Author: David Gorsline

Waiting for a train

Michael Schaub points to Linton Weeks’ preview of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 and launches a zinger:

(Nothing against Ayn Rand, of course. Without her, bitter nerds who like feeling superior to everyone despite the fact that their taste in prose is less advanced than most border collies would have no favorite author.)

But it is Jennifer Burns of the University of Virginia, quoted by Weeks, who lands the solider blow:

On the one hand, Rand’s popularity points to the vigor and growth of the American right, particularly as seen in the Tea Party. On the other hand, it points to a certain intellectual weakness amid the conservative movement, given that their leading intellectual is a novelist who has been dead for almost 30 years.

Turkey Run Park

Our first class field trip, led by Karyn Molines, was much more fruitful. We looked at more than twenty species, and keyed out most of them, as lots was in flower.

good for a toothacheAfter a look around the C-1 parking lot, with a warm-up with the inevitable Garlic Mustard, we started down the hill through a patch of Cut-leaved Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata). The Bloodroots were done blooming, but we were able to key a single fallen flower. Both Dicentra species were to be found, large drifts of Dutchman’s Breeches (D. cucullaria) and a little bit of Squirrel Corn (D. canadensis).

welcome springNear the bottom, along the river, most of the abundant Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum) was not yet in flower, but we found a few blooms.

gotta know where to lookThe crowd-pleaser for a walk at this time of the year is the patches of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)—curiously, one of the few species with a common name in the plural. We found them in several places along the river trail.

Wildflowers along the Glade

done bloominIt’s been a wet, cold March, so I didn’t find too much in bloom during this afternoon’s walk along the Glade, part of my homework for Karyn Molines’ Spring Flower ID class—a violet, a non-native speedwell, and I made the acquaintance of Cardamine pennsylvanica. But I did find a spot close to home for Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetida). Maybe next January I can find its flowers.

Some links: 53

Leta sends two pieces my way: First, this darling Onion item, “White House To Hold Second Auditions This Week For Nationwide Production Of Guys And Dolls“. It nabbed me with the image of Steven Chu playing rehearsal piano. (We should all be so lucky to have a grand in the practice space.) Next is Dave Itzkoff’s behind-the-scenes look at rehearsals for Lonny Price’s production of Company with the New York Philharmonic and a bunch of people you’ve heard of. Is this going to be concert staging, or something else? According to Drew Grant, the production will be recorded for DVD, so we’ll all get to find out in June.

In spring

We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year.

—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), ch. III, p. 62

I’ve narrowed it down to five

Dave Pell helps me understand why it is taking months, may take years, for me to replace my old phone and PDA.

Stop. Do not send me your pick for best note-taking app.

I can’t take any more options. I’ve already spent weeks comparing sets of features I’m pretty sure I’ll never need. I tried out at least fifteen applications on my desktop, phone and on the web. I was completely overwhelmed by choices. The process began to take over my life. I spent hours in front of my laptop, I’d demo various features for my wife and kids…

I thought I could pick one web-based tool for notes and diaries. Right now my bookmarks bar has an entire folder of tools, each for its own special purpose.

Reading list

‘Tis Poetry Month once again, and Patrick Cooper points to Jay Parini’s list of ten American poems then “have left the deepest mark on US literature – and me.” Robert Lowell is more or less unknown to me, and Parini’s selection, “Memories of West Street and Lepke,” reminds me pleasantly of Marianne Moore. I haven’t read much Whitman for a long while—time to rectify that.

Annotation

Because there is no end, happy or otherwise. Nothing is fixed, nothing is solved. The facts, such as they are, finally spin off into the void of things missing, the inconclusiveness of conclusion. Mystery finally claims us. Who are we? Where do we go? The ambiguity may be dissatisfying, even irritating, but this is a love story. There is no tidiness. Blame it on the human heart. One way or another, it seems, we all perform vanishing tricks, effacing history, locking up our lives and slipping day by day into the graying shadows. Our whereabouts are uncertain. All secrets lead to the dark, and beyond the dark there is only maybe.

—Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods, p. 304, n. 136

Silver Line progress report: 17/a

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors has submitted a list of dull, wordy station names to the Metro board. These names are for the new Silver Line stations that lie within the County, so the Loudoun stations aren’t on the list. Emphasis mine in the quote:

The WMATA policy indicates that station names should involve the following:

  • Identify the station location by geographical features or centers of activity;
  • Geographical names may be derived from those of cities, communities; neighborhoods, squares, circles, Metro-intersecting streets, etc.;
  • Centers of activity may be derived from schools, stadiums, parks, hospitals, airports, depots, shopping centers, galleries, museums, government installations, etc.;
  • Names should be distinctive and evoke imagery; and
  • Names should be relatively brief and be no longer than 19 characters.

Most of the entries on the Board’s approved list fail to meet the fourth and fifth criteria above:

  • Tysons-McLean
  • Tysons I&II
  • Tysons Central
  • Tysons-Spring Hill Road
  • Reston-Wiehle Avenue
  • Reston Town Center
  • Herndon-Reston West
  • Herndon-Dulles East

Here are the names I would use. Several of them are the placeholder names that have been on planning maps for years—eminently useful because they told you where the station was located with no hyphenated hoohah.

  • Scott’s Run (or Scotts Run, if you want to be postal about it)
  • Tysons Center
  • Freedom Hill (sorry, there can be only one center)
  • Spring Hill Road
  • Wiehle Avenue
  • Reston Town Center
  • Monroe Street
  • Sully Road (I’m not so sure about this one, since it seems to lie between Sully and Centerville Roads)

I would also consider “Dulles Gateway” for Route 28, if some property developer hasn’t already snapped up that name.

Or maybe we should go the naming-rights-for-sale route and call the Tysons-McLean station “Tysons-Capital One” and be done with it. Until Capital One goes bust, of course.