I took a walk on Lakeside Drive today and saw scores (hundreds?) of swallows swooping and wheeling like berserk bats toward the lake, upside down over the road, then sideways and shuddering back toward the lake again in a group dance with no obvious explanation.
When I went online and Googled “swallows going berserk,” I found an Audubon blog post in New Hampshire that used that exact phrase. But the author thought the swallows were just feeding and happy to see spring arrive.
I have decided that the collective noun for swallow should be “delirium,” as in “a delirium of swallows.”
Are you into collective nouns for birds and animals? They can be a lot of fun, with terms going back hundreds of years. Find your favorites at Wikipedia, here. A congregation of alligators, a rabble of bees, a coalition of cheetah, a gulp of cormorants, a consortium of crabs, a murder of crows — and I am only in the c’s!
Be sure to use “a delirium of swallows” as your next opportunity and appear to know something esoteric that no one else knows.
Last fall, I blogged about the worthy Granola Project, which gives employment to refugees in Rhode Island. It is housed at the social service agency Amos House in Providence. I bought some of the granola at the farmers market a just last week.
Now Sarah Shemkus has written for the Boston Globe about a similar initiative for refugees in Massachusetts, but with the goal of helping refugee women to spin off companies on their own.
“Moo Kho Paw fled the violence and oppression of Myanmar for a refugee camp in Thailand nearly a decade ago,” writes Shemkus. “Five years later, she, her husband, and their baby daughter resettled again, this time landing in Springfield.
“As she adapted to her new home, Paw started looking for a job … That’s when she learned about Prosperity Candle, the Easthampton company where she has now worked for three years.
“ ‘I love the job,’ Paw said. ‘It helps me to pay the rent, to buy the baby diapers.’
“That’s precisely what Ted Barber, 46, hoped for when he and partner Amber Chand founded Prosperity Candle in 2010. … Sales are only part of its mission — the company says its real goal is to help women in and from developing countries by teaching them new skills and creating jobs. …
“In Easthampton, the company employs refugees such as Paw to make and package candles and fulfill orders. Currently, up to four refugees are working there at any given time, though Barber expects to hire more as the business expands. …”
The idea for an enterprise like Prosperity Candle first occurred to Barber when he was working in Africa, helping entrepreneurs build small businesses. …
” ‘I realized I wanted to do something different.’ …
“Rather than giving away money or supplies, [his] company would provide women with the resources, skills, and support they need to start a sustainable businesses. …
“Prosperity Candle formed as a low-profit limited liability company, a structure that requires the business to put its social mission ahead of profits.”
Building energy savings into school design means more money for education.
At Yes! Magazine, Erin L. McCoy describes what planners did for the rural Richardsville Elementary School near Bowling Green, Kentucky.
“When Richardsville opened its doors in fall 2010, it was the first net zero school in the nation, meaning that the school produces more energy on-site than it uses in a year.
“Solar tubes piping sunlight directly into classrooms eliminate much of the school’s demand for electric light, while a combination of geothermal and solar power cut down on the rest of the energy bill. Concrete floors treated with a soy-based stain don’t need buffing. The kitchen, which in most schools contributes to 20 percent of the energy bill, houses a combi-oven that cooks healthier meals and eliminates frying. This means an exhaust fan doesn’t pipe the school’s temperature-controlled air to the outdoors all day long.
“Meanwhile, ‘green screens’ in the front hall track the school’s energy usage so kids can see the impact of turning off a light in real time.
“These and other innovations make Richardsville better than net zero. It actually earns about $2,000 a month selling excess energy to the Tennessee Valley Authority. …
“Three factors are essential to making a green school work: First, you need the participation of the community and the local power company; second, you can’t forget that a school is a dynamic learning environment; and third, you need to speak the language of money.
“Since the economic recession began in 2008, school districts have suffered. Local tax bases were shaken as property values plummeted, and states have cut back on funding to districts, which were pushed to cut funds wherever they were able. Addressing energy use made a lot of financial sense.”
