A… demande ce qu’il y a de nouveau, aujourd’hui, sur la plantation. Il n’y a rien de nouveau. Il n’y a toujours que les menus incidents de culture qui se reproduisent périodiquement, dans l’une ou l’autre pièce, selon le cycle des opérations. Comme les parcelles sont nombreuses et que l’ensemble est conduit de manière à échelonner la récolte sur les douze mois le l’année, tous les éléments du cycle ont lieu en même temps chaque jour, et les menus incidents périodiques se répètent aussi tous à la fois, ici ou là, quotidiennement.
—Alain Robbe-Grillet, La Jalousie (1957)
This way
I was driving back from my dentist’s office and I found one of the old wayfinding signs directing drivers to what it now called Washington Dulles International Airport. I don’t know how old these signs are—perhaps they are of the same vintage as the original access road that was built to the airport, but probably not. I remember seeing one or two to the west of the airport, out U.S. Route 50, but I think that they are gone now. This one, on a relatively sleepy stretch of Little River Turnpike, perhaps has survived because it’s been a while since the road required widening.
So it took me two tries to get a serviceable image of the sign. And on my way home, I continued farther west, not following my usual path, and I found another one! Less sun-faded, but a little more scuffed up.
Hoyles Mill Conservation Park
Carole Bergmann led a walk across Hoyles Mill Conservation Park, home to one of the largest tracts of contiguous forest in Montgomery County. The park’s selling point is its geology, an underlying sill of diabase bedrock that isn’t that far below the surface, as the image on the right demonstrates.
Diabase is prized as a construction material. Its mafic chemistry and the thin soils translate into a forest community of mixed oaks with a fair amount of Virginia Pine and Eastern Red-cedar, but not much in the way of our usual hickories, maples, and Tuliptree. Uncommon oaks to be found here include Shingle Oak, Swamp White Oak, and Post Oak.
We found American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) in bloom on the far side of Little Seneca Creek, and the state rare Pricklyash (Zanthoxylum americanum) right at the entrance gate.
The special bird sighting for the day was a Downy Woodpecker working the upper branches of a Virginia Pine, hanging upside down. This is not the first time that I’ve seen a Downy acting like a songbird. Maybe I should start calling them Downy Chickadees.
Waiting
FELIX. …I’ll find something, because I’ll tell you, Steven, I’ve got a little news flash for you: the world is not waiting for a play! Okay? The world is waiting to see who’s gonna go broke or blow what up next, and how many people are gonna get killed or go hungry, and in between people getting killed and people going broke, they just want somewhere cool to sit in the dark and be happy, you know, it could be Mistakes Were Made, it could be Mamma Mia, it could be fuckin’ Muppets, they don’t care!
—Craig Wright, Mistakes Were Made
Gone
Wednesday’s poem at Poetry Daily is a killer, “Things That Have Changed Since You Died:”, by Laura Kasischke.
…We
send each other mail without stamps.
At the park: 56
Snips from my report on nest box activity for the past two weeks:
Lots of activity! And as usual, not always the boxes one would expect. As of last Sunday, we have at least one egg in eleven of the boxes, although the single egg in #62 looks like it may be a dud.
10 March
Target species observed: Northern Shoveler, American Wigeon, Northern Pintail, Green-winged Teal (30), Gadwall (8)
Water gauge: 0.28
17 March
Target species observed: Northern Shoveler, Green-winged Teal, Gadwall
Water gauge: 0.35
Eastern Phoebes were heard throughout the wetland. I heard Brown-headed Cowbird tinkling in the parking lot. Tiny, tight buds of Spring Beauty could be found.
Here’s the status of each of the boxes:
- #2: —
- #4: 3 WD eggs
- #10: at least 4 HM eggs; hen flushed 3/17
- #77: —
- #7: —
- #6: 1 WD egg
- #84: 3 HM egs
- #1: 17 HM eggs: incubating
- #3: —
- #13: 6 HM eggs
- #67: 7 HM eggs
- #60: 4 WD eggs
- #62: 1 WD eggs
- #5: —
- #61: 1 HM egg
- #68: 9 WD eggs, 1 HM egg; incubating
I think we should skip checking #1 and #68; it would be good to get a count for box #10, but the hen in there may sit tight.
