Author: David Gorsline

Northwest Branch rock hop

for JaiOne of the simpler assignments for my current class in freshwater ecosystems was to visit the falls of the Northwest Branch (and have a picture taken to prove it).

This reach of the river is wild and urbanized at the same time. The trail is a short stumble down from a parking lot on Colesville Road. This is the site of Burnt Mills (ooh, the Internet Archive has an interesting book from 1931 about the history of the flour mill that was here). The riverborne trash is hard to overlook, and especially around the parking lot, the non-native invasive plants are pretty aggressive. Nevertheless, I found a few bits of Rattlesnake Weed (Hieracium venosum) growing around the rocks. Leta and I scrambled for a couple hundred yards downstream before turning back. I showed her an Acadian Flycatcher making sallies to a pool.

On the other side of Colesville Road, the river is held back by a dam and spillway. On this flat bit of trail, we found two Five-lined Skinks (Eumeces fasciatus): a juvenile with the familiar blue tail and a much-larger adult male with indistinguishable lines, orange-red in the head, and a truncated tail.

Leta chatted with one of the fishermen, who said that sometimes he took bream from the river. I think that we would know these as sunfish.

She has a point

BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER

Like other ladies, the little feathered brides have to bear their husbands’ names, however inappropriate. What injustice! Here an innocent creature with an olive-green back and yellowish breast has to go about all her days known as the black-throated blue warbler, just because that happens to describe the dress of her spouse!

—Florence A. Merriam, Birds Through an Opera-Glass (1890), p. 187

Underneath the Lintel

Paul Morella shines as The Librarian in this gentle existentialist fable with just a dash of conspiracy theory. A naive provincial librarian in The Netherlands receives a Baedecker’s travel guide in the book drop, only to find that it’s overdue by more than a hundred years. Seeking an explanation for this mysterious return, he assembles a package of clues, which he presents to us as a chalkboard- and slide carousel-illustrated lecture.

The Librarian’s quixotic mission to reveal, to prove, to justify the existence of his quarry, working from no more than “the ephemera of a life” (tram tickets, police reports, laundry receipts) redeems his own life—and perhaps each of ours—from its more usual fate, the insignificance of an abandoned voice recording at a fair, bought and sold for 50 cents.

This thoughtful, spiritual piece also has its comedy: there’s a nice running gag about a certain juggernaut of a French musical that seems to be playing everywhere in the world simultaneously.

In this solo work, Morella does well with the multiple voices that are required to populate The Librarian’s lecture; however, his baseline Dutch dialect wanders a bit. Nevertheless, his engaging, bemused, slightly obsessive Netherlander bureaucrat is a pleasure to watch.

  • Underneath the Lintel, by Glen Berger, directed by John Vreeke, MetroStage, Alexandria, Va.

Best courtesy reminder of the season: The Librarian enters the lecture hall with the house lights still up, straightens his presentation material, then writes on the chalkboard, “TURN OFF CELL PHONES.” He adds, “PLEASE.”

Mitchell the mensch

I was asked to complete an online survey by one of the environmental/educational organizations that I support. Most of the questions were routine, but I was struck by this free-answer question:

If you can recall it, what is the story or situation that inspired your first philanthropic gift?

And I was prompted to tell this story from college:

It’s not the first time that I made a donation, but the conversation left its mark on me. I was in college, and I was walking with a fellow student, Mitchell H., and someone asked us for a donation–I don’t remember the cause. And Mitchell pulled out his wallet as naturally as taking a pen from his pocket. Later, I asked him, “What do you care about starving whales/greening the Armenians/whatever the cause was?” He said, “This is what you do.”

Mind you, I was on scholarship/loan/work study/piggy bank and Mitchell’s family was probably paying full fare. Nevertheless, that exchange has stuck with me.

(We’ll save the story about how Mitchell tricked me into eating styrofoam packing peanuts for another time.)

On rails

A good four-part series this week by WAMU’s two Martins on the return of streetcars to H Street N.E.:

Perhaps it should have been obvious to me, but I was struck by a comment made by Ellen McCarthy of the D.C. Office of Planning:

“One of the attractions of streetcar as a transportation mode is that it’s cheaper than rail, and while it’s more expensive than bus, what the experience has been nationwide is that the clear visible permanence of rail tracks creates a level of confidence about commitment to development of a particular corridor, so it’s more apt to produce investment on the private sector side.”

