Author: David Gorsline

Flotsam

Tracy Mincer and Linda Amaral-Zettler report their findings from examining the small bits of plastic floating in the ocean. Using DNA analysis and electron microscopy, they found 50 species of microorganism living there, including a two-level trophic web.

As with many ecosystems, the bottom of the food chain was occupied by things that photosynthesise. These included unicellular algae called diatoms and dinoflagellates, and photosynthetic bacteria known as cyanobacteria. Usually, such creatures swim freely in the ocean. They therefore have to work hard to stay near the surface, where light for photosynthesis is abundant. By hitching a ride on a piece of floating plastic, they can stay near the surface without effort.

They also found evidence that suggests, but does not clearly establish, that bacteria are actively breaking down these energy-rich, petroleum-based substances.

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SALVIATI. I have heard such things put forth as I should blush to repeat—not so much to avoid discrediting their authors (whose names could always be withheld) as to refrain from detracting so greatly from the honor of the human race. In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea as they hit upon themselves or hear set forth by others, no matter how simple and stupid these may be, gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or hot rage—if indeed it does not make them ill.

—Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), trans. Stillman Drake

Prince George’s wetlands

Last Saturday’s field trips took us to two freshwater wetlands in southern P.G. County, one well-known among naturalists, the other decidedly off the beaten path.

We met M-NCPPC ranger Chris Garrett at Suitland Bog. Chris is an accomplished trip leader who knows his park and what’s important to see, how to move the group along, and when to just take a moment and look and listen.

The park lies in the watershed of Henson Creek, a small trib of the Potomac. It’s actively managed: one of Chris’s great challenges is preventing the bog (technically it’s a fen, as much of the water comes from seeps) from drying out under the pressure of encroaching maples and willows. And there is Microstegium at the doorstep.

paler redSeveral of the orchids on the plant list printed in the park brochure are probably extirpated, but Chris was able to point out Green Wood Orchis (Platanthera clavellata). He also found for us Ten-Angled Pipewort (Eriocaulon decangulare), the tiny Spatulate-leaved Sundew (Drosera intermedia), Halberd-leaved Greenbrier (Smilax pseudochina), and Red Milkweed (Asclepias rubra). We also got good looks at Netted Chain Fern (Woodwardia areolata), this time in fruit—alas, my snapshots were not satisfactory.

nicely set offerect and readyOn the slopes leading down to the bog (sorry, fen), a Common Wood-Nymph (Cercyonis pegala) was on the wing (a first for me), and Chris showed us a fine patch of Lycopodium, including patches with sporangia.

needs TLCChris and the class moved south to Cheltenham Wetlands Park, a 200-odd acre tract next door to a Homeland Security facility. The park is sometimes likened to a better-known park across the river as “Huntley Meadows Park without the people,” or the amenities, for that matter. There is no visitor center, parking is on the outside of a locked gate, and those fellows from DHS might give you the stink-eye. The budget for keeping the boardwalks in trim is also lacking.

all to ourselvesBut it’s a charming little wetland, all the same. Stories differ as to how the water showed up in the wetland to begin with. The property was once home to an array of radio antennas (like HMP) (you can see remnants of the supporting poles here and there) and was managed by the U.S. Navy. One story is that a brass hat ordered the low spots to be dredged to support bass fishing; another is that the access road to the radio antennas formed a dike that retained water from periodic floods of Piscataway Creek.

ready to eatflower and fruitBird life at late morning was stil jumping: I counted 18 species heard or seen. Swallowtails of various sorts were numerous, and the Eastern Kingbird we saw was likely snacking on them. Arrowwood Viburnum (Viburnum dentatum) was in fruit, and Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis) flowers were starting to mature. The destination plant for this scrub-shrub swamp is Common Bladderwort, with its itty-bitty yellow flowers emerging from the water above a haze of fine brown roots below the surface.

Contemporary American Theater Festival 2013

It’s usually the case that two or three of the plays at CATF share a thematic affinity. This year, three shows are connected by the theme of religious zealotry—not precisely extremism, but perhaps overcommitment, to the point of a fault.

The first of these is the drama A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World, by Liz Duffy Adams, which takes place in coastal Massachusetts in 1702, ten years after the Salem witch trials. And indeed, the first act comprises the retrial of Abigail Williams (Susannah Hoffman), one of the accusers and key player in Arthur Miller’s version of events, The Crucible. Abigail finds herself accused of witchcraft herself, via a chain of suspicion and hysteria not unlike Miller’s story. Although, in a sly aside, we are reminded that you can’t trust any of those stories that “the Miller” made up.

