3 Free eBooks – December 2015

Like last month – one of the ‘books’ I picked for December was one referenced in the Ancient Egypt course from Coursera that I completed back in November; the follow up reading spilled into December. It was a challenge not to pick a book that included botanical prints…I switched to birds this month but couldn’t resist picking an artist (Charles Demuth) that did a lot of plant paint!

Haskell, Barbara. Charles Demuth. New York: Whitney Museum of Art. 1987. Available from the Internet Archive here. The title of the painting that I am including in this post (partial) is “From the Kitchen Garden.” The topics of his paintings included other topics too….a snapshot of different perspectives of the US and Europe in the first thirds of the 1900s.

The British Museum. Mummy: The Inside Story. Available from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine here. The mummy in this case is Nesperennub, a priest who lived at Karnak (Egypt) in 800 BC. The site is a series of slides (with pictures and explanatory text) about the modern way that mummies are studied….not by unwrapping. One of the amulets found near the neck of this money was a wedjat eye. One from another mummy was included in the images and clipped a portion for this post. Unfortunately – this site was removed from the The British Museum’s site when it was reorganized so now it is only available via the Wayback Machine. There are two other online tours (Cleopatra and Egypt in the Old Kingdom) that can be found by clicking on the ‘Egypt’ link just above the ‘slide’ portion of the screen.

Keulemans, John Gerrard. Onze volgels in huis en tuin – Volume 1. Leyden: P.W.M. Trap. 1869. Available from Internet Archive here. Keulemans  (1942-1912) is a well-known bird illustrator and this is one of his earlier works – in his native Dutch. I was looking at it for the illustrations rather than the text. There are two other volumes available on the Internet Archive (volume 2 and volume 3) that I have yet to read…and I’m going to look at other books that might be online that he illustrated. According to Wikipedia, his total output includes over 4,000 published images – virtually all before 1915 so not in copyright.

Enjoy good visuals and good reads!

Kolache Memories

I recently discovered a bakery in my area that makes Kolaches! I found them online and went earlier this week to see if the confections they made lived up to my memory of my Czech grandmother’s kolaches that were made for special occasions for the first 50 years of my life (she stopped cooking sometime in her 90s and no one in the family picked up the mantle from her).

The tray of kolaches in the place looked very similar to my grandmother’s – lots of fruit rather than just a little dab of jelly on top of a mound of dough that some people claim are kolaches. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t have apricot filling (my grandmother’s favorite and thus mine too) but the peach was a good second best.  I bought one to see if the taste would live up to my memories.

Yummy! It was obviously freshly baked. The dough might have been a little heavier than my grandmother’s was…but otherwise it was close enough to bring back a tidal wave of good feelings. I ordered a half dozen with apricot filling (they will make them for special orders) to take as part of my contribution to a pot luck luncheon today! And I’ll probably go back for another half dozen right before Christmas.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 28, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Plastic by the Numbers in the Atlantic Ocean – Samples taken during the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers show that microplastics are very common. There were 0 samples without any plastic! On a personal level, I’m reading labels on face washes and toothpastes now and not buying any that have microbeads.

6 Common Activities that Harm Wildlife – One of the six is ‘microbeads’ so another spur to action. The other activities are also thought provoking: sunscreen, feeding bread to birds, bleached products, removing weeds, and plastic bags. Most of them I had heard about before…sunscreen only recently.

Are superbugs deadlier near where you live? – They are everywhere…some places worse than others. Often they are indicators of use (and misuse) of antibiotics.

An easy pill to swallow – Research into a mechanism to deliver mucoadhesive patches via pill through the digestive tract to the small intestine. There is potential that this could change delivery of protein based therapies (insulin, growth hormone, antibodies, and vaccines) from a injections to a pill.

A Flight of Birds – 14 unusual birds…portraits from the Photo Ark project (one of the 14 is a California Condor)

800-Year-Old Ancient Extinct Squash Uncovered during Archeological Dig on Menominee Indian Reservation – I’d like to see this one in my grocery store!

