Owls

Last night as I sat on my patio with a glass of Malbec from Argentina, watching the fireflies sparkle green-gold in the twilight I heard a strange noise.

It sounded like someone snoring with a whistling hissing snore, rather loudly. Finally I got up and slowly tried to locate the source. It was around my house, in the front. Was it from the streetlight? A moment of horror of some imminant and terrible electrical explosion.... No there was something large and feathery sitting on the wires by the street light. An owl! I quietly and rapidly went and got my camera, came out and photographed the owl,




















Then I heard an answering whistle hiss behind me. Another one closer up on a tree branch!
















They were Barred Owls. A deep woodlands species. I live in a little enlave in a large natural wooded park. I had heard them hoot before (described as "Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks for You Now Ahhh!") but never heard of this noise, perhaps they were hissing at each other like angry cats, or perhaps they were saying harsh endearments.

After the Hailstorm

We have had good strong thunderstorms on and off for the last couple of weeks. On monday some came through while I was at work. There were no tornado warning with them. They seemed to be ordinary thunderstorms. A few hours later I drove home, less than a 15 minute drive. As I approached my house I noticed that things looked... odd. As I pulled into my driveway it was clear some strange event has happened. The ends of banches and leaves from trees littered the ground. Leaves were plastered up the side of my house, up all my windows stuck as if glued there.

Had there been som kind of mini-tornado?

When I stepped out of the car I saw a container that I had been mixing potting soil in now had water 4 inches deep in it. It had been dry and empty in the morning. I have two pots of begonias by my breezeway door. The one on the east side was pulverized, the one on the west side, sheltered from west approaching weather by the side of the house, was fine.














Suddenly it hit me. Hail.

I ran around an checked all my plants. My hostas were shredded, branches were broken off my tomatoes, huge holes punched in my squash leaves, lettuce pounded into the ground.

The plants are slowly recovering, though I am stuck with this summer's hostas being shredded. I am still cleaning up

Fool on the Beach

Rian had a dream of the Fool on the beach with face painted blue.

I was up late with a sick cat and whiled away time playing with photoshop and pictures until I had cobbled together the Fool with face painted blue and placed him by the ocean. Rian disapproved of the Fool's face so I modified it some more. Although Rian liked that last version best, I didn't. So, here is my favorite. Long Live Photoshop!

After a Summer Rain

A few days ago, in the evening after a summer rain.





Crocosmia "Lucifer" leaves with water drops.









Red leaf lettuce surrounded by fresh young weeds... see the Junior thistle?

Orange Lily

One of nature's many fireworks, under my Spruce.

Astronauts' Quote

Disappointed astronauts had their shuttle launch scrubbed today due to thunderclouds in the area. A fellow astronaut was philosophical. They would be disappointed. Some have been waiting 10 years to get into space for the first time. On the other hand he quoted an old aeronautics saying:

"It is better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, then to be flying, wishing you were on the ground"

The Joys of Being an Adult

...include having a dinner of my own grilled chicken caesar salad, champagne, fresh fruit, and good chocolate.

Mmmm

Thistles

I enjoy gardening. I grow flowers, herbs, vegetables............... and also weeds. When I moved into my house there was lawn, areas of weeds, a couple of lilacs, a number of maples and spruce trees along the edges, a line of peonies, and one lovely heavily scented pink rose. I have steadily whittled away at the lawn, and replaced weedy areas with beds. In the front I have a number of perrenials in a border along the driveway and in shady beds in front of the house. They get augmented with some annuals every year, and every year their care gets easier.

The vegetable garden is another story. Every couple of years I expand it too. But the garden is an annual garden of course and I have enriched the soil greatly, adding much compost and tilling it with a monster of a tiller, named "The Beast".

Ohio has a great climate for growing vegetables, abundant summer rain and heat.

There is a problem though. Weeds grow very well and to giant size extremely quickly.

Winter is long and cold and you are not generally safe from frost until Memorial Day. May is unpredictable. We had hard frosts this May on the 6th and 7th, and on the 22nd, and 23rd. Aside from that this May was often warm and wet, often in the 70s and 80s.