Photograph: Michael Heinz/The Journal & Courier/AP/File Students gather on the first day of school at Wyandotte Elementary School near Lafayette, Ind., in 2011. Wyandotte is one of many US schools that have made cutting energy use a priority.
Whenever I walk in the Greenway, I see where they are building the new carousel park. Can’t wait until it launches! The carousel critters are so unusual.
Taryn Plumb writes in the Globe about the three years of painstaking work that have gone into creating them.
“A miniaturized right whale is caught in mid-spout, baleen exposed, barnacles clinging.
“A sea turtle swims, its wide shell blushed with yellow and iridescent red, flippers with waves of violet, pink, and cobalt.
“Enormous butterflies hover – monarchs in dramatic orange and black; buckeyes boasting amethyst spots; swallowtails showing off elaborate webbed patterns of scarlet, purple, and blue.
“Carousels usually evoke images of horses of various shapes and sizes, adorned with flamboyant regalia, circling endlessly in trots and leaps to a backdrop of colorful lights and carnival music.
“But this carousel – designed, sculpted, and painted by two local artists, and soon to adorn the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway in Boston – is a horse of a different color.
“In fact, it doesn’t have any horses at all.
“ ‘You’ll never see another one like this,’ said designer Jeff Briggs of Newburyport. ‘It’s much more elaborate, much more intense.’
“To be installed by Labor Day weekend, the carousel will include a resplendent assortment of local land, sea, and air creatures: lobsters, rabbits, owls, a skunk, squirrel, fox, right whale, sea turtle, cod, peregrine falcon, grasshopper, three species of butterflies, a sea serpent gondola, and a harbor seal chariot. According to the Rose Fitzgerald Greenway Conservancy, the animals were inspired by drawings from Boston schoolchildren, and the project, which also includes a new park, was funded by grants and several dozen donors.” More.
Who will join me when it opens?
Photo: Mark Wilson for The Boston Globe
Sculptor Jeff Briggs has spent the last three years creating the animals on the carousel for the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
Boston and Baltimore have created cool places to learn and practice engineering and craft skills.
At Technical.ly (better cites through technology), Andrew Zaleski describes how the Baltimore Foundery [sic], “a campus for makers,” was inspired by Artisan’s Space in the Boston area.
“It was by chance that Andrew Stroup and Corey Fleischer, two [Baltimore] locals-turned-contestants on a new engineering-focused Discovery Channel TV show, met Jason Hardebeck, the executive director of gb.tc.
“But despite having only met earlier this year, the three had more in common than they knew: each thought it was high time Baltimore city had its own makerspace — a large, indoor area replete with machine tools, digital tools like 3D printers and equipment for woodworking and metalworking — on par with similar spaces in other cities in the U.S.
“Through their time on the show, Stroup and Fleischer met Gui Cavalcanti, who started the Artisan’s Asylum makerspace in Boston, a sprawling, 40,000-square-foot complex where members renting space brew their own beer, construct their own bikes and sculpt pieces of art from metal. After spending a weekend there in mid-January, the two were convinced they needed to find a place within Baltimore where any resident could do the same type of work.
“ ‘Baltimore has everything that we saw at Artisan’s Asylum: the level of artists, engineers, hobbyists,’ said Fleischer, 31, who received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from UMBC, and now works at Lockheed Martin in Middle River. ‘Baltimore has those people, and Baltimore does not have a space like that where everyone can go.’ …
“Whereas few people in Baltimore have the resources to become ‘coders and programmers,’ Hardebeck said, people ‘can understand how to become CNC machine operators.’
“In effect, that’s the grandest wish Hardebeck — a former product manager at DeWALT — harbors for the new makerspace: a place that can foster the next generation of blue-collar workers in Baltimore city by offering a community workshop so people can have access to good equipment and classes. In turn, people can become entrepreneurs building products in their own small-scale manufacturing facility, albeit one they share with other makers.”
Another good lead from the voracious reader of magazines in my household.
This Smithsonian story shows how a relatively simple invention made it possible for the Impressionists to do much more painting outdoors, en plein air.