Shenandoah National Park Counting on Beetles to Slow Invasive Insect – The wooly adelgid is killing the hemlocks in Shenandoah (and in our area of Maryland too). Shenandoah is importing a beetle from Japan (where the wooly adelgid came from). Evidently the beetle has already been used successfully in other parks, including Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

1,700-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Discovered During City Sewer Construction Project – Found in Israel by workers upgrading the sewer system.  It was the floor of a large room in a villa during the Roman period.

Pictures: Great Smoky Mountains National Park  and Pictures: Rocky Mountain National Park and Explore the Power of Parks – From National Geographic…lots of great pictures, of course.

Obesity: A Complex Disorder – Graphic from The Scientist with a link at the bottom for the full article. The more we learn about obesity, the more complex it seems to become.

3 Free eBooks – November 2015

So many good books to choose from…it was hard to pick just 3 – like it is every month. I’m having a hard time making progress on my stacks of physical books when there are so many beautiful eBooks that are freely available.

Linden, Jean Jules. Lindenia : iconographie des Orchidées . Gand (Belgium): Impr. F. Meyer-van Loo. 1885. Ten volumes are available on the Internet Archive here. What not to like about orchids….and more orchids!

Burke, Doreen Bolger, et al. In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1986. Available from the Internet Archive here. The Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s and 1880s pervaded so much of the way ‘home’ looked…and it is surprising how much the individual pieces still appeal even though the aggregation in many of those rooms would look overwhelming today. The gilded peacock feather motif (that I clipped) was used on a book binding.

The Griffith Institute. Discovering Tutankhamun in Color. The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. 2015. Available from the Griffith Institute site here. The black and white photographs taken when the tomb was first opened in the 1920s have been colorized and many are available with annotations online. Click on the image to get an enlarge view. I’ve seen two different King Tut exhibits and still learned some new things from these photos! This site was one of the references from the Ancient Egypt course I am taking via Coursera.

Bonus!!! A fourth eBook for this month…also a reference from the Ancient Egypt class I am taking: Teeter, Emily (editor). Before the Pyramids: The Origins of Egyptian Civilization. Oriental Institute Museum Publications: The University of Chicago. 2011. Available here. Easy to read…and well illustrated. A lot has been added to our knowledge in this area in the past 20 years.

Cass Scenic Railroad State Park

The Cass Scenic Railroad State Park in West Virginia has a train and restored logging town; we went for the scenery but there is a lot of history to absorb as well. I’d bought the tickets ahead of time online. We arrived early enough – leaving Cranberry Glade behind and enjoying the winding roads through the West Virginia forested mountains near Snowshoe Ski Resort - to walk around the depot area and have lunch before our train departed. The hillside across from the depot was full of color.

As we started our journey up the mountain, the sawmill ruins were not far from the track. The track, engines and cars for the scenic train were originally built to carry logs out of the mountains…down to this mill.

Now the area is reforested (although the trees are still relatively young…there are no giant trees yet) and

The streams appear to be recovered. The area is either National Forest or under conservation easement.

The day was sunny and comfortable with a sweater or sweatshirt. The train moved slowly up the mountain and took pictures all along the way. We had taken this same train ride back in 2001 but I had forgotten that the train gets up the mountain via switchbacks. The slow speed and then stopping to achieve the switchback makes it easier to get pictures of the forest.

Many of the trees has already dropped their leaves but there were brilliant exceptions.

The train stops at Whittaker and the passengers get off to buy hot chocolate, photograph the hillside,

Or walk around the ruins of the logging camp. The temperature was cooler than down at the depot…and a good deal more exposed to the wind. Men that worked here lived in thin walled shanties.

As the trains went around a curve – lots of passengers leaned out to get a pictures of the engine with its billowing smoke. It is a coal fired steam engine. Our trip to Whittaker and back took about a ton of coal.

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 03, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

What you may not know about the world beneath your feet – 10 items from BBC future. A short paragraph is included for each one and then a link to a more detailed larger article is provided.

Salamanders Lost, Found and Saved – From National Geographic about salamanders in Guatemala.

U.N. Dreams Big: 17 Huge New Goals to Build a Better World – As I looked at the list – I asked myself if they are all equally important and how the goals will get translated into action by individuals and organizations and governments. Two keywords that appear again and again (standing out to me): sustainability and inclusive.

