Author: David Gorsline

What’s cooking?

The New York Public Library has launched another crowdsourced digital transcription project of analog source materials, similar to the North American Bird Phenology Program. The NYPL is seeking volunteers to extract information from its store of historical restaurant menus. So far, data on more than 170,000 food items offered for sale has been pulled from more than 2,800 menus. There is lots of work yet to do:

With approximately 40,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present, The New York Public Library’s restaurant menu collection is one of the largest in the world, used by historians, chefs, novelists and everyday food enthusiasts…. The New York Public Library’s menu collection, housed in the Rare Book Division, originated through the energetic efforts of Miss Frank E. Buttolph (1850-1924), who, in 1900, began to collect menus on the Library’s behalf. Miss Buttolph added more than 25,000 menus to the collection, before leaving the Library in 1924. The collection has continued to grow through additional gifts of graphic, gastronomic, topical, or sociological interest, especially but not exclusively New York-related.

Violette’s Lock

moving fastThe river was running high and fast at Violette’s Lock, so we did most of our botanizing along the tow path. Great Crested Flycatchers (Myiarchus crinitus) breeped their presence.

I captured some out-of-focus images of Field Chickweed (Cerastium arvense) and Corn Salad (Valerianella locusta) (found in the disturbed patch near the parking lot). I’m developing a fondness for the delicate chickweeds. We found Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia) and Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) trees in flower—these are both species that we studied in winter woody plant ID two winters ago. I made some notes on separating Glechoma from Lamium, but I still need more practice with these common weedy plants. More Field Pansies (Viola bicolor), with their crazy stipules to match the specific epithet of the European species, (V. kitaibeliana).

new favealso found hereI find that I always come back with a new favorite flower. This week it’s Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea). The ragwort (perhaps named for its ragged leaves) is often found with Wild Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata), a color combination that Karyn dotes on.

Karyn recommends the USDA PLANTS database as the authoritative answer on species synonyms. I am finding quite a few differences between USDA and our field guide, Lawrence Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide. It’s hard to keep track of the nomenclature changes: I am sure that I have made some errors.

Some lists: 10

Five (and five more) obsolete common names for birds, taken from the index to Richard H. Pough, Audubon Bird Guide: Small Land Birds of Eastern & Central North America from Southern Texas to Central Greenland, 1946 and 1949, and their modern synonyms.

Lichtenstein’s Oriole
Altamira Oriole (Icterus gularis). M. Heinrich Lichtenstein (1780-1857) was honored by Johann Wagler by naming the oriole for him.
Bandit Warbler
Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas). The old name has a lot more mojo.
Batchelder’s Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens). Another eponym that perhaps was a casualty of lumping species together, in this case Gairdner’s Woodpecker, Nelson’s, and Willow.
Cham-chack
Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus). I’d say, “like it sounds,” but the bird doesn’t sound like that at all.
Forest Chippy
Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivora). Described in the field guides as having voice like a Chipping Sparrow.
Grease Bird
Gray Jay (Perisoreus canadensis). Along with several other equally uncomplimentary names.
Huckleberry Bird
Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla). Apparently a preferred nesting substrate.
John-chew-it
Black-whiskered Vireo (Vireo altiloquus). This name-sayer name actually works. It’s also known as Whip-Tom-Kelly. Poor Tom.
Pork and Beans
Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor). Yet again, supposedly onomatopoetic. I don’t hear it.
Flame-crest
Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa). Another case where the old name is short, descriptive, and to the point, while the new one reads like a committee report. Sort of like the difference between the original Metro station names and the hyphenated jawbreakers we have today.

Too bad Reagan didn’t listen in ’81

David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s first budget director, speaks out amidst the clangor of the fiscal and monetary policy debate in Washington. Ever a deficit hawk, these days he starts to sound reasonable:

In attacking the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers, the president is only incidentally addressing the deficit. The larger purpose is to assure the vast bulk of Americans left behind that they will be spared higher taxes — even though entitlements make a tax increase unavoidable. Mr. Obama is thus playing the class-war card more aggressively than any Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt….

On the other side, Representative [Paul D.] Ryan fails to recognize that we are not in an era of old-time enterprise capitalism in which the gospel of low tax rates and incentives to create wealth might have had relevance. A quasi-bankrupt nation saddled with rampant casino capitalism on Wall Street and a disemboweled, offshored economy on Main Street requires practical and equitable ways to pay its bills.

His op ed piece relies a bit too much on the the thesaurus (the spirit of William Safire is about). But the message that we will all have to give up something to get along is spot on.

It is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent.

