Turning over a new artistic leaf

The Phactor likes botanical art a lot, and here's a nice example where the medium is botanical, in this case leaves, as best as can be determined, folded and packed into spaces to produce some great looking textures and patterns.  Unfortunately none of these art works look like they will have much lasting power based upon how long parsley lasts in the produce drawer of the fridge. At any rate this art has a certain herbal freshness to it. Enjoy. 

Score one for the Phactor!

Everyone likes a challenge, and the latest Get Your Botany On plant ID quiz was indeed a challenge, but an educated guess (false toadflax) based on what the plant clearly wasn't (Comandra unbellata), together with its boggy habitat, scored one for the Phactor!  Yea!  Now to try and impress my taxonomy class of plant ID neophytes; now that's tough.  The key observation was that everything else with similar leaves, based on what you can see in a picture, has the leaves arranged in an opposite pattern, which eliminated a lot of possibilities. Gee, do you think the botanist is suffering from a bout of cabin fever?  For the record, the only time the Phactor has seen the false toadflax was on the Door Co. peninsula in WI, possibly at the Ridges Sanctuary in Bailey's Harbor.

A study in Saturday contrasts

What to do on a snowy Saturday? Two more inches have fallen since my last post this AM.  Well, Mrs. Phactor decides we needs us some culture, so nothing for it but to mount a small expedition to see some fancy art glass by Dale Chihuly and some Murano glass artists.  A few years ago there was a TV special called something like Chihuly over Venice, and it showed them making some of the pieces on exhibit. It was quite impressive, the more so that this exhibit is wholly a private collection, someone with some very deep pockets! The Chihuly pieces were quite different from others we have seen in various places and venues (1conservatory,1 botanical garden, 4 museums).  From a biological perspective, the coolest pieces were a large collection of very life like glass insects, mostly beetles, but also a small swarm of bees complete with full pollen baskets. Before getting some culture, the idea was to stop for a bit of lunch on the way, and feeling a bit adventurous, the decision is made to dine at the Burger Barge, a lovely bit of Americana on the river. This is the quintessential burger joint where the burgers are quite good and served on paper and the finest of cafeteria trays and the beer is served cold and in bottles.  This is one of the more attractive things about the old USA; you can eat at a good ole boy bar and grill and then without even changing your jeans go to an art museum. In another coincidence, the museum admission for a couple of senior citizens and lunch for a couple of senior citizens was almost exactly the same amount showing the equality of culture and a couple of fancy burgers with beer (Dos XX & Red Stripe). At any rate a most pleasant Saturday diversion, and TPP got a nice Darwin greeting card in the museum shop! 

Saturday morning bird activity

Here's the activity report from the Phactor's kitchen table.  It's been a very cold week but today is a warm snap, up to 20 F, and the forecast is for more snow and then the temperature is to fall again.  Suffice it to say everyone is stoking up at the feeders, 2 with sunflower fruits, 1 filled with peanuts, and one with thistle fruits (hey, both sunflowers and thistles are achenes). OK let's see who's feeding. The usual crowd is here: cardinals, house finches, gold finches, juncos, white-throated sparrows, blue jays, red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpecker, tufted titmouse, chickadees, Carolina wrens, nuthatches, morning doves.  Well, not bad for a 15 min bird round up. Oh, yes and 8 fox squirrels easting their corn and spilled bird food and wishing they could climb into the feeders. 
It has been quite a few years since this much snow has accumulated, and lots of low growing shrubs are just mounds of white. No evidence of the lily pond exists, and hopefully the bubble stone and compressor are keeping things aerobic until a melt finally comes. Quite a bit of bun-bun bark feeding is probably being hidden from view, but things are tough enough that at night bun-buns actually appear under the bird feeders looking for a bit of food, that is whatever bits are left by the birds and squirrels.

Campus fashion citings

You can observe lots of interesting winter fashion on university campuses.