Angry Birds: Why Molting Makes Our Feathered Friends Grumpy – Many birds molt between the time nesting ends and migration begins. Since our cardinals are here year-round, I have been watching them closely this year. They did look scruffy for a time…then I didn’t see them as often…and now they are looking much better. The male goldfinches have already made the change to their winter plumage; I wonder where they dropped their yellow feathers?

Photography in The National Parks: Your Armchair Guide to Arches National Park – Part 2  - We didn’t get to see Arches a few years ago when we went to Utah in early October 2013; the government (and national parks) were closed. I enjoyed these pictures…and attached a picture of Wilson Arch that is right on Route 191 south of Moab that was the only arch picture I got during the trip!

For U.S. Tribes, a Movement to Revive Native Foods and Lands – Wild rice in wetlands being restored in Minnesota.

Decision aids help patients with depression feel better about medication choices – From the Mayo clinic. It bothered me that before using the tool…’clinicians are often uneasy or unwilling to offer options other than their preferred prescriptions.’ That is probably true of more than depression medications!

Increased internet access led to a rise in racial hate crimes in the early 2000s - So many things are positive about broadband internet access….this is a downside. We often think that more information helps people understand others better --- but this is another study that shows that it can also lead to extreme polarization.

Work in Transition – On sentence from the article: Choreographers, elementary school teachers, and psychiatric social works are probably safe…telemarketers and tax preparers are more likely to be replaced. Work done by humans will increasingly involve innovative thinking, flexibility, creativity, and social skills.

The curious chemistry of custard – I make pumpkin (or other winter squash) custard frequently this time of year. I’ve always wanted how the consistency develops. It turns out it is all about eggs and their protein!

Photogenic Chipmunk

When I was growing up, I knew about chipmunks first from books. Then I saw them when I went on vacations in Colorado - away from Texas where it was probably to dry and treeless for them to survive.

When I moved to the east coast, we saw them more frequently and I went to a lecture at the Smithsonian by Lawrence Wishner just after he’d published his book about Eastern Chipmunks. He’s the one that point out that the animals have Oreo markings on both sides.

In our current house, we have chipmunks that appear on the front porch - enjoying acorns from the oak further out in the yard. The cats are entertained by the view; they are hyper alert behind the glass of the narrow windows on either side of the front door. In the back of the house, the chipmunks come up onto the deck to clean up the seeds the birds spill from the feeder overhead. They also nibble on seeds from some of the flowers. The cats watch them from the screened part of the deck.

The photographs I’ve included in this post are of a very photogenic chipmunk at Stony Brook State Park in New York (taken on our recent road trip). The little rodent must have been used to people being around because it was near the playground area enjoying its meal…surveying the scene. It was early enough in the morning that nobody else was around except for me and my camera.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 22, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Why statins should be viewed as a double-edged sword - The results of a study from Tulane that indicates that statins may not be appropriate as a preventative measure for those who do not have cardiovascular disease…because statins increased aging and death of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs); MSCs can become all types of cell types including bone, cartilage, muscle cells and macrophages. Thus - the risk/benefit for people without cardiovascular diseases need careful consideration.

Four Ferns for Dry Places - I planted some Christmas fern under my deck and it is thriving!

Smart Windows Just Got Cooler - I’ve always thought it would be great to have windows that could selectively block light - and it seems like there is ongoing work. This start up is based on chemical engineering work from the University of Texas at Austin. It would be great to not need to close the draperies in my west-facing office on hot summer afternoons!

Survey reveals best practices that lead to high patient ratings of hospital care - It turns out that it is not about high-tech resources!

Butterflies in Peril - Droughts and habitat fragmentation….hard on butterflies. Many are becoming locally extinct. We are not in a drought here in Maryland but we are very away of the decline in Monarch butterflies in our area.

The Next Great GMO Debate - Evidently Monsanto is learning how to modify crops by spraying them with RNA rather than tinkering with their genes. What about unintended consequences? I’d rather we focus research on sustainable agricultural practices rather than new sprays that may have a short term benefit and potentially have a long term consequence.

An inside look at the world’s biggest space telescope - An update on the progress on the James Webb Telescope (video and pictures).

