University of Misery

Mizzou has been in the news and most of it isn't good. TPP spent a couple of years at Mizzou in his early career and worked with some real nice people some of whom are still good friends. But having come from upeast, a New England part of NY state, the whole state seemed like the deep south, acted like the deep south, basically a largely, over-whelmingly white campus whose diversity was largely recruited for sports. So none of the racial tension in the news surprises at all. Two years of Misery were all we could stand in those days, so the Phactors left for Lincolnland when the opportunity presented itself. The town and campus were pretty segregated and as poor recently graduated types our residence was in a "bad" part of town and our insurance was really high, of course that was because our lower, middle class neighborhood was red-lined into a "high crime" block by being in the middle between two apartment complexes with a lot of break-ins and other trouble, so those of us inbetween were being soaked and the local insurance company was not happy when this dubious practice was pointed out in the local newspaper. The most appalling part of the racial situation at the university is the student response of denying even local reporters free-speech after having used it to themselves to get a change in administration. Bloody awful, but fortunately non-violent. TPP remembers the racial tensions on the 60s that left cities in flames. So remember folks, it's best just to hang presidents in Effigy, which is a small town about 85 miles south of Springfield.  

Very late fall weather

Here's your basic hand full of green pole beans fresh from the garden. Not a huge amount but enough for a couple of servings which is enough since the kitty girls don't like them. What makes this news worthy, blog worthy, is that TPP picked these on the 7th of November, about a month later than you could possibly imagine them still growing. They got this far by dodging 3 near, but not quite frosts. And here in the upper midwest, the average date for the first frost was a month ago. Picking pole beans and raking leaves are generally not same day activities, but our falls have been gradually getting later and our springs earlier. You think maybe this might be a trend? Maybe TPP should ask his local GnOPe representatives? Depends if this is a trend or if just a rare as in 99 percentile event. And the beans were quite lovely. Also picked a big bowl of young romaine lettuce, but under a row cover, lettuce can grow quite late into the fall surviving frosts with no difficulty.  

Field work season at an end - finally

Today will be our last day of field work for this season. All of our plots have been harvested, so now it's time to gather in the PVC plot markers and taller bamboo stakes added to the poles to almost make them visible in the taller vegetation. Next spring the process will be started all over again by trying to find our plots. You see prairie fires make it impossible to leave anything combustable out there, and bits and pieces of field gear lost during the year will get the spring melt down. The permanent markers are actually spikes driven into the ground, permanent yes, but hard to see. Thank goodness for metal detectors. Nobody got shot by bow hunters and that's always a good thing. In some years the last of our field work has been done with snow flurries in the air; this year TPP is still picking pole beans in his garden! That's evidence of a very mild fall so far, but temps promise to be more seasonal now. Of course the lab is still filled with bags of vegetation to sort and dry, and here's hoping that gets done before the field trip to Costa Rica. Hmm, guess the field work isn't really over, it's just shifting to the lower latitudes.

You say tomayto, they say tomahto, everybody says big

Tomatoes are one of those garden fruits that everybody loves. And some people want to raise the earliest one each year. And some people want to raise the biggest one, and some succeed wildly.  So here's what may be the largest tomato ever raised, even if not the ripest. Perhaps the grower is red-green color blind. This particular tomato was raised in France and it weighs in at 3.795 kilograms (that's 8.4 pounds for the metric challenged). The Guinness book of records lists a tomato from the USA at 3.814 kg, so this particular fruit isn't the biggest ever. It isn't the nice round, plump, smooth fruit that you might be envisioning. Wild type tomatoes are composed of 2 or 3 carpels, sort of like cherry tomatoes but smaller. If you look at a big tomato it's composed of many more carpels or subunits, so tomatoes get bigger by adding fruiting units. It's also possible that two adjacent flowers fused during early fruit development, and not sure that should be counted for a thing like a record. Nonetheless that's an impressive tomato even is not quite the record. HT to Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. 

Fall color - Winterberry

Winterberry is a great landscape shrub for fall and winter color.  It's almost native to the upper midwest, but not quite, but it has no trouble growing here at all. It's actually a holly, a deciduous holly, Ilex verticillata. In particular the dwarf variety is a nicely compact, relatively slow growing shrub, rather unobtrusive until fall and then zowie! The bright red berries just light up the area, and eventually they will become bird fodder. They look particularly good in front of evergreens or other shrubs.  One small thing to note. Hollies are dioecious, so trees either bear fruiting flowers or pollen flowers not both, however you only need one male for every few females. For some reason the males are not as tough nor as hardy as the females and they tend to die a bit more frequently, but they can be pretty easily replaced. As one friend put it, the berries are so lovely they could be artificial. Not sure but TPP thinks that was a complement.