I was busy. My spring term ends in early May. So the first two weekends in May were tied up in grading and finishing classes, and I left on the second weekend as soon as I turned my grades in to go out of town for the week between spring and summer terms. I was home on that Sunday while I hurried to prepare my syllabus and lectures for the first day of my intensive summer term course. The next weekend was Memorial Day weekend and I had a speaking engagement in New Mexico. I returned from that on Monday. The next weekend I had other commitments. So, there was a whole warm wet month without me preparing my vegetable garden beds. I did clear a corner and get some lettuce in.

The weekend before last I attacked the weeds, yanking them out of the rich loose soil in the beds, and cutting the tall grass in the heavy clay between the beds. Weeds there had to be dug out. Part way along I took pictures as proof. Some of the thistles were 6 feet tall!









I worked hard all weekend clearing the beds. Then I carted in 14 wheelbarrow loads of compost from my compost pile, and finally hauled out The Beast and and wrestled it into tilling it all. Finishing putting in plants and whacking down weeds around the compost area and along the edges had to wait until this past weekend. My back muscles are still sore, but it is done!












After a dry week thunderstorms have pounded us with rain. The weather has been ranging from warm to hot. I need to get mulch down and pull new weeds. I have put before and after pictures here. In a few weeks I will add in "growth" pictures. The pictures are looking up from the back of the garden towards my house. I already have lettuce ready to eat and soon there will be much more.... which reminds me, I need to get my bean trellis up.

And I have been working on my herb garden, but more about that later. I'm not done yet.

Sleep

We Americans typically do not get enough sleep. When you don't your IQ drops temporarily (that may explain a few things) and your stress levels go up. I like to sleep. But, I am a procrastinator and have a demanding job. So I stay up late grading, or test writing, or doing essential chores such as changing cat boxes. And then I get up early to teach. I end up running short of sleep for days. Then one day it catches up with me. I become uncooperative - No I WON'T stay to help you through this experiment, you can do it yourself - and I go home, and I crash. Today I slept almost 4 hours, unexpectedly. I got home at 6:00, skipped my pilates class, watered my newly planted vegies and flowers, came inside around 8 p.m., and BAM. I slept until almost midnight. My circadian clock, for whatever reason, is set to always be awake at midnight. I have to be sick or extremely, extremely tired to sleep through midnight. So, the result? It is 4:30 a.m. and I am still awake *sigh*. I hate seeing it get light before I sleep.

This is the kind of thing one is supposed to do as a teenager or in your early 20's. Can I outgrow it now? Please? I do not suffer from insomnia at all. I suffer from night-personess, and naps disordering my internal clocks... if I have any. My time sense is terrible. I have no ability to gauge how long anything is taking. All is relative and in flux. Chaos. It is the way the world is to me, wonderous and beautiful and uncertain.

A June Night's Musings

Tonight was my first grilling of the season, grilled steaks and then chicken. I ate as much steak as I wanted, and perhaps too much red wine, and sit outside on my tiny patio in this June... approaching the solstice. I watch for the stars to appear as the nearly full moon rises, and I think about life.

I marinated my steaks in red wine, garlic, fresh ground pepper, sugar and some liquid smoke. The chicken in a horrible undrinkable cranberry wine from Vermont, on it’s way to vinegar, with garlic and Chinese 5-spice and ginger. All came out fabulous. I will have cold grilled meat for salads for days and days. I may even need to freeze some.

I have had a productive day, and productive days are always a pleasure. Many things need to be done. I was gone much of May. First I was finishing my term, long spring term, long school year, a huge Genetics class, and also one of the worst I have taught. If I am in the mood for some flagellation I will look and see what they said about me on ratemyprofessor.com. Fortunately my Advanced Eukaryotic Genetics class was good. But even teaching only two classes this spring and dealing with my research students I was always up to my ears in work.

*goes inside briefly for an overshirt, is a chill evening*

The weekend before finals I was busy grading, the next two weekends I was on the west coast visiting Rian and Narrisch and my parents, and the weekend after that I was in Albuquerque speaking about Genetics. Four weekends lost while the weeds took over my yard. So today I cleared my vegetable garden beds and much of the area around my mulch. Hard work and with visible results. The thistles were 6 feet high. All gone now. Hurray! I will post pictures later.