Cherokee Purple: The Story behind One of Our Favorite Tomatoes - These are the type of heirloom tomatoes we’ve been getting from our CSA; they are tasty. I enjoyed hearing about the history of how it became one the favorite heirloom tomatoes

The Periodic Table’s Endangered Elements - There are 9 elements that may ‘run out’ on Earth within the next 100 years and 7 additional ones that may join the list because of increased use.

Field recording Irish traditional music - Instrumental, song and dance videos…the roots of Riverdance.

3 Free eBooks - August 2015

Last month I focused on plants, mammals and birds. This month the three books are about places.

Okey, Thomas; illustrated by Katherine Kimbell and Orlando Frank Montagu Ward. Paris and its story. London: J.M. Dent. 1904. Available from the Internet Archive here. Colorful illustrations of Paris in the time before World War I. I clipped 2 that included the Eiffel Tower from different perspectives. A lot has changed in the intervening years.

Okey, Thomas; illustrated by Nelly Erichsen, W. K. Hincliff and Orlando Frank Montagu Ward. Venice and its story. London: J.M. Dent. 1910. Available from Internet Archive here. Another city from the same time period and by the same author….but different artists. I like the composition of the image I clipped: bridge - reflections - people for scale. The same ideas work for composition of photographs. As I looked through this book, it occurred to me that while painting/drawing is slower than taking a photograph - they have the advantage of not including extra people or an awkwardly placed boat!

Hichens, Robert Smythe; illustrated by Jules Vallee Guerin. The Near East: Dalmatia, Greece, and Constantinople. New York: The Century Co. 1913. Many of the illustrations in this book were in morning light. The one I clipped is of the mosque of Suleiman at Constantinople.

Gleanings of the Week Ending August 15, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Is Modern living leading to a ‘hidden epidemic’ of neurological disease? - A study that compared 21 countries between 1989 and 2010 found that dementias are starting a decade earlier than they used to in adults. In the US, neurological deaths in males 75 years old and over have nearly trebled…gone up five-fold for females in the same age range. The rapid increase points to environmental influences. Scary.

A single image captures how the American house has changed over 400 years - The link at the bottom of the article will take you to the full poster. I like history themes that go way beyond what I learned in school (which seemed to be mostly about conflicts and wars).

Deer Management Solutions: It Takes a Village - We have way too many deer in our area. Fortunately I have not been involved in a collision with one….but I see deer grazing near the roads and the occasional carcass from a collision at the roadsides. Our trees and bushes show evidence of deer browsing…we see deer in our backyard. Very few buds on the day lilies survived to become flowers!

Mapping how the United States generates its electricity - Lots of graphics. The first bar chart shows that there is still a lot of coal used for power generation. It accounts for more than 15% of the generating capacity in 15 states. In my home state (Maryland), coal is used for 44% of the capacity.

Global Risks - Richard Watson posts some thought provoking graphics. The subtitle on this one is ‘How would you like your apocalypse?’

Great plains agricultural greenhouse gas emissions could be eliminated - adoption of best management practices (no-tillage agriculture and slow release fertilizer, for example) can substantially mitigate agricultural greenhouse gas fluxes. The challenge is to overcome the cultural and economic barriers (higher cost of slow release fertilizer, new equipment/training required to convert to no-tillage agriculture) to best practices..

A Self-Taught Artist Paints the Rain Forest by Memory and The plants cultivated by the people from the center in the Colombian Amazon - Beautiful and informative work. The second link is for the free eBook. The text is in Spanish…but the drawings are the reason to download it.

Web-based patient-centered toolkit helps improve patient-provider communication - It seems like this is something that should already be in place in most hospitals although I know firsthand that it wasn’t a few years ago when I had a critically ill parent. It is frustrating that it is taking so long for health care organizations to apply data and technology in a way that keeps the focus on care for the patient….and consistent with patient (or their proxy) interaction re that care.

Astronauts Will Eat Space Lettuce for the First Time Next Week - This article is a little dated….they’ve eaten the greens already.

Artist Quits Day Job to Pursue Passion for Beautifully Quilled Paper Art - I like the spiral shape and this art form is all about spiral shapes with colored paper. 

