Author: David Gorsline

Context and perspective

From Rebecca Mead’s profile of Christian Scheidemann, conservator of contemporary art and specialist in non-traditional materials, in the 11 May 2009 New Yorker. Scheidemann is in the process of replacing one of the tree stumps that are part of the late Ree Morton’s Sister Perpetua’s Lie (one had succumbed to rot) in preparation for a gallery showing. Unfortunately the replacement stump of White Oak (Quercus alba) turned out to be infested with beetles, so the conservator called on an exterminator, Jimmy Tallman.

The remaining question was whether the stump needed to be shipped to the shop, which would take up precious time, or whether Tallman could transport it himself, in his van. “What’s the value?” Tallman asked, with a note of uncertainty in his voice.

“Ten dollars,” Scheidemann said.

Tallman looked relieved. “That’s good,” he said. “Because I had one lady, a customer, and I took her antique table out with me, and it turned out to be worth twenty thousand dollars.”

“This will eventually be part of an invaluble installation,” Scheidemann said. “But I think we gave ten dollars for the cutting. So right now it’s worth ten dollars.”

Conspicuous by its absence

Linton Weeks reviews the current state of (online) surveys and survey software.

Then came the Internet, interactive voice recognition and other methods of collecting data that involve less cost and quicker turnaround times for corporations thirsty for consumer information.

There are two salient reasons for the burgeoning survey industry, [Nancy Mathiowetz, past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research] says. First, the corporate desire to make empirically based decisions “requires the collection of data to examine satisfaction, how people view products, etc. Second, the marginal cost of data collection — for some modes of data collection — has dropped.”

A new botany tool, perhaps

Anne Eisenberg reports on a prototype digital field guide, an iPhone app (from a team including Peter N. Belhumeur of Columbia Univ. and W. John Kress of the Smithsonian) that identifies tree species on the basis of scanning a single leaf specimen.

“We believe there is enough information in a single leaf to identify a species,” [Kress] said. “Our brains can’t remember all of these characteristics, but the computer can.”

We might call this an active field guide, as opposed to passive guides like National Geographic’s Handheld Birds for the Palm Tungsten platform, which leave the identification decisions to the user.

I’m skeptical. Plant identification is hard (at least it is for this birder), even though the plant just sits there, and you can examine leaves in the hand as long as you like. It’s not for nothing that the discipline has evolved elaborate ID keys that consider opposite vs. adjacent branching structures, leaf texture, bud scars, characteristics of flowers and fruits, geographic distribution, and more. Ironically, the screenshots accompanying the story demonstrate the identification of a leaf from that tricky genus, Quercus. A more realistic assessment comes from P. Bryan Heidorn with the National Science Foundation:

The computer tree guide is good at narrowing down and finding the right species near the top of the list of possibilities, [Heidorn] said. “Instead of flipping through a field guide with 1,000 images, you are given 5 or 10 choices,” he said. The right choice may be second instead of first sometimes, “but that doesn’t really matter,” he said. “You can always use the English language — a description of the bark, for instance — to do the final identification.”

At the park: 30

I had intended to show Dirk the nest box with Tufted Titmouse eggs in it, but we were surprised to find that the eggs had already hatched and the nest comprised six gaping, blind mouths.

As for the intended residents, Box #13 hatched out 13 Wood Duck eggs. A merganser family of hen and three ducklings, practicing diving, was spotted this morning; possibly this is the same family of thirteen that hatched on 17 April.

Four boxes in a row along lower Barnyard Run are due to hatch out soon, probably this week. We then have two remaining boxes to hatch in June: #2 at the head of the main pond (Hooded Merganser) and #68 at the far end (Wood Duck).

New bird arrivals detected over the past couple weeks: Chimney Swift, all three swallows, Wood Thrush, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Acadian Flycatcher, and a Brown-headed Cowbird chasing insects in the parking lot as bold as any urban Rock Dove.

A puzzle inside a puzzle

In Rabbit Redux, Harry Angstrom has gone into his father’s trade, operating a Linotype machine. There’s a couple of passages in the book where John Updike reproduces the lines of hot type that Harry sets for a local tabloid, including his mistakes. So we come, in Part II, to this passage, typed while Harry is particularly agitated:

Police authorities  revealed Saturday  that they are

holding for questioning two black minors and Wendell

Phillips, 19, of 42B Plum Street, in connection with

the brutal assault of an  unidentified sywsfyz kmlhs

the brutal assault of an  unidentified elderly white

woman late Thursday night.