So my thoughts on this now chilly evening (it is 49 degrees F now), are about my life. I have what I aimed for, tenure as a Genetics Professor, a house, a garden, a car. It is all mine, and I earned it myself. It was hard work, and in the world as a whole, I am both fortunate and have accomplished much. All my goals completed. Yet I always assumed I would be married with children. It is what people do, yes? Fall in love, marry, start a family. I had it all planned out when I was a teenager. I would get married after college, have my kids in my mid 20’s, then go back to grad school. It didn't happen, I did plenty of falling in love, but it was never mutual, and for whatever reason I was not pursued.

I pause to look up at the stars....

I have great benefits. Most women my age, all my colleagues certainly, have not only their careers but also their families to worry about, and none of my female colleagues have as little as half of the responsibility for the kids and the household chores. Most women do the lion’s share. As one of my colleagues said, she loves her husband, and her two sons, she wanted a family and could not stand being alone. Her husband, though he requires as much care and maintenance as her sons, was willing to move for her career, and he adores her. Another man she dated, who she thought was “the one” left her because she did not “need” him. The world is not yet gender neutral. It is still not common for men to be attracted to, and want to support strong, intelligent woman, wanting to make her life easier as she pursues a demanding occupation. Sometimes, yes of course, but still women are more likely to be attracted to a man consumed by his carreer, and to take joy in taking care of the mundane details of their lives.

A recent study... did I mention it in another blog entry?... found that men who were married while they pursued their doctorates and carreers in science were substantially more likely to succeed and stay in science. Presumably due to the support from their spouse. Women, on the other hand, were significantly less likely to finish and succeed if they were married. Their single colleagues fared much better. One sees this in academia in the Biological Sciences. More women graduate with degrees in Biology, women are in the majority even in grad school classes in biology and have been for some time. But when I have looked at job applicants for tenure track position here, women have been in the minority. On top of that, women may be more likely to give up on their carreer even after being successful. The other woman who was hired ten years ago, when I was, left her tenured Associate Professor job last year, to follow her husband when his career took him elsewhere. She wanted to. She was excited about the move, and had said that even with an au pair to help with their kids, she felt overwhelmed with her job and kids and household chores. She went up for tenure the year after I did, so I was part of the deliberations. A male colleague wondered out loud whether her decision to have 3 kids and the resulting juggling with her classes, indicated someone who was not committed to the job enough to be granted tenure. I am sure he voted against her. I was apalled. She was an active and productive faculty member. Now she is gone.

Well I gave up and came inside, just too cold out. The Sixth Sense is going to be on the TV, and I have lit scented candles all across my hearth. Wonderful.

So, on occasion as I eat a fabulous steak, grilled to perfection, and sip good wine and watch the stars come out, it seems a pity I have no one to share it with. And I could use another strong back to help get the garden going, and to do the variety of household projects. And perhaps after a hard day it would be nice to have dinner ready and a strong shoulder to lean my head on, a little human comfort and support.

On the other hand I relish my freedom and cannot imagine having to take care of any more than I do. I pretty much do what I want when I want, within the parameters of my classes and office hours and research students. Trade-offs, trade-offs. In a perfect world perhaps there would be someone who would want to share my life and would be a partner and an equal, someone I would support and who would equally support me. Such is not the case. And looking around, I see few who have such an equal relationship. I do not want to be someone’s inferior or superior. In truth it is hard for me to imagine someone in my life as there never has been. I'm sure I would adpat fine, but this is the life I have had, the life I know. I love my freedom. I do adore my cats and my friends and my parents, all those I love.

And tonight I sat out as the few clouds flared pink and coral and the sky turned to teal then indigo, and the moon rose and the stars came out. A lovely evening, my lovely evening.

The Sixth Sense is on, always a good movie. Last night I watched Ghost In the Shell Two, gorgeous. Why can’t American film makers make inventive intelligent fantasy like that....

For Emano

A few more pictures for Emano since she enjoyed the others.