How to run a university - Adminspeak

Once you've been around a college or university long enough you learn Adminspeak. For those of you new to this jargon, here's a few pointers.
"Strategic reorganization" - This means "we're going to fire some people and the way we're going to do it is by reorganizing to make a division, department, office, etc. disappear on the organization chart".  Yes, rather than just fire people, terminate jobs, admins like to reorganize such that the desired object for termination ceases to exist.  Poof, no more job, so no more person in that position.
"Performance assessment" - In higher education, everything must be assessed. This is why people in higher education collect and count beans. Never mind that there are no complaints, no problems, no omissions, no excuses, no evidence of anything but a job well done, you must be assessed. The problem is they don't know how to do it. Do you never, sometimes, often miss deadlines? Yes, assessments eat up my time that could be done doing something useful.
"Special Study Group" - Groups like this are formed to reinforce preconceived notions and deliver expected results. Some times 2 or 3 such groups must be formed and dismissed to get the desired result. Then the Admin can announce, "A special study group has recommended ...".  TPP had a chair who constructed a new curriculum this way.
"Shared Governance" - Mostly this means faculty are thrown a few bones, placed on committees and such, where their input can be ignored. While membership on a committee can look quite inclusive, unwanted opinions are frequently, conveniently, left out of reports by the lapdog appointed chair. You can also just be left out of strategic discussions, candidate interviews, etc. And that's only if the organization pays any lip service to shared governance at all.
"Program review" - This is the academic equivalent of strategic reorganization. Tenured faculty are hard to fire, but read the fine print. You can be terminated if your program ceases to exist, i.e., it is deemed out dated, too small, too expensive, too specialized, etc. based upon "assessment", which is really bean counting. The lesson here is simple, only make big, broad programs for majors. Minors are always suspect and liable for cutting, as if this was anything but a bookkeeping problem, so make sequences which can accomplish the same thing for students but are not on admin radar.
This is just too depressing to continue.  But maybe you have some suggestions to submit in the comments?

Leftovers - Halloween treat department

The cold miserable rain stopped in time for kids to get out for trick or treat last evening. That was nice for everyone concerned, but as TPP explained just a couple of days ago, the housing density is lower in our neighborhood and in terms of optimal foraging this area is sort of a dead end. So mostly it's just the neighborhood kids. This year during the two hour trick or treat window of opportunity, our house was visited by just 15 kids. Limiting the time extent has improved the quality of the activity greatly and before this limit was enforced as the hour got later the tricker-or-treaters got older and less cute, and more entitled. But few beggers that means leftover treats. One rule is never buy treats that you yourself wouldn't eat, however, while a little chocolate-covered coconut or peanut butter is OK every now and again, having too much temptation around is not a good thing. So given that there's lots of lab work going on, just plain old sorting piles of prairie vegetation, a stash of nutritive rewards is a good thing to have available. Each bag sorted lets you dip into the treat jar. College students, both undergraduate and graduate, too sophisticated and too old for trick-or-treating are still quite happy to have such treats available. TPP will also stock up on post-Halloween treat sales and take some along to Costa Rica at the end of the month. The Ticos don't get to see this kind of USA candy and they do have a sweet tooth. Cheap and easy way to be nice and provide a nice surprise. One of TPP's Costa Rican friends kids grew up while my visits were annual and nearer to Christmas, and the first year TPP missed a trip, his kids were so disappointed. Hmm, those might even have been more seasonal treats of a Christmas nature. Same concept though.

Flowering street lights

You have to absolutely love these flower street lights that "bloom" when you approach. And they look really cool at night too. TPP really wants one of these. Here's the link to read and see more at Bored Panda. So what do you think? Poppy? Mallow? 

That's one very spooky plant!

TPP was thinking about trying to find a really spooky plant for a Halloween post, but it wasn't going well. Then a colleague hit upon a nomination that just can't be beat, so what the heck, here's the link to one truly spooky plant from the In Defense of Plants blog. You can see more of these bizarre flowers here. 

Halloween, yawn.

TPP just doesn't get all the excitement about Halloween. OK, as a kid it's understandable. You get to dress up in costumes, run around the neighborhood, and score some epic amounts of candy. Yes, that gets kids excited, and will keep them that way for awhile. But TPP grew up. Lot's of adult people seem excited about Halloween and it just makes no sense. The best adult thing to get excited about is the Rocky Horror Show being performed at the local theater. That's fun. Maybe they just want an excuse to have a fall party with costumes thrown in for giggles. While walking to the coffee shoppe, this decorated yard caught TPP's eye, and really folks? All this for Halloween? This isn't actually scary, just tacky. Former neighbors used to have a minimalist Halloween display that scared the crap out of kids, especially the spooky music and lighting and a witch at a spinning wheel who turned out to be alive once you got close, along with a couple of other surprises. Kids would cross the street rather than take the risk for a little chunk of candy. Wonder if the tacky house gives away something really good, or maybe they blew their budget on decor and give away pieces of laughee taffee, which is as awful tasting and as good at pulling fillings as you may imagine. The big prize when TPP was a kid was a house high on a hill with about a thousand step sidewalk, but they gave out full-sized candy bars to reward the intrepid climbers. Presently, our neighborhood with its large yards has a low house to distance ratio so trick-or-treaters seek denser neighborhoods to maximize their return on investment. Some optimal foraging there folks.