theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
My desktop is never this clear, so why not take a picture to remember it this way? My in basket is sorted; my out baskets are empty; my Thunderbird inbox is empty. To be sure, I do have a lot of little piles in the project boxes.
Be assured, this state of grace won’t last long.
Consistent with another of my volunteer gigs (with Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic), I seem to have positioned myself as a wetware information transcriber. A couple of months ago I started working about an hour a week as a data entry volunteer for the North American Bird Phenology Program, based out of Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
Phenology is the study of comings and goings in the natural world—what day of the year the swallows return to Capistrano, the lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, that sort of thing. Decade-to-decade trends in a particular location can provide additional evidence to researchers studying climate patterns, among other things.
There are a number of phenology programs active under the umbrella of the USA National Phenology Network. One of the broadest-scoped citizen science initiatives was organized in 1881 by Wells W. Cooke, and was later expanded by C. Hart Merriam of the newly-formed American Ornithologists’ Union. For 90 years, up to 3,000 field researchers submitted data on the arrivals and departures of migratory birds in North America, in sort of an ornithological Mass Observation Project. Data was collected on 2×5-inch slips; when the project was wound down in 1970 (as other means of collecting similar data evolved), the records base comprised 6 million of them. In 2003, Sam Droege began efforts to safeguard and digitize the slips.
Many of the records are on a GPO-issued form, designated 3-801 or Bi-801; this form was redesigned a couple of times to collect different data. But many more are simply hand-written slips in a particularly compact shorthand that identifies the species (often simply by a three-digit AOU number), the location and observer, and the dates that the bird was first seen in the course of the year; seen again; seen commonly; and last seen during the breeding or migration season.
As you would expect, the transcription of this data from scanned document images into a web form is not an automatable process. Enter the volunteer scribes. It takes me 30 seconds or more to copy out a card—up to several minutes if I have to puzzle out a location name (Google Maps is my BFF) written in faded fountain pen ink in a cursive handwriting style more suited to wedding invitations. The data collection protocol also provides for observer’s notes on whether the bird breeds in the area, is a winter resident, and assessment of abundance (one point on the scale is the quaintly labelled “tolerably common”)—all that, along with any other notes made by the observer, is to be transcribed into fixed fields or free text. Each observer seems to have a different approach to spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. The opportunity for transcription errors is therefore high, so each card is copied into the database twice, then compared.
There’s lots more to be done: the number of digitized cards only numbers in the few hundred thousands, so if you’re into birds or just have some spare cycles, I would encourage you to sign up for the program. You can request to transcribe cards only for a particular location or a particular species, or you can do what I do and just pull cards at random. I’ve copied slips filed from tiny, obscure places like Hadlyme, Connecticut and Rhoma, Texas; I’ve worked with a card prepared by A. W. Schorger, author of the definitive book on the Passenger Pigeon. No particular knowledge of birds is required; in fact, the procedures we follow call for a literal transcription of the record, no interpretation or corrections allowed. So even if I “know” that the common name of a bird has been changed in the past hundred years, my instructions are to copy what the observer wrote, and to let the researchers clean up the data later.
And that turns out to be a learning experience for me, too. Before I started transcribing, I wasn’t aware that Purple Martin (Progne subis) and Eastern Phoebe (Sayronis phoebe) once had simpler names in common use (Martin, Phoebe). And I had never heard of Holboell’s Grebe, which we know now as Red-necked Grebe (Podiceps grisegena).
Droege and his team have already begun to draft papers from the data, especially looking at patterns of Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) migrations. The San Francisco-area ABC affiliate put together a rather fine story on the program.
Bowler-hatted, gray-suited Henry Pulling is reunited with his eccentric aunt Augusta and begins a voyage to himself in this adaptation by Giles Havergal of Graham Greene’s novel, the sweet and saucy Travels with my Aunt. Generally narrated by Henry, the play’s gadget is that a quartet of men play Henry as well as 26 other characters, including the titular Mame-ish Augusta. The play’s reveal is perhaps never in doubt, but it gives the four actors a chance to cut loose, as in a hilarious scene between Lawrence Redmond and Nigel Reed as they play two old women cackling about their younger days organizing a Brighton wedding chapel for dogs. The mostly-reserved Bill Largess pulls most of the Henry duty. And any production that gives Michael Russotto the freedom to clown it up can’t be bad. James Fouchard’s formal yet flexible set hides some handy prop storage locations.
They both rolled part of the way down the stairs.
—Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
Happy 80th to the Saxophone Colossus, Theodore Walter Rollins.
Leta and I took a nature stroll along paths in Little Bennett Regional Park, on the southwest side of Little Bennett Creek. On this holiday weekend, the main entrance road was closed to all but campers, so we followed the suggestion at the contact station and parked at the maintenance yard and walked in. A better choice would have been to park in the lot at Wilson Mill along Route 121. This lot is connected to the trail network, despite what the map I received at the contact station said.
Indeed, following that map was a challenge, as it showed trails that weren’t there along with not showing trails that were. And since it’s the area is designed for camping, it’s full of short trails that don’t go in the direction you want. A little bit of climbing, not much; somewhat rocky footing with lots of white quartz cobbles exposed. About 4 miles round trip from the maintenance yard.
Nevertheless, we did make it as far as the Mound Builder Trail to see the earthworks built by Formica exsectoides. We kept an eye on the ground to avoid stirring up the ants that scurried across the trail in sixes and sevens.
Dogwood and spicebush were coming into fruit. We found some interesting mushrooms to confirm some of the IDs I learned in this summer’s class. I heard a Common Raven to go along with the usual mid-day forest bird residents. At a wet spot (relatively so: all the stream beds were dry), Leta spotted Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema sp.) in fruit.
