I am a botanist

Just a couple of days ago, TPP explained that he was a botanist. This was because the Botanical Society of America started a campaign for its members to loudly (?) proclaim themselves botanists. If you want to see some of the hundreds of responses from social media adept people who are botanists, click on over and have a look. These are TPP's colleagues and he's proud of them!  Here's a nice article at the Philadelphia Enquirer explaining what some of my colleagues are doing to combat "plant blindness" and zoochauvinism.

Ice Cream 101

Can any university claim to be a distinguished, quality institution of higher learning if they do not have decent ice cream in their student center/union?  Clearly an absurd question to which the answer is equally clear; no. A few universities of the ag/tech sort have dairy science departments where students in ice cream (DS 101) plus advanced studies where less common flavors as well as frozen chunks are explored, sell the products of this academic endeavor with excellent results.  OK they may not have 29 flavors, but often the ice cream is of top quality.  But even here apparently there are no advance courses in gelato, and one wonders why?  Maybe the romance language programs have fallen on hard times, especially with the aggie crowd, but this is hardly an excuse to ignore their culture's best products.  Come on people, frozen yogurt vs. gelato; it isn't even a contest.  Our university is one that cares so little for the academic enterprise, its reputation, and sugar-induced creativity that there isn't even soft serve [ice cream] frozen custard, maybe a brand like IQ.  A frozen yogurt place tried to make a go of it, and it failed for lack of business, based upon TPP's analysis, the result of a combination of high price and low quality ("it tastes ALMOST like ice cream" (my emphasis)].  So this is now the mantra for the anti-ice cream crowd, ice cream is not fiscally viable, but fiscal sacrifices are considered OK if they benefit sports, but student union space is sooo valuable, they've priced ice cream out of this market. The snack shop does have Blue Bunny ice cream bars, but they are hardly the thing to capture your imagination or interest; no theses from these for certain. So far the higher administration and the trustees seem to lack interest in this issue, which makes you wonder about their priorities. Now when polled independently, the students seem quite uniformly in favor of ice cream on campus and not just in some stupid "ice cream zone". Of course at a few very elite schools you can get espresso milkshakes made with real coffee thus taking care of two metabolic needs in one delicious dose. Perhaps if it were presented as a state educational mandate, ice cream would be forthcoming on campus, but only after an assistant provost and a committee of faculty studied the issue for a year and issued a working paper on ice cream policy to be discussed at open forums. Cups vs. cones, how many flavors, Sunday or sundae, plastic vs. real spoons, and so on.  It's the way things are done.   

Soggy September weather

Usually September is a fairly dry, fairly nice weather month. August had above average rainfall, so things entering September were not too dry. TPP made the observation 3 days ago that some rain would be nice or a few things would need some watering.  Hoo boy!  With a total rainfall approaching 4" in the past 48 hours, everything is well watered now OK. Usually this time of year the lily pond needs some topping up, but now a couple of inches will have to be drained off. Newly planted greens will have had plenty of water. On the down side, this much rain clearly demonstrated where the chimney flashing problem is located, and a contractor will have to be hired to fix things up on the roof side and to replace old (ancient) plaster below that has been degraded gradually over a number of years dating back to before our ownership. As they say, when it rains, it pours. Not sure how this will affect our prairie or the maize crop that is predicted to be a bin buster. With cooler and wetter than average weather, this area may receive an early winter.

Biological research funding

This AM on public radio there was a story about the lack of research grant money and what a difficult time biomedical researchers had keeping their research labs going. Now here's the thing, these are biomedical researchers, and they've always had access to more research money than any other part of biology to the point that we like to say the human bio-medical tail wags the biology dog. The hunt for grant money shapes many hiring decisions at research universities.  TPP takes no pleasure in hearing about researchers' grant money woes, but try getting botanical research funded that doesn't include wheat, maize, or soybean in the title. So easy street is drying up for biomedical type research, but it's always been like pulling teeth to get grant money for botanical research. And actually in terms of bang for your buck, giving us small science guys money would result in more students doing more research than when you give it to big money research. For $50,000 TPP could do research for 5 years using most of the money to keep students fed. That much money wouldn't keep the doors of a big biomedical research lab open for 3 months. And small money grants are even harder to find and to get than big money grants. The competition for grants now creates a boom or bust cycle, and generally that's not an efficient use of resources at all. Presently the USA is selling its biological research down the river because it doesn't want to invest in the future. This is part of the anti-science, anti-education attitude that has permeated our government and such politicians don't mind throwing the baby out with the bath water to get rid of the parts of science they don't like. Unless research at universities is protected, science will begin to erode, and already it's obvious that whatever leadership the USA had in its public education system is slipping away. Like many other things, the lack of biomedical research funding is symptomatic of an even bigger problem of continually decreased funding for higher education as a whole. You see, the only way to really teach science is to do science, and that takes time and money.  Fortunately, my research has been cheap and TPP has been able to absorb personally the costs of his research up to a point; students have got to eat, at least a little.

