- Bryan Russo talks to Steven Bolgiano about his plans to clean up chicken waste on the Eastern Shore with biodigesters. Bolgiano’s new company is called Planet Found.
- Local Harvest is a locator tool for farmer’s markets, CSAs, co-ops, and other sources of locally-produced food.
Cape May fallout
Almost ideal weather conditions (Friday’s passing cold front with storms, Saturday’s northwest winds) set up a great weekend birding in Cape May with a group led by Mark Garland. Warbler migrants were numerous (15 species for my count, including my darling Black-throated Blue and Black-throated Green). In the afternoons, we worked the neighborhood streets around Lily Lake. An insect hatch in the elm trees caused them to “turn on,” in Mark’s words. A brilliantly yellow Prairie Warbler; a crazy weekend for Red-breasted Nuthatches (Sitta canadensis).
Falcons and accipiters were also plentiful (ID mnemonic: the tail of a Sharp-shinned Hawk is sharply cut off, while a Cooper’s tail is rounded) , and easier to see from the west side of Cape May Point than from the official watch station in Cape May State Park. A trio of Brant in Delaware Bay was a small surprise. Mark called the goldenrod thriving in this windblown habitat Beach Goldenrod (other sources call it Seaside Goldenrod) (Solidago sempervirens).
Sunday morning at Higbee Beach we were seeing half a dozen Northern Flickers at a time. Higbee runs north-south along the bay side of the peninsula. Mark explained an early-morning phenomenon that I didn’t understand the first time I visited Cape May, in 1998. As the sun comes up, a passerine (migrating by night) that finds itself over Delaware Bay takes the strategy “water! go back the way you came!” So at sunrise you will see birds flying back north over Higbee, looking for a dry spot to land.
Monarch butterflies were also in migration, a steady stream all weekend. The flicker of a butterfly was always catching my eye, making me think that I’d spotted a bird. I added Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) to my very short butterfly list.
Everyone came scrambling to see the Say’s Phoebe (Sayornis saya) in the park east of the lighthouse. I’ve seen this bird in the west, so I got my look and then went elsewhere: there had been reports of Clay-colored Sparrow in the brush along the back of the dunes, and some of our group got a brief look, but I did not succeed.
80 species for the weekend, plus good looks at several Cape May Warblers for a life list twitch.
Mark’s suggestion paid off: Westside Market on Broadway is a good place to get a sandwich and Krimpets for lunch. If you’d like a split of wine to go with dinner (many of the restaurants are BYOB), Collier’s is the place to go.
I like the funky nouveau street name signs in Cape May City. And the hand-painted sign at my motel (a mom and pop operation now converted to a chain’s branding) was very cute.
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity
Kristoffer Diaz’s 2009 play is an entertaining slam of all things masscult, one that works on multiple levels. Macedonio “Mace” Guerra (the outstanding José Joaquin Pérez) is an artist doing what he has always wanted to do, performing as a professional wrestler. Small but physically talented, he is a journeyman playing the “heel” roles, making the charismatic “face” wrestlers (like the titular Chad Deity, well played with preening entitlement by Shawn T. Andrew) look good—and not getting his neck broken in the process.
When the beleaguered Mace meets Vigneshwar “VP” Paduar (Adi Hanash), an Indian immigrant in Brooklyn with moxie and mojo to match Chad’s, he envisions a story line for the two of them that ends with the little guy on top. Alas, his dreams are quickly co-opted by the promoter Everett K. “E.K.O” Olson (fearsome Michael Russotto), who is as culturally tone deaf as any Hollywood suit.
What makes the satire work is that hardly any cultural group escapes ridicule. The hayseed Billy Heartland (with a perfect theme song from Big and Rich) is just as annoying and stereotyped as the Muslim terrorist character that E.K.O. assigns to VP. Chad Deity serves to lampoon two conventionally opposed groups: he’s a trash-talking African-American and a Romney Republican who makes his entrance into the ring tossing dollar bills to the crowd.
