther upstream, near the footbridge, a Smooth Alder (Alnus serrulata) was proudly displaying its male catkins.

Cooper decoded

James Fenimore Cooper spends a surprising amount of space analyzing a real estate transaction in The Pioneers. The novel takes place in upstate New York, north of the Catskills, in 1793. These passages are from chapter XVI, and is an exchange between Jotham Riddel and the town patriarch, Judge Marmaduke Temple.

“So, Jotham, I am told you have sold your betterments to a new settler, and have moved into the village and opened a school. Was it cash or dicker?”

The man who was thus addressed occupied a seat immediately behind Marmaduke, and one who was ignorant of the extent of the Judge’s observation might have thought he would have escaped notice. He was of a thin, shapeless figure, with a discontented expression of countenance, and with something extremely shiftless in his whole air, Thus spoken to, after turning and twisting a little, by way of preparation, he made a reply:

“Why part cash and part dicker.”

Dicker here has the sense of barter. But, as well shall see, Jotham’s sale was mostly dicker.

“I sold out to a Pumfretman who was so’thin’ forehanded [well-to-do]. He was to give me ten dollar an acre for the clearin’, and one dollar an acre over the first cost on the woodland, and we agreed to leave the buildin’s to men. So I tuck Asa Montagu, and he tuck Absalom Bement, and they two tuck old Squire Napthali Green. And so they had a meetin’, and made out a vardict of eighty dollars for the buildin’s.”

Jotham and his buyer agree to arbitration to assess the value of the buildings. Each party chooses one arbiter, and the two arbiters between them choose a third. A tidy solution, if you ask me.

“There was twelve acres of clearin’ at ten dollars, and eighty-eight at one, and the whole came to two hundred and eighty-six dollars and a half, after paying the men.”

(12 ac · $10/ac of cleared land) + (88 ac · $1/ac of woods) + ($80 of structures) – (3 arbiters · $X/arbiter) = $286.50, so each arbiter received a 50-cent fee.

“Hum,” said Marmaduke, “what did you give for the place?”

“Why, besides what’s comin’ to the Judge, I gi’n my brother Tim a hundred dollars for his bargain; but then there’s a new house on’t, that cost me sixty more, and I paid Moses a hundred dollars for choppin’, and loggin’, and sowin’, so that the whole stood to me in about two hundred and sixty dollars. But then I had a great crop oft on’t, and as I got twenty-six dollars and a half more than it cost, I conclude I made a pretty good trade on’t.”

It would seem that Jotham has indeed flipped his property after one growing season for a $26.50 profit, but I wonder how much is “comin’ to the Judge,” and for what? Property taxes?

“Yes, but you forgot that the crop was yours without the trade, and you have turned yourself out of doors for twenty-six dollars.”

“Oh! the Judge is clean out,” said the man with a look of sagacious calculation; “he [the buyer] turned out a span of horses, that is wuth a hundred and fifty dollars of any man’s money, with a bran-new wagon; fifty dollars in cash, and a good note for eighty more; and a side-saddle that was valued at seven and a half—so there was jist twelve shillings betwixt us.”

Jotham has accepted $207.50 in goods in lieu of cash (by his estimate), and a promissory note for $80, against a sale price of $288. At this point, he seems to be saying that that he will receive the balance of a dollar, or maybe a dollar and a half (12 shillings); it’s not quite clear. In a footnote later, Cooper writes, “In New York the Spanish dollar was divided into eight shillings, each of the value of a fraction more than sixpence sterling.” But he way I read it, the seller owes Jotham a balance of 50 cents, but in turn Jotham still owes the arbiters $1.50.

“I wanted him to turn out a set of harness, and take the cow and the sap troughs. He wouldn’t—but I saw through it; he thought I should have to buy the tacklin’ afore I could use the wagon and horses; but I knowed a thing or two myself; I should like to know of what use is the tacklin’ to him!”

Jotham has the horses and the wagon but no gear to hitch them to it.

“I offered him to trade back agin for one hundred and fifty-five. But my woman said she wanted to churn, so I tuck a churn for the change.”

I read this to mean that Jotham took the butter churn instead of the remaining cash, so no money changed hands at all. Except for those arbiters.

“And what do you mean to do with your time this winter? You must remember that time is money.”

“Why, as master has gone down country to see his mother, who, they say, is going to make a die on’t, I agreed to take the school in hand till he comes back, It times doesn’t get worse in the spring, I’ve some notion of going into trade, or maybe I may move off to the Genesee; they say they are carryin’ on a great stroke of business that-a-way. If the wust comes to the wust, I can but work at my trade, for I was brought up in a shoe manufactory.”