New look at September

September has always been a hectically busy month, so much so that it was never much fun, and yet it's a nice month, one that starts with some leftover summer and ends with the beginning of fall.  In academia everything, everybody wants to get things going after the summer: classes, students, reports, groups, activities, so many demands upon your time that you simply lurched from one to the next. For the first time in many decades this is not the case, so September gets a chance. The estate is in pretty good shape having been baby-sat for the month of August there having been adequate rain and only a limited amount of beastly hot weather. Yesterday was 90 F and muggy, and a front moved through last night bringing rain, and this morning dawned with a temperature of 59 F being enjoyed by a couple of suddenly energetic kitty-girls. The kitchen garden pretty well collapsed, but TPP already got some fall greens crops into containers for October salads and such. Somehow the weeds have done extremely well so a lot of garden cleanup awaits. Remember, weeds do grow faster. The last hostas and fall anemones are providing some garden color. As remarkable as this seems, today was the Phactors first visit to the big Saturday morning farmers' market! The produce looked great; summer produce at its most diverse so we stocked up except for that greedy lady who bought all the basil in sight. "Sorry", she said, "pesto". Having just returned from Italy we totally understood. BTW the grocery store pesto in Italy was just so good, and so much better than even our home-made pesto that we must re-evaluate our approach. Any tip-top pesto makers have suggestions? Early Jonathon apples were available, so Mrs. Phactor will convert them into pie as only she can. 
September is also a month for birthdays it being 9 months after new years parties. TPP is supposed to have a birthday, but he hasn't celebrated that many, many years. An long time friend is turning 80 and he'll get a nice birthday surprise from his friends. Most of all TPP loves all the September deadlines. As Doug Adams used to say, "I love deadlines especially the whooshing sound they make as the rush by". TPP is truly enjoying being able to ignore all the deadline rushes. This part of retirement is great, but September is still feeling pretty weird, still trying to find his balance, getting into a new groove.

US foreign policy - dumb and dumber

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat the past. TPP was a young adult of military draft age during the Vietnam Conflict (only Congress can declare war, and no war was declared), and it was obvious from the start that the military might of the USA could not win this conflict, could not defeat an enemy with a "non-traditional" approach to fighting the conflict, and this has proven pretty much true in each and every conflict the US has engaged in since. Apparently our country's civilian and military leaders are slow learners, but of course the 'Mercan public eats up the "shock & awe" rhetoric as if it were apple pie. A rational look at our foreign policy easily uncovers its fundamental flaw. Sadly, it looks as if the USA is getting ready to make the same mistake again.   Smarten up people! This is what happens when you take a month long vacation from most of the world news; things seem so much worse when you get back, and maybe they are.   

The Great Gelato Challenge - Post game wrap up

TPP is surprised you could stand the suspense, but here it is, with time running out, with the lay-over in Rome coming to an end, so just before we departed Italy, Mrs. Phactor yanked victory from the freezer of defeat!  The little restaurant in one corner of the terminal had, much to Mrs. Phactor's surprise and delight, exactly 1 new flavor of gelato giving her exactly 30 different flavors of gelato in 30 days!  Now some people might want to put an asterisk because technically, based on labels, she had passion fruit gelato twice (and did TPP ever mention his wife's fondness for passion fruit?), but they most assuredly were different flavors, one sort of eh, and the other a brisk, tart-sweet, zing of passion fruit, more or less what we expect!  This unassuming little shop the Cantina del Gelato is about a block along Via dei Bardi from the Ponte Vecchio, but they have the best artisanal gelato. It however lacks the fancy glass display counters and colorful trays, but the aficionados know quality when they find quality. And with gelato, it is all about taste, not appearance.  Also, remember, tastes and licks just don't count, but a small cup with two flavors was allowed. Here's the gelato flavors rundown: coconut, espresso, lemon, mango, vanilla-bourbon, cherries & cream, hazelnut, peach (quite good), mora (blackberry, but sometimes mulberry is also called mora), caramel, pinenut, dark chocolate, passion fruit eh, mojito (lime mostly, hint of mint), mint chocolate chip, pistachio, white chocolate with bits, raisin, peanut butter (a surprise actually), passion fruit zing!, chianti (a real disappointment considering this was in Tuscany), pear & cheese (more like cheesecake with pear bits), mascarpone, tiramisu, strawberry, watermelon, plum, pineapple, chocolate chip, and egg cream (another surprise). You can figure out the problem right away; common and popular flavors are found repeatedly, and toward the end several gelato places failed to produce a new flavor, and the only person this did not disappoint was a nephew who got vanilla at each and every place, a different sort of survey. Mrs. Phactor played it very cagey selecting what she thought was the most unusual flavors first leaving many common flavors until toward the end, e.g., strawberry, which was bloody good strawberry as it turned out. 

