I once used a line printer that I swear was playing the bass line to the Smithereens’ “Blood and Roses,” but it is no match for BD594’s collection of instruments. Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg tees up this version of the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun.”
Not just for coffee farms
Paul Stapleton introduces “evergreen agriculture.” In Africa, intercropping with trees of the genera Sesbania, Gliricidia, Tephrosia, and others improves yields and provides other benefits; dropped leaves from the trees provide natural fertilizer.
The indigenous African acacia (Faidherbia albida) is perhaps the most remarkable of these fertiliser trees. Faidherbia sheds its nitrogen-rich leaves during the early rainy season and remains dormant throughout the crop-growing period. The leaves grow again when the dry season begins. This makes it highly compatible with food crops, because it does not compete with them for light, nutrients or water during the growing season: only its bare branches spread overhead while the food crops grow to maturity.
Something to look forward to
When I was young, I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
—W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938), quoted in The Sun no. 431 (November 2011)
Park
I know that it’s nothing fancy, but this neon sign that marks the entrance to a Doggett’s parking garage on 11th Street, N.W., with its helpful/hopeful HERE and jaunty arrow, just makes me happy.
The garage is only open for the workday, so towards evening, the neon is extinguished.
Krapp’s Last Tape
We loved the details in this performance by which John Hurt and the production team make the piece their own: the cloud of dust when Krapp drops the ledger on the table; the overhead light fixture with one of its two bulbs burned out; the squeaky boots; the way that Hurt’s Krapp says spool like he’s enjoying a private joke. Perhaps most saucily, Hurt treats the squared pool of light that defines his den as something tangible: as he paces, he walks out of the light, then stops short, as if he’s hit a physical barrier.
He executes the material at a measured one-hour pace that some might find a little off-putting. And we missed the snatches of the hymn “Now the Day Is Over” that are scripted for Krapp. But in sum, it’s a performance to treasure.
I used to think that the piece could be adapted to more contemporary recording technology, but after seeing this performance, I doubt it. The meticulous fiddling and threading of a reel-to-reel tape recorder gives the play a breathing space, almost scene breaks, that would be lost if Krapp were merely popping DVDs into an optical drive slot.
- Krapp’s Last Tape, by Samuel Beckett, performed by John Hurt, directed by Michael Colgan, produced by the Gate Theatre Dublin, performed at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington
Boundary condition
Last summer, when we were shaking down the code for the books project, I would use the book Moby-Duck as a test case to make sure that the database schema could accommodate its preposterously long subtitle, The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost At Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. (Hmm, it looks like mighty Amazon doesn’t choose to deal with the subtitle’s vastness.) (Also, we liked to use the book’s forbear, Melville’s Moby Dick, as an example of a book with a ridiculously large number of editions in and out of print and with and without the hyphenated title.) Bill Morris poses the question (but doesn’t answer it conclusively), “Are Run-On Subtitles Literature’s New Flop Sweat?”
Temporary
This ratty old building, window glazing missing from the upper stories, most recently was put to temporary uses like political campaign offices. I like the plastic wrapper around it while it’s being made into something new: gives it a Christo/Jeanne-Claude look. I also like the white background it makes for the shadow cast by the bare tree.
Some links: 57
Making connections: a roundup of nature stories that have caught my eye recently:
- GrrlScientist recaps a recent paper by Dan Strickland et al. that looks at the dependency between Gray Jays (Perisoreus canadensis) and conifers like Black Spruce (Picea mariana). The jays cache perishable food items like berries and mealworms, wedging the morsels into cracks in the bark of trees. Spruces supply a natural preservative, retaining the moisture of the stored snacks, that other northern tree species (birches, maples) don’t provide.
- Rick Wright rereads Ludlow Griscom’s (1890-1959) master’s thesis, revised and enlarged for publication in The Auk in 1922-23 (part 1, part 2). The paper presents a field identification key to ducks of the east coast. In his emphasis on flight characteristics for distinguishing birds at middle- to long-distance, Griscom anticipates the current emphasis on jizz.
- Sharon Levy summarizes recent research on the relationships between crop-pollinating bees like Apis mellifera and flowering plants in proximity to crop land: hedgerows of trees, introduced weeds, what have you. What may be the key to the bees’ success is the degree of plant diversity, be it native or alien.
- Maria Dolan reports on the habitat threat to of Vaux’s Swifts (Chaetura vauxi). These west coast birds, like their eastern congeners, Chimney Swifts (C. pelagica), are dependent on old brick chimneys for roosting (historically, they used hollow trees, which have also become scarce as old-growth forest declines). But rickety brick piles, especially those in earthquake zones, are prime candidates for demolition.
Bigger yard desired
Leta with great-nephew Chase and great-niece Shania, for the one moment in Martinsburg when the three of them weren’t running about.
RGVBF 2011: PS
Best meal of the trip: blackened mahi mahi at the Pharr/McAllen location of the local Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen chain, sort of a Gulf Coast inflection of our Legal Sea Foods.
RGVBF 2011: 5
We wrapped up the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival with a bang, visiting the South Padre Island area. The resort area on this barrier island is, um, more built up than its counterparts in, say, North Carolina. Nevertheless, there are some protected green spots that serve as migrant traps and places for wildlife to overwinter. And SPI seems to be much less popular this time of the year than it is at spring break; we saw lots of deeply discounted accommodations on offer.