Belmont Elm

Just before I got home from Texas - a friend sent me the news (Baltimore Sun from June 10 story here) that the large tree in front of Belmont Manor has Dutch Elm Disease and will be cut down soon. I took some pictures of the tree when I was volunteering at the park last week. It is a 250 year old tree and will leave a hole in the landscape that will take some time to fill. Hopefully the other large elms nearby (three between the Manor House and Carriage House) will be not succumb to the same disease.

The tree in front of the manor house looks partially dead even to the untrained eye but one side is still full of leaves that frame the pond looking away from the house….

And the Manor House looking up the hill.

There are many exposed roots on the hill where the deep shade has thinned the grass. The damage from mowers over the years is evident.

I’m always sad when an old tree has to be cut down. This particular one is a piece of tangible history….planted before the United States was a country!

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 18, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Toward Blood-based Cancer Detection - Lots of promise….but it is still a work in progress.

Buzz Kill for Bumblebees: Climate Change Is Shrinking Their Range - Bumblebees prefer cooler temperatures than many other insects and they like open areas rather than forest. As the ‘normal’ temperatures get hotter, the bee’s southern range is creeping northward but the forests of the north are a physical boundary to their expansion…thus a shrinking area for bumblebees.

Why can’t we move? - A lot of people in the US spend too long commuting…stuck in traffic or on inadequate public transportation. The US has fallen behind the rest of the developed world in our ability to move people to and from and within our cities.

Solving the Energy Efficiency Quandary - It often hard to measure the efficiency of an improvement that is ‘supposed’ to save energy. Not there are some standards emerging that may help do that. It is something needed for homeowners to finally gain enough data to understand the energy use of their home…and guide their decisions re improvements that will have the most impact.

For the Love of Plants - I enjoy botanical prints in old books…and here are some modern ones from botanical illustrator Mindy Lighthipe! (art work) My favorite one is the Monarch Butterfly with milkweed; it includes the Monarch lifecycle.

How free is Your Produce? - How well do you know your 19th century history? Evidently the free produce movement was a food justice movement propelled by Quakers and other abolitionists who hoped to abolish slavery through food ways. And now we have the Fair Trade movement and Fair Food program which are very similar.  

The Chemistry of Ice Cream – Components, Structure, & Flavor - A favorite warm weather treat!

Dragonflies and Damselflies - Check out Elizabeth’s Wildflower Blog --- this time about insects rather than flowers.

Smoke North and Saharan Dust South - Smoke and dust travel a very long ways across land and ocean.

Photography in the National Parks: Framing Wildflowers in the Parks - Good photography tips…and National Parks offer so many subjects to choose from!

Monticello - June 2015

I’ve made periodic trips to Monticello since 1983 when I moved to the east coast from Texas. There always seems to be something new to learn at Thomas Jefferson’s home. We arrived early for the first Behind the Scenes House Tour and Day Pass - with reservations made ahead of time. There was a lotus blooming in the courtyard of the visitor center; I had not even remembered a pool there from my previous visit so it was a pleasant surprise.

Later in the day it would have been impossible to get pictures of the house without people milling around. Did you know that Monticello has three floors above the basement? Jefferson intended for it to look like a single story. Here’s how he got light to the 3 floors. Look at the stacked windows on the front of the house. The windows with the shutters are the first floor. The windows with a white frame and no shutters are the second floor. They fill the lower half of the second floor walls. The third floor has sloped ceilings and skylights!

The viewshed for Monticello is somewhat changed from Jefferson’s day. There were farms where the trees had been cleared within the viewshed during his time but probably not as many clusters of other buildings. From the house it is easy to position yourself where trees block the view.

No pictures are allowed inside the house so I don’t have a picture of the staples that were used to support the alcove beds. I’d not noticed how the beds were supported on previous visits. Jefferson’s bed was open on both sides (and he had a clock positioned on the wall at his feet…he got up when it was light enough for him to see the clock). The other alcove beds had walls on three sides; Dolly Madison visited with her husband frequently and did not like them (probably because she was on the side to the wall!).

The kitchen has separate ‘burners’ for cooking at different temperatures. But they are not vented. The kitchen would have been hot, sooty, and smoky.

The back of Monticello includes the dome. More of the house is visible these days because a giant tulip poplar planted by Jefferson had to be cut down in the 1990s. The inside of the dome room is being monitored closely these days because there are cracks that appeared in the plaster after an earthquake…and they are getting larger.

