Ten Little Celebrations – June 2021

After being away from home in May…being in Maryland again rippled with little celebrations associated with home. Here are my top 10 little celebrations from June 2021:

Scenic drive from Lexington KY to home. Light traffic, good highway, beautiful scenery….I took a picture to celebrate being back in Maryland.

Farmers Market. I’ve been going every week and it’s a celebration every time. The piles of produce fresh from the local farms (and artisan bread) make it a happy errand…and then I enjoy the bounty in meals all during the week. It’s a great substitute for belonging to a CSA (which is not practical for me this year because of my traveling).

A good watermelon. There was a sign in the produce section of Wegmans for seeded watermelons. I always remember them from my childhood….sweeter than the ones without seeds that we find more frequently in stores today. I bought one – hoping it would live up my expectations. And it did. Celebrating a watermelon as good as I remembered!

Yard work. An hour of work (several of them on mornings when it is still cool enough to be pleasant)…2 wheelbarrow loads to the brush pile or compost bin….celebrating a neater yard and satisfaction of encouraging native species.

Apple crisp. While I was away, my husband did curbside pickup for his groceries. He somehow got a huge bag of apples. Some of the excess apples made a great apple crisp…celebrating bounty (and not wasting food).

Howard County Conservancy Mt Pleasant. Every time I hike there, there is something new to celebrate – most recently dragonflies and a black-crowned night heron.

Maryland sunrise and partial solar eclipse. Celebrating being in the right place at the right time to see it.

New crowns. I had anticipated that getting 3 new crowns was going to be uncomfortable but was pleasantly surprised that my expectation was way over the top; there was almost no discomfort during the drilling or sensitive areas afterward…. celebrated that it happened that way.

New computer glasses. Hurray for seeing better…and the red frames.

The Institutions of Extraterrestrial Liberty talks. There were 4 days of webinars….and I found many of them very thought provoking. I celebrated the content…and that they were made available by the sponsors of the virtual conference. (Day 1: https://tinyurl.com/4t7zjv72 Day 2: https://tinyurl.com/2f9n4b72 Day 3: https://tinyurl.com/48rbba2k Day 4: https://tinyurl.com/5bbey7pr)

Gleanings of the Week Ending June 26, 2021

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.

Top 25 Birds of the week: Habitats! – Birds are everywhere (at least now/recent past). The decline in insect populations could make it problematic for many species to survive.

The Institutions of Extraterrestrial Liberty (Day 1: https://tinyurl.com/4t7zjv72 Day 2: https://tinyurl.com/2f9n4b72 Day 3: https://tinyurl.com/48rbba2k Day 4: https://tinyurl.com/5bbey7pr) – A series of webinars chaired by Charles Cockell (I enjoyed his astrobiology course on Coursera back in 2015 and his “Life in the Universe Pandemic Series’ back in Spring 2020). The subject in these webinars is freedom beyond Earth with talks on everything from liberty in Martian settlements to war in space. This is not about the search for life beyond Earth, but it is about the human future beyond Earth and how human societies might evolve over time. The schedule for each of the days is in the comments section so it is easy to select segments easily.

Gigantic flying pterosaurs had spoked vertebrae to support their 'ridiculously long' necks -- ScienceDaily – Their necks were longer than a giraffe’s…and the vertebrae had internal structure not seen in any other animal. The discovery was made with a CT scan and petrographic sections through the bone.  

Linking Birds, Farmer Attitudes and Conservation – The approach is not as straightforward as it might seem…there are nuances and feedback loops that need to be considered to get a positive result.

A breathtaking treasure reveals the power of the woman buried with it : Research Highlights – Early Bronze Age southeastern Spain…heavy silver diadem, silver ornaments…pots with intricate silver plating and daggers with silver-plated handles.

Challenging Conservation Not to Leave Women Behind – An example from the Solomon Islands….globally relevant.

100-Year-Old Lungs Yield Genetic Samples of 1918 Flu Viruses | The Scientist Magazine®- Lungs of 2 soldiers and a civilian preserved in formalin….from the first wave of the 1918 flu…when it was not as deadly as the later waves.

Why Peru is reviving a pre-Incan technology for water - BBC Future – One of the world’s first efforts to integrate nature into water management on a national scale. Projects include protecting high altitude cushion bogs and shoring up ancient water storage (routing water in the wet season to natural infiltration basins). These are ‘slow water’ solutions…mitigations that should be studied for other areas that are drying out as the climate changes.

An Estimated 50 Billion Birds Populate Earth, but Four Species Reign Supreme | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine – And the 4 species are: house sparrow, European starling, ring-billed gull, and barn swallow.

How humanity has changed the food it eats - BBC Future – Perspectives on the processing of food through our history (and pre-history)…and where we are now. It is still possible to make choices that are healthy for us…but a lot of ultra-processed ‘foods’ readily available that are not.