Bare-ankled weather nut - It was 5 degrees below zero this morning, and there walking down a sidewalk was a bare-ankled weather nut.  Yes, short shoe-top socks and low sneakers as your basic Arctic winter clothing.  Won't your mother be so proud that you've learned to dress yourself.

Weather-defying cargo shorts - Some people are just in a fashion rut or saving a lot of money by not buying any clothes at all.  So nothing like the all purpose, all season, khaki cargo shorts, well-wrinkled.  Do they feel a certain chill?  Of course their converse sneakers don't help much either. 

Chic and impractical - Nothing like a pair of high-heeled, knee high leather boots to show off you long legs otherwise wrapped in sprayed on jeans. The traction on icy sidewalks is unparalleled.  The short, little leather coat looks like its weather approved for temperatures down to about freezing, but it's all about looking good, not staying warm. The white faux fur ear muffs actually may be the most practical accessory possible.

Fashion-be-damned uni-sex, over-stuffed, cucoon sleeping bag trench coat - Well, it most certainly looks warm, and it is moving, so we must assume a person is enveloped within that Michelin-man cylinder of down-stuffed nylon. This could also be survival gear for a foreign student from someplace like Thailand.  TPP's Thai students always wore all of their clothing at once during the winter.

Muk luks - If there ever was a season for muk luks, this is it. Yes, these massive furry boots can make any foot look like a sasquatch. And as for the ties with fur pom-poms at the ends; well, this is a dead giveaway that you don't live with a cat who would tackle you in a nano-second.

Of course in his day, TPP remembers a year-book group photo of the dear fellows he hung out with that was quite simply labeled, "Send food, money, winter-clothing".

 

A little behind on filing

Virtually all herbarium collections are behind on filing, unless they aren't collecting anything at all. This semester TPP has a class of warm bodies and the idea is to get them active and doing something useful. Like a lot of things, they best way to learn about herbarium curating is to do it.  So students start by mounting and filing specimens, and this is no problem in terms of finding them materials to work on because TPP is more than a little behind.  This is a massive problem inherited from a predecessor who sort of let things pile up, but TPP is less behind now than when he obtained control the whole collection.  So today TPP was checking accuracy of species names for a pile of old specimens that had been remounted to get rid of old deteriorating paper. So how far behind is TPP?  Well, let's see these specimens were collected from '45 to '67, but not 1945 to 1967, no, 1845 to 1867.  Now that's not too bad, just 150 to 170 years behind.  Actually this is a bit strange because mostly the backlog of specimens is from just 50-60 years ago, but for some reason these were set aside and ignored, for a long, long time.  Part of the problem is that many people cannot read the handwritten labels, but it's not impossible, so why these specimens were set aside so long ago remains a puzzle.  These were all exchange specimens, specimens that our institution obtained from Europe by trading with colleagues, so maybe they just weren't considered very important. Nonetheless the students are strangely impressed by the age of these specimens and the idea that they are working on something with a bit of history to it, that they are contributing to something that is expected to last for awhile barring some catastrophe like a water leak or a fire.

Please, valued Sir, can I have a recommendation?

TPP gets contacted by former students all the time.  Do you remember me? Generally, yes, my memory of students is quite good actually, and I have surprised some people from years ago.  They often then tell me about what they have been doing with themselves, and this is great, but you'd be surprised how few students actually keep me up to date.  Hopefully social media will help in this regard, but then TPP would have to do Facenook or something like that.  OK, that probably won't work.  "Would you please recommend me for this job/graduate program/professional school?"  Recommendations are part of my job, but did we have any significant interaction beyond the classroom?  Your transcripts tell people how that went.  Did you do any research with me?  Any field work? Any special projects?  If no, then there isn't too much I can do at this point. Admissions people and people with jobs to fill want to know if you have a good work ethic, if you have intellectual skills, and can do research, and frankly, TPP doesn't know.  Maybe, maybe, but to be an honest recommender means TPP cannot say because he has no basis for knowing.  This is why we urge undergraduates to get involved, to interact with the faculty; this is why you chose an undergraduate research university, so that you have faculty who will do these things with you. So it was great to hear from you.  TPP will do what he can. "Would you please provide feedback?" OK, that was not the most impressive bit of email prose you just wrote.  You say you "will be incredibly elated and gracious" to have my recommendation, but when you write like this, it mostly doesn't help your cause.  Be simpler and more direct.  Wish we had worked on writing more when you were a student.  Wish we had talked more a couple of years ago and maybe this could have been a more positive communication. Still you did communicate, and you want to do something new, and those are both good things.