This is the headland near Devil's Churn. There is a common piece of advice for the Oregon coast. Do not turn your back on the ocean. There is a very good reason for this. To get some idea... see the sticklike object on the rocks above the surf? and above the spouting horn on the previous pictures? Those are logs. Full sized tree logs. Logs are often floated down rivers for easy transport after being cut. At specific places they then can be loaded onto trains or trucks. Some escape. The power of the Pacific is such that it can snap those logs into the air and fling them fairly high onto the land. All you need is the right condition and the right wave. Even though the Oregon coast is not crowded with people, the occasional person gets taken out by a flying log. The lower picture is a wave crashing in a narrow chute, not technically a spouting horn, but close.

Who would win? President Bush or gay marriage?

Poll results May/June 2006

58% - the percent of Americans that think gay marriage should be illegal
48% - the percent of Americans that think cilvil unions should not be allowed
45% - the percent of Americans that think civil unions should be allowed
42% - the percent of Americans that support a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage
36% - The percent of Americans that think gay marriage should be legal
29% - George Bush’s overall approval rating


ABC story and gay marriage poll info
http://abcnews.go.com/US/Politics/story?id=2041689&page=1

Wall Street Journal artical on Bush approval rating and Harris poll
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2006/05/11/bushs-approval-ratings/

Oregon Coast

After Rian and Narrisch and I had fun in Seattle, Washington and had lunch with Robin Hobb, Narrisch and I took a train down to Eugene, Oregon. There we spent a few days with my parents, went to the coast, and visited Narrish's Alma Mater. Here are a few pictures from the coast trip.
















This is at the Darlingtonia wayside, named for the carniverous pitcher plants that grow in the acid bogs there. Their common name is Cobra Lilly. The are large, often rising 2 to 3 feet from the water, curled and flared with a network of veins and transparent windows to confuse the unfortunate insects that wander in. They were in bloom with thin straight chartreuse stalks dangling dark blood-colored flowers here and there. Tall native rhododendrons displayed pink flowers in the surrounding forest.
















This is a spouting horn, produces by holes are worn in the black volcanic rock. The tide was high and there was a strong wind flinging hard waves against the rock. At times like that water shoots through the fissures and holes, spouting briney plumes high into the air. The air was filled with mist from the crashing ocean. This was near Devil's Churn, north of Florence.
















The wind is almost constant on the Oregon coast. It bends trees into sculptures, peeling off bark and bleaching the underlying wood silvery. Yet the trees hang on, putting out new leaves and branches on the sides away from the wind.

It was a beautiful day with a cloudless blue sky. Rare on the Oregon coast.

Views en Route

These pictures are for Rian, who will not look to see such wonders. Maybe someday. Thunderstorms over Ohio.
















Flying into Phoenix near sunset.













So beautiful.

What a wonderous world we live in.

Robin Hobb

Two weeks ago Rian and Narrisch and I had lunch with Robin Hobb, who suggested we call her Robin. We ate at an interesting eclectic sandwhich shop called the Antique Sandwhich in Tacoma. Fortunately the food was not in fact antique sandwhiches. It was a lovely afternoon. And here is a picture to prove it!

More About Price

I am thinking once again about some of the issues I mentioned in "Fakes", but this time just about pricetags.

The cost of an item in money affects how I think about it. I suppose this is true for everybody. HOW it affects our opinion varies from one to another though. I am someone who increasing monetary cost results in an often decreasing desirability and/or opinion of it. If a thing costs twice as much it better be AT LEAST twice as good or pleasing. So the dinner at a fancy restaurant with wonderful ambience and fabulous food may indeed be worth twice as much as the lower key café down the block. But if the food is at all off, or the music somewhat annoying, or the margarita less good and twice as much, I feel ripped off and annoyed.

The little black dress at J. C. Penney’s may (or may not) be made of slightly lower quality material, but look and feel as good as the one at Macy’s and the Penney’s one being 39.99, and the Macy’s one being 129.99 make the Penney’s one so very much more desirable and exciting to me. If my mother insisted on buying me the Macy’s one I would feel icky about it.

Others of course, feel exactly the opposite. In fact, finding out that an item came from a low-priced place like Penney’s would make them feel that the item was ugly or inferior in some way, and they would feel icky about someone buying them a gift from such a place.