Even if the numbers don’t true up, they make more sense than the arithmetic in my friend Steve LaRocque’s Perfectly Good Airplanes.

Time Stands Still

Time Stands Still is not a play that will wrap everything up for us in a tidy package, that will tell us what we need to know and feel about putting your life and values in danger to do journalism in a war zone. Rather, this comedy-drama requires that we do the work ourselves, guided by what the characters do and say: Sarah and John, together for eight years as foreign correspondents, and their friends Richard and Mandy, a May-December pairing that ultimately bears fruit and happiness. And they do not always express themselves consistently: photographer Sarah (the deeply resourceful Holly Twyford) especially, who shields herself from atrocity with her camera lens and a workmanlike defense that taking pictures is “doing my job,” and yet is shaken by a bleeding woman in a market, victim of a bombing, who smears blood on Sarah’s lens, crying “no pictures!”

It will come as no surprise that Sarah begins and ends her journey on the reporter’s side of the mental barrier that divides her from the civilian, despite her life-threatening injuries from a roadside bomb attack. What’s perhaps more interesting is the move to the nurturing center taken by her partner James (the funny, solid, loving Studio newcomer Greg McFadden), even if it does entail a retreat to pseudo-scholarly writing about pop culture and celebrity interviews for Vanity Fair. And let us not overlook Mandy (played by Laura C. Harris with serious depth), who begins the play as the earnest, pretty young thing girlfriend, a figure of ridicule by Sarah and James (Sarah’s look to Richard when Mandy feels it necessary to define “pro bono” is genius) and becomes a grounded, articulate voice for getting on with the task of living here and now.

John McDermott’s lovely live-in New York apartment set on the Metheny’s thrust stage at times presented a blocking challenge; a character would come to the extreme lip of the stage for a monologue with no reason to be there except to talk to us. And I had the feeling that occasionally light spill into the audience was a source of actor distraction.

The piece is one of Donald Margulies most accomplished, unified works, an equal to his Dinner with Friends (albeit with fewer working kitchens required).

  • Time Stands Still, by Donald Margulies, directed by Susan Fenichell, The Studio Theatre Metheny Theatre, Washington

The chop

I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land. Signatures of course differ, whether written with axe or pen, and this is as it should be.

—Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, “Axe-in-Hand”

At the park: 46

some assembly requiredM.K., Steve, and I got a head start on nesting season by installing two new boxes along Barnyard Run near its outlet into the main wetland. Steve, whom I haven’t worked with before, turns out to be a dab hand at steering the runabout ATV (which we used to carry our gear) down the trails and across the brush and Smilax.

field modifiableFrom a ladder, I worked the tubular, double-handled mallet (we all call it “the pounder,” but there must be a more precise name for it) in order to seat the support pole in the mud. I stayed up there while Steve redrilled one of the mounting holes in the back of the box.

still kind of bleakready to goIt’s still plenty wintry at the park, as a passing snow shower reminded us. But the new boxes are nice and dry, and ready for this year’s ducks. About ten days ago, M.K. watched a group of about 20 Hooded Mergansers going through pair formation behaviors.

Sweet music

February 01, 2012

* * *

Dear David L Gorsline :

This letter is to acknowledge that Chase has received the funds to pay off your mortgage loan referenced above. Chase will forward an original executed release of lien for recording to the recorder’s office in the county where the property is located.

* * *

If Chase collected escrow funds for paying your mortgage taxes or insurance, you are now responsible for payment of these items.

Building on strengths

Annie Murphy Paul recaps recent research that indicates dyslexics enjoy certain perceptual and cognitive advantages over baseline members of the population.

Given that dyslexia is universally referred to as a “learning disability,” the latter experiment [by Matthew Schneps et al.] is especially remarkable: in some situations, it turns out, those with dyslexia are actually the superior learners.

TSA blues

Patrick Smith and I are of one mind.

I’m traveling off-duty, just a regular old passenger. Approaching the body scanner, I “opt out,” as I always do. I’ll be taken aside for a thorough pat-down.

I don’t opt out because of worries about radiation. I do it because I find it appalling that passengers are effectively asked to pose naked in order to board an airplane.

Though I have some concerns about the radiation, too.

Tag

I’m experimenting with tagging a few of the posts here, in addition to the categories that I obsessively rework. The tag cloud in the sidebar is a little lumpy for the time being.

I picked read_me to tag a few select pieces, generally longer, that give you a fuller understanding of how my thinker works.