This and that post

I'm making this post because I'm waiting on the phone to talk with someone about COBRA coverage. This is what I do all day lately, and it's not the most interesting blogging material. But perhaps it will allow me to sneak in a quick post.

The photo above is my roof deck planter. I hastily threw in a few annuals in late May and put a net over them to keep the jays and starlings out. At the time we were having problems with the building watering system and I left for Italy in June thinking all the plants would surely be dead by the time we returned.

But when I finally got home and made it back upstairs (late July), our planters looked better than they ever had! Everything had filled in, the plants were lush (the basil has yellowed a little since), the tomato plants had become the size of a small tree (I apparently mistook Beefsteak shoots for Sweet 100s), and best of all, my mom's heirloom salad tomatoes had volunteered in the thick of the other herbs. Beefsteaks don't do so well in planter boxes (mine currently have a sort of rot), but the salad tomatoes are doing fine. Is this the law of benign neglect?

We also returned to find that a pair of Redtailed Hawks had adopted our neighborhood as their hunting territory. They may quite possibly be descendants of Pale Male, the famous Redtail who lives on Mary Tyler Moore's building on Fifth Avenue. If so, they are decidedly slumming in Morningside Heights. But either way, they get the same rich diet of New York City rats and pigeons, and I often see them at work around 6 a.m. when I wake up. (See below, and note the extended talons.)

But the photo above is the one that was the initial impetus for my post: I was cleaning out the science experiment cabinet and happened upon a mason jar that looked like the remains of an old experiment. At first I thought we'd grown some salt crystals, but then I noticed that the bottle was labeled, "Bleach." Then I remembered that I'd used a bottle of bleach to clean up after a bacteria experiment. So I poked the almost 1" crystals adhering to the bottom of the jar, and sure enough there were still bits of liquid bleach underneath the hollowed out pyramids. So I guess this experiment was a two for one!

One last anecdote: CZ recently performed in a nursing home concert for the 103rd birthday of one of the residents. When she walked back into the apartment after the concert, she announced, "Well, now I've seen everything!"

"You mean the 103-year-old man?" I replied.

"No. I was walking up Broadway at 107th and I saw a Columbia student carrying a four-foot-long, clear plastic toothbrush!"

I'll miss this city.

The naturalist impulse*

CZ feeding a Queen butterfly, 2007

In honor of the SAT II Biology test that CZ took yesterday, here is a quote from Anne Fadiman's essay, "Collecting Nature," from At Large and Small:

"Her conception of nature was incorrigibly romantic; she was painfully affected by beauty; she was a compulsive arranger; she focused on small details--the precise curve of a mourning cloak's forewing, the exact shade of the red spot on a zebra swallowtail's hindwing--rather than on larger and more important questions of behavior and habitat."

Thus Ms. Fadiman, who was describing herself as a child, became a writer and not a biologist.

That quote may apply more to me than to CZ, who shows few signs of being a compulsive arranger, but I think we're both delighted that she can now leave off test prep and go back to learning in a way that lends itself to enjoyment.  We are perhaps slightly appreciative of the impetus the test gave her to master the basics of the subject, but crammed in this way over two months, they are mostly devoid of beauty.  

We have raised butterflies, but we have spent more time birding, and this quote touches not only on the appeal of watching birds, but also on the appeal of keeping a notebook of birding lists (when she started she could barely write) or a life list on a site such as eBird, sponsored by Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.  CZ accumulated over 150 birds on her list before the spring concert season and her shoulder injury overwhelmed any desire to crane her neck looking for warblers.

Instead, yesterday afternoon, CZ watched a documentary on Jacqueline du Pre' and then spent three hours practicing violin. The sounds coming from her room were not unlike those of a bird or butterfly set free.  But in the evening, she picked up The Physiology Coloring Book, took out a set of pencils, and colored in the title. "See? These are the colors of the letters for me," she explained. Then she started reading and coloring the text--for fun.  

The last butterfly of 2007, a Monarch, going free in Riverside Park

*I wrote this title thinking I had heard the phrase somewhere before, so I looked it up.  Not too suprisingly, it was the name of a book on painting.

You know it's fall when...

...you see the Winter Wren

...you go to the park and all the fall birds have arrived--White-throated Sparrows, Juncos, and Titmice. The ubiquitous and year-round House Sparrows have started flying around in puffed and close-knit flocks, and if you look closely, you see a migrant or two, like this Black-throated Blue Warbler, stopping on its way south:

The little Winter Wren (at top) is only 4 inches long. When it stretches out its neck at the foot of a tree (they're bush dwellers), its whole body moves. It's not really big enough to move just its head. Luckily, its tail sticks up for balance. I saw one Tuesday--a real treat, because I've only seen one once before!

