Author: David Gorsline

Meterstones, 2023

Small accomplishments during the year, not otherwise accounted for. Not major milestones, but bigger than inchstones.

  • Served as a teacher’s aide for English Empowerment Center for three terms.
  • Reorganized the space behind my desk to be more Zoom-worthy. Artificial backgrounds are just evil, even if you have a green screen.
  • Reached level 6 of WaniKani.
  • Along with my various community science projects, I pulled-chopped-yanked-sawed a lot of non-native invasives. All told, I logged almost 300 service hours for Virginia Master Naturalists, and I’m three-fourths of the way to 1000 hours of service. On one survey trip, I found a really interesting parasitic fungus of alder trees that causes a gall-like response.

Oh! And something I stopped doing: I retired from NPR, closing the books on a 42-year career in software development.

My year in hikes and field trips, 2023

I got that 20-park badge!

To do for next year: get pix of phyllaries!

Another middling successful season of monitoring nest boxes at Huntley Meadows Park, Fairfax County, Va. I have also joined the Monday morning bird walks (with plant detours with Nancy) from time to time.

The year in review, 2023

I keep finding stuff to write about.

The first sentence (more or less) of the first post for the last twelve months:

  • 8 January: I am mortified that no one else stepped in to do this job, but gratified that Devon Henry was there to do it.
  • 1 February: In my newly copious unscheduled time, I’ve been working with Margaret Chatham on invasives removal at Fraser Preserve, at the tippy-top north end of the county.
  • 9 March: ēar-finger is definitely due for a comeback.
  • 3 April: Signature Theatre smooths out some of the less accessible elements of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures…
  • 3 May: A nice fiction/non-fiction balance.
  • 9 June: Nelson DeBarros led a walk to a small acidic seepage swamp tucked into a Franconia neighborhood.
  • 13 July: Expurgation considered harmful: What’s Lost When Censors Tamper With Classic Films, by Niela Orr.
  • 1 August: Documenting and celebrating Dark Star Park Day in Rosslyn.
  • 8 September: Nelson DeBarros led a walk for the Potowmack Grass Bunch and FCPA staff to a power line easement along South Run.
  • 10 October: By chance, this year’s Master Naturalist conference was held in Southwest Virginia, so the Doctor and I hauled down I-81 once again to Abingdon.
  • 4 November: Sarah Ruhl’s reduction of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid time-travel novel of 1928, picks out key episodes and characters from the life of the titular 300-year-old would-be writer.
  • 6 December: Public Obscenities makes use of some familiar tropes…

The year in review:

New venues, 2023

We’re back in the theater!

Bonus out-of-town venue: Steppenwolf Theatre Company mainstage.

Christmas Bird Count 2023: Seneca and Central Loudoun

Third time around leading Seneca’s sector 14 (9 counters), and second time up leading “Old Ashburn” in Central Loudoun’s sector 11. At the sector 11 tally rally way out in Waterford, I looked at the map of the entire count circle: 15 miles of diameter covers a lot of ground.

On 17 December, mist in the morning portended rains in the afternoon, which didn’t arrive until about 15:30. So our counts were generally down: only 4 Yellow-rumped Warblers (Setophaga coronata ), for instance. My new counter for the Colvin Run/Difficult Run corridor turned up quite a number of birds, including our single Common Raven (Corvus corax). My stakeout of the Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) flock on the power pylon behind my old apartment building paid off: first time for the sector since at least 2017. At Lake Fairfax Park, we found a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) working the ground around an oak.

Last Sunday in Central Loudoun was much warmer than 2022. My team of two beginners and one experienced birder picked up another Common Raven. We had multiple Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus) with good looks in the scope at one bird at the wetland enclosed by the teardrop of Claiborne and Gloucester Parkways. At the Graves Lane ponds, which are turning out to be good for a quick stop, a Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) pair just in scope/long lens range.

Some links: 97

  • Ooh, shiny, shiny.
  • Hilary Howard visits the Jewel Streets neighborhood of Brooklyn/Queens, at 4 feet above MSE. It’s not often that you see Phragmites australis growing on a street corner.
  • Yes, outdoor cats are a problem. Probably worse than you think.