After Jefferson’s presidency there were quite a few people living at Monticello: his daughter and her many children and his sister….as well as other relatives and friends. They had to have quite a garden to feed everyone.

The view from Mulberry Row - the series of cabins for the slaves that worked in or near the house - may have included more trees that it does now. The kitchen is to the right of this view…the south pavilion above on the far left.

My favorite photograph of the house during this visit was through the flowers.

I was surprised at the number of butterflies we saw in the short walk around the grounds.

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Instead of riding the bus down the hill to the visitor center we walked past the cemetary and through the forest.

And then it was time to splurge for lunch at Michie Tavern. The food is good….but I’m not as fond of ‘all you can eat’ places as I once was. In this case - it is tradition. I think we have gone to Michie Tavern for lunch every time I’ve visited Monticello!

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - June 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for the earlier days of June 2015 (actually there are a few more than 10 listed below…it has been a month full of celebrations!).

I’ve been doing some traveling the past few weeks: two one-night-away trips and half-day jaunts.

Winterthur (Delaware) was overwhelming in many ways. I did the Introductory tour and Antiques and Architecture tour --- which is almost too much for one day! But the walk back to the visitor’s center through the woodland garden is soothing. It is a place to celebrate. I am prompted to read the biography Henry Francis DuPont that I’ve had in my ‘to read’ pile for the past few months - and celebrate Winterthur again as I savor the book.

Wheatland (Lancaster PA) was a place I had touring more than 20 years ago but I enjoyed much more than I expected to this time - both the house and grounds. By the time we headed home I was celebrating the place. Maybe it was because I was early enough to get a private tour. The guide was excellent. The highpoint may have been seeing how hooped skirts compressed to go upstairs!

Centennial Park was one of the ways I celebrated being home again. The walk around the lake on a summer morning is good exercise and another opportunity to photograph milkweed.

Maymont (Richmond VA) my favorite ‘golden age mansion’ …. better than anything in Newport RI because the house and furnishings were left intact when donated to the city of Richmond. The tour guide was knowledgeable and photography was allowed. It appealed to me that the house was lived in except for the hottest months of the year rather than being used for 6-8 weeks only like many of the mansions in Newport. I’ll do a complete post about Maymont in a week or so. Maymont is a celebration of tangible history!

Monticello (Charlottesville VA) is a place I’ve been every few years since we moved to the east coast in 1983. There are always a lot of people and the foundation has evolved to handle the crowds. We made reservations for the ‘Behind the Scenes’ and it was well worth it; the renovation and furnishing of the upstairs rooms were just finished in May! During the tour, I celebrated that some of the spaces had been furnished to allow for sitting (after more than an hour of walking around the house!) but now I celebrate that every time I got to Monticello I notice something I did not  before - sometimes on my own and sometimes prompted by a tour guide. I plan to post about the Monticello experience in a week or so.

Brookside is always worth a walk around. It is a good celebration close to home. Pictures are coming soon in another post.

Thrift stores celebrations are always about the serendipity of finding something great at a low price. In June I went twice. The first time I only found blouses….the second time skirts. And several ‘match’!

Gorman Farms CSA started their season this month. It is a weekly celebration of fresh produce….as long as I don’t feel overwhelmed by the bounty. So far - I am just barely keeping up (although there is some fruit beety in the freezer).

A mouth guard may not be something to celebrate but my new one is more flexible than my old one…it’s sparklingly free of deposits. Overall - I celebrate that a mouth guard enables me to sleep better!

A new hot water heater was installed in our house this month. The old one had started to leak after 24 years. I celebrated that we discovered it almost immediately, that it didn’t leak fast enough to get anything in the basement wet, and that we were never without hot water!

Master Naturalist activity was very high at the beginning of the month: the annual conference and the last few elementary school field trips. Both were celebratory crescendos to the spring season activities. I am taking a ‘vacation’ until mid-July when I’m signed up to help with summer camps.

3 Free eBooks - June 2015

I’ve latched onto several series within the Internet Archive this past month - one from museums.