Secret garden, illegal garden, magic garden

On the south side of Philadelphia is a Magic Garden, and this "magic garden" was built both illegally and secretly in northern India. You give some people, actually not some people, just a couple of eccentric crazy people enough pieces of pottery and other "junk" and they'll build something magnificent.  It's sort of hard to believe something like this being "secret" in India. Clearly it wasn't a secret, but secret from people who had the power and authority to stop it before it had gone so far it was better to accept the outcome and help the guy finish the job. TPP's impression is that this is pretty cool both as a garden and as folk art. Now Mrs. Phactor can add this place to her bucket list of gardens to see before she dies. 

NPR - Yes! Phlox News - What?

This is just great. Watch Phlox News and know less! Now presently no evidence is suggesting that regular doses of Phlox News actually damages your brain, it is now certain that you get less accurate information to put in your brain than from any other major news source. In fact, people who use Phlox News as their primary source of information actually did worse than people who watched no news whatsoever. Ouch!  The old no-news-at-all control!  And of course NPR and Sunday morning talk radio provide so much more. No wonder the Phactors are so well informed!  However, and this is the basic gotcha on just about everybody, people who watch the Daily Show do almost as well as NPR listeners, so imagine how well us NPR + John Stewart combo listeners will do. It is of course sad that politics and the affairs of state in our country are such that making fun of them is one of the most informative things you can do. It does however worry me to find people who don't think the Daily Show is funny, or that politicians don't deserve to be ridiculed. After all if they only would stop saying and doing stupidly funny things. 
Now take recent events here in Lincolnland as an example. The GnOPe is hot to win the next gubernatorial election, so they are fielding a slate of woeful hopefuls, none more hopeful nor more woeful than our current state treasurer Dan Rathernot. At a time when no public allegations had been made against him, Dan calls a news conference to say that the allegations made against him that no one knew about were actually a politically motivated dirty trick by one of his opponents.  What allegations, Dan? We're not hear to talk about any allegations, just about that it reflects badly on my opponent. Huh? The man regularly gets outsmarted by fence posts. Hmm, not a good example because it really isn't very funny and is just a sad example of the Peter Principle really.

2014, one month gone already?

My how time flies when you're busy and/or sick. Nothing at all makes me sad to see the end of a month with so much bitter cold and nasty weather. So best that we're done with it, and that much closer to spring. That being said, you, my readers do both surprise and disappoint TPP.  Not a single one of you had the gumption to ask where said Tropical Interlude might be, thus indicating your determination to head there ASAP. Simply nothing else will do! So get on the ball. One must grasp at whimsy whenever it presents itself. So there. And the questions  have been few and those somewhat lame. Be more creative! How can a blog stay interesting unless there is some audience participation?
So, in anticipation of the upcoming gardening season, what in the recent spate of 2014 plant catalogs has caught your fancy?  What must you just have?  At present TPP's favorite has been Ephedra minima, which as it's name suggests is a rather diminutive species supposedly hardy in zone 5. Now to think of a place to plant a sun-loving, low-growing, drought-tolerant gnetophyte gymnosperm.
If TPP were to endorse any commercial operations, Arrowhead Alpines might be one of them. What a great selection of hardy plants. By not providing the link TPP maintains his non-commercial integrity as opposed to all those science-bloggy and garden grubbing sorts of blogs that barrage you with ads. Do you not appreciate a labor of love, or just a blog ego trip?  Here you are blessedly free of commercial duns, but of late things have gotten so quiet that TPP wonders if you appreciate what you get at this blog? So let's do hear from you readers now and again this year.