At the park: 68

Today’s report for nesting activity, abridged and annotated:

greened upbox 60A much greener park than 5 weeks ago, and most of our boxes have hatched! We have 8 (at least partially) successful nests, and one failed drop/dump nest in box #4. Box #13 was in the process of hatching when we got there; the Wood Duck hen flushed and showed a somewhat unexpected distraction display. We closed up the box quickly and backed off; we will get a shell count next time. Box #84 may also be in the process of hatching. Box #60, hatched out, at right.

In the vicinity of box #62, we had unaided eye views of a male Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotoria citrea), vocalizing “sweet-sweet” and checking out some natural holes in a snag. Of course, this the spot where we’d maintained warbler boxes for a few years–until this season.

box 62We’ll have another work day in June, to count #13 and #84 and two more boxes that haven’t yet hatched. Box #62, still unhatched, at left.

Water gauge reading: 1.64

homage to NewmanThis beaver-cropped Sweetgum tree reminds me of Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk. A lot.

Left Fork, Paint Branch

Our field trip for Jai Cole’s Freshwater Ecosystems class visited the Left Fork of the Paint Branch, on the site of the former Maydale Nature Center. The site is part of the Upper Paint Branch Special Protection Area, and the stream was the target of recently completed restoration work. We focused on the restoration work, and also performed a classroom exercise-level habitat assessment.

reconstructedThe centerpiece of the restoration is this 100-meter reach. You’re looking upstream and roughly northwest, standing on a bridge that provides access to the area. Out of frame to the right is a small parking lot. The point of the project was to replace a series of notched logs that channelled the stream as it drops from a weir (the flat water just visible in the background) (which maintains water supply for a pair of ponds on the property) and flows under the bridge; the problem with the logs was they they weren’t designed to allow fish passage. (Brown Trout is a naturalized breeder in the watershed.) The project replaced the logs with a series of arcing rock structures (called “cross-veins” in the local engineering parlance), each with a gentler drop and a plunge pool downstream. The pools give fish swimming upstream enough elbow room to get up speed to jump and surmount the rock barrier. Notice how the top of each arc of stones drops a few inches at the center: that’s where we want the most water to flow. A vertical plane through a watercourse passes through the point of maximum flow and the deepest part of the channel, which is called the thalweg, and in this case we want the thalweg to remain where it is.

weir and cross-veinFrom elsewhere on the stream, here’s a closeup (albeit with a lot of glare) of an arced cross-vein on the right and a straight-line weir on the left. Water flow is right to left, and the weir maintains the pool downstream of the cross-vein. Again, notice that, at this level of flow, the stones of the cross-vein near each bank are high and dry, and the stones in the center have the most flow over them.

What do you see?

Very nice 20-minute video detailing the restoration of a vandalized Mark Rothko, one of the Seagrams murals, now in the collection of the Tate Modern. Of interest to fans of John Logan’s Red—a study canvas prepared by the artist is found in storage, conservationists prepare a test canvas with those big sweepy brushes, some quick views of the murals as a series—tech gearheads (500-power 3-D microscopy), and devotees of the painter’s work.

ᔥ things magazine

Stony Man to Jewel Hollow

pale purpleStephanie Mason led another nature hike yesterday, this time at an elevation considerably higher than three weeks ago. We covered about 5 miles along the Appalachian Trail and side trails, from Stony Man to Jewel Hollow.

ooh shinyWe got some nice looks at high-elevation tree specialists for our region, like Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea), Red Spruce (Picea rubens), and the glossy-barked Yellow Birch (Betula alleghaniensis). Perhaps owing to the higher elevations around Stony Man (4011 feet), the Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) trees in this patch look pretty healthy and untouched by the adelgids.

Closer to the ground, spring ephemerals were abundant—Wild Pink, Moss Phlox, cinquefoil, bluets, many violets, Wood Anemone, waterleaf, Star Chickweed. I picked up one butterfly for my list, Falcate Orangetip (Anthocharis midea). Among the birds, the best was a bird from my “renewal” list of lifers that I haven’t seen in a long time: Veery (Catharus fuscescens). Good, multiple looks at Chestnut-sided Warbler (and we could point them out to a party of passing hikers) and American Redstart.

We climbed about 300 feet, then dropped down and ended about 300 feet below our starting point. We hit Stony Man early enough in the day (before noon) that the traffic was not too bad.