Perry Hurt writes, “The French Impressionists disdained laborious academic sketches and tastefully muted paintings in favor of stunning colors and textures that conveyed the immediacy of life pulsating around them. Yet the breakthroughs of Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and others would not have been possible if it hadn’t been for an ingenious but little-known American portrait painter, John G. Rand.
“Like many artists, Rand, a Charleston native living in London in 1841, struggled to keep his oil paints from drying out before he could use them. At the time, the best paint storage was a pig’s bladder sealed with string; an artist would prick the bladder with a tack to get at the paint. But there was no way to completely plug the hole afterward. And bladders didn’t travel well, frequently bursting open.
“Rand’s brush with greatness came in the form of a revolutionary invention: the paint tube. Made from tin and sealed with a screw cap, Rand’s collapsible tube gave paint a long shelf life, didn’t leak and could be repeatedly opened and closed.
“The eminently portable paint tube was slow to be accepted by many French artists (it added considerably to the price of paint), but when it caught on it was exactly what the Impressionists needed to abet their escape from the confines of the studio, to take their inspiration directly from the world around them and commit it to canvas, particularly the effect of natural light.
“For the first time in history, it was practical to produce a finished oil painting on-site, whether in a garden, a café or in the countryside.” More.
Dear artist friends, I can picture what it would have been like for you traveling by train after an outing to some scenic spot before this invention. “Oh, Madame, I am so terribly sorry. I’m afraid my cobalt pig’s bladder burst!”
Photo: Chrysler Museum of Art
The tin tube, below, was more resilient than its predecessor (the pig bladder), enabling painters to leave their studios.
Pius Sawa at AlertNet (and the Christian Science Monitor) writes, “Residents of Rusinga Island in Kenya [are experimenting] with renewable energy innovations, environmentally friendly farming, tree planting, and other efforts aimed at improving the island’s environment, creating jobs, and overcoming shortages of food and water.
“For the past 16 years, Ester Evelyn Odhiambo has dedicated herself to improving life on one small island. It’s no small task.
“Rusinga Island, in the northeast corner of Lake Victoria in Kenya, is about 16 km (10 miles) long and 5 km (3 miles) wide. About 30,000 people call it home. But the island over the years has become an increasingly inhospitable environment for them.
“ ‘If you plant something, it just dries out,’ says Ms. Odhiabmo, who runs an organization to help people widowed or orphaned by AIDS [Kisibom, or “come and learn”]. ‘You try to irrigate, and the water is too little because the sun comes and dries everything.’
“The changes have come because of poor management of resources – including forests and fishing grounds – and because of increasing climate impacts.
“But now residents are experimenting with renewable energy innovations, environmentally friendly farming, tree planting, and other efforts aimed at improving the island’s environment, building resilience, creating livelihoods, and overcoming shortages of food and water.”
Photograph: Pius Sawa/AlertNet
Ester Evelyn Odhiambo opens a charcoal refrigerator on Rusinga Island, Kenya. It is lined with charcoal, into which water seeps through a hosepipe fed by a bucket. The wet charcoal absorbs heat and keeps the items inside the fridge cool without needing electricity.
A woman in Estonia watching a webcam trained on an osprey nest in Montana was able to alert researchers that an endangered baby osprey was in trouble.
My husband, who likes to read nature magazines, knew this story was a good one for Suzanne’s Mom’s Blog the minute he saw it this afternoon.
Doug Stewart writes at National Wildlife, “The nest overlooks the parking lot of a nursing home in Hellgate Canyon near Missoula. All summer, hundreds of thousands of people watched online as three nestlings screamed deliriously at fish deliveries or listened to their parents vent their fury at encroaching bald eagles.
“At one point last summer, one of the three chicks became entangled in monofilament line from a fish brought back to the nest. Fishing line can quickly strangle an osprey chick. It was a Sunday, and the researchers had not been online to check the nest.
“ ‘We were first alerted to the fishing line by an email from a woman in Estonia,’ says [biologist Erick] Greene. ‘Then we heard from a woman in Wales.’ The researchers also had set up a Facebook page for the ospreys, and in no time it became filled with alerts from concerned visitors. Borrowing a truck equipped with a bucket that can raise up to the level of the nest, the biologists raced to the scene to cut away the line from the chick and removed a fish hook embedded in its wing. The bird survived.”
More great details at National Wildlife, including a description of 700 kids at an urban school watching the webcam and tweeting questions about the osprey to researchers, here.
Holly Hall writes at the Chronicle of Philanthropy that teens are more likely to do volunteer work if there’s a social aspect.
“More than half of American teenagers and young adults volunteered [in 2011], and the best way to enlist this group turns out to be peer pressure: Three quarters of people ages 13 to 22 whose friends volunteer regularly also do so, which is nearly twice the number of those who pursue voluntary activities based on their concern about particular social issues. …
“Those were the key findings of new research results released [Oct. 24] by DoSomething.org, a group working to get young people involved in social change.” More.
At the high school Suzanne and John attended, volunteering was required. But they also did things that just interested them. I remember Suzanne in a play targeting the cycle of domestic violence and John working on peace and justice activities.
The organization pictured below is City Year, “an education focused, nonprofit organization that unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service to keep students in school and on track to graduation.”
Suzanne’s friend Lisa did a City Year and thought it very worthwhile. Today, I often see the kids in their distinctive jackets on the train, and I once went door-to-door to help City Year’s public-spirited cofounder in a primary election for the Senate.
Photograph: Charles Krupa/AP/File
City Year volunteers sing the national anthem outside Faneuil Hall in Boston. The volunteers age 17 to 24 will work in a variety of community-service programs. The best way to encourage teens to volunteer is to make it a way to get together with their friends, a new report suggests.
If you are going to London, try to see where archaeologists have recently located theaters used by Shakespeare.
Matt Trueman writes at the Guardian, “The sites of two Jacobean theatres in London, both used by William Shakespeare, could host drama once again, following planning applications for new theatres.
“The Curtain theatre in Shoreditch, once home turf for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was discovered last year after an extensive archeological dig. Under plans submitted to Hackney council, it would be transformed into a 250-seat open-air amphitheatre …
“Meanwhile, just around the corner, it could soon be joined by a six-storey theatre with a 235-seat auditorium, on the site of a performance space known simply as the Theatre.
“Launched a year before the Curtain, this was only the second permanent theatre built in England and hosted the Lord Chamberlain’s Men when its proprietor Richard Burbage joined the company. The Theatre’s remains were uncovered five years ago …
“Alan Taylor of the Belvedere Trust, the organisation behind the plans, said, ‘We expect to have a Shakespearian piece to what we are offering, but it will by no means be all Shakespeare.’
“Meanwhile, planners at The Curtain, to be called The Stage, have reportedly approached Shakespeare’s Globe about jointly programming the space, but is aiming for similar plurality. Architect John Drew said: ‘It would be great if the performance space was used for all sorts of purposes, such as music as well as theatre.’ ” More.
Can’t help wondering what the characters in my favorite recent TV show, Slings and Arrows (who are completely real in my imagination), would think about adding the non-Shakespeare entertainments.
(By the way, if you rent Slings and Arrows from Netflix, skip the first episode. Not a good introduction.)
Photograph: The Guardian
Excavations at the Curtain theatre in London
The big thermometer on the garage may have said 40 degrees when I woke up this morning, but I’m still thinking spring.
My husband has planted an array of annuals and perennials, and both kids are seeding lawns.
Since I am rather a fan of Mass Challenge winners and I also had a heartfelt testimonial from Mimsey, I encouraged both families to try a 2010 Mass Challenge winner, Pearl’s Premium grass seed.
Mimsey said that she had thrown Pearl’s into a wooded area next to her house, expecting nothing. Before she knew it, a lovely velvety carpet had grown there. Sounded to me like the beans Jack’s mother threw away that led to Jack’s adventures at the top of a beanstalk.
And speaking of plants, the plant identification site Mister Smarty Plants, a big supporter of this blog, needs my support tonight. So if you would like to help him get recognition at a Mass Innovation Night on June 10, vote for him here. It took me a while to figure out the voting. You have to vote for four entries in the event and make a comment. But you don’t have to give your name. Thanks!
I am happy that the Wall Street Journal kept its front page human-interest stories after all when Murdock took over. Today’s feature opened up a side of the U.S. Marines I knew nothing about — protecting endangered species.
Ben Kesling writes from Twentynine Palms, California, “U.S. Marines are taught to overcome obstacles with a minimum of help. But when some Marines prepared to charge a hill in a training exercise here a few months ago, they were forced to halt and radio the one man who could help them advance: Brian Henen, turtle expert.
“The troops were ‘running up the hill and firing at targets,’ Mr. Henen said. ‘Some of the tortoises like the hill also. The Marines don’t want to hurt the tortoise, so they call us and we go in and move it.’
“Mr. Henen, who has a doctorate in biology, is part of a little-known army of biologists and other scientists who manage the Mojave desert tortoise and about 420 other threatened and endangered species on about 28 million acres of federally managed military land.
” ‘There’s a lot of people who don’t recognize the amount of conservation the Marine Corps does,’ said Martin Husung, a natural-resource specialist on the base. ‘A lot of people think we’re just running over things.’ …
John Brent, base environmental manager at Fort Benning in Georgia, says, “‘It’s a well-kept secret’ that biologists are drawn to work on military bases … There’s a chance to do terrific work.’ ”
Quoting from The Next Web, Andrew Sullivan posts today about a Canadian astronaut who may be on his last trip to space, given the Canadian government’s cutbacks.
“Commander Chris Hadfield is one of the most memorable astronauts to have gone into space, so it was fitting that his farewell moment to the world saw him record the first ever music video from space.
“Ahead of his return to Earth on Monday after five months at the International Space Station (ISS), the 53-year-old Canadian astronaut fittingly covered the David Bowie classic ‘Space Oddity’ in a poignant video.
“Hadfield has maintained strong links to folks at home, having entertained his 700,000-plus Twitter followers with regular photos and commentary, and taken part in a Reddit AMA interview, but music was always a focus for him.
“He recorded the first song in space last December, and, speaking before his latest mission, he admitted that he would record a range of songs in space.”
You may get a kick out of this BBC story on the intersection of art and engineering.
“Artist Daan Roosegaarde has teamed up with Hans Goris, a manager at a Dutch civil engineering firm with hopes of reinventing highways all over the world.
“They are working on designs that will change with the weather — telling drivers if it’s icy or wet by using high-tech paint that lights up in different temperatures.
“Another of their ideas is to create a road that charges up electric cars as they drive along it.
“Daan Roosegarde said: ‘I was completely amazed that we somehow spend billions on the design of cars but somehow the roads … are still stuck in the Middle Ages.’
“In the past he has designed a dance floor with built-in disco lights powered by dancers’ foot movements.
“They plan to trial their specially designed glow-in-the-dark paint on a strip of road at Brabant, which is near the Dutch border with Belgium, later this year.”
Yesterday I was thinking about how Lewis Carroll’s wry humor was a kind of code targeted directly at kids. No kid could miss that Alice is the only sensible person among a nutty bunch of adults in Wonderland — Caterpillars, Mad Queens, March Hares, and Mad Hatters — who can’t seem to follow the rules of social behavior they always lecture children to follow.
I was thinking particularly of Carroll’s spoof on the moralizing poem about the little busy bee — familiar to children of that day — and how he entertained with verses about a completely irresponsible and self-indulgent reptile.
Instead of admonishing children to be industrious with “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour,” he writes, “How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail.” (Click there and watch the delicious Disney version on YouTube. Note how confused Alice looks at hearing the wrong words and how polite she is anyway.)
I realized I could write a post on spoofs of poems after my husband pointed out a second item this morning. It seems that the tree Joyce Kilmer praised in his best-known poem turns out to have been close to where I grew up.
And I can never hear these words by Kilmer — “I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree” — without immediately hearing Ogden Nash spoofing Kilmer with “I think that I shall never see/A billboard lovely as a tree/And that unless the billboards fall,/ I’ll never see a tree at all.”
Please help me think of more examples. I’m sure there must be more.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 