One of the most interesting passages is a fanciful recounting of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by the young indentured servant Rebekkah (small but powerful Becky Byers). Rebekkah once visited the big city of New York and observed a touring company production. In her garbled retelling, the Scottish thane is named “MacDeath” and royalty are referred to as governors. (There’s a nice resonance with Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a post-electric play.) There are also hints of another work of Shakespeare’s: a discussion of utopian societies by Abigail and a mysterious stranger (Gerardo Rodriguez) reminds us of The Tempest.

Technical elements are very effective here: the subtle flickering of lamp light from floor-mounted instruments (designed by D. M. Wood); the muffled roar of distant surf at the back of house left (sound design by Eric Shimelonis).

Next is the comedy Modern Terrorism, Or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them, by Jon Kern–a very funny farce with death at its center, and the all-around most successful work in the festival. Here the fanatics are a trio of feckless Muslim suicide bombers working out of an apartment in Brooklyn: Qalalaase (Royce Johnson), a Somali who seems to be condemned to the “those who can’t do, teach” track of terrorism; Yalda Abbasi (Mahira Kakkar), a Pakistani woman whose emotions are even more tightly wound than her headscarf; and the moonstruck Rahim Janjua (Omar Maskati), whose fanaticism for the films of George Lucas and the computers of Steve Jobs exceeds his devotion to jihad. Despite all efforts, they find themselves joined by Jerome, their upstairs neighbor (the superb Kohler McKenzie), a stoner who’d never found a purpose in life until he discovered holy war.

Lots of good physical comedy in this one: Johnson ‘s hand shoved into the back of Maskati’s briefs, checking for moisture that might disrupt the bomb he’s attached to Rahim’s scrotum; Kakkar unspooling and strewing an entire roll of paper towels lest her unwanted guest spill tea (or his own blood) on the upholstery; a crazy blind backwards cross by McKenzie that calls for him to step over a coffee table and love seat, with akimbo grace.

Although it’s been almost twelve years since the attacks in Washington and New York, and our healing has come to the point that we can laugh at some of the blundering war criminals who have followed, and although the time will come (as one character says) when Osama bin Laden is a face to be silk-screened onto an ironic tee shirt, it’s worth remembering the gore and destruction that bombers of any stripe are accountable for. And remembering the compassion that goes into a good laugh.

It’s probably stretching a point to include Jane Martin’s H2O with the others, but there is no question that Deborah (the laser-focused Diane Mair) is dedicated to her Christianity. Once again, Martin succeeds in taking a character from a tradition easily parodied or ridiculed (or worse, just dismissed) and writing a genuine person, one with a burning inner life (think of Martin’s early Twirler). If the setup of this play too much resembles Paul Rudnick’s I Hate Hamlet and Martin’s own Anton in Show Business (commercially successful movie actor [Alex Podulke as Jake] seeks stage cred, talented actor as mentor), be assured that the resolution of this play is bitterly sharp (perhaps excessively so) and calls for Deborah to give up more of herself than she ever has before. Deborah’s eyes, impossibly wide-open and ready for the world at the start of the play, end up hooded and ringed in darkness.

The remaining two plays perhaps could be connected with the idea of contemplating the abyss; this idea connects them back to the seaside cliffs of Discourse as well. In the first instance, Sam Shepard’s enigmatic ghost story Heartless, the psychological hole is physicalized as the canyons of Los Angeles and environs. One character drops into a chasm and returns unharmed; another looks into the void and (perhaps reliably) explains the backstory of her daughter’s brutal chest scar. There is a recollection of climbing a tree, Nicodemus-like, to gaze on the beautiful burnout that was James Dean.

What’s special about this play, for Shepard, is that his strong writing here is for his four women characters. Michael Cullen’s Roscoe (a ruined academic on the run from his marriage and his life) is important to the play for introducing us to the more seriously damaged Mable (Kathleen Butler) and her family. In another Shepard play, Roscoe would take center stage.

And there are jelly donuts.