Atil, Esin. Art of the Arab World. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. 1975. Available from the Internet Archive here. This book was one of the 1970s and 1980s exhibition books from the Freer Gallery of Art. A number of museums are scanning their archives and making them available this way. I liked the sketched bird and the colors of the bowl in the clipped image to the left. After such success with the Freer Gallery of Art books…I am not working through the back issues of the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago) Bulletins from the later 20th century.

Valentine & Sons United Publishing. Canadian Rockies. Montreal: Valentine & Sons United Publishing Co. 1910. Available from the Internet Archive here. I found quite a few tourist booklets for the Rockies on the Internet Archive. The trek between Banff and Vancouver must have been a very popular in the early 1900s. After the Rockies, I searched for books on the Pyrenees and am still working my way through the results of that search.

Cassin, John. Illustrations of the birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America. Philadelphia: JB Lippincott & Co. 1862. Available on the Internet Archive here. I found this book by accident and was surprised that the author (I looked up his bio on Wikipedia) had died relatively young  - from arsenic poisoning because he handled so many pelts and skins that were treated with arsenic to preserve them; that use of arsenic had been mentioned as a historical note in my Master Naturalist class - a piece of trivia that somehow stuck. After enjoying this book - I looked to see what the Internet Archive had of Audubon’s work; they have The Birds of America in 7 volumes! Those books were published more than 20 years before Cassin’s work and the positioning of the birds seems much more contrived. Both probably did their work with dead birds rather than living specimans.

Wheatland

Wheatland (the home of President Buchanan in Lancaster, Pennsylvania) was on our itinerary the day after Winterthur (in Delaware) and it did not disappoint. I was there for the first tour of the day; since no one else was as early, I go a private tour with the very knowledgeable docent. The tour starts on the back porch - where a workman was replacing part of the porch. The house was already its present size when Buchanan purchased it as he became the guardian for a niece and nephew.

There are many decorative features in the house that appeal even today. The windows have sturdy Venetian blinds with wood cut valences. The cords of the blinds are wound around glass knobs (a very practical idea!).

The robust cricket doorstop kept a door open.

The carpets are reproductions and produced in strips that are laid together to form the pattern and ‘fit’ the room.

There is a doll that ‘looks like’ the niece

And some pink ceramic pieces from her dressing table. She inherited the house at Buchanan’s death. Her name was Harriet Lane - known in relation to pediatrics at Johns Hopkins and the St. Albans school in Washington DC.

I liked the egret pitchers

And thought about the practicality of the ‘bath’ before plumbing (or when water is scarce).

I also found some items that are Zentangle prompts (just as I did at Winterthur).

One of the Buchanan items recently returned to the house from a Buchanan descendent was this artful mulit-bell. I wonder what the two bells meant in the household.

The house seen from the front shows a bit more about its division into three parts. Buchanan had his law office on one side. Note where the windows are…the ceilings are higher in the center than in the two wings. The external shutters appear to have been removed from the windows of the wings although some of the hardware is still in place.

As I walked back around to the visitor center, I photographed the privy. The trellis forms a rose bush arbor that hides the entrance to the 5 hole privy (with different seat heights and hole sizes!).

Winterthur Museum

Last weekend toured the Winterthur Museum and Gardens; I’ll post about the gardens later…today the post focuses on my impressions of the museum of American Decorative Arts. The museum holds the collection of Henry Francis Du Pont and is housed in the mansion - extended by du Pont to hold hisgrowing collection before it became a museum in the 1950s - when even the rooms where the family had lived were converted to museum spaces.

The initial impression of the museum is that the light is dim. One of the reasons for that is the large number of old fabrics displayed. Here are some examples taken in the part where photography is allowed: a child’s dress,

Bedding (showing the straw stuffed mattress at the bottom and featherbed on top)

Carpets,

And in an upright grand piano.

Some pictures I took to prompt Zentangle designs in the upcoming weeks: a gate

A comb (It took long teeth to hold very long hair!),

Patterns of wood inlay on chests

And chairbacks,

The transom over the front door.

The biggest surprise of the day for me was noticing that the silverware patterns are mixed for place settings (i.e. all the knives on the table were the same pattern…but the forks were a different pattern). Now I find myself looking at every museum dining room display (there will be another in tomorrow’s post).