Fabulous fungus and pesto pizza

It's been awhile since TPP blogged about food, so here's a nice recipe to consider especially if your F1 likes a meatless Monday dinner (except this week she missed it!). Isn't that a pretty pizza? And this is so simple, first just make your usual pizza dough. What? You don't make your own pizza dough? OK, take 2.5 cups flour, 1 cup warm water, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp sugar, 1 pkg/tbsp. yeast, and 2 tbsp. olive oil and mix in a large bowl until you have a sticky dough. Sprinkle with enough flour that you can work with the dough and knead the dough, in the bowl, until it gets nicely elastic. You will probably need to keep sprinkling in more flour. It only takes about 10 min, and you know you're done when you push in a finger and the dough pushes the hole back out. Pour a bit of olive oil over the dough, roll the dough ball around to coat the dough and the bowl, cover with waxed paper and set aside in a warm place for at least an hour. This will make 1 large pizza (10"x 15"). It will rise a bit faster if the yeast is activated in the warm water for 10 min before making the dough. Lightly oil or grease the pan and sprinkle with a dusting of corn meal. After the dough has doubled in size, about an hour, the dough ball can be stretched gently to the length of the pan, placed in the middle, and then gently pushed and prodded until it reaches the edges making a bit of a crust at the edges. No matter what the topping, bake at 400 F for about 30 min. This recipe easily doubles for two pizzas, or use the other half to make bread sticks or bread.
This pizza is topped with fresh basil pesto brushed on moderately thinly almost out to the edges (recipes abound). The fungi are 8 oz of portabellas, 8 oz of shitake, and a big handful of chanterelles collected from under the burr oak in your backyard. Cut up the mushrooms into a large dice, sauté in 1 tbsp. of olive oil until they have shrunk and dried out a bit. If necessary, drain on paper towels (no one likes soggy pizza). Sprinkle onto the pesto. A light sprinkling of red pepper flakes is a nice optional touch. Top with about 12 oz of fresh mozzarella cheese cut into pieces. This is a surprisingly hearty pizza with a sublime flavor. Enjoy. 

Sansa Stark's portrait in the Uffizi?

Renaissance art is mostly of a religious theme; the rest is portraits of important people. You don't see landscapes except for background details. Some of the frescos in the Uffizi about which they tell you nothing show you much more about the more ordinary life and times. At any rate, a younger relative began the meme of looking for portraits that resemble friends and family members. Thus while never intending to, portraits were being viewed with a new purpose, and much to TPP's surprise there was a portrait of Sansa Stark! Right there in the Uffizi, although they did misidentify this painting's subject, something that does happen even by the museum's own admission. The final decision is up to you.

Thoughts on travel

The Phactors like travel, but not traveling. To be clear travel is when you are at someplace that is not home; traveling is the act of getting to that someplace. Traveling has become drudgery, a necessary ordeal to get to some place different. Nothing about traveling is fun, and it is often quite stressful. Traveling home is more so because there is no anticipation of going someplace new. Airports must be the most inhumane, uninhabitable, uncomfortable, uninspiring, and ugly places that humans have ever designed for themselves. This is why our recent trip was planned to maximize the amount of time spent abroad so that the ratio of travel to traveling was high (15:1 days)!  This time the travel home was uneventful, and clearly a 7 hr layover in Rome is a non-event, something to prepare you for the discomfort and boredom of a 9 hr flight, although TPP will admit, The Grand Budapest Hotel was quite amusing so only 7 hrs of boredom. It makes for a long day and 24 hrs with little or no sleep is never fun and tends to make you into an exhausted grouch. And with the exception of an OK lunch in Rome and an OK burger and margarita at the Chicago airport while waiting for the shuttle bus home the food was terrible, a real downer after enjoying quite good Italian food for a month. Wonder who supplies their kibble? The shuttle bus terminal at O’Hare has all of the services (none) and charm one comes to associate with bus terminals here in the USA. BTW, not the case in Turkey where they know how to do bus travel (yes, even stewardesses!). So home again The Phactors are; the kitty-girls and the F1 are happy to see us back.