    Just the amount of different insects and invertebrates that they are eating in their diet. We know that they eat insects. That wasn’t necessarily new, but we didn’t really have an idea that they were eating so many things. And I think our concern there is that most scientists that have done these studies in the past were not really looking for insects and they’re not taxonomists trained to understand insects.

  • Mary Pipher makes brightness in the dark. “We cannot stop all the destruction, but we can light candles for one another.”

My year in cities, 2023

Finally some out of state travel!

Overnight stays in 2023:

Plus four nights in transit by train and plane. All told, I was on the road 26 nights. How ’bout that?

Widewater to Great Falls

A solstice walk, one of Stephanie Mason’s last walks as Senior Naturalist for Nature Forward. We were also joined by new Senior Naturalist Genevieve Wall. We pushed from the Old Angler’s Inn parking up to Olmsted Island and back: 4 miles round trip, and even though the walking is nearly flat, I was dragging a bit at the end. At Great Falls, the water was up and pumping: I felt a bit uneasy on the first footbridge, so close to the torrent.

low waterA couple of small takeaways: Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) leaves resemble Corydalis, but you often find it growing on rocks; someone (Edwin Way Teale?) once described the twists of bare persimmon branches as “like mad snakes.” Widewater, incorporated into the C&O Canal, is an abandoned branch of the Potomac.

Sighted: one very chill juvenile RSHA.

Girl from the North Country

Girl from the North Country suffers from a surfeit of quirky, irascible, and damaged characters, and nearly as many subplots. In its favor, it’s good to hear songs (many we know, some we don’t) by Bob Dylan (if only, sometimes, as snippets) in new styles (hard rock, blues, gospel-ish) and arrangements. The reworking of “I Want You” as a duet is very fine. But in most cases, the songs are disconnected from the stories: rarely does someone, following the Rodgers and Hammerstein paradigm, sing to explain themselves, or to advance the plot, or because they just can’t help it. The medley opening the second act is particularly puzzling: why are we hearing these particular songs?

That said, Jill Van Velzer does well with “Sweetheart Like You,” giving us a good belt; Jay Russell as the unctuous Mr. Perry and Jeremy Webb as “Bible salesman” Reverend Marlowe are chewy antagonists. There are a couple of rousing 11:00 numbers, “Duquesne Whistle” and a few stanzas of “Hurricane” with an interpolation from “All Along the Watchtower.” And we appreciate that the show doesn’t take applause breaks; but by the same token, the pace of dialog in most of the book scenes is unnecessarily breakneck. Give us a chance to care about these people.

  • Girl from the North Country, written and directed by Conor McPherson, music and lyrics by Bob Dylan, orchestrated and arranged by Simon Hale, Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater, Washington

Upcoming: 58

I’m back in the line as a primary judge for Silver Spring Stage for the 2024 WATCH adjudication year, so these are the shows I expect to see:

  • Galati/Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
  • Elice/Barry/Pearson, Peter and the Starcatcher*
  • Sklar/Beguelin/Martin, The Prom
  • Stephens/Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  • Kreiger/Eyen, Dreamgirls
  • Lippa/August/Wallace, Big Fish
  • Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
  • ?/Stoker, Dracula
  • Robinette/Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

*I’m working Dance Nation for the Stage in March, so I will likely need to swap assignments.

And one TBD.

Wren

So I’m finishing Anne Enright’s The Wren, the Wren and it occurs to me to check what sort of bird an Irish person means by wren. And so I pull out my lightly used (only one trip to Europe so far) Svensson’s Birds of Europe, 2/e (2009) (pp. 336-337), and it is indeed the bird we call Winter Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes.

And the species account is hilarious, as field guides go. On the plate, calling out field marks, is one word: “unmistakable!” And the species account has this gem:

IDENTIFICATION Very small, and this reinforced by ludicrously small tail that is usually raised vertically, also by short neck.

I wonder what other tidbits are to be found in this guide.

My year in contributions, 2023

I finished my Giving Tuesday list a little early this year.

What organizations are worthy of support? Please give some consideration to this list.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2023.