What makes the show work as theater is the quiet intensity of Pérez. He narrates much of the story as a fourth wall-breaking monologue, and he’s not afraid to make us wait for what he has to say—this is appropriate, because Mace has spent his life withholding his true thoughts from others in order to keep a job, in order to get by. When Mace finally unloads on E.K.O. in a bravura surrogate fight scene (with echoes of a similar climax in Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days), pleading for the opportunity to tell his own story, we get the physical release that we’ve been hoping for.
Doing his part to make of Pérez look good in turn is James Long, who covers three ensemble roles and is a professional wrestler IRL.
In a story in which every character has at least one name given to him by someone else, a world of traditional Mexican face masks and engineered personas, of outer borough denizens reappropriating one another’s “authentic street” culture, perhaps it’s fitting that VP’s dialect is a little slippery.
If you really did get to tell your story, what would that look like?
- The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, by Kristoffer Diaz, directed by John Vreeke, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington
e-scriptive
Two of our major play publishers, Dramatists Play Service and Samuel French, have made recent announcements about releasing plays in various electronic formats. Dramatists has 60+ scripts available in ePub format now (including several by Craig Wright); French’s will begin making material available at the end of the year. There is the hint that the app for Samuel French scripts will provide sides for memorization.
Shade-grown maize
Glover et al., in a Comment piece for Nature, recommend perenniation (intercropping perennials and trees with food crops) to boost African agriculture. One of the genera recommended is Gliricidia, leguminous trees already known for their felicitous effects in shade-grown coffee farming.
T. R. has left
Russell Train, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, has died. He is remembered, briefly, by Robert B. Semple, Jr.
His death serves as a reminder of the G.O.P.’s historic tradition of environmental stewardship, a tradition stretching as far back as Teddy Roosevelt, which the party has now repudiated.
Again with the orders
Another one of these peculiar spam messages that purports to be a product order.
Dear Customer,
My name is Jack Melvin…and this order is an individual order. and i like to make a purchase of a (Architectural Casement Windows)and i will be more happy if you can email me with the types and Prices that you have for sale as well………Please let me know if you do accept credit card as a form of payment, and that will be pick up at your location….Hope to read back from you soon..
Best Regard
Jack Melvin
At least I think it’s supposed to be an order, even if it’s addressed to “Dear Customer.” “Jack Melvin” has some overtones of “George Spelvin,” the Equity actor’s pseudonym.
No victims here
Consider this an open response to Mitt Romney’s comments at a fundraiser:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
“…who believe that they are entitled… to food”? Willard Mitt Romney, shame on you!
Count me in as one of those “47-percenters” who do pay income taxes and who also support Barack Obama. I paid $12,804.06 in federal income taxes for tax year 2011 (somewhat more than that was withheld, and I got a refund), and I consider what I received from the federal government in return to be a damn good bargain. I also paid federal payroll and Medicare taxes (maybe not such a good bargain, yet) and state income, sales, personal property, and real estate taxes.
Romney has released his federal income tax return for 2010, and has released an estimate for his 2011 return. He remains coy about his returns and tax liability in earlier years. How much did you pay in 2009, Mitt? I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.
Science debate 2012
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama respond to the 14-point questionnaire from ScienceDebate.org and Scientific American. IMO, both of them play it fairly safe, with no big surprises on either side. About the most radical statement from Romney is this:
I am not a scientist myself, but my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences.
Alas, he then proceeds to walk back most of this statement.
Some links: 61
Stagecraft links ᔥ ArtsJournal:
- Erik Piepenburg sits in on a props masters’ and set dressers’ workshop: “A piece of duct tape on a chair can quietly speak volumes about a character.”
- Angela Watercutter introduces a brief video about the making and manipulating of the puppets for War Horse.