Governor Bridge Natural Area

first of the seasonMayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) has begun blooming, or at least it has at Governor Bridge Natural Area in Prince George’s County, south of Bowie. I made the acquaintance of two exquisitely tiny blue flowers, the five-petalled Smaller Forget-Me-Not (Myosotis laxa) and the four-petalled Bluets (Houstonia caerulea), also known as Quaker Ladies.

side by sideDown along the river trail, we had side-by-side looks at Solomon’s Seal (left) and Solomon’s Plume (right). Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum sp.) has a gently arching stem, smoothly curved, while the stem of Solomon’s Plume (Maianthemum racemosum) shows sort of a zigzag effect.

A bedraggled Common Fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) and Canada Pussytoes (Antennaria howellii Greene ssp. canadensis) with is bicolored leaves were our introduction to the Aster family.

Bonus birds for the trip: we heard the first Ovenbirds and Common Yellowthroats, and a few of us got brief looks at Louisiana Waterthrush (Seiurus motacilla).

Thanks, Mr. Schaper

The monthly newspaper of a certain advocacy organization for which I only recently became eligible for membership is generally forgettable (at best), especially when it comes to “Do you remember this?” roundups. But the staff box callouts for a web site feature brought back to mind a game that I’d forgotten that I remembered: Cootie. I had a set when I was a wee one, and the reason that I don’t remember the rules is that they’re so simple they hardly exist: roll a die until you collect all the plastic body parts for your cootie bug. Sort of like playing Hangman with less skill required. I recall putting the critter together, Mr. Potato Head without any possibility of phenotypic variation, but I don’t think my parents or anybody else ever played with me. There were limits, even in 1961, to an adult’s capacity for boredom just to entertain a child.

In wolf’s clothing

Nick Davies and Justin Welbergen report a novel form of Batesian mimicry: in this case the breast barring that is shared by Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) and Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus). Rather than an harmless species mimicking a harmful one, here the indirectly harmful species (the brood parasite cuckoo) gains easier access to host Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) nests by resembling the more direct threat, the predatory raptor.

(Summary by The Economist.)

Fragments

Using a cast of three, Brook and Estinenne present four of Beckett’s short dramatic pieces, plus a bit of prose serving as transition, in a production that takes the Angl0-French-Irish master’s limited theatrical requirements and strips them down still further. Perhaps not surprisingly, generally this works, as in Rough for Theater I, where B’s wheelchair is nothing more than a black rehearsal box fitted with wheels. As B poles himself along, he takes on the grandeur of a quondam samurai. And Rockaby is improved by eliminating the recorded voice and giving all of those lines to Hayley Carmichael, who delivers a clear, multi-colored, wrenching reading. But we do miss the rocking chair.

In Act without Words II, Yoshi Oïda as A is completely overmatched by Bruce Myers as B in the physical comedy departments; Oïda is reduced to mugging. In his spoken pieces, Oïda’s command of language also introduces an unwanted barrier.

The suite closes with a truly peculiar and graceless version of Beckett’s Noh piece for three aging schoolgirls, Come and Go, with two-thirds of the cast in drag.

  • Fragments, texts by Samuel Beckett, directed by Peter Brook and Marie Hélène Estienne, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

On deck: 7

on deck: 7A small armload of books from last week’s Stone Ridge Used Book Sale plumps the shelf. The Dylan Thomas has a title that has long intrigued me, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, and for two beans, how could I say no? TriQuarterly #137 is, alas, the last print volume for this alma mater literary publication. The Rachel Carson is a loaner from Leta, residual from last October’s project.

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

Stately, deskbound storyteller Mike Daisey brings to D.C. his most recent polemic, both a celebration of this century’s magical technology (especially as designed by Apple Computer) and an amateur’s powerful exposé of toxic working conditions at the Chinese factories responsible for final manufacture of that magic. The piece is even more powerful than last season’s The Last Cargo Cult, showing as it does the unspannable divide between the poorly paid laborers who hand-assemble exotic electronics and the Western consumers who enjoy those gadgets.

Daisey’s physical gifts of narrative are again on display. If he sometimes chooses soft targets (we all enjoyed a rant about PowerPoint in which he bellows [accurately] that Microsoft is great at making “tools to do shit we can already do”), his language has deepened: his allusions range from highbrow to pop, from Walt Whitman and the Gospels to a telling description of downtown Shenzhen “like Blade Runner threw up on itself.”

Just as Apple’s revolution in personal computing changed the metaphor of what it meant to interact with a small computer, Daisey urges us to reconsider the metaphorical lens through which we view technology: his is one of the few theatrical pieces I know of that ends with a call to action in the lobby, with pointers to China Labor Watch and Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehaviour.

A self-described Columbo in a Hawaiian shirt, Daisey delivers a moving piece—but with a light touch. As he admits, he has suppressed the most gruesome stories that he collected from South China’s Satanic mills, lest his listeners tune out. The work sparks reactions that move beyond head-nodding in the auditorium to genuine conversations on the way home.

  • The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, created and performed by Mike Daisey, directed by Jean-Michelle Gregory, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington