- Highway service area: Bright cold lights, dark warm rain, thirteen semi trailers parked. I buy gas. [7 pm]
- rain spitting. grey low clouds. carol walked down to state pier to say goodbye to captain john who leaves for haiti tomorrow #
- videotaping rush hour traffic, streetlights and headlights and taillights shining on rainslicked asphalt #
On the road again
My laptop is still being repaired, and I’m about to head up to Cambridge for a couple of days where I won’t have access to my computer. Instead of the usual blog posts, I’ll post micro-blog entries to Twitter using my cell phone, and these will magically appear (if everything works as promised) as daily digest posts. Or you can follow along in real time under “Micro-blogging” in the sidebar.
New moon
A tiny sliver of the new moon shone overhead. I stood at the end of State Pier not watching the sunset. Instead I watched a barge loaded down with gravel, well out in the middle of the harbor. The gray gravel on the barge shone faintly pink.
The barge was dead in the water, the tow rope between it and the tugboat slack. I could see someone at the stern of the tug doing something to the rope; then the faint sound of a big diesel engine growling, the water between the tug and the barge churned with prop wash, the barge slowly started to move forward; the person standing at the stern of the tug waved madly at the pilot house, the sound of the tug’s engine dropped, the rope went slack, the barge slowed and stopped. Some kind of readjustment of the rope. The tug’s engine rose into an audible growl again, the water churned between the barge and the tug, slowly the barge began to move behind the tug, gradually they got up to speed and headed towards the hurricane barrier.
I watched for several minutes. The pink light on the gravel got fainter, the tug’s running lights grew brighter in the gathering darkness, tug and barge grew smaller. I got bored watching them, and turned to head home. Overhead the sliver of moon shone bright silver, the sunset nothing more than a red glow on the horizon.
Citizen science for urban dwellers
I just discovered the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Urban Bird Studies program. Urban Bird Studies consists of a number of interesting citizen science projects observing birds and bird behaviors in cities: Pigeon Watch, Crows Count, Dove Detectives, and Gulls Galore. As you might have guessed from the names of the individual projects, the target audience for these projects appears to be kids, and they have lots of photos of school groups full of cute kids with clipboards.
Nonetheless, it looks like there’s some pretty interesting science underlying each of these projects. For example, the Gulls Galore project aims to gather data to help ornithologists understand when and in what ways adult gulls relate to subadults and juveniles. And just looking at the tally sheets and the study site habitat form help me better understand what ornithologists do.
Better yet, Cornell Lab of Ornithology understands that it’s a Good Idea to help us urban dwellers to observe and understand our urban ecosystems, through careful observations of selected species. Now I’m trying to decide if I have the time to work on the gull project — it sounds like fun.
Micro-blogging
Most of you won’t care, even though you probably should, but I’ve just linked to Twitter on the sidebar.
I’ve become facinated with the phenomenon of “micro-blogging” — Twitter allows posts of up to 140 characters, meaning you can read or post Twitter messages (called, rather unfortunately, “Tweets”) on your cell phone using text messaging — begging for haiku-like posts….
The 5% solution
Those of us who are Unitarian Universalist ministers working in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island received an interesting and provocative email message from the executive committee of our local ministers group. They asked: If we were to have 5% membership growth in district congregations in the next year, how do you envision us using our district resources to be most effective? (For those of you who aren’t Unitarian Universalists, the “district” is our middle judicatory body.) I wasn’t quite sure how I would answer that question. An advertising campaign? Training sessions on how to welcome newcomers? What would really help us reach that goal of a 5% increase? I would be really curious to know what my readers think.
The marriage of Hilpa
Isaac Bickerstaff, astrologer, writes:
I came across the following in a curious old volume of astrological lore, bound in leather, and (according to the title page) “printed privately in Tremont Street in Boston” — the date unfortunately is obscured, but it appears to be an old book; what is printed here comes from the last chapter of the book:
Hilpa, fairer and wiser than any other woman on the Isle of Z—-, was the ruler of the Valleys, which lay in the center of the island, and ruler of all the groves therein. On one side of Hilpa’s realm stood Mount Tizrah, greatest of the mountains towering over the middle of the island, splitting it north to south from shore to the other; Mount Tizrah was ruled by Shalum. On the other side of Hilpa’s realm, just beyond a low range of hills, was a vast plain bisected by a river, and on that river stood a great City, at the farthest reaches of the tidewater inland. This City was ruled by Mishpach, who was a mighty man known throughout the surrounding countryside.
Now one day Hilpa took it into her head to marry, which was unheard of for the ruler of the Valleys; for Hilpa determined that she would like to have children of her own, rather than choose a child from among those who were brought to the sacred grove. For generation upon generation, into the distant and hazy past, rulers of the Valleys had always been women, women who lay, not with men, but with other women; thus the rulers of the Valleys chose their heirs from among the common people. Hilpa wanted offspring of her own flesh and blood, but she felt the old tradition strongly enough that she recoiled at the thought of lying with a man from her own realm. Continue reading
Autumn watch
Alianthus altissima, known as the “tree of heaven” or Chinese sumac, grows everywhere in our neighborhood. Alianthus is an invasive species that grows incredibly quickly, and can reach twenty or more feet in height in two years. It will thrive in places where no other tree will grow: it will spring up in the narrow bands of rank weeds that grow between dreary parking lots; it will sprout along chain-link fences; it thrives along the trash-strewn edges of busy highways. I remember reading one field guide to trees which described alianthus as a “coarse, malodorous tree,” but that’s not an entirely fair description. It is fair to say that alianthus tends to grow in coarse, malodorous places — sometimes a stray alianthus will be the one oasis of greenery in some blasted post-industrial wasteland.
On my walk today, I passed the alianthus altissima that has been growing up near the pedestrian overpass that crosses Route 18 in downtown New Bedford, growing right next to and choking out a fir tree. Yesterday, the alianthus was still covered with green leaves; but today, suddenly it has no leaves left. The leaves never turned red or orange or yellow or even brown, they just fell off. A mature alianthus altissima can become a beautiful tree, with masses of creamy white flowers in the spring, and in the winter with its many branches reaching up towards the sky. But it adds nothing whatsoever to the autumn landscape.
Not the best day
This has not been the best day I’ve ever had.
No heat in the church. I spent the morning an part of the afternoon dealing with that.
Now my laptop is making icky grinding noises, and I think it’s about to die.
Maybe tomorrow will be better….