Textbook pastebin

When I’m recording a textbook at Learning Ally, I often find it necessary to scribble a sentence fragment from the top or bottom of a page onto a scratchpad, so that I can read the complete sentence smoothly without a noisy rustle of turning pages. I recently worked on Theodore J. Lowi et al., American Government: Power and Purpose (2012), 12/e. In an exercise in political science found art (or spammy nonsense, you may decide), I collected all my scribbles from various page turns in the book, and here they are:

held on to their seats—nearly 80% of Democrats and more than 98% of Republicans.
of bills considered by Congress each year are defeated long before they reach the president.
He cannot aggregate the votes in his
negotiations, proposals, and counterproposals that were taking place.
There is ample evidence that Wilson’s
of information.
foreign policy initiatives.
On January 24, 2002, the 28 judges
Furthermore, in the Judiciary Act of 1789, Congress conferred on the Supreme Court the power
claims on that principle during their terms in office.
legislatures.
Voters were unhappy about the state’s economy and dissatisfied with Davis’s
Voters, as we discussed in the
A grassroots campaign can
American farmers were frustrated with federal agricultural policies
The challenge is how to regulate the participation of groups without
of legislators’, judges’, and executives’ deliberations.
the nation’s economy.
their taxable income any money they can justify as an investment or a “business expense.”
As we noted in Chap-
culture.
providing the states with incentives to carry out federal mandates or shifting the program’s administration to a federal bureaucracy.
favor those already in positions of power and through prejudices that tend to develop against any group that has long been on the lower rungs of society.
the Soviet Union.
hundreds of millions on trade policy, we spend relatively little on environmental, human rights, and peacekeeping efforts.

2 solos

Two powerful solo shows played in the area over the past weekend, both of them responses to violence: in one case, large-scale mayhem that many of us would consider heroic; in the other, a small-group killing, inexplicable, that has deep emotional resonance.

Denis O’Hare is The Poet, a time-shifting tramp in a trenchcoat and porkpie hat (rather than one of Samuel Beckett’s bowlers), tumbled down the centuries to sing the story of Homer’s Iliad. The Poet’s song/riff is a blend of the original Greek, a verse translation, a bit of audience interaction and prompting, and a free adaptation into vernacular English. His memory failing, nevertheless the Poet can summon music and his Muses (skillful Brian Ellingsen on double bass and Milltone tongue piano) and can turn a clever phrase: “Athena tequila” is especially fun.

The piece focuses on the best-known incidents of Homer’s poem: the love between Achilles and Patroclus, Achilles’ great sulk, and the brutal killings of Patroclus and Hector. The Poet’s sentiments perhaps lie with the people of Troy, for although O’Hare’s voice is neutral when he embodies one of the Trojans, he adopts a loutish English dialect for the Greeks that owes something to Sicily or South Philly. The crux of this 100-minute monologue is a stupendous catalogue of wars known to Western history, for a thousand years an unbroken chain ending (for now) in Syria.

Speaking to us out of time as he does, when the Poet names the great cities destroyed by war, from Troy down to Dresden and Hiroshima, he briefly pauses, then moves on. Could it be that, Cassandra-like, he can see the next great devastation of the future, and knows (better than the Greek prophetess did) that it is pointless to share his vision with us?

Nanna Ingvarsson’s task is no less challenging, as she personifies more than half a dozen people (many of them composites) connected to the 2006 mass murder-suicide at the West Nickel Mines School, a former Amish one-room schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. From an innocent schoolgirl of six or seven, to a sassy supermarket clerk, to the tormented killer himself, Ingvarsson runs through a series of emotional and physical changes; Jessica Dickey’s script is a patchwork quilt of interlayered monologues (with a small debt to the Tectonic Theater Project’s own Laramie Project). The actor does well to focus on a specific, simple gesture for each speaker (a twirled bonnet string, a closed-off pair of folded arms) so that we keep our bearings as characters pop in and out.

The piece works best as a primer on the Amish perspective on the shootings. Rather than seek an explanation, a “why” of the violence, the community’s immediate response is one of of compassion, most notably toward the widow of the gunman. We hear the inspiring story of martyred Anabaptist Dirk Willemsz, who escaped from religious imprisonment across thin ice, only to turn back to rescue his pursuer who had broken through into the icy water. Is it possible that such a simple gesture of peace can forestall destruction?

  • An Iliad, by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson, based on Homer’s Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, a Homer’s Coat project, directed by Lisa Peterson, Clarice Smith Center Kay Theatre, College Park, Md.
  • The Amish Project, by Jessica Dickey, directed by Holly Twyford, produced by Factory 449, Anacostia Arts Center, Washington