Yuck
The supply of recycled CRTs and televisions, laden with hazardous lead, is booming. Unfortunately, the demand for this e-waste has crashed. As a result, recycling firms are going out of business and abandoning the waste, leaving toxic dumps for the states and federal government to clean up. The market is upside down.
In 2004, recyclers were paid more than $200 a ton to provide glass from these monitors for use in new cathode ray tubes. The same companies now have to pay more than $200 a ton to get anyone to take the glass off their hands.
Even worse, there seems to be no recycling market at all for LCD screens.
Ian Urbina does the grim reporting.
Opening
Something that you don’t hear top-drawer religious leaders say:
Given that many of you do not belong to the [faith], and others are not believers, I give this blessing from my heart, in silence, to each one of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you, but knowing that each one of you is a child of God…. May God bless you.
And also with you, Holy Father.
Upcoming: 32
Brood II of the 17-year cicada is expected to emerge in Virginia this spring.
[click]
Ian Bogost ends a call:
Hanging up on someone is a physical act, a violent one even, one that produces its own pleasure by discharging acrimony…. Just try to hang up your iPhone or your Samsung Galaxy. I don’t mean just ending a call, but hanging up for real, as if you meant it. For a moment you might consider throwing the handset against a wall before remembering that you shelled out three, four, five hundred dollars or more for the device, a thing you cradle in a cozy as if it were a kitten or a newborn.
Stories I missed: 1
From last summer, Joe Palca’s two-parter (one, two) about Scott O’Neill’s 20-year efforts to find a biological means to control and eventually eliminate dengue fever. I like the focus of Palca’s series: it’s not just about the newest published scientific results, it’s about the process of doing science.
“You know, I was incredibly persistent in not wanting to give this idea up,” O’Neill said. “I thought the idea was a good idea, and I don’t think you get too many ideas in your life, actually. At least I don’t. I’m not smart enough. So I thought this idea was a really good idea.”
Silver Line progress report: 29
A sneak peak at the reconfigured Metro map when Silver Line service opens (December is still promised).
Nice work
Malcolm Kenton speaks for the beavers.
Beaver ponds attract and sustain other wetland-dependent creatures—such as turtles, herons, otters, ducks, and many types of birds and fish. They also do a good job of retaining stormwater runoff, allowing pollutants to settle out before the water moves downstream. Beavers have also become a unique cultural asset to cities and towns: they are local celebrities in places like the Bronx River in New York and Chicago’s Lincoln Park.
But perhaps the best-known “downtown beaver” success story comes from Martinez, California, a Bay Area city that rehabilitated part of the creek that runs through the center of town. When a beaver colony established itself there in 2008, the local government threatened to have them removed. But citizens’ organization Worth a Dam rose to the creatures’ defense, and the city has come to celebrate its newfound furry, feathered and finned denizens…
Omnivore no more
Joe Yonan “comes out” as a vegetarian, with no apologies.
And no matter what somebody like [Anthony] Bourdain thinks, I think the absolute rudest thing you can do—even ruder than turning down somebody’s grandmother—is to show a lack of respect for someone else’s decision about what they’re going to consume. Eat and let eat.
Some links: 65
Snow days are good for cleaning up the inbox of bookmarks.
- Jeff Kelly shows how to build your own RFID data logger for $40 or less. It’s suitable for tracking birds at feeders, nest boxes, anywhere they hang out. The system works with any animal species large enough to carry an RFID tag; a battery at the logging station provides the power.
- A new paper by G. Bohrer et al. describes an “exclusion zone” approach to siting wind turbines in an urban environment, as Roberta Kwok explains. The approach manages the tradeoff between maximizing the power produced by an array of turbines and minimizing its adverse effects on wildlife.