The letter substitutions make sense when you look at Ottmar Mergenthaler’s keyboard: Harry’s left hand has slipped one column to the right.

Except for one thing: sywsfyz should be sywsfyq. The key to the right of y is q, not z. My text is the Everyman Angstrom tetralogy. Where did the mistake creep in?

Red Herring

Fairfax County’s newest professional company turns in a balanced ensemble performance of John Hollinger’s waterfront sendup of assumed identities, 1950s-era Commies, and the G-women who chase them. 1st Stage meets the challenges inherent in the script—lots of little scenes scattered across “Boston, Wisconsin, and the South Pacific”—with a masterful yet inexpensive set design (uncredited) built from a palette of packing crates and plywood and a crew of two period-costumed Grips (Kate Karczewski and Conor Dinan) who perform most of the scene shifting. Thus an entire kitchen is conjured from a waist-high box, a mixing bowl, and a package of oatmeal. The cast of six doubles up to cover seventeen speaking roles, each with a clearly distinguished dialect. Wireless audio embedded in several of the moving set pieces is also a nice touch to localize the sound of a radio or television.

Hollinger’s script offers some tasty technical turns to the actors, including a second-act opener that hinges on the audio delays on an overseas telephone call: the bit calls for syllable-level timing from Katie Foster as Lynn and Lucas Beck as James. The playwright sometimes strains to put a comic button on the end of each of those little scenes, and the plot left a few of us mystified at intermission.

  • Red Herring, by John Hollinger, directed by Jessica Lefkow, 1st Stage, Tysons Corner, Virginia

1st Stage’s performance space is a generously-ceilinged black box with good sight lines (seating about 140) in an industrial park. The company’s web site, unfortunately, is overburdened with Flash effects and rather opaque when it comes to providing information.

At the park: 29

The subject of my term paper for the Introduction to Ecology class that I recently completed is Huntley Meadows Park. The paper is a little long on data and short on analysis, but I’m happy with it. From the introduction:

Huntley Meadows Park comprises approximately 1,425 acres (577ha) of freshwater wetland and surrounding forest in southern Fairfax County, Virginia. Managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA), it is the County’s largest park, and features the largest (70+ acres, 28+ ha) non-tidal marsh in the area. Bounded by housing subdivisions to the north, east, and south, and government installations to the west and southwest, the Park is an island of blue and green prized by casual strollers and scientific specialists alike. It is particularly valued by naturalists for the unique diversityof the habitat to be found there, especially considering its urban/suburban surroundings. Guidebook writers and editors like Scott Weidensaul [Weidensaul92] and David W. Johnston [Johnston97] have singled out the Park for special attention, noting that its mix of woods and water makes it a popular spot for Big Day birders; Weidensaul calls the Park’s very existence “utterly improbable,” encroached on as it is by the busy traffic corridors of U.S. 1 and Interstates 95 and 495. The main entrance to Huntley Meadows Park is only three miles from the Huntington terminus of Metro’s Yellow Line, and hence the Park is a short trip from anywhere in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

At the park: 28

lone egretadaptive reuseMaples are leafing out, offering some shade in the unseasonal midsummer heat. Frogs are everywhere, including a pair of Green Treefrogs (Hyla cinerea) resting inside our one plastic nest box. At least something is getting some value from it. New arrivals seen/heard/reported: Yellowlegs sp., Solitary Sandpiper, Great Crested Flycatcher, White-eyed Vireo, Red-eyed Vireo, Yellow Warbler, Prothonotary Warbler (a singing male and a no-bins look at a foraging female), Ovenbird. A Tufted Titmouse is squatting in box #5 again.

Another one down

From Missy Frederick for the Washington Business Journal comes the unhappy news that Timberlake’s restaurant in Dupont Circle will be closing at the end of May, to reopen under a new identity. Timberlake’s was one of my favorite places to get brunch and a glass of wine before a 1:30 movie on Saturday afternoon—at least, back in the days when I could knock back a frittata without thinking about the cholesterol impact. The decor was nothing special, garden variety wooden booths and pub furnishings: the place was just dang comfortable.