Gleanings of the Week Ending May 23, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

New Battery Technology Will Fundamentally Change the Way the Grid Operates - Cost effective storage of energy seems to be on the near horizon. It could overcome the complaint about the intermittent nature of solar and wind power generation.

The Chemistry of Permanent Hair Dyes - There are probably still a lot of people covering grey hair with permanent hair dyes…not me. I’d rather enjoy my natural salt and pepper!

A Gorgeously Detailed View of Antarctica's Churning Ocean Currents  and Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Will Likely Disintegrate by Decade's End - Two recent articles about Antarctica. The first one is a visualization of simulations done at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  The second article is bad news since it means global sea level rise will be increasing as glacial ice enters the ocean faster.

From Snapshot to Science: Photos of Biodiversity as Useful Records - Learn about National Geographic’s Great Nature Project. The Belmont BioBlitz observations have become part of the project!

The Birth of a Bee - A short video…well worth watching.

Recommended levels of activity rarely achieved in busy workplace environment - Many workplaces are quite sedentary. This study looked at 83 employees in a hospital. Only 6% of the participants reached the 10,000 steps per day goal even though the jobs of 53% of the participants were assumed to require ‘high’ levels of activity! I know when I started wearing a Fitbit I had to focus on getting steps in after my workday. Now that I am retired, it is easier to get the steps in throughout the day rather than focused at the end of the day.

China Coal Use Continues To Fall “Precipitously” - Now if this trend will continue….

First fully warm-blooded fish: The opah or moonfish - And now we discover that there is an exception to something we all learned in school….fishes are not all cold-blooded.

A Map Showing the "Most Distinctive" Causes of Death by State - It is a very colorful map…but does it mean very much. The most distinctive form of death in Maryland seemed strange to me…and ‘tuberculosis’ was listed for Texas.

How Machines Destroy (And Create!) Jobs, In 4 Graphs - I was somewhat surprised that the ‘services’ sector is not even larger. Looking at the graph historically - white collar jobs became the highest percentage and number of jobs in the 1950s and the trend continues.

3 Free eBooks - May 2015

So many beautifully illustrated books came to my attention in May.

Walton, Elijah; Bonney, Thomas George; Lowes, J. H. The Peaks and Valleys of the Alps. London: Sampson Low, Son and Marston. 1868.  Available from Internet Archive here. The creator of the water color drawings (Elijah Walton) got top billing on the title page of this book. The compositions always include details that make it easier to comprehend the enormity of the mountains. In this clip - it is soaring birds and some pine trees.

Poepping, Eduard Friedrich (editor); Endlicher, Istvan Laszlo (illustrator). Nova genera ac species plantarum, quas in regno Chilensi Peruviano et in terra Amazonica. Leipzig: Sumptibus F. Hofmeister. 1835. Multiple volumes available from Internet Archive: Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3. I always find it difficult to resist botanical prints!

Stories from the Arabian Nights retold by Laurence Housman with drawings by Edmond Dulac. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1911. Available from Internet Archive here along with many other books illustrated by Edmond Dulac.

Belmont Manor Cemetery

The cemetery at Belmont Manor and Historic Park was featured in two activities last week: a field trip for 6th graders and a lecture about the results of a recent ground penetrating radar survey done there. So - I’ve been thinking more about it.

It is a walk from the manor house - past the formal gardens to the edge of the forest. There is a fence around it although the survey found some graves outside the fence. Were they graves of slaves or was the fence built long after the grave markers deteriorated and the fence was built around the area of existing headstones? Was the very large tulip poplar just outside the fence growing before the fence was built? The fence is not a prefect rectangle; there is a jog to accommodate the tree!

There were graves found in an area within the enclosure that had not markers. Are they graves from the 1700s? The manor was finished in 1738 and the builder died in 1772. They survey detected pieces of metal probably nails, hinges and fasteners produced by the iron forges and blacksmiths at Belmont. All the markers still visible are from the 1800s or 1900s.

There is one grave that I find particularly sad  - for a 2 year old child. It is a reminder that many children did not live to adulthood in the time before vaccines and antibiotics. Prior to the survey - the headstone seemed to be all by itself in the back of the cemetery. But now the survey has revealed the other graves that were probably still marked when the little girl was buried in 1834.