Stephen Tobolowsky explains his approach to auditions.
First, you have to understand it is the idea that you are walking into a room with people sitting on the other side of the table judging you that is making you nervous. Right? Not completely. Once I got there early and walked into an empty room with a table in it and I got nervous. That’s when it dawned on me that the table itself is a factor. I realized I needed to turn the tables so to speak.
The solution—and this advice works for any profession you have to go on interviews for—go sit on their side of the table. Not literally, but figuratively. Don’t stand opposite them to be judged, become a collaborator. The one thing you always have in common with the producers or your employers is the project. If you make the project the most important thing in the room—not you—you will sit on their side of the table and you won’t be so nervous.
Sarah Ruhl’s script plays it straight for most of In the Next Room or the vibrator play, reserving her trademark theatricality for the satisfying ending. Indeed, it’s a play that accomplishes some of its best moments in the shared silences between two characters, especially a touching subplot between Sabrina Daldry (the fine Kimberly Gilbert) and clinic nurse Annie (an understated and hence very effective Sarah Marshall); the silences are fitting, since this is a story that unfolds in a Victorian America where sexual experience is not discussed, hardly even recognized for what it is. (And apparently no one saw the need for personal lubricant.)
There’s a lovely passage toward the end of Act 1 in which Catherine Givings (welcome newcomer Katie deBuys) looks forward to the coming century in which “everything in our lives will be electrified: On. Off. On. Off.” with clearly mixed feelings.
Daniel Conway’s set puts two half-circle rows of bleacher seats onstage to frame Dr. Givings’ parlor and consulting room as if it were an operating theater. Unfortunately, upstage action creates sightline problems for patrons sitting in the upper row. But I loved the hand-cranked entrance bell fitted to the Givings’ front door.
Matthew Kaiser reports (in the most recent Friends newsletter) on Resource Manager Dave Lawlor’s July survey of the waters of Dogue Creek, which drains Huntley Meadows Park. Fortunately, no snakehead (Channa sp.) fish were detected, and even more positively, samplers found ten Largemouth Bass. It is believed that the presence of the bass will put pressure on snakeheads that would otherwise move upstream in the Creek. Other species counted in the survey (alas, no scientific names in the report):
I find it unpleasant to find myself reporting observations of Lamprey as a good thing. Lampreys are the one taxon of the animal kingdom that I could do without, if it’s all the same to you: they’re nasty things.
Or not, as the case may be. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West’s maggotty mash note to California, has several instances of slang that may be obscure, undocumented, or simply his own coinages. I got nowhere with the following:
He sat near Harry’s bed and listened to his stories by the hour. Forty years in vaudeville and burlesque had provided him with an infinite number of them. As he put it, his life had consisted of a lightning series of “nip-ups,” “high-gruesomes,” “flying-W’s” and “hundred-and-eights” done to escape a barrage of “exploding stoves.” An “exploding stove” was any catastrophe, natural or human, from a flood in Medicine Hat, Wyoming, to an angry policeman in Moose Factory, Ontario. (ch. 6)
How is it that Medicine Hat was transported from Alberta to the Equality State? I wonder whether hundred-and-eight is a misprint for hundred-and-eighty—unlikely, since it would be plural in this context.
Most of the online hits that this next one turns up want to sell me an Acura.
Faye was coming back. Homer saw that Tod was going to speak to her about Earle and the Mexican and signaled desperately for him not to do it. She, however, caught him at it and was curious.
“What have you guys been chinning about?”
“You, darling,” Tod said. “Homer has a t.l. for you.” (ch. 20)
This last one has such a rhythm that I have to believe West made it up.
… all those poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence. A super “Dr. Know-All Pierce-All” had made the necessary promise and they were marching behind his banner in a great united front of screwballs and screwboxes to purify the land. No longer bored, they sang and danced joyously in the red light of the flames (ch. 27)
Sweet profile by Lydia DePillis of Greater Greater Washington’s David Alpert.
Spang on page 2 of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a topical reference, never directly referred to again in the course of the short novel, but one definitely laden with foreshadowing. The work was published in 1961, but its events begin in 1930.
At that time they had been immediately recognizable as Miss Brodie’s pupils, being vastly informed on a lot of subjects irrelevant to the authorised curriculum, as the headmistress said, and useless to the school as a school. These girls were discovered to have heard of the Buchmanites and Mussolini, the Italian Renaissance painters, the advantages to the skin of cleansing cream and witch-hazel over honest soap and water, and the word “menarche”; the interior decoration of the London house of the author of Winnie the Pooh had been described to them, as had the love lives of Charlotte Brontë and of Miss Brodie herself.
In the interwar period, the evangelist Frank N. D. Buchman formulated an approach to shared spiritual experience that became known as the Oxford Group. Even digging shallowly in the online record, it’s clear to me that Buchman’s methods attracted controversy. A snippy notice from an 1928 number of Time calls the Group a “curious collegiate cult” apparently obsessed with sex. Later in the 1930s, with war drums rumbling, Buchman and his followers organized under the banner of Moral Re-Armament (MRA). Buchman was active in Nazi Germany, ultimately denounced by the ruling party; Communists likewise attacked him. His work is also credited as one of the roots of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement.
Anne Eisenberg reports on trials of Ornilux, a patterned UV-reflective window glass designed to reduce bird strike deaths.
Martin Luther King. Jr., addresses the crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 28 August 1963:
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
I know some stage managers and technical directors who would love to post a sign like this one.