Author: David Gorsline

Piscataway Park

early fourthAn ANS walk through several sections of Piscataway Park began with this stop at Piscataway Creek. The trip yielded lots of nice dragonflies and butterflies and some good birds: Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) (adult and immature), Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) (patrolling but not catching any fish), quick looks at a Louisiana Waterthrush (Seiurus motocilla), a cooperative pair of Blue Grosbeaks (Giuraca caerulea). Buttonbush proved to be a good spot for finding butterflies. New ones to my very short list: Zebra Swallowtail (Eurytides marcellus), black-morph Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), Juniper Hairstreak (Callophrys gryneus), Least Skipper (Ancyloxypha numitor).

On deck: 5

on deck: 5The August Wilson is on the shelf because I really need to catch up my familiarity with his work; the Neil Simon and Nicky Silver (alphabetical order buddies) are for a post that is gestating. The TriQuarterly volumes are the penultimate in the series; my “hometown” literary journal is slated to go online-only after #137. Nathanael West is a re-read of much-loved snark: cold comfort food, if you will. The Guy Davenport replaces a copy of this collection lost in last winter’s snowmelt floods.

Less good than harm?

A recent Earthtalk column summarizes research by Aiello et al. that calls into question the practice of adding triclosan as an antibacterial ingredient to consumer products. The literature review, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, asked two questions: (1) Does triclosan, in the typical consumer formulations (0.2-0.3% by weight), do anything more towards preventing infectious disease than ordinary soap? (2) Does triclosan contribute to the emergence of bacteria that can tolerate the chemical, and can this tolerance jump species? The answer to (1), per “Consumer Antibacterial Soaps: Effective or Just Risky?”, is no, while the evidence for (2) is less clear. The research team found evidence from lab-based studies of antibiotic cross-resistance, but field studies did not provide equally strong support for the claim.

It’s worth noting that we’re talking about the concentrations used in over-the-counter soaps and hand sanitizers, not the 1% and more used in surgical scrubs. (Shockingly, how much triclosan can be added to soap is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.) In other words, there’s enough of the stuff in your soap that it may be making staph and strep stronger, but not enough to kill the bugs. Deader than they are, that is, by just washing your hands.

Triclosan seems to be in everything these days. As hard as it is to read a food product label to find out whether it’s got wheat (and is therefore verboten for someone with celiac sprue), it’s equally hard to find out about triclosan in products from the health and beauty aids aisle. Leta found triclosan in a container of shaving gel. Fortunately, some manufacturers, like Method, are now labeling their soaps as triclosan-free.

The least offensive solution

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Chuck Underwood describes an audacious plan: in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil cock-up, the agency will translocate several hundred sea turtle nests across the Florida panhandle, with hopes that the hatchlings will find a home in Atlantic Ocean waters.

“We have a lot of partners involved that normally would not all necessarily agree on something,” Underwood says. “But the general consensus is this is at least an opportunity to try to do something in a situation that has been less than ideal for wildlife.”

At the park: 38

Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser trend chart

A couple of late-starting second broods in #67 and #68 unfortunately did not pan out, and we cleaned those boxes. This was a boom-bust year for Wood Duck: lots of eggs laid, but two nests completely failed, including the 31-egg dump in #67. Final summary numbers: 61 hatched/68 laid Hooded Merganser (5 nests), 53 hatched/113 laid Wood Duck (10 nests, plus 2 eggs in a HM nest).

Of the 19 boxes we have deployed, #77 and #8 are ready for replacement.

The detail-voracious can see the raw data worksheet for the project. The historical summary is probably more interesting.

Metaposting note: my WordPress dashboard says that this is the 1000th post at AHoaA.

Upcoming: 25 bis

Elizabeth Blair previews this year’s Contemportary American Theater Festival and talks to founder Ed Herendeen:

This year the festival is doing two world premieres. One of them could almost be called a musical.

“I cannot tell you the excitement and the buzz and the fear that we have — it’s good fear — producing the Eelwax Jesus 3-D Pop Music Show,” Herendeen says.

West decoded: 2

A goody with several examples online but no authoritative dictionary entry (and no etymology!):

In the suite occupied by Patricia Van Riis, lobster and champagne were the rule. The patrons of Powder River Rose usually ordered mountain oysters and washed them down with forty-rod. And so on down the list: while with Dolores O’Riely, tortillas and prune brandy from the Imperial Valley…

—Nathanael West, A Cool Million, ch. 18

Unless you count Mencken:

Other characteristic Americanisms (a few of them borrowed by the English) are red-eye, corn-juice, eye-opener, forty-rod, squirrel-whiskey, phlegm-cutter, moon-shine, hard-cider, apple-jack and corpse-reviver, and the auxiliary drinking terms…

The American Language, ch. 3

Ah, but OED comes through:

1889 FARMER Americanisms, * Forty Rod Lightning, whisky of the most villainous description, so called because humorously warranted to kill at forty rods.

Much snappier than 201-meter lightning. Forty rods are also equivalent to 1 furlong.

Not the kind of counter you want

It’s really sad that such a widget has a reason to exist, but that’s environmental disasters for you.

The animation first caught my eye, because I was running Flashblock in my browser, which cuts down on a lot of visual distractions. A little code reading tells me that spinning wheels are accomplished with plain old JavaScript, specifically, a jQuery odometer widget.

One more bit of internet geeking: I stumbled onto the Firefox feature that clicking a URL in the View Page Source window does another View Page Source in turn.

Monocacy River NRMA

I took a short out-and-back nature hike with Bob Pickett and ANS in the watershed of the Furnace Branch of the Monocacy River in Frederick County, just over the Montgomery County line. Destinations on this walk are the remains of Maryland’s extractive industrial past: a mill (perhaps used to mill limestone), a lime kiln, and two sandstone quarries, which provided the stone for the aqueduct that carried the C&O Canal over the Monocacy at its confluence with the Potomac.

Trails are not marked nor maintained: this is a hunting reserve. But, as one of us (Ann) pointed out, hunting pressure on the deer population has allowed the redevelopment of a healthy understory. Setting out on the trail, we soon found a couple of huge Hackberry trees (Celtis occidentalis) and Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) fruit beginning to ripen. Numerous Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) and Acadian Flycatchers (Empidonax virescens) were heard, and one flycatcher, irritated at something, came out in the open. Alan found Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) in bloom and a clump of Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora).

drill, baby, drillnew orchidsAfter some stream hopping and bushwhacking, we arrived at the quarry sites. An impressive block of quartzite is exposed: sources call it the Sugarloaf Mountain Quartzite (and indeed that mountain is just to the northeast). In a stony patch, Alan spotted an orchid with pretty leaves: Rattlesnake Plantain (Goodyera pubescens) beginning to shoot up flower stalks. We heard, then after some patient looking, saw a Worm-eating Warbler (Helmitheros vermivora): not a great look, but good enough for #361.

A sign of the times

sign onesign twoSeveral years ago I noticed these old fallout shelter markers on the apartment block at 1901-1907 15th Street, N.W. There are at least four affixed to the exterior. These Cold War mementos are badly faded now; it’s hard to know whether a capacity was ever marked on the signs.

I always meant to do some research and write up the story of these yellow and black sentinels. But it turns out that Bill Geerhart did a much better job than I ever could have done. See also this photo gallery of signs still visible in Milwaukee and elsewhere.