Kevin Karlson led this trip, and even he was knocked over by what was probably the best bird of the festival, a Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) that turned up in the greenery behind the convention center. The flats on the lagoon were also good for Royal and Sandwich Terns (Sterna maxima and S. sandvicensis).
A boat trip, leaving from Port Isabel in view of the lighthouse, provided good looks at Franklin’s Gull (Larus pipxcan).
Back at the festival HQ in Harlingen, I finally stopped to look at a large flock of black birds in the city park and found what everyone had been saying was easy to find. Mixed in with the Great-tailed Grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) were 30 to 40 Bronzed Cowbirds (Molothrus aeneus).
I had a great four-plus-day visit through a good variety of habitats, with a trip list count of 125. Yet I left a good number of birds on the table for my next trip to south Texas. (I’m looking at you, Ladder-backed Woodpecker.)
RGVBF 2011: 4
Justin Rink led Friday’s field trip to the upper Rio Grande Valley, with stops at the town of Salineño and Falcon State Park, near the line between Starr and Zapata Counties.
The morning was brisk along the river. Starr County is an upland relative to the bottoms of Brownsville and Harlingen. I regretted leaving my sports gloves behind in Reston as I lugged the cold tubes of the tripod about. But we had nice looks at several birds, including A-quality views of Lincoln’s Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii) and Pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus). We looked at two of the three valley speciality orioles, Altamira and Audubon’s; seen across the water, these birds are the first for my Mexico list.
At the county park, some of my busmates spotted Greater Roadrunner, but I was content with multiple looks at Cactus Wren (Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus) (a big eight-inch wren warrants a big scientific name) and Lark Sparrow (Chondestes grammacus).
Back at home base in the afternoon, I followed tips from the festival guide and my seatmate to pick up Black-bellied Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna autumnalis) at the Harlingen Country Club (20+ of them) and Green Parakeet (Aratinga holochlora) on the wires above the intersection of Dove Avenue and 10th Street in McAllen (holy Michael J. Fox, more birds than I could sort through).
Boys’ club
Via The Morning News, Garry Wills provides some notes on how Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) structured plays to fit the company of actors at his disposal.
The trickiest job was to write for that rare commodity, the boy actors who played women. These were hard to come by and train in the brief time before their voices broke. That is why women’s parts make up only thirteen percent of the lines in the plays. The playwright had to know what stage of development each apprentice had reached. There were usually just two or three boys in the public plays (though more were available from choristers when a play was given at court or in a great family mansion). The boys’ memories were such that Shakespeare wrote shorter parts for them than for adult actors—an average of three hundred or so lines to the adults’ 650 or so lines per play. But when he had a spectacular boy like John Rice, he was able to write as big a role for him as that of Cleopatra (693 lines).
BYOB
The streetscape in south Texas is dotted with coin-operated water vending machines, like this example from Watermill Express in a convenience store parking lot on U.S. 281 in Pharr. What a great idea! A simple way to cut down on the amount plastic that goes into water bottles!
Now, it’s probably a litle naive for me to be so enthusiastic about a business model that perhaps depends on the unreliable quality and quantity of municipal water supplies in this part of the world. (I found the tap water potable, but some profess to dislike it, seeing as how the lower valley is downstream of several large states.) And providing drinking water for farm laborers working in the hot sun isn’t the same sort of problem as hydrating your kid’s soccer team.
Nevertheless, I wish companies like this well, and I hope that they can expand northward.
I dropped a quarter in the slot, placed my festival-issue water bottle under the spout, and pressed the button. The bottle holds much less than a gallon, so some of my purchase was wasted. The water isn’t chilled, but it’s wet and tasty.
I also saw drive-up ice dispensers around town. And the drive-through espresso huts that you see in the Atlantic Ocean tourist communities are replaced here by Hawaiian ice kiosks.
RGVBF 2011: 3
Thursday’s morning field trip left the afternoon free, so I followed the advice of the festival brochure/checklist and sauntered over to Hugh Ramsey Nature Park in Harlingen, a “99% guaranteed” spot for Buff-bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia yucatanensis). I got good looks at this target bird, both immatures and adults. The park, wedged between Harrison Avenue and the Arroyo Colorado, features numerous plantings of native flora (with interpretive markers) and feeder setups, both of which do a good job of attracting native fauna.
Many stretches of the lower arroyo trail are overgrown, and the numerous social trails and occasional trash mark this sector as a party stop. Blue-gray Gnatcatchers (Polioptila caerulea) wheeze their songs, providing some competition for the steady drone of traffic on Loop 499.
Wildflowers keep the lepidopterans happy, like these two Queen butterflies (Danaus gilippus). Odonates are also active even this late in the year.
On the upper slopes of the park, north of the parking area, sunnier conditions prevail, supporting this impressive patch of prickly pear cactus. This is Cactus Apple (Opuntia engelmannii); some of the plants are in fruit. Rodents skulk beneath the cactus’ protective lobes.
The hummingbird feeders are positioned in conjunction with plantings of Turk’s Cap (Malvaviscus arboreus), the local hibiscus that provides nectar for the hummers. A deck with benches is situated with the blooms at eye-level.
At a platform feeder, a thuggish group of House Sparrows stationed lookouts as they chowed down; they were soon evicted by a Long-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma longirostre).
As the sun settled toward the horizon, a herd of eight or more Plain Chachalacas (Ortalis vetula) assembled, ready to make their own lumbering run at the feeder. I have never seen a more bovine member of class Aves.
The park is an absolute gem. I regret that I didn’t have more time to return and explore it more.