- Hannah Hessel wonders whether dramaturgy is a job: “if the play has any sense of artistic integrity, if it is able to connect with an audience, there probably already is a dramaturg in the room.”
Aisle of View
Sunday we walked the property of VNPS Pocahontas Chapter President Catharine Tucker in Hanover County. Her 70 acres have seen little farming disturbance over the last 150 years, and hence are one of our better representatives of mesic hardwood forest in the upper Coastal Plain. The fall zone runs through Richmond, and this part of Hanover County is northeast of Richmond.
On the state road leading to her land, Catharine pointed out Red Morning-Glory, or Redstar (Ipomoea coccinea) growing in a hedge managed for butterflies. There seems to be some question as to whether Ipomoea is native to this part of the country.
Catharine effectively used the subsiding road cut to illustrate the soil profile: a sandy horizon lying atop red clays.
The bulk of the property is a Beech-Tuliptree forest, with some magnificent examples of Fagus grandifolia. Our group measured around one tree, computing a DBH of 110 cm. And with beeches come the parasitic Beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana)—plentiful here, but difficult to photograph with a point-and-shoot.
Our destination plant was Shining Clubmoss (Huperzia lucidula), found in one small clump at the base of a tree. This fern ally is kin to the more often-seen Lycopodium ground pines.
Bonus local common name: Catharine calls Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) May Pops—although Google thinks that this name goes better with Passiflora incarnata.
VCU Rice Center
For my first field trip as part of the Virginia Native Plant Society’s annual meeting, we visited the Virginia Commonwealth University Inger and Walter Rice Center for Environmental Life Sciences in Charles City County. The botanizing was what it was, but the education and lab facility was a stunner.
VCU acquired the property, on a bluff with a majestic view of the James River, via a gift from Walter Rice’s widow, Inger. She then went on to specify (and fund!) a state-of-the-art sustainably-built edifice. Panelled in American White-cedar, the building has achieved LEED platinum certification. Early plans called for solar panels on the roof, but they would have been shadowed by the huge oak that provides the shade in this image. So the panels were relocated to the research pier at the bottom of the bluff.
Vertical geothermal tubes provide some of the heating and cooling. I was surprised to learn that the permeable paving system for the entrance drive and parking area (a plastic grid over layers of sand and gravel) was one of the more expensive elements, blowing out the original $2M budget for the entire package.
The south-facing conference hall is naturally lit and ventilated. Knee-height casement windows are supplemented with industrial-strength ceiling fans, keeping temps in the room very comfortable (albeit on a breezy early fall day).
As we talked outside, our presenters were upstaged by a pair of chippering Bald Eagles, their arrival announced by an unhappy Blue Jay.
Along with research into Eastern Box Turtles and Prothonotary Warblers, the Center is in the midst of a wetland restoration project—one that was prompted by Nature herself. Kimages Creek, just to the east of the educattion building, was dammed in the 1920s by a real estate developer who sought to establish a hunting club. Although he busted almost immediately, the dam remained for the time being, impounding a body of water called Charles Lake (it’s still labelled as such on Yahoo!’s maps). The earthen dam, never well-maintained, was eventually breached by storms in the 2000s. Efforts are now underway to re-establish the tidal freshwater creek.
Land use in the area is exceptionally well-documented and mapped, owing to the place’s strategic importance during the American Civil War. Gen. George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac was encamped on the eastern side of Kimages Creek for a short period of time in 1862.
We’re rolling
What, no tears?
I’ve been scrubbing the spam comments from a blog that was left unattended for a short time. Sort of like scrubbing a toilet, but smellier. Amid all the filter-evading nonsense text and copy-paste from real articles written by honest people, this bit of non sequitur caught my eye:
Fantastic website. Lots of useful info here. I am sending it to a few friends ans also sharing in delicious. And naturally, thank you in your sweat!
Silver Line progress report: 24
V-DOT has released a set of aerial photos of the line’s silver band of concrete and steel looping through Tysons Corner.