Some birds are just around in unusual numbers, like the Phoebe and the Blue Jay. The Robins haven't left yet, but the Grackles have arrived, and so has the Sapsucker. Even the Pigeons are flying around in circles instead of barely getting out of the way of the buses. It's a gregarious, bustling moment.

But I'm holding out for the Golden-crowned Kinglets, my favorites of all the songbirds. They usually pass through in flocks at about this time:

All photos from Wikipedia Commons

UPDATE, October 11: We saw our Kinglets today! They were all over the North Woods of Central Park, both the Golden-crowned and the Ruby-crowned. They were extremely cooperative, hanging upside down off branches at close range and at eye-level. They almost seemed to be following us!

We also saw another Winter Wren. We were actually there because someone had reported a Sedge Wren, a bird which hasn't been seen in NYC in forty years. We knew where it had been seen this morning, but alas, it was a no-show. Still, a lovely day with lots of birds!

***

Whenever we've had a moment this week, C.Z. and I have been looking at everything we can find under the microscope. I doubt this is systematic enough to "count" as lab science, but it's really fun! This week we've seen hair, mold, an onion tip, leaf cells, bacteria, diatoms, other unidentified micro-organisms, and a Euglena. I suppose high school science teachers wouldn't be impressed, but I thought it was hilarious when C.Z. put down her violin right in the middle of Nutcracker practice, put her eye up to the microscope and started talking to the light-shy Euglena, whom we had to constantly chase down, "Oh, you're so cute! I see you found something to eat. That's great!" And who knew that protists could dance to "The Waltz of the Flowers"?

Paying attention

I was much amused by an article I read yesterday in the NY Times called Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Paying Attention.  The ostensible reason for the article was a bit of new research on the role of gamma waves in the brain. But I liked the practical hints the article included about attention and modern life. 

I've always considered myself a bit attention-challenged. Maybe I think that because I tend to be a bit absent-minded and forgetful (this was true even when I was young), or perhaps because I just plain hate being interrupted, which I suppose isn't much of a virtue when you're a mom. Once interrupted, I can't pick up the train of thought where I got off.  It's long departed. Others seem to be able to field multiple requests and switch topics on a dime. I'm a deer in the headlights.  I hope there's some corresponding virtue on the other side of this coin (which is apparently not a dime).

So, what I like about this article is that it frankly admits some things I've been thinking for a long time, along two lines:

Limit distractions

First of all, that Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and yes, those annoying TV screens in cabs (I suspect that ours isn't the only family that makes a game of seeing how fast we can turn them off), are fracturing our attention.  Use if you like, but in moderation.

Secondly, that it takes the brain about twenty minutes to reboot after an interruption.  I think most homeschoolers must know this instinctively, but that's why our family tries to be really careful about taking on activities that require that we drop what we're doing and leave home.  We also find that we can only do a few things really well on any given day.  

And here's a useful quote from the article: "Multitasking is a myth," Ms. Gallagher said. "You cannot do two things at once."  Thank you, Ms. Gallagher!  Now I can admit my limits and stop trying to do the impossible.

The article also recommends that you spend the first ninety minutes of each day concentrating on your most important task.  That must be why I get up, look out the window, read my Bible, and write in my journal.  It's my favorite time of day.

Don't worry

But there was another major point to this article:  You can waste your life worrying.  Ms. Gallagher of the article has had ample motivation to gain control of her attention to worry.  She's had cancer.  The article states that she remained relatively cheerful during her treatment by (among other things) keeping in mind this line from Milton: "The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n." I think that's a very useful thing to learn, and though the article made no mention of Ms. Gallagher's faith, how much more should Christians learn it!

Ms. Gallagher also noted that the typical person's brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime, so we should prioritize what we spend them on.  One thing that I resolve not to worry about is how many of my bits I've already used up.  And what is a bit, in terms of the human brain, anyway?

Sometimes it doesn't take much to encourage us, just a tiny acknowledgment that we can live peacefully within our limitations.  I know that isn't always the most popular message on the block, but the older I get, the more I like it.

A short post about ice spikes

Have you ever seen one of these in your freezer?  (Or maybe I should ask first, do you use plastic ice trays?)  We see them sometimes in ours, and used to see them quite often in the freezer of our old apartment. We were always curious about them, but didn't know what they were until one day we stumbled across this web page which explains them. They're called ice spikes, and apparently, some people have gone to quite a lot of trouble to produce them!  

We don't used distilled water to get them, like the website suggests. Apparently plain old New York City tap water does the job quite well all by itself.  When C.Z. was younger (and perhaps still, but I haven't asked) she used to think it was a special treat to get a ice-spiked cube in her glass. 

I'm feeling full of short posts today.  Not sure how many will get done, but maybe there will be a couple more.  I seriously doubt they will be anything important, but I'll enjoy posting them anyway!  

Enjoy your Friday!