Some of that is the "tribe" issue that my freind Noelle talks about. What identifies you with those you associate with, what you wear and where you got it fom, and the underlying knowledge of price, is important in many social groupings. On the other hand being too fixated on money can imply other things. I remember that one of the characteristics that truly marked Moll Flanders as a whore by nature was that she thought about every personal transaction, every transaction in general in terms of money......

A NYT article on money and freinds and "pods" .
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/fashion/sundaystyles/07friendss.html?ex=1147320000&en=51740dae1201c5bd&ei=5087%0A

So, How does price affect your views?

How common in scientists?

"Studying Tiny Fruit Flies, and Reaping Big Rewards"

By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: April 29, 2006, New York Times

"ALBANY, April 28 — A California neuroscientist and biologist whose research of fruit flies found genetic links to human behavior was awarded the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, the country's largest award in the field."

"Some of Dr. Benzer's most widely known research came when he used fruit flies to explore the way genes affect sleep patterns. He found that some fruit flies were genetically programmed to sleep at abnormal times, but that injecting them with normal genes would change that.

Similarly, Dr. Benzer said, he is coded to sleep at different times than his wife, who wakes up at 6 a.m. and typically falls asleep by 10 p.m. Dr. Benzer, on the other hand, stays awake until 4 a.m. and sleeps until noon. He routinely works in his research laboratory into the early-morning hours, he said.

"We make it a point to have dinner together," he said."

Neighbors and Star Trek Memories

When I was little, 4? 5? my family had a TV for about a year. I watched a variety of kids programs, and other things. I remember Mighty Mouse, and The Mickey Mouse Club, and Gumby, and The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. My parents, on observation, decided that the TV was bad for us, my brother’s grades were falling and he had become belligerent about being allowed to watch his favorite shows. So they gave it away.

As a result I grew up without a TV. This had a number of effects. I read voraciously, it was my main entertainment, which helped me stay way ahead of my peers intellectually. I played outside a lot, and developed a great attraction to our world and all the living things in nature. I also lacked the basic social common ground of favorite TV shows. I was often confused or shocked by terms and phrases my peers used, not knowing the popular shows they came from. It perhaps made me even more of an outsider than I would have been anyhow. I like the fact that I am well read and well rounded, so I can’t say I regret it. I do wonder how my brother felt, having something he wanted and adored given away like that, when it could have been kept.

I did see a bit of TV here and there, while babysitting as a teenager or when over at friend’s houses. At some point I discovered the reruns of Star Trek. I loved it. I adored Spock. It was amusing actually, as in 5th grade I had been called Spock by some classmates, and I had no idea to what they were referring. In any case, I ended up trotting across the street to a neighbors house to watch Star Trek every day. They had seven boys and one girl, and one of the younger boys was my age. We were all friendly and their house was pleasantly chaotic and no one minded me being rapt in front of the TV every day for an hour. So I watched the series through, and through again, and again.

Just tonight I wondered, what if they had minded? What if they had wanted to watch something else on TV in that time slot?

What if the addition of yet another child to the house was a burden? Not that I think any of those things are likely to have been true, but how would I have felt, relying on something someone else had, for something I desperately wanted? Would it have burned me not to have it? Would envy and longing have eaten at me? Knowing myself, I don’t think so, but can I be sure? What if I could watch it only on occasional days, and never know in advance which days those were. I do recall that I missed days, for one reason and another, which was a great excuse for watching the series over and over.

At the root, my question is about covetousness, and wanting that which is not yours. It is not something I am generally prone to. But on occasion there is something that someone else has easy access to that I never will have, something I WANT. It is a great unpleasantness, yes? I can understand why one of the Ten Commandments has to do with envy or covetousness, for things (specifically your neighbor’s house, or donkey) or people (specifically your neighbors husband, maid, slave). Of course the Ten commandments are truly followed by few people now. For example, how many people do no work on the Sabbath (whether you consider it Saturday or Sunday) and/or do not take advantage of those who do? But in truth coveting can be a powerful destructive force in a community or a society.