On the lighter side is the bio-comedy Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah, by Mark St. Germain. The abyss is no deeper than the swimming pool next door to the apartment where F. Scott Fitzgerald (Joey Collins) is holed up doing Hollywood script rewrites, but there is a real threat that Fitzgerald will drop back into alcoholism and the self-pity of a creator who never lived up to his early promise. A visit by the false friend Ernest Hemingway (the boisterous Rod Brogan) knocks him off the edge.

Entertaining as the play is, it carries the burden of too much research, too much name-checking. Benchley, Parker, the Murphys—didn’t these guys have any friends that we’ve never heard of?

If you don’t agree with these reviews, remember Qalalaase’s advice: “The internet is full of falsehoods.”

  • Contemporary American Theater Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
  • A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World, by Liz Duffy Adams, directed by Kent Nicholson
  • Modern Terrorism, Or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them, by Jon Kern, directed by Ed Herendeen
  • H2O, by Jane Martin, directed by John Jory
  • Heartless, by Sam Shepard, directed by Ed Herendeen
  • Scott and Hem in the Garden of Allah, written and directed by Mark St. Germain

Battle Creek Cypress Swamp

We took a look at a freshwater swamp for our next wetlands field trip, co-led by Charles County staffer Katie Bradley. Battle Creek Cypress Swamp is known around the area as being one of the northernmost places where Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) can be found in large numbers. It’s suspected that the cypresses did well in this spot, rather than getting crowded out by shade-tolerant understory species, because farmers once grazed cattle here.

creeque alleyMuch of the soggy spots were just that, with no standing or running water, but Battle Creek itself still showed some flow, as it made its way south to the Patuxent.

Katie also took us upland into a nice managed meadow along the access road (Grays Road) that I hadn’t seen on my previous visit.

nettedDown in the bottomlands, we found Netted Chain Fern (Woodwardia areolata). I’m starting to get a handle on this one, and how it differs from Sensitive Fern. Both are lovers of boggy spots, and both have the non-fernlike wings along the rachis. This note from Flora of Virginia helps a lot:

When fruiting structures are not present, Woodwardia areolata is sometimes confused with Onocolea, but in W. areolata, the pinnae tend to be alternate (tending to be opposite in Onocolea) and acute or acuminate (vs. obtuse), with finely serrulate margins (vs. entire) (p. 156)

The fine serrations and the alternate pinnae are fairly clear in the above image. But I still need to be patient and spend more time looking for sori.

Stories I missed: 3

Just when I think that I have run out of indignant, that I am fresh out of appalled, I come across a story like this: In an effort to determine the precise whereabouts of Osama bin Laden (preparatory to the extrajudicial killing, assassination, whatever you want to call it, of this monstrous person), the Central Intelligence Agency put together a fake hepatitis B vaccination clinic and went about collecting DNA in the Abbottabad, Pakistan neighborhood where bin Laden was suspected to be holed up. As the editors of Scientific American put it,

It is hard enough to distribute, for example, polio vaccines to children in desperately poor, politically unstable regions that are rife with 10-year-old rumors that the medicine is a Western plot to sterilize girls—false assertions that have long since been repudiated by the Nigerian religious leaders who first promoted them. Now along come numerous credible reports of a vaccination campaign that is part of a CIA plot—one the U.S. has not denied.

The likely wages of this shameful sin is the stalling of global efforts to eradicate polio, as Donald G. McNeil, Jr.’s reporting for the New York Times suggests. A certain Dr. Shakil Afridi is identified as being in charge of the fake medical exercise. Instead of administering the full three doses of vaccine that are called for in the protocol, the ersatz humanitarians abandoned the setup after giving one dose to everyone in an entire neighborhood, without permission. Bad medicine, reprehensible spycraft, irresponsible policy.

Upcoming: 34

Michael Wines provides a fine update on two different research teams’ efforts to re-establish Castanea dentata to its pre-blight glory. Perhaps the best part of the piece is his concise explanation of the two different mechanisms for fending off Cryphonectria parasitica‘s attack on the chestnut.

Still, it’s too soon to tell whether the genetically modified trees or the Chinese hybrids will be successful.

“We’re only five years in the fields,” [Sara Fern Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania State University] said. “You can’t really say anything much in forestry until age 15.”

