botany, shoes, books, and justice
The 28th Berry Go Round is a few days old now, but definitely still worth visiting. Some of my favorites from this edition were Mary Farmer’s post on the relationship between a stunning tropical tree and extinct megafauna and a brief, but very good, article on terrestrial plant evolution.
Want to submit to next month’s BGR or host in a few months? Here’s how.
This picture of a budding lilac is from May 17th. I’ve lived on this cold, dry mountain for four years now and this is the first year I’ve seen blooming lilacs. Lilacs are in the olive family, which Phytophactor ruminated on a few weeks ago. I love lilacs and this particular bush is on my daily walk home, so I think I would have noticed if it had bloomed in previous years. Oddly enough, it’s been a very chilly and dry spring, two things I thought would make it less likely to bloom. Perhaps it’s the lack of extremely cold nights alternating with warm weather that is the normal Flagstaff spring, or maybe the extremely wet winter we had helped it. I do wonder what generally prevents them from blooming here.
Last week I made the first of two moves I’m making this summer. It took two afternoons, many more trips than I expected, and four other people. I’m trying not to think about how soon I have to do it all again. At least nearly everything will already be packed next time. The day after I finished moving, I only managed an hour of work. The rest of the day was spent lazing on a couch reading Zodiac
From Anaïs Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love
Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her self the night before were difficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day.
The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blond eyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten a porcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, to reform the contours and blurred surfaces of the cheeks, to erase the contradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity of its forms.
She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile.
Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair, and costume, for a fissure through which to explode.
What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure and artifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty emerged which had been frayed and marred by anxiety.
Hurricanes are going to make the oil spill that much harder to deal with.
This Is your Copilot Speaking makes me feel better and worse about flying. Also, it’s a problem when airlines treat their pilots nearly as badly as their passengers.
Another animal disappears in the 6th great extinction, this time it’s the Alaotra grebe.
Temblor Range on BPotD
We’re running out of fish very, very quickly. I expect when we finally slash fishing fleets, it will be far too late.
Challenging, painful art of Marina Abromovi?.
Denialists are scared control freaks.
A (non-snarky) list of ways men can help prevent gender violence.
Giving women power over household money means that kids are fed and father is sober.
How do invasive species affect you?
Rand Paul’s position on private businesses having the right to discriminate would sit even less well with people if the question were phrased “Should your tax dollars be used to pay police to remove people from private businesses solely because the proprietor doesn’t like the color of their skin?”
After months and months of checking Craigslist like most people check Facebook, I’ve finally found a new place to live. I’m excited to leave the annoying partier neighbors and increasingly difficult management at my current apartment complex. I’m even more excited about living in a real neighborhood close to a grocery store and lots of bus stops with neighbors who have more plants than I do. The kitchen is a bit small, but it’s adorable, has real tile and wood floors instead of crappy linoleum and gross carpet, and has all kinds of clever cubbyholes and closets for storage.
Unfortunately, my current lease is up Monday and my new lease doesn’t start until the end of June. I get to stay with a labmate I’ve been wanting to get to know better in the meantime, but moving twice just isn’t going to be pleasant.