What about withholding? If one could freely give what another desires, is it not a bad thing to fail to do so? Of course one can send one self down a long road of guilt for all one has not done that one could have.

In any case, my neighbors were kind to me, and I am sad that all the children are long gone to the various corners of the country, and that June, the family matriarch, has had health problems and has been moved to Washington D.C., in with her youngest son. This all happened at Christmas time, and I was visiting my parents and I was told what day Paul was arriving to pick her up from the hospital pack her up and take her back east. And I, dawdling for no good reason, missed them. I should drive out to D.C. from here to go visit. If I do not, I may never see her again. She and her family were the only neighbors who were really close to my parents and my brother and I. My parents are now more alone then they were....

Well, enough late night meanderings.

Babies and Baseball

When you meet a stranger what do you speak of? There are topics of conversation that can serve as common ground for strangers in a social setting. For the young it is relatively easy, pop culture, music, school. This is complicated by the addition of physical appearance and gender of course, is one attractive? cool? of the same “tribe” as a friend of mine put it? If you are female and wearing silver rings on multiple fingers and so am I than we may be of the same “tribe”. Goths proclaim themselves with their black clothes, the popular kids by their physiques and current fashion. The process is easy, if fraught with snobbery and cliquishness. The young are more cruel than adults.

For adults it can be trickier though. People become set in their ways and expectations. Location becomes important, common experience very important. As a college professor, if I am dumped into a group of other college professors, or scientists, or even academics in general, I am fine, but such groups are not that common.

In New York City, where I lived for ten years, strangers speak of their jobs, what part of the metropolis they live in, politics, culture, travel. These are common ground for New Yorkers in general. Once you get out into more typical American cities, suburbs, and towns these topics become uncommon. Instead, men speak of sports, cars, and to a lesser extent, their jobs. Women speak of husbands and children, sometimes shopping.

If you are man who has no interest in sports or cars, or if you are a woman past youth who has never been married or had babies, it is exceedingly hard to participate in these initial ice-breaking conversations. What do you do when the common ground is not in fact in common? I can talk about the weather of course. I like weather. But too often I slip and talk about my job or politics too quickly to strangers. Soon I am the strange one in the room. I long to be back in the company of academics, or simply my own company.

I am just not interested in talking about babies or baseball.

Moral War?

An interview with the Rev. Richard Land from March 23,2006

“A Christian Defense of the War in Iraq"
"Removing a dictator, introducing democracy, staying the course in difficult times--it's right, noble, and it's just.

As president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, the Rev. Richard Land is one of the most influential moral voices on the conservative Christian scene. He spoke to Beliefnet's Holly Lebowitz Rossi about why, as a Christian, he supports the war in Iraq as much today as he did when it began 3 years ago.”

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/188/story_18823_1.html

It continually amazes me that there are many Americans have no problem with deceptions and manipulations aimed at facilitating the start of a war that has now killed 2347 Americans in the military and wounded another 17, 469 - let alone the 34,000 or so Iraqis killed. These fellow countrymen are willing to believe that Iraq posed a direct threat to the U.S. in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and have no issue that we have left many more directly threatening and/or genocidal regimes in other countries untouched. Yet, these same people, willing to accept our leaders’ pursuit of this war, by whatever means, were disgusted and appalled by the previous President allowing an eager adult intern to perform a sexual act on him, and then being deceptive and manipulative about it.

Which deception is more detrimental to the lives of our fellow Americans, our position in the world, and out future? Which actually causes the most harm? What kind of “morality” is this?

Many of the people that think Clinton should have been impeached and think that GW Bush is a hero consider themselves strong Christians. What kind of Christianity is this? How often did Jesus preach against violence, preach for peace? How often did he preach against sex?

Of course there are many Americans who do not agree with the war, and undoubtedly the majority of Christians world-wide do not agree with it. There are too many who do think like the author of the quote at the top. Or perhaps, too many people like that in positions of power.

Why do religious extremists of so many stripes promote killing? Why is deception about adultry so much worse than deception to engage in a war that will kill thousands and thousands of people? Why is death so much less abhorrant than sex?

http://icasualties.org/oif/

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/