Jug Bay Natural Area

Our first wetlands class field trip went to the Prince George’s side of Jug Bay on the Patuxent River. Greg Kearns of the park staff ran us up the river in a powered pontoon boat; he described the changes, good and bad, that he’s seen in the tidal wetlands over this 30-year career.

coming backfloweringThe re-establishment of Annual Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica) is due a decade of hard work by Kearns and his team: planting, spraying invasive Phragmites, building fences to exclude non-migratory Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), and other management activities regarding the geese (some call ’em flying cows). And the work has paid off. At left, the yellow-green band of veg in the midground, between the Spatterdock (Nuphar sp.) in the foreground and the gray-green Phragmites in the background, is Wild Rice. At right, you can see some of it coming into flower. This plant is a congener of the wild rice we eat, Z. palustris, harvested from the upper Midwest and Canada.

doing fineAfter the boat trip, a handful of us wandered down to the observation tower. We were surprised to find several good examples of Baldcypress (Taxodium distichum), especially since the feature of next week’s trip to Battle Creek Cypress Swamp is this same tree. Here’s an example that appears to be doing quite well.

Oh, yeah, and the place is crazy full of Osprey (Pandion haliaetus).

Decline of the West: 1

First it was the lights coming on at Wrigley Field, then the closing of Tower Records and Ollsson’s Books, and then the end of the zone system for D.C. taxicabs. We endured. But this blow is too much to take: the Metropolitan Museum of Art has discontinued its colorful admission buttons, replacing them with paper tickets, stickers—and advertising. A spokesman for the museum says that the the new paraphernalia will save the organization two cents apiece. Bah!

hoping for a freebieAnd Godzilla here was working on collecting a full set, hoping to score a free admission when his color came up again.

Not unlike some consultants I know

“Christ a-mighty, it’s hot, huh, kid?”

Clem Hoately, the talker, stood beside Stan, wiping the sweat from the band of his panama with a handkerchief. “Say, Stan, run over and get me a bottle of lemon soda from the juice joint. Here’s a dime; get yourself one too.”

When Stan came back with the cold bottles, Hoately tilted his gratefully. “Jesus, my throat’s sore as a bull’s ass in fly time.”

Stan drank the pop slowly. “Mr. Hoately?”

“Yeah, what?”

“How do you ever get a guy to geek? Or is this the only one? I mean, is a guy born that way—liking to bite the heads off chickens?”

Clem slowly closed one eye. “Let me tell you something, kid. In the carny world you don’t ask nothing. And you’ll get told no lies.”

“Okay. But did you just happen to find this fellow—doing—doing this somewhere behind a barn, and work up the act?”

Clem pushed back his hat. “I like you, kid. I like you a lot. And just for that I’m going to give you a treat. I’m not going to give you a boot in the ass, get it? That’s the treat.”

Stan grinned, his cool, bright blue eyes never leaving the older man’s face. Suddenly Hoately dropped his voice.

“Just because I’m your pal I ain’t going to crap you up. You want to know where geeks came from. Well, listen—you don’t find ’em. You make ’em.”

He let this sink in, but Stanton Carlisle never moved a muscle. “Okay. But how?”

Hoately grabbed the youth by the shirt front and drew him nearer. “Listen, kid. Do I have to draw you a damn blueprint? You pick up a guy and he ain’t a geek—he’s a drunk. A bottle-a-day booze fool. So you tell him like this: ‘I got a little job for you. It’s a temporary job. We got to get a new geek. So until we do you’ll put on the geek outfit and fake it.’ You tell him, ‘You don’t have do nothing. You’ll have a razor blade in your hand and when you pick up the chicken you give it a little nick with the blade and then make like you’re drinking the blood. Same with rats. The marks don’t know no different.'”

Hoately ran his eye up and down the midway, sizing up the crowd. He turned back to Stan. “Well, he does this for a week and you see to it that he gets his bottle regular and a place to sleep it off in. He likes this fine. This is what he thinks is heaven. So after a week you say to him like this, you say, ‘Well, I got to get me a real geek. You’re through.’ He scares up at this because nothing scares a real rummy like the chance of a dry spell and getting the horrors. He says, ‘What’s the matter? Ain’t I doing okay?’ So you say, ‘Like crap you’re doing okay. You can’t draw no crowd faking a geek. Turn in your outfit. You’re through.’ Then you walk away. He comes following you, begging for another chance and you say, ‘Okay. But after tonight out you go.’ But you give him his bottle.

“That night you drag out the lecture and lay it on thick. All the while you’re talking he’s thinking about sobering up and getting the crawling shakes. You give him time to think it over, while you’re talking. Then throw in the chicken. He’ll geek.”

—William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley (1946), Card I, “The Fool”